Hocking, Amanda Letters To Elise (My Blood Approves 4.5) (2 page)

Nothing in life has ever made as much sense as this.

I want to run to the hillsides, climb to the rooftops, singing her name over and over. Elise, Elise, my love, my true, Elise.

All this time I’ve been here, travelling with Ezra, and we hadn’t seen her. We must’ve gone over every bit of countryside in all of Ireland, but somehow, we missed her. As if she’d been hiding, a treasure

tucked away like a pot of gold.

The guilt I’ve felt these past two years has finally disappeared, like a weight from shoulders. For nothing about me can be as horrible as I’ve imagined, as I’ve feared. No creature such as Elise would ever speak to me if I was a monster.

I want to write down exactly how I found her, precisely as it happened, so I can remember this day

forever, in perfect clarity. Even if tomorrow she leaves, I could survive forever on this one meeting, on this one beautiful, perfect day. So I cannot forget. I will not.

Ezra and I have been staying in the countryside, preferring the small villages to the cities. The rural areas have been hit the worst by the famine, and that is why we came here in the first place. Ezra had gotten word of the devastation in Ireland, of all the people dying of starvation.

After some debate, Ezra decided we should come here. We would be doing the people a favor, helping

to ease the suffering.

Things were even worse than we’d expected. Children so small and frail with bellies round and

distended. Fields filled with rotting, stinking potatoes. Bodies piled along the side of the road. Flies in swarms, the only things thriving in this kind of climate.

Well… perhaps not the only thing.

Initially, I was against the idea. It was the opposite that everything Ezra had ever taught me. Taking a human’s life is beyond my capacity. But when I saw how these people were dying, the slow agonizing

death that starvation is, I understood that there were far worse things in life than death by vampyre.

Ezra chose carefully, looking for people he was certain wouldn’t survive and whose absence would

benefit those around them. Like a family of five that only had enough to feed two.

Many humans called him the Angel of Death, and they were grateful when he’d finally come for them.

To humans, Ezra did look much like an angel. He was beautiful in a way that I’d only imagined the

seraphim could be. Calm and comfort seemed to flow from him, and he held his victims in his arms,

giving them peace for the first time in so long.

Still, the guilt ate at me. I truly believed we were helping these people, ending their anguish in the only way we knew how, but death is not an easy burden to bear. Even a welcomed death.

We both ate much less frequently than we needed to. Once or twice a month at most. The humans were

far too weak and frail to handle even the smallest blood loss, so every feeding meant death.

I’d begun to hate Ireland. When we’d first arrived, I’d been enchanted by the beautiful rolling moors.

The grass here seemed so much greener than I’d seen before. Even with famine lurking around every

hill, there was a certain lushness to the scenery I’d never seen in America.

But now I saw the grass that was so green because it grew from such tainted fertilizer. How many bodies were buried here? How many lives had been lost? Not just at mine and Ezra’s hand, but by the hands of

our kind, or by disease and famine?

“Why does this happen?” I asked him, kneeling beside a fresh grave I’d dug myself. We always buried

every body we came across, whether we made them or not.

“I don’t understand the question,” Ezra said, wiping the dirt from his hands onto his trousers.

“Why do people always die?”

“It’s as it is. As it should be,” he said, but the moonlight shone brightly on his expression, and I knew he’d asked himself that a thousand times before. “Everything dies.”

“But we don’t.” I stared up at him, hoping he would have some response, but I’d already began the

realization that my maker didn’t know everything. He was no more a god than I was, with no more

solutions than I had.

“We will,” he assured me, staring off in the distance. “Someday.”

“But why is it like this?” I got to my feet, unable to contain the anger and confusion inside me. “Why do all these innocent people suffer? How can children, who’ve barely even taken a breath, die in so much

pain? How is there so much death in this world, and yet we live on?”

“I don’t know, Peter,” Ezra said. “But I’m afraid that the answer might be that you’re asking too much of this life. I don’t think there is a reason.”

“Asking for a reason isn’t too much.” I shook my head fiercely and clenched my fists. “Suffering requires a reason.”

“We’ve spent too much time out here.” Ezra lowered his eyes and turned away from me, walking

towards the road. “The isolation is getting to you.”

“What isolation?” I asked, following him. “I’m with you always.”

“I’m not enough.” He quickened his steps, inciting me to hurry along with him. “I’m death as much as

anything around here. You need to be around life. We’re going to the city.”

“How will that help? Life is only a prelude to death,” I insisted. “Being around living vital people will only serve as a reminder that soon they will be still and motionless in the ground.”

“Sometimes the best course in the search for the meaning of life is to busy yourself until you forget that you don’t know the meaning of life,” Ezra said finally.

I wanted to argue further, but Ezra was impossible to argue with when he’d made up his mind. He’d

become tired of my ever growing malaise and was determined to snap me out of it. Once we reached

the city, he planned to find a boat to take us away from Ireland, maybe to England or France.

We reached the city two nights ago. Ezra took me to a pub, which is the only way I’d know how truly

hard this was him. Ezra kept his emotions to himself as often as he could, but when they became too

much for him, he had to find a release.

His best solution for dealing with a depression was to lay with a woman, preferably a human woman full of life with a warm body and pounding heart. I never asked him, but I suspect that he never bit a woman he took to his bed. To be with them was to pretend, for a moment, that he was alive, that he was

capable of giving and receiving love with another being.

In the pub, he ordered whiskey, which we both pretended to drink, but most of it ended up on the floor.

Women were always enamored with Ezra, and two lovely girls joined us.

The fairer of the two had her eyes set on the Ezra. She hung on his every word, gripping his arm with

urgency, and she melted at the sound of his laugh. It didn’t take long before he was renting a room

above the pub and whisking her up the stairs.

Her friend would gladly go with me, but I didn’t have it in me. Being with a woman had never been quite the release for me as it was for Ezra. I stayed down in the pub, listening to the girl talk for quite a long while, but eventually, I left to walk the streets alone.

When the sun began to rise, I headed back. We didn’t have much money, so I didn’t want to rent a room

of my own. I waited on the stairs until the girl had gone before going into the room. Ezra was sprawled across the bed, contented and sleeping. I stole a thin blanket and made myself a bed on the floor.

Ezra awoke early for the day with an extra bounce in his step. He was still convinced that being around people was the cure for what ailed me. He insisted that we go out to the market while the evening sun

was still up, when the market was busy with shoppers and sellers. Seeing people laughing, bartering,

living, would be good for me.

I’d wanted to argue with him, but I thank the heavens that I did not. Letting him drag me out to that

market was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

The streets were crowded, much fuller than I’d seen them in the small villages we’d traversed. The

sound of voices echoed off the shops that lined market. Chickens and goats were aplenty, making their

protests at being sold off for food.

The smell of it was all overwhelming. The thin blood I’d been subsiding on was nothing like this, heady and pounding through the masses. It was intoxicating.

People pushed against me to get where they wanted, their bodies burning like small flames. Children ran into me, shouting an unapologetic “sorry” over their shoulders as they dashed on to play some game.

“See?” Ezra clapped me on the shoulder to draw my attention to him. “This is what life is about.”

“A dirty market?” I asked with a wry smile, but I’d already begun to feel lightheaded.

The combination of the sun, which tires vampyres, and the effects of the market were too much for me.

I couldn’t hang onto my sense of hopelessness even if I’d wanted to.

“We will stay in the city for a few more days,” Ezra said, seeing through my attempts at disapproval.

Then I felt something, a sensation I’d never had before. Like a heat in the pit of my stomach pulling me.

As if I’d had an invisible thread tied to me all this time that I’d never noticed before, and someone just picked up the slack and began to pull me.

In the din of the thousand voices that filled up the street, I heard one clear as a bell. I turned towards it, not that I had a choice. The thread yanked at me so hard, it was turning me.

“You expect me to let you have that for –” the voice was saying, that clear, perfect girl’s voice lilting with an Irish accent. But she stopped speaking when I turned around, when she saw me.

I couldn’t move or breathe or do anything. The whole world fell away, and she was the only thing I could see.

Her eyes were gray, like a heavy fog that blanketed me, and her skin was white as porcelain. Red flames of hair framed her face, and the pink petals of her lips parted as she stared at me.

I could hear her heart above everyone else’s around her, even though her heart beat much softer and

slower. She had the heart of a vampyre, and it sounded strangely exotic against the frantic beats of the humans. It sung to me, calling me to her.

I don’t remember walking over to her. I’m not sure that my feet even moved. It was as if I’d evaporated into a mist so I could float through all the people crowding the street until I stopped in front of her.

A cart filled with tomatoes separated us, and no gap had ever felt farther. We were only a foot or two apart, but I needed to be closer to her. The distance was terrifying.

An old woman stood next to me, trying to push me out of the way to continue haggling over the cost of

tomatoes, but I ignored her. I was immovable, like granite. I couldn’t go anywhere unless this beautiful girl asked me to go.

I had never seen anything more lovely than her, and I doubt I ever will again. She was most painful to look at, like staring at the sun, because she was so perfect. She appeared young, maybe sixteen when

she’d turned, and she was flawless in a way I’d never seen anyone, not even other vampyres.

“Hello,” she said, her words barely more than a breath. A strand of red hair had fallen across her

forehead, and she tucked it back with delicate fingers.

“Hello,” I said, my voice as soft and weak as hers. She’d stolen all the air from my lungs.

“My name is Elise,” she said at length.

“Elise?” I smiled, knowing there had never been a name that sounded more beautiful. “I’m Peter.”

“Peter,” she repeated, and my knees became weak at the sound of it. She turned back, breaking eye

contact with more for an excoriating moment as she yelled back over her shoulder. “Catherine! Can you

watch the cart? I have to…” She trailed off and looked back at me.

“Will you walk with me?” I asked, filling in the gap.

She nodded once, and another vampyre came over. Her dark hair was tied back in a braid, and she gave

Elise and me an odd look.

“Elise?” she asked. “What’s all this?”

“Catherine, I have to go walk with this gentleman,” Elise said.

Catherine tried to press her for more answers, but Elise didn’t have any. She stepped out from behind

the cart and walked next to me. We turned down a street, moving away from the bustle of the market.

She kept staring up at me, and I down at her, as if we were both afraid that the other would disappear.

She turned into a stable, empty aside from a few horses. She put her hand on one of the wooden pillars, as if to steady herself, and looked at me. Her eyes were hypnotic, forcing me to look at them. With her, I had no willpower of my own.

“Who are you?” she asked, almost in an awed tone.

“I already told you. I’m Peter,” I said, hoping that would be explanation enough, and moved towards

her.

“Are you a sorcerer?” Elise asked and stepped away from me. She climbed up on a bale of straw, so she

could look down at me.

“No.” I ducked below the beam so I could walk over to her. “Are you?”

“No.” She shook her head, and I noticed a small braid she had in her hair, keeping it back so it didn’t fall in her eyes.

She reached up, hanging onto the beam, and her dress pulled taut against her bodice. It awakened a

fever inside of me, and my whole body began to heat up.

“How have you put this spell me on then?” Elise asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

I reached up, putting my hands on the same beam as her. My fingers brushed against hers, causing a jolt to surge through me. Her eyes widened, so I knew she felt it too. I leaned on the beam, so our bodies

were so close they were nearly touching, and I breathed in the sweet perfume of her flesh.

“This,” she said softly. “This is a spell, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “If it is, I don’t care. I don’t ever want it to stop.”

I leaned in, meaning to kiss her, but she jumped down off the bale of straw. She ran out of the stable, her dress flowing behind her, and she glanced back at me over her shoulder. I’m not sure if she wanted me to give chase, but I didn’t have a choice.