The Phantom Diaries (20 page)

Authors: Kailin Gow

BOOK: The Phantom Diaries

12.59Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

“You’d prefer to make love to me here in your home, rather than Annette’s.” She smirked and put her hands to Annette’s trim waist. “I agree. Annette’s apartment is so sterile, so chaste. But here, sensuality and passion are imbedded in every fiber of these rooms. It’s all very much like you, Eric; to fill your home with the unquenched passion you still carry after all these years.”

Her lips parted in that practiced way she had. She stepped back to the bed, sat down and brought one heel to the edge, setting her in a provocatively inviting pose.

“I know what you’re up to, Kristine, and it won’t work.” Though the words came out forceful and strong, my legs carried me a few steps closer to her. “It’s Annette I long for, not you.”

With the experience of the stage actress that she was, she brought a puritan expression to Annette’s face and shifted over to kneel dejectedly on the bed. “I just want to get closer to you, Eric.” The voice was innocent, the eyes downcast and demure, and the pout on her lips childlike and pure.

I was transfixed. Annette. Was Annette finally breaking through Kristine’s hold on her? I wanted to believe it. I wanted Annette back so much! I moved to the edge of the bed, drinking in her beauty. My desire for her was blinding and it completely possessed my senses. I had always desired Annette since the first day she stepped into the Opera House. I knew I had to meet her, even if it meant being exposed as the Phantom in public. Even if it meant having to reveal my terrible secret after all these years. Annette was the reason I had for continuing my existence.

Annette put a shy hand to my chest and gazed at me with pure wonder, just as she had those first few days when we’d rehearsed her songs. Her lips met mine; soft, gentle and unhurried. Her breath was sweet and I had to fight to keep from ravaging her.

How wonderful it was to find myself in her arms again.

Décembre 22 2009

Mon journal,

As soon as I leaned over Annette, I noticed her eyes had shifted from demurred to hard and wicked. The Annette I thought I was embracing was not Annette, but Kristine acting as Annette. The treachery! Kristine was a master at playing with my emotions and my heart.

Much later when Annette could finally break free to tell me, I learned that Annette was trapped inside weeping, crying out for me to help her, to save her. “Only you know about Kristine!” she said. “Only you can help me, Eric. Do not fall for her once again. Please, Eric, don’t forget me. Don’t let her win. Don’t let her kill me.”

***

Eric, Annette, Kristine, Chace, and Aaron’s story continues in Book 2 of Phantom Diaries.

Dark Memories

October 2010

Excerpt from

PULSE

Book 1 of 5

kailin
gow

prologue

S
he ran like an animal. Her clothes were wet, sopping, clinging to her thighs and to her chest, hollow and transparent around the curve of her shoulders. Her hair shook out droplets of rain; her cheeks were flushed and she was breathless. He could see her heartbeat throbbing at the side of her throat, see it in the rhythmic panting, hear it from across the street, pounding in his ears, intermingled with the thunder bolting from the sky. He could feel it – it felt like an earthquake to him, shaking his ribs, his shoulders, his legs. It had been so long since he had seen a heartbeat like hers – since he had felt a heartbeat at all.

The skies had opened up – as they so often did in North California – without any warning, without any hesitation. It was as if the smooth blue glass ceiling of the world had shattered all at once, letting the primordial oceans pound down upon the pavement. He could see her consternation, her irritation – she wanted nothing but to get out of the rain, to dry herself off, to curl up into something warm and dry.

But Jaegar loved the rain. He loved the energy – the pulse of life beating down upon the earth. He could hear the scattered raindrops in their rhythmic approach to earth and pretend that each fall of rain was a beat of his dead heart. And she was alive with the energy, too –
alive
as he had never seen a woman alive, tossing her hair back, running into shelter, and her lips were pink and her cheeks were red. He remembered that his lips would never again be pink, that his cheeks would never again be red.

She was so young
.

Humans so often surprised him in that way. They looked no different from him – he could have been seventeen; he had been seventeen for so long – but their youth never failed to surprise him. The way the world was so new to them – that rain could still take them by surprise, when he had seen so many rainfalls.

He could smell her. The wind carried her scent to him like an animal's scent, and it was all he could do to keep his fangs in check. He leaned heavily upon the branch and parted the leaves to get a better look at her. He could feel the blood – stagnant in his veins – begin something like a torpid, sluggish, shift towards life – the closest thing he would ever get to a heartbeat. She was the sort of girl who made young boys' hearts pound, he thought – and they never knew how lucky they were to experience that sensation.

For it was the physical aspect of it, he thought, that humans understood least of all. They romanticized vampires, of course – how terrible it would be to live at night! To drink blood! To prey upon humans! These were things they could intellectualize, understand. Humans had been forced to commit murder. Humans had been forced to bite back their most natural, primal desires – and so they could almost understand, when they imagined vampires, what it was like to feel that insatiable hunger for a woman's throat, her breast, her wrist. But not a human in the world had ever been alive without
living
, without a heartbeat – and so they took it for granted – what it meant, that constant linear throbbing, clock-like, towards inevitable death. For Jaegar was a vampire, and he was not alive, and the dull ache in his chest where a heartbeat should have been was for him one of the most agonizing things in the world.

They don't know
, he thought.
They'll never understand
.

He had been told that she was the one. He had waited for her until sunset – the sun agonizing upon him, even with the ring around his finger. Vampires were not meant for light, and even the strongest magic could not take away the pain, searing, burning, aching, in his flesh. He was unnatural in sunlight, and only now that dusk was beginning to settle over him could he find relief. He sat perched in the tree, obscured by the leaves, staring at her as she ran down the street.

He leaned in too closely – the birds noticed at last that something was wrong in their midst and took flight; a flurry of wings beat up around him and the branch snapped from the tree and plummeted to the earth below.

It was enough time to make a distraction.

He concentrated, and in half a second he was behind her, so close he could feel the wind blow her hair upon his lips, and then he opened the umbrella above her.

“Miss,” he said.

She startled.

“What the...” She rounded on him.

“You looked wet,” he said. She did not seem amused.

“I'm warning you,” she said. “I know kung fu.”

He had learned kung fu once, many centuries ago. He thought it better not to mention it.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to help.”

She softened.

“Thanks,” she said, lamely. “I'm sorry – I didn't mean to snap at you. But you need to learn not to sneak up on people like that. You scared me.”

Her eyes remained fixed upon the tree from which he had come. A suspicious glare clouded her gaze. Had she seen – was she wondering? He knew she knew something
was wrong. He tried to maintain whatever pleasant normalcy he could. The sequoias were tall, after all. No human could survive a jump from
them
– he knew she knew this. He knew she thought he was human.

From Top Author for Young Adult

Kailin Gow

PULSE

17 year-old Kalina didn’t know her boyfriend was a vampire until the night he died of a freak accident. She didn’t know he came from a long line of vampires until the night she was visited by his half-brothers Jaegar and Stuart Greystone. There were a lot of secrets her boyfriend didn’t tell her. Now she must discover them in order to keep alive. But having two half-brothers vampires around had just gotten interesting…

BITTER FROST

All her life, Breena had always dreamed about fairies as though she lived amongst them…beautiful fairies living amongst mortals and living in Feyland. In her dreams, he was always there – the breathtakingly handsome but dangerous Winter Prince, Kian, who is her intended. Then she sees Kian, who seems intent on finding her and carrying her off to Feyland. If she is his intended, why does he seem to hate her and want her dead? And her best friend Logan has suddenly become protective. Things are getting strange…