Velvet (41 page)

I don’t know how long it went on for. I only knew the pain was constant and sharp; the only clearness in the fog of existing. I had no real concept of time, but eventually, blessedly, it stopped. He pressed his trembling lips to my skin in a kiss.

“You promised me,” I murmured, on the thin edge of consciousness.

“I know,” he whispered. “Open your eyes.”

I did. He met mine and murmured something in that funny language of his—and I could feel the teethmarks in my neck closing back up. I should really ask him about that language sometime. Probably not now, though.

I fell back against the snow, drained. In my mind I laughed because I’d never used that word literally before. I felt Adrian crawl slowly over me. He touched my cheek, my eyes, my lips. He whispered my name brokenly against my heart.

And then I didn’t feel anything.

*   *   *

I used to chew on pennies when I was teething, or so my mom always told me. She’d have to hide all of them on the top shelf so I couldn’t find them. I remember they tasted like copper.

I woke up in the clearing and the world was copper. The trees, the grass, the clouds, my tongue—all copper. I would never be able to get that smell, that taste, out of my head.

I realized something heavy was covering me from head to foot.

Ah, yes.

That would be Adrian.

I muttered and shifted. He woke up, blinking sleepily. Our eyes met and we stared at each other for a long time. And then I reached up, stiff from the cold and dried blood, and put my arms around his neck and hugged him because I still didn’t believe he was alive—I wanted to, but wasn’t I crazy? Crazy people thought their dead, fake ex-boyfriends were alive. I didn’t know anymore. His arms felt warm around me—real. As long as they held on, I didn’t care if I was crazy. That was fine.

“Adrian?” I whispered against his cheek.

He buried his face in my hair. “I’m here.”

“Okay.”

I drifted off again.

“Caitlin,” he murmured into my hair a while later.

“Hmm?”

“We need to go back.”

“There’s no going back,” I mumbled.

“We need to go back,” he repeated. “We have to get to my house. I need to call Mariana and Dominic and Julian. We need to get warm.”

Warm sounded good.

Half letting go of me, we stumbled to our knees, and then, after many shaky attempts, we made it to our feet. I was so dizzy. The clearing smelled of copper. Adrian smelled like copper.

We took a step, and then another. Holding on to each other for balance, we staggered across the meadow and into the trees, the bright starlight dusting the path enough for us to see our feet on the white ground. We walked for so long. Everything in me begged me to stop, to fall into the snow and sleep, but I ignored me, and thought about clean clothes, a hot bath, hot chocolate, a fire, food, protein, food, a blanket, sleeping in a bed, sleeping anywhere.

The house came into view. The utility van was gone.

“Adrian,” I said, pulling him to a stop. “I … smelled him. It was like—like charred meat. What did you do?”

He paused before saying, “I honestly don’t know. Whatever it was, I’ve never done that before. I didn’t even know I could.”

We went inside the open front door cautiously, listening. The house was silent, a few lights burning on into the darkness.

“Grab some clothes, whatever you need for a few days,” he said as we headed up the stairs, checking every door as we went. There was no one there. As I packed, he went back downstairs and started raiding our fridge. I moved sluggishly, limply placing sweatpants and shirts and socks into a duffel bag, paying little attention to what I grabbed or if it matched. I headed downstairs again. Adrian looked better, more awake—more
alive
.

“You ready?”

I nodded.

“Lock the door, and we’ll come back tomorrow.”

We headed outside and I locked the door. My phone beeped anxiously in my bag. I fumbled onto the motorcycle and unlocked the screen. I had a text message from Rachel asking how I was doing over at Trish’s. I texted her back:
sry was watching movie marathon. im good, going to bed now.

I shoved my helmet on and Adrian pulled down the driveway, onto the main road, toward his house. Ten minutes later, we were there, the massive wrought-iron gates swinging open. He parked, and I tapped my phone again and sent a text off to Trish:
can u cover me? im with adrian; rachel & joe think im with you. thx.

I could only hope that Rachel hadn’t already called Trish or her parents and asked how I was. Since I’d never called Trish earlier to tell her I would be coming over, she wouldn’t know that I hadn’t gone with them to Norah’s competition like I was supposed to. Oh hell, I hope the police hadn’t been called. I shoved my phone in my pocket, too tired to think through the possibilities, and followed Adrian inside. We went up to Adrian’s room and he found his cell phone where he’d left it. I sat on the floor, not wanting to get blood on any of the furniture. Some insane part of me found it amusing that the last time I’d been in this room, I’d been drunk and Adrian had been a pirate.

“Mariana?” he asked a moment later. “Come home now. He came back.” He listened for a moment, then glanced at me. “At the house, with me. I’ll fill you in when you get here.” He listened a moment longer, then hung up.

“Why didn’t they help?” I asked. “Why were you alone?”

He shook his head. “They were in D.C., following a lead about our father. It was a setup. He planned this whole damn thing.” He ran a shaky hand through his hair, then grimaced when he realized it was matted with blood. “I need, uh—you need food.” He helped me up and we stumbled downstairs and into the kitchen where he flipped on a few lights.

“Eat these,” he said, handing me a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “It’ll hit your system fast.”

I popped one into my mouth and chewed mechanically. I loved chocolate chip cookies, but I honestly couldn’t taste them now. He opened the fridge and reached into a drawer, pulling out a plastic IV bag. I watched, fascinated, as he ripped off the stopper and drained the blood in one long swallow. I was on my second cookie when he reached for another bag. I figured I should be nauseous, but I wasn’t. He wiped his lips, threw both bags in the trash, and reached back in the fridge, pulling out a covered Tupperware container. He popped the lid, slid something onto a plate, and stuck it in the microwave.

“What’s that?” I asked around my fourth cookie.

“Spaghetti; lots of carbs. Can you handle that?”

I nodded. “Do you have any milk?” I was eating chocolate chip cookies. I needed milk.

“Milk? Yeah…” He grabbed a gallon from the fridge, poured me a huge glass, and set it in front of me, hands shaking.

“Keep drinking,” I told him.

He saw me sitting there, munching on my fifth cookie, then went back to the fridge and pulled out his third bag and began sipping at it slowly. The microwave dinged. He held the IV in one hand and handed me the plate of spaghetti with the other, then set a knife and a fork in front of me.

He’d been dead an hour ago.

I twirled some pasta on my fork and ate it. Mariana’s cooking. Good.

“Why aren’t you in Virginia?” he asked finally, voice neutral. “You were supposed to be in Virginia.”

I blinked. “Our water heater broke. I had to wait for the repairman.”

Tommie. The repairman. Adrian’s father. So stupid.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I couldn’t tell if he was angry.

So I shrugged. “We broke up. I didn’t want to call you.”

He bowed against the island we were both sitting at, his face in shadow. “We thought you would be gone all weekend,” he muttered. “We had someone in Virginia on standby to keep an eye on you. We let our guard down—Mariana and Dominic went off, Julian was in New York, and I stayed here with Lucian. I could feel you at your place, but I assumed it was residuals. I didn’t
think
.”

I swallowed my bite of spaghetti. “If you thought I was gone, how did you know what was happening?”

He looked up and I couldn’t read his face. “You—felt something—that you don’t normally feel. Well, you don’t … feel it all the time; only—it shouldn’t have been there, not if it was residual. You don’t feel like that when—when you’re away from me.”

My stomach clenched into a slimy ball of curdled cookies and spaghetti. I knew what he was talking about.

“Adrian,” I said, eyes watering, “I got all messed up.”

“We don’t have to talk about this now.” I couldn’t tell if he was offering me a way out or just didn’t want to hear about how I’d made out with his father.

I felt sick. Adrian had
died
because of me.

I let the fork clatter to my plate as I stumbled to the garbage can, barely getting the lid off before I violently threw up. There were hands on my back pulling my hair away and I just kept going until there was nothing left, and even then I couldn’t stop for a while. Adrian handed me a paper towel.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, and he helped me sit on the stool again because I was shaking too badly.

“Caitlin,” he murmured, “he’s a demon. I know you don’t like that word, I know you don’t believe it, but you’ve seen him now. You have to understand that he has means of persuasion beyond your control.”

“I don’t care about
him.
I care that I almost got you killed,” I whispered.

“No,” he said tightly. “I almost got
you
killed. Twice.”

“I let him into my
house
.”

He met my eyes levelly. “You were waiting for a plumber. A plumber came.”

He blinked, and swallowed tightly.

“Did you get enough?” I asked, nodding at the empty IV bag.

“Yeah,” he muttered, voice rough and thick. “We should get cleaned up.”

I looked tiredly at the hall, which led to the stairs, which led to another hall.

“I don’t think I have enough blood pressure to make it that far.”

He put his arms around me, lifting me off the stool. I listened closely to his heart as he carried me up the stairs to what had sort of become my bedroom. He nudged the door open with his foot, walked across the plush carpet into the bathroom and turned the lights on low, then set me on my feet. Reaching into the medicine cabinet, he pulled out two brand-new toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste. We stood, trembling, at the dual sinks and brushed our teeth, not making eye contact.

He finished first and went to the giant claw-foot tub and began to fill it with hot, foaming water. When he came back, he frowned, perhaps really seeing me for the first time since we’d gotten to the house.

“You’re covered in blood,” he said bluntly.

“Yeah, well, it’s all yours,” I replied. “And his. And you have more of it on you than I do.”

“I also have more of yours
in
me than you do,” he muttered to himself. “Are you awake enough to take a shower?”

Honestly? Probably not. I nodded, though.

He looked around, pointed at the towels as if to say, “Hey, there’s towels,” and then actually said, “I’ll be right outside.”

I almost let him go. But the thought of being alone again after everything that had just happened, even for a moment, was out of the question. He turned to leave and I caught his hand. He stared down at it for a long moment before looking at me. I wasn’t really thinking, just moving on instinct. I pulled him with me into the shower, turning it on without letting go of his hand. His face was a question mark even as I closed the glass door behind us. It was big enough to fit six people, but with just the two of us, it somehow felt impossible small. It must have looked kind of funny, both of us standing fully clothed in a giant marble shower, covered in blood. I kicked my shoes into the corner. Already the steaming water was running in little red whirls toward the drain.

I let go of his hand to reach for the hem of my blood-drenched shirt, but I was so weak I got it halfway off and it got stuck. After a moment, I felt Adrian’s fingers brush my skin as he pulled it the rest of the way off. For the second time that day, I was glad I’d worn my cute bra.

A long moment passed. Adrian’s lips were parted, his eyes dark and silver. Beads of water clung to the ends of his hair, building and falling, building and falling. I reached for his shirt, but before I could do more than touch it, he put his hand over mine. I flinched, waiting for the inevitable rejection. Instead, he ran his hands lightly up my arm, a pained look crossing his face as his fingers slid over the black-and-blue bruises that littered my skin. After a moment, he grabbed the shirt himself and tugged it slowly over his head, tossing it in the corner with my shoes.

Even in the clearing, I hadn’t been this terrified.

He kicked his shoes into the corner with the rest of our things. I looked slowly up from the waistband of his jeans, up, past the dozens of raw scars on his stomach and chest and the field of purple-green bruises, up to his eyes. He was staring somewhere past my shoulder, and he was perfectly still, as if trying to hold himself together by force of will.

Blood was caked in his hair, on his neck, his chest, his hands. I reached up and dragged my thumb lightly across his jaw, rolling away a gunky strip of blood. He closed his eyes and turned his cheek into my palm. I wasn’t thinking, really. I just wanted to wash everything away. I wanted to start over.

“You’re too tall,” I murmured.

He looked at me a moment, then sank slowly to his knees, arms hanging limply at his sides as he looked down at the blood-tinted water swirling down the drain between us.

I washed his hair, the bubbles turning bright red, then pink, then fading, finally, to white. He winced, once, when my fingers went over the bump on the back of his head—I’d forgotten he’d cracked his skull, too. Even when there were no more bubbles to rinse, I slid my fingers through his hair a few more times. He looked up at me when my hands finally went still.

His eyes were burning a low silver, swirling in lazy circles. He stood slowly, too close to me, and reached for the button on his jeans, pausing to see if I’d follow his cue. I reached for the button on my own jeans, which were irreparably stained with a mixture of muddy snow and vampire blood. We slid our jeans off and added them to the pile. He was wearing a pair of black boxer briefs, and nothing else—I’d seen him this unclothed once before, after the Halloween party, but it had been dark, and I’d been drunk, and my memory did not do him justice. I swallowed, heart hammering.