Vicious (24 page)

I had not known she’d realized that. It was true I had seen a brutal and barbaric side of my lover, and seeing that side had given me pause. She had continually tried to explain her nature to me, but all I could see were those eyes. After watching them ink over right before she wrenched a man’s head backwards had put everything she had said into perspective. Not to mention the crazy experience of seeing a bullet exit your lover’s body while she’s rampaging through a prison.

However, I had planned to not show this to her. It was my burden to bear. I had to come to terms with this because this was her nature, and she couldn’t change what she was. I supposed that’s what I got for trying to hide anything from a vampire, especially a vampire who knew me so intimately.

“Yes, Anna, I did see,” I said, resigned.

There was no point in denying it anymore.

She covered her face with her hands and looked like she might weep. If there ever was a time when Anna could weep, I supposed it would have been then. I tried to look in between her fingers to see her face. There were no tears, of course, because Anna simply did not cry. I knew that fact about her as clearly as I knew the sky was blue.

“I knew you would eventually,” she said dismally as she removed her hands from her face. “I tried to warn you, but I knew you would see for yourself. I’m a monster.”

I grabbed her and wrapped my arms around her in another intimate embrace. I squeezed tightly in an effort to meld my body with hers. I felt like I simply could not get close enough to her. In that moment, I wished we were somewhere that had four walls and a locked door so I could try another way to get close to her. I tightened my hold on her body, knowing full well she could break it at any moment if she had a mind to. I moved my lips near her ear. Here went nothing.

“I want you to make me a monster too,” I whispered in her right ear as I held on for dear life.

It was obviously the wrong thing to say. She broke my grip and pulled away from me with an astonished face. All I could do was meet her eyes with my own pleading look. When I looked into her face, I knew I had blown my one good chance to really discuss this with her.

“Are you crazy?”

“No. I’ve been thinking—”

“You’ve been thinking about it? Didn’t you see enough horror in that prison? Do you want more death and blood?”

“No, Anna. I just want you.”

She stopped her angry rant and took a deep breath and began again in a calmer voice. “What?”

“You, Anna. I want to be with you. I don’t think I can survive in your world for very long as vulnerable as I am. Plus, I will grow old and die someday.”

“So will I, Grant.”

“But not for a really long time. Think about it. We could be together. You can teach me all the vampire stuff and I can teach you guys how to acclimate to today’s society better. This is how we have a future. Can we please just talk about this?”

“Vampire stuff? Like drinking blood? Do you want me to teach you about drinking blood, Grant? Are you ready to say goodbye to food and hello to warming blood in the microwave to quench your never-ending thirst to drink it warm right from the source?”

I paused. She knew where to strike at me. It was one thing to fantasize about being with the woman of your dreams and having astounding strength and agility for a lifetime longer than you could fathom. It was clearly another to think of the everyday practicalities of what that would mean. I would have to drink blood to live. That was an undeniable fact. I hesitated while I looked at her unfaltering face.

“Yes, if it meant being with you,” I said resolutely, even though I didn’t sound very confident.

“Bullshit. You say that now, but it’s totally different to live this reality. What about the rage you will feel and have to learn to suppress? What about the fact you will more than likely forget everything you’ve ever known, including me?”

She stumped me again. Would I forget everything, even Anna? Everyone else had forgotten practically everything they knew. Would I really forget my parents and my life? Would I really forget something as dramatic as knowing my Anna? Of course I would. She had. Everyone had.

I looked at her defeated when another idea sprang to mind.

“Stay here,” I said quickly.

“What?”

“Stay here and enroll in night classes. We could get an apartment together and spend at least some time together. You could learn about all kinds of things here, and we would be away from the vampires of New Orleans.”

Her hard expression gave a little, and she took my hands softly.

“Grant, I can’t do that. My vampire friends are my family. They depend on me, and New Orleans is home for us. I want to be with you too, but I simply can’t condemn you to the life I lead. The past week has been a tumultuous ride for us. I think we should take some time apart to reevaluate everything. Besides, I need to go back and make sure Lea behaves and doesn’t decide to come after you.”

“Do you love me?”

I had surprised her. Her expression told me that.

“I believe that I do. I have never felt this way before, but this all happened so fast, and I don’t want to make a rash decision based on the chaos of the last week. If I turn you, I am damning you to my life, the life of a vampire. If I stay with you, I am ostracizing myself from my family, and I am leaving New Orleans and you more vulnerable to who knows what.”

My heart sank into my stomach, and I choked back the desperation that welled up inside my chest.

“But I love you, Anna,” I said, and I even thought I sounded like a whiny five-year-old.

She ran her fingers through my hair and gazed up at me affectionately.

“I know. Let’s write to one another. One letter a week. We’ll take some time and reevaluate things, but stay in each other’s lives this way. We need to make sure we never give away anything specific in case someone else reads them. Don’t even address the letter to Anna. Call me Lois instead, and I’ll call you Clark.”

“As in Lois Lane and Clark Kent from Superman? You know about that?”

“Hey, I’m a vampire. I’m not dead.”

We snickered at her little joke together. It was good to see her smile and to feel like smiling in return.

“All right, so we write letters. Then what?”

“Then we see if we still feel the same after a while. I don’t want you to miss out on an opportunity to have a real life, Grant. If you still feel the same way after you live in the normal world for a while, then we can have this discussion again. You might feel differently about me after you get settled back in reality.”

“I don’t think I will,” I said resolutely.

“Let’s just try this and see, okay?”

She handed me a little index card. It had her address but no name listed above it. Below the address, a simple phrase was written clearly.
One letter a week
. She had planned this.

“Okay. One letter a week, but for how long?”

“As long as it takes to become clear,” she said vaguely as she leaned in and kissed me gently on the lips.

She squeezed my hands one last time, got in her car and drove away and out of my life.

Chapter Twenty Six

Grant, one week later

“As you can see, ballet dancers were a main focus of Degas’s artwork. He was given permission to follow their company during their performances and observe them backstage during practices.”

The auditorium was packed with people nodding off during Professor Freeman’s lecture. The lecture hall held five hundred people and boasted three huge projection screens. The place was filled to capacity. We all shifted and moaned in unison. You couldn’t do much more than that. It was like a sardine can with stadium seating. Thank God for deodorant.

He wasn’t a bad lecturer, but half the student body was hung over from the Women’s Lit. department bonfire party the night before. Everyone that is, except me. I’d gone to the party because I had to. Eric had insisted, and he was a lot bigger than me. He had threatened to drag me there in my sweats if I didn’t go willingly.

Now, almost everyone was tired and hung over. There was a quiet and slightly nauseous peace to being hung over. The room around me was a collaboration of groaning companions who smelled of old beer and bacon.

I tried to blend in with them. I wanted to, but I hadn’t gotten drunk the night before. The one beer I’d sipped on had made me feel sick, and I’d ended up pouring it out in a holly bush when no one was looking. Everyone looked so content now, laughing about the antics of this person or that. They passed around a bottle of Advil and shared looks of faux regret with one another. How I longed for the simple pleasure of feeling hung over with them right now.

“Critics of the time chastised Degas for his poses of women, saying he obviously hated women for the unflattering positions he made his models take.”

My eyelids felt heavy, and I rubbed my eyes, trying to blink away the sleep. There was one thing I shared with my fellow classmates. I hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. Every time I’d closed my eyes and begun to drift, there had been those lifeless wolf eyes staring at me just beyond the boundaries of reality. It had shocked me back awake every time.

I tried to focus on the images in front of me. Lovely women in dancer’s costumes and nude women washing their hair flashed before me. I wanted one to look like her, but they didn’t. None of them resembled Anna, not even a little.

My eyes blurred despite my attempt to focus, and the lovely little dancer quivered and shook in front of me. She was looking down at her feet while she laced her slippers. Most of her face was obscured. Suddenly, she looked up at me. The motion was so quick I jumped internally. She was beautiful. Her painted eyes stared at me intently, and while in this trance of staring at one another, her eyes changed. They inked over like a vampires right in front of me.

I jumped, startled awake by a gentle hand on my arm.

“Are you okay?”

The hand and the voice belonged to a sweet, mousey girl that sat next to me. I was pretty sure her name was Melanie.

“Yeah, I’m good. Sorry. I must have passed out. I didn’t snore, did I?” I whispered.

She giggled a little. “No, you just jumped a little. Some party last night, huh?”

“Yeah, it was nuts.”

We went back to paying attention to the lecture, and I tried to shake off the memory of the image.

I watched the clock. We still had twenty more minutes. I sighed and tried to not think about Anna. Her skin, her eyes, the way she always seemed to smell like roses. I had to forget, or at least I had to make it not so raw. I remembered everything so vividly it was like she was sitting right next to me.

“I am,” whispered Anna.

I looked over and Anna had taken the place of mousey Melanie. Her blue eyes were just as intense as I remembered. The students around me didn’t seem to notice her. They didn’t seem to hear her either.

“Anna? What are you doing here?”

“Am I here?”

“Of course. You are right here in front of me.”

“Well, I didn’t intend to be.”

“What does that mean?”

“I told you before, Grant. You are different than most.”

There was a loud bang. I started and grabbed for Anna’s hand.

“Anna, what was that?”

“It’s what you can’t ignore.”

“What? What does that mean?”

There was another thud. It sounded like something big was on the other side of the walls, trying to break through to the lecture hall. Another bang echoed through the room, but no one other than me seemed to notice. I looked around frantically for the sound’s point of origin.

“It’s coming.”

“What is it? Anna, why aren’t you helping?”

“There’s nothing I can do. You chose to see. You chose to live this life. When I’m here, this is all you can hope for.” She ran her hand down my cheek with a sympathetic gesture.

“No, Anna. That isn’t true. I want you to stay.”

The bang happened again, but this time, it was obviously centered on the double doors that led in and out of the lecture hall. It was louder this time than the last, and I could see the doors rattle beneath the force of whatever was outside. No one turned around. Professor Freeman continued to lecture and the students continued to doze around me, pretending to take notes.

“We need to get out of here.”

“And go where? For me this danger is everywhere.”

I looked at her exasperated. “Enough of the riddles, Anna. I want to know what’s happening.”

“I’m sure you do. You are different.”

“Stop saying that!”

“You are. Look at these people. Just look at them.”

More loud bangs rattled the door. They were coming faster now. Screws that held the hinges in place were separating from the wall. Whatever was on the other side was big and dangerous. No one looked, no one moved.

“See. They ignore. That’s what people do. Normal people look away. They ignore what’s in front of them if they don’t believe it.”

“How can you ignore that?”

“Most find a way, but not you.”