Stolen Night (4 page)

Now that the sunset had almost fully settled over the land, I knew that if I scanned the sky I would see the beginnings of the constellation of Andromeda. I brought my eyes back to the orchard.
Whoever lived in my house would return soon. They were most likely at the evening service at the church.

Rhode’s hand linked through mine. When two vampires love one another, their touch will produce warmth. Without love, we feel nothing. In that moment, his touch was like the brightest
sunlight on the warmest day.

‘Lenah, every tombstone in that graveyard carries the name Beaudonte.’ He motioned with his head towards the house. ‘Your family lives there . . . even now.’

I grasped my hands around Rhode, pulling him to me. Our bodies were intertwined in the middle of that lane. We, demons of bloodlust, held one another close.

‘Promise me,’ I urged. ‘Promise that no matter what happens, you will always be there for me.’ I pulled away and looked into Rhode’s vampire eyes. So glorious, they
were the colour of a summer sky. My sky. ‘We don’t know what will come, but if I know you will always be there for me, I can bear it.’

‘I promise,’ he said. ‘No matter what may come.’

He took my hand into his. With a glance back at the house and the graveyard beyond, the burn of tears that would never come stung my eyes. So I let the only person left in my heart take me away.
As darkness swept over the long lane leading out, I could hear the singing of a few people in the meadow behind the old monastery. They were heading away from us, back towards the orchard. That was
my family singing. Although they were many generations later, they were still my blood. I gripped Rhode harder, and let him take me, as he had done three hundred years before, into the night.

Present day

Time does not tick on for the dead. After we die, we cannot keep it. It is the master of the living. For the dead, for the vampire, time is a hornets’ nest. Dangerous,
best to be avoided – always humming in your ear.

When Rhode had run from me after our meeting with Suleen and the Aeris, he was leaving me for the second time in our long history. The first time had been in 1740, when my mind was starting to
string itself into pieces of lace. He had said, ‘I will never leave you,’ hundreds of times, thousands of times. Vampires like to count; they like to tally their sadness.

The last time Rhode left me, I went mad. The last time Rhode left me, I had created a very different kind of family for myself. The last time Rhode left me – I had made a coven of
vampires. This time I vowed, standing on that Wickham Boarding School pathway, with the moon filtering through the lattice of branches, I would not relive that misery. I would resolve to be me . .
. whoever that was.

But where had he gone this time? Back to where he was hiding during the year I believed him dead? What could possibly have been strong enough to keep him from me?

His words gnawed at my mind.

I didn’t want to come back
, he had said.
I had to.

Rhode had said he would never leave me. He said that as we stood in the lanes of my father’s orchard hundreds of years ago.

Security vans pulled through the campus. Guards and police officers corralled students and pointed them to their dorms. Trees swayed and the stars above twinkled in a lazy
dance.

‘Hey, you!’

I turned. A security guard I had never seen before walked towards me in the darkness. His badge shone under the pathway lights, which seemed brighter than usual.

‘Curfew is 9 p.m. tonight, which is in fifteen minutes. Let me see your ID.’

I reached into my pocket, extended my hand with the ID held between my fingers. The guard reached for it then froze, motionless, as though he was struck dumb.

‘Sir?’ I said, but he stared into the distance. Unmoving.

After a moment, he shook his head quickly and then turned on the spot, heading down the pathway away from me.

I stood on the path, unsure of what had just happened.

Suleen stepped out from the shadow of a building nearby, making me jump.

‘Walk with me,’ he said.

‘How did you do that?’ I asked, breathless.

He did not answer. We went in silence down the path alongside the building, past maintenance crews working in the dark. I could not tell what they were doing but sparks flew into the air like
tiny fireworks.

‘They are changing the locks,’ Suleen said. We were quiet again as we crossed the campus and approached the beach. Across the steps that led down to the sand was a strip of yellow
tape that read: P
OLICE
L
INE
- D
O
N
OT
C
ROSS
.

Suleen lifted the tape up right beside a police officer who was reading something from a clipboard. We ducked under the tape, and the officer gave no indication that he had seen us.

When we reached the beach, they had already moved the body but Kate’s blood was still soaked into the sand.

Suleen and I stood in the light of the moon. The summer wind blew gently and I admired my silent protector. I wondered why he had involved himself in my life for so long. And how it was that he
had such power. It radiated off him; it positively hummed.

I inhaled the scent of ocean and salt. When I was a vampire, I could not smell anything other than flesh and blood. My sight, on the other hand, was unlimited, needed for hunting, and resulting
in countless murders. I could see the veins in my victims’ skin, the flow of their blood. But touch and feeling? There was none. And taste?

‘All you shall taste is blood and it shall be the fruit of your darkness
. So say the books on vampirism,’ I said aloud.

‘Vampires love to record and pass on their misery. They use anything they can find to do so. Ancient documents, printed and scrawled on the oddest of paper, the bark of trees or on human
skin,’ Suleen replied.

I was quiet for a moment.

Then, ‘I created the vampire who killed Kate Pierson,’ I confessed.

He nodded. ‘As you saw tonight,’ he said, ‘our past is not an immovable thing. It defines us; it can undo our future.’

I exhaled loudly. ‘How do the Aeris have so much power? Are they actually capable of time travel?
Could
they have sent me back in time?’

‘Yes, I think so. You see, in this particular decree they are trying to repair the damage you have done.’ Suleen seemed to think about his words for a moment, then said, ‘The
Aeris are not human. They do not have human desires or wish you any ill.’

‘Yet they’re hurting me in the most effective way possible – separating me from Rhode.’

Suleen drew in a deep breath, which surprised me. I watched him inhale, though he would never need the air. He drew it in, and when he breathed out he blew towards the ground, so the grains
travelled in infinitesimal movements, making patterns on the sand.

When he was done, a faint outline lay at our feet. Like a silver ghost, Kate’s body lay on its side, mouth gaping open exactly as Justin and I had last seen her.

The wind picked up but Kate’s apparition still glowed on the sand.

‘They said Rhode and I could talk and touch but we couldn’t commit to one another.’ The word
commit
hung in the air for a few seconds.

‘Yes, this is the rejoining of soulmates. If you choose to form a life together, if you give in to your love despite their warning, you will return to the fifteenth century and Rhode to
the fourteenth.’

My vision blurred, the ocean a mess of watery lines – I didn’t dare meet Suleen’s eyes and pressed my lips together hard. The images from my first human life swam before my
eyes: a graveyard peppered with ancient stones, hazy light cast through thick glass, and monks chanting in the night.

Kate’s misty body glowed underneath the bright moonlight. If I went back to the fifteenth century, as the Aeris threatened, no one I loved from this world would be there. No Vicken. No
Justin. Wickham wouldn’t have even been built yet – no Lovers Bay Main Street.

Kate would be alive, however. Tony too.

‘Be the human you wanted to be. Revel in it,’ Suleen said.

‘How can I be that human when it’s so dangerous here?’ I met Suleen’s eyes and then sighed. ‘The blonde vampire has most likely returned for revenge. She seemed so
delighted with herself and her murder.’

It came to me then: Suleen should stay. Suleen could help me!

‘Stay,’ I said simply. ‘With you here, no vampire would dare attack.’ Suleen’s expression was one that I had seen before but not in a very long time. A kind of
parental concern. Emotional pain rippled in my chest. I visualized my father and mother in the white light of the Aeris. I could only imagine what my disappearance had done to their lives.

‘Your father was no victim,’ Suleen said, reading my emotions and perhaps my thoughts.

I fell to my knees and Suleen joined me so we both knelt on the ground.

‘You made a choice on that archery field, Lenah,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘Then you know you chose to stay here, in this world. That means you must deal with the repercussions, even if that means fighting this vampire.’

I didn’t want to fight the vampire. Not alone.

‘What about the Aeris?’ I asked.

‘No supernatural being has ever accomplished what you and Rhode have. Just as the Aeris did not interfere with you and Rhode, they cannot interfere with this vampire.’

Guilt spread over me. The only hope I had was that Suleen would stay.

‘I cannot,’ he said, reading my thoughts once again. He hesitated a moment, looking over Kate’s body, then said, ‘May I tell you why elemental magic is so powerful? Why
your ritual called the Aeris?’

I nodded, saying nothing.

‘Elemental magic is life magic,’ Suleen continued. ‘We, vampires, take life. It is our curse. The more powerful the magic, the more we are drawn to it.’

‘Why?’

‘Magic is drawn from the elements. Supernaturals have summoned it, created it with our power. That is why when a spell is performed, vampires can sense it if we are near. We crave it like
we crave blood. It reminds us that we have some control in this world that ticks by without us.’

‘I didn’t know the consequences.’

‘Of course you did,’ Suleen replied, and even as I said it I knew that he was right. At the time, I didn’t care about the power of the ritual. I put my selfish wishes above all
else. ‘And so does this vampire, who has come to Lovers Bay. She craves that magic.’

‘If you can’t help me, then why are you telling me this?’

‘We are much more connected than perhaps you realize.’

My lips parted. ‘How?’ I asked.

‘That is for another time,’ he replied. ‘Just know, when you most need me, I’ll find you.’

Suleen stood above the body and held a palm above Kate. He moved his hand as if he was simply wiping the air, and the sand looked as it had before we arrived. We walked back to the pathway on to
the campus and Suleen stood with me at the entrance to Seeker.

‘I suggest you get inside,’ he said.

‘I could die,’ I said to him.

He examined my face a moment, then the corners of his lips lifted, just barely. Just enough that a smile shone from behind his eyes.

‘Not a girl like you . . .’ he said.

I blinked. That was all it took. In that fraction of a second I stood alone. No one walked along the path. No one called to me from the meadow. All around me was the pervasive sound of
silence.

I stood outside the glass doors of Seeker dorm looking at the reflection of the sixteen-year-old girl standing there alone. Almost seventeen. How I had longed to make it here.
I would age this year.

But the foyer was the same as last year and the familiar guard sat behind her desk, in her blue uniform, speaking into a walkie-talkie.

I took in my appearance. Same thin nose. Same brown hair that reached down to my ribs. Long, lanky legs, clad in black combat boots. The shadowy light illuminated my humanness. My white perfect
skin used to glow in the moonlight. It healed instantly if anything or anyone dared to sully it. But now red raised scrapes marked my hands. I turned my cheek to see another, smaller scrape. These
were the physical reminders that Justin and I had crawled through the brush of the Wickham woods while Kate was being murdered.

Justin.

I sighed, feeling the weight of the night’s ordeals in a slouch of my shoulders. I had to enter alone and go back up to my apartment. I pushed open the door and walked inside.

‘Lenah Beaudonte has checked in,’ said the security guard into her walkie-talkie, and checked my name off a list. As I headed for the stairwell, from the long hallway on the first
floor of rooms I could hear people speculating about the police cars on campus.

I heard Kate Pierson died.

First Tony, now Kate.

Has anyone seen Tracy?

I listened to the whispers all the way up to the top floor. When I opened the door to my apartment, I found a glass ashtray blackened by cigarette butts, dirty plates in the sink and three empty
pizza boxes on my coffee table. Next to them was a familiar silver flask given to Vicken by some count in the 1890s. I picked it up and opened the top, expecting to find, as usual, a stash of
blood. I sniffed for the metallic rusty scent but instead found . . . whiskey? I shook my head, unable to stop a smile.

Oh yes, Vicken Clough was now definitely a mortal.

I put the flask down and turned to my bedroom; the door was open. I walked slowly across the living room, passing messy piles of books and an empty pack of cigarettes. When I placed a hand on my
bedroom door, it creaked, echoing in the silent apartment as I pushed it open. There on the bed, where I expected to see ashes and blood, were messed sheets and a couple of pairs of jeans in a
heap. When I came out of the bedroom, the living-room decor was unchanged from when I’d left it four days earlier.

The longsword on the wall.

The red couch.

The thorned iron candle holders.