Amaranth (12 page)

“Okay … good …” She blinked, confused.

“I’m angry at you. You
lied
to me.”

“I know. Wait. You’re
not
…
afraid?”

“I told you, she needs to lie down and rest. She’s not ready
for this, Aud.” Gabe stood and walked to her side, but she ignored him.

“No,” I said. “I knew something was weird, I just didn’t
want to face it. It doesn’t exactly surprise me.” And now that I was about to
get some answers, I was able to speak calmly.

“Look, maybe you
should
rest
again for a while,” she said. “We can check on you later— if you want us to, I
mean.” She made eye contact with Gabe, signaled him to leave. He made an
unhurried stroll to the front door, gave her one solemn nod before he shut the
door behind him.

“I don’t want to rest. I want to know things.” I propped
another pillow behind me, adjusted it, mumbling to myself, “This must’ve been
what Vivienne was trying to tell me, the reason the spells haven’t worked.” As
soon as I was settled back on the pillow, I locked eyes with Audrey. “But for
starters, why haven’t you changed me? Or killed me? And I thought vampires were
supposed to keep themselves secret.”

She relaxed, laughed while she pushed herself down to the
floor to sit next to the couch, giving me some space to move around. “That’s
exactly
why they didn’t work.”

“How did you—?”

“I know Vivienne. She’s been trying to help you, but you’re
so stubborn. I know you have thousands of questions, but answer mine first. How
are you not
at all
surprised by this?” She gave
that quirky raise of her eyebrows I knew so well.

“Gavin isn’t like anyone else I’ve ever met.” I shrugged.
“His presence is strange. Like he’s not real when I’m around him, like he’s a
ghost. I rush whenever I’m with him, almost like I have to hang onto every
second before he disappears. And when we kiss …” I bit my lip and twisted my
hair between my fingers. “I’m not afraid. If any of you were going to hurt me,
you would have by now, I guess. And clearly, Andrew was the only one who meant
me any harm.”

“Well, you’re definitely more conscious than Gabe gave you
credit for.” Though she kept cautious eyes on me, she chuckled.

“I’m freaked out, don’t get me wrong,” I raised my hands in
front of my chest. “And I do have a ton of questions, but …”

“But what?”

“Gavin needs to be the one to explain this to me.” I peered
out the living room window, suddenly missing my other half. Never mind my other
half was a vampire.

She watched the sadness invade my face, exhaled and scooted
back on the couch to comfort me. I looked at her smooth porcelain skin, reached
out to touch her. Other than that glowing soft skin and sharp fangs, she looked
the same to me. Which seemed odd. I analyzed her face, curious. “Your eyes.
They’re normal.”

“They turn black when we transform to hunt.”

My eyes examined her neck for a bite mark, but instead found
a tiny crescent-shaped mark, the same bizarre scar Gavin had on his forehead.
She didn’t protest when I reached out and ran my fingertip on the blemish.
“What is it?”

“Our birthmark. It appears after we’ve been changed. Brands
us. Gives the night official ownership of us. Everyone gets theirs somewhere
different.”

I stared in awe, annoyed by my own inquisitiveness. I should
have been running, but could only think of a million more questions I wanted to
ask. “I don’t understand. You can live in the sunlight, though. How do you
belong to the night?”

“The night is our prime time for feeding, specifically after
midnight, until sunrise. The night changes us, heightens our senses and compels
us to hunt.”

The black eyes and rabid fangs I’d witnessed when Andrew
attacked suddenly made more sense now, along with Gavin’s strange behavior.

“Are you really…?”

“Undead? Yes.” She replied quietly, a somber look on her
face. “There’s a lot to tell you. But first, you have to know that Gavin isn’t
here because he didn’t want to make things worse. He knew you’d feel safer if I
was the one to talk to you.”

“Didn’t want to make things worse? Ha.” Anger surfaced
again. “It’s a bit late for that.” I grabbed the blanket from my lap and hugged
it closer to me. “Call me crazy, but I think it’s wise to tell your girlfriend
you’re a vampire at the
onset
of your
relationship. You know, just to make sure you’re both on the same page and
all.” I looked away, worried with my fingers, twisted them together.

“You’re right, and he knows that, but he’ll talk to you
whenever you’re ready. But I had to be here for you first, Camille. Talk to me.
About all of this, before you go and see him. Please.” She reached for me and I
jumped, just realizing I was afraid of her quick movements. She recoiled her
hand and carefully tucked both hands on her lap, looked down.

“I want to know about
you
,
first,” I said. “How long have you been
this
?
How did
you
know vampires exist?” I laughed, in
disbelief I was asking such things, yet not surprised by my new knowledge. This
world was crazy and unpredictable. No one,
no thing
,
no
monster
had to convince me of that. For a long
time now, I’d been aware that anything was possible in this life.

“I
didn’t
know they existed.
I found out about Gabe before I flew home to Seattle. He told me the truth, and
I wanted him to change me. I know how it sounds, but I had my reasons.”

And you didn’t tell me about
Gavin
?”

“I knew you were safe with him. And it was his place to tell
you, not mine.”

“Unbelievable,” I folded my arms, disgusted by the betrayal.
“There is no valid reason to give up your life to be what you are now. Nothing
can justify that.”

“Gabe told me about Andrew last night, so I caught a redeye
and flew down here. Then
this
happened,” she
pointed to my battered body.

“What are you saying?”

When Gavin and Gabe found out who Andrew was—that he was the
one you were trying to break up with—they knew you were in danger, knew he was
about to kill you. Knew they’d have to stop him when he tried. But saving you
meant you’d find out the truth.”

“So? They told
you
the truth.
What, were you all planning on lying to me until you decided to have me for
lunch one day?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She
pursed
her lips. “Like I said, I wanted Gavin to tell you what he is, not me. And I
found out by accident, as did you. And … this part’s hard to explain … Gabe and
Gavin have a way to break the curse. I wanted to be with Gabe, but if I were
still human, I wouldn’t be able to go with him, where he needs to go to break
it. There was a chance that if he went, he wouldn’t come back. And I couldn’t
lose him. I simply couldn’t!”

She sat silent for a moment, let me absorb the absurdity.
Then she said, “Andrew attacking you set things into motion. Gave us a reason
to visit Samira sooner. She’s the creator of our kind, the one who can lift the
curse. ”

Her
kind
? This was something
straight from the
Syfy
Channel. “Your
creator
? Do you have any idea how deranged this
sounds, Audrey?”

“Yes, Camille, I am very aware of it,” she barked,
impatient. “But you wanted answers, and I’m trying to give them to you. Just
bear with me.”

“Okay, go on,” I sighed. “But at least start with your
species’
specifics. You know, sunlight, diet, coffins,
sleep schedule?”

“Uh. Okay.” She stood up to reach for and hand me a glass of
water from the coffee table, remained standing. “Well, for starters, I think
you can guess our diet. We drink any kind of blood. Fortunately, there are
plenty of us who have access to it: blood. Like Gabe. He was a doctor back in
the day. Today, he has connections that can get us what we need, so we don’t
have to … feed traditionally. Hence, one of the reasons we had no need to kill
you. The other specifics should be obvious.” She smiled curtly. I rolled my
eyes. Great. Not just a vamp, but a stand-up vamp. Nothing described
surreal
quite like this did. Yet I listened with wide
eager eyes, a fascinated child hearing the most fantastic bedtime story ever.

Yet there was one thing I still didn’t know. “How do you
know all of this if you were just changed so recently?”

“Gabe sort of gave me a crash course. But there were stories
passed down in my family about my mother’s great aunt being one of us years
ago. I grew up with the assumption that they were just that, ghost stories or
something. I never knew this stuff really existed, but when I found out … when
Gabe told me … I had the strangest connection to it.”

“I can’t believe you never told me about this. You were
always so …
normal
.” My mind wandered, picturing
the Audrey I knew in middle school, but I quickly reeled myself back into the
conversation. “So let me get this straight. As long as you have your blood supplied,
you don’t have to
kill
?”

“Right. As for the sunlight, our eyes are sensitive to it,
but it’s manageable. Much more so when we feed.”

I shivered at her words, pictured the black sunglasses that
Gavin toted around like a safety blanket.

“Our bite is venomous,” she continued. “We never bite,
except with the intent to kill and feed, or to change someone. But blood isn’t
the only thing that sustains us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Blood is our nutrition.” She lit a cigarette for me. “Our
basic sustenance. But we also use energy to thrive. To become stronger, more
powerful. We draw energy from other people, draw from what they have: their
weaknesses or their strengths, it depends. We have to get to know the person
though, have to read them. We’re all different kinds of readers.”

“You can read minds? You know what I’m thinking right now?”
I made a disgusted face and didn’t care if she saw it. “If Gavin knew
everything I ever thought, I’d die of embarrassment if I had to look him in the
eyes ever again.”

“No,” she said, laughing, “not like that. We all read
different
energies
, not minds. We can tell what
someone’s good at, what their fears or strengths are, even what their desires
are. With that knowledge, we know what we can, or what we shouldn’t draw from
the people we feed from. Gabe said that most of our kind uses it as an
advantage in hunting, but some are just addicted to the power. It’s how Samira
designed us.”

I finished my glass of water and looked down at my bruised
and swollen body, took a drag off my cigarette while I assessed the damage.
Oddly, the ribs I was certain were broken in the attack didn’t hurt. “Did Gabe
fix me?” I pointed to my ribs.

“It’s nice to have a former surgeon around.”

I set my glass down. “So, you
have
to feed on blood and energy?”

“Blood, yes. Energy, no. Energy’s optional. It’s like an
extra high, makes us stronger. Andrew was so powerful because he’s been feeding
off you since you met him. The longer we can feed on a single host, the more
powerful we become, Gabe said. Andrew could read your ambitions, and was able
to drain that energy from you. Once we find someone we can read, we know which
buttons to push to weaken them. That allows us to feed off their vigor. A
reader like Andrew can’t drain
everyone
who has
aspirations, only those who possess strength in that area. And ambition is
definitely your strength.” She smiled to make it clear that was a compliment.

I was far from flattered; what she was saying had me too
much in shock to feel anything else. I stared at the ceiling, aware my
cigarette ashes were spilling onto the couch but unable to even tap them into
the ashtray. “Andrew’s been draining me all along.”

She nodded while she wiped the ashes from the couch, shoved
an ashtray underneath my arm. “It’s allowed him to be much stronger than he
would have been, living just on blood.”

“Andrew sure milked me for all I was worth,” I said, wincing
as I shifted on the sofa. “Puts a totally new spin on that old saying, doesn’t
it?”

She nodded. “Samira forbids us from feeding off a host for
too long. She won’t allow a mortal to become a permanent power source for us.
Her servants roam the earth as her watchdogs, and if they catch us doing that,
we’re destroyed.”

I finally blinked, rubbed my cigarette into the ashtray, let
her hand me another. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she said. “You can go to bed,
you know. I can leave you alone now.”

“This changes everything.”

She’d been standing the entire time; she began to pace. “I
know. But you have to know that Gavin and Gabe are different. They choose to
live differently than Samira wants us to. They don’t hunt, don’t take energy.
Gavin’s leading a resistance among our kind against her ways. And against our
curse. Now it’s causing quite the commotion.”

“Where is this Samira person? And why do you and Gabe have
to go there?”

“In a city called Amaranth. It’s the only place the curse
can be removed. She’s the only one who can grant it.” She stopped pacing and
rushed to the kitchen to refill my empty water glass, at my side again in a
flash. “Besides, word’s gotten out about Gavin’s leadership of an alternative
lifestyle. She would’ve acted to stop him about that. Gavin figured he’d
confront her, and, he has a plan. Gabe and I will be his support.”

“Wait a minute. I thought you said Gavin was
defying
her. You just said if Gabe went without you to
see her, there was a chance he might not come back.”

“Yes.”

“And this was Gavin’s idea—? Wait. So
none
of you might make it back?”