Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1) (12 page)

“It’s like he said. Seeing is believing.” She ran a hand over the only smooth spot in the comforter. “I did more than see,” she whispered. Straightening herself, she turned toward the door and gave Kalin a half-smile. “So the sooner I know what I am doing here, the sooner I can do it and leave.”

“Very well,” Kalin nodded. “How about we get that coffee, and then I will explain everything to you.” She went to the closet and grabbed a pair of fleece slippers and a tailored tan duster. She handed them to Sarah.

“What are these for?” she asked as she took them.

“We’re going outside. And it’s pretty chilly tonight.”

While she followed Kalin, Sarah got a good first look at the house in which she was staying. It astonished her. It was the most perfect house she had ever seen. The floors were old hardwood, and the walls were covered in thick, rich-colored paints and wainscoting, with many oil paintings and framed antique documents. The ceilings were vaulted with thick wooden beams that ran parallel to one another. The comforting smell of apple and cinnamon wafted in the air. The Bose sound system implanted into the walls filled the ambient spaces in the house with light classical music. Sarah focused on the music. Beethoven. It was gorgeous.

The kitchen was even more spectacular than the rest of the house. It looked like something out of an old Mediterranean painting. It was clearly Kalin’s domain. She moved around it effortlessly and with such comfort that she seemed almost like a mother hen preparing dinner for a gigantic brood of children.

“How do you take your coffee?”

“Um, black, thank you,” Sarah answered. Kalin poured two huge mugs of coffee and handed one over to Sarah. She pulled her coat tighter around her, and surprisingly, she set her mug down and also tightened Sarah’s collar around her. The gesture surprised her, but Sarah smiled back and nodded a thank-you.

“Ready to go?”

Sarah nodded again as she followed Kalin to the French doors in the dining room that led out to the gigantic expanse of red and gold that painted the trees. The moonlight lit just enough of the path that she could make out a narrow strip of gravel. Kalin slowly began making her way through the backyard, past the benches that sat underneath gigantic trees, past a gigantic fountain, and up a slight hill before they reached their destination.

In the clearing, there were two rows of stones. In each row were seven slabs of thick marble jutting out of the ground. Tombstones. She was looking at tombstones.

“What is this?” she whispered, her voice jittery. Her stomach flipped in waves of nausea.

“These,” Kalin looked around, “are your predecessors. All men and women who willingly gave their lives for a cause they saw as greater than themselves.” She turned to face Sarah, who was staring, wide-eyed, at the gravesites.

“I don’t understand.”

Kalin walked over to the first row of stones and ran her gloved fingers over the top of one of them. “We’re dying out, Sarah. We told you that. Our bodies, your bodies, have evolved. We can’t increase our numbers because human bodies won’t accept us. A vampire has not been made in almost three hundred fifty years. It’s the rejection, you see?”

She stepped away from the tombstones and began walking farther up the hill. She was a few paces ahead of Sarah when she turned and motioned for her to follow. Sarah slowly climbed the hill until they reached another burial site, this one dotted with four raised stone crypts. She followed Kalin until they both flanked one of the large boxes.

Kalin looked down at the stone and began to rub her hands over the top lovingly. Her eyes weren’t on Sarah, but fixed on the top of the stone, and in what little she could see of them, Sarah could tell there was sorrow. A great sadness hid just beneath the surface of Kalin’s beautiful face.

“Your discovery, Sarah, could be the key to keeping our race alive. There are so few of us left.”

Sarah watched her linger over the inscription on the stone. In an effort to ease the shake within her, she took a giant gulp from her coffee cup. She accepted the fact that she was in a house with vampires. It was futile to argue or resist it now, and she was being let in on something more than just the fact that they existed. She was being brought into their world, and it was not as a spectator.

“You can’t have children, can you?” she blurted. Kalin’s head dipped lower to the stone, her cheek almost resting on the cool marble. In the moonlight, she looked like a picture, a painting of an angel hovering over the dead to usher them on to the other world.

“The oldest among us are related and therefore cannot mate to reproduce. The youngest among us are of mixed blood, so even if a child is conceived, the female’s body will reject it.” She lifted her head to look at Sarah. “There has not been a child born to our race for hundreds of years, just as there has been no one ushered in. We cannot do it.”

She rose from the stone, and Sarah couldn’t help but lean over to look at the inscription Kalin had been laying on. She couldn’t read it, but she could hazard a guess that his person had been special. Her heart pounded in her chest, and a heat spread through her to the very core. Sarah’s eyes grew wide as she forced her gaze away from the stone to stare at Kalin.

“She was not of my blood,” Kalin whispered, wrapping her arms around herself, the empty coffee cup swinging at her back. “I loved her as my own, and she gave her life to save mine. To save ours.”

Sarah felt her stomach flip and sink. The look on her face, the pain in Kalin’s eyes. Had she not felt Taris’ teeth in her skin, not seen him cut and heal himself, the look on Kalin’s face would have been enough to convince her they needed to help.

“Your research could help us prosper, could help us become that strong, proud race we once were. The rejection is what is killing us, don’t you see? If you could keep it from happening, then I could have a child of my own, one who would be like me.” Kalin ran a hand over the stone again. “One who would survive.”

“Why didn’t you have one when you could?” Sarah leaned into the stone and placed her hands lightly on the lip of it, staring down at the etching.

“I always thought I would have time,” Kalin whispered.

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut and tried to hide back the blurry well that was threatening to spring. This agony could not be ignored. She couldn’t set it aside, couldn’t shake it. More than that, now, she couldn’t walk away. Her research had produced amazing results, true, so why couldn’t she try it out for them? Worst case scenario, there would be no change in their situation. She had to try. If for nothing else, she had to do it for Kalin.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll do it.” She reached over the stone and took Kalin’s hands in hers. “I’ll help. For you.”

Kalin nodded and mouthed the words “
thank you
.”

Sarah could feel Taris there, watching. She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to break away from the bonding, solitary moment she and Kalin were now in, but she couldn’t help herself. Her neck craned ever so slightly to the right, and when her eyes made contact with his, her heart began to beat in that smacking, erratic rhythm all over again.

He stood at the very top of the hill, teetering on the edge, that leather trench of his flapping in the October night wind. His hair was loose and whipping behind him. There was a slight reflection at the sides of his face, and Sarah noticed his ears were pierced, sporting thick gauge rings. Why hadn’t she noticed them before? His eyes were hard and fixed, but not on her. Not this time. They stared straight at the stone box that stood between her and Kalin. If he stared any harder, he would have bored holes into it. There was something about his face as he began to draw closer to them that almost made her forget the searing heat of his tongue, the sharp tingle of his teeth, and the subsequent well-hidden anger that welled up inside of her from the moment she opened her eyes. It was pain, the very same pain that she saw in Kalin.

When he finally reached the base of the box, Kalin looked up at him, her eyes heavy with unshed tears. She didn’t pull her hands away from Sarah, only shook them back and forth as she gave Taris a weak smile.

“She’s going to help,” she whispered.

Taris nodded. “I know. I heard.” With his eyes still beating into the box, he took one hand out of his jeans pocket and splayed it on the lid. It was the hand he had driven the nail file through. There was not a mark on it, just smooth, golden skin. “Thank you,” he said. Sarah couldn’t tell if it was for her, but she replied anyway.

“I would say you’re welcome, but I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for her,” she nodded her head toward Kalin. “And for her.” She nodded down toward the box. “And for them.” She pointed down to the cemetery.

“As you should.”

He never once looked up from the box, only reached out a hand to grab Kalin before she pulled her coat tight around her and walked down the hill to the warmth of the house. When he let her go, he replaced his hand on the stone.

Sarah grabbed her empty coffee cup from the moist ground beside the stone and began to follow Kalin. She stopped beside Taris and looked down at her slipper-clad feet, which were beginning to grow cold from the misty night air. They sat there for a few minutes, silent, Taris not moving, Sarah on the verge of not even breathing. She felt that heat again, that rush that came to her the minute the length of his body was on hers. She remembered the feel of his hands around her waist as he lifted her up off the floor and pinned her to the wall. She watched his hair catch the wind, and she could still feel its softness against her skin.
Pissed off
was not the correct term to describe how she felt.
Violated, abused
, and
used
all came to mind.

But
wanted, desired
, and
needed
stomped them down into a puddle of mud, and it infuriated her that from the whole experience, that’s what she took away from it. As much as it pained her, she had to admit it to herself. She wanted Taris. In the worst possible way, she wanted him.

But hell would freeze over and she would go ice skating with Ted Bundy before she admitting that. It was best to keep the steely reserve he was expecting. She couldn’t exactly tell him that while she was there, if he needed anything, she would be more than happy to oblige. She needed to get the work done, and fast. She had to say something to diffuse the tension, to let him know that she was “mad” at him.

“So are we going to talk about what happened?” His voice was a low whisper, the deep notes of it floating on the air and hitting her square between the legs.

Sarah cleared her throat and shifted her eyes to see him staring right at her, at the spot on her coat that covered the tender skin his mouth had assaulted just a few hours earlier. “I suppose we can.”

“Good,” Taris removed his hand from the stone and stood upright. He lifted the edge of his black hoodie and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Let’s do this over something to eat. I’m starving.”

“How can you be starving? You all but drained me dry! I’m still a little woozy.”

Taris shook his head and began to walk down the hill. “It’s not like that. You aren’t food.”

“Then why—”

He stopped suddenly, whirling around just as she barreled straight into his chest. He pushed her away as if she had burned him. “I will explain when we get inside, okay?”

“Geez, fine.” Sarah sneered as he turned and used his long legs and his gigantic stride to lead them into the house and to the kitchen.

Once inside she plopped down onto a bar stool while she watched him fling his trench over the kitchen table. Taris pushed his hair back from his eyes as he jerked open the fridge and hunched down to look inside. The soft light flooded over the planes of his face. His long hair was tucked behind his ears, and the visual combination was nothing short of the finest-quality eye candy. His black fleece hoodie stretched over a strong, wide back, his jeans hugged his thighs and ass just right, and then there was that piercing, smoldering, amber gaze. Rummaging through the fridge with reckless abandon, he looked kind of like a frat boy searching for munchies after an all-night booze bender.

A tall, muscled, slightly broody, older-than-his-time, take-me-anywhere-you-want-me frat boy.

“What do you want?” he asked with his head still inside the door.

“Um, whatever you are having would be fine,” she said.

Taris snorted. “Aha,” he said. “I was hoping this was still in here.” He pulled out a large platter with a huge mound covered in aluminum foil on it. He held it with two hands as he shut the door to the fridge with his booted foot and then set the plate down onto the counter.

“What’s that?” she asked.

He jerked the foil off to reveal a large beef roast. Even cold, it smelled like heaven. Half of it was gone, and she could see that the inside was red, almost completely rare.

“I love it when Kalin makes this ’cause we get awesome sandwiches for a week afterward. Would you like one?” Sarah nodded while he fumbled in a drawer and took out a carving knife. “It’s always best if you cut it off and then heat it. Otherwise, you get that weird temperature thing with one side of it being hot, the other side cold, and it throws the whole flavor off.”

“Are we going to talk, or are we just going to make old lady chatter all night?”

Taris stopped mid slice and looked up at her. Her eyes were fixed on the knife and full of something he didn’t even want to think about.

“I am not talking about anything until I have something to eat.”

“Well, how about you talk while you make your sandwich. I’m a little tired and would like some rest.”

“I doubt that,” he mumbled.

“Excuse me?” Her eyes snapped up to look at him.

Taris continued to slice into the roast, placing large chunks of the pink meat on a plate. The pieces landed on top of one another with soft
plops
. “I said, I doubt that you are tired.”

“Why? Because you say so?”

“No. Because you’ve slept twenty-three and a half of the last twenty-four hours. Besides, you can’t go back to bed. When we are done eating, I am taking you somewhere.”