Dark Melody: A Vampire Romance (Immortal Legacy Book 1) (8 page)

“Who were you before you turned?” I asked, changing the subject and not just because I was embarrassed about succumbing to the vision he’d stuck in my head. I was genuinely interested in who Alec Norwood really was.

For a long time, he didn’t answer. Just as I was beginning to think it was something he didn’t want to talk about, he turned to look at me. “I was a knight under King Edward III.”

“Wow! How interesting. It must be amazing to see a world so different than the one you were born to.”

“It was so long ago. Most of it doesn’t seem real anymore.” Again he slipped into silence, seeming to lose himself in those memories of that long ago life.

“What was your name then?” I asked.

Suddenly his face brightened. “Sir Jonathan of Lincolnshire, at your service, My Lady.”

“So you were a real knight? That’s awesome!” I laughed, glad for the sudden shift in his mood.

I was seeing a side of Alec that I was sure few people ever saw. “You must have been a noble and fierce knight.”

“Not fierce enough, I’m afraid.” His mood once again turned somber. “I searched for the answers for centuries. There are none.”

I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe you were not searching in the right place?”

Stopping suddenly, Alec wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me so close that our bodies were almost like one.

“Tell me, Nicole, are you afraid of me? Do you trust me?”

My heart was pounding furiously against my ribs. “Yes and yes.”

His velvety smooth laughter was so dark but yet so wonderfully sexy.

“Hold on,” he told me.

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I rested my head against his hard chest.

Suddenly the ground was no longer beneath my feet. We were moving through the night so fast that we seemed to be riding the wind. Never had I known such exhilaration. The feeling was pure freedom.

Nicole

High above the city, the lights of New Orleans seemed magical. With the moon and a blanket of stars as our backdrop, I flew through the night in the arms of an immortal. Without warning, we stopped moving, but we were still floating somewhere between heaven and earth.

Alec’s lips were on mine - his tongue forcing its way into my mouth. Relenting, I let myself get caught up in his hunger.

I eagerly returned his kiss. Even when I felt his fangs with my tongue, I didn’t pull away. The thrill of exploring the night in such a way was second only to being in his arms.

Was this what it was like to really be in love?

Could I really be falling in love with a vampire?

When I thought about just how crazy my situation was, I could feel the wings of a thousand butterflies fluttering in my stomach.

The thought slipped from my mind. Nothing seemed important – nothing other than being in his embrace.

This was the moment that I finally came to accept that I wanted Alec Norwood. It wasn’t just simple lust. I wanted him more than I wanted to breathe.

We slowly began to descend. “Let me love you, Nicole,” he whispered in my ear.

Tilting my head back, I gazed into his eyes and felt myself falling into that place of no return. We again came together in a searing kiss of need - a need that transcended the cravings of the flesh. At that moment, I knew that I was exactly where I should be.

I barely noticed that I was now lying on a bed of soft grass. Alec’s hand slid over my skin in a soft caress as he removed my shirt and bra. Now I was completely exposed to his hungry eyes.

His mouth was on my flesh and I felt an explosion of mind-numbing need course through me. The pain of his fangs piercing my skin finally pushed me over the edge. I had to have him. I could no longer push the feeling aside.

“Alec. I want you,” I panted. I needed to feel him possess me - quenching the need that was overwhelming my entire being.

He lifted his head to peer into my eyes. “You are so warm and beautiful, my sweet Nicole.”

“Alec, I want to be with you always. I want you to turn me.” I didn’t even know where the thought came from. I was running on pure need.

It wasn’t just my body that needed him. My soul needed him.

I couldn’t even catch my breath. I was being consumed by something that I had no idea how to control and couldn’t even begin to understand. It was a longing that I had to satisfy, no matter the cost.

Without warning, he pulled away and a chill settled over me. I was left lying in the grass, desperately needing him to put out the fire that was now burning out of control.

“You don’t have any idea what it is you are asking of me.” His voice was so soft that it was barely audible.

The cool night air brought on a shiver, reminding me that I was completely naked from the waist up. Snatching my shirt from where it lay in the grass, I covered myself.

Kneeling down beside me, Alec reached out to caress my cheek with his cool fingers. “One minute you want death and the next you want eternity. What darkness dwells in your heart that makes you crave such torment?”

Taking his hand in mine, I brought it to my lips. “Being with you is the first time I’ve really felt like living.”

Alec shook his head. “The life of a vampire is not life. It is death of the soul.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said, pushing myself into a sitting position. “I can feel your soul. I can feel the ice melt when I am in your arms.”

Cupping my face in his hands, he brought his mouth down on mine. I could feel his fangs piercing my flesh as he kissed me.

Finally, it was Alec who broke the kiss. “What you are feeling is the spell of the vampire. Nothing more.” As he spoke, his eyes glowed with more intensity than I’d ever seen in them.

Swallowing the lump that had formed in my throat, I asked, “What about you, Alec? What do you feel?”

Turning away, he stared up into the night sky. “I feel nothing. I’m a vampire, remember?”

His words were like cold water in the face. I didn’t trust myself to speak without revealing the pain that was eating away at my heart, so I focused on the task of redressing.

When Alec turned his attention back to me, he was smiling as if the last few minutes hadn’t happened.

That hurt almost as much as his words.

He offered me his hand. “We should get back.”

Although I let him take my hand, I said nothing. I was hurting inside, but I couldn’t be sure why or if it was real.

Could he be right?

Were my feelings nothing more than an illusion brought on by his vampire spell?

Either way, I was determined not to let him see my emotion. I would be as careless as he was about it.

If vampires really were devoid of emotion, maybe they were the lucky ones.

Nicole

Alec left me before dawn. He promised to return when the sun went down. I was under no illusions now. His main purpose for seeing me again was so that we could help Ethan escape Omar.

I should have been grateful. At least he was there to help find Ethan, and I was thankful for his help. There was just a part of me that wished there was more to it, and that maybe he did feel something.

Trying to sleep was useless. I was too restless for that. When I wasn’t thinking about Ethan, I kept running through the events of the night.

I must have appeared pretty naive and stupid to him. Even the memory of how I’d acted brought a blush of shame to my face.

For those few minutes that I’d been in his arms, I would have given up my soul to be with him. In fact, I’d freely offered to do just that, but he’d still refused me.

How stupid I must have sounded.

I should be thanking him for saving me the anguish of his existence, instead of feeling like I’d just lost my last friend. Really, I couldn’t understand what I liked about him. He was arrogant and not particularly nice to others, but I was still drawn to him. Even when I wasn’t with Alec, he was all I could think about.

Focusing on anything else was impossible, but I tried. Blocking out his kisses was like trying to walk on water. It just wasn’t going to happen.

Since he was nowhere around, maybe it wasn’t just the vampire’s spell that was making me feel this way. Maybe it was real.

The morning sun was just peeking through my bedroom window when I finally gave up trying to sleep.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t have anything to do. There were dishes to wash and a floor to vacuum. Although these chores were tedious and mundane, they would help keep my mind off Ethan and Alec.

After a couple hours of furious housecleaning, I managed to fall asleep on the couch, but my sleep was restless. As soon as I drifted off, my dreams were filled with strange, ghastly images of tattoos and Alec’s seductive vampire eyes.

When I finally opened my eyes, I was nearly as tired as I was before falling asleep. What I needed was some food and a few cups of straight caffeine. Since I didn’t happen to have any straight caffeine, coffee would have to work.

After a meal that included a ham and cheese sandwich, as well as a cup of strong coffee, I sat at my living room window, staring out at the world. People milled back and forth in front of my apartment, but I didn’t really see them.

My world had changed and it would never be the same.

Alec was right. I longed to know what was beyond the veil of death. If I could just see my little brother once more, and know that he was okay.

Did Jay cease to exist once he took his final breath, or had he gone to a better existence?

If I could only know!

No one blamed me for Jay’s death. Well, no one except me. It was my fault. He’d been my responsibility that day and I’d failed him. If only I hadn’t taken that phone call, maybe he’d still be alive.

Finally, something outside my own dark little hell caught my attention.

There was a little boy on the patch of grass in front of my apartment building. He was pushing his toy trucks over mounds of earth. Although the boy was covered in dirt, he was so adorable.

The tears came again and I let them. I didn’t have the will or the strength to brush them away. I’d do nearly anything to hold Jay in my arms again, and to wash the dirt from his face.

Ethan’s voice crept into my thoughts.

Communication with your brother is possible.

Ethan believed in these other dimensions and that it was possible that the dead existed in one of them. He thought that if it were possible to cross one dimension, at the very least, communication with those in the afterlife should be possible.

Now I wished I’d taken Ethan a little more seriously and questioned him on what he knew about after death communication. There were always psychics, but it was hard to tell who was real and who wasn’t. I couldn’t stand to get my hopes high and have them dashed by some fake.

But if I believed Ethan, there was a sliver of hope. Maybe it really was possible to talk with Jay without having to join him in death.

It wasn’t that the thought of dying bothered me. Death hadn’t bothered me in the least since that day God took my little brother. In fact, for a long time, I’d wanted to die. I believed that I should be the one lying in my grave and not Jay.

Alec had started to change that. Within the darkness that is the vampire, I’d found a ray of light. He was a source of strength for my soul.

Blinking rapidly, I suddenly felt as if I were coming out of some kind of daze. I’d been so lost in my dark world of self-pity that I hadn’t noticed the passage of time.

Sighing, I got up from the window seat. It was time to get ready for the night, and whatever it brought with it.

Alec

I stood in the shadows, just out of reach of the sun. Although the sun was setting, it wasn’t completely down. I’d come out too early, and I was now feeling the effects. There was that familiar nausea and the burning sensation on my skin.

Myth would have the world believe that the sun would turn me to dust, but that wasn’t how it worked. It was true that the sun could make a vampire deathly ill, and if exposed to it long enough, it could cause what is known among vampires as true death.

Many of the vampire myths were inaccurate. The nonsense about vampires turning into bats was nothing but a mere fairytale. Some of us could fly through levitation, and although we moved fast enough that it seemed as if we could disappear into thin air, we couldn’t. We were physical beings made of flesh and blood, just like humans.

From the dark alley, I watched Nicole at her window. I saw the grief twist at her face and the tears roll down her cheeks.

Nicole was a woman with secrets, but so far I hadn’t been too successful at pulling those secrets from her mind. I could pick up on her emotions, and there had been a couple times that I’d heard her thoughts, but for the most part, she blocked me out. This was something most humans couldn’t do.

There were many things different about Nicole. She embraced the darkness far too easily. The torment of her soul was transparent, even if her thoughts were not. It was as if she were the very essence of darkness, but yet I could feel a light burning inside her.

She’d been so tempting last night. As she lay in the grass, offering up all that she had to offer, I could so easily have taken from her what she so badly wanted to give. My hunger for her had nearly possessed me to the point that I’d wanted nothing more than to become one with her. The monster that lived inside of me wanted to drink of the life essence that she’d offered. I’d come so close, but I couldn’t bring myself to take her into the shadows completely.

Nicole was becoming an obsession that I couldn’t risk, for her sake as well as my own. It was getting to the point that I wanted to take her to my bed even more than I wanted to feed.

If only her love could sate my hunger for blood and my instinct to kill.

From the moment I saw her in Dark Wind, watching me, I’d been drawn to her.

My desire for her was overwhelming. It was time to focus on something else or someone else. At the moment, that someone else happened to be Ethan.

I was Ethan’s maker, and like all vampires with their progeny, I had that parental instinct to preserve my creation.

Taking on Omar would not be easy. Although I wasn’t exactly a young vampire, Omar was ancient and extremely powerful. Most believed he was one of the original vampires.

What a disaster this was turning into.

All this trouble because Ethan couldn’t stay away from those crazy Light Seekers, and now they also wanted Nicole.

After leaving Nicole last night, he’d found Victor waiting for him with a message. Omar was prepared to offer a deal. He would take the girl for Ethan.

In the beginning, I’d been confused as to why they were even bringing it up to me. It wasn’t like Omar to negotiate at all. That’s when it dawned on me that Omar believed Nicole to be under my protection. That was probably the only reason they hadn’t already killed her.

At least that was my suspicion, although my theory didn’t make a lot of sense. Like any man, vampire or mortal, I did have an ego, but I was also smart enough to know that I wasn’t a match for Omar.

Omar didn’t have to make deals with me, so why was he offering to do so?

This was troubling. I had to be missing something.

Although I wanted to protect Nicole and keep her from harm, she technically wasn’t under my protection. My desire to protect her and my instinct to protect my progeny were at war with each other. The battle raged within me as I tried to come to a decision.

How could I keep Nicole safe and still save Ethan?

Omar claimed he wanted Nicole because she knew too much. Ethan had broken the code of silence. This was an unspoken rule that all vampires lived by. No human should know of our existence unless they were feeders that would eventually die. Until that death, they would be under the vampire’s control.

I’d never paid a lot of attention to this code of silence, but I also wasn’t in the habit of flaunting what I was either. Anyone that I’d confided in did eventually become a feeder. As a feeder, the person would sooner or later succumb to that sure death that ultimately claims them all.

But there were many vampires who ignored the rule and Omar wasn’t going after them. This was an excuse to get the girl. What did Omar really want with Nicole?

If only I’d died on that battlefield, none of this would matter.

Closing my eyes, I tried to recall my life before, but it was no use. Whenever the memories came, they were always memories of how my life ended.

It was a foggy night. The world was so much different than today. England was at war. In the midst of battle, I felt an explosion of pain rip through my back.

I spun around and saw the enemy with his sword drawn. He was ready to strike. Something else caught my attention and I turned away. This gave my enemy the opportunity to strike again.

I fell and was left there to die, but that didn’t bother me as much as one might expect. At least I would die with honor.

And I would have died then, but a woman found me as I was bleeding to death. At least that’s what I thought at the time, but she wasn’t a woman. She was a vampire.

She’d been scavenging the battlefield, looking for the wounded so that she could feed on the blood that still remained in their bodies. Julia would have fed on me as well, but for some reason changed her mind.

Instead, she fed on me until I was near death and then she fed me her own blood. It had been Julia who brought me into darkness. Much like what I’d done with Ethan. But Julia was different. She was the kind of vampire that horror movies were based on. Julia was the walking, talking embodiment of evil.

It hadn’t taken long to see what she really was. Although leaving a sire without being released was forbidden, that was exactly what I’d done. In the process, I’d turned her into my enemy.

It didn’t matter. Nothing could have compelled me to stay after I saw her strip an entire family of their lives. She’d killed them not because she needed to feed, but for sport.

Julia still followed me, no matter how many times I tried to give her the slip. Even now, she was in New Orleans. According to Victor, my sire was fraternizing with Omar. I could only hope that would keep her busy enough that she would leave me be, but it was doubtful.

I stepped out of the shadows as the last rays of sun faded from the western sky. It was time to make a decision. Would it be Nicole or Ethan?