Eternal Ever After (20 page)

Arie slid the doors to the withdrawing room open to reveal the cause for the sickening fragrance that filled my nostrils. The scene that emerged was a harrowing image of bloodied bodies tossed about. Some pitched in unnatural positions, strewn carelessly on the divan, while others lay in pools of blood on the floor. Nausea swept over me, mixed with a feeling of smugness that must have come from Katarina.

Stepping over an unanimated corpse Arie entered the room, which was littered with bodies in varying degrees of decomposition. Flies buzzed around the massacre, its rank smell tinged with sweetness. It smelled like rotting meat sprinkled with cheap perfume. My thoughts of horror were overridden by Katarina’s thoughts of glee and I was trapped as an unwilling invader in her body.

I had tried to cover up the stench with several vases filled with flowers and the Hungary Water perfume that I poured on the clothes of my prey. Suddenly, I heard a wheezing breath. Arie walked a few paces further into the horrific scene. He discovered by a window a servant who lay dying. As he struggled for air, I saw distinct puncture wounds on his neck.

-You sloppy, careless, headstrong fool.-

The weight of his telepathic transference felt like a shout. I wanted to cover my ears, but I stood there and could feel my lips turn upwards in a smile. Bending next to his body, Arie placed his hands on each side of the servant’s head. Without haste he snapped the servant’s neck.

Oh god.

Looking around at the destruction I had caused, I saw blood splattered the walls and almost every surface of the once-grand room. Blood smeared the ivory keys of the fortepiano I had insisted upon having but never played. I entered the room from the doorway where I observed his displeasure.

The sound of my gown brushing across the floor drew his attention. He turned to me and grimaced at the self-satisfied smile on my lips. I walked to a vase of flowers, inhaling their fragrance before removing a delicate bloom from one of them. I plucked the petals one by one with a crazed and manic energy, relishing the fight to come. The petals fell to the floor, landing in a pool of blood which now soaked the hem of my gown as I feigned a yawn. This was my latest ploy to start a fight since Arie had begun ignoring me decades ago. In all honesty, I felt surprised he’d let me suck his cock, but then what man could resist that temptation?

I wondered whether I could feel pain if things went terribly wrong between the two of them, trapped as I was in her body or mind.

“Do you like how I’ve decorated?” I asked with a curtsy while smiling at Arie.

Oh god.

She’s completely crazy. I understood now why Arie would pull away. I looked like her, except for the eyes and highlights. On top of it I had the Sight, and she could never cope with that. I’d felt a little sorry for her before. I didn’t realize just how nuts she was until now. My thoughts were pulled away to hers. I looked around the room at the decomposing bodies, remembering every moment of torture. It gave me tremendous gratification. And I felt excited that Arie could see what I’d done.

“Thy vile countenance consumes all truth and reason. Leave my sight and never return to it.”

With a gleeful laugh, I spun in a circle. I stopped spinning and crossed the room to stand in front of Arie.

“I barely restrain the compulsion to grab my sword from the foyer and have you meet its length,” he said with eyes maddened by my petulance. “There are so many casualties, so much wasted life. I see now you hold no love, no remorse, and no comprehension. There is not even a fleeting glimpse of the woman I knew in life before I turned you.”

“I grow weary of this place with its paltry amusement. It holds no charm and I grow sick of your theatre. I want to dance. Won’t you dance with me, Arie?”

I grabbed both his hands in an attempt to force him. Arie pulled his hands from my grasp and stepped backwards. I pouted and walked through the blood scattered with flower petals. Then I turned to meet his cool gray eyes, which were filled with resolve. I waited for him to hit her. Maybe if he struck her I would go flying out of her body, jolted from my vision.

Arie regarded me unflinchingly. “Regretfully, I must decline, and you may stay with me no longer.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am deadly serious, my dear. You no longer play with a full deck.” Arie said—his blunt remark without ceremony.

“Where shall I go?”

“I care not where you go… So long as it’s far away from here.”

Tears of blood rimmed my eyes. A red drop fell to disappear in the pool of blood at my feet. After more than a century there was nothing more that could be said. No amount of explaining or pleading could ever change the inevitable.

“You can’t mean it.”

“The mental sickness that marked your human existence has escalated to a psychosis. I’ve seen it claim many vampires of weaker mind who tire of eternity. You were my world, my consort, and I mean it with every fiber of my being.”

And with that his eyes softened. His gaze lowered to focus on the fallen petals. When he looked up, he stood alone amongst the rotting corpses. From outside the house I looked back through the window. He walked to the fortepiano, placing his fingers on the blood-stained keys. A melody filled with love, loneliness, and sadness honored the departed that were his audience.

CHAPTER 14

Like a ghost I floated out of Katarina and could see her face streaked with bloody tears from where I hovered above. With a jolt I pulled back into my own body where I sat in the back seat of the BMW. I knew why he left her and I could feel the weight of his pain threaten to suffocate me. Victoria sat in the passenger seat next to Arie and looked back at me strangely.

But she didn’t look at me like others did—like I exuded weirdness on multiple levels. Her look seemed to resemble satisfaction at finding a mythical sameness reflected in another. It felt like she knew exactly what had happened. I knew that when the Sight came it looked like I stared into nothing, like a blank slate. At least that’s what one of my foster parents said at the time—that something must be wrong with me because I’d go blank and wouldn’t answer them. The bitter notes of the piano drifted through my memory as I reoriented myself with my surroundings. It didn’t seem like more than an instant passed, although my vision felt like it had lasted forever.

Arie parked alongside the street a few blocks down from the Coffee Grind. We moved along the sidewalk dusted in white until we stood across the street from the caf
é
. Victoria looked both ways down the street before she leapt like a cat onto the rooftop of the apartment building behind us. A man exited a shop a few doors down. Arie waited until he got in his car and pulled away, and then wrapped an arm around me. Moments later we landed on top the roof next to Victoria.

He crouched on the flat rooftop across the street from the Coffee Grind and pulled me down to crouch next to him. Fine flakes of snow coated the street and the sidewalk below. Victoria followed suit and crouched beside him while snow speckled her cropped blonde hair. It looked pale, wild, and spikey, like her.

But she exuded calm and wasn’t very verbose, which seemed to suit Arie just fine. Neither of them spouted words for the sake of filling the silence with meaningless commentary. They were the opposite of me in every way. I tended to babble when nervous. And I had a habit of being blunt, much to Arie’s chagrin.

Victoria closed her eyes. It seemed like she was trying to hone in on something. “There. I can feel it. A dim presence filled with malice and madness; the black aura is trying to consume me. The presence is filled with grief and so much past hurt,” Victoria said as her breath caught. “The aura flickers in the distance. Wait. It threw up a shield. I can no longer sense the entity it projects from. I’ve never felt such an overwhelming sense of sadness as that which underlines all that hate.”

Victoria opened her eyes. Arie regarded her with affection. Rising from her crouched position on the roof, she shivered. Arie smiled at her breathtaking and otherworldly figure and we waited for her to collect her thoughts.

“What was she doing?” I asked.

“Although I am older and more powerful, she is the most gifted vampire I’ve ever met when it comes to scanning auras. Auras leave a trace behind and the last time I sensed Katarina’s presence it was outside the Coffee Grind. Since it’s been several weeks and we still haven’t found her, I sought help from Victoria to scan the area,” Arie said as he inclined his head toward me. He rose to stand next to her and I did the same, rubbing my hands together to keep warm.

I’m sorry, Arie,” Victoria said. “I could almost focus in on her location, but she knows that she’s being hunted. She put up a shield and then I couldn’t sense her presence.”

“I have to find her.”

The wind whipped around us, blowing snow off the roof. It kicked white dust into the air in the momentary pause of silence.

“And Arie…?”

He met Victoria’s eerie but exquisite hyacinthine eyes in quiet regard.

“There is no light. All I see is darkness and sadness.”

“That’s why I have to find her. I should be the one who ends it. I cannot leave her to withstand the Legacy’s punishment, which may not end quickly. It would break her already unhinged mind.”

Icy wind blew fine snow onto Victoria’s dove-white cheekbones. Frost began to form on her chapped pink lips. Again, she reminded me of an angel, all white and windswept. She reached out a hand to touch his arm in consolation. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know. We need to find her before she hurts anyone else. We need to find her before she hurts Holly.”

For a fraction of a second he looked vulnerable, scared, and I knew he couldn’t bear the thought of losing me. He hadn’t let anyone in for so long, and now he needed me. I had to believe he’d come to see it too. My heart ached for him. After everything Katarina put him through, I understood why he walled himself off behind his pain.

“She’s not like
her
… She may see things, and she has the same dark hair, but she is not Katarina. I think you’ll find she’s stronger than that, and as long as she’s with us—we can keep her safe,” Victoria said as she nodded toward me.

“I want to make sure she doesn’t get hurt. I know now that I am the reason Katarina has come here and until it’s over Holly needs me.”

“If you think that’s the only reason you protect Holly then you’re lying to yourself.”

Arie sighed, staring off into the distance, and gritted his teeth through his clenched jaw. It kind of felt embarrassing standing there with them talking about me like I wasn’t. I had never seen anyone speak their mind to Arie without receiving a condescending rebuttal.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“Let’s go back to the club,” Victoria said.
Without waiting for a response Victoria leaped into the air, flipping backwards off the other side of the building and disappeared into the snow.

Arie put his hands on each side of my waist. The dead feeling of winter reflected in his eyes had a longing burning beneath it. Bringing his face so close to mine that I could have kissed him, my hands went to his shoulders, my fingers resting at his throat. I leaned up and the first kiss seemed too short, careful and chaste, but the second was not. He cupped the back of my head and bent me back, kissing me like he wanted to break me in half. His fangs lengthened and broke the skin on my lip. When he drew back from my bleeding lip, his eyes darkened with desire.

I tried not to think about how much I wanted him. And I couldn’t think about how I wanted him to want me back. I licked the blood from my lip and he tightened his grip. We dropped twenty stories to the sidewalk below, landing in the alley next to Victoria. I knew now why he tried to stay away. To say that things ended badly with Katarina put it mildly. I also knew how I would break his fierce determination to push me away, if I could get Tessa to help me.

***

The bar downstairs where I sat with Victoria filled with figures draped in black while I sipped a club soda. Arie had disappeared, stalking in the direction of the elevator, I presumed to get a more fitting beverage at the bar upstairs. The downstairs catered to the Goth clubbers and didn’t serve Puncture, let alone Crimson Dusk. Our drive over had been a quiet one after our rooftop kiss. But after my latest vision I understood his hesitation and distance. Heavy industrial music vibrated through the lower level. A man wearing a trench coat with black fingernail polish and long raven hair walked across the club in my direction.

He stood in front of me and smiled, revealing fake resin fangs. “Hey, can I buy you a drink?”

Before I could respond Victoria showed her fangs. “Move along. She belongs to my maker.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry,” the man said, shaking his head as he walked away.

I laughed. “He has no idea just how serious you are.”

“Fang-fakers. Only a handful of them are unassuming and sincere. Most are pretentious and border on delusional. He thought I was another one of the role players that frequent here. None of them know—only the humans upstairs that we feed on know the truth.”

“You don’t like them.”

“I always find blatant imitators with their primal sexuality amusing. They are primitive and act like apes. I took to celibacy a century ago.” She scoffed.

My eyes widened and I found this fascinating considering where she worked and the sex club upstairs. I couldn’t imagine being able to ward off temptation in a place like this. “But why?”

“The absolute freedom from sexual thoughts and desires increases control over all the senses. My capacity for empathy and scanning auras surpasses vampires even older than I am because of my abstinence. It surpasses even my maker. That’s why he had me come with you tonight.”

In our society sex sold, and modern civilization supported an ocean of impure thoughts, lustful desires, and sensual pleasures. I could see how it caused one to become weak and feeble without accounting for supernatural forces. Society deteriorated to a place of racial degeneration where children beget children and people led artificial lives without a real ethical culture.