Eternal Shadows (2 page)

Its contents were dark red, so much so that there seemed a blackness to it.

My first instinct was to drop it, to let it splatter all over my nice cream-colored rug, but Rhys had his hand wrapped securely around mine, keeping my fingers locked around the glass. And then the smell hit me.

Bliss.

I raised the glass to my mouth, nearly knocking my teeth against the rim in my haste. The liquid inside ran over my tongue, down the back of my throat and hit my hollow stomach with a wave of satisfaction. It was warm, and suddenly I was a bit warmer, too. And sweet, so sweet. Just like I remembered.

My hand jerked open and I staggered away, dropping the now-drained glass. Rhys caught it effortlessly, saving my carpet from an untreatable stain. I felt a single drop lingering on my lips and lifted my hand to wipe it away. Instead, my tongue darted out without permission and drew it back into my mouth. The taste was divine. Better than anything I’d ever tasted in my entire life. Better than chocolate.

No. No, no, no, no
. I couldn’t think that way. As soon as I realized the direction my thoughts had taken I was repulsed by them. I wouldn’t be like that. Blood would never touch my lips again. I made a solemn vow to myself.

Rhys set the glass down on my bedside table. I shivered at the
sight of it beside my innocent-looking Hello Kitty alarm clock. “Can you manage to listen to me now?” he asked, apparently not bothered by the fact that he had set a glass coated in blood next to my poor childhood relic.

I thought about his question. The babbling in my head had ended. I felt calmer, warmer, lucid. The thirst hadn’t gone away completely, but I no longer wanted to free myself from the confines of my flesh. “Yes,” I said, not knowing why I was so willing to hear what he had to say. He was a vampire. Yet I took a deep breath and faced him, ready.

He looked the same as he had in my nightmare, serious and unshakable. I wondered if his expression ever changed. His eyes were focused on mine and I found it impossible to look away. “You are a vampire,” he said for the second time. I hated hearing it. “I will explain as best I can.”

“What is there to explain?” I snapped, regretting my impulse immediately. Rhys didn’t look very enthused by my interruption.

“You must have questions,” he said.

Suddenly it felt like he was too close. I inched around the edge of my bed, attempting to give myself more space. “I don’t want to be a vampire,” I said, yelping the last part of the word when I slammed my thigh into the footboard of my bed.

He remained where he was. “Whether you want to or not, you are.”

“I don’t have to stay that way.”

“There’s no cure.”

“There’s death.”

The sound that came from him next was pure exasperation. I thrilled at the small victory. Rubbing my throbbing leg, I turned my back on him and headed towards my desk, hiding my smile.

“How much do you know about vampires?” he asked, either avoiding or ignoring my previous comment.

I noticed for the first time how clean my room was. I never kept it this clean, even when I wasn’t obsessively researching mythological creatures. “What happened to all my books?”

He pointed causally to a pile in the far corner. Sure enough, every library book I had collected sat there, stacked one on top of the other. My handwritten notes lay on top. I grabbed onto the back of my desk chair and spun it back and forth just for something to do. “I know you’re all bloodsucking demons apparently bent on world domination.”

“You’ll have to count yourself with our number now.”

“No way.” I gave the chair a hard spin, watching it turn around and around for at least six revolutions before I kicked it to the side. My mother’s picture watched me from its place on my desk. I had found the most beautiful frame for it last Christmas, silver and sage green. It reminded me of her. She had been an avid advocate of world peace and all the best charities. She had traveled all the time, taking food and medicine to third world countries and speaking at conferences and government associations. I had gone with her once, but only once. She hadn’t wanted me to miss school. I knew it was really because she had put herself in danger every day. How many guns had been held to her beautiful golden head? And how many had been lowered when they saw the compassion in her green eyes? I didn’t know. But I knew it only took one not lowered for her to never come back to me. Now here I was, with a gun to my head. Metaphorically, of course. Could I possibly have her strength? “I’ll never be one of you.”

“We’re not what you think.”

A tear hit my desk, smearing the ink of the school paper I had printed out just before I began my insane research. “Oh no?” I
asked, concentrating on making sure my voice didn’t crack. “You mean you don’t drink the blood of innocent people? You didn’t just invade my home? You didn’t just kill my father?” I faced him then, certain no more tears would follow.

He was closer than I had expected. My heart, which I only now realized still beat, skipped in my chest. His breath was cold as he spoke. “We drink blood. We are taking over your country, and others, so that the human race will not destroy itself. Your father’s death was an accident, a mistake, but he died for that same reason.”

“An accident?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“That does not change the truth.”

“He didn’t fight.”

“He did. He resisted most adamantly.”

“Good for him. And you can be sure I’ll resist just as hard, if not harder.”

“Yes, you’ve made that quite clear.” He hadn’t moved an inch through all my stalking about the room, but now he shifted his weight. “Now, will you quit acting like a child and try to think rationally?”

“I am a child!” As soon as I screamed the words I stopped. I had been making the very opposite argument to my father for the past month. It wouldn’t be long before I was an adult, legally an adult, and he wouldn’t be able to dictate every detail of my life any longer. I would be able to move out, choose for myself, sign for myself…It was all so very close. I remembered feeling like I could almost close my hand around my coming freedom.

I turned suddenly, nearly tripping myself in my haste to get to the far wall of my room. I stared at the generic calendar depicting the greatest landscapes of the United States, the red circle drawn around the eighteenth, glaringly bright. The days had only been crossed off through the twelfth. If I had been dying for almost a week…

“What day is it?” The words tumbled out of my mouth, barely audible and hardly articulated.

Rhys understood despite all that. “The eighteenth of May.”

I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t decide whether or not it was a good thing I didn’t have to any more. Only one thought kept repeating in my head.

My eighteenth birthday.

A strange sound started echoing through the room. It took a moment until I realized it was me, chanting “no” over and over again. I ripped the calendar down and counted the unmarked days once, twice, five times. That couldn’t be right. If it was then everything had been ruined.

“Now what’s wrong with you?”

“Eighteen on the eighteenth,” I said, desperate not to believe it. “I missed it.”

Rhys appeared on my right. I didn’t bother to look at him. I was almost fascinated by the way the calendar shook in my hands as though it had a life of its own. “You’re not making sense,” he said.

I turned on him. I couldn’t help it. Angry tears poured down my face. “I was supposed
to be eighteen on the eighteenth. It’s supposed to be lucky! Now I’m seventeen forever. Some birthday this is. My life couldn’t possibly be any worse.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I could name dozens of ways your life could be worse.”

“Who’s being ridiculous? I’m a bloodsucking, people-killing, unnatural demon!”

“Stop talking, and listen.” There was a different tone to his voice. Harsher, colder. I was certain I had finally driven him past his point of tolerance. But there was something else, too. I found myself utterly silent, watching him, waiting for him to speak. Not even sure what I would say, I opened my mouth, but no words came. Odd. Normally, I could talk myself into a coma, as my father used to say.

Rhys took me by the arm and I let him lead me back towards my bed. “Sit,” he said. I did. “No more talking until I’m done.” I tried to speak again, but there was a tiny twinge at the back of my head, so I stopped. Rhys continued on without pause. “You are a vampire. You will need to drink blood. You are stronger now, faster, but you will have to learn how to control all these new reflexes and abilities. Unlike all your human movies, we can’t do everything perfectly as soon as we are turned. It will take time, just as it did when you were a child.”

Fabulous. Just when I was finally going to be an adult. Not only was I a dumb vampire now, but I was a child again, too. Great. I wanted to say all this to Rhys, to whine and complain, but I didn’t. I settled for making a disgusted sound, expelling most of the breath I had been holding.

“Breathing is optional now,” he continued. “Mostly we do it out of habit. Your heart is still beating fairly regularly, but that will stop in the next day or so. After that it will only beat once in a very long while. Sleep is a necessity, though how much of it you need will decrease over the years.”

Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Who cared? My life was ruined. I was dead, stuck at seventeen, and apparently an unwilling prisoner of an incredibly handsome immortal young man.

Okay, so maybe that last part had the potential for some interesting possibilities, but I was too angry to delve into those. Rhys could go stake himself. Or whatever it was vampires did.

“Do you have any questions?”

Wow. I had permission to speak. Bad choice on his part. I tried to think of something annoying. “Is there any more to your name? Or is it just Rhys? Like Cher and Madonna.”

“O’Shea,” he said, not visibly perturbed by my jab.

“Jeeze, that’s Irish. Could you be any more stereotypical?”

“Could you be any more typically American?”

What? Oh, no. This was my time to get back at him, not the other way around. “Excuse me? What the hell does that mean?”

He leaned back against the wall. “At least I can claim a proud ancient heritage. You Americans just look like mutts. A hodgepodge of features. That and you’re incredibly cocky and self-righteous.”

Jerk. “Mutts live longer than purebreds.” Ha. Take that.

“No point in arguing with an American.”

“Go drink yourself into a coma.”

“Do you have anything of value to say or ask?”

“How old are you?”

“About five hundred years.”

“Holy crap, that’s old.”

“How kind of you to say so. Anything else?”

I grumbled and made a show of thinking about it, leaning back on both my arms and staring up at the ceiling. I hoped he had somewhere important to be and I was holding him up.

In my act, my hand found the paw of the stuffed dragon my mother had bought me for my fifth birthday. I cut the melodrama and sat up, pulling the well-hugged creature into my lap. I stared at it for a long moment, stroking its blue fur and purple horns. Suddenly, my anger turned into grief.

“Where’s my father?” I whispered, not daring to look up at him just in case he didn’t plan on being compassionate about this. I knew I was all over the place. Bouncing from one psychotic mood to the next, but it was his fault.

“What do you mean?” he
asked, his voice devoid of any sign of our previous squabble.

“His body. Or grave, whatever. Can I see it?”

“He was cremated. I can bring you his ashes.”

Why was he being so nice? I wanted to hate him for it. Then again, he probably hadn’t been the one to kill my father. He’d been too busy killing me. I clutched my dragon and nodded once. “Please?” Maybe being nice in return would get me some time alone. Enough time to end my own existence.

I didn’t hear him leave, but I felt it. I couldn’t begin to explain how. The silence stretched out in my room and I repressed the urge to cry. He returned just as quietly. I didn’t sense it at all until I saw the small metal box held out to me.

I let go of my stuffed companion and took the box with both hands. It looked old, ancient, even. An antique. Vampires probably had lots of those hanging around. Silver in color and tarnished in a dignified way, it seemed the perfect resting place for a man like my father. The designs etched into the metal wrapped around the box in harsh
, but beautiful angles.

I felt my throat close up and my hands began to shake.

“Get out.” I choked the words out, past my coming tears.

“Kassandra, you really should—”

“Get out!”

Rhys sighed, but he retreated almost immediately. I stared at the box which held my father’s ashes while I watched Rhys in my peripheral vision until he exited my room, closing the door behind himself.

I pressed the box to my chest and let myself topple over onto my disheveled comforter. I grabbed my dragon again and curled into the smallest ball I could manage. Clutching what remained of both my parents, of my human life, I cried myself to sleep.