Eternity and a Year (4 page)

Carrie ignored his protest and plunged her hand below the waistband, spreading her fingers so his erection, hard and smooth, filled her palm. He groaned. Carrie lowered herself and knelt before him, the rumpled bed sheets brushing against her nipples, which protruded from beneath her disturbed garment. Brendan groaned again as her mouth closed around his cock, and she pushed until it pressed against the back of her throat. He buried his hands in her nutmeg locks and balled them into fists, pulling tightly. He guided her as she slid away and forward again, his hair tickling her lips when she had gone as far as she could.

She pulled free suddenly, releasing Brendan and eliciting a moan of regret from him. “What are those?” she asked, staring at his groin. Buried among the dark, curly hairs were two shining patches of deathly-white skin, oblong scars that rose a quarter of an inch above the rest of his flesh.

He frowned and looked down. “Those—those are my conversion scars…from when I became a vampire.”

Carrie couldn’t have hurt worse if he’d hit her across the face. In fact, that was very much how she felt. The scars rested neatly on either side of his penis, about a quarter of an inch above its base. Whoever had made them would have had to have his cock in their mouth to do it. “And how the hell,” Carrie said, as evenly as she could manage, “did you become a vampire, anyway?”

Brendan looked up to meet her gaze. There were tears brimming in his red eyes. “After we fought,” he said, “I stormed out into the streets. I didn’t know where I was going, I was just so mad. I wandered around fuming for about half an hour. Then…she came up to me.”

Carrie glared at him, and he reluctantly continued.

“She bit me. She turned me into a vampire.”

“Oh, I see,” Carrie said scathingly. “That’s a very clear explanation. Only one teeny oversight—you seem to have left out the part where you shoved your cock into her mouth.”

Brendan’s shoulders wilted, and his erection was doing the same.

“I’m sorry!” he said. “I’m so, so sorry! I was so mad, and you told me to leave—I know it’s no excuse—but I was just so angry, and…and I’ve never regretted anything more!”

She glared fiercely at him, hoping if she narrowed her eyes enough it would hide the fact that hot tears were building up behind them. “You know,” she said, “I think you got what you deserved. That just proves that even when you were human, you were a monster, driven by whatever stupid, destructive impulse popped into your head.”

Brendan flinched as if he had been struck.

“And a liar, on top of it,” she added. “You left me to think you were dead for a year, then you came back and you
lied
to me.”

“I—I didn’t lie!” he protested.

Carrie drew back her hand and slapped him across the face as hard as she could. “You told me you hadn’t slept with anyone since you left!” she cried. “You told me that yesterday!”

“It’s true! I didn’t sleep with her, or anyone else, I just—”

“Get out, Brendan!” Carrie shouted, fighting to contain her tears. “Get out!”

Brendan rose from the bed and drifted towards the door. He hadn’t even reached it by the time Carrie regretted her words. By the time it shut behind him, she was sobbing. There was a hollow in the mattress where he had sat. She settled into it and buried her face in a pillow.

* * * *

The next day at work was agony for Carrie. She tended shop automatically while her mind whirled with thoughts of Brendan. Where was he? What had she done? Would he come back? Could she find her way to the abandoned building to which he’d taken her that first night? The questions were dizzying. She very nearly lost her temper with a customer who came in complaining with a return. At lunchtime, her boss, Anne, confronted her.

“Is something wrong, Carrie?” Anne asked her in the privacy of the store room. “You don’t seem like yourself today.”

Carrie bit her lip and held back tears. “It’s…” She struggled with what to say. If she tried to play off Anne’s observations and pretend her morning performance had been normal behaviour, she might lose her job. “It’s Brendan,” she replied truthfully. No need to mention he had returned—as a vampire. Carrie was still having trouble stomaching that particular detail herself.

Anne nodded. “It was this time last year when he went missing, wasn’t it?”

Carrie nodded back. She had been working at the boutique for nearly three years. Anne knew all about the ordeal. She had been one of the first people Carrie had told about it, and one of the first to have her wedding invitation rescinded.

“Listen,” Anne said, “why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

Carrie shook her head. “That’s all right. You don’t have to do that, I—”

“Really, Carrie. Go home. I’ll be fine without you for the rest of the day.”

Carrie nodded gratefully. “All right,” she said, feeling slightly guilty but mostly relieved as she plucked her jacket from where it hung on the hook against the wall.

She walked home slowly, taking a longer route than necessary. She was reluctant to return to her empty apartment, where the bed sheets lay unmade, twisted and generally distressed after a night of sobbing, tossing and turning. The city streets were more appealing. Here, she didn’t have to be alone with her feelings of betrayal and regret. People surged around her, oblivious to her pain, but there nonetheless.

Carrie’s thoughts turned to the run-down building where Brendan had taken her. Could she find it again in daylight? And if she could, would he be there? Was that where he’d been staying throughout the past year, in that dusty, dilapidated old structure? It was worth a try, she decided. His confession of betrayal had left her with an aching hole in her heart, but being separated from him only made it worse. She started in what she thought was the general direction of the building.

Within an hour, she saw its flat-roofed brick top looming in the distance. She hurried towards it, as if it were a treasure chest rather than a condemned warehouse. Her heart pounded against her ribs, more from anticipation than exertion. She turned a corner and realised footsteps were echoing behind her.

She stopped in her tracks. All was silent, save for the humming motors and screeching brakes on some nearby street. The back of her neck prickled, and her intuition told her she was being followed. She turned slowly to see who was there.

The figure was a man, Carrie could tell that much, but his face was mostly obscured by the hood of his jacket. He stood a couple of hundred feet behind her, watching. His hands were buried deep in his pockets. A chill ran down her spine. She turned and took a deliberate step forward. Silence. She took another step. More silence. She began to walk. He followed, his footsteps loud to her straining ears. She cursed under her breath. What had she been thinking, coming to a place like this on her own? She could only hope all he wanted was her purse and its meagre contents.

She stopped when she reached the abandoned building where Brendan had taken her. She was sure it was the right one—a hole gaped in the wall of the third floor, just where it could have shed moonlight on her and Brendan’s joining. She glanced to her right. Her stalker had entered the alley and was quickly moving towards her. Should she say something? Scream? Her heart stuck in her throat.

The man seized her arm and she span, pulling against his grasp. He held on and jerked her to him, letting a string of Spanish expletives fly in a burst of foul breath. Carrie struggled, and he upbraided her. Though she didn’t understand Spanish, the threat in his words transcended the language barrier. Finally, she managed to scream. The thug hit her hard across the face, and silver stars blossomed before her eyes. She reeled, supported only by the man’s rough grip.

Suddenly, her attacker whirled, shouting a confused-sounding exclamation of “
Que demonios
!” as he released her. Carrie fell, scraping her palms on the ground, as the heavy sound of vicious blows and half-uttered curses filled the air. She looked up to see her attacker bent double and receiving a nose-crunching kick to the face. Her saviour was a blur of pale skin and dark hair that gleamed faintly copper in the sunlight.

“Brendan!” Carrie’s heart leapt as she recognised him.

Brendan turned to face her over his victim’s crumpled body. His mouth hung open, as though he were breathing hard, and his long teeth gleamed in the sunlight. He squinted, reducing his eyes to narrow slits that hid the red of his irises. He dropped suddenly to stoop over the body of Carrie’s attacker, who was gasping for air. In less time than it took her to blink, he’d jerked back the man’s hood and sunk his fangs into his neck.

Carrie pressed herself against the alley wall and watched in horror as the colour drained from the man’s face, turning him as pale as Brendan. “No!” she cried, darting forward, trembling. “Brendan, stop!” She seized one of Brendan’s shoulders and pulled with all her might, doubting she was capable of stopping him, but sure, nevertheless, she couldn’t just watch him kill someone.

She was shaking by the time Brendan rose, finally giving in to her pleading and pulling. With crimson blood streaming from the corners of his pale mouth and her attacker lying unconscious at his feet, she no longer found it difficult to admit he was a vampire. Her heart beat faster in trepidation as he stepped towards her, and an alien sense of deep, primal fear gripped her.

He staggered past her, seemingly oblivious to her presence. His eyes were completely closed. He stumbled blindly down the alleyway, eventually collapsing in the dirt and gasping as he drew his body up and wrapped his arms around his knees. A trickle of blood ran out of his mouth and was smeared across his face as he jerked.

“Brendan!” Carrie exclaimed, gathering all her courage and approaching him. “Brendan, what’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he lay balled on the ground, shivering. That was strange, as she herself was hot beneath her jacket. Did he have a fever? Could vampires even get fevers? She shook his shoulder. “Brendan!” He was unresponsive.

Carrie cast a nervous glance at the man lying in the alley. She had to get herself and Brendan away from her attacker before he woke or anyone else came along. She eyed a door that hung slightly ajar in the side of the building. Then, she seized one of Brendan’s thick arms and began the arduous process of dragging him towards it. It took her nearly ten minutes to lug his body over the threshold. When it was done, she collapsed by his side. He wasn’t shivering as badly now they had entered the dark, dank interior of the old warehouse.

“Brendan?”

He shook. She lay down beside him, wrapped her arms around his waist, pressed her cheek against his back and cried. What else could she do? She certainly couldn’t take a vampire to a hospital.

Chapter Three

Brendan woke with a groan roughly fifteen minutes after Carrie had laboured to drag him into the shelter of the abandoned warehouse.

“Brendan?” Carrie leapt to kneel over him. “Brendan?”

He rubbed his eyes with his fists. “Carrie?”

She breathed a deep sigh of relief. “I’m here. I didn’t know what was wrong, so I brought you into the building…”

“Thanks,” he murmured.

“Are you all right?” she asked. His eyes were open but he kept blinking, as if he were staring into a bright light instead of lying in semi-darkness. His expression was pained.
At least he’s awake,
she thought,
that’s an improvement.
Still, she chewed her lip as worry plagued her.

“Yeah,” he replied, “it was just…the sun…” He grimaced.

“The sun? So…it’s true then? Sunlight hurts vampires?”

Brendan nodded. “It makes me sick and it hurts my eyes.”

“Oh. Do you…do you feel okay now?”

Brendan ignored her question. “Why’d you come here? That was stupid of you. You could have been killed. I only saw what was happening because I heard you scream.”

Carrie frowned. Brendan seemed to be rapidly regaining his health—his grimace of pain had turned into a stubborn expression of disapproval. “I had to see you,” she said. “After last night, I—I just had to see you.”

Brendan grasped one of her hands and squeezed. A slight tremor lingered in his fingers, one of the remaining traces of the sun’s wrath.

“I didn’t think you’d ever want to see me again,” he said.

She sighed. “I didn’t really want you to leave, but…” She quieted as her head throbbed with a fresh wave of raw emotion. How could she explain what she’d felt? Anger, jealousy, betrayal…and a desperate longing despite it all. She’d hated banishing him with the same words she’d used on the night of the fight that had separated them for a year, and yet she hadn’t been able to stop herself.

“I’m sorry, Carrie.” Brendan’s apology resonated in the dark, mostly empty room. “I love you. I would do anything to take it back if I could.”

Carrie drew a deep breath and closed her eyes. “I forgive you.” Her heart felt somehow both heavier and lighter as she spoke the words, resigning his betrayal to the realm of painful memories she’d try her best not to think about. It was one of many.

Brendan sighed deeply. “Thank you.” Tears shone in his red eyes.

“I’m so glad you’re alive,” Carrie said, “so glad.” Tears welled in hers, too.

“Upstairs…” Brendan began, “upstairs, I have blankets…”

A tingling started in her core, and her clitoris began to ache with need. She followed him up two flights of rickety steps to the room where she’d lain with him two nights before. He’d covered the hole in the wall with something, and the windows must have been filled in long ago as they were little more than faint outlines of off-coloured bricks in the walls.

“I can’t see very much,” she said, gripping the railing as she stood on the last stair. “I’m afraid I’ll fall.”

“That’s right,” Brendan said. “Sorry. I forgot you wouldn’t be able to. I mean, I can see in the dark.”

“You can?” Carrie asked, surprised.

“Yeah. Here, hold my hand. I’ll guide you.”

She reached for his cool fingers, wrapped her own around them and followed him across the floor. The dust they kicked up tickled her nostrils.