Infinite Days (29 page)

I looked down at the ring, realizing that I had forgotten I had worn it throughout this entire year. It had been my talisman, the one item, besides Rhode’s ashes, that I’d taken with me from place to place.

“Do you?” Justin asked. “Do you want to die?”

“I want the cycle to end. And in some way, it has,” I said.

In that moment, I knew what I had to do. Just as I had known that night at winter prom when I left Justin in the ballroom. Even if I died, as Rhode said was a possibility, even if it didn’t work, Vicken couldn’t stay a vampire and neither could I. And maybe I’d known it all along and it was why I’d come back to Wickham and had worked so long to find the ritual.

“I need you to do something for me,” I said, sitting up and looking at Justin. He was war torn. His blond hair was slick with sweat and his face was smeared with dust, the dust of dead vampires.

“Sure,” he said, brushing my hair back with his palm.

“Will you go see if they have taken Tony’s body? I can’t do it, but I need to know.”

“Sure,” he said, and kissed my forehead. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

Once he left and the door closed behind him, I opened the door to the patio, allowing the air to scoot under the curtain and into the apartment. I went into the kitchen and stood in front of the black canisters that rested on the counter. Inside them were herbs and spices.

I unrolled the ritual parchment still hiding in my pocket. I picked out thyme, for regeneration of the soul. As I walked back toward the bedroom, I raised onto my tiptoes and took a white candle from the iron wall sconces.

I opened the door to my bedroom.

Vicken lay on the bed, his arm over his eyes. I shut the door behind me and pressed my back against the door.

After a moment he said, “I feel as though I am split. In a thousand pieces. Drawn and quartered.”

“It will pass,” I said.

“Is that all I was to you?” He sat up slowly. His eyes were framed with black rings, and his skin had whitened. He needed blood and he needed it soon. He leaned his back against the pillows. “Just a victim? Of your dark age.”

I stepped next to the bed and placed the herbs and candle down on the night table. I tried to stay focused and I refused to look at my bedroom, the shell of my life that I left behind in December. “I do not think of you as a victim,” I said.

Vicken laughed, but then swayed a little, drunk from thirst. “Now what do we do?” he asked. “Shall we return to Hathersage? Go back to our existence? I feel awful.”

I raised a hand and held my palm an inch or two above the wick of the white candle. Using the light from within me, I set the candle aflame. Vicken looked at the candle and then at me. I slid open the drawer in my night table and found my silver letter opener. Not a knife, but it would have to do the trick. “I release you, Vicken Clough.”

Vicken’s eyes widened. “No,” he said, sitting up rigid. “I was clouded. Insane. Lenah—”

I raised the blade in the air and slashed down on my wrist so hard that a gaping wound opened. The blood started to ooze, though, as expected, there was no pain. Vicken stared at my wrist and then licked his lips even though he shook his head. “I don’t want this.”

“I release you.”

“No…,” he said, though I extended my wrist toward him.

This was what I wanted. To take back all the hundreds of years of pain and suffering. To do something right for once. To set it right. So Vicken could live, and Justin, too. If Vicken stayed a vampire, I would spend eternity fighting him. He deserved more. He deserved it back in the nineteenth century, when I promised him something I could never give.

Justin Enos was the reason I came to life. He gave me that freedom. I danced with thousands of people, I made love, and had friends. I was a full human and I had Justin and Tony to thank for it. And if anything, I owed Vicken that same chance and I owed Justin the freedom to let me go.

“I stand as your guardian,” I said to Vicken.

I used the light from my right hand to ignite the herbs. Vicken took my wrist and placed it to his mouth.

“Believe…and be free.” The smoke swirled up from the herbs on the night table. I closed my eyes and did what I had to do. And in that moment, with Justin’s face in my mind, I knew it was right.

I stumbled out of my bedroom, closing the door behind me. I fell so my back rested on the wall. I tilted my head back, with my eyes closed. I was weakened beyond my wildest imagination. Most of the blood was gone from my body. I was so exhausted that the room was off-kilter and I couldn’t focus.

To my right was the living room and, beyond that, the doorway to the patio. Dawn had broken and the sunlight was peeking in from underneath the curtain of the porch. Vicken lay in the deepest sleep he would ever experience. When he awoke, he would be Vicken again. Not the soulless angry vampire that I’d created.

The front door opened.

Justin stepped into the dorm room. His beautiful pouted mouth pointed down; the energy in his eyes was extinguished. He didn’t say anything at first. Just the noise that silence makes that can never quite be explained.

“They took his body,” Justin said. “The police.”

He finally looked up at me and his eyes rested on my right hand grasping my bleeding left wrist. He gasped and reached for me, but I put up my left hand and he stopped.

“Tell me you didn’t just do what I think you did. Tell me, Lenah, that you would have told me first.”

“I can’t.”

“Lenah…” Tears spilled out of Justin’s gorgeous green eyes. His young face contorted with pain, and the guilt surged through me. He would know heartache and grief, and I was responsible for it.

He walked toward me, but I kept my hand around my wrist, trying to keep the blood in. My body wasn’t regenerating blood, it was escaping, and soon I would be empty entirely. Justin reached for me, but I kept my hands close to my body.
Stay up,
I thought, and concentrated on maintaining consciousness.

He kissed me hard. I pulled away and, without a word, I slid off my onyx ring and placed it in Justin’s palm. He looked down at it, thrown for a minute, and then back up at me.

“Don’t you see?” I said, not removing my gaze from his. His green eyes were so watery with tears. “I fell in love with you,” I continued. My knees buckled, but Justin was there to catch me. Justin swallowed hard, and another tear fell out from his eyes. He wiped it away. I was seeing double. My time was running low.

“Lenah…” Justin was crying now.

I inched to the right, toward the patio door.

“Don’t do this,” he said, as if I could change it.

“In there.” I pointed at the bedroom door. While I was dying, the vampire within Vicken was evaporating and escaping his body. “The intent was
you
. Your protection and freedom. That’s all I want now, is for you to be safe. You’ll wake up tomorrow with no fear. It stops with me.”

Blood seeped through the grasp around my wrist. “Please, go,” I whispered. “You don’t want to see this.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Justin said through gritted teeth. “I’m waiting here.”

If I could have cried, I would have. But there were no tears in me. I was nothing but a carcass. “Just promise me you’ll be here when he wakes up. It takes two days. Tell him my whole story. He’ll know what to do.”

“I promise,” Justin said, just when the back of my heels hit the patio door frame.

I smiled; my hands were shaking. “You brought me to life.”

Before he could respond, I turned to the door.

I thought I heard something before I stepped out into the dawn.

I think it was Justin’s knees hitting the ground. I pulled the curtain aside, and a blast of morning light hit me square in the face. I raised my hands from my sides.

I would tell you that I felt fire, and hell and pain. It would be the only justifiable payback for the way I killed so ruthlessly throughout my life.

But I didn’t.

All I felt were dazzling gold, and diamonds of light.

Turn the Page for an Excerpt from Rebecca Maizel’s Next Book

Stolen Nights

Available in early 2011

Copyright © 2010 by Lovers Bay, Inc.

T
here is a bay before me. A small inlet, and spring, it seems, has finally arrived. The branches sway now, happy in their release from their heavy burdens of ice and snow. Did I tell you I licked the snow with my tongue? Yes, perhaps I did. I cannot remember which days I write in this journal and which days I spend talking to you in my head. Today, I write.

Lenah, I wish you could have seen my face. I bent down, wrapped in a blanket, stuck out my tongue and licked the snow. A grown man! It was…wonderful. The wind was biting. Chills ran down my spine and I could taste the salt in the air. I have hundreds of words now for things I had so long forgotten.

The locals here ask so many questions. Where am I from? Why is a handsome man of so young an age by himself with no wife or girlfriend? I would tell them I wait for you but that is only half of the truth. I do wait for you—though I know you will never come.

The truth is, I mourn you. Because there is an aching in my soul; I know this—I have one now. I would sprout wings and soar to the highest tower so you might see me, so I could tell you I am whole and sound. But we both know angels make very rare appearances. And I am no angel.

I would scream for you if you would hear me. I would burn this place to the ground if it meant you would see the smoke. The only item I burn is sage and that’s to cleanse myself of worry of you—yet you remain. No salt on my window will cure your ghost.

Even the waves cascading in this bay lead out to an ocean that flows to the shores of England. I can connect anything to you if I try. This rock in my hand, smoothed by ages in the sea. If I toss it back, could I will it to reach you?

England.

I don’t ever want to see it slaughtered by modern day. Let it remain in my mind as it was before all of this happened.

Before you and I in an apple orchard. Before you in a white dress.

These words roll in my head day after day but I find no peace. My dreams haunt me—my worst fear—your death, I see it in thousands of incarnations. I must believe that you will transcend this darkness. That you will find a way to prevail and forgive me.

For leaving you.

I stood on the porch and raised my arms from my sides. I was ready…to burn. The morning sun came over my body in a sharp beam. I waited for the scorching pain that would send me to hell.

But there was no pain. There was only warmth that rolled from my head to my toes.

I wanted to take a breath but a great pressure lay on my chest. As the sun radiated on my skin I felt a great weight lifted from my body. One layer peeled away. A release. Another layer, another release. I stood alone on that porch but something heavy was coming away and up into the air. I was getting lighter and lighter.

I kept my eyes closed but the peeling continued. The light seemed to swirl through me, down through my muscles and into the bone. There was a jolt of energy and the bottoms of my feet left the ground. Bathed by the light, I levitated above the tiles. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out—at least nothing I could hear. Then the world spun a thousand times, ten thousand times. I opened my eyes, but Wickham was a blur spinning so fast that when my knees buckled I slammed full force into the floor. Only then did I realize that I had survived whatever should have killed me.

I had survived the ritual.

My knees stung from the fall, but I was distracted by the pounding in my throat. I drew in breath, immediately brought my hands to the base of my neck, and inhaled again. My fingers clenched around my throat; a pounding vibrated deep within me. It was the rhythmic knocking of an old friend who reminded me she was still there…my heart. I tried to steady my balance by pressing my fingertips onto the tiles.
Stand up, Lenah,
I thought.

I shook my hands out and then my arms, too.
Oh,
I thought.
My body and my mind are connected. I can feel. I can think.

I surveyed my surroundings, remembering where I was.

Think, Lenah. You are on the porch at Wickham
. As these words came to my mind, so did the images of the last moments before I had stepped out onto that porch. I sat on the bed with Vicken and performed the ritual. I had destroyed my coven, a coven of vampires. The ritual called for bloodletting and, only moments before, I had sliced open my wrist, giving all of my blood to Vicken so that he might be human once again.

But I had survived…and the ritual wasn’t supposed to work that way.

I remained on my knees and brought my wrists before my eyes. The skin wasn’t broken! It wasn’t cut from the silver letter opener. How was that possible? Something glittered below my eyes and I looked to the porch floor.

Around me was a pile of luminous dust. Thousands upon thousands of tiny sparkles. I had seen this before.

I looked back to my hands and the skin was rejuvenated—no cuts, no bruises. I leaned forward, still on my knees, and placed my palms in the dust. When I dragged my hands back toward my body, my palms made a scraping noise against the gritty remains and the tiled porch floor. These microscopic diamonds were cool and gritty—just like before. Just like when I was first made human and Rhode sacrificed himself on that same porch. All he had left behind were the same gritty, sparkling ashes.

Knee caps. Bare thighs. Arms and bare breasts. I was naked just like the first time when Rhode had performed the ritual for me. Whatever happened on that porch had incinerated my clothes—had burned up the vampire within me and I was human again. I placed my hand down on the wood and something hard dug into my palm. When I looked down I saw my necklace with a vial as a pendant; the thick chain curled in a circle.

My necklace holding Rhode’s dust lay in my glorious glittering vampire remains. Mine. They looked just the same as the dust within that tiny vial pendant. Tiny glitters sparkled on my palms. I looked from those particles to Rhode’s necklace and back again to mine. A creeping thought, almost like a nudge, came to me, slowly unfolded and the dots connected, one by one. The realization came in one sentence: they didn’t just look the same…they
were
the same.

If I survived…could it be possible?
No,
I thought.
Rhode is dead. Like Tony
. My gut wrenched and I looked to the lines snaking through my palms. My lifeline was the same even though I had been transformed. Transformed back to a human. As I stared at the lines, images flashed through my mind so quickly I wasn’t sure which one to focus on first.

Vicken pleading with me not to perform the ritual. His skin was so white. Suleen, at Wickham, in his traditional white garb, standing by the Chapel, his arm outstretched to me.

Justin at winter prom.

Me telling him good-bye.

The sheer magnitude of the moment came over me in that early morning light. The ritual had worked but in a way I had never expected.
No—Rhode is dead,
I insisted. I sucked in a heaving breath, then another, filling my lungs, and I exhaled again. That’s when I heard a man’s cry from behind me. A soft cry, the kind of cry that can only come from someone in deep pain.

Justin.

I opened my mouth and stuttered, swallowed, and pressed my tongue to my teeth. I tried to speak but spit came flying out. I lifted my right foot but collapsed back onto the tile with a thud.

I had to get inside.

Justin’s wail made my stomach clench. I reached one hand forward and turned my body to face the porch door. The curtain blew out and fluttered in the morning breeze. I reached and pulled my body forward—this was harder than I thought. My legs were dead weight but I kept dragging myself across the porch even though my legs lay behind me, motionless.

I snarled from the effort and grunted, too. There was a surprised hiccup and then silence. I reached out, so my fingers gripped the cool metal of the bottom of the door frame. I ducked my head under the curtain.

Justin was on his knees, his face in his hands. He looked up at me, lines of tears streaked over his bronzed cheeks. His mouth formed an O-shape and he reached out to me.

“D-D-Don’t touch y-yet,” I slurred, continuing to crawl.

Justin stood up as I pulled myself from the patio to the middle of the living room. I had linked the heavy necklace chain through my fingers and it crunched against the floor as I crawled. The vial scraped against the floor and my skin ached from the pressure of the heavy silver digging into my fingers. My temples throbbed and it matched my heartbeat. My knees kept slipping on the floor and my arms gave way because my wrists weren’t strong enough yet. Adrenaline rushed through my stomach as I caught myself on my elbows sending zings of pain through my arms.

I was positively beastlike. I shook my head.
No,
I thought, but I couldn’t stop it.
More
images shot through my mind. I knew, like all those touched by supernatural forces, that those images were placed in my mind intentionally.

Rhode standing on the porch of my apartment with his hands raised from his sides. His eyes are closed, and he looks so peaceful he could be sleeping. A white light comes from the sky in a strong beam—it engulfs him. Tiny globules of diamond refractions pour off Rhode in a sparkling sandstorm. The gritty ash collects around him, his clothes stripped piece by piece as he bathes in light. His vampire soul collects around him in a heaping pile. He collapses onto the porch and stares at his hands, shocked that he had survived.

I gasped and the images rippled out of my mind, leaving it blank. They were clear at first and then as I kept dragging myself into the apartment, Justin’s face pushed them away. My wrists wobbled and my head ached but I threw my body forward. My heartbeat fluttered in my ears.

Keep going, Lenah. Keep going
…but my arms gave out and my cheek hit the hardwood. I exhaled and inhaled, one breath after another. I let the sting of the hardwood ebb away. I closed my eyes, focusing on one image that stayed in my mind amid the blackness.

Rhode stands in the glittered ash. He is gorgeous, naked. I follow the meaty carvings of his chest, down to the firmness of his abdomen, down and down to the bone in his shins. He could be made of marble. My god
,
I think. I love the sculpted angles of his body. I look back up when he brings his palm over his chest and covers his heart. I am utterly entranced as if the images were real.

“Lenah?” Justin asked again. In a breath the image disappeared and my eyes opened in a shot. My cheek was still planted against the hardwood floor. I pushed up with my hands but my wrists shook so much that my hair fell from behind my shoulders making a curtain on either side of my face. In a clumsy collapse, my strength gave out, and I hit the floor again.

For a few moments there was only the sound of my breath. I felt a softness on my lower back, and I realized Justin laid a blanket over me. He sank down to his knees and wrapped me in the blanket. His fingers were cautious, they hadn’t touched my skin. I could barely hear him breathing. I looked up, moving the curtain of hair out of my eyes.

“Touch me,” I said, finally making my mouth work the way I wanted.

Justin’s face collapsed, his slim but proud nose was red. His eyes were swollen and his lips were still quivering. “I’m sorry,” he said, wrapping the blanket around me even tighter. He was on his knees. I gathered whatever strength I had to reach for him and to wrap my cold arms around his waist. Pressing my face into the soft cotton of his shirt, I could hear his heart thudding madly.

“I’m sorry,” he said again and again.

“Why?” I asked, feeling his arms and body quiver and shake beneath my weak grasp.

“For crying. I don’t know.”

We sat on the floor like that for a moment while I caught my breath and the shuddering from Justin’s body slowly wavered and then stilled. His shoulders trembled, then stilled, then trembled again. He reached out and cupped my cheek with his palm. He was so warm. Now it was my turn to shake, only I wasn’t sure if I was shaking because of Justin’s beautiful face.

“You’re cold,” he said, hugging me closer. He sniffed and wiped a stray tear from the bottom of his jaw.

I nuzzled into the comfort of the fabric. He kissed the top of my head and drew me even closer. We were silent as I breathed in and out, taking in Justin’s familiar smell. Like fresh grass and earth.

“How?” Justin asked. “I mean, how did this happen? You said you were going to die.”

“I don’t know,” I said, sitting up and leaning on the wall behind me. I wiped the sweat away from my forehead. There was the silence between us, Justin’s golden glow was tainted by his sadness. I wanted to wield the light like I had only hours before and try to brighten back up our lives. Something about him seemed grayer, so I ran my thumb down another wet line on Justin’s face. He closed his eyes at my touch.

I dropped my hands by my side and sighed. I looked about the living room of my apartment and, of course, my eyes fell on Rhode’s sword. My eyes slid from the sharp point, down to the blade, then to the hilt. Right above the handle was the strongest part of the sword, the blood grooves. They were small wells, which would catch the blood of the enemy.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re smaller or weaker,” Rhode had said. “With this you can defeat—”

“Lenah?” Justin interrupted Rhode’s words in my head. “How are your legs?” I wiggled my toes and found that some of the feeling was coming back to me. On the porch they had been dead weight.

“Better. I think it’s just going to take a bit.”

According to Rhode, the ritual killed whoever performed it. Something within me, a burning hot ball in the pit of my stomach told me I was supposed to live. I had no guide this time. I had to follow my intuition.

And my intuition told me that Rhode was alive.