Stolen Night (20 page)

I closed my eyes, blew out the candle and made a wish.

I wish first for our safety. All of us – Vicken, Rhode, Justin and me. And for Wickham. But my heart wants the hurt to go away. I wish for someone to tell me I am all right. That who I
am and what I did is forgiven.

As I opened my eyes, the wish still swirling in my mind, Justin’s happy expression shone back at me from behind the flickering candle. He really did throw this party just for me.

‘Happy birthday,’ he said. He took my hand, running his fingers over my skin.

Someone placed a cup in my other hand. I took a sip and the slick tangy peach liquor slipped down my throat. Still holding my hand, Justin drew me around the side of his car. He had set up a
small tent next to it. He took my drink and placed it on the ground, then brought his hands up and cupped my face. With thoughts of Rhode and the earrings still pulsating in my mind, I wasn’t
sure what to do. And if Vicken was walking the perimeter, he could see us.

‘I know you love Rhode. You’ve loved him for six hundred years,’ Justin said. His body heat warmed me. ‘I can’t compete with that.’

‘What?’ I barely whispered. His words were so true that they took my breath away.

In the dark, Justin’s expression was ferocious. He leaned forward and whispered in my ear, in a low growl, ‘But he has no idea who you are as a human. Not like me.’

‘Justin . . .’ I said, surprise rolling over me, down my back to my toes.

‘No,’ he said, and he cupped a hand behind my head. ‘I want to be the one to show you what it’s like to survive a ritual, Lenah. What it means to live. He doesn’t
know you like I do.’ His sincerity pierced me. He meant it and I could feel it in the locked gaze. ‘Let me in, Lenah,’ he said, and the intensity was in the rush of his words and
the tightness of his jaw. ‘Let me in,’ he said, his voice husky.

He brought my face close to his and leaned in for a kiss. He groaned as though he was hungry. My shoulders relaxed. My chest released. Because I wanted touch, I wanted warmth, I wanted what I
could not have when I was a vampire. He pulled away and we both took a breath.
Wow – I did love his kiss.
As he pulled away, I saw the silver rune at the base of his throat.

I had to try to make sense of everything. Make sense of you.

I relived that moment in Justin’s bedroom when he had delicately cleaned my collarbone wound. I touched the pendant lightly with my fingertips.

He put an arm around me, pulling me close. I could feel passion emanating from him. ‘I need you,’ Justin said. His eyes were fierce and he didn’t move. ‘So whatever you
did with that ritual doesn’t matter to me. I want . . .’

Claudia appeared around the side of the tent. She wasn’t alone, I realized. Tracy stood behind her, looking unamused. As if she had been forced to be there.

‘Come on, Justin, you can’t keep Lenah all to yourself tonight.’ She grabbed my hand, and with a tug I was back at the party around the campfire. Throughout the rest of the
night I danced, drank peach schnapps and melted into the warmth of Justin’s embrace.

Justin kept my arm in his, parading us around the party as though we were royalty. I didn’t fear the woods. I didn’t fear the vampires. The presence of so many other Wickham students
helped to ensure my safety. They were grieving for Tony and Kate and Ms Tate and trying to forget the violence. I was revelling in the humanness of it all. I let Justin’s hold ground me. When
we were touching, skin on skin, I knew which version of Lenah Beaudonte I was meant to be. I could smile. I could be human.

There were no strange smells of apples. I was not a crazed vampire who could not be forgiven. I had already been forgiven. I was just a seventeen-year-old girl celebrating her birthday. We
leaned our backs against a large oak tree and watched as a small circle formed. Claudia danced in the middle of it, shaking her body and laughing with some of the other senior girls. Tracy stood on
the outside, watching. She did not smile, at least not like everyone else. Her smile was just a lazy lift of the left side of her mouth.

As the night went on, Rhode’s gesture in giving me the earrings was easier to forget. They sat deep in my pocket where I need not touch them. I could wrap my fingers around Justin’s
skin instead.

Hour by hour.

Sip by sip.

It didn’t really matter at all . . . did it? So easy to forget on a warm night with friends. With Justin and his soft touch. He whispered words in my ear.

I missed you so much.

Don’t go back to campus.

Words like this led to . . .

Justin’s arms around me.

A sleeping bag . . .

Inside a tent.

In the darkness of my closed eyes were blue hydrangeas, whose petals were the symbols of love and hope. Love and hope. Love and hope.

‘I love you,’ the deep voice said. As in the listening room, this voice had no British accent. Justin whispered my name again and again . . . until we slept.

My head was filled with sand.
What an odd sensation
. I was aware it was on a pillow. I squinted an eye open – too bright.
That hurt!
Was this a demon light
to cause so much pain? I’d heard that a demon hell was so bright it left a normal creature blinded.

Birds don’t chirp in demon hells.

I would just sleep; I was warm. Was I in my bed? I inhaled deeply: the woody ash of a campfire. Oh, right. I was at Lovers Bay camping ground. I dared to peep out.

The sun filtered through a blue vinyl ceiling, making the sleeping bag I lay in very warm.

I was in Justin’s tent.

He lay asleep next to me, on his back and his face angled towards me. I looked at his beautiful pouted lips and narrow nose. He had a slight stubble on his chin. He adjusted his position in his
sleep, moving his arms above his head.

‘Lenah . . .’ he groaned.

The night’s events slammed back into place.

Oh, Lenah, you fool. Worse than a fool. Idiot girl. Foolish idiot girl.
I had to figure out how to get out of the tent without waking him up. Oh
no
– what if Rhode had seen
me with Justin? What if Rhode had never left the woods? He was bound to have been watching me, with those vampires milling about.

Calm down, Lenah. Get up slowly. Where is your shirt?

The weight of my blood made my head throb as I tried to get up.
Slowly
, I thought as my backside edged over the cloth of the sleeping bag. I grabbed my clothes that were lying next to the
sleeping bag. A wave of nausea overwhelmed me. Not because I regretted spending the night in Justin’s tent.

Because a part of me
didn’t
regret it.

I watched him sleep for a moment. The silver rune necklace lay around his neck, shining in the early-morning light.

I don’t know
, he had said about the necklace
. I had to try to make sense of everything. Make sense of you.

He had sought out that knowledge rune so he could understand me and supernatural power. But what had happened last night was not supernatural. I needed him to touch me, to remind me what it felt
like to be mortal. To know that even I could be forgiven. Forgiven by Justin, who had been so angry with me. Who had found a way to let me in.

I scooted out of the tent as quietly as I could. I peered around, but a large bush hid me from the rest of the camping ground. I quickly slipped into my clothes.

We were far back in the woods, but I could see Justin’s SUV near the remains of the campfire. Small silent tents dotted the campsite in a circle and remnants of marshmallow bags and party
cups littered the ground.

I had to get back to Wickham campus, and it looked as if I would have to do it alone. Somehow I would have to explain to the security guards why I didn’t have a buddy to sign on to campus.
I knew I shouldn’t be walking alone, but I would have to risk it.

Fully dressed, with a tip-tap of my toes on the crunchy grass, I headed for the woods, hesitating when I heard rustling in the tent. Justin must have been waking up.

I set off towards the pathway that led out of the camping ground, surveying my options. I did not dare walk across the camping ground, where Claudia and Tracy slept. I took a few steps towards
the campsite exit but stopped.

A figure clad in black stepped out of the woods and on to the pathway in front of me. My heart stopped. I drew in a shallow breath. And another. The figure had dark hair and a tall frame, but he
stood in the shadows of a large tree and I could not make out more. The morning light only touched the treetops. He took another step and my throat constricted at the sight. A vampire? I could run
into the woods, perhaps lose him that way. I could make a ruckus in the camping ground, wake everyone up.

Wait.

This vampire was smoking a cigarette.

Vicken.

I stuck my hands deep into my pockets as I finally crossed out of the camping ground and into Main Street.

‘You are monstrously stupid. Do you know that?’ Vicken said. ‘I don’t need my ESP. I was told by that Claudia girl not to disturb you. I slept with my back against a
bloody tree just to get away from her.’

‘Vicken . . .’ I said. My tone was an apology; as we walked back to school our strides matched.

In the warmth of the pocket of my jeans, my mother’s earrings, in their little black bag, bit at my fingertips. My peach-schnapps headache ebbed as I kept walking. The sunrise kissed the
buildings on Main Street.

‘I was supposed to protect you,’ Vicken said in a low voice.

‘Spare me,’ I said as a tingle of guilt spread from the pit of my stomach to my face. We kept walking, faster and faster, in that early-morning light. Up Main Street, past the shops
and market until we were at the campus gates.

‘Names?’ the security guard demanded.

Vicken and I showed our IDs and the pedestrian gate opened.

‘Vicken,’ I said as we walked back on to campus, ‘you have to promise me you won’t say anything to Rhode.’

‘Promise you? He was walking the perimeter too!’

I didn’t know what this meant, so I bit at the inside of my cheek. Vicken’s dark expression softened.

‘Why’d you do it?’ he asked.

I didn’t answer.

‘Never mind, let’s just get upstairs. I’m dying for a coffee,’ he said.

Step by step, we walked past the security guard of my building and up the staircase. We were almost at my floor when –

Apples again, coming up the stairwell in a nauseating stench. Apples rotting. Apples fermenting in a broken wooden barrel. I could see them in my mind. An image from my past: apples sitting out
in the sun too long, brown and leathery.

‘No!’ I shouted, throwing a palm against the nautical-themed wallpaper of the hallway.

Rhode stands in the centre of his room. He lifts the sword from the floor. I see his chest – he breathes rapidly. He then hits the sword on the telescope, sending pieces of black metal
into the air. He slams his lamp, and glass shards fly in all directions. His rage . . .

‘No!’ I yelled, and fell to my knees. Below me a few doors opened with metallic clicks.

‘Everything OK up there?’ someone yelled.

‘We’re fine. Fine!’ Vicken called back, and I opened my eyes, trying to focus on him. But his wild hair kept coming in and out of my vision of Rhode destroying his room.

I held back a scream of horror. Rhode’s anger pulsed through me in a series of heartbeats. I tried to recall the images of Rhode, close my eyes and see him. His anger rushed through me as
tiny sparks exploded in my body.

He
knew
I had been with Justin in that tent.

‘What did you see?’ Vicken asked, and it was only then that I realized he was holding my hand. ‘That was another vision of Rhode, wasn’t it?’

‘He’s angry,’ I said. ‘He definitely saw me last night.’

Vicken pulled me up. I could smell pine on his clothes and tobacco on his skin and his breath. No apples . . . luckily.

Somehow, the last set of stairs seemed impossibly hard to climb. But I managed them. Once in my apartment, I would shut the door, go into my bedroom and crawl under the covers.

Do you forgive me?
I had asked Justin. He had said yes. But now I realized I was asking the wrong person.

I’d hoped as Justin touched my salty tears that he hadn’t realized I was crying because I wished he had been Rhode. Shouldn’t I have been happy to be touching someone who cared
so much for me? Exhilarated, just like last year, when we were together and I was overjoyed and happy to feel loved?

‘If you keep gasping without telling me what’s going on, I’ll lock you up until you do,’ said Vicken.

‘It’s just about last night,’ I replied, and reached out to grasp the doorknob. My fingers gripped the metal.

Searing pain radiated up and down my body. My gut wrenched in a knot so tight that I doubled over. My knees hit the cheap carpeting and the hard fabric raked my skin through my jeans. I placed a
palm on the floor, saliva whooshing into my mouth.

The barrier spell
worked
!

‘You used to be able to drink pints and pints of blood. You were a powerful vampire queen. This is ridiculous,’ Vicken said.

He lifted a hand to open the door.

‘No! No!’ I cried, and raised my hand. It felt like a dead weight and I pressed it back on to the floor. ‘The barrier spell has ignited,’ I said. This sickness was the
mortal reaction to powerful magic.

It meant that a vampire had tried to break into my room. If it was Odette, she would be a pile of ash on the floor. The spell would have killed any supernatural intruder instantly.

Vicken sat back on his heels and stared at the door, his eyes wide in shock. ‘Guess she found out the ritual you gave her’s a fake,’ he said.

The magic of the barrier spell meant all the herbs I scattered had ignited, sending energy about the room. That energy made us, now mere mortals, ill. I reached a palm up and hesitated in front
of the door. I had to see if it was hot or cold. If it was hot, the spell was recent; cold and it had occurred some hours earlier.