Stolen Night (3 page)

‘You may talk, speak, interact, but you may not commit to be the couple you once were,’ Fire said, reading my mind.

‘But how will we know if we’ve committed to one another? If we’re the couple we once were. I can’t just stop loving Rhode.’

‘You have always, always loved whoever you wanted, whenever you wanted. Rhode, Vicken, Heath, Gavin, Song and Justin. But who filled up your soul? How many of them have you committed to?
You didn’t share a life, you didn’t grow with them as you did with Rhode. It’s over, Lenah. You must do to Rhode what you’ve done with the rest of the men you’ve come
across. Keep him at arm’s length.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I barely said, knowing deep in my soul that she was completely right. Had I used everyone except Rhode? I had, hadn’t I? Fire took another step
towards me and I could feel the heat emanating off her.

‘Like the whitest of shores on a beach that stretches as far as the eye can see. You want that ocean. You see that ocean. But you can never go back in. Ever.’

I swallowed hard, unable to formulate the words I so desperately wanted to say. I wanted to convince her. Could I keep Rhode at arm’s length? Could I pretend we didn’t have the
history we had? The silver light around my victims pulsated behind Fire’s head, reminding me of all that I had done to deserve this moment there on the archery field.

‘And them,’ I asked with a nod of my head. ‘What happens to them if I stay?’

‘You see this light around me?’ she asked.

I nodded again.

‘Your victims – they have white souls. And they will keep them.’

I imagined my soul to be black and hardened, like a lump of coal.

‘And if I return to the medieval world? If they go back to their lives?’

‘Then they will be left to their own choices. The fate of their souls will be their own.’

I had already decided their fate. They were safe where they were, safe in that light. How could I release them into a past I knew nothing about? Was I being selfish? Did I want to protect their
souls or my own? I knew more than anything else in the world that, if I had a soul, Rhode and I were meant to be together.

‘What is your choice?’ Fire asked.

I looked at Rhode. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. I wanted to kiss his mouth, even now, even with the Aeris’s decree that we would never be a couple again. Just seeing him there, knowing
I could be near him when I had been so convinced of his death . . . I didn’t want to go back. No matter what we had to face, if Rhode was by my side, even at arm’s length, I could do
anything.

‘I choose to stay,’ I said, looking into Fire’s poppy-coloured eyes. ‘Here and now in Lovers Bay.’

In my mind, a perfect apple orchard painted in thick swirls of colour dissolved as though left out in the rain.

‘And they’ll be safe?’ I asked, meaning the people behind the Aeris.

Fire nodded, then said, ‘You must fight her, Lenah.’ She didn’t need to tell me whom she meant.

She took a step back into the light and her distinct form began to blur.

The white light dimmed too and Suleen, who stood beside us, held a hand out towards the Aeris. He turned his palm left, then right, and then made a fist. He was performing some sort of
communication that I did not understand. Fire mimicked these gestures. A palm left – right – then a fist. She and her sisters were almost gone, fading into the scenery as if
they’d never been there.

Rhode was watching Suleen, but I couldn’t stop staring at his chest rising up and down. I had stared at it for hundreds of years, wishing we were both alive, breathing and living
together.

You cannot commit
, Fire had said.

I jumped forward, past Suleen and towards the vanishing Aeris.

‘Wait,’ I yelled. ‘Wait!’

I threw my arms out towards the light, but it dimmed, leaving nothing behind but misty cobwebs. The Aeris were gone. Fire was gone.

Rhode stared around the archery plateau, now shrouded in darkness. Sunset had long since fallen over Wickham campus.

‘We have to do something!’ I cried to Suleen.

‘You did,’ Rhode said. ‘You chose to stay.’

There was sadness in his voice, anger too. I just couldn’t part with Rhode, not when it came down to it. I couldn’t go back to the medieval world without him.

The grass under my feet was grey, the sky black. I swallowed and a lump in the back of my throat hurt.

‘Your hundreds of years of experience on this earth must be your conscience now. Stay away from one another,’ said Suleen. His even tone broke the spell of my thoughts.

Rhode met Suleen’s eyes. A tremor travelled from my shins to my knees to my thighs. I needed to grasp something hard, clench it in my fist and break it.

My mind sped up, as though coming back to the world I’d existed in before the Aeris came from their white world and lit up the archery plateau.

Justin.

I spun around to look back at the edge of the plateau, where Suleen had conjured up the water shield. But Justin had long gone. I suppose I could not blame him. I would not have wanted to linger
at the scene either.

‘There is no other way, Rhode,’ Suleen said.

Rhode replied in Hindi – a language I had not learned. Despite the twenty-five languages I could speak fluently, Rhode chose one I could not understand.

He walked past me and descended the hill without looking back.

Was he leaving? Forever?!

‘What did he say? What?! Rhode!’ I yelled, and followed. Suleen caught my arm. ‘No!’ I screamed. I pushed against his strong grasp but he easily held me back.

I watched as Rhode ran across the meadow, then on to the pathway.

‘Rhode!’ I screamed. This heartache made me feel sick. ‘Rhode!’

He did not look back.

I could not tell him about the blonde vampire. I could not say,
Stay, for I love you. I’ve always loved you. Stay and we can do this together.

Because without a second look, without a glance, he was gone.

1730, Hampstead, England – the Heath
When the years of vampirism began to chain my mind to madness, I yearned for my parents’ apple orchard. I ached for the
succulent red apples dangling from the branches. For almost three hundred years I begged Rhode to accompany me back to Hampstead. When we finally made the trip, I wore black for the occasion. My
hair fell in long tendrils over my shoulders; my ribs were constricted by a corset. The 1730s was the era of panniers, wide hoops attached to a woman’s hips underneath her skirt. Women were
meant to take up space, to be a spectacle, to be admired. It was a time of opulence. I loved this era most of all. I could shine when the light of the sun was no longer upon me. As for the men,
many wore wigs, powdered white. But not Rhode. He always wore his hair long, black and tied at the nape of his neck. The leather of his black boots reached almost to his knees.

We were gorgeous Angels of Death.

‘Three hundred and twelve years since I stepped on this land,’ I said, glancing at Rhode.

‘Same for me,’ he replied.

A brilliant sunset descended over the heath, washing the fields in a tangerine light. Behind him, set off by a field, was the stone monastery where I’d spent so much of my childhood. The
Hampstead sunset daubed blood-red hues over the grass. As a vampire, I was relieved to know that the daylight would start to dwindle soon.

‘Are you sure you want to see this?’ Rhode asked.

I nodded, moving my eyes from the monastery to the lane ahead. I had often padded these fields as a child. Images of dirt caking my toes, my hair flowing behind me in the wind and the rich earth
burned in my mind. The wind brushed through the branches again and a shower of leaves layered the ground. The earth seemed to shiver as though it knew something unnatural was walking its lands.

As Rhode took a step, his sword clicked against the side of his leg. I lifted my hand and gently intertwined my fingers through his. Even though almost every finger wore a jewel, he chose to rub
his thumb over the onyx – the stone of death. We stepped down the long, tunnelled lane and headed towards my family’s home. As we passed the monastery my eye followed the grey stone and
well-kept grounds. After three hundred years, it was still a place of holy reverence.

Was it possible Henry VIII had spared it? That it had escaped the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century?

‘It is a church now,’ Rhode said, and when I looked properly I could see that the monastery of my childhood was no more, though the core of the building remained the same. I could
hear the sounds of a service from inside, soft murmuring and chanting.

When I was nine years old, I used to hide underneath the stone-framed windows, my feet pressed into the scratchy ground. I would listen to hundreds of haunting voices. The hum of the
monks’ soft tones would echo out into the field, sending a vibration through my chest.

One night, my father had told me the light from the monastery was the most beautiful light in the world. ‘Candlelight,’ he had said, ‘is a human’s beacon to God. A little
piece of God on earth.’

‘It’s just ahead,’ Rhode said. There it was. I stared at the house in the orchard.

‘It’s the same,’ I whispered. ‘It’s just as it is in my memory.’

The same slate roof and evenly spaced stones. The same two-storey manor overlooking manicured lanes of trees that stretched back in straight vertical lines so far that I couldn’t see their
end. And the trees were in bloom. Green, green everywhere, lime green, sea green, bottle green, and long grass that tickled your ankles.

I gripped the heavy fabric of my gown, lifting it up so as not to drag it along the muddy ground.

‘I don’t believe anyone is at home,’ Rhode said, as he took in the smokeless chimney.

It didn’t matter to me either way. I pressed my hands against the glass, wondering if it was cool – I could not sense its temperature. As a vampire ages, her sense of touch deadens.
I leaned in closer. The wooden beams on the ceiling had been reinforced over time but it all looked the same. The familiarity sent a wave of comfort over me and that feeling overtook the anger,
pain and misery that so overwhelmed me as a vampire. The comfort was a gift.

‘Lenah, look,’ Rhode said from behind me. ‘There are—’

‘Fifty acres,’ I finished for him, turning from the window. A sense of calm overwhelmed me as I looked at him. I expected him to be marvelling at the acres and acres of land.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Tombstones.’

As though I had been drenched from head to toe in icy water, the calm vanished. It was replaced by the unrelenting familiar constant: grief. The most common feeling of the vampire. Grief. Loss.
Pain.

My eyes followed the direction in which Rhode was pointing. I paused at the doorstep a few moments before walking towards the little graveyard. Rhode had squatted down on his heels and was
running his index finger along a deep engraving on the front of one of the gravestones.

As I walked past the house, I glanced at my reflection in the windows. So many years before, I had seen myself as a child in the wavy lines of the glass. Now, in the same glass, I saw my long
dark hair falling over my shoulders. The black of my dress stood out against the lush green of the rows of trees behind me. I took another step to the side of the house and entered the
cemetery.

Rhode’s finger was tracing the L in my name.

It was my gravestone.

God, it was a rotten piece of stone, but despite three hundred years out in the elements my name was still etched clearly. There was no epitaph.

Long ago
, I thought.
Long ago
,
I belonged to the world. I could have made a difference to my family, to my neighbours, to the monks and to myself.

‘Now you know,’ Rhode said quietly, and stood back up. ‘You were given a tombstone.’ That had been one of my many questions about my human death.

‘I wanted to see it,’ I replied with a nod. ‘No matter how painful.’

‘Your father died not long after you,’ Rhode said.

The tombstone next to mine plainly read that Aden Beaudonte died in 1420. Next to the rounded curve of his gravestone was jasmine. Jasmine flowers are dainty and white; they grow together in
clusters. Grow jasmine if you need to live, someone had once told me, not just exist but
live
. Grow jasmine so you’ll never be alone. I took a step, leaned forward and plucked three
sprays of flowers. When I turned back to my father’s grave, Rhode had stepped away and was standing at the end of a row, staring down at another tombstone.

I placed one jasmine spray on my mother’s grave; she had died alone in 1451.

‘Lenah . . .’ Rhode whispered. I looked at him. His chin pointed towards his chest and his eyes were fixed on the stone before him. He squatted down. I walked towards him, and once I
was by his side I saw the name on the tombstone. I gripped his shoulder, stumbling backwards. I had no breath to take. No heart to thud. Just the simple shock of seeing the name:

‘You had a sister,’ said Rhode in awe. ‘She was born two years after your disappearance.’

A sister. I had a sister? I stared at the name, unmoving. If I’d known she’d existed, I could have come to see her, could have watched her live. I spun from the tombstone, walked
past the graves and back to the orchard. The train of my gown trailed behind me over the dirt of my father’s land.

‘Lenah!’ Rhode called.

What had they told her? That her sister had been taken away by demons? That she was there but then gone? My sister lived to be 53, uncommonly old for her time. She outlived my mother. My mother
wasn’t
alone. I stopped once I reached the orchard.

A sister.

I heard the sound of Rhode’s footsteps over the grass and he stopped right behind me.

‘You were right. You had to come. To find out about your family,’ he said gently.