The Link (4 page)

I looked at the door too, puzzled, then gasped and said, “And you’re breaking rules by telling me this and the Enforcers are coming for you?”

“
They will be,” he nodded.

“
For me?” I whispered.

“
No,” he said, “for me, but you could be
…
hurt
…
if you are with me.”

“
But how will they know you’ve told me?” I asked.

“
They won’t, exactly
,
” he
said
.
“Vampires can link minds to communicate. One of the Elders’ rules is to keep our minds open to them at all times. Whenever they want, they’re supposed to be able to know what I’m doing. But I’ve closed my mind to them. They can’t see me anymore. Whenever a vampire does that, they send out the Enforcers to find out why.”

He suddenly had a look of pain on his face that made me reach for
him;
I took his chin in my hand
and
asked,
“What is it, what’s wrong?”

“
I’m so angry at myself for being so weak,” he said.
“I’m putting you in so much danger here. I never should have spoken to you, I should have stayed away.”

“
No, Matthew, you’re wrong,” I said. “I’m so glad you’re here, in my life,” I smiled. “Please tell me more.”

He smiled, shook his head, muttered something about “no resistance” under his breath and then continued. “I don
’
t know why the link changed for me, why I was able to be near you, to come to you
…
to fall in love with you,” he said softly.

“
The link?” I asked, still digesting the rest of what he had said. Did he really just say he was in love with me?
Could my heart possibly beat any faster?

He smiled and went on
.
“Your love, your compassion, is so much that it overflows out of you and into me. It wraps around me and makes me see possibilities, makes me see hope, makes me feel whole. I believe this and the great sadness you
’
ve suffered somehow changed the link in a way that no
one has ever seen. Many vampires link with humans. We do lead a fairly solitary, lonely existence, so it’s a natural occurrence for us. We see a human that we are inextricably pulled towards, that we have an undeniable need to protect and we link to them. But the Elders also made it so the links, when they do form, also keep us at a distance, it prevents us from getting too close. We actually feel pain if we get too close. A link has never, until now, until you, allowed a vampire to be to near the one they protect.
The way it had always happened when we link is, we watch over the one we
’
ve joined with, keeping them safe, but we have to allow their lives to take a natural course. They live, go to school, fall in love, get married, have children, grow old, die, all the while not knowing we’re there, not knowing we exist. But we do our best to keep them safe from evil until they pass on.”

“
I knew you were there.” I whispered.

“
Yes, I sensed that you did,” he smiled.
“I’d heard stories of the linking… but I had never linked with a human in all my years” he said “I really thought I was incapable so I just existed, wandering
the earth, doing what I was created for, keeping good people safe but never really caring too much about what I was doing, feeling lost, alone…
and then I saw you. I felt the link form instantly.
It allowed me to feel everything you were feeling, it pulled me to watch over you.”

“
When?” I asked.

“
You were four years old, in your front yard running through the sprinkler with a friend.”

“
My best friend Jaime,” I smiled at the memory.

“
Yes
,
” he said, “but what you didn’t know was that there was someone nearby, in the bushes, watching you and planning on how he would grab you. I was just walking down the street, pretty miserable and very much alone, when his evil hit me like a sledgehammer. I looked over to find where it was coming from, and I saw you. So young, so innocent, so happy, so alive, so beautiful. It stopped me cold in my tracks, I nearly collapsed, my knees felt weak. For a moment I forgot everything, but then I smelled him again.
I urgently searched for the evil that was so close to you, easily finding him in the bushes. I knew what he was planning. He was
waiting for your friend to leave so he could grab you and then he was planning on doing unspeakable things to you, things he had done to other young girls before.” He squeezed his eyes shut and shivered at this horrible memory, then continued. “I went over to where he was and startled him. I knew I couldn’t stop him right there because you were too near and might see me, so I followed him. I watched him slither away, down the street. I felt him planning to come back so he could try again, soon.
I waited until he was far enough away from you to stop him… stop him from doing this to you or to anyone else ever again. Then I went back to where you were. I was fascinated by this powerful feeling - I knew
I
couldn’t allow anything to harm you ever. I snuck in to your room when you were gone to memorize your scent and then I faded back to the shadows and became your protector.
I finally had a real purpose to my life, I was thrilled. For the first time since I had been turned, I felt happy. I had heard how amazing this link was and now I knew. This was how it was supposed to happen, I had linked. I had found my angel. Of course the link also kept me from getting
too close to you, at least at first. That’s how it’s supposed to happen and I was content staying in the background, as the rest of my kind are. It’s easy for us to remain hidden from humans, we move so fast that your eyes rarely see us, in fact it’s difficult for us to move slowly, it actually tires us and it wears us down. So I moved around you, watching you, protecting you. But you always seemed to be looking whenever I was near, like you could sense that I was around. It was odd, but I could feel you searching for me.”

“
I was,” I said.

“
That was strange for me,” he said. “In all the stories
I’ve heard about linking, that has never happened.
No humans have ever acted like they could tell they were being watched.
You were definitely different, but I tried to tell myself that I was imagining it.
I watched you go through school, grow into a beautiful young woman, falling in love and get married, and everything felt normal, felt like it was supposed to. But it was when you had your son that I started to feel something different, something more than protectiveness. I started to feel the link
changing.”
My heart sputtered when he said this, it would always be painful to think about my baby.

“
I had never heard any vampire talk about feeling anything other than protectiveness over their human, never heard that the link could somehow change, that somehow it would allow me to feel something more, that it would actually let me get close. And no one has ever heard of a vampire falling in love with their human, of wanting not only to watch over and protect, but also to talk to them, to touch them, to be with them
And never in my over 200 years,” he dropped his eyes when he said this, while I tried not to react. “
D
id I ever think it could happen to me. The unquestionable love you have for all those around you is something I’ve never seen before. I never knew it existed. Somehow it pulls me towards you, it makes me love you, it makes me want you
;
it makes me want you to love me too.”
He paused for a second, watching me, then smiled and went on.

“
When you suffered your devastating loss four years ago, the link changed even more…
now, not only was it allowing me to get close to you, but I could feel that it was actually
pulling
me to you.
At
first I tried to resist.
This really wasn’t how it’s supposed to work, this wasn’t supposed to happen. I contacted all of my friends and none of them had ever heard of this happening.
So I fought the pull to go to you.
I’ve been fighting that pull ever since then, but I can’t fight it anymore I can no longer deny what has happened to me…
and I can no longer stay away from you. I need to talk to you, be near you, touch you.
I need you to know me.
And I have to offer you the choice of being with me forever. If you accept, I swear I will to find out how to do it. We don’t know how to turn a human,” he said, then smiled at the confused look on my face
.
“
O
nly The Elders know. Only they decide who is changed, and, up until now, only they could create a vampire. No one knows where they are.
We are forbidden to try to contact them for anything.
We are never allowed to ask them to change a specific human.
If they need us, or when they know we need them, we are summoned and the Enforcers bring us to them.
No one, other than me as far as we know, has ever seen even part of the change process. I regained consciousness briefly and looked around before
passing out again. The Elders have a large spy network who watch us and they will find us if we break their rules. When they find out what I am trying to do, at the very least I would probably be imprisoned until your life ended naturally.
I know I wouldn’t survive that.
I couldn’t survive being away from you for that long. You breathe life into me…
a funny thought since technically I’m dead…
but it’s true. You gave me my heart back. Before you’d even met me, you gave me love. I had to come to you, to tell you how I feel, to ask if you would be willing to join me.”

“
Join you?” I asked.

“
Yes,” he said softly. “There are tales, rumors, that there are some, a few, out there, besides the Elders, who might have clues to the change process, how to turn a human into a vampire,” he said
.
“I want to search for them, try to find them, but I can’t seem to go if you don’t want to join me. I don’t ever want to leave your side again. If you choose to stay, I will gladly stay here, by your side. I will love you and protect you until your life reaches its natural end, if that’s what you want. But I had to find out if there
was a chance, even a small chance, that you would come with me. I love you Sarah and I can’t bear to be away from you anymore
,
” he whispered. “I can’t lie to you, it won’t be easy,” he continued, the pain so strong in his eyes that I winced
.
“We will constantly be on the run. On the run searching for the answers we need and on the run from The Enforcers.
I could try to search on my own but I feel very strongly that I need to do this with you by my side. I can
’
t explain it. It’s just that something tells me that we won’t find the right answers unless we do this together. We may not succeed but hopefully we will find what we’re looking for and hopefully, when they find us, I can eventually convince The Elders to allow us to stay together. And, of course, if you ever change your mind, if you decide that it
’
s too much for you, we will stop running, stop searching and I
’
ll bring you home. The Elders won’t punish a human, only me. But no matter where I am and what happens to me I promise to always love you to the depths of my soul.”

He stopped then, unable to continue. If he could cry, he would be right now. Instead he just waited.
He waited for me to say something, not sure he wanted to know what I was thinking.

My heart was pounding, my head was spinning. This can’t be real. Did he really just ask me to travel the world with him in the hopes of me staying with him forever?
(
O
f course it meant the whole vampire thing too, but I was trying not to think too much about that right now). A morbid thought popped into my head. “We’re not going to be leaving a trail of dead bodies or anything, are we?” I said.

He laughed and said
,
“No sweetheart. There won’t be a trail of dead bodies. There won
’
t be any dead bodies.” I stared at him, thinking some more. This is too much, too fast I thought. I looked into his eyes and tried to think about it from his perspective. It wasn’t too fast for him
.
H
e had
wanted
this for a long time. He probably knew me better than I knew myself. It was completely against my nature to react quickly to change - usually I fought it for as long as I could, but what kind of life had I led up till now because of that? Pretty boring and unexciting. I thought about it for another minute, looking around the room. What was I really giving up? I lived my
life on auto-pilot now. I had been dead since that horrible day. My heart had shut down completely. Since then I no longer lived, I just existed; so again, what would I really be giving up? My sisters? We’re all very close, but they’re scattered throughout the country, busy with lives and families of their own. This was something more, something thrilling, something I’ve never done before. For the first time in years I felt excitement in my heart, I felt it actually
beating
. I knew that I loved this man and that I belonged with him. I suddenly knew without a doubt that I would be giving up so much more if I stayed. I had to try this. I couldn’t let him out of my sight. My voice cracked and I had tears in my eyes but I managed to say, “When do we leave?”