Chapter 4 The Place Where Endings Are Disguised As Beginnings
Roman
Her pulse still haunted me, making my escape futile. Retreating to my study, I pulled the hidden lever, clicking the bookcase free. It swung freely open to reveal a stairs that led to the cellar. I was desperate to get away from her. To put distance between the sound of her racing heart and the sharp smell of her blood that still prickled against my tongue. But I would be fooling myself to think space would eliminate the urge to consume her, that distance would erase the terror I caused her.
The phantom jump of her pulse twitched against my fingertips. My mouth ached for more than just a taste as I barely broke skin. It had taken everything in me not to tear her wrist open and drink until she went slack in my arms.
I struck the stone with my fist cracking my skin open. Blood smeared the wall, dark and sluggish, but the pain was absent. It always was. The only pain I felt was the pain she gave me and it was always in the form of guilt and heartbreak.
It was my weakness that cursed us from the start. I destroyed her to prove I did not love her. Instead, I bound myself to her death, again and again and again.
I closed my eyes and saw her pinned to the wall, chin tipped up in defiance. I recognized the way she’d challenged me even while trembling, it sparked a fire within me that would be nearly impossible to extinguish.
“Sir.” The voice cut cleanly through the haze.
I turned sharply, eyeswild with teetering hostility. “Where is she?”
Marianna stood at the foot of the stairs, hands folded tightly. She hadn’t come closer. She knew better. “In the library.”
Of course she was.
“She always loved the library,” I said, more to myself than to her. The words were a memory of lives past. “She would sit by the fireplace after choosing a book at random and would read until she fell asleep on the chaise.” That same chaise still resides in the library after all these years. Lush burgundy velvet, carved wood molding and clawed feet.
Marianna shifted, uneasy. “Sir…”
I looked at her with such intensity that her courage wavered under the weight of my attention.
“I just thought,” she said carefully, “if it truly is her…perhaps being so harsh isn’t-”
“It is her.” The words came out cold, final. “Hair changes. Accents fade. But I would know her anywhere.” My jaw tightened. “Her blood calls to me. Her soul was made for mine.”
Marianna swallowed as if the truth of my statement got lodged in her throat. Silence stretched between us before she finally spoke again. “Do you truly believe cruelty will keep her safe?”
The question struck harder than the stone had.
Truthfully, no. “Forgive me,” I said quietly, “if I’m harboring residual resentment.” I turned away, fists clenched. “The last time I saw her, we were in the middle of an argument.” One I was losing. “And before it could be resolved or shall I say, before I could swallow my pride and apologize, she died.”
Marianna said nothing. There was nothing she could say. And now, after a hundred and fifty years, I had her back. In the four lifetimes after her first death, I gave into my admiration, my passion for her, doing the very thing I refused to do the first time around. Love her. I was foolish to think that we could be…happy. But happiness wasn’t in the cards for us.
But this time was going to be different.
Sending Marianna away, I waited out the final hours until midnight, in the cellar alone haunted by the past.
At the first stroke of the midnight chime, I ascended into the manor. At the eighth stroke, I made it to the library where Marianna was already waiting as if her presence would make this any better. That was if she was awake, which I knew she wasn’t.
The room was quiet and the warmth from the fireplace was fading. I wasn’t surprised to find her curled on the chaise, a book fallen open against her chest, breath slow and even. Some habits followed her throughout every life. Some things never changed.
This one never had. It was where the curse began.
Where I first fell in love with her.
The urge to kneel beside her. To brush the fallen strand of hair from her face. To press my ear to her chest and confirm the rhythm of her heart was still there even though soon enough her heartbeat will be my own. There was a reason vampires don’t fall in love with humans.
She shifted slightly as if sensing my stare, nuzzling deeper into the cushion, the book slipped a fraction lower. A soft exhale left her lips. The sound nearly unraveled my composure.
Slowly, with calculated steps, I approached her sleeping body only to lift the slipping book carefully from her chest. I set it aside and pulled a blanket over her before adding more wood to the fire. She would remain on the chaise and when she woke, she would see me less of a monster.
I turned and left the library, my feet didn’t falter as Marianna stood waiting for instruction. Marching past her, I went for the front door. Once she realized I was leaving, she hurriedly followed me, questions of where I was going spoken softly.
“To pay Edgar a visit. A deal is a deal. Judas needs an offering from Spring River.” And it won’t be Elodie.
The carriage waited for me outside, the horses restless beneath the moonlight. Soon Valemor Manor disappeared behind me. In the library, the girl I loved slept peacefully.
And in Spring River…another girl waited for a fate she did not fully understand.
The town lay hushed in a thin veil of mist, lanterns were slowly fading as people slept in their beds. The carriage quietly rolled through town and only stopped once outside Edgar’s house. The same house it was parked outside of after the reaping.
Once reaching the front door, my fist pounded against the flimsy wood signaling my arrival. It was courtesy, but not out of respect. It was meant to get him and the rest of his family to leap out of bed, hearts pounding and out of breath.
I heard their whispers of confusion as their feet stomped down the stairs. I gave him more respect than he gave me as I waited for him to answer the door.
His sleepy eyes go wide as he sees me lingering on his front step. “W-what are you doing here?” Is he feeling my hand around his throat as he croaked out his words. I can see the faint purplish tint of a bruise develop on his crepey skin.
“Are you going to invite me in?” I wait only to be met with dumbfounded silence. Sensing that I’m not going to get it, I barged into his home uninvited as he barged into mine.
He and his wife who was in her nightgown clung to his side as if that weasel of a man could protect her, stumbled backwards putting as much space between as they could. “I was being polite, which is more than what you did when you showed up at Valemor.”
His wife whispered in his ear questioning what he did, but I’m sure Edgar will never admit that he intentionally provoked a vampire.
“After your unexpected visit, you convinced me of my mistake.” The words felt hollow and sticky in my mouth. Admitting a mistake to a human didn’t feel right. “I want to prove to you, to Spring River, that I’m a vampire of my word. So I’ve come to take Evelia as the offered.”
“And the other girl? Elo-”
Before he could finish her name, I rushed up on him leaving very little space between us, but being very careful not to touch him, “you will not speak her name. Ever. That goes for your daughter too. The offered are meant to be strong…my initial choice was not.”
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked. I felt it before I heard it. A pulse. Steady. Young. Unaware. Evelia watched from the balcony.
I turned my gaze toward the staircase. Several tiny feet pattered against the floor as they scattered.
“Evelia will take her place as Spring River’s offered, but I want my investment returned.” His greediness was appalling. He had equated his daughter’s life to a sum of cash with no real understanding of the circumstances.
“That can be arranged.” His money meant nothing to me. “As long as you and your family keep my mistake unspoken.” Calling Elodie a mistake wasn’t as hard as it should be. It was a mistake, she was a mistake that I couldn’t learn from.
It only took seconds for Edgar to come to the right conclusion. “Evelia. Get dressed. You’re going with Mr. Devereux.”
Edgar’s wife quickly retreated upstairs to tend to the other children or help Evelia get ready, leaving Edgar and I alone. Absentmindedly, he rubbed at his neck as if feeling my hand still wrapped around it. It would prove to be helpful in reminding him to keep his mouth shut.
Finally, footsteps descended from the stairs. Evelia glided down the steps in a pale blue dress, her blonde hair pulled tight atop her head, and a bag containing her belongings in hand. Her gaze searched my face with an eager willfulness. She was beautiful, but as I looked at her, I felt…nothing.
No pull. No fire. No maddening restraint snapping tight in my chest.
Following her father’s lead, Evelia heads to the door.
“Leave your things. You won’t be needing them.” I instructed her before she got too far.
Confused, she slowly dropped the bag before proceeding to the carriage. There were no goodbyes shared between herself and her father. Was she aware of the deal he made to get her chosen? Did she find it flattering?
Evelia was obedient and took instruction well compared to Elodie. She climbed inside the carriage and found comfort in the silence. Spring River slowly disappeared and only once she realized we were heading in the wrong direction that she finally spoke. “Where are we going? Are you not taking me to Valemor Manor?”
“No.”
“Is it because of her?” The disgust in her voice has my teeth clench. I might deliver her with a bite taken out of her neck if she didn’t watch her tone.
“Careful,” I said softly, but the softness held warning, not tenderness. “You will not speak of her again or I can pay your family another visit. I’ll make sure you get word of where their gravestones are.” The threat landed perfectly. “You were never going to Valemor. There is much that you and your ignorant father don’t know about the reaping. Blindly giving away your daughters with misplaced illusions.”
Sitting up straighter with her best voice forward, she gives whatever reason the mayor decided was good enough to put ease into the townspeople. “The chosen placate the vampire from their perspective towns in order to keep them from devouring everyone and everything. It allows us to live in harmony.”
A forced smile, wide and menacing stretched across my face as my hands loudly clapped together, the vibration of my palms slapping echoed throughout the small cabin, “bravo.” My behavior has her bright blue eyes narrowing. “I know what you humans tell yourselves, you were not chosen to placate me.”
Offended by my rejection, she gained a sliver of courage, “so if we’re not going to Valemor, then where is it you’re taking me? What of the promise you made to my father? What about my immortality?”
“You’re going to Harrowmere.” The place where endings are disguised as beginnings. It held no meaning to her, as to most, Harrowmere was a ghost along with the vampire that owned it. “Everything has a process. And immortality is earned not given. No bribe can obtain that.” The percentage of chosen actually gaining immortality is slim. All they have to do is endure. “You may not have been chosen to placate me, but you were chosen to serve someone…that someone will be determined soon and it is up to them to grant you your wish of immortality.”
The weight of her choice, of her father’s choice, pressed down upon her. She shook with fear instead of the moist cold air that seeped into the carriage. She didn’t realize it, but her terror would make her valuable, desired. But it would make clenching your goal of defying death nearly untouchable.
I leaned back to rest against the carriage wall, my eyes fixated out the window. The remainder of the ride to Harrowmere was long and riddled with ill feelings even though I’ve taken this path every year, each year with a different girl. But this time deceit joined us.
I wasn’t looking forward to going back to Harrowmere or seeing Judas. Old friends wasn’t the best term to label our acquaintance. Nor were we equals as Judas was older and more wealthy than I. He sold his soul to the devil long before I did.
