Chapter 44
Road Trip
We sat in morbid silence for some time on the way home, mulling over the dog’s death in our heads.
In movies and books, animals were slaughtered as a warning to someone to stop doing whatever they were doing, a threat to say ‘this is going to happen to you if you keep it up.
' But I wasn’t doing anything I could stop.
Was it some kind of sick attempt to scare me away?
Or was it a prelude for something much more sinister?
Does anyone want you dead? Matt’s words haunted me.
Thoughts burned through my head so fast I thought it highly possible Karson would hear the incessant tick of my brain.
Not least of all, what did it all mean? Where did we go from here?
I was the holder of an immense, terrible, dark secret.
To protect it, would it mean at some point he’d sink his teeth into my neck, suck my blood, and leave me dead on the floor?
“She’s not like an ordinary female,” Karson said, breaking my spinning thoughts.
I turned to him.“What?”
“Monique, she’s a female, but not a standard one.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Vampires are as lethal as each other, regardless of sex.” He attempted to justify his propensity for violence; pathetically.
I raised a brow. “The females are as strong? And that makes what you did okay, is that what you’re saying?”
“Sometimes they are. We all have slightly different skill sets.”
“Is she as strong as you?” I shot back.
He was quiet for a long moment, staring ahead, with what looked like regret on his face.
“No, but none of them are.”
“She’s your friend,” I sighed and stared out the side window. “You shouldn’t have touched her.”
“You do not understand our world.”
I was getting a pretty firm handle on it. Violence was their world, a natural order among them. There were no looks of shock or outrage when the vampire had been killed. They’d all moved on as if death was a standard, everyday thing. The thought landed like a cold slap.
“Are you going to kill me, not now, but one day soon?” The words shot from my lips, no safety clip to stop them.
He turned his head to the side window, back to the road, then to me. “No,” he answered bluntly.
“But you had to think about it?”
“I did, and the answer is no.”
“What if I tell people what you are?” I persisted.
“You won’t.”
“How do you know I won’t?”
He looked at me with a flicker of frustration.
“I just know.” He turned his eyes back to the road.
One hand rested on the wheel, one on the gear stick.
He had nice hands, tanned, sleek, long fingers.
The kind of fingers designed to play a piano, or a paint canvas, or stroke thighs.
There was a large silver watch wrapped around his left wrist, and on his right a chained bracelet and a large silver ring with a black stone.
Immediately I wondered why I’d stop to appreciate his hands when we were talking about death—my death.
Was it possible I’d detached myself from reality somehow, like an outsider looking in, asking the questions but not connecting on a deep level emotionally.
Perhaps it was some kind of inbuilt coping mechanism?
“And if you did I’d kill them," he added in an unconcerned manner.
I didn’t think he was serious, but the notion was still somewhat unsettling.
All of his traits were somewhat unsettling, actually.
Those fangs, as sharp as blades, which appeared and disappeared at will.
The speed with which he moved. The strength it took to tear a man’s head off with his bare hands . . .
‘It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re safe now.’
I remembered his warm hands cradling the side of my head and then images flashing through my mind, of me running along the lakes edge, through the thick entanglement of the tree’s and collapsing on the roads edge alone.
Except, I wasn’t alone, and I hadn’t run at all.
Karson had carried me, and then he’d tried to implant the visions in my head. God, he could mind control too?
“That seems excessive! I won’t tell anyone, but if I did, instead of killing them, couldn't you just mind control them to forget, like you did to me after the fires?”
He leaned back onto his seat, looking amused by my discomfort. “I could if I wanted to. Not that it worked on you. Now I know why.”
“Why?”
He frowned. “You’re a witch, mind control doesn’t always work on witches, unfortunately."
“Oh, Karson, that’s nonsense! I think Dahlia is a little . . .” I looked for the right word that might describe her without being mean. “Unhinged.”
“We will see.”
“We won’t see! I think I might know If I could move objects with my mind,” I scoffed.
“And yet how did you see the deer, can you explain that?” He made a wide gesture with his hand. “You could’nt have seen it from the side of the road.”
“I must have, how else did I see it?” I answered, frustrated.
“That’s my point, Amelia, how else could you see it?”
“It proves nothing, something caught my eye, I told you to stop, we did, and we found her.”
“No, you screamed at me to stop, then fled like a mad person to a deer that was impossible to see from the road.”
I twisted my hands in my lap, reaching for the ring I no longer wore, I hoped I’d be able to put it on again soon, I missed the feel of it against my finger. “Still, it proves nothing,” I said indignantly, “and if it were true, which it’s not, would it matter—given you are a vampire after all?”
His expression changed, his face was shadowed by torment, as if a thousand stories flickered behind his eyes and took on a disturbing sharpness.
After some time, when still no answer came, I added, “Karson?”
“Vampires and witches are enemies, Amelia. We have held a truce for a number of years now, but it remains delicate at best. I think at this stage it’s something you need not concern yourself with.”
“Why are they enemies?”
He set eyes of ice onto me, frozen icicles pierced through to my bones. I had to refrain from rubbing my arms. “I said, it is of no concern to you.”
If not his look, then his tone was enough to scamper away any further questions about the relationship between species.
“Fine,” I muttered, staring out the window, frustrated. I could feel his gaze burning the back of my head and the silence became unbearable. Unable to stand it, I asked, “Who do you think killed Katrina and Robert?”
“I suspect Cole and Jefferson may have played a role, one way or another we will find out. Of that I can guarantee you.”
“Have you spoken to Matt yet?”
“No, I prefer to do my own research first.”
I’d started with the most difficult of questions, there was no holding back now. Still, I was troubled by what his answer might entail.
“Which involves?”
“Whatever it needs to.”
“Which is?” I pushed. He ignored me. “Karson, which is?”
“Let it go, Amelia.” He raised his voice. “You are not ready to know.”
“I am, or I wouldn’t ask,” I replied with equal heat.
His fingers tightened around the wheel. “You are not. I am protecting you by not telling you, could you please just drop it.”
“Okay, fine. I will drop it,” I retreated. “For now.”
His jawline clenched. I knew I was annoying him, but I didn’t care. Well, much anyway. I didn’t want to push him too hard. I’d seen his temper and I had no desire to be at the mercy of it.
I’d noticed something about him. When we were at the nightclub, and in front of Monique and Michael, he stood like a statue for the most part.
Stoic to the point of stone. He didn’t speak with his hands to emphasis his words.
His face was a constant mask, like a Viking in battle, his thoughts shielded and protected behind a pool of unreadable darkness.
As if the very essence of emotion was a highly guarded secret, locked and hidden in an impenetrable vault from anyone seeking to understand him.
He kept you guessing what he might be thinking.
Except, of course, when he exploded, then nothing was left to the imagination.
But when we were alone he used his hands when he spoke and showed more emotion on his face.
Perhaps it was some unconscious, instinctual survival mechanism and he didn’t see me as any threat.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“I stopped ageing sometime in my late twenties. I tell people I’m thirty-one.”
“And what year were you born?”
“1502.”
I drew a deep, shocked breath. “You’re 517 years old?”
“I guess so, I don’t think about it anymore.”
“Can you die at all?”
“Vampires need their hearts and brains, their bodies can repair just about anything, except if they are removed.”
I didn’t need to ask how they removed them. “How did you become a vampire, did someone bite you?”
His facial expression shifted to tenser lines. “No, most are converted that way. But I was born this way.”
“Born a vampire. It must have made breastfeeding tricky.”
He let out short surprised laugh. “I think my mother managed.”
“Are your mom and dad vampires, too?”
“No, I am something.” The laughter died. “different.”
I wanted to ask more, but storm clouds had invaded his face again. It would have to be a question for another time.
“What else can you do, other than be ridiculously fast and strong?”
“Every sense you have, we also have. But it’s amplified. Our smell, sight, hearing, touch, all of it is far more superior.”
“Like synthetic drugs might do for sport stars?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Not even close,” he paused and looked steadily across.
“If you take every animal’s unique abilities—like the strength of a gorilla, speed of a cheetah, hearing of a bat, the eyesight of eagles, the smell of a bear—and amplify it, you may come close to what we are capable of. ”
“So, you’re like the world’s best predator.” As I said the words a large rock settled uncomfortably in my gut. I realized the dire consequences of a species with those kinds of skills.
“We are.”
“And I take it you can mind control?”
“Yes, and mind read.”