Chapter 68 #5
“You’re a fine one to talk about age—how old are you, and yet you still act like a twenty-year old boy.”
“Just get in the car, Amy,” he sighed, opening the door.
I strode straight past.
“Seriously, what are you going to do—walk all the way home?”
I didn’t answer. I kept walking. That was exactly what I’d do.
The wind whipped my hair back and it sailed behind me.
The clouds were thick and heavy as if my fury was reflected above.
A few splinter-like droplets landed on my face.
It would pour soon. In the distance, beyond the streetlights, trees mazed in a world of black, a graveyard of darkness expanding an eternity, filled with shadows waiting to reach out and drag me screaming into the depths of nothingness.
Right now though, I didn’t care, I kept walking.
The car rolled beside me. The V8 engine hummed down the street. Ethan had the window down, his elbow resting on the seal. “It’s going to take a while if you walk. You might make it home by daybreak. It’s going to rain and once you hit those trees it’ll be pitch-black in there.”
It sounded like a threat. “Stop reading my fucking mind, Ethan,” I shouted. The wind seemed to grow with my breath and bucket against the side of his car.
He frowned. “Amy, get in the car. Or I swear to God I will get out and put you in here myself.”
It was a threat, and a serious one if the look on his face was any indication.
“Fine,” I snapped, “take me home and then go back for Darcy.” I went around and got in the car, slamming the door shut behind me.
“Karson will keep an eye on him and make sure he gets home safe. There’s no need to worry about him.”
“Karson is busy, if you hadn’t noticed.”
He didn’t answer. He pulled out from the curb. He drove fast.
I stared out the window, seeing nothing, broiling with anger, the hurt climbing back through my veins. After some time I said, “You have no right to read my mind, we made that deal when we decided to live together.”
“Honestly, I hardly get to see inside your mind, but when I do, I don’t like what I see. You’re reckless, and emotive, and you act before you think. You’re going to get yourself killed. You don’t know that boy, and yet you were going leave with him. You don’t know what he would’ve done.”
“I can tell you what we would have done,” I said with a condescending arch of my left eyebrow.
He shook his head and clenched his jaw. “You think sleeping with him would hurt Karson? You’re right, it would have pissed him off.
And for what? So you can get some temporary upper hand by opening your legs to some random boy.
Did you ever think what might happen to the kid, what Karson was about to do to him? ”
“What?” I stared at him. “What?” My alcohol affected brain struggled to grasp what he was saying, “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t play dumb, you understand.” He made a wide gesture of frustration with his hand. “You know vampires are jealous creatures by nature, and especially Karson. Once you commit to them . . .” He rubbed his face vigorously and didn’t finish.
“He left me, Ethan, he doesn’t care about what I do.” A lump moved to my throat. “You think I don’t wish he hadn’t? I don’t wish he would come back and say it’s all been a big mistake and he’s sorry?” I turned to look out the window, the trees blurred past.
“He cares, you know he does.”
“Not enough to be with me though, right? It’s okay for him to sleep with Rebecca,” I spat out her name like she was a bit of shell in crab flesh. “But I can’t be with anyone, is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes, Amy, yes,” he shouted, “you knew that when you signed up. You knew what you were in for.”
Confused, I shook my head. “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He swung and studied my face. His eyebrows drew into a deep frown.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I reiterated when he looked on with lingering doubt.
“That son of a bitch.” He slammed his palm against the steering, three times.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
He hit it so hard I thought he was going to snap the wheel. His rage sent my heart into overdrive. I stared at him, bewildered. We sat in silence for a long moment, staring ahead.
Finally, he said in a quiet voice, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Ethan, you better tell me what you are talking about.”
He took in a deep breath, and I knew what he was going to say wasn’t going to be good.
“Back when it all began, when vampires and humans courted, sometimes some of the humans were inadvertently killed by other vampires. The result of this was revenge killings that would sometimes go on through whole families and would continue to plague our species. So, to keep the peace, it was written into scriptures that when a vampire and a human courted, the vampire should mark their human with a symbol under their ear, so that other vampires would know not to touch her, or him. It was a code of respect. It saved the lives of not only the partners, but also the vampires through retributions. It kept the peace within the species.”
“They branded them?” My voice was hoarse.
He nodded. “Some still do, but it’s usually done by way of a tattoo or hot metal, mixed in with other symbols. Not obvious to humans but a vampire knows it immediately.”
I thought of the girl in the night club and her weird tattoo; and the vampire who’d scanned his eyes over my neck and arms.
Forgive me, I was unable to determine she was spoken for.
“Once a human is marked they commit to that vampire, and no other vampire or human is allowed to touch them. If they do, they pay the price.”
“The price?”
“Death, Amy,” he replied grimly, “for the vampire who’s disrespected the rules, and sometimes for the human too.”
Waves of cold rolled over the nape of my neck and down my spine. Automatically I reached up and trailed my fingers over the sides of my neck—there was no bump, no scar; I wasn’t marked.
“But he didn’t brand me.”
“The concept of owning one’s human, of marking them—not just with a tattoo or symbol, is ingrained within our society, to keep law and order, and must be respected.
He’s of the original culture and he regards those rules as the foundation on which to form a stable society.
When you willingly slept with him and you formed an emotional connection, or he did to you .
. .” He stared out the side window for a long moment, then looked back and said quietly, “It’s hard to break. ”
“So, what are you saying? That I’m his possession until he chooses otherwise?”
“Yes.” He rubbed his hand roughly on his jeans like he was easing the sting from thumping the steering wheel. “If you let him go emotionally, he will let you go eventually. He should have told you before you . . .” He waved his hand forward and didn’t finish the sentence.
The words he spoke to me right before we made love echo through my mind, ‘but you don’t know.’
“I don’t know if I can. I . . . if he cares, there’s hope, right?”
He sat silent for a long while, his jaw tight. He stared at the road ahead like it held the answers to my plight. Finally, he shook his head slowly and deliberately and sighed, like he held the world on his shoulders.
“Not every story can have a happy ending, Amy."
If words were bullets, he had shot them.
I felt my throat clog again. “You can’t know that, Ethan. You don't know how the story will unfold, or how it will end.”
“Oh, I know. I’ve known Karson for an eternity, and it always ends in pain, or worse, with him. He—” He stopped on the cusp of whatever it was he was about to say.
“He what, Ethan?” I demanded, “what?”
Frustrated, he shook his head and ran his hand roughly through his hair. “You have to let him go, for your own sake.”
“What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
“There are some things that are best left unspoken.”
I snorted. “To protect me, right? You give me half-truths, or nothing at all. You both keep things hidden from me, even now I see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice. But it doesn’t matter because I know how I feel. How he makes me feel.” I stopped, appalled by the tremor in my voice.
“And how is he making you feel, Amy?” he said, suddenly angry. “He won’t commit but won’t let go either, will he? How does that make you feel, exactly?”
Like I’m broken.
“I can't . . . I can't accept it’s over. Not like this, not over nothing . . . I—” I stopped what I was about to say—that I love him, but I couldn’t draw it from my mouth. I didn’t need to, he read my mind.
“I know, I know,” he said, his voice both soft and frustrated.
“You can turn down the leaf on your suffering, wait in hope, but even then, you will be forever marked, one way or the other. If you pursue it, it can only end in misery. Surely it’s better to let it go and look for another novel later on. ”
I continued to stare out of the window, regaining my unravelled composure. After a long moment I said, “I’d rather be marked forever, than to have never opened this book at all.”
We spoke no more words to each other that night.
Half an hour later I stood at the window in my room and stared out at the darkness.
The clouds hung like a firestorm above, not even the moon had managed to escape their gloom tonight.
The rain began to tap on the window. I listened to the rhythmic sound and watched it land and streak down in tiny threads like dreams; visible, but just out of reach.
You have to let him go, Amy.
Intellectually, I knew Ethan was right. If Karson couldn’t commit then, by decree, I had no choice but to release myself from the torment.
Emotionally, I didn’t know if I could. I closed my eyes, and I could see him standing behind me, his dark hair tousled forward, his hazel eyes swollen into a darkened pool of magnetic desire.
Air whispered over my neck, my skin rose as if it were whispers of his breath against my ear.
He stretched his arms out and wrapped them around my heart, cocooning me, like he did by the stream.
I stood perfectly still, mesmerized by the memory of his touch.
Even the tapping of the rain ceased to exist. For a moment, one exquisite moment, he was with me again.
The hoot of an owl dragged the sensation away and reluctantly I opened my eyes.
The rain quivered down the window like tears.
I closed my eyes and tried to bring him back.
Nothing came but emptiness. I squeezed my eyes, hands, and jaw so tight my teeth ached; searching, sifting through the hippocampus for that moment, but it was gone, and I was left exhausted by loss.
The thought of him sharing a bed with Rebecca tore glass through my heart.
I turned toward my own bed, usually a place of comfort; suddenly it took on the air of emptiness and loneliness of a desolate ship, marooned and abandoned by sailors long ago.
If I were to lay down on it, the hollow expanse threatened to amplify and consume my soul, and I felt as if I would be lost in a lonely abyss forever.
Instead I went to the recliner I would often read in by the window.
I curled my feet up and squeezed my eyes shut, willing the tears that sat behind them to stay put.
I’d deal with the pain tomorrow. I fell into an alcohol-induced sleep, listening to the comforting sounds of the rain pounding on the roof.
I dreamed of him, of course.