Chapter 43. William
william
William has ample time to pull back before Lorena kisses him.
He knows he cannot allow this to happen.
Their noses brush, and he feels the warmth of her breath on his cold skin. He must move away.
Instead, he buries his hand in her curls, wrapping the floral-scented strands around his fingers. He can hear her heart racing, their chests so close that he can almost delude himself into thinking the pulse is coming from him.
Then her mouth touches his, and he cannot resist any longer.
His lips part, and Lorena sucks in a shaky inhale. Her exhale warms his mouth, and he gives in to their kiss.
When Anne kissed him, he felt only tension; yet with Lorena, he feels liberated. It is as if she unlocks him, and he wants to give her all of himself.
Only … he cannot.
“Lore,” he murmurs, pulling away from her. “I have a lot of work to do in this room before morning.”
“Can I help?”
“Not with this,” he says, “but it would help if you would not fight me on amending your friends’ memories.”
“I swear they can be trusted,” she says. “There’s no reason for the vampires to suspect either of them knows anything.”
“Tiffany and Zach are very close, and if he finds out, Trevor could, too. Remember that he is Legion. It is bad enough battling vampires, but I cannot fend off two foes.”
“I’ll tell Tiffany that if she tells Zach, she’ll be putting his life in danger. If she doesn’t listen, then you can compel them to forget. Okay?”
After a beat, he says, “Okay.”
They sit in silence for a moment. He waits for Lorena to leave, only she does not. “William?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you stay a little longer?”
He gets to his feet, frustrated that she is not listening. “Lore, I just told you—”
“Fabiana will alert you if there’s danger!” she says as he pulls her up. “You can keep patrolling, but with a smaller perimeter than last night, and if someone is coming, you can intercept them.”
“That would be a major gamble.”
Yet even as he says it, he can hear from the change in his own tone that he is considering it.
“What if Nate never gave up your location?” she prods. “Maybe he wanted to finish the job himself. Do you really want to go if you don’t have to?”
“Just a moment ago, you were arguing the opposite point—”
“Well, someone told me I’m a resourceful arguer.”
He feels himself fighting off a smirk. “Good night, Lore.” Then he adds, “I will see you tomorrow.”
A glorious grin breaks over her face. “Good night, Will.”
IT IS a long night for William.
He carries both vampires out to the surrounding forest and buries them twenty feet underground, where their scent is mostly masked.
Then he cleans the blood off the LUB’s floor, but he is unable to restore the broken furniture or torn books.
Given that there is no way of explaining this to Zach or Trevor, he decides to block the entrance altogether.
William dislodges the wardrobe, exposing the tunnel behind it. Then he punches at the wall until his knuckles crack with blood, and the stone crumbles, blocking the entryway.
Zach and Trevor will wonder what happened, but Lorena and her roommates will know.
After a shower, he changes into a clean pair of jeans and a sweater. Given that it is Saturday, students do not have to be in uniform. The sun has just risen when he positions himself outside Lorena’s window, out of view. He trusts her, but he cannot be sure about her roommates.
He does not expect Lorena to be objective in her assessment of her friends, given that she has such a great and forgiving heart. That is one of the reasons he has fallen—
He cuts off the thought, unable to follow it to its inevitable conclusion.
“I swear.”
It is Lorena’s voice he hears first. “I saw them last night. Will is burying their bodies, so they won’t be found.”
“Do any other vampires know where we are?” asks Salma. She sounds levelheaded and unshaken by last night.
“No,” answers Lorena. “And even if by some slim chance they do, William is going to go patrol often. He’ll do whatever it takes to keep the school safe. If he senses someone is coming, he’ll intercept them, and if we’re in danger again, he’ll leave with them to protect us.”
Silence meets her words.
“Please, say something.” It is Lorena speaking again. “I’m so, so sorry, Tiff. I never meant for either of you to get drawn into this.”
Still no response.
“Maybe we should get the nurse,” says Lorena.
“Tiff, do you want to go home?” asks Salma gently.
Still nothing.
It is uncharacteristic of Tiffany to be the quiet one, and William worries he does not have a choice. He is going to have to alter her memories—even if it means disappointing Lorena.
“This is why you fought.”
The voice does not sound like it belongs to Tiffany. It is too tiny and brittle a thing for so formidable a person.
“Yes,” whispers Lorena. “Salma was upset about it, too, at first.”
“Were you listening to what we explained before, or would it help if we go over it again?” offers Salma. “Vampires existed once, but now they’re gone, except for a group of about fifty, and they can’t turn humans—”
“Except for William,” says Tiffany, her voice growing firmer.
“He’s not going to turn anyone,” says Lorena. “He doesn’t like the vampires any more than we do. And if we don’t want him to join them, we need to help him stay here.”
Something twinges in William’s chest, in the spot where the ice shelf melted, leaving mutable liquid water in its wake.
He knows Lorena is just trying to make the situation more palatable for Tiffany, yet her words stir a storm inside him. Is that really how she feels? Is she only pretending to care for him to protect the human race?
“Tiff,” says Lorena, her voice hesitant. “If you want to forget all this, Willian can help you do that.”
A long silence. Then—
“You’re offering for your boyfriend to erase my memories?” Tiffany sounds more than just affronted. She is horror-struck.
“Only if you want that,” says Salma, jumping in as peacekeeper.
“Seriously, no one can find out about any of this. I know it’s the biggest news story in the world, but you can’t be a reporter right now.
William can hear from like any distance, so if you even mention the word vampire, he will compel you.
And while he won’t kill us, other vampires will.
Do you understand? Saying anything could—”
“I get it, I’m not a fucking five-year-old!” snaps Tiffany.
It sounds like she has moved off the bed and is now on her feet. William is glad that she is shedding her shock and that Lorena was right about Salma being trustworthy.
“Zach and Trevor can’t know, either.” Lorena speaks in an ominous tone. “It’s the only way to protect them.”
“What about when they go to the LUB and see that whole mess?” asks Tiffany. “Anyone can make blood and bodies disappear, but can William make books and bookcases magically whole again?”
“I’m sure he has a plan. He thinks of everything.” There is an unmistakably admiring tenor to Lorena’s tone, and it makes William’s chest puff up.
“Can you try not to sound so in love with the bloodsucker?” asks Tiffany. “It’s making me sick.”
This mixture of fear and prejudice is familiar to William, yet his gut recoils to hear it from someone who knows him.
In his day, he sometimes came across masked human protesters protected by Legion guards who operated flamethrower-like weapons that were so powerful, a vampire could not always escape them.
“Can you live with this?” Salma’s voice pierces William’s thoughts. “Or would you rather not know?”
“I always want to know,” says Tiffany without hesitation.
William has heard enough.
He takes off, and after making a needed alteration to his room, he goes on patrol.
He runs around the woods, giving the manor a sizable perimeter, yet not so wide that he risks letting someone through.
He also checks all the bus stations and the nearest train station, running laps around the school until close to breakfast time.
When he returns to the manor, he does a quick search of the structure to make sure he is the only vampire present.
He arrives at the dining hall too early, before the tables have even been set. Perhaps Nate was right to note that he is an impatient immortal because William is keenly aware of every passing minute as he waits for Lorena to appear.
The only thing he wants to do is be with her.
He cannot remember ever feeling this way about someone, not even when he was alive. It is as if she has broken a lifelong wintry curse.
Right as the temptation to march out and find her grows too great, he picks up on the first hint of her presence. Her scent is still far away, near the third tower, but she is on the move.
When at last she walks into the hall, his heart nearly constricts.
“Morning, Will,” she says, and he cannot deny the name sounds better than Rochester or Darcy.
“Morning, Lore.”
“Hi, Will,” says Salma, and he is astounded by how well she is handling everything.
“Hi, Salma. Where is Tiffany?”
“She’s not hungry,” says Lore. “We’re going to bring her a plate to the room.”
“It’s just taking her a moment to process, but she’ll be fine,” says Salma.
William considers going to check on Tiffany to make sure she is keeping quiet, but when Zach shows up, his concern eases.
“Where’s Tiff?” asks Zach straightaway.
“Period cramps,” says Salma, who has barely taken her eyes off William since she arrived.
“We didn’t need the specific diagnosis,” says Trevor. He looks from Salma to William, visibly annoyed by her newfound interest in him.
When the meal is over, Salma takes the food to Tiffany, while William and Lorena go out on the grounds. There is no one else in sight, and William inhales deeply to make certain they are alone.
“Can I ask you something?” asks Lorena as they follow a stone pathway along the grass.
“You just did.”
“Wow, you’re like a century late with that joke,” she says, a smile curling her lips. The winter sun makes her skin glow, and he wishes he had a camera to immortalize her in this moment.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a Stoker?” she asks.
William knew this question was coming. “I was not just hiding it from you,” he says. “I was hiding it from me, too.”
“Why?” she prods.
“I always knew I would be turned one day. In my family, it was custom to remain human until our late twenties or early thirties, during which time we were encouraged to reproduce as much as possible. Yet I refused all the proposals that were arranged for me, and that is how I developed a reputation for being arrogant and vain, not unlike your Mr. Darcy.”
They approach the statue of the horned demon, which offers some scattered shade, and she asks, “Were you just trying to resist doing what was expected of you?”
“No, it was not that.”
Lorena sits down on a patch of grass by the demon’s feet. “Then what?”
William folds down beside her and finds himself eye level with her golden gaze. It becomes harder to speak all of a sudden.
“I wanted to marry for … love.”
He does not know why he is embarrassed to admit it. Especially since Lorena does not look even close to laughing.
“How were you turned?” She asks the question slowly, like she is uncertain how it will be received.
Yet William is done keeping secrets from her. Last night proved to him irrefutably that she is the only being in the world he can truly trust.
“Grandsire visited my residence in Massachusetts Hall. The Legion’s attacks on Stoker vampires had reached my branch of the family, and he came to tell me our home had burned down, and my parents had gone into hiding. He said we could not wait any longer—he had to turn me.”
William can still see Grandsire’s silver eyes as he pleaded for his life. I beg you, do not do this—not yet. I am not ready—
Yet the leader of the vampires cared not for his descendant’s consent. He cared only that his plan be successful.
Just like when he orchestrated the Treaty. It did not matter to him that a sizable number of vampires disagreed and aligned themselves with Leonardo the Bloody. Grandsire simply forced the Treaty upon all of them, and those who defied his rule were shunned and abandoned to the Legion’s mercy.
William feels like something is traveling up his throat, and it is not the food he had for lunch.
“I’m sorry,” says Lorena. She takes his hand and holds it in silence. She does not ask about Grandsire’s motivations or try to find a way to make it all right. She just sits with him, and he realizes this is exactly what he needed.
“You make it sound like being a vampire is a bad thing,” she says after a while. “But you get to be young and live forever, so why couldn’t you have a great love now?”
The way her cheeks darken with blood makes him instinctively shift closer to her.
“When one’s heart stops beating, the effect is more than just physical,” he says. “Time does have an effect on us: It numbs our emotions. Good feelings become less frequent and intense, like putting on glasses that filter out bright colors. We cannot love the same way again.”
Lorena nods like she understands, but William sees something like disappointment flit across her face. He buries a hand in her curls, feeling his way through the dense forest of her hair, eager to touch every strand.
When their lips meet, her breaths grow shaky. He snakes his arm around the small of her back, pulling her closer, her body radiating warmth like a portable heater. Their tongues tangle together until Lorena comes up for air, gasping.
“It feels like I’m making out with winter,” she murmurs.
“And I with summer.”
He wishes he could unzip her coat to feel more of her body, trace her contours, and absorb her warmth. “Would you like to come back to my room?” he whispers.
Her heart pounds harder. “Um, I’m not—I mean, if you expect … I’ve never had sex.”
She says the last part quickly, casting him a mortified look. Yet William’s expression stays unchanged.
“Neither have I.”