24. Trail of Moonlight
24
TRAIL OF MOONLIGHT
DOM
T hat was close.
I didn’t even feel the change take over. I was so caught up, being turned on by her and wanting to bite her tangled together too fast. Seeing her lips slide over my dick was too much for me to handle. I wanted to fuck her and end her, and those two feelings can never mix.
Not ever again.
When she said I was sexy as the vampire, it staggered me. I don’t think anyone has ever told me I was sexy as that monster. It’s comforting and jangling at the same time.
When I’m that person, I’m a monster. Even my thinking is different. It’s like the demon that lives in us takes over and controls us. Things I do as a vampire, I would never do as a mortal.
We’ve migrated from the brown couches to her oversized, fluffy reader’s nook chair. A daybed wide enough for two people.
“So, do your siblings all think like you do?” she asks., interrupting my self-loathing.
“No, not really,” I say, dragging my fingers slowly over her legs that drape over mine. “They all like killing. Hattie didn’t want it initially but realized how much she loved being the villain, so she took to it. My oldest brother is the only one who sought out his own death to make it come faster. He wanted it.”
“This is the brother you don’t talk to because of a girl, right?”
I feel my muscles constrict at the mention of him. I don’t like talking about him. “Sort of. There’s more to it than that. That one is the most fucked up thing he’s done.”
I feel her tense up. “What did he do?”
“He’s the reason I died. He killed me. He’s the reason I turned vampire at thirty-six.”
“What! Why the fuck would he do that?”
“Cause we fell for the same girl,” I admit, though I’m still hesitant to bring her up. Sadie’s memory haunts me still, even though it’s been hundreds of years since I’ve seen her face. Before Sayah, she was the last one I had these strong feelings for. “Her name was Sadie. I loved her. Was going to propose.”
“And it never happened?”
“No. The night I was going to, he showed up. I found out then that they had been fooling around and were in love with each other. He and I got in a fight, and he broke my neck. He knew I would turn, so it made it a little better, but he knew I didn’t want to be a vampire. So it was cruel. He fled with her after killing me.”
She lets out a rough exhale. “That fucking sucks. I’m sorry that happened to you. Why would he do that to you?”
“We’ve always had that love-hate relationship,” I say, feeling the tension in my neck at having to talk about him.
“But she ended up dying, right?”
“Right.”
“What? Did he kill her too?”
I nod, grabbing her hand and interlacing my fingers through them. “He sure did. But that’s what Ollie tells me.”
“What did Ollie say?”
“Just that Bash loved her and wanted to turn her. She didn’t want it. That pissed him off, so he killed her.”
“Bash? ”
“Yes,” I respond. “My oldest brother. His name becomes him, as he’s known for bashing heads in.”
“Wow, that’s nice,” she replies sarcastically. “And is that how he killed her?”
“From what I gather from Ollie, they got drunk one night, and he drained her to her death and then fed her his blood, forcing her into being a vampire. See, when you make a new vampire, you have to drain them, feed them, kill them, and then feed them again. But before he could kill her, she ran.”
“I’m guessing he found her and killed her anyway?”
“Yep. You guessed it. He killed her in a fit of rage. But she knew she had to feed to turn, so when she arose, she hit him over the head with a cast-iron skillet and ran again instead of feeding to turn.”
“What happens when you don’t feed?”
“You basically desiccate. Your body shrivels up, and you become stone. Still alive but not really.”
“So that is how she died? She desiccated?”
“No,” I laugh at this story's twists and turns. “Apparently, he found her and forced her to drink from him. When she did and changed, she hated him for what he did and left him once more. When he found her again, she was with someone else. So he drove a silver-laced wooden stake through her heart. And killed the man she was with as well.”
“Jesus fuck. What a psychopath.”
“Yeah, he can be.”
“And you haven’t talked to him since?
“I didn’t let a girl keep me hating him for centuries. We have an on-again-off-again relationship. I let him back in, and he does something monstrous; we fight, and then we don’t talk again. It’s a pattern.”
“I see.” She stops her questions for a second and looks at our interlaced fingers. “Didn’t you say you had three sisters? Not two?”
“Yes. Part of Bash’s evil ways,” I say, shifting our weight a bit so we’re more on the pillow. “After he killed Sadie, he lost his mind. He killed a dozen more people and made half of them new vampires. One of them happened to be a siren. ”
“Oh, shit! A siren?” She sits up to look in my eyes.
“Yep. Half siren now. Half vampire.”
“I remember my grandma’s grimoires had a note about sirens. She mentioned someone who was ‘of the sea,’ but I hadn’t known what she meant until now. She must have met one.”
“Crazy, right! She’s pretty badass. She’s dangerous and moody but has gotten control over herself in the last one hundred and fifty years. I don’t trust her like I don’t trust Bash.”
Pulling out my phone, I scroll through my pictures until I find a picture of Jasantha.
My gorgeous sister, with midnight-black, smooth skin, blood-red hair, and bright green eyes, stares at us through the phone screen.
“She’s beautiful,” Sayah responds. “And what are her powers?”
“She has octaves in her voice, her siren’s song, that can lull anyone into a trance. She has done it to me a few times. You wake up not remembering anything that just happened. I woke up a few times in public in just my underwear after pissing her off. She finds that funny.”
Sayah laughs, picturing it. “How does that work then? The whole hybrid thing?”
“She can live either in the water or on land. Because of her hybrid blood, she can walk in the sunshine. She has offered her blood to me a few times to see if it would help me walk in the sun.”
“And it didn’t?”
“No,” I respond sadly, clicking my phone off and setting it on the arm of the chair. “Nothing has ever worked. The spell my mom put on us is powerful. The moon rules over the sun, every time.”
Lingering thoughts of sadness pull at me, remembering the last time I felt the sun warm my skin. Missing the sun is akin to missing a limb. You’re not the same without it.
“So, you haven’t seen the sun in over two hundred years?”
“Right. Only in movies. Gods, I miss it.”
Her eyes are reflective, as though she is trying to borrow my feelings of deprived sunlight to see how it feels in her skin. “I’m so sorry, Dom. That must be so awful. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t be in the sun. I wonder . . .” she trails off, as though her ideas are too big for words.
“What?” I ask, sliding to the side of her to see her face.
“I’m wondering if I should try something.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not quite sure. But I wondered if I could try it on a piece of jewelry. Pull the moon’s energy to protect you in the sun?”
I look at her incredulously. “You think you could do that?”
“One way to find out,” she says, wiggling out from under my arm.
Rising, she goes to the spell cabinet.
I follow her to her beautiful wooden secretary. The smells that waft from it are woodsy and earthy incense, like a witch’s den.
She’s handing me things, things I don’t know what the fuck they are or why they’ll help, but fuck is it sexy seeing her in her element.
After she’s done handing me shit, she pulls out a gorgeous Lapis Lazuli that’s attached to a chain. Raveling it into her hand, she grabs the rowan wand. “All right, let’s go out on the back porch.”
I follow her lead, instantly hard when she puts her witch hat on.
Figuratively. She’s not wearing a witch hat.
But fuck me, that would be hot too.
“Okay,” she says after setting her rocks on the railing. “While I consult the moon, I want you to hear my words and hold those crystals tight in your left hand. In your right, hold this—” She hands me the Lapis Lazuli—“while I speak, pull the words into those stones and believe it with your whole soul, okay?”
I nod, hanging out in a state of intrigue and disbelief.
Sayah tilts her head back and finds the moon, her astute beauty piercing the dark with her light.
“Goddess of the moon,” she speaks, giving breath to the words, “give upon us your energy to heal Dominic from your darkness. Gods of death, Gods of the sun in my state where he burns, let this item protect him and shield him from your rays as long as he wears the Lapis Lazuli. No more should he burn. Lend me your energy to imbue in this stone, and when you are not present, let it radiate around him and protect him. ”
I hitch my thoughts to hers and read the energy surrounding her.
The palpitating breath of power gives her conviction, and with that, she shoves her energy to the moon, commanding it to give its light to the wand. Every ounce of concentration is pushed out. I push it out with her, gazing up at the moon and imagining it thawing to liquid, seeping into the black sky.
As if the moon is listening to us, it shakes and shivers, and a shockwave ripples through the blanket of stars around it. The moon is melting, the lustrous irradiance seeping from the velvet sky and flowing like a river to the deck at our feet.
The trail of moonlight is indeed lighting up the dark and gliding into the tip of Sayah’s wand, which in turn takes on an austere glow. It gracefully glissades down from the dark sky into the wand like a phosphorescent waterfall, glittering as something would in a black-lit room. All sound seems to have ceased in respect for the magnificent occurrence, as though Mother Earth and all her creatures are in reverent awe.
As the moonlight dissipates into the wood, she holds it before her, her face aglow in the luminescence.
She shifts her gaze to me, mouth agape, and I’m just as staggered as she is.
“Okay,” she stammers, still trying to grasp the magick she caused, “Hold out the Lapis Lazuli in the palm of your hand.”
I do as I’m told and hold out the stone.
Slowly, she presses the wand's tip to the stone and we watch the glowing wonder leave the wood and enter the rock, creating a bright glow our faces light up with. It’s almost blinding. Once the brightness subsides into the wand, the rock glows before us until I clasp my fist around it and close out the light. Holding my hand out in front of me, it’s alight like I have a fistful of fireflies. Our shadows dance in the rhythmic glow akin to torchlight.
Holding my fist to my heart, I talk to the moon. I ask things of her that I’ve asked her millions of times. I’ve screamed this to her on my knees in desperation. She’s never listened.
Please set me free .
I beg of you.
I will worship you more fiercely if you let me worship the sun, too. I love you both. You’re both my girls. I can be shared. But please let me feel the warmth of the sun again. My bones are so cold. Being warmed by the sun is like being embraced by a gentle, unseen force. She creeps into every pore of my being. She lays down a sensation of vitality and comfort like the universe herself is breathing life into me.
Your embrace is just as extraordinary. The tendrils of your darkness beckon me home, and my demons are at peace in your dark.
But I am part witch. And that side of me . . . that side needs the whisper of summer’s embrace. I have two sides, and they both need to live.
Please.
I’m begging you.
As my whispers subside, the glow simmers to a sparkle, returning us to the darkness again.
When I’m done, I clasp the chain around my neck and tuck the stone safely into my shirt. A new trinket from my lady love that may be the key to my salvation.
Frosty touches like a ghost’s caress sink down my spine.
“Do you think it worked?” she asks as we stand together on the deck again bathed in darkness.
“I think it did. But . . . I’ll put my hand in the sun first to make sure.”
“I think it did, too; I can feel its power. It’s palpable. I just . . . I don’t know what I’d do if it didn’t work.”
I stop her and lift her chin. “The thought alone that you’d make me something that would free me from the dark means the world to me.” I pull her lips to mine and kiss her gently; she slithers her arm around my neck and caresses my face with her other hand. She feels so good on me. I pull away, interlacing my fingers behind her back. “If anyone can free me from the dark, it’s you. The problem with Scarlet’s spell was that she has the same blood as me, so she’s controlled by the night. If anyone is going to spell something that will take power away from the moon, it’ll be someone who’s ruled by light. Your warmth is so powerful; you are driven by light and love, and you have a bond with the sun. Since we have a bond with the dark, it would be hard for us to take that power away from it. You are bonded with light. It should be easy to take the power away from the dark.”
“Can we try it tomorrow morning?” Her ocean eyes sparkle as she gazes up at me.
“We can. If it doesn’t work, I’ll have to stay inside all day until I can go outside again.”
“No problem,” she says, kissing me. “Gauge loves lazy pajama days.”
“And if it does work, it may help your case with my family.”
Her expression withers and her eyes look into mine, but they go beyond me like she’s fallen into a void.
“Hey, where did you go?” I ask, wiggling her hips.
“Oh, hi,” she says quickly. “I was panicking thinking about meeting your family. What will that be like? Will you tell them I know? Will we act like I don’t know? What?—”
“Stop,” I shush her and kiss her cute little nose. “My mom and dad are fine with people knowing as long as they know you won’t spread our secret. My mom is nurturing. My dad is kind, but he has a hard temper. He can be scary, but only to me. And to Bash. Hattie, you don’t have to worry about. She’s sweet. Scar will be hard to win over, but that’s because we’re twins. Jasantha, she’s like a perfect mixture between Bash and me; she can be kind and humanly, or she can be hard and murder-y. I think that’s the siren in her. And Ollie, he’s a kind soul. He hates being a vampire as much as I do.”
“I thought you said your middle sister Hattie is all murder and mayhem?”
“She can be. You have to keep in mind that we’re all vampires. We can all be murder and mayhem when it comes down to it.”
“Great. So, little ol’ me walks into this house full of vampires that are all, in your words,murder-y, and I’m gonna be like, ‘Hi. I’m Sayah. I’m with your son and brother. Please don’t eat me.’”
I laugh and put her arms around my neck. “Nobody’s gonna eat you. They just may want a little taste.” I snort a growl and nibble the shell of her ear .
“You’re not making me feel any better with your jokes.”
Pulling her in, I wrap my arms around her head and kiss her lips. “I’m so glad that you know.”
“Me too. But—so, they’re all gonna be there?” she says, nervousness still intertwined in her words.
“All but Bash,” I reply shortly.
“They don’t talk to him either?”
“Nobody but Ollie does, and that’s only once every fifty years or so.”
“Okay. So, just the one crazy sibling will be there. Oh, wait—no, make that two ‘cause Hattie.”
“We’re all crazy, darling, we’re vampires.”
Her chest rises and falls, but the energy about her tells me she’s terrified about going to my parent’s house.
I can’t blame her. Something is unnerving about walking into a den of vampires being a mortal and the primary source of their food. One of us takes some getting used to, but the seven of us at once would be terrifying to someone just learning about all this.
I have to make sure to put her mind at ease.
“Besides,” I say softly, “if this talisman works, I’m dating a witch who can take away their darkness which may win you millions of brownie points with the vamps.”