Soren #2
“You could have asked first.” But the line is already dead.
“What’s that mean?” Vex turns to me with his hands on his hips.
“It means get in the car.” I toggle everything off and walk out of the room without Vex following.
My body feels like it’s moving on autopilot. I’m not mad that Lazarus said show him. It was inevitable.
But the pain of that night, it never really leaves. Not really. Not in the way that matters, not in the way moving on requires. And as much fun as I had with Callie tonight somehow what I’m about to do kills every step forward I just took.
I hear Vex thundering down the steps and out the door by the time I’ve reached the car. Inside I feel my heart crumbling all over again. Just like that night.
“You look sick.” Vex climbs in the car as I turn the ignition.
“I feel a little sick.”
He taps his thighs, like an anxious puppy. Eager for a field trip. While I just sit staring out over my steering wheel feeling the pain and grief and anxiety rush into me all at once. Lazarus lifted the dam with two single words.
“You’re freaking me out.” Vex pokes my hand where it’s clenched over the gearshift.
“I was married once.” I start the car and pull away slowly.
“That is quite the bomb drop.” Vex whistles. “I’m going to zero in on, was.”
I drive us out of the city, picking up 76 and heading west before I can even gather the words building in my throat. Then I have to dig so deep inside of me to even get them out.
With a forklift.
“Do you know how old I am?” I barely get out.
“Older than me.”
“Obviously,” I breathe evenly, slowly trying to calm the thousands of bees stinging my chest all at once. “Two hundred forty-five. I’ve been dead two hundred and seven years. Depends on who you ask, depends on what number they celebrate. Birth or rebirth.”
“Aww you have a bicentennial coming up.”
“Vex.” I snort but somehow his ridiculousness chases away the bees. “I died when I was thirty-eight.”
“That’s old for what?” He pauses likely to do the math in his head. “Seventeen eighty-one?”
“Correct.” I pull off the turnpike and head toward a little town no one really knows how to pronounce and follow the twists and turns through back roads.
All the while Vex sits quietly for the first time since we turned him.
I slow down near a back road, no streetlights, only the quiet a forest can provide.
“It’s a short walk.” I pull off to the side and park. Getting out I stare down the now paved road. “It wasn’t paved then.”
“The road.”
“Yeah.” I wander off because it’s that easy for memories to swallow you whole. To drag you to the past where life was different. When your past self begged to live in the future past the pain you felt then.
“I’m really trying to take your lead here, Sor. But the grief you are throwing off is making me ill.” He walks beside me, matching my pace as I lead him into the woods. “This is also the part of the movie where I die.”
“I’m not going to kill you, Vex.” I hold a branch out of his way. “I’m going to show you how I died.”
He nearly trips over himself.
“It’s about a mile.”
“Do I get the backstory?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Work on it faster.”
“You’re the first person I’ve told.” The bees are back. This time I stumble into a tree. My palm slapping against the bark. As I gulp down long deep breaths.
Vex rubs slow circles on my back. It’s, welcome. Oddly enough. He’s been a pain in my side since he woke up as a vampire. And yet sometimes the Goddess knows just who we need in our coven when we need them.
Neither of us talks about that as I dive further into the forest.
“Lazarus?”
“He ah,” I swallow past my pain. “Knew me.”
“So he knows this story?”
“He knows his version of events.”
“Noted.”
“My wife.” The words rip through me. Like a knife sliding into my abdomen. “She, she had just come home from the mill.” I stumble as we dive deeper into the forest. “She was home before me.”
And it’s like the overlay of that night sweeps through me.
I can almost see myself walking home as I did that night. On this very path. Carrying water and a deer I’d just hunted.
“It was about this point.” I pause on the trail, my mouth filling with adrenaline. “You ever get that feeling that you know something isn’t quite right.”
“I ah, I’ve had that feeling.” His eyes go distant. Maybe remembering the night he died. Which we still need to understand. One day. And a vampire has many, many, many days.
“I walked a little faster.” I mirror my steps that day, leading us to the cabin I built by hand all those years ago.
And there it is. Still standing. Mostly because I show up from time to time, making sure to fix what needs fixing. Keep it up to code so no government officials come looking for it.
“This is it?” Vex steps forward, looking at the cabin, the one I built with these two hands.
“Yeah.” I step forward, my hand on the doorknob.
“It looks new.”
“Maintenance.” I open the door and air from the past rushes through me. I swear I can see her, my Cassandra standing over a pot cutting potatoes. A smile on her freckled face. “She was so excited to see me that night.”
“Was she not usually?” Vex looks around the open space. It’s no longer one open room. But a space with distinct areas now. A kitchen. A sitting area. A bedroom, and a bathroom.
“She was,” I reply softly knowing he was trying to poke at my pain. “We needed flour. She wanted to make fresh bread. She told me she ran into two men at the mill.”
Vex snaps his head at me. His pupils taking over his eyes. A predator’s eyes that can sense the wrongness in that statement.
“I was never a jealous man. Competitive sure. Jealous. No.” I swipe a finger along a countertop before leading him back out of the cabin. “These men offered her a life I could never give her.”
Vex growls a little. He doesn’t realize it yet, but that reaction is the coven’s bond rippling through him.
He’s feeling the residual of my pain echoing across a coven bond.
“She refused.” I turn away, leading him past the cabin out back where I pause when the moon pushes past the clouds to light the forest. “She wouldn’t go without me. They promised her a life of luxury.”
“They followed her. Didn’t they?”
“They attacked me first.” I look out into the direction they came from. I don’t see their memory now. I didn’t see them then either. “Three of them. I was bleeding out before she could ever scream.”
Vex turns in a circle. “It was here.”
“This very spot,” I agree. “And here is where they took her.”
His head snaps to mine. “Explain.”
“Cassandra was a bride. The one woman in this world who can not only feed a vampire coven for all their days, but the one who can bear their children.” Tears burn my eyes. “I watched them rip her apart before my eyes.”
“Soren.”
“I’m not done.” I need to get it out before I lose the ability to even talk. “I watched everything. I watched them feed from her. Bind her to them. Rip her apart. And then put her back together.”
“What the fuck.” Vex swallows. “Did she?”
“Die?” Here is the tricky part. “I don’t know. I died.”
“You...” He runs his hands through his hair. “They just killed you for no other reason than to steal your wife.”
“Yes.” It’s that simple. “You need to understand. Vampire covens will rip each other apart for a bride. They will destroy even her to ruin her for another coven.”
“Calliope.”
“Calliope,” I repeat.
“So that’s how Lazarus found you.”
“Barely alive, barely breathing.” I shove my hands in my pockets and wander around.
“Do you remember?” he asks.
“Turning?” I shake my head. “No, Lazarus says it’s by design.”
“I don’t remember either.” He runs his hand along the side of the cabin. “I don’t like not remembering.”
“Do you know who killed you?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I only remember up to the point of Lazarus yelling. Everything else is just a blur. Did you ever find the coven?”
“No.” I turn to him. “And I don’t want to.”
“If you find them, you may find Cassandra.” Vex frowns. “You never looked?”
“No.”
“Why?”
This is the part that rips me apart all over again. The part that keeps me up at night. The part that I still haven’t healed from.
“She consented.”