Chapter 9
The silver of Auris’s eyes had faded with the sun, and as soon as only the stars were out shining, his eyes had become an almost solid black again.
Gloria, the housekeeper, had arrived about fifteen minutes after Auris had called her. That had given me just enough time to put on more than my editing sweats, and the jeans had earned me a playful, disappointed groan from Auris.
Gloria called Auris “Mr. Salek” and stayed masked the entire time she cooked dinner.
No infection risks taken in this household, it seemed.
I’d expected her to be older and motherly, but she was only about ten years my senior, at most, and instead of motherly, she gave off a fun aunt vibe, complimenting me with a very unsubtle wink for getting such a good-looking man as Auris to spoil me.
She left once the cooking was done, and Auris sat next to me at the counter while I ate.
“You’re watching me.” I shoved a forkful of pasta in the best homemade tomato sauce I’d ever had into my mouth.
“Of course I’m watching you. Why would I admire the stars when I can look at you?”
I snorted. “Get a TV. That’s better than either.”
He chuckled. “That would be a terrible waste. Television programming is boring. You know, I’m not sure your sharp tongue and sharper wit translate into your work.”
I swallowed before I spoke, holding on to a modicum of manners. “Everyone’s a critic. At least look at my photos before you decide they’re as boring as TV shows.”
He leaned a bit closer. “I did. I liked the thing you did with the anatomical collections.”
“Those have been called dark and tasteless. When did you see my photos?”
He shrugged. “I had some time while you were sleeping. You have quite a lot of your art on your website. Fair warning, I cannot say how long I will manage to hold off on buying some of your prints. Or all of them.”
I lowered my fork and narrowed my eyes. “Wait, you do sleep, right? And that series wouldn’t work with this place.” I indicated the couch. “This needs something that resonates with the ocean, not all those jars and what’s in them.”
“You advise on interior design as well? Hmm. To answer your question, I doze. I don’t sleep, as such.
There is a form of hibernation that’s possible.
” He ran his fingers along my cheek again as if he craved the contact every now and then to make sure I was real, even though he was the dark vampire faerie prince.
“I’m sure I can think of a place or several I own that would be suitable for your photos. ”
“Now you’re just trying to flatter me.”
I finished the last of the pasta. I wondered whether he ever missed sleep. Or dreaming. I didn’t want to ask him right away, didn’t want to ruin the mood in case the answer was yes.
“I think I might enjoy flattering you, Ethan. I haven’t decided yet, so I’ll have to keep experimenting with it.” He indicated the windows and the ocean beyond with his chin. “How about a walk along the beach? Or do you need more food?”
I pushed my plate away and stretched. “I’m good. A walk would be nice, actually. I haven’t really been to the beach since I got here. I mean, I watched the waves, I just didn’t get sand in my shoes.”
He chuckled. “All work and no play, my sweet? High time to change that. Come.” He took my hand and pulled me after him.
He grabbed my jacket from the hallway closet and helped me into it. Part of the large windows was actually a sliding door that led straight out to the back of the house, where a patio lay under a small dusting of sand the wind had carried up here.
Auris put his arm around me and led me to a set of steps that eventually turned into a wooden walkway that wound through the dunes, and from there down to the beach proper.
I was glad he held me close. It was dark, even if the ocean mirrored the soft starlight that fell on the waves.
It wasn’t as much light as I would’ve liked.
It was a lot like the woods, this outing, but this time around, there was no lingering doubt about what would happen to me. I was safe with the vampire at my side.
The walkway ended, and our feet soon hit the sand.
For a while, we walked side by side in silence except for the waves spinning their age-old tales in the ocean’s unchanging language.
The silence between us was the uncomplicated one we had shared the night before.
It was comfortable, but I broke it first.
“You said you hibernate?”
“Yes. Hibernation might not be the right word for it. Sometimes, just going on and on feels like a drag, like too much. It’s not that living becomes tedious, but I suppose you could say the noise of the life ebbing and flowing around you can turn from a soft susurration into an ear-piercing cacophony.
It’s wise, then, to seek out a lonely place below ground, somewhere well hidden. There, you stay a while.”
“A while?”
“Yes, my sweet,” he said, light humor coloring his enchanting voice.
“You stay for a few years. Decades, sometimes. I spent some time in the root cellar of my old house back in the woods—the one I showed you. There are caves that are suitable, though these days, you really have to make sure they are not spelunking hotspots.”
I nodded. “Do you dream? Did you dream in the root cellar?”
“Hmm.” We walked a good ten steps before he answered. “I’m not sure the experience is like the dreams you have. They are more memories, but with different sense memories highlighted. I don’t know how to explain it very well. Maybe think of it as replays with the focus elsewhere each time.”
“Huh. So that entire hibernation, it’s similar to sleep, like a photo of a photo of a photo with the details no longer crisp, and the timeline is way long. So it’s like the way you eat? Much slower and less frequent than I have to eat?”
He pulled me closer. “In a way. Does it scare you?”
I thought about it. The idea of sleeping and experiencing old memories over and over underground for years should have scared me, but then again, when one lived so long, the break might be welcome. “I don’t think so. Is it scary?”
“A good question. It scared me, the first time I did it. I’d been alive for a long time, from a human perspective, and I didn’t understand the need to stop, even though I had been told about it.
Actually doing it was easy, however, and going back to the world after so long filled me with more energy than I’d had before.
” He shrugged. “It was refreshing. Ten out of ten.”
I grinned. “Well, I’m glad.”
He squeezed my hand.
For a while, the sound of waves rolling in and chatting among themselves was all there was.
I tried to imagine what it must be like, growing tired after so long, then finding a cave or some hole in the ground to spend a few years unconscious in before returning to the world.
I imagined doing it with Auris at my side.
“How do you know when to come back up again? From the hibernation?”
“You just do. I don’t know what it would be like if you were to be woken by an unsuspecting human. I have never met anyone who has had that happen to them.”
I gasped. “There are other vampires? That you know, I mean.”
He leaned in and kissed my cheek. “Yes, my sweet, though they are few.”
“And that werewolf you mentioned?” I turned to him in the darkness.
“They felt unnatural; magical. The region had legends about people turning into wolves. They did not get close enough to me at the time to try for a conversation, and they didn’t seek me out later. If there are more werewolves than vampires, they are much better at hiding than we are.”
“Who knows? The world is big. That’s something I’ve learned while traveling. It’s big, and there’s always more to see.”
“That’s right.” He took my hand with his free one and led it to his lips to kiss my knuckles. “You’re getting cold; should we head back?”
“All right.”
He spun me in the soft sand in such a way that I was sure at least some was getting in my shoes. I could just about make out a cheeky expression on his face that told me he was doing it on purpose.
Brightam’s lights were—much like its name promised—bright against the sky as we headed back to the house. The darkness that had hung in velvety softness over the ocean on the walk out was left behind us.
It felt as if we had abandoned civilization and were now slowly returning to it. All that resonated with my photos all over again, but how exactly it fit into what I wanted to capture, I still wasn’t sure. It was a feeling, not an idea, not an image ready for me to snap, not yet.
Auris pulled me from my thoughts. “Yesterday, at the old house, I said we could come back another time. It upset you. Will you tell me why?”
I looked up at him, his face outlined by the distant glow of lights from town. “I wasn’t upset. I… Well, that was when I realized that last night seemed…surreal. Up until that point, at least. Then you mentioned coming back so casually, you know?”
“Hmm. I had considered the future, and you hadn’t.”
“Exactly.”
He stopped abruptly and pulled me until I faced him, my hands on his chest.
“How about now? Would you like to talk about the future?”
I held his dark gaze. “Yes, I would. And…I hope you’re in it. In my future.”
He didn’t move, turned into a statue that held me in an unshakable grip, a statue that kept me safe and close. Except Auris was no statue at all.
“I will be, my sweet. I will be your future.”
He pulled me even closer and his lips found mine.
There wasn’t the same kind of all-consuming need in this kiss as there had been in the others, but I could tell it was a promise, like the sealing of something I couldn’t quite make out the shape of yet.
I kissed him back in the same way, with nothing but the ocean behind us and the stars above taking note.