Chapter 27 #2
‘Are you going to bite me?’
He studies me for a beat before he answers.
‘Not unless you ask me to.’
I fix him with a look, and it makes his serious expression crack, one corner of his mouth lifting in a soft little smile.
‘I take consent very seriously.’
I pull in a deep breath before I ask my next question.
‘If you do, will I become a vampire too?’
He shakes his head, though the pillow catches most of the movement.
‘Only if you ingest my blood as well,’ he says.
I feel his hand trail over the side of my neck, grazing my hairline.
‘It’s never an accident, the way it happens.
It’s deliberate. People either ask for it, or they have it done to them on purpose, usually violently. ’
A shiver slips down my spine at that, fear and concern coming together at once. ‘How did it happen for you?’
‘Elias,’ he says, a weight to it that deepens the crease between his eyebrows. ‘I asked him. Begged him, actually. He was dead set against it.’
I frown. ‘Why?’
And then he takes a breath so deep I feel it move the entire bed. ‘My mum,’ he says simply, and for a moment I think he’s going to leave it at that. But after a while, he takes another, sharper breath and starts to speak again.
‘It was just after we got the confirmation of her diagnosis.’ One finger twirls a strand of hair close to my temple. ‘I hadn’t long found out about Elias being a vampire, and I was still in the stage where I was asking a million questions.’ A hint of a smile creeps into his eyes. ‘Like you.’
I smile back, turning my head so that I can kiss his hand, silently urging him to continue.
‘Anyway, we were talking about immortality, and I asked Elias if becoming a vampire could reverse an existing health condition.’
‘Like Alzheimer’s,’ I say, as the realisation dawns on me, and he nods slowly.
‘But Elias is as old as the hills, and he didn’t remember exactly how it worked, and I didn’t want to take any chances, you know. I mean, it’s my mum. And I’d already lost my dad…’
‘So…’
‘So he punched me in the face and then he turned me, and we both watched the bloody lip he gave me like a pair of idiot hawks to see if it healed up before our eyes.’
I raise an eyebrow, and he does at least have the decency to look a little sheepish.
‘I know, Luce. I know how stupid that sounds, but you have to remember that I was young then, still grieving my dad, and then facing the loss of everything about my mum that made her my mum. I was desperate.’ His mouth twists into a regretful smile. ‘Also, drunk.’
My nose wrinkles. ‘That tracks.’
‘Elias said that we needed a control for it to be a fair test, and so after my change, he punched me with his other fist, and the cut from that healed in thirty seconds. So our hypothesis was that vampirism does not cover pre-existing conditions.’ Green eyes blink mournfully at me.
‘Based on that, I couldn’t take the chance that my mum would be stuck in Alzheimer’s hell for all eternity. ’
My heart falls for him, a lead weight in my chest. I should have known that there would be a reason behind it all, but his sacrifice almost brings me to tears.
‘And then what happened?’ My voice is barely more than a whisper.
He takes a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Then I sobered up and realised what I’d done. Realised that I would have to watch everyone I love die.’ His laugh is a harsh thing, ragged and humourless. ‘Biggest buyer’s regret of my life.’
He shifts a little on his side, re-tucking the pillow under his chin before he carries on.
‘I went off the rails a bit after that. I’m not proud of it.
Drink, drugs, partying, you name it. Nothing would touch me, so I figured why not?
I longed for some real, lasting physical pain to match my mental anguish, but it was always fleeting. So I gave the blood lust a go.’
The joke is light, but there’s a world of pain beneath it. My hands move to his sides, tracing the wind of tentacles across his cool skin. He closes his eyes against the feeling.
‘Elias had an app – some dark web thing. It was like Tinder for vampires, basically. Matching up people who got off on having their blood sucked with those of us who were happy to suck it.
‘I tried it a few times, but … I hated it. Not to mention, I was awful at it. One time I bit into the muscle instead of a vein, and the woman screamed like she was being murdered.’ His mouth twists into a tight grin, no humour at all to it.
‘After that I just couldn’t. The legend around our kind is that killing is an inevitability – that we’re monsters.
But Elias taught me that it doesn’t have to be like that.
We’re no more monsters undead than we were alive.
’ His teeth catch on the flesh of his lower lip.
It’s not quite a smile, not quite a grimace.
‘No more flawed than your average human.’
He’s certainly less flawed than most of the humans I know.
‘So Elias is one of the good ones?’ I ask. It makes me feel better to think that Bram had someone like that to guide him at the beginning. At least it does, until I see the way Bram’s eyes dart sideways at the question.
‘Elias … has seen the full spectrum,’ he says, diplomatically. ‘But he’s a reformed character now – hasn’t killed anyone since the Industrial Revolution.’
I can’t hold in my chuckle. ‘Pretty good going.’
He smiles back at me before his expression falls into something more serious.
‘It’s like a spiral,’ he says. ‘The more you feed, the more you slip away from who you once were. The more you consume human blood, the less human you become.’ His eyes dart back to mine, dark and serious.
‘I don’t want to be like that, Lucy. I couldn’t live with myself. ’
My chest contracts, something like a string tugging at the very centre of my sternum. ‘I believe you,’ I whisper into the air between us, and at the sound of it, he grasps my jaw and pulls my lips to his.
‘You should,’ he rasps, when he breaks the kiss. ‘You’re safe with me.’
But he doesn’t need to say it. In my heart, I already know.
He reaches for me again, and I melt into him, curving my warm body around his cooler one with a contented sigh. My hands trace the lines of his tattoos, my fingertips trailing the tentacle around his heart. The one with the writing on it.
Forever the wind in my sails. Forever my anchor in the storm.
I know the words without having to read them.
‘It’s for my dad,’ he says, his voice rough, and his other hand settles over mine, moving with me. ‘I got that one after he died.’
There’s pain in his voice, and though it’s quiet, as if muted by the passing of time, I can feel every ounce of Bram’s love for his dad in the way he says it.
‘Was he a sailor?’ I ask, and I feel the movement of his nod through his body.
‘He was a fisherman.’ His hand closes around mine, our fingers tangling together. ‘Always loved being out on the boat.’ There’s something else alongside the grief in his voice. Nostalgia, perhaps? Maybe love?
‘Did he die at sea?’ I ask gently, and when he doesn’t reply for a while, I squeeze his hand, letting him know that he doesn’t have to answer at all.
But then he takes a small breath and blows it out again. ‘No,’ he says eventually. ‘It was cancer.’
The word catches in my chest, snagging on the old scar.
‘My nana had cancer,’ I hear myself say, my voice sounding so high and tight that I almost don’t recognise it.
‘I took a year out to care for her.’ I feel my throat tighten, tears stinging at my eyes.
‘I thought that if I tried hard enough I could save her.’
I feel the shift in his weight before his arms wrap around me, surrounding me with such comfort that it makes a small sob creep up my throat.
‘But you couldn’t,’ he mutters into the crook of my neck, softly, like he already knows the answer. Like he couldn’t either. I slip my arms around him and hold on tight.
‘It’s cruel,’ he says, and I know he’s talking as much about his dad as he is about Nana. The compassion in the way he speaks, in the way he’s holding me, strikes a direct line to my heart.
‘She was all I had left,’ I manage, and he sighs in response, the sound a reflection of my grief.
The kiss he presses to my temple is a brush of a thing – tender and honest. ‘I get it,’ he mutters, and then he holds me, just like that.
No platitudes, no solutions – just a warmth, an understanding which engulfs me so completely that, now I’ve known it, I can’t imagine how I’ll ever go without.
He told me I was safe with him, and I absolutely believe him.
So much so that when tiredness comes for me, I don’t resist it. I just curl up in those cool, tattooed arms and let sleep drag me down. In fact, I feel so safe that just before it does, another truth tumbles out, just like that.
‘And that’s why,’ I hear my voice say into the darkness, moments before I drift off, ‘I want a family.’