Chapter 15
For a few stunned seconds, my mind refuses to cooperate.
Vampire.
The word clangs around my skull, absurd and impossible. And yet, once it’s there, once I let myself really look at him, it starts to align. The way he moves too fast. The way he’s always there when I need him, when I’m about to die. California. The alley with Noah. Tonight.
He’s a predator. A dark one. Something ancient and dangerous.
So why doesn’t my body recoil? Why don’t I feel fear, only a strange, humming recognition, like a truth clicking into place?
“I’m not afraid,” I say over the thunder, my heartbeat thrumming.
Lightning flashes, showing Hayden and his bared fangs in sharp relief above me.
His eyes narrow like he’s thinking, debating some decision.
For a moment, I’m terrified he’ll disappear.
But then he sweeps me up in his arms like I weigh nothing, carrying me through the graveyard toward the church.
I’ve never been this close to him, so I can’t resist wrapping my arms tighter around his strong neck, pressing my nose against his temple, breathing deeply. I close my eyes at his delicious, dark scent, like cinnamon and smoke and something else…like sweet papyrus and liquid, leather-wrapped gold.
Is this what vampires smell like?
When I drag my nails along Hayden’s scalp, his breath hitches, and his footsteps falter a moment before I feel his jaw clench. He kicks open the rusty black gate that nearly ended me and carries me to the church’s heavy front door.
“We’ll talk in here,” he says gruffly, twisting the locked handle with a flick of his wrist and shouldering open the great wooden door.
It’s pitch black and cold inside. The door slams behind us, the storm carrying on with a hushed quality now. Hayden’s boots echo loud and distant against the stone walls as he carries me into the heart of the sanctuary.
“You okay?” Hayden murmurs in the dark. “You scared now?”
“No,” I whisper.
“You sure?” His fingers dig slightly where they hold me, on my bare thigh. “Your heartbeat went up.”
I swallow hard. “You…you can hear my heartbeat?”
Hayden’s steps falter, slow, then stop. For a moment, he holds me in the darkness, every sound and touch enhanced by my blindness. The rain drums against the roof, the thunder muted outside the church’s ancient walls.
“I…” His voice has gone rough. Hayden’s hands find my neck, his thumb rubbing my pulse. “I can feel it. Like now, it’s gotten faster again. I can always feel it. It’s impossible to ignore, how it gushes through your veins.”
“Oh,” I breathe.
“We need light.” Hayden’s voice is a low rumble at my ear.
“I’ll only be a moment.” I feel a soft whoosh of air against my face.
I feel around with my hands, kick out my legs, and determine that he’s set me down on a front-row pew.
I listen hard, straining, but I don’t hear anything except the rain and thunder, the groan of wood beneath me.
Before I can panic, little warm lights begin to wink on around me.
I swivel my head to see that the tiny prayer candles at the multiple votive racks scattered throughout the church are being lit with impossible speed.
The long, skinny candles on taper stands ignite as well.
I try and spot Hayden, but other than the occasional dark blur, I can’t see him.
A heavy clatter of brass has me facing the front of the church, where Hayden is lighting the large white candles atop the altar. His hand twitches, and the burgundy altar cloth is swept cleanly from beneath the weighty brass candle holders and solid gold cross.
“I couldn’t find any robes or blankets,” he says. Hayden’s suddenly kneeling in front of me, as if by magic, wrapping the thin linen around my shoulders. “If you’re still cold, I can think of something else.” I gaze into his deep violet eyes, blinking in soft awe.
“You thirsty? You need some water?” he says quietly.
“I need answers,” I plead. “You’ve saved me three times now.”
Hayden looks up at me. A crack splinters in his mask, and I catch a peek at a pain and grief so vast, I flinch. He gets up and turns his back to me.
“If only it were enough.”
It’s so low, there’s no question he’s talking to himself. But I need him to talk to me. I stand up, pad across the stone floor in my bare feet. I reach up, touch his cheek. He closes his eyes.
“So, you’re a vampire,” I say.
He blinks, gazes down at me. But there’s something in the way Hayden is looking at me now—careful, searching, almost wary—that makes my stomach twist. I have the sudden sense that there’s more he’s not telling me.
There’s another layer beyond this one, something heavier he’s bracing himself to drop.
“Do you feel better, by the way? Now that we’re in here?” Hayden asks. He sounds odd. Almost dreamy. “You used to like thunderstorms. Said it felt like the earth giving you permission to be yourself.”
I frown, feeling a little dizzy. That’s exactly how I feel. But…
“I’ve never said that to you.”
Hayden steps out of my reach, pinning me with grave, dark eyes.
“No,” he says. “Not in this life.”
“What?” I breathe. “What does that mean?”
Hayden is quiet for a long beat. Thunder rolls, low and distant around us. When he finally speaks, his voice is stripped bare.
“This isn’t the first life I’ve known you in, Rose.”
The words land wrong, tilt the world on its axis.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You come back,” he continues softly. “Again and again. You live, you grow, you love. Then you die. And eventually, you return, and I find you again.”
The world tilts a little, my vision going hazy. I shake my head.
“Breathe, Rose,” Hayden says. My knees are aching on the cold ground. I don’t remember falling. Hayden’s kneeling in front of me. I grab his arm, sucking in a harsh breath.
“When did we meet?” I gasp. “The first time, when did we meet?”
Hayden swallows hard, his eyes boring into mine.
“Two hundred—” he says in a slow rasp.
“Two hundred?” I cry out, and Hayden cuts me off.
“I wasn’t finished. Two hundred and six years, twenty-nine days, eight hours, and three minutes ago.”
“That’s the moment you first saw me?” I ask, blinking very hard. I feel like I’m fighting not to faint.
“No,” Hayden says, soft as I’ve ever heard him. “No, that’s when you first told me your name.”
Something goes quiet inside me. I lift my eyes to him.
“Please,” I whisper. “Please, Hayden, tell me everything.” I touch his elbow, and he whirls, taking my hand in both of his, the expression on his face open and fierce.
“We first met in 1820. You have to understand; I was a monster before I met you.” Hayden’s face contorts, full of hatred.
His fangs are nearly completely retracted, tiny points glinting just past his top lip.
“I was already a vampire then, one hundred years old. I treated humans like”—he shakes his head, lets out a thick, mirthless laugh—“like food. Stick ’em with a straw, suck ’em down.
Leave them crumpled husks.” Hayden drops my hand, turns away like he can’t bear to look at me.
“I was…I was hunting your father when I saw you. And you were kind. Curious. Sad…but hopeful. I couldn’t stop watching you, and you saw me in the forest, but you didn’t run—you never run, do you?
—and you came to me, dress covered in dirt, ribbon falling from your hair.
You smiled at me and you were…” Hayden looks over his shoulder at me, his eyes glistening and soft. “So, so beautiful.”
All my breath leaves me, the floatiest, warmest feeling filling my veins. Hayden’s face crumples and he turns back to face the altar. He tips his head back, gazing up at the magnificent rosewood cross.
“We fell in love,” he whispers. “I was the happiest I’d ever been in my existence. But then you were killed. Taken from me.” The grief in his voice is so raw it hurts to hear.
“What?” I breathe, my heart pounding, my head swimming.
“It happened the day before your nineteenth birthday. I was getting you a present three towns away,” he says.
“Your screams still haunt me…I’d never moved so fast in my life.
But it was already too late. By the time I got there, your throat had been slit.
Your body was already so cold, but I couldn’t let you go. ”
“Oh, H-Hayden,” I hiccup.
Hayden laughs ruefully as he shoves the heel of his hand against his eye.
His palm comes away wet. “No one had seen who’d done it.
No description to go off of. I couldn’t even pick up a scent.
I wandered the country like some sort of beast, searching for your killer.
I searched for years, obsessed. And then one day, thousands of miles from where I first laid eyes on you, I saw the only thing in this universe that would stop my single-minded search for your killer. ”
“What?” I can’t stop trembling.
“You,” he finally says. “I saw you. Wiping dust off your cheek as you hauled a bucket of water up from a well. Of course, I didn’t believe it at first. Thought I was hallucinating.
I approached you, asking if you could spare a cup of water for a thirsty stranger.
You did. When I asked who I should thank, you said, ‘The rain, obviously. But you can thank Rose in the meantime.’ I couldn’t speak. ”
I can hardly breathe. My heart aches.
“How is that possible?” I ask.
Hayden’s eyes drop to his hands. He inspects them, turning his wrists this way and that, staring at some phantom thing only he can see.
“I didn’t understand it at first. I didn’t question it.
I thought maybe the universe had given you back to me.
I wanted to believe that so badly. And then…
” His voice drops to almost nothing. “You were killed. Again.”
“How?” I ask.
“Someone poisoned your stew,” he says quietly.
The world tilts. I nearly lose my balance.
“Lamb stew?” I gasp.
Hayden’s head snaps up, eyes flaring.
“Yes. Yes, how did you know?”