Chapter 33
This is what it feels like to die.
It’s the only thing I remember from my two hundred years of reincarnation. This interminable, cold black. The taffy-like stretch of time. How an instant feels like a century, how the years fold like a blanket, different points touching each other.
Oh, then there’s this.
The pain.
Each cell dying slowly. The terrifying scrambling that happens when there’s a slow ratchet up of suffering, when you’re sure you can’t weather it getting worse and then it crescendoes in a burst of agony.
I can’t escape it. Right now, I’m writhing, fighting, fleeing, but I know from experience there’s no saving me from this.
Isn’t that messed up? That this is the only knowledge I carried with me from my past lives? That in the end, now that I’ve breathed my last, there was no sweet memory with Hayden I could take with me? That it was only blood and death?
But now something else is breaking through. Not death. Him. Memories I’ve never had before, never been allowed to keep, rise up all at once.
The secret handshake we came up with together in the early nineties. The double clap, the snap, the wiggly fingers at the end.
I remember how I teased him for accidentally ripping the armrest off his chair during the “devil face flash” moment when we watched The Exorcist.
During our first life together, he’d had to ask me three times to marry him.
The first time, he was so nervous, he fumbled and dropped the ring into the ocean.
The second time, he hadn’t bothered to ask my father because “he was just a human.” Boy, had he regretted that one.
The third time, he set up a picnic with my favorite foods.
Had Winston deliver the invitation. When I turned back from the sunset to find him on his knee, I thought, I never knew vampires could sweat.
I tucked my smile into my hand. Let him sweat a minute longer.
Sometimes, apex predators need to be taken down a peg. Especially apex predators like Hayden Caldwell.
I can picture the wedding, that beautiful disaster. And the wedding night. The wedding night!
I remember how in the early 1900s he hated the song “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and I found it so annoying that he couldn’t tolerate a simple song that I’d whistle it constantly, just to get under his skin.
I remember the tearful fight in the rain when I begged him not to fight in the First World War, and he told me he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t fight to protect me. Our lingering goodbye kiss on the train platform, the last time I saw him in that life.
And I remember all the boring in-between moments.
The quiet mortar that joins bricks, the load-bearing pillars of love.
Hayden bringing me a glass of water when I was coughing in the next room.
Hemming pants on one end of the sofa while Hayden read the newspaper on the other.
A whole day spent in companionable silence together doing errands, Hayden a patient sentinel at my shoulder as I appraised the bruises on apples, Hayden handing me clothespins as we hung the wash to dry outside, the gentle clink of plates as we washed and dried after dinner.
This is what I hope to take with me to wherever I’m going, whatever comes after. The memory of Hayden’s face, soft and content, as he dries a metal fork with a dishrag. After all, he’s a vampire. He could conquer the world, move mountains, dive to the greatest depths of our unexplored ocean.
But instead, he chose boring nights in the kitchen with me, chopping basil and garlic—because, I currently remember, that is a vampire myth, the whole garlic thing.
He chose milking cows and scrubbing out the pails with me in Australia.
Hayden could have been drinking the blood of kings, but instead, his boots squished right alongside mine in Ireland when we walked to the bog to cut peat.
He never liked the smell, that loamy, rotting, damp scent probably so much worse to a vampire, but he rarely complained.
This is why I need to remember. Because this is love. Proof that it was not Delia or fate or anything more than just two souls choosing each other, over and over.
I hope to god I remember when I pass to the next place. I hope it’s not all darkness. I hate the dark.
A sharp agony shoots through me, and my soul screams.
Stay with me, says the memory of Hayden’s voice. I’m right here. You have to come back. Winston will never forgive me if you don’t.
The voice is bright. Dazzling. I want to stay near it.
Around me, the darkness makes an earthy, tectonic shift. There’s a sucking pull at my soul, a vacuum somewhere opposite to the voice.
Fight it, the voice says. I don’t know if the voice belongs to my soul or Hayden’s.
Doesn’t matter—I listen. Fight with every dying cell in my body. Claw my way back, like I have done over and over and over.
There’s a ripping sound, and I realize I’m that sound.
It’s like Velcro, and now I get it, now I understand—my soul has been clinging to all these different parts of the universe.
These different times and places. My bouncy human soul.
But now it’s all coming together. I’m snapping back to myself, growing strong.
It’s agony. But that’s a good thing, I think. It means I’m going the right way.
I claw my way toward the light, toward the pinprick that’s getting smaller and smaller in the distance. I shove away the beckon of rest and promise of peaceful sleep, and fight like absolute hell.
When I’m close enough, I leap into the shrinking grain of light.
—
I take a ragged, shuddery gasp of air.
In that single breath, I can taste a distant snow, ozone, dust from the central heating, cedar and fir woodsmoke, the faint unpleasantness of dead fish and taurine.
I blink my eyes open, immediately squeeze them back shut with a hiss—it’s very, very bright.
A soft, fuzzy warmth bumps against my palm. The roaring thrum of a kitten’s purr.
“Winston?” When it doesn’t hurt, my hand goes to my chest. It’s whole. No wounds.
I hear a door slam. Sloppy, clumsy footsteps rush closer, and the door to the bedroom bursts open.
Gentle hands are suddenly all over me, my face, my neck, my chest.
“Rose,” Hayden chokes. I can hear the tears in his voice. I have no words for what I’m feeling, so all I can do is inch my hands to his face and pull his mouth to mine. I swallow his sobs, and he swallows mine as we kiss and kiss.
Winston’s meow breaks us apart. I’m still scared to open my eyes.
“Your footsteps are so loud,” I mutter. “And my eyes hurt when I open them.”
“You’ll get used to your senses faster than you think. Come on. Try. Open your eyes.”
When I finally lift my lids, look into Hayden’s deep indigo eyes, I’m slammed by the entire weight of my full soul. I cling to him, gasping, tears clouding my vision.
“Hayden,” I rasp. “Hayden, I remember. I remember everything.”
“I’m glad,” he says slowly, “but every vampire keeps the memory of their human life.”
“No,” I say. “No, I mean, I remember.” Hayden’s face crumples for a moment. He blinks very fast. Swallows hard. I think he knows what I mean but he’s too scared to believe it.
“What?” He clears his throat. “Which…?”
I surge up into his arms, wrap myself around him. I press my forehead to his.
“We sat in Prospect Park in the 1930s reading comics from the Dubble Bubble wrappers. I dropped your favorite teacup in Australia, and you were so upset, but you kept it. It was in the vault. We’ve made love in nearly every ocean, and one time a jellyfish stung me during.
“It’s real, Hayden. Nothing’s ever been more real than our love.
Every life, I’ve loved you more and more, and you have too.
You have too. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’ve made it through the transformation—because we always find each other.
Turns out you were wrong.” I press a kiss to both of his tear-filled eyelids, to his top and bottom lip, parted in wonder. “Our love can conquer death.”
Hayden chokes, shaking his head. That’s when I notice the shadows beneath his eyes, the mess of his hair. He must have been in agony for however long the change was happening. But when he looks up at me, he seems reborn. Saved.
“Rose,” he murmurs. “You’re my miracle.” Hayden kisses me, hard and fervent. “This is it now, you know. No more curse. Both of us immortal.” He pulls back. “We’ll never lose each other again.”
I’m flooded with a warmth so perfect, so beautiful, it scares me. I lean forward to whisper in his ear.
“You should ask me to marry you.”
“I know. I should do it right. On one knee, all that.”
“Yeah?” I lean back just enough so our eyes meet. “You’re not gonna ask my father? A human?” Hayden frowns. But then understanding flickers over his eyes, and he looks embarrassed.
“Oh god,” he says. “You really do remember everything.” He bites his lip, looking suddenly giddy. “God. You remember everything. I never dreamed…” Hayden’s eyes fall shut. “Yeah. I’ll ask you to marry me again. A million times, how about that? That enough?”
“It’s a good start,” I say, leaning in for a kiss.
Beside us, Winston curls up to sleep, and to my new vampire sensibilities, his purrs are deafening.