Chapter 55
Black Blood
Karson drove us toward home. Rain sheeted against the car windscreen; the wipers whipped across it but as quickly as they were cleared away it flooded again.
I stared out the side window. Numb, hungry, tired, disturbed.
Everything thrashed through my head. I thought of the cruelty witches were capable of.
Murdering whole families, including children.
The kitten. The three men Caron had led like pigs to the slaughter.
She knew Karson and Ethan would come, and the men would be killed, and she’d left them there anyway.
I was a witch. Not just any witch, a fighter. Born to kill.
I stared at my hands, sitting in my lap, clutched together.
Perfectly normal looking hands. Soft, sleek, hands.
Hands capable of writing, of stroking, of loving.
Those same hands were capable of hideous things.
Outside, I was the girl next door. Inside, under the folds of my skin was darkness—black blood.
I’d felt the difference, known something was inherently wrong. I had a terrible temper I couldn’t always contain. All those fights as a child that I told myself were self-defence. Truth was, I enjoyed it. I wanted to fight. I got a high out of seeing someone go down under my fists.
Watching goth girl slam the knife into BJ, I was furious; the rage burned so bright, if I had physically made it to the knife, I would have stabbed her.
I was a witch. Karson was a vampire.
He hated witches. And I was in love with him. Deeply and utterly transfixed by all he was. My head throbbed dully behind my eyes. I rubbed my hands over my face and fought not to cry.
“It’s been quite the day,” Karson said. I slid my eyes across to him. He seemed to be taking my measure.
His comment was grossly inadequate. “You think?”
Karson lifted his eyebrows as if annoyed by my response and kept his eyes trained on the road.
I sighed and rubbed my face again. I lifted my head and attempted some kind of peace. “What’s the difference between immortals and vampires, other than the obvious?”
“They are not as fast, nor as strong. They can’t read or control minds, every sense they have is way above a normal fragile, but it’s not as amplified as ours. They can repair themselves, but they die easier.”
“And your parents, they are immortals?” I asked gently, not entirely sure I wanted to know the answer.
“They were.”
I felt something twist inside. I wasn’t sure what to say to that, whether I should apologise for his loss or ask what happened.
A loss that very well may have occurred at the hands of witches.
I opened my mouth to ask but closed it again.
Like a coward, I remained quiet. I stared back out the side window, watching as my breath landed in ghostly mist against the pane and then disappeared.
The window misted, then cleared, another breath misted, then cleared, it was strangely relaxing.
“I can give you a wipe, so you can clean it as you go if you like?”
I twisted back. He sent me a half smile.
I smiled back weakly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get your window dirty.”
“It’s fine, Amelia. I do not think a bit of breath is going to hurt it, but if you start writing on it, I might have to protest.”
“Surely you would love ‘Amy was ‘ere,’ scrawled across your window.”
“I think we should leave that kind of high-class autographing to the kids on street walls and restroom doors, don’t you?”
“Maybe I could write ‘for a good time call . . .’”
He smiled, one of his beautiful smiles. He had the ability to lift a mood, take me to a happy place in an instant. He was extraordinary. I stared at him for a few heartbeats longer than normal, before dragging my eyes away.
He kept glancing at me, his face perched on the cusp of an unasked question. The silence was unbearable. I said, “Karson,” as he said, “Amelia.” We both paused and stared at each other awkwardly.
“You go,” I said.
He yanked the wheel suddenly and pulled into a hard shoulder by the road.
I sat staring straight ahead. The rain drummed on the roof and slid down the window like a watery blanket.
He flicked off the lights, peripherally I could see his hands gripped to the wheel tight.
He stared straight ahead, tense, consumed by thought.
“Thank you for coming today,” I said, when he didn’t speak, I stumbled over the right words. “I . . . I know it must be . . . now you know . . . I’m guessing you regret saving me?” And I prayed he didn’t.
His eyes broiled as if considering. I waited on bated breath for him to respond, it felt like an eternity before he said at last, “No, I do not regret it. I told you already I will not harm you, nor see you harmed.”
“Yes, but that was before you knew what I was.”
“The day we stopped for the deer I knew you were no normal girl, and then when you mentioned you remembered me running you out of the fire I knew for certain. At the Bite I knew you were important. They do not send their best fighters for just anyone.”
I bit my bottom lip. He knew what I was and still he came to save me. He must care for me in some manner? I was hesitant to hope for more, though I did.
The dark had been brought on early by the rain, and in the dim light, in the enclosed space, our trapped energies seemed to be magnified. I twisted my hands in my lap and stared at the dashboard like it held the answers to my plight.
He said, “I did not mean to upset you last night, I forget sometimes human bodies are so . . . weak. I would never deliberately hurt you.”
I looked at him baffled. “Weak?”
He misinterpreted my response as an affirmation.
“Yes, you are such delicate creatures,” he seemed mildly repelled.
There was a long pause then he said, “I have never met anyone like you, with the ability to get under my skin like you do, with such a lack of fear of me, and—” he stopped on the cusp of saying something, stared back out the window.
After a long moment he turned back. “I didn’t know how to handle it, I tried to scare you.
I didn’t do it to hurt you. I would never . . . at least, I would never mean to.”
He paused. I waited for him to continue, but when he didn’t, I spoke. “Is this your way of apologizing? Because if it is, you kind of suck at it.”
He frowned. “I never apologize, Amelia. I’m merely trying to explain myself.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You never apologize?”
“What’s done is done. It’s always done for a reason, I cannot second guess my decisions, it does not change the fact. Apologizing is a human thing, it’s absurd.”
I shook my head slowly, trying to make sense of his thought process, it seemed so ridiculous to me, I almost laughed. “Well, if you’re not apologizing why the need to bring it up then?”
He scowled. “I told you why.”
“Just so I would understand why you did it?”
He nodded.
“In my world, when you do the wrong thing you apologize, it doesn’t change the fact, but if it’s sincere, it helps the person you have wronged feel less hurt over the incident. Everyone makes mistakes, our actions afterward determine the depth of our character.”
We stared at each other, trying to understand each other’s world, read each other’s minds.
“It was improper,” he said at last.
“It was completely inappropriate and unacceptable,” I agreed.
There was a flicker of what looked like regret and guilt flash across his face. He wiped at a speck of non-existent dust on the dashboard.
“You shifted my position to a wall with speed and you yelled at me, Karson. You didn’t hurt me .
. . physically anyway,” I added. His brow flicked once, a small movement like a butterfly testing its wing before its first launch.
It was the only indication my words may have hurt him a little.
I waited for him to speak, yet nothing came.
Annoyed I said, “What do you expect me to say, it’s okay? Because it’s not.”
“Do you think you can find it in yourself to forgive me?” he asked.
That comment took me by surprise. I never thought he would care about someone’s thoughts of him, he lived in a world of violence. It was normal for him to use strength as force. I could see a torment in his eyes, it was an apology of sorts.
“You saved me today, so we’ll call it even,” I conceded.
“Actually, I have saved you three times now, so you owe me two.” His lips tweaked up.
I felt my eyebrows lift. “Actually. I stopped that man from digging a knife into your back, so I saved you.”
“I can assure you the knife would not have make it through the fabric of my shirt, but I will allow you that one, so you owe me one.”
“I’m sure I’ll find a way to pay you back.”
He smiled, his mind surely swiftly turning to places I didn’t intend.
Flabbergasted and blushing with embarrassment, I laughed nervously. “That’s not, I didn’t . . . I’m hungry,” I said, annoyed with myself. “Could we please find somewhere to eat?”
He laughed, a soft and breezy sound. He started the car, turned on the beams. Darkness had descended and fallen upon us, as if a velvet cloak had dropped from the sky, and rain thundered against the roof.
I hadn’t even noticed the rain increase to become a deafening roar, or the daylight’s complete demise.
When I was with him time moved past unnoticed, as if we were absorbed, intertwined, in a separate sphere of our own making.
“I have already ordered takeout Italian I hope that’s okay?” he said as he pulled out onto the road.
I nodded.
He kept glancing at me, with a concerned expression, and it seemed a withheld comment, or an unanswered question, settled on his lips. He stared straight ahead, his fingers gripped tightly to the wheel, his Adam’s apple raked up and down his throat.
Inside, I clenched. “What now?”