“But—”
“And I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Lysander, I’m…” I was torn between fear and confusion. He was acting too calm about this.
“Don’t worry, I’m not mad,” he said, raising his hand to quiet me. “You have acted very maturely about this. I should have let you come make peace sooner. For that, I am sorry.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I wasn’t in trouble.
He motioned for me to walk with him.
“You are a special case, Alyssa. Most mortals are turned knowing full well what they’re getting themselves into.”
We found a bench along the walkway and took a seat.
“Normally, when we wish to turn someone, it is because they mean something to us beforehand. There is plenty of time to let them know the sacrifice they will be making. To warn them of the difficulties they might face. You weren’t given this opportunity.”
I thought about my friend; she must have made it to my home by now and found the apartment empty.
Would she go looking for me? Would she understand my meaning when she saw the photo al-bum? Would she understand the message I was trying to convey? If only I could have said something to her. Just one last conversation to say good-bye.
“Please try not to dwell on your mortal life,” Lysander cautioned, interrupting my train of thought. He was right. I was dwelling. I didn’t want to give up ties to my old life.
I had not been given a choice. I had not been prepared for this sacrifice.
It was easy to deal with the loss of my apartment and job; but my friends, on the other hand, had been like family. It was hard to accept that I could no longer call on them for support. I could no longer share in the good memories or be there as comfort for the bad ones. To be dead to them was the hardest sacrifice to make.
“I don’t know if I could have prepared myself for this,” I said. Tears welled up again in my eyes. My chest ached with sadness. “I wouldn’t have asked for this.”
I wiped my face, trying not to let the tears run down.
“It is a lot to ask of anyone. Giving up your life is something that most are unable to do. I am proud of your strength, that you have dealt with this so well.”
Lysander’s words were comforting. He gently wiped a tear from my face.
I looked up, finding his eyes; the faintest hint of emotion was there, just below the surface.
“Did you ever go back and say good-bye to your life?” I asked.
“Yes.” He put his arm around me and pulled me in close. “We all go back and say good-bye in our own way. I visited my family’s home and looked in on them once, but never spoke to them again. I knew, just as you do, that it would do more harm than good to tell them what had happened to me.”
I nestled my head into his chest, listening to the faint beat of his heart. It was good to know that Lysander, too, had shared my pain.
“I’m sorry I did this to you,” he whispered.
“Oh, no, please don’t think I resent what you have done for me. I’m glad you saved me that night,” I said, pulling away slightly to show him the sincerity in my face. He’d been my savior. Even though I was saddened by the loss of my mortal life and friends, I knew he’d given me a second chance at life.
“I shouldn’t have let it get that far, and for that I am sorry. I should have stopped them before they hurt you.”
That thought had crossed my mind more than once during the past week. But there was no use dwelling on that fact. You can’t change the past. As much as I wanted to complain, it would do no good.
“I’m still alive, and that’s what’s important,” I said, in a small attempt to return the comforting gesture.
“You would not be talking to me right now if I had taken care of them before they hurt you.” Lysander was beginning to sound as depressed as I felt. “You would have gone on with your life, completely unaware of our existence.”
“Yeah, and maybe, next week or the week after, I would have been attacked by some other stranger.” I gave Lysander a goofy smile, trying to lighten the mood. One sad vampire was enough, and I didn’t like the depressed look on his face. “If you hadn’t noticed, I don’t really protect myself that well.”
Lysander returned my smile. “You do have a point there.”
I loved that smile. He really was a handsome man. And I felt pretty lucky to be stuck with him. Lysander pulled me in close again. His faint heartbeat lulled me. I snuggled in tight against him.
“I’ll get used to this,” I said softly.
“Can you?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
As long as you’re here with me
.
“Really?”
“Yeah, it’s not so bad.”
“You’re not a very good liar.”
“No, really. I’m happy to be alive and here with you.” It wasn’t a lie. I was happy to still be alive, and I did enjoy his presence, when we weren’t arguing. “I just need a little more time to get used to things.”
“You have all the time in the world.”
“I just wish there was some way I could say good-bye.”
Lysander’s chest expanded as he sucked in a deep breath. I could tell that this constant dwelling on my old life frustrated him. “There is nothing you can say that will make her or any other mortal understand. She will find the photo you left out. She will come to the conclusion that you are gone. Don’t torture yourself or her by leaving any more uncertainty out there.”
I nodded against his chest, not wanting to speak.
Lysander always seemed to be right about things; an advantage of his age, perhaps. It would be much easier for my friends to accept my death than an explanation that I was a newborn vampire stalking the streets of Las Vegas. There really was no gentle way to break that kind of news to someone. If she thought I was dead, the healing process could start for her. I remembered Crystal’s comforting words. I was thankful Fallon was alive and well, and even if I couldn’t see her or any other of my old friends, I knew they were still out there, living their lives.
Lysander took my hand; his finger ran lightly across the top of my ring.
“What is this?”
I looked down. “It was my mom’s. She gave it to me a long time ago.”
“I see.”
“I don’t want to lose it. It’s the last thing I have of her. The last—”
“Keep it. There is no harm in taking a small memento. Let this be it, okay? Let the rest go.”
I looked back towards the spot where I had been attacked. I knew I needed to let go. I needed to leave my old life here, behind me, and move on.
“I think I’m ready to go now, Lysander,” I whispered.
CHAPTER 17
* * * * *
I’d impressed Lysander with my ability to deal with the loss of my mortal life and my eagerness to continue learning our ways.
My skills were developing fast. Our senses and abilities were supposed to grow with age. Ac-cording to Lysander, it could be years before I would be able to accurately read a mortal’s thoughts. Perhaps more than a century before I could peer into the mind of an immortal. However, at this point, it required almost no effort to look at someone and instantly discern what he or she was feeling.
I was happy with this empathic ability and worked to focus it whenever I was near enough to someone to use it. I focused on the clan, Lysander, and anyone near enough for me to use as a test subject.
Besides the strange warmth that accompanied Lysander’s presence, I sensed happiness and a desire to be close. You would never know this by his outward appearance. His expression rarely gave way to the feelings he kept locked deep inside.
I couldn’t deny I had my own warm feelings for Lysander; but, after the embarrassment of our previous kiss, I wasn’t going to make such a forward move again.
Still, I loved that he would smile at me as he rose every evening. Each time, I wanted to lean in and kiss him, but I wouldn’t let myself. I sometimes wondered if he shared my quiet desire and just didn’t want to act on it. Was there a secret reason he held back? Some unknown fear of commitment?
A few days had passed since saying good-bye to my mortal life when I found myself alone in the house with Lysander. The clan members were all out in the city on their own, enjoying its plethora of entertainments.
Lysander sat in the dining room. He’d spent the last couple of days camped out there, papers sprawled all over the table and a large book in front of him.
Normally, I would have left him alone to his writing, but curiosity got the better of me. He seemed so engrossed, passionately scrawling words across a page of the large book.
I sensed a mix of emotions, some happy and some sad. They filled the space around him, like an aura surrounding his body. Whatever he was writing had a connection deep inside of him. Having only seen brief glimpses of true emotion in Lysander, this new sensation piqued my curiosity.
I walked behind him, peering over his shoulder. There was a drawing of a woman that looked like me.
This must have been what he was working on a few nights ago.
His talent for drawing, in my opinion, outmatched his ability to write. Every sketch I saw of his seemed to come alive on the page. I grinned, admiring the picture. It was like staring into a mirror. He had captured every small detail: each long strand of red hair, the high arch of my widow’s peak, the faint smile lines around my mouth, and the full pout of my lips. I’d always been given compliments on how naturally full my lips were.
Next to the picture was the word
rebirth
.
I was flattered he was writing about me, though it should not have surprised me. Lysander wrote down everything. He had a passion for writing and the ‘documenting of living history,’ as he put it.
I heard him say so many times, with sadness, that Kallisto had his original work. According to him, there was so much more of his history documented than he was able to scribble into the old and weathered tome he’d showed me earlier.
This book he wrote in, though old, was much less worn than the previous book. My picture and the words he wrote fell toward the end of this tome, telling me it couldn’t have held more than a century or two of his recent writings.
I hovered over Lysander a bit too long, and I felt him stealing glances at me from the corner of his eye.
“Do you need something, Alyssa?” he asked gruffly.
I sat down next to him. “Sorry, I just noticed your drawing.”
“It’s a crude likeness,” he said, a note of sarcasm in his voice. “But it is not the picture that matters as much as the story that goes with it.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “You’re very talented.”
“I should be, after a few thousand years of practice.”
I giggled. “I guess practice does make perfect then.”
He returned to focusing on his work as I glanced over at the words he had written under the title.
Fate brings us opportunities when we least expect it.
I had not made an attempt to turn another in more than a century. The memories of the deaths of my previous children haunted me. For years, I was destined to be alone. I had resigned myself unto this fate, the punishment for my own desire for freedom.
As fate would have it, I happened across a pair of very appealing strangers one night on my evening hunt. Their minds were filled with thoughts of sexual conquest and their energy was a succulent mix of power and adrenaline. I savored the thought of their blood as I peered into their minds. They planned their attack, not knowing they would soon be my prey. Morbid curiosity stopped me from acting before it was too late, and Alyssa became their prey before I took my chance to attack.
I regret that my fascination with the brutality of their attack prevented me from stopping them before they had done too much damage. I should have acted before she crossed their paths.
She was an innocent. A young woman. Too young to die.
I knew she was far too injured to survive if I left her. My sloth in attacking would be the cause of her innocent death, and I could not allow it. She did not deserve death, so I granted her immortality.
The sincerity in his words was so refreshing. It seemed the wall he’d built up around himself couldn’t hide emotions from his written words. Perhaps there was some real feeling there.
I reread the passage again.
The memories of the deaths of my previous children haunted me. For years, I was destined to be alone.
“What happened to your other children? You’ve been alone for a long time, haven’t you?” I asked cautiously.
I had a feeling. Intuition. I knew what the answer would be before I’d even asked the question. The warning we had received from Edmond and the prior history lesson Lysander had given me was enough to tell me Kallisto had had something to do with it.
“I do not wish to talk about it, Alyssa.” His voice sounded hoarse, as if he struggled to keep the emotion down. “You do not need to know those details.”
I sensed the ache in Lysander’s heart. It must cause him physical pain to bury the memories, and I was just drawing them out with my questioning. His reaction confirmed my suspicion.
I leaned over, wrapping my arms around him in a comforting embrace. “Forget I said anything. I’m sorry I mentioned it.”
Lysander returned the gesture. I felt his muscles relax as he let out a deep breath.
We sat there for a moment, wordlessly holding one another before I released him. I pulled back, finding his eyes and held their gaze, admiring the beautiful flecks of blue.
This time, to my surprise, it was he who leaned in and gently pressed his lips to mine. The flood of emotions came rushing to the surface like an electric charge.
He tightened his arms around me, embracing me, guiding me closer to his body as our lips and tongues danced together.
I lost myself in the moment, knowing the desire was truly mutual between us.
His lips were soft and sweet. I could have spent an eternity kissing them. Flames of desire ignited inside of me.
Without warning, he pulled away. “No, we can’t do this,” he said, turning away from me. He covered his mouth with his hand.