Kindred (16 page)

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you, or not?” he says, skipping all of the in-between talk that would’ve eventually led to what he really came out here for.

I pause and breathe in deeply and finally turn my head fully to see him at my side.

“Yes, I’ll tell you,” I say and he looks a little shocked that I gave in so easily.

I need this, to be able to get it out in the open. It’s risky though because I’ll have to tell Harry all about the night I was Viktor Vargas’ prisoner. About the things that Sibyl told me.

When it comes to the dark secret of Aramei, Trajan and Viktor, I know there are ways around that, that I don’t really have to tell Harry about it. But I want to. I need to. It’s hard carrying this burden alone.

“I need to tell you everything that happened that night,” I say, staring intently at him. “But you have to swear on your life and mine that you won’t repeat any of it.”

Harry’s mischievous and lighthearted nature is tucked away now and he looks at me with such determination and loyalty. He knows this isn’t the time for anything else, that what I’m about to tell him is important and that he should listen carefully.

He nods his promise and I know I can trust him.

I gaze out at the field and think back to that night more vividly than I ever have because I had always tried to forget about it, to tuck it away in the darkest folds of my memory. And I tell Harry everything, every last detail no matter how significant or small. I tell him how afraid I was and how it was then, in the clutches of death, that I came to understand just how dangerous this life is and that I know I can never go back to the way things were if I ever wanted to. When my life was seemingly simple, despite having a drunk for a step-dad and a vulnerable, love-hungry wreck of a mother. I explain to Harry how the Blood Bond works—how Sibyl told me it worked and even how Isaac told me it worked when I visited Aramei in the cave—and that immortality never comes without a cost. A very high cost. And I tell him about Aramei, about how fragile she is in mind, body and soul and that just being in her presence is an overwhelming experience that I’ll never forget. And I tell him about the mysterious ancient book and about Trajan and Viktor and Nataša and how even though I couldn’t read the language, I got the worst feeling from the drawings that screamed at me from its pages.

And I tell Harry about how Trajan protects Viktor because in doing so, he protects Aramei, the love of his life.

For once, Harry cannot speak. Instead, he stares out into the field with me and I can only wonder what thoughts and images float through his mind. I can sense his emotions, all of which I share: disbelief, shock, sadness and resentment, among others. He must be thinking about Daisy, too, and maybe what this means for her, if she’s in any danger because of her father’s choices.

We sit here, Harry and I, on top of the roof for a long time and finally the sun begins to slip quietly behind the trees.

Harry looks over at me, a storm of questions on his face, but he can’t seem to decide on which one to ask first.

“What is the main reason you’re telling me all of this stuff?” he finally says. He seems afraid of my answer, knowing just by my demeanor and the sheer poison of the mood that there is, in fact, a reason and that it can’t be anything good.

I draw my knees up toward my chest and wrap my arms around my legs, my shoes propped against the shingles in a slight downward angle to hold my weight. In the sky a faint orange and pink hue lingers until finally the shadows pull it away and leave only darkness. The stars flicker on here and there until it’s dark enough to see an expanse above me full of them, but this time I can’t give them the attention they deserve.

“When I woke up in the room with Viktor, I noticed…,” I say in pause, looking out ahead, “I told you something had happened to me. I know I must’ve been injured in the wreck, but someone bandaged me up pretty good.”

Harry just listens. I feel his eyes on me the whole time.

“In just a few days,” I go on, “the wound healed up and even now there’s only a faint scar left to prove it was there. It’s not natural. I sliced my knee open on the lid of a green bean can when I was twelve. Five stitches, a tetanus shot and a lot of discomfort and that took
weeks
to heal.” I pull my pant leg up to show him. “The scar’s worse than the one on my stomach and that one had
twelve
stitches.”

Harry looks at the scar on my knee, but I doubt he really sees it much. Aside from it being dark, he’s too engrossed in the story and anticipating what all of this will mean.

“I can’t believe Viktor is alive….” Harry’s voice is distant. It’s like he’s not even talking to me when he says this; his mind is somewhere else, in that dark, abysmal place where all shocking realizations go when first discovered.

I pull my pant leg back down and bring my knee back up to sit the way I was before.

“I think Viktor fed me his blood the first night I was there,” I say and it stings as badly as I thought it would. “I think I’ve been bonded to him and I hate myself for it.”

I hear Harry’s breath release as if he had been holding it in for a long time. The air is stiff with silence and regret.

“And I can’t let Isaac know,” I add, my voice softer and more deeply affected by my own words. It feels like tears are burning in my chest.

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what happened,” Harry says, looking over at me. “Really I think it depends on where the wound is and other stuff. Maybe the cut from the can caused an infection and it took longer to heal. You can’t really base your theory on that.” I can tell how unsure of his own explanation he is, but he’s doing his best to seek logic first rather than jump right into the worst case scenario.

“I’m not basing it only on that,” I say and his expression falls. “You know I’ve not been myself lately. Fainting spells. Weird suicidal mood swings like what I pulled with Nataša—that was
insane
, Harry!” I look at him fiercely for a moment. “And then the talking to myself—I think I’m going crazy. Just like Aramei, I think I’m starting to lose my mind and it scares me to death.”

Harry shakes his head harshly side to side and turns carefully around enough to face me so he can get his point across. “But you said that it was like fifty years or something before Aramei started losing her mind. For you it’s only been, what, like
eight months
since that happened?”

“Seven.”

He opens his hands, palms up. “Well then see?” he says. “I doubt he did that to you—and when was the last time you drank from any werewolf veins, huh?”

“I haven’t,” I admit.

“There’s something wrong with you, yes,” Harry says, putting his hands back on his knees, “but it’s likely more medical than anything else. You probably just need some iron pills and Thorazine.”

“Harry, that’s not funny.”

He forces the little grin away that tried to creep up at one corner of his mouth.

“I know,” he says, “but you can’t do this to yourself—Watch, you’ll go to the doctor tomorrow and they’ll have a perfectly logical diagnosis and then you’ll feel stupid that you ever let something like this get to you.”

I laugh under my breath, but find nothing about this actually amusing. “Well, I doubt they’ll diagnose me with anything
il
logical. Bloodbondicitis?” I roll my eyes.

“Okay,” Harry says, giving in to me a little, “maybe they can’t rule something like that out, but if they
do
diagnose you with something that makes perfect sense, then I think it’ll be safe to assume you don’t have anything worse to worry about.”

“Maybe so,” I say, still not convinced that any ‘logical diagnosis’ is possible anymore. “But
what if
, Harry?” I turn my gaze on him again, catching the glint of his eyes in the moonlight, the soft set of his jaw, the thickness of his eyebrows. “Let’s just pretend for a moment that Viktor
did
perform the Blood Bond with me, just like he did with Aramei—he wanted me as his mate bad enough to kidnap me—if he did it, I’d slowly lose my mind and know nothing of who I am, or who I wanted to be. I would become a mindless, unpredictable…
thing
…and—.” I stop abruptly, wishing that I could just choke back the words and the image of myself that they shaped in my mind.

Harry cups his hand atop my bended knee and pats it once. “Then Isaac would take care of you the way that Trajan takes care of Aramei,” he says with such finality and candor that for just a moment I’m able to see a brighter side to the whole thing. But the moment lasts only as long as it takes for the harsh reality of it all to flood my thoughts once more. The reality of being trapped in a body that can’t even bathe herself or understand simple, yet important things in life like shame and humility and inspiration.

“And maybe Isaac won’t
be
like his father,” I argue. “Already he’s nothing like his father, Harry. Trajan is cruel and only has a heart big enough for Aramei. He only
loves
Aramei. The world could burn down around him and as long as it was just him and Aramei left in it, he would be content.” Tears surface in the corners of my eyes, but still I manage to hold them back; the back of my throat and the spot between my eyes stings and itches and burns. “Maybe Isaac will love me
less
. Maybe he won’t love me
at all
. Maybe he’ll think of me as used, or tainted. He can never know about this, Harry.” My stare pierces through him at my side. “Do you understand? Isaac can never know.”

The tears break away and roll down my face, one trailing down the bridge of my nose. I reach up and wipe it away to relieve the itchiness it caused.

Harry scoots closer and wraps his arm around my back, grabbing my arm and pushing me to lay my head against his shoulder. “I don’t think you’re giving Isaac enough credit,” he says, rubbing his hand in a circular motion against the side of my upper arm. There is a long pause and then he says, “Adria, what scares you more? Losing your mind, or losing Isaac?”

I sniffle and raise my head. I had never thought of this before and for what feels like forever, I sit on the roof, finally staring up at the stars and I think about it. I think about how while growing up I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved at such a young age. My dad. My grandma. My mother. My sister. I think about what it really means to be loved, what it means to be able to love someone. I think about how often love has been taken away from me and how angry I am because of it.

“My mind,” I answer softly, gazing out in front of me at something that I don’t actually see. “I fear losing my mind more because the way I feel about someone else is the only thing in this world that I know I can control. I’ve accepted that I can’t make anyone love me. I couldn’t force my dad to stay. I could never make my mother understand that I loved her more than Jeff ever would and I couldn’t force my sister to love me more than Ashe.” I wipe all of my tears away stubbornly and I never look at Harry. “Even if Isaac ever stops loving me, I want to hold on to my right to love him for as long as I can.”

I’ve never opened up to anyone like this before. Not even Alex. Not even Isaac. I’ve never explored this part of my mind, until right now, in this moment with my best friend who seems to never let me down and always knows the right things to say.

I look up as headlights blur through the darkness at the end of my driveway and my demeanor changes quickly. I sniffle away the last of my tears and rub the tip of my finger underneath my eyes to wipe away any smeared mascara that might be there and I crawl out of this ridiculous, miserable moment that makes me feel exposed. And Harry understands that I don’t want to talk about love and control anymore, so he says nothing in response.

“You’re probably right, about the diagnosis,” I say, watching as Isaac’s Jeep—with a brand new windshield—drives past the mailbox.

“But none of it explains Genna,” I remind him.

“Yeah,” he says, “I admit that if anything really is ‘unexplained’, it’s that whole Genna Bishop thing—
that
freaked me out.”

Isaac’s headlights blink out after he kills the engine, leaving the front yard dark again and he gets out of the Jeep already knowing where I am. I hear his keys jangling just before he pushes them down in the front right pocket of his jeans. The motion light on the front porch flashes on as Isaac moves closer and he stands near the pool of silver light illuminating one half of Beverlee’s car parked out front. I wipe my face one more time, just in case.

He raises a hand and waves up at us casually. “Take your time, love,” he says from below. “I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

Isaac has never even slightly showed jealousy towards Harry and that’s just something else that I love about him. It’s not that Isaac doesn’t have that typical ‘human’ territorial instinct—he proved that two weeks ago when a senior, Mason Bragg, was hitting on me at school right in front of Isaac and Isaac stepped between us, staring Mason down with a look that needed no words. But Harry can do anything he wants. He can hang all over me, hug me, lay his head in my lap—it doesn’t matter because Isaac knows Harry’s heart. He knows
my
heart.

“I’ll be down in a second,” I say, waving back at him.

Isaac starts to head up the porch steps, but he stops and looks back up at us. “Oh and Harry,” he says, “Daisy wanted me to remind you to…bring your
thoughts
with you—whatever that means.”

Harry laughs quietly.