She smiled broadly at me. We had not done this for quite some time, and I knew she missed it as much as I did. She stepped forward and slipped into my arms, and I led her around. She rested her head against my chest, sighing happily. We allowed the music to carry us for a while, and then I broke the spell.
“Do you want to know more about Sembur’s gift to us?”
She looked up at me, distracted. “We can enter the houses of our victims by turning into mist, and we can talk to each other without using our mouths. We’re closer. Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful, but what could beat that?”
I laughed. “There’s a way you can use it that’s really obvious, but we haven’t tried it because up until now you’ve still been adjusting to using your mind to speak.” I didn’t want to mention how dangerous it was. I was well used to it. Bronwyn had had some trouble mastering it, mostly the fine art of not broadcasting to everyone within earshot.
“Okay.”
“I think it’s best if you lie down for this. I need you to concentrate with no distractions.”
I pushed her to the bed. I lay down, taking her with me, then pulled her in close so she was using me as a pillow.
I snuck a quick look at her—curiosity was vivid in her fiery green eyes. “Okay, push your mind toward mine.”
“That’s easy.”
“Shh.” I needed silence to be able to do what we were about to do. I relaxed as best I could, and then dug around in every nook and cranny of my brain for everything that was me. No words, just emotion, memory, color, instinct, sounds—basically everything people normally used for thought.
I felt the feather light touch of Bronwyn’s mind, circling around the things I brought forward.
I heard her speak in my head and my ears. Both voices were soft and wondering. “Oh my God. Is that you, Crowley?”
“Yes, it is.” I dropped the concentration to speak to her normally.
It was too much effort to keep both things together. “That’s the other facet to Sembur’s gift. It’s not just words I can broadcast, it’s other stuff too.” I leant up on one elbow and watched her carefully.
“Normally, all you would use the telepathy for is to control your victims and animals. No more than that. Apparently that was a vampire law that Sembur was first taught about when he became one of us. It was a law that he had forgotten about and unknowingly broke when he was testing the limits of his telepathy with Kilkenny.”
I paused to allow it to sink in. Bronwyn nodded, frowning.
“All right,” I said, making sure I still had her full attention.
“Remember, vampire love is all about emotion, since sex can’t enter into the equation anymore. I once told you that vampire marriages are forever, and this is why. The law was made for a reason, a very good reason. When Kilkenny and Sembur did what we are about to do, they somehow fused together. She is a part of him and he a part of her and they can’t separate.”
“I don’t quite see what you’re saying.”
“It means that when Sembur withdrew from Kilkenny’s mind, he left a part of himself behind. It’s difficult to describe, but it’s kind of like an awareness of the other person. If he wants her, all he has to do is call down the link they have together and she comes to him. It works the other way as well.”
She looked at me expressionlessly. “Are you asking me if I want to try this with you?”
“Yes.”
She rolled over and propped up her head with her hand, so we were eye to eye.
“First of all, there’s more here that you aren’t telling me, isn’t there? How did you get Sembur to help us with Aristotle? I never saw you look for him, or call him, or use any other normal means of communication to get to him. You have a link with him, don’t you?
Why did it take so long for him to reach us?”
“Yes, we have a link. It happened when he made me into a vampire.” I smiled. “I used it to call him when we were at the fountain in Kings Cross. He kept an eye on us after that but he was a long way away and it took time for him to reach us. After all, he can’t just get on a plane and fly to the other side of the world.”
Bronwyn stared at me, taken slightly aback. “Okay. That was easier than I thought it would be.”
“What’s the point in lying? If you agree to do this, it’s not going to work on you anymore, is it?”
She nodded, silent for a moment. “What do you mean, if? Why wouldn’t I agree to do this with you?”
“I don’t know. I thought it might be too much for you.”
“Too much for me? How? After all the shit we’ve been through, this is a real walk in the park.”
I got a little angry. “This is something huge and irreversible. You are going to be with me for potentially thousands of years. It’s not a small, trifling thing. We both have to be sure we don’t want to do this because we’re afraid of being alone. I want to do this because I love you and I want more out of a relationship with you, in the way that vampires do it.”
Bronwyn smiled. “That’s not my fear. I’m not like you that way.
I’m not afraid of the future and never have been. Things always work out for the best, and it doesn’t really matter if it’s something you think is horrible at the time. I want to do this for exactly the same reason you do.”
I reined in my anger. The criticism, at heart, was true—but only in the past. I’d always clung to the past, but I wasn’t prepared to do that anymore. It was time for me to live. It was as though I’d been given a second chance with Bronwyn.
“You see the world through the eyes of youth.” I held up a hand to silence her. “As life goes on, it becomes more difficult to live because you do get stuck in ruts, be it ways of life or ways of thinking. You are, however, right—life is a dynamic thing. You have to change as time changes. But we’re getting off the subject. Do you want to do this with me?”
“I thought I already said yes.” She kissed me. “Now, how do we do this?”
I leaned forward for my own kiss. I adored her. “Well, once I start, you’re going to work it out. I’ll be open enough for you to see how I did it, and you can copy it. I can’t really describe it in words.”
She pushed me back down and settled into my arms. “That’s a much nicer position, isn’t it?” She kissed the angle of my jaw, as I had once done, so long ago it seemed, on the night of her graduation ball.
“I’m ready if you are.”
I sank into the concentration that I needed to open myself to her.
After a moment, I dropped the barriers to my mind a notch, and she moaned softly as she took in what I was giving her. I felt her gentle touch, softly sorting through the torrent that I tried to slow down a little for her to assimilate. I felt a sliver of triumph I knew didn’t come from me as she found my memory of what I had done to open myself up to her. Slowly, she opened up to me, and I gasped at the flood of raw feeling that poured into me from her.
I watched over her as she sat by the side of the road, terrified, as an angel approached her. I was with her when Robbie McMahon stole his first kiss from her, and then took her virginity. We won an English prize when she was little, came top of the class in math a year later.
She longed to meet her angel just one more time to tell her about her life and what was happening to her. She had tried to find love, but had never known it. All the emotion she had felt for other people had been empty and hollow, robbed of the passion she had for her angel.
I was with her when one day she had been sick as a dog from drink, and her angel had found her and cradled her once again in strong arms.
The final night she had spent with her parents held a special flavor for her. She loved her parents dearly, of that there was no doubt. Her father was a man who smiled with his eyes and told wonderful jokes.
He hugged her with the scent of tobacco and aftershave hovering around him. His hand steadied her as she rode her bicycle for the first time, and he helped her into a tree, with her worried mother standing behind them, and laughed as she giggled while trying to grab a branch. Her mother made wonderful birthday cakes, fantastic pizza, and brilliant costumes for school plays. They could not really talk much, because her mother was worried about Bronwyn’s love for her angel.
It continued on, a torrent of power, love, and memory. I held her and loved her through everything in her life, my strength and passion reassuring her, as my words never could.
At the same time, I felt her gentle touch on my mind, sorting through the things I was feeding her.
She held me when I fell out of a tree as a child and broke my leg; she was with me on my wedding day, and held me the first time David beat me to within an inch of my life. She saw Rose as she had been as a young woman, saw some of what we shared, and was with me on the night of my human death. She struggled with me as I became an immortal, stood with me and loved me as I fought Rose’s family. She was there when I found a little girl by the side of the road, a memory of the loving woman she was to become. She felt my every moment of torture around her, loving her but unable to bring myself to admit it. I could feel Bronwyn’s loving strength inside me, and most importantly, the emotion she felt for me. I was humbled by the depth and strength of it. Now I finally believed it. She did not have a crush on me, she truly loved me for everything I was.
We continued on for a time that could not be measured by either of us, we explored one another, learning more and more about each other, gradually fusing together. We finally slowed down, feeling the approach of dawn, knowing that we needed to sleep. The sharing left us both drained and in desperate need of rest. After we withdrew each side of the flow, we snuggled together, satisfied. Just before sleep claimed us, Bronwyn kissed me with a passion that had always before been restrained. We had no more secrets from each other, even if we had wanted to keep them.
This was the true gift that Sembur and Kilkenny shared, that ran through their veins, and that I had been blessed enough to give to Bronwyn. In a corner of my mind, I could feel a bubble of emotion and love that I knew didn’t belong to me. It was Bronwyn, and I stroked it gently with my mind, returning the love that was given to me. I could not imagine how we had stayed together before we had done this.
Trust was all well and good with humanity, but it wasn’t something that worked for vampires, because vampires were always more primal, surviving on raw instinct. Life was a commodity that was cheap to a vampire.
Now I finally understood the depth of the Sembur’s rage at Aristotle for taking Kilkenny away from him. Sembur and Kilkenny had shared the ability to create the bond with us, unwilling to force us to wait the millennia it would have taken for it to appear naturally.
The next evening, I awoke, my arms tightening around her. Her muscles tensed, and I gazed at her beautiful face. She avoided my eyes, squeezing my arm and sliding out of my grasp. She pulled her clothes on, keeping her stiff back to me.
I walked out of the room, and she lingered for a moment or so behind me.
I had to feed. I was starving.
I was acutely aware of Bronwyn behind me, jogging to my side as I walked out of the back door.
I looked at the moonlight turning the ocean into a solid blanket of silver. I drew in a deep breath of brine air, closing my eyes and feeling Bronwyn in the center of my mind, feeling her quiet and almost timid affection.
I turned to her, and she slid into my arms and held me tight, head against my chest. I stroked her hair and disentangled myself. She slid her hand into mine, and we walked down the rocky path onto the beach, bathed in silvery moonlight.
I saw two figures on the white sand before us, and Bronwyn pulled me to a halt.
“I’m hungry,” she whispered.
I smiled, running my tongue along my sharp fangs. “So am I.”
“After you,” she said.
“Together.” I pulled her forward at a dead run, and we leapt onto the two figures.
This time I got the boy, and my fangs were in his neck before he had a chance to make a sound. His warm blood filled my mouth and I drank deeply of him, draining him almost to the point of death. I felt Bronwyn flare in my mind as our connection became as bright as the sun from the raw power of it.
I picked up the boy’s unconscious body, motioning for Bronwyn to follow suit.
I led her down the beach to a sandy clearing on the opposite side of the path we had taken. As I suspected, he had left his ancient car unlocked—and I think his rust bucket was lucky to have had doors anyway—so I put him behind the wheel. Bronwyn put the girl in the passenger seat, carefully avoiding my gaze.
I straightened and crossed my arms. “You’re going to have to look at me some time, lover.”
Bronwyn fidgeted and then looked at me, her heart in her eyes.
“I’m sorry. I just . . . I can’t . . .”
The vulnerability in her naked gaze twisted my heart. “I love you, BronwynHunter,” I said, taking a step toward her. “More than anyone or anything in the world.”
She threw herself into my arms, and I felt her tears against my chest. I held her, letting her cry herself out.
“I’m sorry,” she finally managed to say. “Last night . . . I’ve just never done that before. I’m almost embarrassed . . .”
“I don’t know why,” I said. “If you’re worried about what I think, don’t worry, just feel me.”
She nodded and let it go as we walked hand in hand back to the green grass of the rear of our house. She snuck glances at me as she sat close to me.
It was the same for me as it had always been. I could feel her undiminished love for me, and it gave me confidence in us.
“Do you know what you want to do this evening?” I asked.
Bronwyn was lying on her back, arms pillowing her head, as she gazed at the stars. “Did you have any plans?”
“Well, I do have an idea, if you’re interested.”
“You know I am, so just spit it out, will you? By the way, you know I love
you
more than ever, don’t you?” She looked as though she thought she was blushing. I’d forgotten to tell her that it was impossible for her to do that anymore, and amazed she hadn’t noticed it herself.
“Are you accusing me of procrastinating? I know. You know I love you more than ever, don’t you?”