Authors: Samantha Towle
Well yes, I did kind of consider it before, but I’m not telling him that.
“But you’re an
Original
,” I press.
“I’m not that person anymore. I left him behind a very long time ago.”
I snort an accusing sound. “Yeah, sure you did.”
“And you know me so well,
Alex
?” He highlights my name. I don’t like the way it makes me feel.
“Obviously not!” I yell at him. I’m feeling kind of unreasonable here. I like to think it’s to be expected. “But you obviously know me – know my real name.”
Shifting his body to face forward, he rests his hands on the steering wheel and bows his head. It’s a long moment before he moves or speaks.
He glances at me sideways, through his thick lashes. “Of course I do.” His voice is intense.
It does a combination of things to me.
I like that he knows me. And I hate that I like the feeling. But mostly it worries me, and that worry grips a tight hold of my stomach and knots it, infinitely.
What if he knows about Nathan and Jack, and the farm? What if they’re not all as safe as I’d thought?
“What else do you know?” My voice carries like a whisper.
He lifts his head, but doesn’t move his eyes from mine. “If you’re asking if I know who you were with and where you were, after the change, then the answer is no.”
Relief floods into me. They’re still safe.
“But I do know who you were before that.” He pauses, deliberation passing over his face. “I know your name is Alexandra Jones. That you went missing after a night out with your friend, Carrie. You had a boyfriend – if you could call him that – Eddie, who you lived with in Scarborough. Your parents died in a car accident when you were sixteen …”
“Okay. Enough.” I hold a hand up not needing his reminder of my previous life. “I get you did your homework.”
“I just read the newspapers Bunny, that’s all. I needed a start in finding you. I needed to get a it ="29"> handle on you as a person. How you lived your life. Your typical behaviour. I didn’t get much from the papers, obviously, but just enough to get me started. When I looked back in the news, I knew I was looking for a girl who had recently gone missing in the UK. I figured whoever ‘Alex’ was, she wouldn’t have gone back home after what happened to her. Especially not when she’d been handed over by a shifter.”
“Shifter?” My throat closes up. “You know that?”
He raises his eyebrow. “Don’t worry. I didn’t get his name. Was it him – the boyfriend?” His says the latter part, softer, gentler. But it sounds kind of pitying too.
“No.” I give him a sharp look. “Just someone he trusted.” I lower my voice, looking away.
He starts to drum his fingers on the steering wheel. I get the impression that wasn’t the answer he wanted.
“It took me a long time to find you, Bunny. And a lot of resource. You’re good at disappearing, better than you realise. But I’m also good at finding. Then when I found you here two weeks ago–”
I tense up. “Two weeks?”
“Yes. I kept my distance for the first week. I thought it best to take my time before I approached you.”
“You don’t live here.” The truth thuds into me.
He shakes his head, no. “I needed it to appear that way. I wanted you to feel safe with me, so I rented the lodge.”
God, I’m so slow.
And then I feel tricked and violated, and stupid and enraged, all over again. But more than anything just confused. So utterly, bloody confused.
“Why have you been keeping me here with you if you’re not planning on hurting me? I’m guessing you kept me here by ruining my passport?” I add as the thought occurs to me. And then I start to feel angrier at the realisation.
“I haven’t been keeping you anywhere. I’ve
been
trying to keep you safe – am trying to keep you safe, but recently it’s like you’re a magnet for trouble.”
He doesn’t deny ruining my passport though, that doesn’t escape me.
“Did you ruin my passport to keep me here with you?” I demand to know.
His eyes meet with mine again. He takes in a deep breath and runs a hand over his black hair. “Yes.”
I should have known. I always kept the passport in the zipped pocket, with the picture of Carrie and my money. I just thought the blood had seeped through and ruined them. Stupidly, I trusted his word.
“You ruined the only picture I had of my Carrie! She died and I have nothing left of her! Why would you do that to me? God! If my right hand wasn’t broken right now, I’d punch you!”
“I didn’t ruin the picture, Bunny. The blood had seeped through; it just hadn’t affected the passport.” He presses his lips together, looking helplessly at me. It only proves to make me mne tidth="0">
I still don’t know if I believe his story, but I ask, “Your brother?”
He nods.
“But why? I don’t understand any of this. I don’t understand you!” Feeling frustrated again, I push my good hand roughly through my tangled hair, trying to grasp hold of a clear thought, any thought, really. “I thought you wanted what he wants?”
Me, for unspeakable things.
That’s what I was told to believe. Not just by Nathan, but Albino too. He’d called them. They were both on their way to come and get me from the mansion.
“You were coming for me. When I was been held at that mansion. He said you were coming to take me away.”
“Isaiah. Not me. I knew nothing of it at the time. Believe me, if I had I would have been coming there to get you out.” He turns, looking away from me, ahead, out of the windscreen and into the night. “I haven’t seen my brother in a really long time. I only found out about your existence after you escaped.”
“Who told you?”
His shoulders tense. “I still have people I trust, who are, let’s say,
around
Isaiah.”
“Why haven’t you spoken to him in so long? And why do people still think you are.”
He stays silent.
“Tell me,” I press.
“It’s just easier that way.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s strength in numbers, Bunny. If Elijah knows Isaiah and my relationship has broken down, he’ll use it to his advantage. I may not want to be around my brother, or like what he stands for anymore, but I also don’t want to see him dead. And, I’d kind of like to keep breathing too.”
“Why don’t you want to be around him? Did you have a falling out or something?” I probe.
“Yeah, something,” he murmurs.
It’s obvious he doesn’t want to tell me.
“What about?” I ask, softly, using womanly tactics.
He casts a glance at me. There’s harshness in his gaze. I don’t like it.
“There are things you don’t need to know.” His tone is final, but I’m not having that.
“That’s bullshit! I have a right to know!”
“No, Bunny, you don’t.” His voice is suddenly rough, affected. I’ve never heard him sound this way before. He sounds almost, pained, regretful. I can see his jaw workingm feote>
He looks back at me with those dark eyes of his, intricate darkness in them, as he says, “Look, we just don’t share the same vision – I don’t think we ever really did. He’s my brother.” A shrug. “I went along with things until I no longer could.” A breath. “Now you’re my priority. I need to keep you safe from him. I won’t let it happen again.”
My body stiffens. “You won’t let what happen again?”
I can see it in his face. He didn’t mean to tell me that.
“Nothing.”
“This has happened before. I’m not the first?” Suddenly I don’t feel so lonely. Which is a crazy thing to feel at this time, I know.
He pushes his hands over his hair, hanging them off the back of his neck, exhaling loudly. “No. You are the first of my kind to be female. I just – I failed someone, a long time ago. I won’t make that mistake again.”
I feel this sudden urge to hug him. It makes me want to slap myself.
“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth in the beginning?” It’s an accusation, not a question.
He gives me one of his looks. “Would you have believed I didn’t mean you any harm? Would you have listened to me? I know what you thought I was, the Matthias me, and I thought the best way was for you to get to know me first before I told you who I am – was. I was going to tell you the truth tomorrow, when I gave you the passport … the vampire’s just kind of speeded things up for me.”
“That’s utter crap!” I say venomously, angry again. “You could – should have told me; trusted me to make my own decisions. But instead you spend a whole week with me, lying to me. Pretending to be my friend. Letting me believe you’re someone you are clearly not.”
“I never lied to you. I just omitted certain truths.” He gives a wry smile. “And I am your friend, believe that if anything.”
I let out a sanctimonious laugh. “Friends don’t lie to and deceive one another. You said your name was Zeff – Zeff the vampire hunter, not Matthias the Original!” I use air quotes.
Yeah, I know, but I’m not exactly thinking straight at the moment.
“My name is Zeff.” His voice is clipped. I can tell he’s losing patience. “It’s what I go by and have done for the last eighteen years. And I am a vampire hunter. I’ve been hunting and killing them for the best part of four hundred years, all in the hope of getting close enough to Elijah so I can kill him for what he did to my parents.”
I let out another sharp laugh. I know it’s cold and cruel but I can’t help it. “Yeah you’re the real honest kind.”
“Don’t give me the moral high ground crap, you’ve hardly been honest yourself, have you?”
I look at him with incredulity. “You and your bloody brother are the reason I wasn’t – couldn’t be honest! The reason I have to hide myself away, leave behind everyone I care about!” A snarky laugh of disbelief escapes me as I shake my head in disbelief. Disbelief of everything. Of him. “You really are something else.”< />
He drums his fingers against the steering wheel. “I’ll try to take that as a compliment.”
“Don’t.” I take a deep breath. “Wait – did you set up that first vampire attack in the woods just as a rouse to get close to me?”
His brows knit together. “Are you not listening to a word I’m saying?! I’m not exactly drinking buddies with vampires if you hadn’t noticed – I. Kill. Them.” Single and distinct, and I don’t like the way his voice sounds when he says it. “It happened exactly as I told you it did.”
“You shot him?”
Something flickers over his face. Humour. I’m not feeling so humorous right now. I kind of want to slap it off his face.
“Okay, well not everything happened
exactly
like I said. I didn’t shoot him. I … kicked the crap out of him, broke his neck, then silvered him.”
Makes sense. I never remembered hearing a gunshot. I was out of it, drained and bleeding, and I guess it didn’t seem so relevant at the time. I was just glad to still be alive.
“No one will ever hurt you while I’m still breathing, Bunny.”
Then I feel all kinds of breathless myself.
Grasping for air and sanity, I say, “And that’s how you got close to him …” I utter, it all just making sense to me. “Because he had no read on you … that thing you did in the alley when you revealed yourself to me … I never had a read on you before, not properly. What is that? How do you do it?”
He lifts his shoulder, lightly. “I shimmered.”
I give him a confused look.
“I can do magic. My abuela – grandmother,” he explains when I give him a curious look, “She wasn’t just a werewolf. She was a very powerful Wiccan. The line goes back for generations. We inherited her magic through our mother, and though we have nothing to the extent of her abilities, I can still conjure up some pretty strong magic. It’s not something we have allowed to be common knowledge, you understand. We needed to stay protected and hidden. If Elijah had found us when we were young it would have been a death sentence. So my grandmother spelled us when we were babies, then as we grew up, we just harnessed the power of the magic and continuing protecting ourselves. I live my life under it. It makes things … easier. When I took it off before, for you, that was the first time in as long as I can remember.”
“So you just appear just like any other–”
“Regular human being,” he finishes for me. “It’s just a parlour trick, really, obviously using real magic.”
“Well it sure works. You had me fooled.” I can’t help the bitter tone. “And it’s back on now – the spell?”
“Yes.”
Something else clicks in my mind. “The magic – would it affect me? You know when I said to you before that I get a shock every time …” I peter off at the look at his face. Anger bursts from me again. “You made me think it was me! That there was something wrong with me! And all that time you knew why it was happening!”
“I’m sorry,” he says. But he doesn’t sound it. “It doesn’t usually affect people so badly. Generally it’s just like a tiny static shock, but for some reason it flares up against you.” He pauses. “Maybe it’s because there’s something more between us.”
I give him a ‘don’t start that crap again’ look.
He blinks himself free of my annoyance.
I rest back in my seat and look down at my hand. While we’ve been talking – okay arguing, it’s been healing itself. I very carefully stretch my fingers out, flexing them slowly. Not there yet, but almost.
I glance out the window. We’re still stationary on the road. Not one single car has passed us by. I sit up, and turning around, looking out of the windows, I try to garner a sense of where we are. All I can see is the dark countryside. “Where are we?”