Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (23 page)

“But—”

“Just listen. Just hear me out,” he snapped. I shut up. Again. “I’ve not been able to speak a word to you this entire drive, for fear I might…” He seemed to stop himself from going on.

“Might what?” I put my hand over his on the steering wheel.

“Might… cry.”

My hand swiftly moved away from his and covered my mouth.

His eyes flicked sideways onto me. “Do you
mock
me?”

All I could do was shake my head.

“Then, say something. Don’t just sit there looking at me like I’ve lost my damn mind.”

“I…” I put my hand forcibly in my lap. “Is that really what’s been bothering you all afternoon?”

“What did you think it was?”

“Um, maybe the fact that we’re being hunted and have nowhere to go.”

He laughed once. “Ara, we have somewhere to go—I told you that.”

“Then where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise. You can just be patient and find out when we get there.”

I folded my arms and turned my knees to face the door, looking out the window.

David stayed quiet for a while. I took a little glance at him every ten seconds and, each time, I noticed his knuckles getting whiter on the steering wheel. He was either intensely angry or…

I sat all the way forward in disbelief when the headlamps from another car lit up a tear on his cheek, and all the weight of my guilt pushed my lungs inward around my heart. “I didn’t know what to say.”

“What?” he said, half distracted. He wiped a thumb down his chin, pretending to scratch it, but I knew he was really wiping a tear.

“I was… I think maybe I got a bit angry at you—at the you from the past—when I read your journal. But I had no right to feel that way—”

“Ara, of course you do, you—”

“No. I’m your
wife
.” I spun around in my seat to face him, touching his arm. “I always knew what was in you—the monster. And seeing it for real should never have come as such a shock to me. But it did, and I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry.”

“But I am. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you right away that…” I didn’t really know what I wanted to say. Nothing in my vocabulary could truly express how little any of that really mattered, or how sorry I was that he thought for so long that it did—enough to bring him to tears.

“That?” he prompted.

“You wouldn’t show me the monster—
be
the monster around me—because you were afraid of it yourself, right?”

He wet his lips, focusing harder on the road.

I took that as a yes. “But you enjoy it—when he comes out? You like the way he makes you feel?”

“Sometimes. And other times it… it worries me—what I’m actually capable of.”

“And I guess that’s what I should have told you.” I sat back again and took a deep, relaxing breath. It was clear to me now. “You and your brother have done a lot of damage to me in the past,” I said, and David gave me an awkward, kind of apologetic smile. “And maybe it left me a bit twisted,” I continued. “But what you need to understand about me, David—something that has been there from the very beginning, before I ever even met you—is that your monster doesn’t scare
me
. And the real truth—the dark, deep secret of mine is… I enjoy the way your monster makes
me
feel.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that… reading that journal put a knot in my stomach. But… it wasn’t necessarily a
bad
knot.”

David shut his eyes for a moment, gripping the steering wheel a little bit tighter than before. “I’ve tainted you—”

“No, David, you’ve awakened me.” I put my hand on his thigh. “I’m not saying I want to go out and kill innocent girls or torture them while you have sex with them or anything, but the part of you that wants to do that… he excites me. And I can’t really explain it. And I don’t really want to. I just want you to know that I love you no matter what you’ve done and no matter what you do.”

He took a long jagged breath and tilted his head back against the seat. “I hate you, you know that, right?”

“Why?” I said with a little squeak.

“For leaving me in anguish this entire afternoon!” he said with a gentle laugh. “God.” He banged his chest. “I think my heart maybe even started beating with worry for a while there.”

“Well, whose fault is that?” I punched him softly. “You should’ve said something earlier.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t… I felt like I might… I just…”

“Didn’t want to cry?”

His shoulders sunk.

“David.” I waited until he looked at me. “If I can love the monster, what on earth makes you think I can’t love you when you cry?”

“The monster is a representation of strength. Tears are weakness.”

“No, they are a tiny piece of your soul for me to hold onto until you’re ready to feel all right again,” I said with a cheeky grin; he grinned back, then reached over and scooped up my hand, squeezing it tightly.

“Then… you don’t want to leave me—for all the wrong I’ve done?” he asked. “For beating Arthur and getting you arrested? For leaving you at Drake’s castle for so long on your own? The offences are endless here, Ara, I—”

“You need to shut up about it,” I said, squeezing his hand back. “You burned down the Training Hall for me.” I laughed, and he burst out laughing too. “I think we’re even.”

“You… you heard about that, huh? I wondered.”

“I saw the smoke,” I said excitedly. “I was… to be honest, I was humbled and I felt… really loved.”

“Loved?”

“Yeah, that you cared that much about me—that you were so sickened by what had happened, that you had to burn down the place it happened.”

His thumb moved anxiously over my hand. “Falcon assured me that you understood. That you knew I—”

“Didn’t hate me for what I did with Arthur?” I said, nodding. “He did. And I believed him.”

“I wasn’t sure you would.”

“It would have been easy not to. But I figured you deserved a little faith—after all we’ve been through.”

“After all we’ve been through, I deserve a soundproof steel room a hundred miles underground, with nothing but a bed, a bath, and you.”

I smiled, looking down at the raised veins on the back of his hand. He had a way of being so accidentally sweet sometimes that I wondered how he could be the impure soul. “Wanna know something?”

“Sure.”

“Driving down this road—so close to my old home—to the place where I met you, and where all of this began—I’ve seen a new shopping mall, a few new houses, and there’s some traffic lights that weren’t there before. A lot has changed. But there is one thing that hasn’t in all this time.”

“Let me guess,” he said, “You still love me.”

“Well, I was going to say your face hadn’t changed—given the immortality and all,” I said, chuckling over his sudden jab in my ribs. “I’m kidding.” I pushed his hand away but kept hold of it. “I was just joking.”

“I know,” he said. “But you’re right. Neither of us has changed—one bit. Physically. And one day, a hundred years from now, we will drive this same road and see many more changes within these streets, Ara, but unlike any other move through time for me, I will now have you beside me. Always.”

“And forever.”

He drew my hand up to his mouth and kissed the back. “Always and forever.”

Chapter Five

We turned down the road toward the lake, and my heart melted around the feeling of coming home. The trees had grown in over the road and fallen branches made it difficult to drive a straight line, so David took things easy, keeping the speed low for the first time in his life, while I looked out the window, trying to spot the fox warning signs around the border.

So many memories belonged to this one place—memories of almost everyone I loved. Mike and I had trained here. Jason and I had talked here. I met Petey for the first time here. David and I had spent more time alone here than we had anywhere else in our entire little world. And now, this narrow corner of the earth
was
our entire world.

“Have you spoken to Falcon?” I asked. “Does he know you’ve come to get me?”

“He came up with the plan.”

“What plan?”

“We gathered the knights in a secret meeting and had a…” He laughed. “Rather complex attack plan at the ready. We were going to swoop in with guns and flamethrowers, bomb some buildings with the help of the human faction, and use that as a distraction to save you.”

“
Were
?”

“Yes.” He stopped talking while he swerved right then left around some fallen branches. “We were planning to leave two days after we first saw your spirit that night.”

“First saw?” I said. “Did I come back?”

“Twice. You don’t remember?”

I shook my head. “I remember the first time.”

“Well, yes, you returned again—scared the living hell out of me.”

“I did?”

“You appeared while I was… in the bathroom.”

“Doing what?”

“Reading a paper, Ara, what d’you think?”

If vampires could blush, he would have. I laughed obnoxiously loud.

“You went to Jason, too.”

I stopped laughing. “I did?”

David nodded. “That’s how we knew you were okay—that you weren’t being held prisoner. I planned to send Falcon in to talk with Drake so I could stay and maintain power at the manor, since Walter had already assumed temporary power while I was gone, but when he found out where you were—by means unknown—he started a coup, worked everyone into a frenzy about the evil witch child, and our people followed him.”

“Couldn’t you have stopped him? I mean, you’re more powerful than he is—more powerful than you’ve let on, right?”

“I didn’t want to stay and fight him for the throne. I don’t care about the throne—or the people.” He laid his hand firmly on my knee. “All I wanted was to find you and make sure you were safe.”

I patted his hand. “So you just gave up the throne and left our people in Walter’s hands?”

“Not entirely. Falcon stayed behind to be my ‘eyes and ears’.”

“What about Blade, and Quaid?”

“In the rush, I never got to speak to them. I’m not sure what happened.”

That made me nervous. “What about Jason? Is he safe, being that they think I’ll go to him?”

“He’s in hiding—with that guy Trey.”

“He made it there then—Trey?”

“Safe and sound.”

“What about his human family?”

“They’re fine.” David nodded. “Jason dropped what he was working on and immediately set Trey and his family up somewhere with a nice house, new car, and enough money to get by until Trey gets a job.”

“So they’re under the Lilithian rule now?”

“If there is one left, yes.”

“Good. And don’t worry.” I squeezed his hand. “We will get our monarchy back.”

“I thought you didn’t want it.” He looked sideways at me. “You always wanted a normal life—free of all of this.”

“I did. I mean, I do, but…” My eyes drifted away to the thick wall of trees. “It’s people like Trey that make me want to stay—to defend them; to give them a better life. What will happen to all those people if I’m not there to speak for them?”

David smiled, his eyes sharpening first, then his lips. “I’m proud of you, Ara.”

“I know.”

When we reached the pair of trees guarding the pathway to the lake, David didn’t pull over and stop the car; he turned and we took a deep dip down a ditch before bumping and bouncing over the grown-in path, the headlights beaming back at us off the trees.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my head hitting the soft rooftop.

“Taking us home.”

“Home? This leads to the lake—we can’t
live
here.”

He just smiled—that damn secret smile I hadn’t seen in so long. And I couldn’t argue after that; all I could do was sit and grin like a little girl, replaying that smile over and over. And oddly enough, thinking about that look he got when he had a secret, I realised that I’d never seen that on Jason. They were twins, but their smiles differed so greatly they wouldn’t look alike standing side-by-side with a grin on their faces.

“So Jason got banished, huh?” I asked.

“He did.” David’s knuckles gripped the steering wheel a bit tighter.

“I’ll change that,” I promised, “when I’m back in power.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you so upset about it?”

“Because, after all he’s done for those people—saving their Queen many times from not only the mad king but the power we forced you to use, and developing the Re-humanisation Technique—he deserved better. Someone
should
have spoken for him.”

“Arthur would have—if he’d been there,” I suggested.

David’s knuckles turned white under the blue glow of dashboard lights. “Do not mention his name.”

“Why?”

“Because I will likely crack this steering wheel and we will be continuing on foot.”

I laughed, sobering then as my heart warmed. “It’s nice to see the love you have for him—for Jason. I always knew you loved him, but it’s just nice to actually see it.”

“He’s my brother.” He shrugged. “I’ll always love him. No matter what.”

The car slowed then and a giant log stared back at us from beyond the headlights—completely blocking our path.

“Oh my god!” I leaned forward and undid my seatbelt. “We’re here.”

“Yes.” He reached across to clip my belt back in. “But we’re not stopping here.”

“Where are we going?”

He manoeuvred the car awkwardly across the bumpy terrain around the log, tall grass scraping the paintwork, while small twigs scratched at the windows. “A house—at the end of the dried-up stream.”

“A house?” My bones nearly took off running ahead to see it. “There’s a house out here?”

“Yes.” David laughed. “Now shush. I’m trying not to hit anything and damage my car.”

I sat back, my hands over my belly, and thought about the fact that this was Bump’s first time coming to our lake. And hopefully not the last.

When we finally came to a pair of grassy tyre tracks and left the forest floor behind, I felt less like a stuffed toy in a washing machine and more like a passenger in a car. I even relaxed enough to recognise a lot of the trees. Each one held a memory of some kind—as if I could actually
see
the echoes of our past—see myself standing there in the place where we really started this entire journey; one that would eventually lead us back here—still just as in love.

“Do you remember that day?” I asked, nodding toward the very end of the tyre tracks—where I’d once found myself lost after he admitted to stalking me.

“The day I first said I love you?” He laughed. “No, I’d forgotten.”

“Ha-ha. So funny.” I sat back again, holding the sides of the leather seat with both hands. “How much longer until we get there?”

“It’s another ten minutes inland.”

“I’m not sure my bladder can take another ten minutes on this old road.”

“We’ll drive along the old dried up creek bed in a minute—it’ll be a bit… smoother.”

“Good idea.” My butt bounced right off the seat then and the baby nearly pushed my heart up my throat as we landed. I looked at David, irritated. “
Ten
minutes you say?”

“If my memory serves me.”

“Memory?” I jiggled sideways then, almost banging my head on the window. “How long has it been since you’ve come out here?”

“Sixty years, give or take,” he said with a shrug.

“Then what makes you think the lake house will even be there!”

“Oh, it’s there.” He nodded with certainty. “Might be a bit run down and old, but—”

“A
bit
run down? David! It’ll be dilapidated.”

“It’ll be fine. Stop worrying.” His hand slid smoothly down my thigh and stopped on my knee, and a warm wave of calm ran through me—David’s forced calm. But I didn’t push him away or reject it, because it had been an awfully long time since he’d done that. It made me feel human again—and vulnerable in a nice way.

With my head clear of worry, I thought about when I first started using my powers—how I’d sit on that black rock by the lake and shoot my light into the water. Back then, even in the presence of Nature, my head would hurt, and it only occurred to me now that what Jason taught me—to transfer my energy into the ground and draw it back out—came so naturally these days I never even felt myself doing it. I didn’t even get one headache when Drake took me out training, and it just made me wish I’d had Drake as an ally when I first found out I was Lilithian. He taught me more in four hours than anyone had in my entire time as Queen, and I knew there was more he could teach me—if given the chance. If David would give him the chance—trust him.

As I laid my head on the car door and looked out the front window, something about the way the headlights shone on the lonely, overgrown trees made me feel unsafe—even with David by my side. The last time I came out to the lake was during my training to become the Queen—a soldier. Now, I had the capabilities of any great warrior, and I had nothing to fear. Not a human. Not a vampire. Not even a weapon. But I feared Walt. I feared his fear. I feared his desire for power. I feared being hunted for the rest of my life—being made to use my abilities as weapons, always being on my guard.

“What’s going to happen to us, David?”

His mind was completely focused on driving, but he stepped outside of navigation-mode for a second and, when he looked at my face, pulled the car to a slow stop, drawing the handbrake up but leaving the engine running.

“We’re going to lay low—until you’ve had the baby—”

“But—”

“Ah. I’m speaking. You be quiet,” he said playfully.

I pretended to zip my lips. Begrudgingly.

“You can have the baby, and when she is safe, we will recruit an army—”

“But then Drake will know she’s not Anandene.”

“What happened to shutting up?” he said with a small smile.

“David, we need him—his army. If we’re going to take back what’s ours, we need to fight! We can’t do that without his help.”

“And we can’t do it while you’re pregnant. It’s too risky, because I know damn well that you won’t sit back and let us win Loslilian back without you. And I can’t have my pregnant wife wielding a sword—”

“I fought at the Fall Battle,” I said. “And I was fine.”

He slowly sat back with his tongue pushing out his cheek, his eyes lost in thought. “Look, let’s just get settled—regroup. Okay? Then we can discuss politics.”

“Fine.” I rubbed my face vigorously. “We’ve both got very good arguments here. And I am just too tired to see anything clearly. Let’s just go find this house. And it better have a bed.”

“It does,” he said with a grin, putting the shift into drive. “And probably a few spiders as well.”

“That’s good,” I said chirpily, “So you won’t be the only deathly terrifying creature there?”

“Hey, may I remind you that your species
kills
my kind. You’re a hell of a lot scarier than I.”

“I’m hungry too. So I hope you’ve fed up on humans, because I’m going to drain you dry once I get your clothes off you.”

He shifted awkwardly in his seat, moving the fly on his jeans sideways.

“You okay?” I asked.

“You just…” He hesitated at first, and then exhaled and just said, “…gave me a hard-on.”

I threw my head back, laughing loudly.

***

A museum of mismatched furniture and fixtures from different eras stood proudly elevated over a dried-up creek bed—as if time and life had forgotten this house was here. David had darted inside before I even hauled myself out of the car, and opened all the windows and doors, letting the cool breeze in to freshen up the smell of absence and fear. The wispy, torn curtains moved out through the balcony doors like ghosts that were just set free, and the bones of the house creaked against its stilts, threatening to crumble under my feet.

I knew from looking up at it as we first pulled up that the house was one big, formerly white, square building, with what looked like an attic up top in the high peak of the rooftop. My inner History student determined the building to have been built sometime around the early eighteen hundreds, but as I climbed the stairs and stood in the double doorway, looking across at the steel-framed bed and the stripy mattress— stained with aged blood and years of moisture damage—it could more easily be placed sometime in the twenties. There were once soft white curtains around that dirty old bed, but they’d worn so thin with age that they resembled nothing more than flakey webs now.