Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (43 page)

He pulled the car up the driveway and checked his rearview; Lord Eden pulled in behind us. “What about us?”

“I heard you went nuts on Quaid for trying to have sex with her.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“But you did get defensive?”

“A little.” He turned the key in the ignition and the car stopped purring. “What can I say, Ara? I asked her to marry me once. There will always be feelings there and, blood or none, I don’t wanna see another guy on top of her.”

“So you still want her—you know, with those ‘feelings’ being there and all?”

He didn’t even give it a moment of consideration before saying, “Maybe.”

A glint of mischief swept up from my lips to my eyes. “Even though David’s ‘dipped his dick’, like, a hundred times in the past?”

Mike opened the car door and hopped out, closing it firmly without giving me an answer.

I laughed to myself, following him. So he could give
me
crap, but he couldn’t take it.

When Lord Eden climbed out of the car behind us, I found myself checking the windows down the street to see if anyone was watching. He might be years younger than Greg Thompson, but surely people would ask questions if they saw him. He was just too much like the now-dead man for people not to wonder.

“You worried?” Mike asked.

“Huh?” It took me a second to realise he was asking if I was worried about Walt’s men. “Oh. Um, no. I was just making sure no one was watching.”

Mike looked deliberately at the front door, as if waiting for something. “Well, I’m just hoping Sam and Vicki wait inside—like we agreed this morning.”

“Me too.” I looked up at the house as well, hugging myself. “Last thing we need is a street performance.”

“I’ve had a vision!” Lord Eden announced, striding toward us quickly.

I felt a flutter in my chest, taking in the worried look on his face. “What was it?”

“All you need to know is that we mustn’t attack Loslilian until after Christmas.”

“Why?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“I’d rather you did,” I said sternly.

The worried look lifted and he smiled affectionately at me. “You’re starting to sound more like a queen every day.”

I folded my arms, clearing my throat purposefully.

“There’s a funeral,” he said. “We win back the manor, but at the cost of a life.”

“Whose life?” Mike demanded.

Lord Eden’s eyes went to my belly.

“The baby?” I touched her defensively. “What happens?”

“Walter.”

“What does he do?”

“I don’t know. I see only a very tiny coffin and I hear the words “Walter will pay, Ara. I promise you—”

“Right,” I cut in. “So… we attack after Christmas, you reckon?”

He nodded once. “There will be snow late this year—a day or two after Christmas—but we make our move on a day where the rain floods the grass in the field around the manor.”

I looked at Mike, he shrugged and nodded in a passive combination.

“Okay.” I shrugged too, just wanting to move on from the horrible truth of that alternative path. “So I guess we better get a tree for the lake house.”

“And I better fly the boys over.”

“No.” Dad put his hand out quickly and clutched Mike’s forearm. “Don’t.”

I felt the dread flatten Mike’s aura. “Okay,” he said without argument. “I’ll fly home for Christmas then.”

“That would be best,” Lord Eden said. “And Amara.” He grasped my upper arm firmly. “You need to refer to me as Dad for today. I can’t have Vicki asking about my true name. In fact, she can’t know it—in case it puts her in more danger.”

“Okay.” I nodded.

He let go of my arm and walked past me toward the house.

“You okay?” Mike asked.

I rubbed my arm. “Are
you
?”

He jammed both hands in his jeans pockets and exhaled, looking up at his old bedroom window. “I’ll try to make it back for the battle after Christmas, Ara, but I’m worried about the boys now. I—”

I touched his arm softly, nodding. “I know.”

“I know you know.” Mike offered me his warmest, most loving smile, and placed his hand on my back, giving me a little push. “Come on. We better go play mediator—make sure Vicki doesn’t kill your dad.”

I opened my mouth to say “He’s not my dad,” and only just managed to suck the breath back in before the words rolled off my tongue. Mike couldn’t know the truth yet, because there’s no way he could keep that from his thoughts around Lord Eden.

At the bottom of the porch steps, the ex-Greg Thompson stood looking up at his house, like maybe he wasn’t so sure about going in. He took the first step, though, rearranging his posture in an obviously deliberate effort to look unaffected.

On the second step, when he took a quick breath, I knew he was struggling to hold it together.

By the third step, Lord Eden looked weak with grief and more human than he’d been since he was Greg, so by the time he touched the door handle and turned it, he was no longer the Original Vampire: he was just a man.

He pushed it open and stood for a moment, taking in the space. He’d been here plenty of times lately as Petey, but his first steps home as Greg were obviously a lot harder than he ever imagined.

Mike ran up the steps behind him and whispered something in his ear, taking him by the arms as if leading an elderly man that got lost on his way back from the corner store. I followed them inside and closed the door, checking the street one more time.

“Mike!” Sam cried, and as I turned around, Sam leaped up from the sofa in the den and wrapped his arms around Mike. I wasn’t sure if he’d seen Lord Eden standing there behind Mike, or if he’d even recognise him, but it only took a small whimper from Vicki to know that she spotted him.

She didn’t get up, didn’t move from the sofa, but just sat there covering her mouth and holding her stomach like she was struggling to keep something inside.

Lord Eden looked away from her to his son, and as Mike stepped back and cleared a path from Sam to Lord Eden, all the anger and the hatred my little brother had for his father a few days ago vanished. He threw himself into Lord Eden, who stumbled back a few inches, both of them sobbing audibly.

“I never left you, son,” he said, his arms wrapped almost twice around Sam. “I never left.”

“I know,” Sam cried into his neck. He moved back then, keeping his hands on his dad’s shoulders, and took a really long look at him, layering this new image over the memories he had—just like I did when I first saw him. “You don’t look like you,” he said. “And I still can’t believe it—any of it.”

“I’m sorry.” The vampire shook his head, his eyes moving across the somewhat dark room to his wife. He held his hand out to her. “All I can ever say, Vicki, is ‘I’m sorry’.”

Vicki very slowly stood up, straightening her legs before holding her head high. Her hand remained against her stomach and she wiped away a tear with the scrunched-up tissue in her fist.

“I do not expect you to forgive me, and if you say the word, I will leave and you never have to see me again—”

“But what about me?” Sam cut in. “I’m angry. It’s no lie, Dad. But I don’t want you gone. Neither does Mom.” He looked back at Vicki. “Do you, Mom?”

It was clearly hard for her to do, but she gently rocked her head in a ‘no’.

Dad took that as his cue to hold her, and she fought him as he first wrapped his arms around her body, but he overpowered her and she leaned against him in a sobbing mess, slapping his chest over and over. He just held on tight, though, and let her hate him—let her love him. Let her show him how much he truly meant to her—enough that she might, eventually, forgive him.

She stopped sobbing for a moment and looked up at him, her chin trembling. “Do you still love me, or did that die with Greg Thompson?”

Lord Eden hesitated, shifting his feet and straightening his shoulders before he answered. And I thought for sure I knew what he was going to say, so when he spoke, it shocked me.

“I still love you, as I always have.”

Vicki’s face folded in where all the passing years made impressions on her skin, and the vampire, the man, the husband, moved in to comfort her again.

“Then why, Greg?” She looked up at him. “Why? I just can’t make myself understand why you left—why you didn’t just tell me the truth about the need to fake your own death.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Well,” she snapped breathily. “You’ve got forever to explain it, don’t you?”

Lord Eden’s shoulders lifted with a deep breath and he moved back a few steps to sit down on the sofa. “It will hurt you for me to explain.”

“I’m hurting now,” she pointed out, propping one hand on her hip.

The vampire held her gaze for a moment, then nodded. “You’ve always been my best friend, Vicki—my confidante, my ally. But something an immortal comes to understand after centuries walking the earth is…”

Oh no, I thought. I knew exactly what he was going to say. And I wanted to stop him, but at the same time, if I were Vicki, I’d want to hear it. No matter how bad it hurt.

“There is love,” he explained, “the kind you have for a lifetime. And there is the love you have for eternity—”

Vicki’s shoulders lowered as her head came up a little and she closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Vicki. I don’t want to hurt you—”

“What does he mean?” Sam asked, looking from his mom to his dad. “I don’t understand.”

“Your father is telling me he doesn’t love me enough to be with me forever,” she said pragmatically, then turned a cold eye on her dead husband. “Does that sound correct?”

Sam’s eyes followed hers. “Is that true? You faked your death to get away from us?”

“To protect you—”

“No, you could have stayed to protect us, you—”

“I had to leave. I couldn’t take you with me—”

“But you could’ve sent us somewhere to be safe. You could’ve made us wait for you if you wanted to, but you didn’t.” Sam’s eyes narrowed at his father. “You didn’t because you didn’t want us anymore, did you?”

“I always wanted you, Sam. I will always be here for you—”

“But not for Mom?” Sam asked, and the energy in the room fell flat.

Lord Eden clasped his hands in his lap and looked down at them. “I’m sorry, I—”

“How can you be so cruel?”

“I wish I felt differently, Sam, but—”

“Well you know what
I
wish?” Sam said, standing defensively beside his mom, his arm circling her shoulders. “I wish you had never come back. You need to leave.”

Lord Eden looked at Vicki. She nodded, covering her nose and mouth to hold back the tears.

Mike stepped in then. “Sam, why don’t we let your mom and dad go upstairs and talk? You can—”

“No.” Vicki put her hand up, shaking her head. “No. I… I think we’ve heard all we need to hear.”

Lord Eden nodded to himself, placing both hands on his knees, then he stood up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”

“I’m glad you did,” Vicki said, lowering her hand and rolling her shoulders back. “Because now I can finally move on—knowing I was never in your heart the way you were in mine.”

Lord Eden opened his mouth, but obviously thought better of it, because he closed it, took a step away and then stopped by Sam. “I hope you can forgive me one day, son.”

Sam angled his chin upward, stiffening his lip, and Lord Eden took that for it was: a cold farewell.

I went to touch him as he passed, but he politely turned his head, his eyes glassy, and brushed me off.

The front door closed behind him, and Mike and I stood awkwardly under the archway between the den and the entranceway, not really sure what to do.

Vicki took a very audible calming breath and let it out, tidying her straight hair. “Who wants coffee before we leave for the safe-house?”

“Mom,” Sam said in a flat tone. “You can’t just make coffee and biscuits. Dad just said he never loved you the way he’s meant to. You’re supposed to cry!”

Vicki swallowed with what looked like difficulty, nodding. “I will, Sam,” she said in a weak voice, patting his arm as she passed. And I admired her then. She had always been a rock. She could show emotion when she needed to, but she mostly showed strength. I knew how much she was hurting right now, but she’d make some coffee, talk about the baby and our plans for Christmas, and when we dropped her at the safe-house, she’d go up to her room, draw a hot bath, sink right in, and cry until her fingers pruned.

When she hopped out and dried off, though, she would be renewed, and I knew that she would never think of Greg Thompson again. Like me, she realised that the man we all loved really was a lie, and the truth was nothing even close to it.

***

David reached down and scooped up my hand as we reached the clearing around our lake. From here I could see the perspective Jason took when he painted that masterpiece he left as a gift, and almost as though I were lost in that world of oil brushstrokes, the forest today looked too perfect to be real. The days that brought us closer to winter had stripped all the trees bare, aside from the distant evergreens bordering the road, and the lake was so still that the tall white columns of the naked tress reflected back off its surface like elven staffs.