Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (44 page)

We made ourselves comfortable by our rock, and as I stretched my legs out and opened my face to the bright sun, David flipped sideways and planted his head in my lap.

“What does he think we need to talk about?” he asked.

“He thinks I’m not admitting the truth about how I feel—that maybe what we did with Chastity really does bother me—deep down inside.” I opened my eyes wider as I said the last words.

“Does it?” he asked earnestly.

I squinted in thought. “I know it would bother other people. But blood and sex just… they go hand in hand. They always have. And I’m just—” I laughed, going back to that night in my thoughts. “I don’t think I could do that again unless I was in the mood, and it won’t be a regular thing. But it was good for the thrill.”

“Wait until you’ve made your first kill.” He closed his eyes, making himself more comfortable. “You think you’re messed up now, but there is nothing that beats sucking the life out of something and living off it for days.”

“Hm. Yeah, I’ll pass, thanks,” I said, holding my hand just above his eyes to shield them from the sun. “So, did you speak to Chastity after I left today?”

“I did.” His tone pitched high with interest. “Turns out she was more into what we did than she let on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s just say her taste is more feminine than I first thought.”

“She’s a lesbian?”

“She is.” He sounded way too excited.

“Get that thought out of your head, David Thomas Knight!” I flicked him in the temple. “Things got crazy last night—in the moment, but I am not doing
that
to her!”

“Why not?” he whined, rolling onto his side, his arm across my lap, elbow on the ground beside me. “You liked the way she tasted in my blood, right?”

I felt my cheeks go hot.

“You never know,” he said, sliding a finger under the hem of my dress. “Maybe you’d like it if you tasted her in a different way—”

“Stop that.” I slapped his hand away; he laughed. “I was
blood
hungry, David. I would never go down on a girl—”

“Relax.” He rolled onto his back again, closing his eyes. “I was kidding.”

I could tell from the small crooked smile that he was. But I could also tell from his tone that he wasn’t.

After a moment of silence, Mike’s words in the car this morning got the better of me. “
Should
it bother me?”

“What?” He popped one eye open.

“Should it bother me what we did?”

He laughed. “Did it bother you before Mike said it should?”

I shook my head.

“Then no.” He closed his eye again. “It shouldn’t.”

“But—”

“Ara.” He opened both eyes. “Does it bother you, or doesn’t it?”

In my mind I replayed it—the way his jaw brushed against her most private zone; the way she smelled and the way it turned us both on; all the thoughts and ideas I saw in his mind as he drank from her—all those things should’ve grossed me out, but in the moment, I just found it incredibly hot. I knew I’d do it again. Even if that wouldn’t be right now, without the heat of desire, but I knew I would definitely do it again.

“You weren’t there with
her
,” I said. “You were there with
me
—
for
me, to make love to me. Nothing about last night bothers me—not even because it technically should. But as soon as it becomes about the other girl—or guy—it’s over. We won’t do it again.”

He didn’t say anything, so I looked down at him and found a pair of raised brows and a smirk. “Guy, huh?” he said.

“Well. I,” I stammered, scratching just behind my ear.

“Did you have anyone in mind?” His tone went up on the end.

My heart flipped as I accidentally thought of Jase. “I didn’t mean that!” I put my hands on his chest. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

David laughed. “He’s done that before, you know.”

My blood stilled with confusion. “Who’s done what?”

“Jason.” He laughed. “Two guys and a girl.”

“Seriously?”

His head moved against my thighs in a nod. “You wouldn’t think it, huh?”

“No.”

“And it’s out of the question with you and I,” he added, “so don’t even think about it, but yes, Jason has done it before.”

“How?” I racked my mind trying to figure out how two guys would have their naughty way with one girl—without doing anything I wouldn’t want to imagine Jase doing. No offence to Falcon if that’s what he likes, but if Jase did, then I would be kind of… shocked.

“You can’t use your imagination?” he asked with a gentle laugh, reaching up to stroke my cheek. “Do you want me to show you his memory?”

“You have it?” I almost fell forward with disbelief.

“It was too funny not to steal.” His deep, glassy eyes moved from the wiry branches to me. “Wanna see it?”

“Um, thanks, but no.” I folded my arms on top of Bump. “I really do not need to see Jason going at it with another guy.”

“He didn’t touch the other guy.”

“Then how did he…?”

“They call it a Pig on a Spit.”

“A what!”

He laughed loudly. “A Pig. On. A Spit.”

“I don’t get it. Oh!” I said as it sunk in. “One guy on each end, right?”

“Right.”

That sounded kind of gross, but it also made my blood heat up.

“No!” David said out of nowhere, and a little bit too loudly.

“What’s no?”

“No. Never.”

“What?”

“I can see everything you’re thinking, my horny little pregnant wife. And I forbid it. You will not become a rotisserie no matter how badly you want it.”

I laughed so hard and so loud then that a flock of birds suddenly left the island across the water. “I don’t want it, David—sex with anyone else. Ever. I just imagined it for a moment.”

“Do me a favour then, and next time, don’t imagine anyone I know.”

“Sorry.”

He just laughed lightly.

After that, despite the impending battle after Christmas and the concern for my child’s life, despite the vampires residing at our peaceful little lake house right now, David and I spent the next hour or so talking about everything
but
our worries. And I think the way he smiled and the lightness of his voice made me fall a little bit more in love with him for every minute that passed. I could feel my heart healing inside, and everything we’d been through, everything we’d suffered both apart and at each other’s hands, just seemed to slip into a past that felt further away than it actually was. I found myself noticing more about the world around me—the colour of the dirt around the lake, how it was darker where the chill had tarnished the grass; and the birds, how it seemed routine that every afternoon at around three o’clock they would take flight and spread out across the sky; and how, in this light I could see the small scar on David’s chin that I hadn’t noticed since I thought he was human—it was all there. All of it. Every normal thing in my human world had always been here in my supernatural world, but I just never had eyes to see it.

“David?”

“Hm?” he hummed in an ultra-relaxed state.

“For the record, I’m really not okay with sex threesomes.
Blood
threesomes I don’t mind, but—”

“It’s not my thing either, Ara,” he said bluntly.

“You say that, but… I mean…” I bit my lip and took a deep breath, preparing myself for his answer. “
Did
you want to have sex with Chastity last night?”

“Not even a little bit.”

“Truly? Because I’d rather you were honest.” Although, honesty could lead to a white-hot shot of Cerulean Light if I didn’t like the answer.

He opened both eyes and studied mine, his pupils getting larger. “I have no reason to lie to you. And I also have no reason to want another girl, I might add.” He rolled up to sit, then spun around so he faced me, his legs crossed under him like a kid on a rug at preschool. When he lifted my hand and threaded his fingers through mine, I felt a familiar flicker of static energy between our palms—something I hadn’t noticed for a long time. “You, my love, cannot be compared to—you cannot be looked past or brushed off like other girls can. I will never want another girl as long as I live, because everything I ever wanted in a girl is right here.” He squeezed my hand. “Don’t ever doubt that, but please, also, don’t ever feel like you can’t ask me.”

I sucked my lip in as I smiled sheepishly.

“Okay?” he prompted.

“Okay.”

Chapter Nine

Clear beads of sweat broke out across Jase’s forehead, his eyes scrunched tight as he fought me. Even with the wintry wind battering the shutters outside, I felt a warm trickle run down from my neck and drip into the gap between my jeans and my tailbone. He was stronger than Em, stronger than Quaid, and holding him in the grip of fear wasn’t as easy as it was with them.

“Focus, Ara.” David’s instruction came through the thick fog of concentration. “You’re letting your feelings for him get in the way.”

“He’s fighting me.” My voice came out strained, as though the fight was physical.

“No, you’re
letting
him fight you.” I felt his hand on my arm. “Lock him down. Tell yourself you’re more powerful than him, and—”

“Argh!” David jumped back as I slipped off the chair and landed hard on my bum by the bed, flapping my hands around my head. “Get it off! Get it off!”

“There’s nothing there, Ara,” he said flatly, standing back.

“There is!” I looked away from him to the webs on my hands and face, kicking my legs as the spiders skittered toward me. “Get them off me!”

“What happened?” Em asked urgently, running her hand over the webs.

“He flung it back at me—the nightmare,” I yelled. “He drew me into it.”

David squatted beside me, and Jason sat up, lowering his legs over the side of the bed.

“Are you okay, Ara?” Jase softly cupped his palm over my head, and the nightmare faded.

David batted his hand away. “She’s fine.”

I breathed deeply through the remaining fear, lifting my own mind back to the surface—to reality—where it was light and warm with the heat of the fire. “I’m not strong enough to lock Jason down.”

“You are,” Jase assured me. “But when you doubt yourself, you open the floodgates of vulnerability, and any vampire—no matter how young or old—will feel that, and you’ll lose the fight.”

“But it
was
working,” David added, cupping my hand and helping me to my feet. “A few more seconds and his blood would have been at just the right temperature.”

“I know.” I rubbed my head, then my sore butt. “But how do I feed off a powerful vampire
and
keep him locked down in the nightmare at the same time? I’m not sure I can do that.”

David’s eyes flicked to Jason. “No.”

Jase put both hands up, shaking his head. “I never said it.”

“But you thought it, and no! She is not feeding off you.”

I grinned, seeing an opportunity to tease David. “Why not? After all, you did say I had to practise on
him
so
you
could teach me—”

“Fine.” He moved over and laid on the bed, straightening his t-shirt as he made himself comfortable. “You can practice on me then.”

“But that would mean Jase would have to teach,” I teased, folding my arms.

David closed his eyes and angled his chin to the roof. “Just get started.”

“Okay, if you insist.” I sat back down on the chair beside the bed.

“And be prepared, Ara,” David warned. “I will not go easy on you.”

“Neither will I,” I said with a smirk, and David opened his eyes then to darkness. Pitch black emptiness.

“Good,” Jase said. “The fear of nothingness.”

“Do you think it will be enough?”

“The kind of taste you prefer in blood comes from fear, not the adrenaline rush of fright. Draw it out—build on it, and when you feel his blood change—” he grabbed my hand and placed it on David’s arm, “—taste it to see if he’s afraid enough for you.”

As I touched David, his mind woke to the realisation that this scenario wasn’t real. He pushed back, fighting me out of his mind, and his blood cooled. If my touch alone was enough to draw him to the surface, then I needed to take him deeper into the nightmare, because a bite would certainly bring him up again—and it would be when I was at my most vulnerable.

I closed my eyes and imagined shadows bouncing under a swinging lantern, felt the bite of an underground chill, and when I drew a deep breath through my nose, I imagined the smell of rotting eggs—so thick and hot I wanted to cough the taste out from the back of my throat. And David took a breath as I did, letting it out with a little cough. The smell was foul enough to make me want to leave his mind, but I was determined to pull him down deep.

As I walked, I curled my toes to grip the slimy rocks beneath my bare feet, knowing that even in the real world David would be doing the same. In our minds, though, we weren’t sitting in a comfortable, warm room anymore; we were in the dungeons at Drake’s castle, and when we walked around that corner and looked into the cell up ahead, we would see our beloved wife in chains—bleeding from her eyes.

David fought me then, searching his mind like a dreamer scans a dream to see if this terror he felt was real. So I stretched out the tunnel before us, making five cells into fifteen—the short walk to the next corner now a long trek. And he went a layer deeper into himself—distracted by this new obstacle—his blood warming just a little.

In the distance, he could now hear his beloved wife screaming, begging for the imagined henchman not to hurt her. Again. And with that one word, with the implication that she had already been hurt, he sunk down into the nightmare again, his body flooding with the toxic energy of drowning hope.

I felt a soft pulling sensation inside my head—the same one I felt as Jase fought to free himself of the nightmare—but it wasn’t strong enough now to knock me away from his mind. I knew what I was feeling, and I knew how to overcome it.

David’s own mind took control of the nightmare then, and I relaxed back, letting his past and his everyday experiences create the world, while I held him under with an iron fist.

He imagined what might have been done to his wife—imagined every horrible possibility—and his blood warmed. With just a few more steps left until he would lay eyes on her again, his mind stretched the tunnel out again and she slipped farther and farther away.

“Ara!” he called, his voice resonating out here in the real world.

I heard shuffles and footsteps as my teacher and our onlookers clearly got up to come closer.

With my hand against David’s forearm, I could feel his muscles tighten and his body shift and move with the fight, like a mental patient trying to escape. But in his nightmare, his wife called out to him, screaming so high and crying on the end of each one that he started running—forgetting everything he felt, losing himself in the instinctual desire to save her.

He could hear her whimpering, hear a man grunting, and the horrid smell of rotting eggs and blood and something else he didn’t want to think about made him run faster.

Until he reached my slope—a slight ascent he hadn’t noticed before—slight enough to slow his steps and make his feet slip. He clawed his way toward her cell, screaming her name, and I opened my eyes.

“It’s time.”

“Bite him,” Jase instructed.

David’s fist was in such a tight ball that I had trouble moving his wrist to my lips, but as it finally touched my fangs and I sunk them in, David sprung up from the nightmare, calling my name.

I jumped back, his blood spitting out from the new wound, and stood between Jason and Emily.

David looked around like a wolf in a small cage, and when he realised what was happening, he folded forward, his eyes wide and his chest caving with each laboured breath. His back was completely soaked with sweat and he actually looked pale.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Move,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Move!”

Jase grabbed my shoulder, pulling me back as David ran for the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. A second later, I heard the toilet seat go up, followed by a heaving and coughing sound.

“Too far?” I said to Jase.

He just nodded, eyes on that bathroom door.

“Should I run?” I said. “Is he going to strangle me when he comes out?”

Emily laughed. “More like hug you.”

“Yeah,” Quaid said, laughing too. “That deserves a hug. Amazing work, Queeny.”

Jase nodded in agreement, folding his arms, his warm smile changing his face. “I agree. There’s no way he can be mad after that. Best work I’ve seen.”

“Agreed,” David’s voice echoed out weakly from the bathroom.

I smiled up at Jase. “Brave enough to let me try on you again?”

“Bring it on, Queen of Darkness. I can take you.”

“I doubt that, pretty boy,” I said. “I figured out where I went wrong.”

“Oooh, I shiver in my boots,” he said playfully.

I looked down at his bare feet. “You’re not wearing boots.”

“Ha-ha.” He turned me by the shoulders and aimed me at the bed. “This time, you’ll have to bite me—to see if I stay under when you do. And at the same time, I’m gonna get Ems to attack you—see if you can keep me under and defend yourself at the same time.”

“Yeah, what good is a predator that lets its guard down?” Quaid said.

“Fine.” I linked my fingers and flexed them outward. “Lie down, and let’s get this started.”

The toilet flushed then and David popped his head out, drawing a toothbrush from his mouth to speak. “Wait for me.”

“Why?”

“Because if you’re planning to feed off my brother, you’ll do it while I’m in the room.”

“Still don’t trust me, huh?” I said playfully.

“Trust has nothing to do with it,” he stated, aiming a deliberate gaze at his laughing brother. He popped back into the bathroom then, and I looked at Jase, confused.

“What was that all about?”

Jase folded his arms, giving me a very smug grin. “It might have something to do with a certain thought you had.”

“What thought?”

He raised his brows and the same scene I’d imagined yesterday by the lake—of me drinking from Jason while David drinks from me—flashed into my thoughts like a photo on a screen. My cheeks went hot and my ears burned. “He showed you that?”

“No.” Jase shook his head. “It slipped out.”

“Well, stop laughing. I never meant to think that.” I sat down on the chair by the bed and pushed his chest to lie him down.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s out there,” he said, “and now he can’t get the horror out of his mind.”

“I’m not the slightest bit bothered by it,” David said, wiping his hands on a towel as he came out the bathroom. He dropped the towel beside Jason’s leg and sat down on the bed. “But just the same as if I were to feed from Emily, Ara would rather be in the room.”

I gave David a soft smile and nod to show I understood where he was coming from.

“Now, this time,” David said, “take him to a place that has no relevance to his life. You won’t necessarily know your victims, and so you won’t be able to use a memory or a phobia to frighten them.”

“So I need a generic fear?” I offered, my mind already ticking.

“Right.” David got up off the bed and came to stand behind me. “And at some point—randomly—I’m going to attack you.”

“So am I,” Em added.

“Okay.” I nodded, looking at Jase. “Let’s do this.”

Jason and I closed our eyes, and I sharpened my senses, maintaining full awareness of everything around me: the crackling fire; the window slightly ajar in the attic; the breeze sweeping in and brushing the curtain along the wall. I pinpointed the location of each vampire in the house: Em by the stove; Quaid leaning against the wall by the fire; David right behind me; two guards smoking outside. By the power of my Cerulean Energy, if any of them moved an inch, I’d know about it.

When Jason’s eyes opened a second later, it was to a long table with seven stern faces staring back at him—one of them his uncle. A much taller and darker version of Drake left his seat and came around to where he knelt on the floor, and just the idea that he was brought before the council was enough to heat Jason just the way I liked it. When he fought me, I just laughed and shook my head. He didn’t stand a chance now.

“Both of you,” David said, “Out. Now.”

My attention wandered from Jase for a split second, and his mind lifted a few layers.

As I shoved him back down and locked him inside his own endless mind, I heard David repeat his command to Em and Quaid, both of them laughing as they slid the glass door shut behind them.

My muscles tightened along my thighs and upper arms, ready for an attack. My ears pricked and my nose took in more of the smells around me—the smoky flames, the bread going stale on the table, David’s orange-chocolate breath as it brushed along my neck, and the rich, tangy taste of the fear in Jason’s blood. He was ready.

“Bite him,” David whispered in my ear.

“You’ll attack me,” I said, struggling a little to keep Jason locked down.

“That’s not why I sent the others away.” He knelt down by my legs and gathered my hand up in his, angling it so my wrist was exposed. “I want to taste you as you absorb his life force. And I want you to take it all—as if you meant to kill him.”