The Gates (2 page)

Months passed, and instead of Joel, his mother Marie appeared at the gates.

“He wanted you to know that he didn’t come because he does not love you,” she said. “He didn’t come because he
does.
He can’t bear to bring you more pain, and he can’t bear it himself. Let him go Arianna. It’s time.” She looked at me with beady, pleading eyes, and all I could do was slip my journal through the bars of the gates and into her hands, to show her written proof of the desperation and adoration I’d been stowing away, waiting for him to change his mind and come to me. “Arianna, if you want to see him one last time—”

“Leave.” Tears made it difficult to see. My cold hands gripped the golden bars as I burned her with my bitter gaze. “Give him that.” I reached out, shoved the journal harder into her chest and stumbled backward.

“Arianna … he’s sorry he chose to stay on earth, sorry he ever changed you.”

“I said leave!” I screamed, began retreating through the fog and down the hill toward the city’s central village. The fog began to swallow up the gates as I ran, and I glimpsed a broken man with warm skin and a compassionate face—my favorite face—rushing toward Marie, joining her side to call out to me. He stood there, gripping the bars and begging me with his eyes. I continued to withdraw until his pained face was swallowed up along with the gates, the fog separating me from what I could not separate myself.
Curse the day I ever gave my heart to that man!

* * *

Herds of villagers bustled about, more than I’d ever seen together at one time, shouting and pushing their way through the crowds that surged the city’s cobblestone streets. They were heading north, toward the gates at the top of the hill. I fought to keep myself out of the street, struggled to make my way toward my cottage door, but the heavy pail of well water and sack of produce I carried over my shoulder caused me to lose my balance when the villagers pummeled into me to get by.

The pail crashed to my feet and the sack fell behind me, and I was swept into the stampede and carried up, toward the open gates.

The open gates?
I blinked in disbelief. Yes. They stood open. But why?

Samira’s guards flew above us, swooping down like demons from hell, plucking random people from their feet and sinking their teeth into them. More screams broke out as the guards ferociously swept the streets, trying to stop the Amaranthians from making their way up the hill. I latched on to whomever I could, just to regain balance so I wouldn’t be trampled on. The fears I’d had for some time now came true—an uprising had unfolded and hit its peak. The Amaranthians were finally rebelling against my mother’s reign and wanted out of this exile, wanted to return to earth to enjoy their human lives. Soon, Samira would send more guards into the city to control the rebellion, to stop the Amaranthians from escaping and returning to earth. I knew what her control entailed. It meant a massacre.

Getting closer to the gates, I ducked my head and winced each time I spotted a guard soaring over me. In mere minutes I would be outside the exile walls, free to make my way to the portal that led to earth, where surely a crowd would be gathering, waiting their turn to ascend to the bayou to make their escape. The crescent moon cycle, the one that declared the portal was open, was present. It was the only time visitors could travel between earth and Amaranth.
This must have been planned
. Samira’s guards would no doubt wipe out the city to regain control. She wouldn’t kill everyone off. Would she? She couldn’t. She would lose her power if she had no energy to draw from.
Do I want this? Do I want to return to earth as human? Could I ever return to Joel? Could I forgive him and leave all of this behind?

It was now, or never. An opportunity such as this would never present itself to the Amaranthians again.

Struggling through the crush of villagers, I finally made it outside the exile walls, past the gates, and fought my way toward the portal entry, where my new fate awaited. Finding, then focusing on the maze in the distance, I charged forward with other Amaranthians who clearly had the same idea I did—to leave and never return to this godforsaken place. If I made it back to earth alive, a new season would begin, and I would embrace the change with every ounce of my being. Would there be enough time for the sea of people to make it through the portal? There was no way everyone would make it out alive. Too much hysteria. Humans rarely passed through the portal as it was. If they dared to travel here from earth, they were killed, or changed, immediately upon arrival to Amaranth. So the sight of hundreds and hundreds of warm human bodies surging the portal entry to escape was a foreign one, and alarmingly … inspiring.

I pushed my way through the crowd but was forced to wait my turn to get to the portal door, and watched, helpless, while people were trampled to their deaths, clawing their way to get to the underground tunnel. All I could picture was my mother, rotting away in her wicked kingdom, all alone after the Amaranthians and guards had left her desolate in her exile. Surely my father would leave her to die the worst kind of death: a sad, lonely, never-ending existence.

1

GONE WITH THE WIND

Present Day, England

Camille

“Are you sure you want to do this, Cam?” Gavin raised his eyebrows, which stopped me in front of the charming Victorian bed-and-breakfast. We’d arrived at the hotel a few days ago, after slipping away from Paris, narrowly escaping Arianna’s wrath when she learned Joel was dead. Gavin dipped into his luscious bank account to take over my expenses while we took time to exit reality—leaving Arianna some time to calm down—and to figure out how to arrange a war with the undead. Returning from our walk, I stood on the hotel porch and gazed out at the English countryside, vast and green, with rolling hills and clouds that belonged in dreams.

“Am I sure? Are
you
sure that’s going to be the last time you ask me that?” I said. “I think that’s five times since we got in the car, and you promised you wouldn’t ask again.” I squeezed his hand and pulled him toward the front door. I was marrying him if I had to drag him down the damn aisle.

“Camille, we still haven’t talked about—”

“Sex? We’ve talked about it plenty. I get it. You want to be human, and it doesn’t look like that’s happening anytime soon, so … end of discussion. The minister’s inside waiting.”

“All right, all right. But why do I feel like this should be the other way around?” He chuckled as I began towing him through the doors, lowering his voice. “This just seems rash, even for you.”

Pleased at hearing “rash,” I smiled to myself, then swung around to look at him. By then, I’d plastered a no-nonsense expression on my face. He stopped laughing. “I want to be with you,” I said. “And if it weren’t for your stubborn ‘I-need-to-be-human-first’ thing, I’d have that ring on my finger and you in my bed by now.”

“What? I’m already in your bed.”

I rolled my eyes at him, not in the mood for stalling games.

“I’ve told you how I feel about this. Sleeping with you isn’t just about that.” He pulled me aside, ducking into a hallway. I complied, but my impatience was escalating. I already knew what else it was about. The guy had been around for centuries; he wasn’t celibate. And yet he wanted to marry me first. Which is why we were here.

“I have every reason to be concerned,” he said. “With your history, being knocked around—”

“Gavin. Don’t go there, please.”

He stuffed us into a sitting room that smelled of warm mint tea, and shut the door. “It matters to me, can’t you understand that? You know, the grandest gesture of respect and all that … for you to know you’re different. It’s important to me to give you that, the opposite of what every guy who came before me
didn’t
give you … preferably when I’m human and don’t want to sink my fangs into you. And when you feel you’re ready to let someone else put their hands on you. Is that so much to ask?”

“And I appreciate that, which is why I’m ready to do this.”

“We still have so much to deal with. We have to go back to Paris and see Arianna, construct a plan to get back to Amaranth and face Samira again. Let’s plan this the right way, at the right time. Don’t you want Audrey and Gabe with us for this?”

“Right now, I can’t even look at Arianna, Gavin. I didn’t have time to prepare, I could barely come up with a proper apology. As for Audrey and Gabe, we can have a formal ceremony later, when this nightmare is over. And we don’t even know if …” I felt tears well up at the possibility they were dead, but pushed them back.

He took my chin in his hand, forced me to look at him. “Let’s go back to Paris, love. We’ve given Arianna time to cool off. Besides, we’re running out of time. We need to make preparations before the Amaranthian portal opens again and Samira sends more guards after us. God knows how many are already here on earth, looking for us … we don’t know how many followed us through the portal after we escaped. And Marie’s still on the loose …”

Marie. Joel’s mother. She was here on earth, on a mission to capture me. He has a point. The clock began ticking when we escaped Amaranth, our safety critical. Samira, the ruler of Amaranth, would surely see to it that we paid our debts from our last visit. The next crescent moon was imminent, which meant the Amaranthian portal would soon open, giving her guards access to earth again, and plenty of opportunity to find us.

“Exactly,” I said. “We’re running out of time.” Already I’d spent so much of that time riding on an emotional roller coaster, by the time I finally figured out what the hell I wanted, I was ready to fight for it. “I don’t want you to treat me like damaged goods. And I appreciate your concern, but there’s no need for you to have this aversion to sleeping with me. Unless you don’t want to be with someone who’s been— with someone like me.”

His eyes widened and he stumbled backward. “Camille.” He took a deep breath. “Do you have any idea how hard it’s been this past week? We’ve been all alone in the countryside. You’ve been prancing around in the sexiest pajamas I’ve ever seen. They didn’t make that stuff back in the day.” He let out a laugh, moved toward me. His hands on my waist, he shifted me backward, up against the door. “You don’t think I want you? Every second, of every day?” His sly smile lured me in.

“Well, I guess I understand …”

“Do you, really?” He kissed me, made sure he had my attention. “Do you understand that every time I do this,” he dragged his lips across my neck, “and this,” slid his fingers under the hem of my shirt, “that it’s torture?” He grazed my earlobe with his teeth, then skimmed my collarbone.

Breaking a sweat, I slipped out of his grasp and opened the door. I needed fresh air. “I, uh …” I cleared my throat. “You convinced me.”

“Thank you.” He grinned, all smug and sexy and annoying. His confidence as of late had become insanely jarring. Once he knew I was committed to being his, regardless of what he was, he suddenly seemed lighter, not nearly as hard on himself for coming into my world.

“You have got to stop doing that,” I exhaled, then stormed up the stairs to pack since he was insisting we go back to Paris. He wanted to marry me first, but he sure as hell wasn’t making the wait easy, and I resented that he was having a good ol’ time rubbing it in.

* * *

The decision had been made. We’d return to Paris to consult with Arianna and the resistance, to regroup after our unexpected escape from Amaranth and organize an attack against Samira. A carefree elopement would have to be reserved for another day. Soaring in Gavin’s arms, high above the troubled world, had become my new favorite way to fly since Joel first flew me across the Atlantic. Although since that flight, I had to do it sparingly. It was too physically exhausting for a human to travel at that speed over such long distances. Even so, a coach seat on an airplane just wasn’t the same anymore. So, much to Gavin’s disapproval, he took us on the relatively short flight from England back to Paris, and by the time we arrived, the lump in my throat had become permanently lodged there. The last time, Arianna threw us out of her apartment when she learned why Joel was in Amaranth in the first place: to save me. And here I was, once again hand in hand with Gavin, standing at her door.

Music blared in the background, some French new wave music I didn’t recognize but could tell it was my new favorite. Her gorgeous face appeared at the door and I gazed up at her, hoping my eyes said it all. I tucked my mousy brown hair behind my ear and swallowed.

One hand holding a drink tray, she sighed, her eyes on her drink in her other hand. She took a swig of it, sloppy like an old sailor. She didn’t look so hot. “I don’t hate you,” she said in a sulk, opened the door farther to invite us in. “I’m just heartbroken.”

“I understand. And I’m deeply, deeply sorry for your loss.” Looking down, I played with my coat buttons. My special coat. In Paris, with me on my adventurous travels yet again.

“Thanks.” When I heard her and looked up, she finally made eye contact with me.

“Did you invite the whole neighborhood?” Gavin asked, observing the handful of vampires that were packed into her apartment, drinking and talking, grouped together in clusters like high school cliques. I wanted to ask Arianna if we were really okay, but when Gavin changed the subject, I decided to take advantage of it and wait.