He didn’t answer.
“Valek!” Charlotte shook him a little. Silvery tears slipped, glimmering down her face.
He had to leave tomorrow evening. It would be his last and most desperate attempt to save her. There was no other choice. But he wouldn’t just abandon her. He needed to say something. He pulled her against him. She resisted slightly, but he pulled until she collapsed into his arms.
“Why are you acting so strange?” She whimpered against his chest.
He placed each of his gray claws on either side of her face and kissed her once on the cheek. “I have to fix you, Lottie.” He pressed his lips to her forehead, feeling her small hands wind around his wrists. A light tugging feeling suggested that she was trying to fight him away. “I promised that everything was going to return to normal. I won’t break my promise.” He couldn’t look her in the eye, so he just held her even tighter to him. “I’m leaving tomorrow, but I promise I will return,” he confessed.
“What?” Charlotte tried harder to pull away from him, an overwhelming hurt bubbling underneath her words, as though she were about to cry. He couldn’t stand it. “I don’t need you to
fix
me. I need you to
stay
with me! Please!”
“I cannot stay. You are very sick and growing sicker. Soon, you will mentally begin to lose yourself as that woman did. Her fate will be yours, which is why I am leaving tomorrow…with Sarah. I want you to know why I won’t be here when you wake up. I cannot lie to you any further. I cannot stand the guilt.” He heard an immediate reaction to this within her thoughts, so he answered it. “You cannot follow us. I’m doing this because I love you.”
She began backing away slowly from him. She was afraid, he sensed. Afraid of him. Human intuition was so keen. So quick. Like a rabbit sensing a snake in the grass. He experienced that with every one of his victims. Though Valek’s, as a Vampire, was even sharper than that. It was true that his kind made the perfect predators.
He quickly opened his arms to her. “Come to me, Lottie.”
“No.” Her eyebrows pulled together as more tears rolled down her ruddy face. “You can’t leave! I promise I’ll be fine.” But another addiction-pain waved through her body and she bent in half.
“You won’t,” he countered, sadness tightening up the muscles in his throat. He knew she wasn’t about to let her guard down. Not now. What he wanted to do next would have to be done by force. Her addiction was too heavy. He could see the need for him build again in the look in her eye. She was fighting it.
“Come here to me. I’ll make it better.” He beckoned again.
“
No!
” she hollered. She was resisting, tears dripping off the point of her chin.
Her pulse slammed louder in his ears as tiny beads of sweat, almost microscopic, formed along her forehead and at the hollow of her throat. It was absolutely arousing.
“Forgive me, then,” he whispered and flew toward her.
Charlotte screamed as she somehow managed to dodge him. She ran around him, racing for the gate. It was only inches before her, her hand outstretched for the wrought iron as he grabbed at her ankle. She screeched as he yanked her back, her face falling to the grass, her chin slamming hard into the dirt. She must have split it open, because the heady scent of iron, copper, salt, and life hit him square in the face. He dragged her toward him as she continued to kick and cry and gripped her tightly underneath the arms. Valek whirled Lottie around to face him.
“Please! Please stop!”
Fresh blood poured from her mouth, as she had also bitten her tongue upon the impact. He could really see it then, the mirror image of him—the beast she would become if he ever gave in to her deepest desire. She looked like a monster. He vowed silently to himself he would never usher her into that—into becoming the very thing he hated. Himself.
Before Valek could see her move, something plunged deep into his chest. He cried out, dropping her to the ground as the pain bubbled up and out of the open wound. He looked down to see a large, crude hunk of wood protruding from his center.
He moaned in pain, the borrowed blood from his veins seeping down his clothes. He wrapped his claw around the makeshift stake. “You are quite the Vampire hunter, Lottie,” he murmured darkly before ripping it from himself. Fast, so that he would not draw the pain out any longer. Lurching forward, he dropped to his knees. Bending in half, he tore open his shirt to watch as the wound quickly sewed itself up, the cascade of blood remaining stained along his abdomen and on his clothes.
Valek yanked off his overcoat and shirt, tossing them to the grass, before he looked up and was met with the silence of the empty courtyard. Charlotte had learned a thing or two from so many years of living with him—that was for sure. She had already taken off, her fevered thoughts still audible, however. She was running. He could make out her rapid pulse, her breaths hastily flying from her as her footfalls slammed into the packed snow.
***
Charlotte burst through the threshold, slamming the front door back on its hinges. Immediately, Sarah poked her head out from the library, book in hand. Charlotte glanced down to see that she was clutching a newly, bound edition of
Anatomy of Vampires: Volume II.
The pages looked crisp, like they were hot off the press. Apparently, Sarah had made a recent purchase.
With hot tears streaming down her face, fists balled up at her sides, Charlotte glared at the Witch. “If you were
really
my friend, you wouldn’t be doing this! Why would you try and take him away from me? Why can’t I come with you?”
She didn’t let Sarah reply before she bolted up the staircase, tearing open the door to the upstairs bathroom, and instantly slamming it closed. It caused all of the surrounding walls to shake.
Charlotte gripped the sides of the marble sink, gazing at her grubby image in the mirror. Along her lips and down her chin and neck ran her own blood. Her tongue swelled inside her mouth, but no pain, not even her scar, matched the pain on the inside. Her breathing was fevered and broken. Streaks of dirt smeared down her skin.
Charlotte pushed through her tear-stained, frustrated sobs to turn the hot water faucet in the modest bathtub that must have been at least eighty years old. It was antique, and old-fashioned, just like the rest of the bathroom. Violently, she yanked off her favorite dress, now grass-stained and packed with dirt and blood, and threw it to the floor. How could he be leaving her like this? And with whom was he leaving her? The likes of Lusian? Did he really think he was keeping her
safe
by doing that? She continued to sob, but the tears stopped coming, for it was as though she had run out.
Large spouts of steam began to blanket the small room. It eclipsed the mirror in fog so much that she couldn’t see her reflection anymore. It didn’t matter. She detested the sight of herself anyway.
She didn’t get into the bath. Naked, she leaned forward with her hands gripped to the brim of the tub, her head hanging down toward the floor. Defeated. Devastated. Once Valek made up his mind, there was no changing it. She knew that very well. Her scar wasn’t the thing that tormented her now. It was the utter deceit from the only one she’d ever trusted. Her face twisted in anguish from the pain living in her chest. Too much to take. She wanted to tear a hole in it and rip out her heart, just so she wouldn’t have to feel it anymore.
Finally, she put one leg in and then the other, wading through the hot water. She reached over and closed the curtain around herself, hoping to block out the rest of the world. She flicked the knob that let the water run through the shower head and buried her head in her hands. The rest of the tears she thought were no longer there commenced again. For a few moments, she was away from the world—just alone with herself and the quiet running of the water.
From the other end of the room, she heard the doorknob turn, the door creaking open. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t even look toward it, already knowing who it was. She was surprised by her own bravery. Slowly, Valek entered, the door closing almost silently behind him. Charlotte could make out his silhouette behind the shower curtain as she peered out from between the fingers covering her face. The edges of his body were fuzzy in the waves of steam.
Her heart crawled into her throat as she watched him move nearer to the bathtub, realizing just how vulnerable she was. So, maybe she wasn’t so brave after all. Her face started to grow hot, all words eluding her as she dropped her hands to her sides. Should she reach for a towel? Scream at him to leave once and for all?
Her legs stayed frozen in the hot water, her pulse hammering into her ears as she watched the shadow of his claw reach up and pull back the curtain. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. It was as if he was moving in slow motion before her, and she began to tremble, willing him to leave.
There he stood, his cerulean eyes fixed on hers, but filled with a deep anguish and sorrow. It created a crease in between his eyebrows. He stared at her for a few more silent moments, a thick bed of dark eyelashes cradling the depth of his icy stare.
Before Charlotte could think of something to say, Valek began stepping into the hot shower with her, bare-chested, though with shoes and pants and all. She looked up at him, confusion and slight embarrassment filling her as he refused to remove his gaze from her own. All her rational thought disappeared. She would forever be enraptured by that stare.
The water plummeted over him, causing his strands of black hair to cling to his face and neck. Charlotte’s breath caught in her chest and she remained frozen, unsure of what to do next. That eternal sadness didn’t leave his face as he grasped the back of her head and pulled her forward, crushing her to him with a kiss she knew he meant as a goodbye.
Reservation left her as she reached up, knotting her fingers in the locks of his hair, her lips moving slickly against his. She couldn’t breathe. Her whole body started to quake with the utter nerves of what was happening. Valek’s other hand moved to the small of her back, pressing her harder to him.
Finally pulling away from her, Valek placed both of his hands to the sides of her face, almost bending so that his gaze would meet hers at the same level.
“I love you more than this existence itself.” His words were broken, almost as if they were sobs, though he refused to cry. “This is
not
a ‘goodbye’. It is not even a ‘goodbye for now’. It’s an ‘I’ll be back soon’.”
Charlotte’s heart constricted, new tears beginning down her face. She couldn’t understand why he was refusing to take her with them.
“It is far too dangerous. I would feel better knowing that you were safe within these walls.” His claws ran down the length of her arm, sending shivers up her back. Valek reached for the brass knob, turning the water off. Charlotte wracked her brain to come up with her next move. A chill suddenly crept in to the room, causing all of the hairs on her body to bristle. She was in utter disbelief and a complete panic. What if something happened to her while he was gone? He would never know. Everything inside told her it was a bad idea.
Sopping, Valek stepped from the bath and grabbed one of the ruby-colored towels. She stood there, holding herself together as he extended one of his hands to help her out of the tub. He draped the oversized towel around her shoulders and wrapped it so it enveloped her completely, before sweeping her from her feet in one fluid motion. Silver streams of water ran like metallic veins down his face, perfect in all its sorrow. He continued to gaze at her as he carried her from the bathroom and into the hallway. Charlotte’s heart plunged into her stomach.
“Don’t! They’ll see,” she protested, curling up into a smaller ball in his arms.
“They won’t. And I don’t care.”
He continued down that same corridor she knew so well and through the double doors into his bedroom. Charlotte noticed immediately that the bewitchments over the bed had changed from little stars to streams and streams of glimmering currents of varied light and color. More glorious than the aurora borealis, and she knew exactly who’d put them there. Worse was that each and every candle in the room was lit. Suddenly, her stomach did a back flip. Her nerve endings became electric as her gaze shot to Valek’s face. Oxygen didn’t come so easily.
Though she had expected to find a smirk there, he was all but light-hearted. His face looked hard and strained, as if he was deliberating something very serious, his eyes distant, fixed on his current thought.
Gently, he placed her on the bed, the towel still hugged around her. Charlotte studied him as he stood before her in the pale stream of the nighttime glow, his placid skin almost illuminated in the milky light. She scanned his sculpted form, bare before her. He had never been that vulnerable in front of her before. His broad chest. His thick arms. There was a blood stain still in the middle of his stomach, cut like a diamond, where she had stabbed him in the cathedral garden. His hair stuck in thick, wet, wavy locks to his jagged marble cheek. He was a holy vision that made her heart absolutely break. It was all she could do to stop herself from reaching for him.
“L-lottie, I, umm….”
She’d never seen her Vampire this way. Normally so even-keeled, she could see he was completely at odds with himself now. He was going to pieces, just as she was. She knew this couldn’t be an easy thing for him, either. The only other time they had ever been apart from each other in her life was when she was very small and he had been called to a neighboring Occult to help with some magical epidemic inflicting their people. She remembered how difficult that had been, and it was so many years ago. That and when Aiden had parted them briefly just a few months ago, of course.
“Lottie,” he began again, nearing the bed. She could see his spine go rigid, as if he was forcing himself to remain in one piece. She knew how he hated when his emotions got the best of him. He sucked in a deep breath through his nose. “I want you to trust me. I hope you trust me—”
“I do,” Charlotte said impulsively and a little too quickly. She clenched her jaw to suppress another outburst.