“Eva,” Elijah shouted from the forest, his voice panicked and thick with fear. I watched in horror as Grayson’s arm reaches toward me. I jumped back instinctively, placing myself out of his grasp. He drew in another hard, long breath.
“Eva,” Grayson struggled to call for me in a raspy choked voice. My mind spun as I try to understand what is happening.
“Grayson?” I asked as the wall of tears built back up behind my eyes, threatening to spill over my lashes. His lips twisted into a grin as he held his hand out in front of him in the sunlight.
“I’m alive,” he called out to me, his face beaming brighter than the sun. I let out a nervous laugh as I cupped my mouth and tried to understand what I was seeing. He pushed to his feet and stood before me, arms outstretched.
“You’re…” I begin, but I was suddenly at a loss for words. I stepped closer and reached out my hand, touching his chest ever so slightly. The dull and steady thudding of his heartbeat pushed back against my fingertips. “You’re human,” I sputtered in shock. His grin spread showing all of his pearly white teeth, minus the fangs. “Do you know what this means?” I asked, unable to believe what I was seeing.
He took a deep breath and his expression became serious. His eyes locked dead onto mine as he wrapped his fingers around my hand and held it firmly in place on his chest. He seemed older. He had aged a lifetime in these few short weeks.
“I can save you,” He replied, his voice just above a whisper. My heart melted at his words and I instinctively wrap my arms around his neck. His skin was warm to the touch and it was a soothing and welcomed sensation. His arms laced around my body and squeezed me painfully tight.
His body was hard and muscular beneath me. I suddenly realized he was much larger than his old self. I felt… safe. Anger washed through the air and I pulled back as I looked off into the trees for Elijah. I scanned the woods, unable to locate him. Grayson’s arms wrapped tighter around my waist and I was pulled back into the moment. I reached up and stroked his cheek, not believing my eyes. He grinned and turned his face slightly to kiss the palm of my hand. I blushed involuntarily as happiness blanketed me. It was my happiness. The anger that floated through the air had evaporated with Elijah as he retreated further into the woods to avoid the daylight. I wanted to run after him, soothe him and let him know he had nothing to fear. My heart belonged to him now. Grayson gripped me tighter, nearly squeezing the air from my lungs as he lifted me into the air and swung me in a circle.
“This is impossible! After Marcus,” my voice trailed off as the sadness from losing my brother crept back into my mind.
“Eva,” Grayson spoke and I could see the regret in his eyes. I placed my hand over his lips, stopping him from ruining this happy moment.
“No, it wasn’t your fault. I’m just glad you are…you,” I explained and his expression softened.
All night I had mourned Grayson. If everything went the way we had planned, he should have been dead by now, but here he was, in my arms.
I blinked back the tears from my eyes, but my vision remained blurred. A haze fell over us and my heart began to race. Grayson’s arms were locked around me as the world faded back into the night.
***
Chapter Thirty-six
Animalistic
“No,” I whispered, my body frozen in fear, suspended in Grayson’s arms and still in the dressing area of the club. When our eyes locked, the smirk fell from his lips as his fangs slowly protruded from his gums. His confusion turned to hunger.
It had all been a lie.
My heart broke, not because my death was imminent, but because I had a glimpse of how ordinary life could be before it would be snatched away. Tears fell to my chest as I gave up, unable to fight any longer.
Grayson’s nose had skimmed along my jaw before his teeth roamed over the flesh of my neck. That’s when it washed over me, so subtle I almost missed it. Beneath the haze of my own panic was remorse, but it was not my own. Grayson had meant what he’d said when he’d told me he loved me and now, the inkling of human emotion that he clung to, might be able to save my life.
“Grayson, I love you. This isn’t you,” The tears poured from my eyes as I pleaded with him to remember what we’d had. He was a much younger vampire than Elijah, and I knew that meant he would be less predictable and more animalistic. But I had to take a chance.
With the sounds of Elijah and Olivie fighting to the death in the distance, I was soft spoken and whispering sweet-nothings to Grayson, in hopes of saving my own life. If I was honest, I was making peace with my demise. I was okay with things ending this way because I couldn’t picture any other outcome.
Love didn’t conquer all.
In the real world, there was pain and disappointment, and in those tragic moments, we know we’ve really lived. I think that’s why they tell you to pinch yourself when you are overwhelmed with joy. Because the feeling of happiness and love are just an illusion that we create for ourselves to make our meaningless existence more bearable.
I felt that pain now, wafting through the air in Grayson’s remorse as his fangs sank into the soft flesh of my throat. His bites were not gentle, but neither was his affection. He was wild and wanton with his emotions in life as he now was in limbo.
As my body weakened so did, the pain and I smiled through the tears as Elijah screamed my name, no doubt feeling the life drain from our connection. I’d felt his agony as it ebbed and flowed around me. He was being set free from me as well, no longer saddled with the burden of my affection. I wished I could suffer the quick snap of a broken neck, ripping off the Band-Aid with one quick motion. Instead, we all suffered through my slow demise.
Everyone fears the physical pain of their death but that was nothing more than a mosquito bite across the course of an entire lifetime.
The real pain was those last few moments when the body dies but the brain still contains a spark and you are trapped alone, inside of your head and lost in all of your regrets.
Your life literally flashes before your eyes and it has nothing to do with a God or religion. Only regret. Only selfishly thinking about all of the things you’ll miss.
“It was you,” I felt Elijah’s words vibrate through every fiber of my being and I felt at peace. Everything I’d thought I’d known about vampires was wrong. They couldn’t all be painted with the same brush.
The very thing that had killed me, taken from me, had also given me life and love.
“It was you,” he screamed, the pain of his words slicing through my heart. “Wake up, Eva.”
I struggled to scream back and let him know I would be okay. I wasn’t going to a better place, but I was going… fading… making peace with what my fate had turned out to be.
The flicker, the spark inside of me began to dwindle.
“Eva, It was you all along,” he pleaded.
The sharp thud of my heart caused my eyes to shoot open and I sucked in a ragged breath, burning my lungs as they struggled to take in more air.
“It’s you,” he pleaded and my skin began to cool where the sun had warmed it only moments before. My hands unclenched and blades of grass fell from my grip, pulled from my twisted imagination. Grayson laid only a few feet from me, his eyes still open and looking at nothing, the light behind them gone. Grayson was dead.
I was on the floor of the club, chaos surrounding me. My eyes locked with Elijah’s briefly and I felt my heart surge. He was coated in crimson and I hoped, in a moment of selfishness that it belonged to someone else, that it wasn’t his own blood. I looked off to the small group of vampires gathered just a few feet away from him, waiting for their chance to be able to get their shot at him. He was hunched in a defensive crouch, his hands extended in front of him, ready to grab and rip apart anyone who tried to advance. I gripped my hand over my mouth and let out a devastating cry as Olivie took her shot, jumping on him from behind.
Elijah’s growl was so intense and full of agony it felt like it had vibrated through my bones.
I shoved to my feet, wobbling before I grabbed the broken leg of a chair, charging toward him.
He was on his back and Olivie had sunk her fangs into his throat, ripping and tearing the flesh from his body.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Be Still My Heart
Closing my eyes when I leaped, it felt almost like I was flying. But I didn’t disappear into oblivion. Instead, I was knocked from the air when my body collided with another. I screamed, when my hand slid down the length of the chair leg, lodging a large splinter into the palm of my hand.
The other end slid effortlessly into Olivie’s back, missing her heart, so the blow was nothing more than an irritation, a bug bite to someone of her strength. But I knew all too well what a mere bug bite can turn into. Death.
That simple distraction was enough to take her attention away from Elijah, who grabbed a small knife from his belt, shoving it into her stomach and upward, lodging it under her ribcage.
She sputtered, blood pouring from her lips that quirked up into a smirk. “You think if you kill me this will end?” she asked, struggling to laugh and spraying a few drops of blood onto Elijah’s face. “The Elders will come for her. They won’t stop until they have her. Until Moses has her.”
“Moses,” he whispered, his face going white.
“You can’t save her.”
“I won’t let that happen,” he growled, his anger so intense and thick in the air around me I could barely breathe in his crippling rage.
He grunted as his hand followed into the wound. I covered my mouth, gagging but thankful I couldn’t see him reaching inside of her stomach and sliding under her ribcage, clutching her heart in the palm of his fist and ripping it from her chest.
Her back bowed as she let out a blood-curdling scream. The other vampires froze and I seized their moment of uncertainty as they watched one of their Elders being eviscerated.
I stumbled to Elijah, pressing my hand over the wound on his neck, struggling to keep the life from draining from him. He growled, fangs extended.
“You’re bleeding. I can’t be near you. Go! You have to go!”
I shook my head, struggling to keep myself from crying as I held my aching palm against him until his blood caused my wound to fade away.
“You said we’d walk out of this together. I won’t leave you.”
“I need to feed so I can heal,” he groaned. “It’s too deep.”
“Feed from me,” I pleaded, although I was still lightheaded from Grayson’s attack.
“No. I’ll kill you.”
“You didn’t kill me last time. You stopped. I know you can stop.”
“Eva, I was only able to stop because Olivie pulled me off you.”
“They are going to kill you if you don’t heal!” I looked to the small gathering of vampires who hadn’t made any attempt to continue their attack. They turned and ran, leaving me alone with my bleeding vamp. “Why? Why aren’t they killing us right now?”
My eyes went back to Elijah as he looked at the doorway they’d just exited. “Because I killed an Elder.” His eyes met mine again, searching for some understanding but I had no idea why that had caused them to stop advancing. “Because I’m already dead.”
“What?”
“They already know she’s gone. They will be here for us and there is nowhere we can hide that we will be safe.”
“Why are they doing this to us. What do they want from us?”
“It’s not us they want. It’s you.”
“I don’t understand. W-what did I do wrong?”
“I was supposed to bring you to them. That was my job. But I couldn’t. I’m so sorry, Eva.” My mind raced as I thought back to the hidden phone I’d found in our bag and the mysterious Porter duties.
“No,” I wiped the tears from my cheek, smearing Elijah’s blood across my face. “No, you can’t just give up!” I pushed to my feet, grabbing his arm and struggling to help him stand. He groaned but stood as well, leaning against me for support.
“You can’t save me, Eva. I’m already gone.” He laughed sardonically. “I was gone before you ever met me. I’m not human anymore.”
“That’s not true. You know it’s not true. You care about me. I can feel it. I know you can feel it too.”
His eyebrows pulled together as his mouth turned down. “I hadn’t been able to feel anything since I’d turned… until I met you.” He smiled, his hand cupping my cheek and his thumb sliding over my skin. “I’ve lived more in these last few days than I had in two hundred years. I will never be able to thank you enough.” He pressed his lips against my forehead and his eyes fell closed. “You should have kept walking, Eva. I should have told them I couldn’t find you. I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist you and it would end this way, but I couldn’t help myself.”
I pictured the moment I had walked by him on the street, cloaked in darkness. “Why didn’t you?” It hurt to hear him confess he wished I’d never met him but I knew he meant because I would be safe.
“When you stood on that ledge-”
“Wait, you saw me on the hotel roof?” I took a small step back as he steadied himself. He nodded, not hiding the guilt he felt. I could feel it too, like a dense rain cloud threatening to let the storm break free. “You were the porter they sent for me. That’s why Olivie came looking for us herself.” I swallowed hard trying to process the events of that day. “Why not just kill me?”
“They wanted you alive. You are special.”
“There’s nothing special about me. I’m just an ordinary human.”
He smiled, shaking his head. “You are anything but ordinary. I felt a pulling to you before I ever saw your face.”
“How is that possible?” I asked, my lip quivering. “I thought you had to… care about someone to be able to feel each other the way we do.”
“You have to love them,” he confessed using the word I so desperately wanted to speak but was too afraid.
I knew it was absurd standing in a building full of dead vampires and worrying over sharing my feelings.
“It wasn’t until I saw your face on that street that I knew how I could feel bonded to a stranger. I’ve loved you for hundreds of years.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
What’s In A Name
“What?” I took a step back, stumbling and hoping that someone would pinch me and wake me from a crazy, fever-induced dream.
His eyes closed and he hung his head. Now he was the one not sure of what to say, choosing his words carefully.
“I don’t know how, or why you…” He let his hand fall, revealing the wound that had begun to heal but hadn’t quite disappeared. I could see that he was in pain and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the bite or what he was trying to explain.
“The man who turned me wasn’t an ordinary vampire. He called himself Moses.”
“Like from the Bible?”
“The very same. Things were very different back then, especially in a place like New Orleans. Viviana’s fathered owed Moses for a ceremony he’d performed. He claimed he was the reason he’d been wealthy and successful. But he never paid, so Moses collected his debt. I was never meant to be there. When I followed Viviana, he decided to kill two birds… so to speak. Viviana’s death would be payment for what was owed, and I would become someone he could teach.”
“What do you mean teach?”
“There are many worse things out there than eternal life. Much darker things.”
“Like voodoo?”
“There was no name for it back then but they say it had been around since before man was even created. Now it’s referred to as hoodoo. They believed God was the quintessential hoodoo doctor and Moses was a great conjurer.”
“I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
“I’ve only fallen in love once, Eva. When I met Viviana, I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. When she… she died, I knew I would never be able to love anyone else. So I tried everything I could to br
ing her back to me. I spent years at Moses side, learning everything he had to offer in hopes of finding a way to bring her back to me. Moses claimed to be a necromancer, to talk to the dead, but not even he could make her rise. When there was nothing left for him to teach me, I vowed to kill him for what he’d made me do to her.”
This must be what it feels like to be staked in the heart. “Oh,” I whispered, fighting back my devastation that I knew he could feel as I looked at the blood-slicked floor between us. “Did you?”
He shook his head swallowing hard. “No. He turned dozens of vampires to protect himself from me. I spent years killing his scions until I was the only one left born of his blood. But by then, no one had heard from Moses in a hundred years. Olivie must have made a deal with him for something, maybe her seat on the council. Who knows how many of the members he has control over. I had no idea who I was being sent to find, Eva. I didn’t know it was you.”
“I still don’t understand, Elijah. What is it they want from me?”
“Do you believe in soul mates?” He asked and I cringed because I didn’t want him to continue on about his love for Viviana. Placing his finger under my chin, he tilted my face up to look at him. “Because that’s what we are. That’s what we’ve always been. I lost you that day in the French Quarter.”
I shook my head, pulling back from his touch. “That’s not possible.”
“Some people believe that we never actually die…”
“You’re a vampire.”
“I mean humans. Some believe humans never truly die. That their soul comes back over and over again.”
“Reincarnation? That’s impossible.”
“It was impossible. Look around you. Look at me?” His eyes were pleading with me to understand. “I shouldn’t even be here, Eva. I should have been dead hundreds of years ago. I’ve tried to kill myself in more ways than you could even imagine but I could never go through with it. I held onto hope that one day I would find a conjure that would bring you back. The reason Moses was never successful was because he had to be in love for it to work. But I’ve always loved you. You are one of a kind, Eva. Could you imagine how powerful vampires would become if they could come back from the dead? The human race would be wiped out. You are the pin to their grenade.”