The heart in my chest, which stopped beating and died 151 years ago, picks up pace. A little faster. And faster.
“And it works?” I breathe.
Henry looks back over at me. “It works.”
And my chest nearly explodes, unable to keep up with the pace of my Resurrected heart.
“You are a unique man, Lexington,” Henry says. “You’re so…” he hesitates, unable to find just the right word. “Normal. Despite being Resurrected for such a long time as you have been, you’re very human.”
It’s not entirely a compliment. But he isn’t wrong.
“And where your life has taken you over the past few years,” Henry hesitates. “I’ve seen it in your eyes. In the way you look at your wife. You know you’ll live on forever, but in time, she will pass on.”
“Henry, what are you saying?” I demand, all of my patience gone.
He looks over at me. “I’m offering to cure you of your Born vampirism. I’m offering to make you human again, so that you can live out the rest of your days with your wife.”
The breath chokes in my lungs. And I know I’m a sap these days, because tears actually spring into my eyes.
I look out the window, not actually seeing the flat land whizzing by. My eyes lose their focus and my brain is a tumbling, swirling mess.
I was born in 1851. That was a long freaking time ago. Back before cars were invented. Before the vaccine for polio was created. Before cell phones were even imagined.
And when my mother told me what I was, when she explained what being immortal meant, I had to accept that forever was before me.
Which meant losing a lot of people. Over and over, unless I decided to just cut out all interaction with humans. Which I did for thirty years in the House of Allaway.
But this, Henry’s proposal, there’s an end in sight.
But the right kind of future with Elle.
“How does it work?” I ask, collecting my thoughts into something coherent and logical.
“Just like the Bitten cure, it’s a single injection,” Henry explains. We are already more than halfway to Silent Bend, and not a single cop has tried to pull us over. “You’ll sleep for a while, I’m guessing a day and a half. And when you wake up, you’ll be human once more. It will be as if no time has passed since you died your first death. Your body will simply resume, aging from the age you died.”
I’ll be twenty-four again. Legit body of a twenty-four year old.
Elle will be pissed, physically aging a year older than me.
A chuckle bubbles up from my chest. I put my hand over my mouth, rubbing. I shake my head.
“That’s amazing,” I say. “You’re amazing Henry. Is there anything you don’t know how to do in this magical world?”
Henry actually cracks a small smile. “I haven’t figured out how to cast my own curses yet.”
He’s joking. But I know he’s researched it.
I wonder if he’s ever come across anyone like Rose.
I shake my head again, staring out into the dark night. I take a deep breath.
“I want to do it,” I say.
Maybe it’s something I should take more time to think about. But really, that decision was sealed the moment I fell in love with Elle, the day she hid her smile behind a menu, just days after I arrived in Boston.
Henry allows that small, controlled smile of his to form, and presses down harder on the gas.
Henry parks in the massive garage and the two of us step inside the mansion that is the House of Conrath. It’s bizarre, being here when no one else is. I lived here for years, surrounded by dozens of people. Never a dull moment, never much of any quiet.
But it’s utterly silent when I step inside.
“I hope you aren’t feeling nostalgic and need a few moments to enjoy being back,” Henry says. He walks straight to the ballroom. “Time is of the essence.”
“That’s fine,” I say, looking around. And I remember the first time I came to this house, with Charles and Chelsea Allaway and the other members of their House. How amazed I was at the beauty and Southern charm of this place.
It’s so grand and massive.
My life has changed a lot over the years.
The symbol of the raven Conrath crest begins lowering in the ballroom floor, and slowly Henry and I descend down into Henry’s no longer so secret lab.
He doesn’t waste a moment. Henry pulls on a pair of gloves and goes to one of the fridges that line the far wall. The takes out a vial and attaches a needle to it.
“You’ll want to lie down for this,” Henry says as he continues prepping things.
My heart isn’t quite sure how to function right now. It’s racing, thundering, skipping beats, and in general trying to climb up my throat and out my mouth.
I take a deep breath. I lay my jacket across the back of a chair and walk over to the cot set up against the bookshelves.
“How many others have you cured with this?” I ask as I lie down.
“None,” Henry says as he walks over. “You’ll be the first.”
“Well that’s comforting,” I say as sweat breaks out over my entire body.
Henry smiles, and man that’s disturbing in this very moment. “Don’t worry. I’m a thousand percent confident it will work. What I can’t promise is that it will feel very pleasant.”
I shake my head, probably not hiding the eye roll. I take a deep breath, placing Elle and Aster firmly in my mind. “Let’s do this.”
Henry nods his head, and sinks the needle into my chest, right into my heart.
Henry steps on the gas once more, rocketing us away from the Conrath Estate.
I sit slumped in the passenger seat, my eyes barely focusing as we rip out of Silent Bend and head back toward the main freeway.
This was all a game of timing. Picking me up, giving ourselves just enough time for the process to work, and then getting me back to the airport, at the same time the House of Conrath flew back in from Vegas.
My job is to get through the airport without any of them seeing me.
In this immortal, bloody world, there are always secrets, and this is one that I have to carry on until the secret becomes visible to others.
Word can’t get out about Henry’s cure.
No one can know about this.
Because if it gets back to Cyrus that Henry has a way to turn him human and then kill him, Cyrus will slaughter the entire House of Conrath.
I sit with my eyes closed, leaning my forehead against the glass, trying to pretend that every movement of the car doesn’t feel like agony. Trying to pretend that I don’t feel like I’m eighty percent deaf now. That my body is so weighed down with it’s own mass that I am the human equivalent of a two-toed sloth.
The transformation was agony.
Way, way, way worse than my death.
A hundred times worse than my Resurrection.
But as I imagine the look on Elle’s face when I tell her, I smile. And it’s all worth it.
I’m really not feeling up to talking as we head back to the airport. So in silence, we take what should be the two-hour drive in just over an hour.
Henry parks the van on the curb for drop off and grabs my bag for me off the back seat. “Take it easy the next few days,” Henry says. “I imagine this isn’t going to be an easy transition for a while.”
“Yep,” I grunt as I push the door open and nearly stumble out. I turn, bracing myself against the frame of the van. I look up at Henry. “Thank you. Seriously. This is a bitch right now, but you have no idea how much this means to me.”
“I think I know a little bit,” Henry says. He’s always so serious, always with a hidden history behind every single word. “Travel safe, Lexington.”
I pat the frame, offering him a thin-lipped smile before closing the door, and walking into the airport.
Walking through the crowd, waiting in the security line, I inhale a deep breath. Over the one hundred and fifty plus years I’ve been a Born, I’ve
learned to ignore the burning in my throat at the scent of human blood. But as I breathe, without that pain, I realize just how agonizing it’s been for so long.
I lean slightly closer to the young woman standing in front of me, taking in a deep pull of breath, and I have no primal urge to kill her.
After security, I grab some food, and I just smile to myself. It tastes so damn good. I’m not wishing it was blood. And the fullness in my stomach after I finish is so miraculously satisfying.
By the time I reach my gate, I’m well and truly tired.
Tired.
Something I haven’t felt in so long.
I chuckle as I walk up to the window to the side of the gate while I wait for my plane to finish unloading. I stare out at the landscape.
The sun shines brilliantly on this February morning in Mississippi.
And for the first time in over a hundred years, it’s not causing me any pain.
Henry removed my implants.
And now I just stand here, as a human man. Enjoying the sunshine that was my enemy for a century and a half.
A taxi takes me from the airport back home. I pay the driver and climb out onto the sidewalk, looking up at the beautiful Victorian brownstone that has been our home for two and a half years now.
I feel like a new man.
A damn cheesy one.
A smile on my face, I enter the code to the main door, and climb the stairs to our condo. My heart races, and for a second, I pause before unlocking the door.
I’m going to miss that. Hearing Elle’s heart race any time I look at her in that way. Every time I make some dirty joke. Every time we make love.
I’m just going to have to feel for it now, instead of hearing it.
I unlock the door and let myself in.
The sound of Aster tromping around sounds from upstairs. I close the door, setting my bag beside it, smiling as I look up at the ceiling.
She’s so much quieter now that I don’t have supersonic hearing.
A heavier set of footsteps chases after her, and I smile wider.
“Where are my girls?” I call out. And there’s silence for half a second. And then a shrieking cry.
“Daddy!”
Footsteps come tumbling down the stairs, and I watch as Elle half trips after Aster, but beaming the most beautiful smile at me in the entire planet Earth.
“Daddy, you home!” Aster cries happily as she races over.
I catch her before she can trip into my legs and lift her up, pressing a kiss into her chubby cheek. She in turn splatters kisses on my cheek, wet and slimy ones.
Elle smiles up at me as she comes to my side and I wrap an arm around her, pulling her into me, before tipping my head to kiss her.
“Ew!” Aster cries out in disgust, trying to push us apart.
But even she can’t do that.
“Welcome home,” Elle says. And there are questions in her eyes, as there should be. I was pretty vague on the phone when I called her after arriving in Silent Bend. And then I was unable to take her following calls while I writhed in agony in Henry’s lab.
“Hey,” I say quietly, staring into her blue eyes that are almost the same shade as mine. “Marry me?”
Her smile grows wider, a sparkle in her eye. “Yes,” she says.
“Daddy,” Aster says, leaning forward and putting her nose to mine, her little hands on either side of my face. “Mommy has surprise for you.”
She laughs, shrugging her shoulders up to her ears, thrilled to be in on the secret.
“Oh really?” I ask dramatically, raising an eyebrow as I look back at my wife. “I like surprises.”
Aster laughs, clearly dying in anticipation.
Elle bites her lower lip, looking up at me, as if she’s nervous. “You should tell me about your trip first.”
“No, now, now, now!” Aster demands. She pokes out her bottom lip in a pout, ever the drama queen.
“Princess Aster demands now,” I say, giving Elle a helpless look.
She smiles again, lacing her fingers together, fidgeting. “Well, you remember how I wasn’t feeling all that well last week?”
Immediately, my stomach drops. Sweat breaks out onto my palms.
“Yeah,” I say. And my poker face obviously isn’t very good, I can see it in Elle’s own look.
“And we assumed it was just the flu Aster brought back from playgroup.” She’s pale white, but there’s excitement building in her eyes. She’s actually slowly rising up onto her toes.
“It wasn’t just the flu,” I say in a little breath.
“It wasn’t just the flu,” Elle repeats with the shake of her head.
“I gonna have a wittle bruder or sisser!” Aster declares excitedly.
My eyes grow wide and my heartbeat slows down. I look back at Elle.
“I saw Dr. Dahl the day we went to the movie and you left,” she says. “I was going to tell you both that night, but you had to go.” She bites her lower lip for a moment. She scoots in half a step closer. “Lexington, we’re having another baby.”
And I finally break. I let go of all the control I had for the last minute. A laugh rockets from my chest. A single, sharp, pure thing. And it’s followed by three more. I squeeze Elle tighter to me, filled to the brim with amazement and disbelief.
Another baby.
We’re going to be a family of four.
Parents to an immortal Royal and an immortal Born.
And the both of us are human.
Utterly, aging, frail humans.
“I love you,” I breathe into Elle’s hair. “This…” I loose another laugh. “This is amazing.”
Elle laughs too, but there’s emotion in it. She’s gained so many more emotions since she had Aster, and it’s amazingly beautiful. “I’ve been dying the last two days. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to have the news out.”
I laugh and squeeze her once more.
“Oh, I’ve got some news of my own I’m dying to share,” I say as my very human heart rockets into my throat.
The House Of Royals Series
The Fall Of Angels Trilogy
The Eden Trilogy
The Mccain Saga
What I Didn’t Say
To view all of Keary’s books, in series order, click HERE.
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Keary Taylor is the USA Today bestselling author of over a dozen novels. She grew up along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where she started creating imaginary worlds and daring characters who always fell in love. She now splits her time between a tiny island in the Pacific Northwest and Utah, with her husband and their two children. She continues to have an overactive imagination that frequently keeps her up at night.
To learn more about Keary and her writing process, please visit www.KearyTaylor.com.
Keary Taylor, Garden of Graves
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