Chapter 14
History
I heard his footsteps move past me in the dark. I exhaled.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
Lights flickered on, and what I saw shocked me. Photographs covered every inch of every wall and Tristan was in all of them. But he wasn’t alone. Several different girls shared the frames with him: A short, blonde-haired girl sat with him on the back of a beat up pickup truck; a chubby brunette waved to me from the deck of a large steamboat; a pretty redheaded girl put playful bunny ears behind his head as they posed in the sand… They were all in love with him, totally and completely; it was evident in their eyes. They were content.
“Are these the photographs of all the girls you’ve been in love with?”
He nodded slowly. His stare was intense.
It surprised me how much hearing those words had hurt. Still, I followed the wall around, taking in every face. I had to see them, to know who they all were—that is, until I saw my own face staring back at me. Just like before, it stopped me in my tracks. While the other girls had dozens of photos hanging, my aunt had only one. They were seated at the center of the maze; I recognized the fountain from the images London had shown me. He held her in his arms, with her head nestled beneath his chin. Her eyes were shut, and their fingers were interlocked.
Jealousy boiled within me. I hated them for having had his heart, and I was angry that he had made me aware of them. It was stupid, and I knew it. He was a stranger, a vampire. I shouldn’t even know him. Still, my heart ached.
“Why did you bring me here?” I asked him. “Why would you show me this?” My voice cracked as I pointed to the photo of him and my aunt.
“Ana.”
“You expect me to just fall in line don’t you? Just to fall for you like those other girls. Like my aunt— what makes you think—“
“She really doesn’t remember…”
“Remember what?” I screamed at him.
My reply surprised him. “Did you just read my mind?”
“I…”
“They’re all you,” he spoke quietly. “Every one of them.”
“What?”
“Please, just listen…The first time I set eyes on you was the summer of 1757. The war between witches and vampires was still going strong then and your family was hiding out in a small cabin on the Nebraskan plains. I had been tracking your movements for weeks. You were the daughter of a very influential warlock and I’d been sent…” He sighed. “To kill your entire family. I couldn’t believe my luck when on my arrival, I discovered you off on your own. You were standing there, perfectly still, at the center of a wide field of wheat in some sort of shiny gown. You were so still, and so obvious that I was wary of a trap. I decided to crouch in the high wheat grass and wait. You began to move, letting your body twist and sway with the whims of the wind. You were dancing, your dress shimmering in the sunlight amidst a sea of gold. You were glowing, Ana. You were like nothing I had ever witnessed. Make no mistake, I was a killer, a murderer by every definition, and yet as I sat there, I found myself utterly enchanted by you.”
“We vampires are rational creatures, but every thought and every ambition centers first on quenching the thirst for human blood. It lingers in the back of your mind constantly. The first kill is always the hardest, because you’re still tied down by human emotion and morality. You learn to cast them aside, to give in to the unfeeling predator inside you. You must or you don’t survive the beginning. Eventually, you end up as I was, at the point where you not only enjoy the hunt, the kill—you live for it. Until, that is, something pulls you back. Something makes you feel again—because once you’ve remembered what it is to feel, to be human, the world suddenly isn’t the same anymore. That’s what you did for me in that field.”
“Eventually, your mother came storming into view, reminding you, quite loudly, that you were no longer in St. Petersburg, and no longer a dancer. Your glow had faded, but as I watched you leave, I knew that I had to know you. You, who had instantly changed my world. I survived off animals during the day and visited your window in the evenings. I enjoyed messing with you. I’d move things around when you weren’t looking and leave you notes under your pillow. It was juvenile, but it was the only way to show affection that I knew. Eventually, you began to answer the notes, leaving them in your window before you fell asleep. You would tell me about the books you’d read and about the places you’d visit if the war ever ended.”
“I began to want more and one night I convinced myself to wait for you in your room until you came in for the night. As I sat there, I found myself nervous, something I hadn’t felt in hundreds of years. You came in just after sunset, I remember, and my presence startled you so much that you nearly fell. I, who had been terrified that you would scream, had fled through the window. But you called to me, and I, hearing your voice from the other side of the field, returned. I could see in your eyes that you knew immediately what I was. But you came to me, first touching my face with your hand, then laying your head against my chest. You became, in that moment, the most important thing in the world to me.”
A smile peeked through his despair. I kept listening.
“After a week or so, we ran away together—it was the first time of many. It felt so impossible our being with one another, and yet it was happiness, as I had never known it. We drifted through eleven perfect months until you collapsed one night, as we played in the sands of the Carolina coastline. I could hear what was wrong even before I got to you. Your heartbeat would keep me company while you slept, and I had become accustomed to its rhythm. But it was sputtering now, your heart was failing. Our time was ending, and you were departing for somewhere I could not follow. You promised me that it wasn’t over, that you’d come back to me somehow. And then I, who had lived twenty lifetimes by then, watched you die after only seventeen years of life.”
“It would have been so easy for me to give up my emotions again, to return to the life I’d led before, but somehow I knew that it would be a betrayal to your memory, and only that kept me from succumbing to the pain. I decided to enter society. I spent the next forty years traveling and learning about the human world. I visited all of the places you had wanted to see. Eventually, I came back to that cabin. It belonged to an old farmer then, and upon sight, he asked me if my name was Tristan. He told me that a girl of sixteen traveled there every month to ask about a boy whose description I fit perfectly. I offered to work for him as a farm hand in order to wait for the next visit. I convinced myself that it had to be some mistake—that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. I knew that the chances of you actually coming back were nothing, but still, I waited.”
“Two weeks later, the wagon the old farmer described pulled up to the farm and a young girl stepped out and started for the old man’s house. It wasn’t the same girl that I saw in that field. I tried to think of what I should do. It was obvious that there had been some mistake. Then you were running, calling my name as you came down the hill as fast your feet would carry you. You leapt into my arms and before I could break the news that I wasn’t the boy you were looking for, you began to tell me things—things only you could possibly know. You had kept your promise to me, you had come back—“
His voice was interrupted by a knock at the door.
“Dammit,” he groaned. “I was supposed to have more time.”
“What's wrong?” I asked, waking from what had felt like a dream.
“I have to take you home now. Get on my back.”
The knock sounded again, this time more urgent. “I’m going,” he shouted. I hopped onto his back and he rushed me outside, setting me carefully inside the boat before he got inside. His strokes were hard and violent this time, and I had to hold the sides tightly to keep from being throw
n into the lake. I tried to ask him something as we approached the shore but he shook me off. Once on the other side, we disappeared into the tall grass and then sped across the estate. He leapt up to my balcony as though it were only a foot off the ground.
He let me down and took me by the shoulders. “I didn’t get to finish, Ana. I know how it must have sounded, but it’s not some fairy tale. It ends badly. I’ll be back in a couple of days to tell you the rest, and if you have any questions then I’ll answer them for you. After that, you won’t see me again.”
Then he left me there, alone on my balcony, with my mind scrambling to make sense of tonight.