**
It was hard to run without the use of both my hands, but I wasn’t about to let Will’s grip go. I was positive if I let go, even for a second, they’d get him.
And it would be my fault. I got him into this. I was the reason he was here. I had to get him out of it. Or at least try.
The memory of the cellar no one else probably even knew about came to me in a flicker of images just as my memory of Declan had.
I felt my body grow hot thinking of him, and I forced my thoughts back to that cellar door.
Often I would roam the large mansion and would find hidden passages and out of the way corridors to hide in. The family mostly stayed in the upper levels of the house where there was a “living” area—that was practically hilarious to me now—and our individual, adjoining private bedrooms.
I could usually spend a day hiding in a place once I found one. The morning was the best time to disappear, and on that morning, my birthday, I’d found the kitchen and the hidden cellar door.
Because they had finally found my books. Because they took the last thing that I found any comfort in away from me.
And that cellar practically called to me. Like it had been waiting for me to find on that day. Like a present. Only now did I understand it was a twenty-year-belated present from Declan.
It was how I’d escaped. It hadn’t been hard. Because somewhere, locked in my mind was the memory of Declan taking me, still human to the cellar, showing me the only safe way out. He tried to save me one last time, at the last minute.
But I refused to leave him.
And by the next day, I was a cold, dead, unfeeling vampire who hated him.
I was only twenty. I hadn’t known the price big decisions could force me to pay.
My wonderful Declan’s gift was under the island in the kitchen, which was laughably called a kitchen. Colin must have bought his Castle, not had it built for himself a few hundred years ago like I thought. Vampires had no need for kitchens. Refrigerators, sure, but what would they need to cook?
We had refrigerators. In another locked room. Colin kept the only key.
Which meant we had electricity. All along? God, Colin is such a pompous ass.
I remembered the kitchen had been locked. Dust covered every inch of the large, ancient room. It looked like a staff of fifty would have worked in it.
And I remembered it clearly, the smell of stale air, the darkness.
I wondered if Colin even knew it was there, and doubted it. He wouldn’t have cared. I bet he had it boarded up the day he moved in, falsely confident it would never be found.
But as the four of us ran through the mansion, through the halls that had been my home for twenty years, my thoughts finally clicked into place. At that moment, as if distraction allowed me to gain access to it all, everything came flooding in.
All I chose to give up.
I had been smart. Completing my sophomore year had proven I was where I needed to be. I was going to be a doctor. I’d been accepted into a competitive Pre-Med program. Only two others in my class had made the cut. I’d been so proud to tell my family.
My little brother would be thirty-five now. My parents would be twenty years older too. And they probably thought I was dead.
I was dead.
I could never see them again. Not the way I looked. The way I still looked. Twenty years later, their still-twenty year old daughter shows up? Sure.
Nothing flickered in a jumble of images anymore. It crashed down on me in a painful jolt, and I remembered all of it, both of my lives perfectly. And all of the little decisions that took me from one to the other.
Declan and I making love on a neglected bridge as a summer storm swept through, our bodies drenched with raindrops from running along the deserted, gravel road as the clouds rolled in.
Declan and I resenting each other for two decades, me resenting him because of things I didn’t understand. Him resenting me because of what I let him take from me. From us both.
Twenty years wasted in the cold. With Declan who meant nothing to me without the human feelings he gave me. Who I couldn’t love because he murdered me.
I was such an idiot.
When all was said and done, when the decision had to be made, I made it. I chose this life. I made my Declan change me.
For all of my vampire life, I blamed everyone else. Colin. Declan. Anyone at all, but never the one who deserved it the most.
Me.
But there was nothing I could do about that now. What I did was done.
My sweet, sexy, brave Declan would forgive me. I’d already forgiven him for his part.
All I could do was make the best of what was to come. If anything was to come.
Annabelle grabbed my arm and pulled me to her. I knew she didn’t mean to pull so hard, but it hurt. There was a pop inside my arm as she yanked the joint. It was lucky she hadn’t ripped the entire thing off.
“Run and don’t look back.”
Although Will was pulling me in the opposite direction—away from the kitchen, I might add—I resisted. This couldn’t be the last time I saw Annabelle and Lennox. If I left them, I may never get to see them again.
I had to use my time wisely. They were risking their lives for me. I had to tell them what they meant to me.
“We will meet you in the kitchen,” Lennox added when his partner didn’t understand my reluctance.
I let go of Will’s hand, though he didn’t make it easy for me, and threw my arms around Annabelle’s neck. She stiffened and held her breath, probably completely confused about what I was doing.
Pulling away, I kissed her cheek. “I love you.”
She didn’t move. I didn’t expect her to understand, or to say anything. I knew I should have been more cautious. My sister or not, there was human blood on me, and she was still a vampire.
I turned to Lennox, who was watching with his handsome mouth hanging open, and put my hands on his muscular forearms.
“Thank you for what you’re doing. Thank you for everything. I love you both.”
And finally Will was able to pull me along with him, and I didn’t fight it.
“We’ll wait for you,” I said back in a normal volume. Though we were far down the hall and when I turned back, my family was already gone, I knew they heard me.
It was easy to steer Will in the right direction. We were both so exhausted, it was a miracle we could remain on our feet, let alone run. Stumbling was more like it. Neither of us were able to find our footing on the irregular, stone floor.
There weren’t any monsters lurking in the shadows, at least not yet. Or maybe I didn’t know they were there. It wasn’t easy to see too much in front of us since the halls were lit by torches. They’d been annoying to me before, when I was a vampire. But it was practically pitch black to me now.
Of course it was.
Torches were a silly form of lighting.
But we were somehow able to keep moving forward. When one of us would fall, the other would help the other up.
When we reached the first level, then the door to the kitchen, I was surprised the door was still open, ripped from the doorframe with one, easy yank. Or, was it maybe even opened wider than I’d left it? I wasn’t sure, but I’d expected it to be closed, locked, dead bolted and sealed shut, even more secure than when I found it yesterday.
Just yesterday.
How could so much change in so little time?
I guessed that was how things were. Nothing happened for a very long time. But when something did happen, it changed the game entirely.
Will and I had yet to say anything to each other. It was weird, but we didn’t have to. He knew what my expression meant, and his immediate movement was his response. There was no reason to chat. There was nothing to say. I was grateful to have him with me, even if it was selfish. I hoped he was happy I was there with him.
The
room was completely dark since there were no flickering torches on the walls, badly lighting the room. And it smelled differently than I remembered. But everything would be different now. Anything I’d experienced while a vampire would be different.
Like the human stuff had been.
That part hadn’t hit me yet. There hadn’t been time. Things did feel different. I felt completely different. But exploring the extent of it would have to wait.
Will squeezed my hand for reassurance and camaraderie and we stepped through the threshold.
Immediately, a torch was lit and the familiar scene of the kitchen dimly flickered in the light of the flame. There was only one difference in the room than I remembered. It took my drained mind seconds to understand what it was, even though once I realized it, it was obvious.
Delilah stood in the middle of the room, lighting a third torch even though I didn’t see her light the second one. My human eyes were no match for vampire speed.
My human body was no match for vampire strength.
And in that moment, with the loathing in Delilah’s hideous sneer as her attention turned to me, I knew how much she would enjoy what she was about to do.
She and Viola would sure get along well.