Before I could even begin to defend myself, Justin stepped up onto the rim of the boat. I watched his knees bend and the bottom of his feet press onto the wooden rim. He pushed up high off the boat. Before he hit the water he flipped so he did a somersault in the air, and then splashed into the water so the spray came up high over my head.
What on earth could be the point in that? Those in the water laughed and clapped. Seemed a bit useless to jump for sheer amusement.
“My turn,” said Roy, and he swam back toward the boat.
“Don’t crack your head,” Justin said to Roy. “Be careful.”
Much to my surprise, one by one they all somersaulted off the boat. Why didn’t I want to jump? Other people seemed to find such happiness in it. I turned away from the acrobatics and walked up to the bow. I sat down with my feet dangling over the edge. Behind me, there were more happy yelps and splashes, but I focused on the small waves slapping against the boat’s underbelly. Even though I was wearing my floppy hat I could still feel the sun shining down on me, heating me up. I glanced back to see Roy and then Justin somersault, in perfect circular movements off the boat. He was something, wasn’t he? To be able to do that—and in the bright of day.
GIRVAN, SCOTLAND
1850
I lay in a field hidden behind a series of houses. I always dressed in the most luxurious fabrics. That night’s dress was black and ankle length, made from China silk, with a corset brocaded with flowers of red, green, and purple. The iridescent satin gathered on each side and created a tier of ruffles. I wore my hair long, in a braid.
It was just after 9 p.m. and the houses on the street ahead of me oozed a dreamy light from their small windows. Girvan, Scotland, was a coastal town. A close-knit community with sweeping, endless hills. We, the coven, were in a meadow behind a stone wall that ran parallel to the main street. Song was pacing, keeping watch as always. Heath lay on his back, watching the stars move through the sky. Gavin threw tiny knives into the bark of a tree. He always held a collection of daggers in his boots or pockets. On that night, he picked a tree about one hundred yards away, threw the knife, and then retrieved it to do it all over again.
“We need someone knowledgeable,” I said. I stood up from the grassy ground next to Heath and started to pace. I was ruminating again. “Five is a strong coven. After all, there are five points on the pentacle star. North.” I pointed at Heath. “East.” I pointed at Song. “And South.” I pointed at Gavin. “We need a West. We are missing our West.”
Four protectors with me, the crux, the center. With five members, the pentacle would be complete. Once the coven was fulfilled, the bonds between us would be unbreakable. The magic would require the coven to remain ruthlessly committed to one another until their deaths. All three of them, Gavin, Heath, and Song, knew I wanted one more to join our unit. Though, I think Gavin, the more careful of us, feared the power of the magic. Binding magic is lethal. It creates an invisible bond that ties to your soul. Breaking the bond is impossible. It means death—this was exactly my intention when making the coven. No one would betray me unless they wanted me to kill them. If I made the right choice and made the right man a vampire, we would be unbeatable. I wanted to ensure that we never had to worry about our survival. Survival? Could I even call it that?
“Above us is Andromeda,” Heath said, only in Latin. He was my second vampire, after Gavin. “Next to her is Pegasus,” Heath continued, and pointed up at the many stars linked together to form the mythological winged horse.
“Take me, Pegasus,” I called out, and started to spin in a circle, my arms out to my sides. “Take me high in the sky at noon so the sun can shine down onto my back. Let me reign on your wings.”
I laughed so my voice echoed through the meadow. I kept spinning and spinning until finally I collapsed down onto the ground next to Heath. He rolled onto his left hip and faced me.
“They say that Andromeda appears as a woman holding a sword,” he said, and ran his hand along my body from shoulder to thigh. I smiled and then rolled onto my back. I could not see Andromeda. To me, stars were tiny bright lights that I could not wield.
“Also, you can only see her by the five brightest stars in the galaxy.”
Interspersed in the silence, there was a thunk every time one of Gavin’s knives hit his target. Song paced and paced, almost growling under his breath. We had no need to feed as we had decimated a boardinghouse the previous night. It would only be a few days before the power of the blood waned and we would have to feed again. As Heath continued to name the stars individually, I got up out of boredom and paced again. That’s when I heard a man singing a lively Scottish song.
Straight ahead through the trees was a one-story tavern made from stone. Small, rectangular windows threw candlelight toward the meadow. It had been fairly quiet, but as I walked through the trees in the direction of the tavern, the singing grew louder. Soon the voice was clear. It was gravelly but carrying the whole tavern in song.
“Here’s to the sodger who bled, and the sailor who bravely did fa!”
I held the hem of my gown so I could walk with ease over roots and branches that stuck up from the mossy ground. I knew my coven was watching me, but my extrasensory perception told me that they were at ease.
“Their fame is alive, though their spirits are fled. On the wings o’ the year that’s awa!” sang the man again. The singing voice was quite good despite the slurring of his words.
I threw one leg over the stone wall and stepped down on the other side. I was a few feet away from the tavern and I approached the window as silently as possible. The candlelight from inside was a glowing orange. There were wooden tables with bar stools. Men and women held glasses filled with ale or whiskey. I peeked from the right-hand corner of the window and saw a tall man, in full British military uniform, dancing on top of a table. He couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen, though there were wrinkles on the sides of his eyes when he smiled. His arm muscles pushed out and gripped the cloth of his uniform. I wanted to run my hand down the line of his spine.
The uniform had a red jacket and black pants. He kicked out and jumped. He took a blue felt cap and threw it into the crowd. He kicked his right leg, then his left, and jumped up and down so his feet slammed onto the tabletop while he danced a traditional Scottish step. He brought his knees up and down and repeatedly kicked his legs.
The cuffs and collar of the uniform were gold. The circular buttons glinted in the torches circling the tavern. I turned. The music came from a group of men hitting drums and playing bagpipes in the back of the room. The soldier kept dancing on top of the table while the guests in the tavern clapped in time to the music. His face was red, filled with life—filled with blood. He was tall, like Rhode, with slim features and a pouted mouth. His hands were strong, and the right one grasped the handle of a mug of ale.
“Their fame is alive, though their spirits are fled! On the wings o’ the year that’s awa!”
After the final resonating note he jumped from the top of the table to the ground, so his beer sloshed out of the mug and onto the wooden floor. He had brown eyes that, even from the darkness of the pub, glimmered at the tavern guests.
I walked away from the window and around the perimeter of the building. I was going to go inside and talk to this man. Except, right before I pulled on the door, it banged open and hit the side of the building with a shudder. I raced across the street and leaned against a tree across from the tavern door. The trees were green and leafy, but skinny. Their tops bent toward the sky in a thin point. The man walked outside, took a deep breath, and placed a cigarette between his lips.
The man inhaled and when he exhaled the smoke into the sky, he held the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He squinted one eye and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, squinted his eyes at me, and took a step forward. “Is someone there?” he asked. He had a husky voice with a deep Scottish accent.
I took a step away f
rom the tree. “Hello, soldier,” I said.
His eyebrows rose, and he bowed in an exaggerated motion. When I did not curtsy in return, he smiled, but with curious eyes. I stepped across the dirt street and stood in front of the tavern door.
“I shake hands,” I said in response to his bow, and stuck my right hand out as I had seen hundreds of men do in my time. Men in society during the 1850s did not think it proper for a woman to shake hands as an equal. This is a fact that remains preposterous to me.
He looked down at my outstretched palm and then up at my eyes. I was smiling with both lips closed. This was always effective whenever I wasn’t getting what I wanted.
“Shake hands?” I asked. He outstretched his arm and when he did, I looked at his inner right wrist. Thin blue veins protruded from the skin and ran away from his palm and up his arm.
We grasped hands, and he looked me up and down. In that moment, I wished I could have felt the touch of his strong hands. I could sense his firm grip but no skin-to-skin contact. Nothing definitive, anyway. He let go first and backed away slowly into the tavern doorway. While I could certainly feel the heat of his stare, I would have loved to know what his fingertips felt like running down my skin. Or what his breath smelled like, or his hair. Even though I knew all of that was impossible, I wished it, anyway. All I could smell was upturned earth and musk, the scent of his flesh still lingering on my clothes.
“Your hands are cold,” he said.
“There is something special about you,” I replied, walking closer so that the light from a torch on the door illuminated my face. He came closer again. He squinted a bit, turned his head to exhale smoke, and then examined my face again, his eyes stopping on my mouth.
“No, my dear. There is something special about you.” This young man was looking at me with deep interest. The jovial tone was gone. “What are you?” he whispered.
I admit this threw me. No one yet had mentioned my appearance, my smooth skin and wide, black pupils. No one dared admit that I was something other than normal. Most humans were transfixed by my beauty.
“No one of consequence,” I said casually, and started to circle him, swaying my hips in my usual way and looking him up and down.
“I’m a Scots Fusilier. A man of maps. I have traveled the world to verify the locations of the earth for the British Army. I have looked upon many faces. Noses, eyes, all of intricate specificity. Your features, lassie, are not of these parts.”
“Nor any that you have ever known,” I said, stopping my circling so that I stood in front of him. “What is your name?”
“Vicken, dear.” He stepped closer. The gruff edge to his voice was so strong, much harder than Rhode’s, whose gentle cadence was burned into my brain. “Vicken Clough, of the Twenty-first Regiment.” Vicken held my gaze. He didn’t flinch; he just blinked, calmly.
Either my ESP was extraordinarily off or this man was not afraid of me. I had to leave. This was something I couldn’t fathom or understand. My eyes flickered to the meadow beyond the tavern.
“I must go,” I said, and walked past him, away from the tree and back in the direction of my coven.
He grasped my forearm. “I beg you not to trifle with me, miss, for you may get exactly what you want.”
This man was powerful—forthcoming. He knew exactly what he wanted. I ripped my arm away and headed back into the meadow. I stepped over the stone wall and toward the coven, whom I could see were still in their same spots, relaxing far off in the middle of the field. If I brought this man into the meadow he would be instantly murdered. Not that I was against this, but I was too intrigued to have him killed just yet.
“Wait!” I heard him call. His footsteps stopped at the edge of the meadow. “Who are you?”
By the time Vicken had reached the field, I had moved too far into the darkness for him to see me. I stood on the side of the meadow protected by the shade of tree branches. Vicken gripped the stone wall, lifted a foot, and then placed it back on the ground. He craned his neck to see into the darkness. He swore under his breath and turned away. I walked back toward the coven.
“Who was that?” Song asked. I couldn’t help a smile of satisfaction.
“One of interest,” I said, and peeked back over my shoulder. Vicken was walking back toward the tavern. “Meet me at the inn at dawn.” I looked up at the sky and the position of the moon. “We have four hours.”
With that, I turned from the coven and without him knowing it, I followed Vicken home.
Vicken did not live far away from the tavern. I climbed back over the wall, making sure to stay in the shadows and trail behind. When I got to the road, he was only a few yards ahead. He swerved a bit from the amount of ale he had consumed. He lived seven houses away from the tavern. He bumped his shoulder on a tree when he turned down a small dirt road. As I followed after, I looked ahead; the drive to his home ended with a sharp cliff and then miles of ocean.
Vicken’s home was set on the edge of a dense forest that abutted the sea. There was a main manor made of white stone. It was two stories and capped by a black roof. Behind it was a smaller, one-room cottage made of a gray stone; it was considerably less grand than the main manor. As I silently followed, I passed a horse stable where I could hear horses neighing comfortably and the sound of the ocean hitting the rocks somewhere over the cliffs.
Vicken walked into the cottage and shut the door behind him. I turned the handle and followed after. It was true what he said. He loved maps, and they were everywhere. At least a dozen were on the walls and on a small wooden desk in the right-hand corner of the room. In a closet were military uniforms. Even a bright blue globe sat on the desk.
The back door to the one-room cottage was open, and in the backyard I saw Vicken setting up a contraption made of brass. It was based on three legs, a modern-day equivalent of a tripod.
I walked past a washtub. The curtain was pulled open, and a pair of white socks hung over the basin. I stepped into the doorway, and Vicken looked up. He didn’t smile or frown, he simply stared for a moment and then went back to assembling the machine.
“You have no fear of beasts? Monsters?” I asked.
“You are no beast,” he said matter-of-factly, and continued to fiddle with a long tube that was positioned toward the sky. He looked in the lens, checked the direction of the tube, and then looked at me again. “I am more afraid, miss, of the things that I cannot see with my eyes.” Vicken gestured with a wave of his hand that I join him. I walked toward the telescope and looked in the lens. The moon was crisp and clear, though the moon’s cracks and crevices were another land to me.
“Beautiful,” I barely whispered. I looked up into Vicken’s eyes. He smiled a bit. I backed away in the direction of the main house. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?” I asked.
Although Vicken claimed that he was not riddled with fear, he kept his distance. He kept his fingers on the telescope, busying his nervous energy with the parts of the machine that needed to work to see the night sky. I followed the strong frame of his wide shoulders. Kept my focus on his dangerous glance. His masculinity was intoxicating.
“You intrigue me,” he said, meeting my eyes again.
I threw my head back and laughed deeply so my voice echoed in the silence. “Intrigue you? Is that what this is? Curiosity?”
Vicken kept his gaze on the telescope.
“Tell me, Vicken Clough, of the Twenty-first Regiment. What would you say if I told you you could search this earth and record it all? Be the most powerful navigator the world has ever known? That as long as the earth existed, you would exist.”
Vicken’s slim nose and square chin pointed at the ground. His eyebrows were furrowed and kept both his hands loosely behind his back. “Eternity, miss, is not possible.”
“And if I told you it was?”
He looked deep in my eyes, and I waited for him to break our stare, but he stayed firm. “I would believe you.”
I walked a few steps and stood across from him so our
faces were inches apart.
“What do I have to do?” he asked. “To stay with you.” He wanted to kiss me. I could see it in his eyes, that longing that brown eyes sometimes get. His lashes curled out from his lids, so when he blinked, he looked like a little boy. I smiled; this was my favorite part. He would surely feel terror after this. I let his lips brush over mine so gently that it barely registered even to me that we had touched. My fangs came down ever so slowly and I whispered, “I’m going to have to kill you.”
Vicken’s breath shuddered, and he stepped away from me. There was a twinge of fear running through him but not the kind of horror I expected. No desire to run. The only fear he felt was for his own actions, what he could or would do—for me. This was mind boggling. Preposterous. I checked the moon. Three hours until dawn.
“I’ll give you a night to think about it,” I said, stepping around the house and heading away from Vicken and back in the direction of the main street. “This time tomorrow I will come for your answer.”
“The way you speak tells me no matter what I say, this isn’t a choice.”
Vicken had stepped out from behind the cottage to see me. Under the smooth light of the moon, I could see the sweat on his forehead.
I turned back. “Why do you even consider this?” I asked, sure that there must be a reason for his compliance to my wishes.
Vicken’s smile was crooked, so only the left half of his mouth raised. He leaned a hand on the side of the little cottage. “You,” he said.
There was a moment of silence. I looked over his strong arms and how his hair fell about his face in a lazy, haphazard way. “Say your good-byes, then,” I said, and turned away from him, disappearing into the darkness.
That next night, I approached the main manor. Through the window, I saw Vicken eating dinner with his family. Long white candles decorated both ends of the table. There was an open animal carcass and various bowls of greens. Vicken’s father sat at the head of the table, and Vicken was seated directly to his right. His father, a great round man with thickets of white hair, laughed heartily and took Vicken’s cheek into the palm of his right hand. The familiar anguish rose in my throat. I hated families. So often this sadness made me enraged enough to murder, so I would kill whoever could possibly remind me that my family was the life that I left behind.