Blood and Guitars (34 page)

Trey was sleeping on his side, his hair
already messed up by the pillow. I gently lowered myself into the
bed next to him and lay there watching him. I’d never watched him
sleep. Not really. He’d fallen asleep at Ken’s studio several
times, once or twice with his head in my lap on the couch in the
lounge or the sound room, but I’d never been able to stare
unabashedly at him like this until now.

I recalled the night I’d become a vampire,
and how strange it had been to see an immortal version of myself
staring back at me in a mirror, and I wondered what Trey would look
like after the change. I couldn’t imagine any part of him that
could be improved upon. He was perfect just the way he was. His
strong jaw, his dark lashes, those soft lips that so often twisted
into a lazy smile that I always felt was for me and me alone. Trey
would be a beautiful vampire. There was no doubt about that. But it
would be because he was a beautiful man, inside and out.

The blackness of the room was disorienting
when I awoke the next morning. Turning my head slowly, I glanced at
the clock to see that it was already eight.

“Sleep good?” Aurora’s voice was absent of
the morning grogginess I knew mine would have. Her head was resting
on my chest and she hadn’t moved, except for the slight bobbing up
and down motion caused by my breathing.

“I crashed hard,” I admitted, unable to
recall even a dream.

“You needed it.”

“How about you?”

“I slept great.” Though I couldn’t see her
face, her smile was evident in her tone “I fell asleep and woke up
to the sound of my favorite song. What more could a girl want?”

I furrowed my brow in confusion. There wasn’t
any music playing. Aside from the constant rain falling on the
window and the occasional passing car, it was quiet. Then Aurora
tapped my chest intently with her finger and I realized she meant
my heartbeat. I couldn’t help grinning as I ran my hand over her
long, dark hair.

“Your favorite song, huh?”

“It’s true,” she said. “I’m sort of
fascinated by it.” She snuggled up next to me on the pillow and
smiled innocently.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Her gaze drifted up to the
ceiling. “Maybe because I haven’t really felt alive since I lost my
family. Not even becoming a vampire changed that. And then you came
along and reminded me what it’s like to really live. I guess I
associate the sound of your heartbeat with all of those feelings.
You could compare it to a soundtrack in a movie. It’s always there
in the background whenever we’re together, constant and
comforting.” She smiled and played with my hair. “Plus, your
heartbeat is strong and warm and pure … like you.”

“And yours isn’t?” It sounded like a stupid
question the second the words left my mouth, but Aurora didn’t seem
to think of it that way.

“Come here,” she said. “Listen for yourself.”
She gestured for me to lay my ear to her chest and I complied. I
don’t know what I expected to hear, but the sound of her vampire
heartbeat surprised me. It was quieter than I would have guessed,
and it created an echo inside her chest. Ken would have used the
word ‘tinny’ to describe it. If my heartbeat sounded like a bass
drum, hers was a snare with the treble cranked up.

“Wow, you’re right. That’s amazing,” I said.
We both sat up and she leaned her head on my shoulder, sighing in
content. “You can tell me anything. You know that, right?”

“I know.” She was silent for a moment but I
could tell she had more to say. I waited patiently, enjoying the
fact that she was in my arms again. “I haven’t been this close to
someone since….” Her voice trailed off in uncertainty for a long
moment. “Since my brother Aden.”

My heart sank. It was obvious how painful it
was for her to talk about, but I sensed that she needed to.

“Tell me about him,” I urged. “I want to know
all about your family.”

Aurora flipped on the lamp and picked up a
framed picture I’d been too tired to notice last night. I spotted
her immediately in the photograph. She appeared to be about
seventeen. She was as beautiful as ever, but there were some subtle
differences between the human girl’s face in the picture and the
face of the vampire that was so familiar to me.

“This is my mother,” Aurora said, pointing.
“Her name was Nakia. It’s an Egyptian name meaning pure. My father
met her on a business trip to Cairo. Her family disowned her when
she chose to leave her country behind and marry him.”

“You look like her,” I said. It was obvious
now where Aurora had inherited her exotic features. Everything but
the eyes. The man in the picture had Aurora’s7-Up-bottle- green
eyes.

“My father’s name was Jerod,” she added. A
boy sat next to Aurora in the picture. He looked only slightly
younger than she was. The boy had her dark hair, but his eyes were
brown like his mother’s. “That’s Aden,” she said softly, reaching
out to gently touch the glass that covered the picture. “He was my
shadow.” Aurora smiled, and I got the feeling she was lost in a
memory for a long moment before she cleared her throat and spoke
again. “He was only a year younger than me. We were basically
inseparable. He was the only one who really ever understood me.” I
squeezed her gently to my chest, not wanting to interrupt her train
of thought. “He was really into photography. We had plans to own a
gallery together full of his photographs and my paintings. When he
died in the accident with my parents, I wasn’t sure that I could do
it alone.”

“But you have,” I said, hoping I sounded
encouraging. “I mean, you have The Waking Moon and you’re making a
name for yourself.”

“Yeah.” She turned her head to look up at me.
“If Antonio hadn’t found me when he did, it never would have
happened.”

“How did he find you?” I’d been wondering
ever since I’d met her maker last night.

“In the park,” she answered. “Depressed and
miserable. I’d been accepted into the art school Aden and I had
always wanted to attend. He was going to join me there the next
year after he graduated high school. After the accident I was
pretty much on my own. My parents left behind a good amount of
money, and I stayed in their house for a couple of months but I
couldn’t get myself to attend the school … not when it was supposed
to be something that Aden and I were going to do together. The park
near our house was our favorite place to paint and take pictures. I
went there, night after night, hoping against hope that he’d show
up and everything could go back to the way it used to be. Antonio
found me there. He watched me secretly for almost a week, probing
my mind to learn my story. I was so lost that I couldn’t refuse him
when he came forward and made me the offer.”

“He just offered to make you a vampire?”

“Not in so many words. He said he could give
me a new life. Any hope I had of salvaging my old one had
dissipated, so I accepted the offer.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Antonio took me to the apartment he keeps in
Chicago and changed me. After a few days of adjusting to my new
self, he brought me back to Florida with him. I’ve been part of his
Brood ever since.”

“So, exactly how long have you been a
vampire?”

“I had just turned nineteen when I was
changed. That was four years ago.”

I don’t know why that surprised me. Maybe it
was because Aurora didn’t look like most nineteen-year-olds. She’d
told me once she was 23, a year older than me, and technically she
was. She was just frozen in time as her nineteen-year-old self.

“Does that make me a cradle robber?”

Aurora laughed and turned her head to gaze at
me. “Maybe it does.”

“I managed to rob the cradle and date an
older woman all at the same time. Look at me go.”

Aurora grinned and I leaned down, pressing my
lips to hers. My heart fluttered, which she would definitely hear,
but I didn’t care. When I pulled back she gave me a dreamy
look.

“I’m still young,” she said wistfully. “In
the world of vampires.” It sounded like a loaded statement to me,
but I realized she wasn’t going to explain further when she spoke
again. “Whatever your plans are for today, I hope you don’t mind
bringing me along. I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be
apart right now.”

“I like the sound of that,” I said with a
grin. “Besides, I’m just meeting the guys at the studio to work on
a song later and I’ve sort of gotten used to having you around for
that.”

“We should decide where we’re going to stay
tonight, then,” she suggested.

“As much as I’m going to regret it when I
climb out of these sheets, we’d better make it my place,” I said.
“My dog is going to think I abandoned him if I don’t get back.”

“Okay then, your place it is,” Aurora said.
“I’ll throw some of my stuff together in a bag and maybe we can
drop it off at your place this morning. That way you can check on
Cowboy and we can bring him with us to the studio if you want.”

“It’s a plan.”

“There are clean towels hanging up,” Aurora
said, gesturing to the bathroom with a wave of her hand. “If you
want to take a shower I’ll be ready to go when you get out.”

Fat raindrops beat against the windshield of
my car as Aurora and I drove to my place. Despite the stormy
weather, I was feeling more optimistic. More like me. The smell of
the rain was invigorating, and the constant rhythm of it put my
mind at ease. I was perfectly content as I rounded the corner onto
my street and neared my house. There was no warning, no feeling of
foreboding, to prepare me for what I saw next. It took me several
seconds to process the scene in front of my house. I slammed on the
brakes, squealing to a stop on the side of the road. Aurora’s grip
on my right arm tightened apprehensively.

“What in the …?” Aurora’s voice trailed off
as we studied the scene before us. A black car had smashed into the
stone fence separating my property from my neighbor’s. Steam was
rising from the crumpled hood. And that wasn’t the strangest part.
There was a huge dent in the driver’s side of the car which
couldn’t have been caused by the stone wall. Muddy tire tracks led
from the dented side of the car and back out into the road. Before
I could work out how that might have happened, I realized with a
pang of shock that I recognized the damaged vehicle. It was a Mazda
RX8 just like mine.

“Wes!” I said as I threw the transmission
into park. I climbed out of the car and found that Aurora had
gotten around to my side with supernatural speed.

“Wait,” she said as I started for the damaged
vehicle. “Maybe you should let me go first.”

But I wasn’t about to stand around when one
of my friends could be hurt. I reached the driver’s side door,
which had been mostly crushed from impact with some unknown
vehicle, and peered inside the space where the window should have
been. Wes was nowhere to be seen but the passenger side door was
ajar. I glanced around frantically and noticed that Aurora was
doing the same.

“There’s no one here,” Aurora exclaimed. “I
would be able to hear them.” It wasn’t until later that I realized
Aurora had been listening for the sound of a human heart other than
mine. She followed when I headed around to the other side of the
vehicle, almost slipping on the wet grass. I hadn’t had a clear
view of the other side from where I’d parked on the road. That’s
when I spotted Wes. He was lying a few feet away sprawled out on
the ground, motionless. I rushed to him, falling to my knees at his
side on the soggy lawn. There was a bloody gash on his forehead,
and his left leg was bent grotesquely, along with a lot of other
cuts and scrapes. I leaned my head against his chest to listen for
a heartbeat, but there wasn’t one.

“No,” I said, gritting my teeth. “This isn’t
happening.” I quickly positioned my hands on Wes’s chest and
started doing CPR. After five compressions I moved to give Wes a
breath of air but Aurora beat me to it. I shook my wet hair out of
my face and started pumping his chest again. We continued that
process for what seemed like an eternity, but really only spanned a
few minutes. “Damnit Wes, don’t do this!” I slammed my fist on his
chest.

Aurora was there across from me, a knowing
sadness in her eyes as she glanced from me to Wes and back.

“Come on,” I urged. “You are not dying on
me!”

“Trey?” Aurora spoke my name so softly that I
almost didn’t hear her above the pounding in my ears. “He’s
gone.”

But I couldn’t believe that. Wes wasn’t gone.
He was right here in my freaking front yard. He was hurt but he
couldn’t be gone….

“I’m not giving up on him,” I stated,
continuing with the CPR alone.

Aurora squeezed my shoulder gently and said,
“I can smell death on him. There’s nothing you can do for him now.
You have to let him go.”

I didn’t want to hear it but the reality of
Aurora’s words went straight to my core. In that terrible instant,
I knew she was right. Wes wasn’t coming back, no matter how bad I
wished he would. I stubbornly pumped Wes’s chest a few more times
before I choked on a sob and collapsed back onto the grass. Aurora
was next to me in an instant, wrapping her arms around me and
trying to comfort me.

“How could this happen?” I demanded. The icy
numbness that washed over me was suffocating and had nothing to do
with the pouring rain. I was only somewhat aware of a man’s voice
calling out to us from behind until he stood at Aurora’s side.

“I saw it happen from my kitchen window,” the
older man explained, short of breath from jogging across the street
to us. “I’ve already called 911. They’re sending the police and an
ambulance.” He paused there, probably recognizing from the state of
Wes’s lifeless body that a hundred ambulances wouldn’t make a
difference. “I hurried out here to see if I could help right after
I made the call.”