Called to Order (22 page)

Why did anyone have to die?
 
It seemed so unfair. Perhaps if she could offer him some of her blood like he suggested it would hold off the effects of whatever was supposed to happen to him and maybe they could come up with another solution in that time. A solution where everyone lived happily ever after and no one had to die, for a few hours or permanently.

She placed the small fox on the table next to the bed and looked at Adam. “I will give you some of my blood.”

* * * *

Shocked at how easily Annalise seemed to except all of this, Adam was afraid it was his last admission that would push her over the edge. “Anna, you are a priceless gift. There is one more thing I have to tell you.”

“I’m listening.”

“You have not yet asked what I am.”

She frowned. “What do you mean? You’re just like everyone else, except you have some really cool gifts and live extra long without aging.”

“No, Anna. What I am has a name.”

“What is it?”

“Vampyre.”

She froze. “Come again?”

“I am vampyre.” She laughed at him. “Do you understand what I am telling you, Anna?”

“Oh, sure. You, the man who has kidnapped me, broken into my dreams, danced with me, made love to me twice with an intensity I have never before experienced, and can miraculously move things with his mind, just your average country bumpkin, who is Christian to boot, is telling me he is a vampire.” A hysterical laugh bubbled past her lips.

“Anna, I do not lie.”

“Nooooo, of course not. Why would you lie when you possess superhuman strength? You could force people to believe whatever you wanted them to. Tell me, Adam, if you are ‘vampire,’ where are your fangs?”

“They only distend when I feed.”

“Ah, and I suppose that’s how you took my blood? You just,” she placed a fist in front of her mouth and quickly forked out two fingers like fangs.

“For the most part, yes.”

“Oh, okay. Well, why didn’t you say that to begin with? Look, why don’t you just stay here while I run out to the outhouse for a sec? I’ll be back in a flash.” She was speaking to him in a patronizing voice as she moved closer to the door. She wasn’t afraid. The emotion coming from her was more…sarcastic?

When she touched the knob, he flipped the lock. She paused and frowned at the door. She turned to face him and gasped when he was already directly behind her. “I am being honest, Anna. You’ve seen my family, you have seen me bleed and heal, and you have even seen me move things with my mind. What else must I do to convince you?”

She was getting angry. “Fine. You’re a vampire and you drank my blood.” She turned her head, showing him her neck. “Bite me.”

“Pardon?”

“Bite. Me.”

“Anna—“

“Come on, Dracula, show me what you got.”

“It will hurt.”

“Funny, I don’t remember even waking up before. You are so full of shit. To think I was almost believing all your crap about being your mate. I was actually considering it, Adam-who-cannot-tell-a-lie. Well, you must think I am really stupid—”

“You are my mate!”

She froze.

“I do not mean to shout, but I do not know how to get through to you that I am being honest. I am vampyre, Anna. I live off the blood of the animals we raise on the farm, as does the rest of my family.”

Her eyes were suddenly very large. In a small voice she said, “But you don’t sparkle.”

“Why would I sparkle?”

“And you don’t burst into flames in the sun. You leave the house every morning just before dawn.”

“That is true, although since I have been called to you, the sun has been making me ill. I can still tolerate it, but not like the others of my kind. My tolerance is dwindling because I still have not bonded with you.”
 
He carefully took her hand. “Overtime folklore has distorted what were once recorded facts. Fables diluted the truth to the point that our existence is no longer even believable. The sun cannot cause us to burst into flames, nor will garlic blister our skin. Nevertheless, we are different, but we are not evil.”

He rubbed her hands softly with his own. They were cold as ice. Looking into her lost gaze with his own pleading eyes, he explained, “It is a misconception that those of our kind are without souls. Our species has been referred to throughout time as everything from
vampyre
to
demon,
u
niversally believed to be nothing more than mythical creatures. However, our existence had been a secreted one dating back to the days of Christ. We are not monsters. We are immortal Christians devoted to the Amish faith and way of life. We are The Order.”

Her emotions were erratic. He could not seem to follow one sense long enough before it flipped into a different feeling completely. He grew alarmed when her emotions began to flicker as if she was losing her grip with reality and beginning to shut down her mind. He waited for her to say something.

Her breathing had accelerated, and her eyes were filled with unshed tears. “Adam?”

“Yes?”

“I want to go home.”

He reached for her, and she flinched. When he reached for her again, she surrendered into his embrace. He pressed her head to his chest and kissed her hair. “Do not fear me, Anna. I could not bear it. Sleep now, my love.” Her legs crumpled, and he carried her to the bed. He wanted to tear at the walls. What if this was something she simply could not accept? What if this was the end for him? What if he never got to hold her willingly again?

He held her sleeping form and watched her. He never wanted to let her go, but perhaps letting her go was for the best.

Chapter 17

The sun was setting across the beautiful Pennsylvania landscapes. Annalise had been sitting staring out at the green and brown patchwork of the earth for several hours. It was nothing like the urban parts of the state she was from. Here, there was nothing but land folded into more land, trees, and old farmhouses here and there. She looked toward the horizon, a small cluster of roads, some immeasurable distance away, so far it made her feel like a giant, able to pinch the tiny rooftops in the distance. She had no way of knowing if the homes she saw rested inside or outside of the property line, no way of knowing if the residents were like Adam and his family or not.

The only thing Annalise did know was that during the hours of daylight, Adam could not tolerate the sun’s intensity as much as the others. She had skipped breakfast. She woke up alone in their room and spent the afternoon dressing and readying herself for a day that was altogether frightening and unpredictable. When she slipped out of the house, she was relieved to find the kitchen empty.

She had walked outside and found a patch of sunshine to sit in far enough from the house. It was hot and she was sure her cheeks were sunburned, but it was her only shelter from the insanity she had been thrown into.

Gracie had come to see her at one point. Annalise had not spoken a word and only thought the repeated phrase,
go away, go away, go away.
Eventually the girl sighed and returned to the house.

Annalise did not want to talk. What would she say? She felt confused and stuck somewhere that even if she escaped, she would never understand. She would never be the same. It wasn’t like she could tell her friends at home about this. That would be a one-way ticket to the loony bin. She was living on a farm of Amish vampires. How insane was that?

When Adam first began telling her about his secrets, she didn’t believe him. Then he had sliced his flesh wide open and healed right before her eyes. She had been in school long enough, learning the basics of medical practices and common scenarios to know that a wound wide enough for stitches and deep enough to bleed a person to death did not just miraculously heal itself.

The age thing was not as much of a red flag as the healing. It was the twenty-first century after all. There were things like BOTOX and plastic surgery that Annalise supposed could make any seventy-something woman appear to be in her thirties. Maybe. She thought about celebrities who never seemed to age and figured the plain lifestyle and simple living contributed to how fit they all looked. That was the rationale she had clung to last night. Today, however, she had wondered if celebrities like Dolly Parton who looked better than they did in the eighties were actually vampires as well.

And what about all the vampire propaganda? There were shows, books, movies, and more setting bloodsucking trends across America. Was there any truth to these fictional works? Would they eventually all be living amongst one another, fighting for civil rights among species and serving up bottled blood? Was there a scary governing trio somewhere in Italy that would come and rain down penalties on those who broke protocol? And what about werewolves? Did they exist, too? It was all simply too much.

Anna began to bite her nails as if the answers to her problems rested somewhere beneath her cuticles. When she nipped her skin a little too close and drew blood, she quickly stuck the digit into her mouth and looked around, paranoid that some rabid vampire was going to sniff her out and attack. She knew she was being ridiculous, but she kept her finger in her mouth until the blood stopped nonetheless. Once her finger was nothing more than a dried up prune, she decided it would be safe to occupy her fidgeting hands by braiding grass. She plucked three long blades and began weaving them together.

Anna had been freaked by Adam’s mind trick. Moving things with your eyes was just wrong. Yet, in hindsight, she supposed she should be grateful that he hadn’t poofed into a bat or something. Did they sleep in coffins? And was this why she hadn’t come across a mirror? What about garlic? She could have sworn she saw Gracie slicing up some the other day.

And what about Cain? Everyone had been so furious over his flirting. Was it because he had intentions she didn’t understand but the rest of them did? Was he going to eat her? Anna moaned and dropped her face into her palms, her long green rope of grass forgotten.

Could she believe Adam? He’d sworn since the first time they met that he did not lie. If she asked him something, he told her the answer, no matter how upsetting. He had also done some sneaky work of omitting some facts. She guessed his loophole was that she never asked. He had drunk her blood.

When he first told her about needing a transfusion, she had a more clinical approach in her head, IVs, tourniquets, and the like. When he said he had already taken her blood, she had images of Adam in James Bond garb drugging her and filling a small vile with her red stuff. It had never crossed her mind that he had bitten her.

Was this why she was having dreams about bloodsucking insects? Was her subconscious trying to tell her something? Was the spider-looking bite on her leg actually from Adam? She thought they bit in the neck. And if he drank enough, would she turn into one? No, he said they had to transfer blood for that to happen. Or was that just for mates?

She needed to get out of here, that’s what she needed to do. Somehow, some way, she had to convince Adam to let her go home. This was simply too much for her. There were no such things as vampires!

The sadness she felt at the thought of leaving was something she didn’t know how to cope with. She didn’t want to be here, yet leaving filled her with such trepidation she wanted to cry. The thought of going home left her confused. Where she had built her life around her own likes and dislikes, choosing the people to surround herself with, following a career she could see herself happy in, and dating a man she felt free to be herself around, it suddenly all felt wrong. She had not molded herself to fill a slot, but surrounded herself with things and people that molded to what she wanted. However, the idea of returning to her old life made her feel like a big, fat square peg trying to squeeze into a tiny, round pinhole.

She began to pluck buttercups from the grass and drop them into the soft dip of her apron. When she collected over a dozen, she began weaving them into her braid of grass.

The idea of picking up with Kyle where things had left off left her completely cold. She suddenly saw things about him she not only didn’t like, but things that actually turned her off. He was her friend and coworker, but she could not imagine ever being intimate with him again. She would always hold him in Adam’s shadow. She would most likely hold every man in Adam’s shadow for that matter.

Adam was the most handsome man she had ever seen, hotter than Brad Pitt or any other product of Hollywood. But if she were blind, and even if he were ugly, she still would have found him beautiful. And Adam was right here. He wanted
her.
She would never meet another man like him. There would never be another man that could set her body afire the way he did. And he wanted to marry her. For all eternity.

She wondered if she did bond with him, if she would look better. Would her breasts fill out? Would she be a little taller? Would Adam still want her if she looked different? It didn’t matter anyway. She could not sign her life, no, several lifetimes, to a man she really didn’t know.

Did Anna know Adam? She went over the facts. He was a good big brother, a loyal son, a caring and generous lover. He could dance. He was soft-spoken yet confident enough that he never came off as weak. She had seen that he would fight even his brother to defend her honor. He was financially secure. He had a strong relationship with God and did not like it when she cussed. He was also incredibly sexy. Was there anything else a girl could ask for? Oh yeah, and he drank blood. Vamp fantasies were fun until you were living them. In real life, biting hurt.

And then there was the be-all and end-all. She could either live forever or Adam would die. She would have the rest of eternity to come to terms with her situation, yet Adam would have nothing past his last moments of surrender. He would be giving up eternity, for her, so she could,
maybe
, live another sixty-some years. She didn’t want to make such a decision. She bet if she chose what was best for herself, the pathetically short remainder of her life would be plagued with the knowledge that a good man died because of her. That wasn’t something she wanted to live with. Maybe he could erase her memories. Could vampires do that?

The idea of not remembering Adam made her sad as well. There seemed no happy ending in all of this. Either she died and was reborn with eternal life and mated to a man and life she barely knew, or a man she barely knew but was half in love with would die. And it would be all her fault!

Irritated that she still had not come to terms with one decision or another, she growled at her indecisiveness and crumpled the delicate circulate of yellow flowers and grass and tossed it weakly away. They would wilt by the end of the day anyway.

* * * *

Adam watched Anna from his place on the porch. Gracie had said she had been sitting in the field all day and had not eaten or spoken to anyone. He read her emotions. They were incongruent, sad one minute then hopeful then sad again. He watched her as the sun made its final, flourished bow behind the mountains in the distance, painting the green fields radiant shades of pink and yellow. Then everything had turned a foreboding shade of gray.

He should go to her. When the sky finally darkened, he took a step to do just that but hesitated as her soft sobs reached his ears and he saw her shoulders quake in the darkness. This was his fault.

When she seemed to calm her tears, a sense of numbness washing over her, he began to walk toward her spot in the field. He purposely stepped on a twig so that she would hear him approaching. She stiffened at the sound but did not turn to greet him. Finally he said, “You are sad.”

She still did not face him, and he kept his position standing several feet behind her. He assumed she would ignore him like she did his sister, but then she surprised him by saying, “It is lovely here. We don’t have anything like these sunsets at home.”

“My mother used to tell us the sunset was God tucking his children in for the night. The yellow was his prayers, the pink his kiss, and the black him shutting his eyes.”

“My mom used to read me
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
by Eric Carle.”

“I am not familiar with that tale.”

“It’s about a caterpillar that eats everything in sight and then turns into a butterfly.”

He shifted his feet. “Do you miss your mother? I lost an uncle, but am not familiar with mourning many loved ones.”

“She died after I finished high school. I was sad and still miss her, but she always worked so incredibly hard to make ends meet and make sure I had school clothes and lunches that I was almost grateful when she died. It was as if she would finally be able to rest.”

“Was your father not there to protect you?”

“No. I never knew my dad, don’t even know what he looks like. He never contacted me and my mom never talked about him much.”

“He fled his responsibilities.”

“Yes, but that isn’t uncommon where I’m from. Plenty of women do it on their own and do just fine.”

“I would never be a man like your father.”

“I know. You’re nothing like any man I know, all super powers aside.”

He slowly moved and sat down next to her. “I do not have superpowers. I am just a different species with different abilities. It is the same as cows and humans. Cows walk on four feet and moo while humans walk on two and speak and feel emotions.”

“Is that how you see us? Just more sophisticated cattle?”

“No. I see you as my equal.”

She shut her eyes and shook her head. He noticed a red burn across the bridge of her nose and wanted to soothe the area. He wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her tight and promise everything would be all right. “Anna, you can ask me anything, and I will give you an honest answer.”

She sighed. “Did you ever kill a human?”

Distraught that she would think him capable of such an act, he quickly answered, “No.”

“Then how do you…eat?”