Damon (39 page)

As my tension eased, I became aware of a trickling sound. Like water flowing in a babbling brook. My thoughts turned to the days of rain we’d had recently, and then something cold and wet touched my leg. The rumbling sound I’d heard was rushing water. The water was coming our way and we were trapped. We’d drown in this pit.

I held onto him against the cold and dread. This day had been charging toward me for years and it had finally arrived. This would be my last day on this earth.

“I promised I’d never leave you behind again,” Damon whispered in my ear.

“You sure did.”

I decided it would be better like this, after all. People like us - we had to be stopped.

***

I sat in a puddle of water, feeling indifferent to our situation, while Damon examined our own personal waterfall.

That’s when I gave up. We couldn’t get out. We were trapped, and one day someone would stumble across our bones, and wonder who we were. I only hoped they wouldn’t find us by falling in as I had.

“Stand up,” Damon told me. “You’ll freeze.”

“We’re going to drown. In about thirty minutes. Hear the rumbling? That’s water. Rushing water. This trickle is nothing compared to what’s coming.”

He strolled around the room, pounding on the rock. “There’s a door here somewhere. Get up and help me find it.”

I felt like I had the time Mama had pushed me out of the car six miles outside of town on a deserted road. I’d returned home filthy, exhausted, and feeling ultra calm. Tired of running, tired of trying, tired of listening, tired of everything. All I’d wanted was a shower and some sleep. No energy left for thoughts or feelings.

It was the perfect feeling - indifference.

The safest feeling in the world.

Damon came to stand over me and held out his hand. “Come over here,” he said. “I’ll lift you over my head and throw you. Like cheerleaders do. I’ll get you out. I’ll save you.”

I ignored his hand. “Then you’ll be trapped down here,” I said in a dull voice. “You’ll drown before I can get back with help. I’d rather die here with you. If you die, I’m killing myself, anyway. Annoying as you are, I can’t live without you.”

He propped the torch between two rocks. The flame was flickering and burning low. Soon even that comfort and slight heat would be gone.

“You need to keep off the rock,” he said. “It’ll suck your body heat right out.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, wanting to cry, but too dull to find the energy. “You should have shot me in the head. I was wrong.”

“The vampire will come along,” he said. “You’ll get numb.”

“I’m already numb.” The cold had seeped into my bones to the point I wasn’t shivering anymore. I was soaked to the skin. “I’d rather be numb when it happens.”

He pulled me to my feet and held me close, sending me whatever body heat he could spare. The instant his warmth reached me I began to care whether I lived or died. I was frightened, and I held onto him, prepared to stay that way to the very end.

“I’m so sorry I did this to you,” he said, stroking my hair. “I was so sure. It’s not supposed to be this way.”

I could only nod against his shoulder. I knew he hadn’t done it on purpose, even if my survival instincts wanted to shout at him for being so stupid. I still loved him enough to forgive him, and to die with him.

“C’mon. Sit down and we’ll drink,” he said. “You’ll feel better. I’ve got my pocketknife.”

I nodded, knowing it was true. We could get drunk and spend our time down here thinking we owned the world. We’d be gone before we knew we’d died.

He dug into his jeans pocket. “Here, hold the lighter so I can see.”

I was about to take the lighter when we both saw moving lights from up above. Two tiny silver lights. They darted to the side and then disappeared.

We stood in unison.

Damon grabbed me and pulled me behind him. “It’s him,” he whispered. “It’s happening. He’s here.”

I opened my mouth to ask who, and then I remembered why we’d come down into this god-awful cave in the first place. To find the red vampire beast. The same kind of beast that had attacked my grandparents and Bella and Chester years ago. The same kind of beast that had killed Joseph Jarvis. Torn him to shreds, Verna had said.

We both stared up into the blackness for long moments until finally the lights returned, shining down on us. A low growl replaced the rumbling of water.

The shining lights flew through the air, moving lower and suddenly there it was, standing right in front of us. By the dim glow of the torch, I could see it, just as Bella and Chester had described. Just as Elliot had written in his book. The beast stood on all fours, covered in red fur, snarling at us with jagged fangs. It might have passed for a small red bear if not for the disturbing human face. A human face covered in red fur. Just as Damon had described.

But instead of recognizing us as his own kind, this thing seemed vicious, angry, threatening, and seconds away from killing us. It rose to two legs and I saw it’s long claws move as it snapped its hands open and closed. Taunting us.

We both slowly backed up until we hit a wall.

“We’re like you,” Damon told the thing. “We have your blood in our veins.”

The beast hissed and took a step closer. If it could understand, it obviously didn’t care.

“I can’t fight it,” Damon said, his voice shaking. “I only have my stupid pocketknife. I don’t have my gun!”

“I don’t think it would matter,” I told him.

We were trapped. We couldn’t maneuver around this thing. We couldn’t outrun it. We couldn’t fight it. Damon had found exactly what he’d been looking for. Death.

Damon turned to me and grabbed my shoulders. “Before it kills you, you have to drink some of its blood. Otherwise, you can’t return. That’s the cure. I’ll cut it with my knife.” He gave me a hard shake. “Maggie! Remember.”

“I’ll remember,” I whispered, shaking so hard my head was banging back against the rock wall. I couldn’t take my eyes off that thing. This was it. This was the moment. We were going to die. Violently. Painfully.

Suddenly, Damon pointing a gun to my head seemed like nothing. A meaningless incident. Even the idea of drowning sounded pretty good.

Looking into the eyes of a living monster, any other kind of death seemed preferable.

Our dream had officially turned into a nightmare.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Damon slowly moved his pocketknife around to lift the blade but like a flash of light, the beast charged at us, grabbing and tossing me before I even had time to yelp.

I flew through the air and landed on rock, much as I had when I’d fallen into the pit, except this time I landed much more gently, on my butt, on the cave floor above the pit, sliding a few feet before coming to a stop.

Damon landed beside me. We were in the dark and I only recognized him by the smell of his shampoo when his head bumped against mine.

An instant later, the beast flew out of the pit, holding the torch. It landed in front of us and tossed Damon the torch, which he caught in reflex.

The red beast with glowing silver eyes stepped closer, his facial features gradually changing into that of a man as he approached.

Damon and I could only stare at him, at this creature with a human face and a body covered in red fur.

He wore a red cloth wrapped around his waist and reached down to untie the knot. He shook out the material and stepped into a military-style jumpsuit.

And suddenly a human man stood before us.

A handsome man in his late twenties or early thirties, with long, straight dark hair. He might have looked like any man on the street if not for the glowing silver eyes.

He spoke in a deep, resonant voice, in a language I couldn’t understand. I inched backward on my hands wanting to run, but I couldn’t run off wildly into pitch blackness.

Damon stood and I quickly joined him, pasting myself to his side, reminding myself to always, always, always carry my own flashlight. If I made it out of this alive, I would never be without one of those tiny key ring flashlights in my pocket. Never.

I wanted to take a step backward, but Damon stepped forward.

The strange man spoke again, this time gesturing, sounding urgent, and a little annoyed.

Damon moved closer to the man and I held onto handfuls of his shirt trying to hold him back, but he was ignoring me.

“I understand this,” Damon said. “I understand those words.”

And then I let go of Damon’s shirt and took a step back when Damon started speaking the same foreign language as the man. As they began carrying on a conversation.

A dialogue in a rapid language.

A dialogue as if between friends.

Damon’s voice rose from soft, shaky disbelief to loud, shaky conviction. He crossed his arms over his head, nearly setting his shirt on fire with the torch. But he dropped it instead. He made an odd sound and stumbled to the side. He might have fallen if I hadn’t pushed against him when it seemed he might land on me. He glanced at me and took my arm to steady me, as if he were so distracted he thought I were the one stumbling.

I pulled my arm free and stepped farther back, now seeking the darkness, the instinct to hide taking over.

Damon and the creature hugged and laughed, talking over each other in excitement.

Damon pointed upward, toward the dead Damon on the ledge, still speaking that bizarre, complicated language. A language I couldn’t even identify by sound. An alien language.

The notion came to me as a mere spark of thought, but then my mind slowed and I realized they were. They were actually speaking in an alien language. Damon was speaking to a creature that transformed from a red, growling monster to a human man. He was speaking to the creature in its native language.

As if… as if it were Damon’s native language, too.

Then, Damon looked for me, found me in the darkness, his eyes glowing silver. His face glowing from the brightness of his eyes.

He came for me as I backed up, unable to stop myself, unable to take my eyes off him. I didn’t know if I was awake or asleep, sane or crazy, alive or dead, but I knew he wasn’t behaving like a human. He wasn’t behaving like the man I knew.

Honestly, I might not have been so alarmed if the other man hadn’t been in the cave with us, speaking the same language, behaving the same way, but the two of them were aliens and they were ganging up on me. I out outnumbered. I was the outsider.

“Calm down, Maggie,” Damon said in English, in a soothing voice. “It’s okay. I know what’s happening.”

Maybe he did, but I didn’t - and I didn’t like it.

In my effort to keep his hands off me I stumbled over the uneven cave floor and Damon caught me, pulling me into his arms.

Where once I’d found warmth and comfort I now felt trapped, caught, under attack. I fought against him in a panic, finally freeing myself from his grasp. I turned and ran blindly into the darkness, wanting to scream, but unable to find enough breath or voice to do so. The scream resonated in my mind, instead.

I ran, bumping off walls and unseen objects, stumbling, at times using my hands on the ground to keep moving, until I saw two silver eyes race in front of me and I landed against a wall of male chest. Damon wrapped his arms around me again.

Inside my head, I heard his voice as clearly as if he’d spoken.

Stop, Maggie. You’re safe. I remember everything. My mind is clear again. We’re saved. We can go home now.

But to whose home? His or mine?

He held me close, in strong, warm arms, and I dropped my forehead to his chest in exhaustion. In the darkness, I could imagine that nothing had changed between us. That he was the man I’d loved and married and planned to spend the rest of my life with. I could pretend to be blissfully ignorant. Just for a few minutes, until I could rest.

While I did, Damon relayed his story to me. About the trip through the portal from his world to mine. A trip that had been chaotic. Something had gone wrong during the launch and he’d landed on this side of the portal banged up and disoriented. He’d been injured during the journey and stood on this world lost and confused, with no memory of where he was, who he was, or why he’d come here. He’d encountered a miserable, insane Damon Jennings – the real Damon Jennings – pacing in the cave with a gun, preparing to kill himself.

“He came at me,” he said. “He attacked me. I didn’t understand him. He was crying and banging his head against the wall. When he saw me, he charged, screaming. He attacked me. I couldn’t understand why he was so angry. When we clashed, I took everything in. We’re telepathic, Maggie, and in an instant he fed me everything in his mind. Every thought, every emotion, every detail of his life and of this world. I remember now. He saw me as a beast. He called me a vampire. He fell still and told me to drink his blood. I was weak from the trip and so I did. I fed. He smiled at me and shot himself. He said he was finally happy. He died and I became him. I took everything from him. His form, his life, his clothes, everything. I was him. I couldn’t remember who I really was. All I could remember was Damon Jennings. Every memory he had became mine. And those memories led me to you.”

He stroked my hair and whispered in my ear, “I am a vampire, Maggie. I really am. We can transform, change shape. I took his shape.”

I leaned back to look at him, remembering how I’d once loved his silver eyes. In the heavy darkness, they shined enough to create a sphere of light around us. “But you became insane like him.”

He kissed me softly and rested his forehead against mine. “His confused thoughts were in my mind. But, somewhere, lost in my own mind, were memories of my own world. I knew I had to find my way back. I knew I had to save you.”

“Save me from what?”

“Insanity. The blood here, here on this planet, is not like the blood on mine. Our blood doesn’t mix. It’s poisonous to humans. That’s what happened to your grandfather and Damon’s grandmother, your mother and his father. Poor David. And now you. They were poisoned by our blood. We infected you. We never should have come here.”

“But if you hadn’t,” I said, “we’d never have met. I’d still be alone, and crazy.”