Dinner With a Vampire (60 page)

Something in the pit of my stomach fell away. ‘Do you mean Annie?’ Yet again he nodded. His eyes tinged pink and I didn’t have to ask to know what had happened.
Well, that explains a lot.
I felt another pang of jealousy, mixed with guilt too.

‘If something were to go wrong though, would—’

‘Father won’t be far away, and he knows everything there is to know about turning.’ Again, I didn’t know whether to be reassured or concerned.

‘Do you want to know something?’ he said, clearly keen to change the subject as he entwined his fingers with mine. He didn’t wait for an answer as he placed my hand over the spot on my chest where my heartbeat was the strongest. ‘I can’t wait until that heart stops beating.’

I rolled up onto my toes and planted a kiss on his lips.
I could wait, but if there is ever going to be a good reason to turn, it is for more of these moments.
I rested my head on his shoulder. He had his back to the mansion and I looked up at the place that had been my home for the past three months. I stared at it, wondering how such a large, empty, cold house could feel so
right
, even after everything that had happened.

And from the top floor, a face stared back: the King’s. His expression was neither kind nor angry, just blank, just as I thought his heart had been for so long. But now I realized he suffered, more than any of us; and a floor below that, a second man looked on: my own father. I didn’t need to study his face to know that it was full of hurt.

I pressed my bare midriff into Kaspar, hoping they wouldn’t see and glad the darkness hid my flushed cheeks.

I won’t let any feud between them come between Kaspar and I. I can’t let it.

All traces of the storm had disappeared by the next morning. The sun streamed through my windows, voiles thrown open by Kaspar to wake me up before he left. He had gone to hunt, because he wanted to make sure he wasn’t thirsty before he turned me.

Today is the day. Today, I become a vampire. Today, I seal it all.

The hairs on my arms stood on end. My legs slowly warmed as strips of light divided the sheets I was tucked beneath; moments before they had been frozen from his touch.

This is it.

The clock on the bedside table read a little after nine. When the hands reached half-past, my father and Lily would leave, escorted by Eaglen.

There is no going back.

It could be months before I saw Lily again. I hadn’t even seen my mother.

Tonight is the night.

I slipped my feet from beneath the sheets, cursing how cold the floor was as I pulled one of the sheets with me, to cover my nakedness. When it occurred to me that no would see, I dropped it, letting it pool at my feet as I picked my way through the sprawled clothes that lay on the floor.

So much for not being able to forget.

The mirrors in my wardrobe reflected every inch of my form: haggard, drawn, the cold making me rosy-cheeked – not for much longer. The skin was taut over my bottom rib – it never used to be. My hips jutted out more than I liked and my knees looked scrawny. I was thin: too thin for a body that had once been rounded and curvy. My skin was torn and bruised from weeks of torment and caress under Kaspar’s hand. My eyes were wide, always wide; always fearing what would come next.

‘Is this what you want, Violet?’ I whispered to my reflection, reaching out and touching my glass shoulder. ‘Truly?’

My reflection did not answer, but stared back, lips only parting as mine did to sigh.

Truthfully, want was never a luxury you were permitted to have,
my voice said, so clear in my mind that it could have come from a real person beside me.

‘I know,’ I replied, turning away and pulling a clean shirt down from the railing. When I had dressed, I attempted to pull a brush through my damp, tangled hair, but it only left it frizzier, so I gave up.

The entrance hall was still quiet when I reached the bottom of the stairs. The butlers stirred from their stone-like stature when I passed, bowing. A maid replaced the black roses in the vases with fresh white lilies, pressing the petals of the withering flowers between the pages of a heavy book she had placed upon the table.

Nothing was out of the ordinary. Nothing had changed. Nothing would change, but me.

In the kitchen, Cain greeted me with a grin, laughing and joking from behind a tumbler of flowing red liquid, which swirled from side to side, staining the glass pink. His eyes twinkled as he asked after my sister; dulled when I replied that she was leaving shortly.

The apple I picked from the bowl was as red as the blood he drank. I sank my teeth into it, wondering if this was how it felt to sink fangs into flesh – but no, skin would be softer. I swallowed a chunk of the apple, moist and sweet, forgetting to chew most of it.

The digital clock on the wall read 9.26 a.m. I contemplated returning to the entrance hall.
I should say goodbye. But how do I say goodbye when I only greeted them a day ago?

Lyla’s beaming face appeared in the doorway, chased by a cheering Fabian, who chuckled and grabbed her as they pulled closer and locked lips. I saw them only as figures against a bleary background. Felix and Charlie followed, not far behind, and bowed. It slowly percolated my skull that they lowered themselves for me. Declan, late; spread a newspaper across the counter, his fingers tracing the edge of each page, headlines and pictures and columns merging into one black-and-white whirl. I found myself walking away, reminded of my first morning at Varnley.

‘
But you choose to kill people instead.’

The metallic smell filled the corridor, seeming to stick to the carpets of the living room like smoke. It filled my throat, drained my saliva and left me propped against the back of the sofa, clutching my throat and gagging.

A few hours and I will lust for the stuff.

When my breathing eventually slowed, I moved off in a daze, not convinced I was even awake. My hand rested on the door out of the living room and I froze, wanting to stay, to just let them go; forget goodbye, because goodbye was too hard and I knew that tonight, I would betray them, particularly my father, in the ultimate way.

But it wasn’t goodbye for good. It was goodbye to the Violet they knew, who ate and drank and got ill; the Violet who would die before she had seen a century pass; the Violet who they had loved and cared and fed and taught for the past eighteen years.
That’s all.

I took a deep breath and twisted my wrist to turn the handle, allowing the door to swing inwards. I stepped through, seeing Eaglen first, then my father and the other two men from the government, arms grasped by the guards. Lily stood close by. She saw me first; her face a picture of sadness and disappointment, only outshone by my father’s face as he looked away and refused to meet my gaze.

‘Dad?’ I breathed. I felt tears prick the underside of my eyelids every time I blinked. He did not react. But Lily did. She broke away from the group, dodging one of the guards that moved forward to stop her.

‘I want to speak to you before we go,’ she said once she reached me. ‘In private,’ she added, glancing over her shoulder at Eaglen.

I nodded at him and the guards. ‘We’ll be two minutes.’

She led the way outside, ducking into the alcove I had sheltered under just the night before. With a slight blush, I realized my soaking shirt was still draped across the banisters, where Kaspar had left it the night before. I picked it up, squeezed out the water and laid it out flat in a patch of sun to dry.

‘That’s your shirt?’ Lily asked. I nodded. ‘How did it get there?’

I stared at the ground, refusing to say it in words.

‘
I didn’t think you’d ever fall into bed with a murderer, but now I can see I was wrong.’

‘I guess this is goodbye then,’ I muttered to fill the silence.

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you for longer.’

‘Me too.’

‘But it’s not safe for you to come to Athenea. You and mum will be safe at home. You understand that, right?’

‘Yeah.’

Again we fell into silence. I wanted to stare at my feet, scuffing against the stone, but instead I watched my little sister, burning her image onto my memory, like I had the cold the night before. I wanted to remember the healthy glow in her cheeks that hadn’t been there for more than a year and the twinkle of her violet eyes and the way she didn’t seem so short anymore.

‘Violet?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Do you remember when you were doing your exams and you told me that you would read me some Shakespeare once you had finished studying?’

My lips twitched. I had promised her that whilst she was having one of her chemo sessions the previous May. ‘You mean that time I really annoyed you by talking in Shakespearean language the whole day?’

‘Yeah, then. But you never did read me any and when I was really bored in hospital, I decided to read
Romeo and Juliet
myself because I wanted to impress you when you came home and so I could get ahead with my English GCSE next year.’

I tried to smile. ‘Did you like it?’

She scowled. ‘No. Romeo and Juliet were naïve and blinded by lust.’

‘Oh.’

‘I hated it and I forgot all about it until last night, when that Cain guy let me into the library and I found a copy of it. And it reminded me of something Juliet had said that I thought I should tell you.’

‘Really? What was that?’ I asked as I looked over her shoulder towards the entrance hall, where I knew Eaglen would be eager to leave.
Maybe I’m even eager for them to leave.

‘It’s quite famous. You probably know it.’ She looked up at me, waiting until my eyes slid back to her before she carried on. ‘
Deny thy father and refuse thy name; or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet
.’

Her words hit me like a punch to the stomach. I gasped, stepping back, the badly hidden tears behind my eyelids leaking out. ‘Lily!’

‘I’m sorry for what’s happened to you. I know a lot of it isn’t your fault, but you did have a choice; you can’t have gone hurtling towards all of this without being able to back out.’ She began to step away, tears now seeping from her eyes. ‘You’re going to give up being human for that Prince guy, so let’s face it, Violet. You’re more of a Varn than you are a Lee now.’

From behind her, Eaglen emerged, my father not far behind, as two unmarked cars with tinted windows pulled up.

‘My Lady,’ Eaglen called out to me, bowing and getting into the front seat of the car that was furthest away. Lily walked around to the back seat, pausing and looking at me with tears streaming down her face before she ducked inside. Without even looking up, my father got into the other back seat of the same car as his two men were pushed into the car behind. The door slammed on my last glimpse of him as his human daughter and without any hesitation, they pulled away.

Nobody watched them leave except me. My gaze followed the cars as they weaved along the gravel driveway, passing one of the gardeners who swept the fallen autumn leaves into a pile; then around the one edge of the forest until they delved into the cover of the trees, disappearing from view.

I sank against the banister, falling into the puddle my wet shirt had created and, from far up the hill, I heard the crackling of a fire as the beacon at Varns’ Point was lit once more, filling the air with the stench of burning.

The sun was just beginning to set when Kaspar returned. The Thames Estuary glistened under the fading rays, becoming a glaring orange sheet. Just above that, a thin strip of puffy violet clouds hovered, marking the divide between sea and sky.

I knew that dwelling on the past made the future seem bleaker, but I couldn’t help but think back to the time when I would never have considered standing here, time running out as the falling sun marked my minutes left as a human.

I felt sick just thinking about it. I had already rushed to the bathroom twice that afternoon and despite not eating anything since the apple, my stomach twisted and knotted, threatening to throw up what little was left in my gut.

‘I prefer you in the rain,’ Kaspar muttered in my ear, rubbing my shoulders in slow circles. The continuous motion helped to ease the tension in my muscles, so rigid and stiff that my fingers could not loosen themselves from where they gripped the stone banisters of Kaspar’s balcony. ‘Don’t worry,’ he continued. ‘It will all be over before you know it.’

I nodded, unable to speak because I didn’t trust myself to open my mouth in case my stomach betrayed me.

‘Violet, it will be dark soon.’ I nodded and didn’t move. He tried to tug a little on my arm, but my knees just wouldn’t bend so that I could take a step. However, it was enough for him to be able to prise my fingers away from the stone and half-carry me towards the door to his room.

He walked over to his bedside table, picking up a red velvet cloth and bringing it over to me. It remained rigid as he placed it flat in his palm, unfolding the corners of the cloth to reveal a small, ornamental dagger, encrusted with emeralds along the spine of the handle. The blade itself was wafer thin and looked horrifyingly sharp.

I must have seemed alarmed, because he pulled a reassuring smile. ‘Diamond-encrusted blade. It’s for me to cut a wound on my wrist with.’ He frowned. ‘It will give a clean cut, which will make it easier for you to drink from.’

‘Right,’ I breathed, suddenly feeling queasy.

He tugged at his bottom lip with a fang, looking me up and down. ‘You don’t have to do this, you know. Just say the word and we’ll forget it.’

‘No. I’ll do it.’ I tried to sound defiant, but it came out as more of a squeak. Lines appeared across his brow and he placed the knife aside, taking one of my hands in his own.