Endlessly (11 page)

“I’m sorry!” she sobbed. “I don’t know
how to control it!” Tears welled in her eyes. She crossed her arms
and hugged herself trying to get warm.

“Jason, I can help her with this. If
you want to head home you can. I’ll teach her how to control it.
I’m sure she won’t mind driving me back when we’re done. Is that
okay, Ash?” I asked, glancing at her.

She smiled at me, then shot a glare at
Jason. “Sure,” she said. “I can drive you home later. And Jason,
you are disgusting. I guess it’s true. That really is all men think
about.” Her checks flushed scarlet.

“Yeah,” Jason muttered. “I’m getting
outta here. This is just too creepy for me. I don’t like her
thoughts either.” He walked around us toward the car, but stopped
beside Ash. For the first time since I’d known him he looked
sad.

“You know, he doesn’t shift, so you
can’t be with him,” he said. “He’s not one of us.” He stared at
her, and after a moment I realized they were having an unspoken
conversation. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

Jason gave me a contemptuous look. “Now
you get to tell her what you are.” He walked off, not waiting for a
reply.

Ash and I silently watched as he drove
off. She wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of my coat. “Well,
that’s that.”

“Are you okay?” I asked. “I know Jason
can be a huge jerk, and I’m sorry he upset you.”

“He wasn’t being a jerk,” she said. “He
was just showing me how my life would be with him. He seemed…
sincere…like he would have done anything for me.”

Fuck. Maybe I had been wrong about
Jason. Could he give her everything that she deserved? Everything
that I couldn’t? Could he give her a real life? Love? Marriage?
Children? Happiness? I might give her love and marriage, but not
children. Even then, we would be on the run, with the Quatre trying
to hunt us down and kill us, I wanted nothing more than to give her
happiness, yet I knew there was little chance of it. Most likely
any life with me would end with capture, pain, and
death.

An awkward silence hung in the air.
Finally she whispered: “I told him he would make some girl happy
one day, but not me…that my feelings lie elsewhere.” She eyed
me.

I felt my chest tighten. This was the
moment when I should’ve said: No! I should’ve told her we could
never be together. Now was the time to make her run for the car,
chase down Jason, and take him up on his offer of happiness. This
was when I could choose to let her live. I didn’t have to allow her
to join me against the Quatre. My wish to be with her was nothing
but my own selfishness.

I stifled a sob, then said: “Let’s go
inside where it’s warmer.”

She struggled to walk without shoes.
She glanced at me, her pain showing through her eyes. That’s when I
decided once and for all that we were doomed. It was that or I
would die right there and then. I smiled faintly, bent, and swept
her up in my arms. Though her body felt stiff as set concrete, she
was light, and once I held her she softened. She snuggled against
me as she sunk into my coat. My chest ached for her. For the first
time in my memory I felt complete. And for the second time in my
life I was scared shitless.

The sun started to set. This was going
to be a long night.

Chapter 11

FATED INVITATION

I carried her to the couch and set her
down. It was much warmer inside, maybe because she was trying to
compensate for her cool skin. I took off my sweatshirt revealing my
holster with the fully loaded gun.

She eyed the weapon, and I sensed it
would be better to take off the holster. I hid it under my
sweatshirt on the floor.

She smiled and said: “You don’t have to
carry me.” As she looked down at the floor her cheeks turned pink.
She sat up, stretching her legs across the length of the couch. She
shivered, then wrapped her arms around her midsection trying to
warm herself.

“You don’t have to be so embarrassed,”
I said, sitting on the opposite end of the couch. I watched her
hugging herself. “You’re cold blooded. It’s going to be hard for
you to stay warm.”

“So,” she said, “what are you?” She
squinted. I could feel her mind pounding against the wall in my
brain. “And how are you doing that? I can’t read anything from you
now. I could earlier.”

“That’s part of what I’m going to teach
you,” I said. “Just like you envisioned the safe area, you can make
an impenetrable wall in your mind. It’ll take practice, but I think
you’ll be able to get a handle on it within a day.” I sighed and
rubbed my eyes. My head felt recovered from the blow I’d taken
during her shifting, but I could still feel pressure inside my
skull. I should’ve never gotten that close. Now I was
tired.

“And?” She pried at the edges of my
mind.

As I watched her I prepared myself for
a reaction of disgust or worse. My biggest fear was that she would
be afraid. I had to let her find out for herself. It would be one
of many things that would help introduce her to this unusual world
where both of us lived. For the first time she was seeing how
different this was from the world she’d known up to just a few
hours ago. If she decided against resending her soul, her life
would never be “normal” again.

I looked down at her feet protruding
from under my trench coat. I slowly cupped my hand under her ankle
feeling her cool skin. I ran my thumb along the ankle. Again I felt
the pulling in my chest. This was the moment that I had wanted. I
yearned for her to know. But if this is what I wanted so badly, why
was I so terrified? Suddenly I realized that I’d stopped breathing.
I exhaled, relaxed my shoulders, and discovered I had also relaxed
my hold on the wall in my mind. Now the whole of what was in me was
open to her. I could do nothing to stop her, so I let her see
everything. I closed my eyes. I cringed at the thought of what she
might do.

In the next few seconds I felt her
rummaging through my thoughts and memories. She pulled her leg from
my hand, and faced me. It seemed like hours had passed. Her cold
hand fell upon mine. I opened my eyes, but didn’t look at her face.
Instead I looked at the end of the tattoo on her hand. I recalled
when she’d first showed it to me, and tried to show her the memory.
I closed my eyes.

She moved closer to me. Finally I
looked into her eyes. The ache in my chest crushed out another
sob.

Ash didn’t speak out loud,
but I could hear her clearly.
Oh Verloren.
How could you ever think that I would run from you?
She placed her icy hand on the side of my face,
leaning her forehead into mine.

With her it was hard to figure out any
rules. Could we be together? I didn’t know. Her scent reminded me
of something ancient, no longer human. Before I knew what I was
doing I started kissing her passionately. She lay back on the sofa,
pulling me with her. Our thoughts were a tangled mess of right and
wrong. I tried to show her what might happen, but she couldn’t
control her lust. She didn’t care about the future. She just wanted
me.

Our kissing was so heated I could
barely think. It was only when she started fumbling with my coat
buttons that I finally caught her shaky hands. I pulled back from
her and stared into her eyes. I let go of her hands, cradled her
face and gently kissed her.

With her hands free she grabbed the
back of my shirt and pulled it up over my head. I pulled it the
rest of the way off, then sat up and edged away from her. When she
reached for my pants I caught her wrists, pushed her back down and
pinned her hands above her head.

I leaned in close to her ear and ran my
nose down to her collarbone inhaling deeply. She turned her head to
expose her neck to me. I drew back to look at her face. Her eyes
were closed. She wanted to satisfy me in any way she could. I bent
down until my mouth was millimeters away from her artery, then
slammed my teeth shut. She heard the sharp snap of my teeth, and
flinched. When she realized I hadn’t bit her she glanced up at me,
her eyes sad and wanting.

I kept her hands pinned and laid my
face in the hollow of her throat. I listened to her accelerated
heartbeat. I inhaled her, filling my senses with her life. I’d
always restrained my natural instincts, but now she wanted me to
let go, and escape all self-control. She didn’t understand what
that might mean. I sighed as her heart slowed. I let go of her
hands and lay my ear on her chest to listen to her heart. She
brushed the hair from my face and began to run her finger through
it.

I fell into unconsciousness, and had no
idea what brought me back to my senses.

I raised my head, kissed her, then
tried to explain: “I can’t do this,” I said. “I won’t be able to
control myself. I don’t know what you would become.”

I don’t care. If it means
that I can be with you. I am willing to do anything.

I sat up and stared at the floor. “You
might become a murderer. That’s what I am. You don’t know what
you’re asking.” I put up my wall.

“I’ve seen it. I do know,” she said,
pouting.

“Let’s not talk about this right now,”
I said. “We have some important stuff to get cleared up. We should
work on ways to keep others from hearing your thoughts. It will be
useful for you to be able to read others but I don’t think you want
it the other way around unless you’ve shifted.” I smiled, trying to
look playful.

She nodded.

That gave us a task for the night, and
we pursued it until she could do it at will. She liked to read my
mind. I showed her how I projected my thoughts to control my prey.
That helped.

Later as we lay beside each other she
buried her face into my chest and inhaled deeply. She told me she
loved my smell. I showed her how she used to smell to me, and how
that had changed. Her new scent didn’t trigger the same hunger in
me. I wasn’t as tempted to feed on her now that she’d found her
shift.

You know who you look
like?
she asked me wordlessly.

Who?
I asked.

Kurt Cobain.

I chuckled.
Well, I can’t sing like him.

She stared into my eyes, and I saw my
world there. She kissed me. Her hands started to wander, making it
clear that she wanted more than a kiss. I slowly pushed her hands
away.

It will never be enough for
you, will it? This is all that we can have together,
I told her.

I know. But I’ll never stop
trying.

**********

I awoke in early afternoon, but left
Ash sleeping. I slipped out the door and away from the trailer. As
I neared the woods I pulled out my cell phone and called the store.
Jessica answered.

“Jessica? What are you still doing
there?” I asked.

“You know how I am. I was waiting for
you guys to come back.” she said.

“Why didn’t you leave after Jason got
back?” I asked.

After an odd moment of silence, she
replied: “Jason didn’t come back last night, Verloren.”

I thought of how Jason had left, and
figured he must have gone on his own hunting trip, but instead of
saying that, I made up a different story. “Hmm. He must have
stopped off at a friend’s. He took the car. I stayed here to work
with Ash on her shifting. There were some minor issues that needed
attention.”

I could hear Jessica draw a breath.
“She shifted?”

Again I felt reluctant to tell her
anything. I still had this urge to protect Ash. I should have
listened to it.

“In the end it was essential that she
do it outside,” I said. “She would have destroyed the
shop.”

“Destroyed it?” she asked.

“She’s a dragon,” I said.

Silence. “I can’t believe it,” she
whispered. “I feared it, but I didn’t really think it would happen.
Verloren…you need to get to the store ASAP. Don’t tell another
person what we have just talked about.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“We can’t talk about it on the phone
just…have her pack some things and get over here. We’ll talk about
it when you get here. Hurry.” I heard the click. She’d hung
up.

The only thing that would scare Jessica
that badly was the Quatre. The thought of them made me shiver, then
I saw flashes of light. I saw the world fading as I fell. The next
thing I knew I was waking up on the ground. The sun had moved. I
looked at the clock on my cell phone. I’d been out for a half
hour.

I made sure my thoughts were
well-hidden when I went to wake Ash. I didn’t want to upset her.
Though I couldn’t be sure why Jessica was so worried, her voice had
badly shaken me.

I entered the trailer. Ash lay on the
couch with her eyes open. She smiled at me.

“I thought you might have left me,” she
said as she got up from the couch and wrapped her arms around me.
My heartbeat echoed in my head.

As she pressed her body against me I
set my hands on her hips, and searched her eyes. “You really do
want to get yourself killed don’t you? You are making it very hard
for me, as a man.”