Moon Child (18 page)

“Hey,” he said in a voice he couldn’t keep even anymore as he shook violently. “I’ll be okay. I feel fine.”

Mamoru and Ash exchanged worried glances. Tristan couldn’t see his near vampire-pale skin, the deep blue setting into his lips, nearly a match to his eyes. He couldn’t feel the quake sending out small ripples from his body. He couldn’t feel the dead numbness in his limbs. That he was still standing on the rock was just rigor working for him. 

He smiled at her, though it wasn’t as warm as he thought it was, and touched her mouth with a shaking finger. He pressed down enough that he could feel the outline of a fang. “Really, I’m fine. Not even that cold anymore.”

She stared at him a moment and then cursed in her native tongue. “Blasted all that I cannot read your mind!”

Tristan chuckled, his eyes fluttering shut as he rested his forehead against her. “Now you know how frustrating it is to be with you.”

She made a rude noise instead of laughing as she wanted in hopes of keeping him from looking up and seeing her tears. She turned her head to the side when he nuzzled his face into the crook of her neck.

“You’re so warm,” he whispered and Ash’s eyes widened, meeting Mamoru’s same worried expression. “You always smell good… makes me want to lick you. Do you taste like vanilla if I lick you?”

Ash actually blushed when Mamoru quirked a brow at her. The fact that she had a scent at all wasn’t what made him smirk, he knew why she smelled like anything while most other vampire didn’t, it was the thoughts behind Tristan’s words that Ash couldn’t hear. There was more than tasting her neck with his tongue in the American’s thoughts.

“Or bite you…,” Tristan breathed out and then took in a deep, deep breath. His lips, cold and stiff as they were, nudged her neck making her skin run with excited goose bumps. “Mmm,
yum
.” He let out another sigh and then gave her a little nip. “You remember that time in France, in the room when you jumped me? God, it was so hard to say no to you… I knew it so dangerous, that we shouldn’t.”

“Anō,” Mamoru interrupted softly, hoping to keep Tristan’s ramblings down. The man needed his strength.

“Yes?” she snapped hastily, understanding the reason for Mamoru’s hesitancy was going to upset her.

“Just, um, how human are you right now?”

“My body is still dead, if that is what you mean.” She realized then that she’d forgotten to breathe when she awoke, something she always did when conscious.

He shifted uncomfortably. This whole situation was unsettling, never something he’d have expected or even dreamed. “You should leave us then,” he said softly, knowing full well that they were going to die. Desmond had left them to die.

“Shh,” she cooed, running her hands up Tristan’s arms in a feeble attempt to keep him warm. They knew Tristan was on the edge. Her voice shook when she said to Mamoru, “I refuse to leave either of you to die alone.”

“Ash…”

“No. I will stay until it is over. If he is meant to die here, I will not let it happen alone.”

“I might be able to swim out,” Mamoru was saying, almost as if to himself. “But I can’t carry Tristan too.”

“Sharks,” Tristan suddenly said, eyes unfocused as they searched the water. “You think they can get in here? I can ride a shark out…” He chuckled. “That’d be awesome. Love sharks…”

Ash traced her fingers over Tristan’s face, memorizing him with her eyes and body. “I am partial to the Great White myself, beautiful creature…” Softer, to Mamoru she said, “I don’t think I can either.”

“We can watch shark week together,” Tristan said, oblivious to the situation anymore. “That’s some good television right there.”

Mamoru was looking at Tristan’s pallor. “You’ll really let him die?”

Tristan’s eyes flew open, held widely, fixed on Ash’s. “I’m going to die?” he whispered.

Ash bit her lip and nodded. “I would love to lie to you and say I could save you…”

“But you can’t,” Tristan whispered.

Ash and Mamoru exchanged a look. He hadn’t noticed that the water was higher.

“Even if you bit him right now, there’s no guarantee that he won’t need to breathe still… But there is one thing that might help him survive the swim, help stabilize his system,” Mamoru was saying carefully. “If you gave him your—”

“
Damare
!” Ash all but screamed, making the others flinch. That flinch, it hurt Tristan’s whole body. Softer she added, “No. That is not an option right now, Mamoru, and do not speak of it ever again.” The look in her eyes, it was enough to take the words from his mouth, leaving him to nod.

She hated the very idea of it, remembered how Tristan had reacted when Yukihime slipped him her powerful, ancient blood. She remembered the fear she felt as she lay dying in that cell in France. But it wasn’t her fear, it was Lucien’s. She was conscious just enough to hear everything, even if her vision failed her.

Lucien was terrified of what he saw in Tristan when he drank down Ash’s blood. She’d felt that same fear in Japan when Tristan had attacked her in the shower. It changed the seemingly innocuous American and made him into something even darker than a vampire, because if he willed it, he could lead them to do whatever he wanted.

Ash had Yukihime erase every last thought in his head that lead to him drinking a vampire’s blood and the result. It wasn’t that she feared succumbing to the thing he’d become, but that she didn’t want to see it destroy Tristan. He begged to be bitten, to be allowed to become what he was meant to be but Ash saw the beauty in humanity. That alone was reason enough to preserve what Tristan was, a man. Just a man, one she loved deeply.

“What are you talking about?” Tristan muttered.

“Nothing, my love. It is nothing.” In low voice, she hissed, “Where the hell is Desmond?”

“He left us,” Mamoru said sadly. “It’s done.”

Tristan snorted a rude noise. “That man’s the King of Assholes but he wouldn’t leave us here to die.”

Ash knew Desmond more than Tristan, not that that was saying much, and she was sure they’d been left to die. “Why are you so certain?”

Oh good, the water’s warm again.
Tristan took in a deep breath and let it out slowly across Ash’s neck. “Because he loves you.”

Ash stiffened, eyes darting to Mamoru’s. “That—”

“He does,” Tristan whispered, trying to hug her tighter but couldn’t manage to make his body work. “In his own, weird way, he does. Almost as much as… I love you, Ash. You should have slept with me while you still had the chance. Should have bitten me before I died…” He licked his lips, leaving them dry and discolored. “You know, I used to be a good person.”

“You still are.” She sounded like she even believed it.

He snorted in difference. “You can’t believe that, not after all I’ve told you about me, what you’ve seen me do.”

Ash exchanged a worried look with Mamoru. “I heard your words and I have seen your actions. You… you are a little lost, but not misguided. You mean well and that shows in your actions.”

“No,” he breathed out, resting his forehead on her shoulder. “You don’t get it. I’ve killed a person…
Four
people. Shit, five if you count that bastard elf… They all deserved it too, except that fledgling kid in France, but fuck, I feel terrible about them all.”

She frowned, knowing he meant Sebastian and not Silas when he said bastard elf. She also knew he couldn’t turn off his guilt and that it was a very active weight on his mind as of late. It was the one thing they shared in common, a strong conscious.

“Those are serial killer numbers,” he whispered. “Good people don’t kill.”

“They were shinwa.”

“And that makes it okay?” His fingers at her waist tightened, though he couldn’t feel them anymore. “I killed them.”

She sighed, stroking the bare spot at the back of his neck where his hair parted. Her eyes welled against her will. “You cannot live by human law anymore, Tristan. You…” She choked back a sob, the words threatening to poison her. It broke her heart that they were true whether she spoke them or not. “You never were human to start with.”

He sighed, the fingers at her waist opening and his weight shifting to force her to take it all or lose him into the water. He turned his face to the side so that he could nuzzle her neck. “I tried so hard. I never lied to you, not ever. I tried so hard to get you to trust.”

“Tristan,” she said in a soft, shaky voice.

“I know now, after Godzilla showed me. I get it, I really do.” His sigh made him slump down further. “I should be lucky you’ll even talk to me, none less love—” His voice cracked and the words were lost to the cold depths of the Mediterranean, never to be found again. “I just wish you would have trusted me, just a little. Told me the truth… while you had the chance.”

Ash gave a little gasp when Tristan’s arms around her slipped and they both nearly tumbled into the water. With a little help from Mamoru, they kept Tristan upright, sandwiching him between cave and vampire. His head hung, chin to chest and eyes closed, the rest of him stiff with cold.

“Tristan?” she whispered, hand shaking from fear and not the cold as she reached up to touch him. There was no heat radiating from him anymore and the heart in his chest was beating slow, too slow. “We have to go, now!”

“Kuso,” Mamoru grumbled and looked around. There was no way of getting out of the cave, he knew there wasn’t, but still he needed to be sure. He took a deep breath and dove under to search the edge of the cave for any openings that might lead to air and dry land. When Mamoru came up again he was on the complete other side of the cave. He gulped down more air and then went back under to check the again.

“It’s no good!” he declared frustrated when he emerged. “Ash, you should go. I’ll stay with him. You don’t want to see this.”

“I have watched those I care about die before,” she snapped, refusing to take her eyes from the man in her arms.

“I know,” Mamoru answered in such a sad tone that it jerked Ash’s attention to him. “That’s why you should go. You’ve seen enough of death for five vampires…”

Ash wasn’t sure exactly what her blood had showed him during their little tryst last spring, now she knew. It was what everyone saw when they tasted her soul, misery. Was there nothing good of herself to share with those who joined themselves with her?

A hand touched Ash’s shoulder and she flinched. “There is good in you to be had, Ash.” Mamoru moved closer so that Ash could see him and Tristan both, and he gave a nod to the unconscious man. “He’s part of your good.”

“The man who will bring death to us all.”

Mamoru’s brow rose with his chin. “If that’s how you interpret her words, then fine. But I don’t think so. Now, I’m not saying I think he’s our savior either… it’s—I don’t know. I really don’t think he’s meant to kill any one race off.”

Ash frowned, biting her lip. The warmth of her own blood surprised her. “Damn it all,” Ash suddenly blurted, surprising Mamoru. “I should have told him everything from the start.”

“There’s still time,” Mamoru said gently. He wasn’t convinced but they could at least try. “We’ll carry him together. Can you hold a deep breath to give us clean air when we run out?”

“Yes. Come, hurry.”

Mamoru grunted as his body protested from the cold. He wasn’t vampire enough to be immune to it and while it wouldn’t kill him, it still made him achy and slow.

Tristan’s lifeless body hanging between the two, Mamoru took in a few quick breaths, expanding his lungs and then one deep breath to hold and prayed he could make it to the surface. Ash took in her own deep breath and nodded.

The Japanese man was just about to dip under when a body exploded out of the water. He cried out, reaching for his knife, dropping Tristan in the progress. Ash gasped, losing all of the air she had stored for the two men and went under, desperately clinging to Tristan. When she came back up she was in near panic. But the confusion was quickly replaced with hot anger.

“Desmond! Where in the—” She stopped, really seeing him finally. “What happened to you?” she asked in a tiny voice. “Where is your shirt?”

There was a gash over Desmond’s left eye that was deep enough that he was still bleeding, another longer slash across his chest that extended around to his lower back.

“Fooking fish, think they own the whole bloody ocean!”

Mamoru stiffened.

“You ran into mermaids? Here?” she asked feeling uneasy. Out of the seven shinwa, the vampire were considered the strongest and they had few adversaries, especially now that the lycan were all hunted out of existence. But there was a reason old vampire lore said they were afraid of water. Malik was so transfixed on his fear of the brutal creatures that he only ever left his birth continent once in six-hundred odd years—in a vain and botched attempt to kill the harbinger of death prophesized to wipe out his kind.

“Aye, but we had us a wee blither… think I micht be married now... Er, right then, they’ll let us pass.” Desmond’s attention finally went to Tristan. “See yew got him tae shut up.”

“He’s dying you insensitive monster!” Ash screamed loud enough to bleed a human’s ears.

Desmond stuck his lip out in a little pout, looking like a scolded child before righting himself again. “Come on then, we know the way.” The big man flicked his head to the side, cracking his neck and then nodded for the others to submerse themselves.