Phantom (Endlessly Book 3) (3 page)

BOOK: Phantom (Endlessly Book 3)
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She didn’t respond. She was going to play this game, avoiding any questions she didn’t like. I knew I’d have to piss her off to get a response. I was good at that.

“What, are you afraid that if you get too close you won’t be able to keep your hands off me?” I took a long drag from my smoke, rubbed my chest, and made grunting noises.

With a vampire’s stealth she dropped from the tree. She stood up straight, keeping her head down and her face hidden.

“You’re so repulsive,” she said.

I walked toward her, laughing. She motioned me to stop, and I stood, shivering. In the broken moonlight her hand looked skeletal. I felt my face fall.

I took a few steps back and yanked my muddy jeans on. She wouldn’t look at me naked and I wanted to see her face. I threw my cigarette on the cold ground. My toes numbed in the icy mud, and I started toward her again. She backed up, buried her hands in her pockets, and bowed her head lower.

“Ash? Are you al
l right?”

“I’m fine.”

“I get the feeling you’re fucking lying to me.”

Why did she always do this? To love her was like trying to help a wounded animal. The animal would lie there, hurt and suffering, but when you extended your hand, the creature would snap, forcing you away.

I struggled to throw up a mental wall to keep her out of my thoughts. I didn’t want her to anticipate my move. Her body tensed, and she took her hands from her pockets. She was going to run. With her stubbornness I expected nothing less.

“Look, I just need to ask you about something,” I said, taking a tiny step forward. “I need you to look into my mind at something from earlier today.” I edged to within jumping distance.

“Really? Then why did you just shut me out?” she asked.

I saw what she was hiding. Her
cheeks and eyes were sunken and her skin was tight against the bone. Her white skin was normal for a vampire, but her face was streaked with dirt. Her pitch black irises and nubby horns were a stark contrast to her skin. She was trying to kill herself by not feeding.

I jumped on her and knocked her to
the ground. Even through all the layers of clothes I could feel her struggle. The backpack arched her spine unnaturally. She felt like a squirming stick as she growled. She punched wildly, but weakly, at my chest. I grabbed her wrists, slammed them into the mud beside her head. I felt her rage, and the strange sensation that warned me to avoid contact with the palm of her hand. One touch and I was dead — a trait she’d picked up from drinking the demon’s blood.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I yelled. “I thought we were beyond this shit!”

Her fangs glistened in the moonlight as she growled. She started kicking manically, as she threw thoughts at my mind. They thudded in my brain like a pulsing migraine. She was trying to use her mind to force me off, but I blocked her out.

“Answer me!” I roared, ignoring the pounding in my head.

She turned, burying her face in the forearm of her baggy sweatshirt. The mental blows stopped, but I wasn’t going to let her in my mind… not yet. She started sobbing.

“Fucking Christ, Ash,” I whispered.

“I can’t do it, Jason. I tried, but I can’t… without him.” She hiccupped, and continued to cry.

I couldn’t help but think that maybe finding your soul mate wasn’t a good idea. Look at what it had done to
Ash. As her black tears slowed and she regained normal breathing, I looked at her broken face. The age-old question formed in my mind: Is it better to have loved and lost, or to never have loved at all?

“You know, this isn’t encouraging for me,” I said.

I struggled with the desire to embrace her. I wanted to hold her and take away the pain, but there was nothing I could do. She took a deep breath and looked at me. I gazed at her thin fingers and could still feel that she was pissed.

I won’t touch you,
she told me.

I rolled off of her and sat in the mud. She struggled to sit up, but the backpack weighed her down. She wiped her face on her mud-caked sleeve.

“I came looking for you because you’re the one person that would know for sure.” I kept my wall up. “I wondered if it might upset you, but I guess that’s already fucking done.” I clenched my jaw. “It doesn’t matter what you see though. I’ve made up my mind what I’m doing, regardless.”

She looked at me confused. “Would you just tell me already?”

“If I let you in, do you promise you won’t get upset and run off? And… that you will come home.”

“I’m not making any promises.”

I was suddenly plunged into a world of regret.

 

I fidgeted with the gun that I physically couldn’t let go of. Behind the bars Fabi sat somberly as Verloren held Ash’s head against his chest. He ran his hands through Ashley’s hair as she cried. I could see the ugly scars on her back where the demon had amputated her wings.

Verloren gave me the sternest look, but his eyes were hollow. “You’ll take care of her for me, Jason,” he breathed.

“Yes.” My voice broke.

Ashley wailed, “No! You won’t leave me!”

“It will be okay,” He tried to soothe her. “Shhh. Over time you’ll forget.”

 

I’d promised Verloren I would take care of her. Now she was almost dead. It was a low blow and she knew it, but she didn’t care. She felt the pain of the memory with me.

“You really know how to bust a guy’s balls,” I told her. “You know you’re coming home with me, right? I don’t care if I have to drag your ass all the way home kicking and screaming.”

She huffed at me and crossed her arms.

“Don’t test me,” I said. “I’ll fucking do it and you know it.”

“Fine,” she said, aggravated. “What do you want me to see?”

“Just don’t run off
, okay?” I said.

She hesitated and pursed her lips. “I won’t run off. Even if I did you would just chase me down and aggravate me to death. Which I’m sure is the more agonizing and painful way to die.”

I smirked. “You know me too well.”

I opened my mind reluctantly and pushed the fresh memories forward. Her face fell and her eyes searched mine franticly. A tear rolled down her face. Her breath caught and she lunged at me and wrapped her boney arms around me.

“Oh my god, Jason! You found her!” Ash cried out.

 

 

 

4 TORTURED SOUL

 

I pushed her away and blocked her from my mind. She didn’t need to see anything else. I stood up and dug in my pocket for another cigarette, lit it, and ran my fingers through my damp hair.

I paced for a moment,
turned around, and stared at her. She looked wild, her hair matted with mud and moss. Her eyes were huge. A smile faded from her lips as she searched my mind.

“Why are yo
u here? You have to go find her.” She looked up at me from the mud.

“No… I don’t.”

“What? What do you mean? You have to find her.” She looked confused.

“Why?” I asked, blowing smoke into the night.

“Because this is what you wanted, this is what you’ve been waiting for!”

“I thought it was, b
ut I don’t anymore. Believe me… it will be better for her, and me, if we never meet again.” Still there was the tug.

“What? Are you insane?” she shouted.

She stood up, staggered, then her body went limp. I dropped my cigarette and caught her before she hit the ground.

“Shit!” I said.

I pulled her backpack off and laid her on the ground on her back.

“I just… feel… lightheaded,” she whispered. Her eyes swam and her lids drooped.

“Damn it Ash! You should have never done this. You need blood… right fucking now.”

I stood up and looked around. I had no idea how far we were from humans. If I rushed it, I could get caught. I clenched my jaw as her eyes refocused on me. I had blood and I could give it
to her. I unbuckled my belt, stepped away from her, and started taking my jeans off.

“What are you doing?” s
he asked weakly.

“I don’t have a knife on me. Just, don’t move or lunge at me, okay? You have to lie still.” I shifted into my werewolf form.

“I don’t…” she whimpered.

Don’t move and don’t think about it. You can’t let your mouth touch the wound. Do you understand?

I thought about how her virus transformed huma
ns into zombies. I wasn’t human and her virus was a mutated strain. There was no knowing what I would become if I was infected. I hovered over her. Her eyes swam as she tried to focus on my monstrous form.

I’m not drinking your blood,
she told me. She swatted at me.

This isn’t up for discussion. Open your mouth.

She looked at me, hurt.
Why won’t you let me die? It would be less of a burden for the both of us.

I growled low and gave her this thought:
I will not betray him and I… care about you.

There was a long moment of silence and pain. It was more than the promise to Verloren t
o take care of her. I loved her and couldn’t watch her kill herself.

I’ll drink only if you tell me why you won’t go find her,
she told me.

Drink first.

She let her mouth fall open. I raked my claw across my forearm, trying not to cut too deep. I held the wound above her mouth. It hurt like fuck, but she needed it. The blood was too slow. I ran the claw through the wound again, ripping deeper into the flesh.

Her breaths were quick and shallow. She dug her fingers into the mud.
The blood filled her mouth and I tried not to spill any on her face. She pulled her feet up and I heard a soundless moan from her in my mind.

Then I felt the pull. It was a strange longing tinged with sexual desire. This was a power that all dragons had. Having experienced it before, I knew what to expect, and didn’t let myself give into it. But my ability to keep her out of my mind was slipping. She pulled her hands out of the mud, grabbed hold of my wrist, and tried to pull the wound to her mouth.

I lost control of my shift and turned back to my human form. I scrambled away from her and back into the trees. I licked my wound, trying to clean away the blood so she wouldn’t smell it. She sat up and her gaze followed me. I clamped my hand over the wound.

She was pulling me to her with the power of desire. I struggled internally as I yanked on my jeans. The pulling was like the one I felt for the tattooed girl. Ash had drawn me to her like this once before. I didn’t want to control myself any
more then than I did now. I wanted to run to her and hold her. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to give her what her body was craving, but I knew better. It was only a moment of weakness for her and she would hate me for it after… if I survived the vampire’s urge to feed while mating.

I shook my head
, trying to clear my mind of desire. I needed to shut her out. I clasped my cut arm, focusing on the pain, and closed my eyes, leaning against a tree. I was breathing hard. Like any vampire, she wanted sex with feeding. That could’ve been disastrous and it was a close call I would never let happen again. I resisted her attraction.

“Ashley, please stop,” I moaned.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

I felt her cut the sensation, but it
took a minute for my body to respond. I kept her shut off from my mind as I crept back to her. She rose stiffly, wiping spilt blood from her chin. Already she looked a little better, but real improvement would take time and a lot of feeding.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“Don’t beat yourself up. I was expecting it.”

Ashley shrank back,
embarrassed, then noticed I was holding my arm. She grabbed her pack and dug through it. Pulling out a t-shirt, she ripped it into strips, and tied them around the wound. Her icy fingers felt good against the hot pain of the cut. She read my mind and laid her palm over the wound once it was bandaged. An awkward silence passed between us.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep your hands off me,” I said mockingly.

“You're such an ass sometimes, you know that?” She glared at me and let go of my arm.

“It’s what I do best. You ready to go home now?”

“First you have to tell me why you’re not going to look for her.”

I groaned and checked to make sure she couldn’t hear my thoughts prematurely. I thought before I spoke. Ashley was tougher than most girls, but I still tried to avoid the subject of Verloren in all our conversations.

There were no kind words for it, so I just blurted it out. “I don’t want to end up like you. More than that… I wouldn’t want her to end up like you.”

She flinched as my words sunk in.
My chest ached from her hurt and she wrapped her arms around herself. As if on cue, the clouds blotted out the moon. It started misting again. Without the moonlight I couldn’t see her as well.

“If we never meet, we won’t know what we’re missing,” I said. “I’m not immortal
, Ash, and neither is she. One of us will die. Where will that leave the other?” I searched her eyes.

He
r face fell and she looked at the ground. Mist thickened into actual raindrops and the drops tapped lightly on tree limbs and earth. Ash shivered so badly it almost seemed like convulsions.

She finally spoke: “Why are you so scared of losing someth
ing you don’t have? If I could go back… I wouldn’t change a thing.” She bit her lip and furrowed her brow. “I traded my soul for a few months of pure happiness and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Rain washed away her tears as quickly as they appeared.

”You see yourself as trading your soul for happiness,” I said, “but to me, it looks like most of what you got was centuries of torture.” She flinched again. “We’re going home,” I said, walking into the trees.

When I was out of her sight I stripped and shifted. The dressing on my arm pulled tight as my body expanded. I grabbed my pants, stood on my hind legs and walked awkwardly toward her. I found her washing her face with the rain. I handed her my wet and muddy jeans. Shakily she folded them and opened her backpack. Inside I saw a large clear plastic bag: her notebook. Once I’d snuck into her apartment and read some of it. It was her memories of Verloren. I’d stopped after reading a passage or so. I’d been worried that her grief would turn into an obsession and thought of myself as only wanting to check on her. But after reading just a little, I’d realized what a personal intrusion it was.

Ash pulled the backpack on and looked at me. Her bo
dy tensed again from the cold and she shivered.

“We need to stop and pick something up before we go home,” she told me.

Don’t worry about your tent,
I told her.

“It’s not the tent,” she said
, pointing in the direction I’d come from.

Can’t it wait? You’re cold and you need to feed.

“It’s extremely important. That’s why I hid it from you.”

What is it?
I asked.

“It’s probably better for you to see for yourself.”

Okay, lead the way.

“I’m exhausted, and cold, Jason, I don’t think I’ll be able to
…” Her teeth chattered.

Well, I guess it’s time for me to give you a piggyback ride then, huh?

She eyed me, chuckling. I lowered to all fours as she laid an icy hand on my back. I squatted lower.

Come on. Like a horse,
I told her.

She straddled my lower back, uncertain where
to grip. My chest was too wide and my neck was too far up, so she settled on gripping my shoulders. She clung to me with freezing fingers, locking her feet around my waist. She buried her icy face in my back and my muscles tensed.

“Sorry,” she muttered, pulling her face away.

I know a really quick way you can get warm.

“If it involves me getting naked, forget it. You are such a pervert.”

Can’t blame a guy for trying. Now let’s get moving so I can get you home.

BOOK: Phantom (Endlessly Book 3)
3.04Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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