Salvation (The Captive Series Book 4) (22 page)

   “No. I would never turn to a real person again unless it becomes absolutely necessary in order to survive, and even then I would hate it. I don’t mind the other blood as
much as long as I don’t have to touch the person. I will use the donor program, and you can feed solely from me if you decide to do this.”

   “Yes,” she breathed, relieved and strangely titillated by the thought of such a proposition. “Would I be normal after?”

   “What do you mean?”

   “What will I be like after? Will I still be me or will I be a little wild? Will I lose control and try and kill someone, or start trying to feed off of everyone?”

   He tilted his chair on its front legs towards her. “You think you’ll be a monster.”

   “Yes,” she croaked out, horrified by the possibility.

   “No. You will be you Aria. I’m sure it will take some time to get used to certain things, but you will be able to control the hunger, and you will not become a bloodthirsty lunatic.”

   She couldn’t help but chuckle as she shook her head. “I didn’t think I’d be a lunatic but how can you be so sure?”

   The chair clicked against the floor as he leaned back again. “Because we can all control what we do, and because Xavier has assured me that the others he knows of, did not lose their minds. They did not go off their rockers, and were in fact as normal as any other vampire born of a human.”

   “What if he’s wrong?”

   “There are many things about Xavier that I don’t understand and will never know but I
do
know that, annoyingly enough, he’s never wrong about the histories that he speaks of.”

   “I see,” she muttered slightly more at ease.

   He leaned forward, she thought he was going to kiss her, but instead he picked up a piece of apple and handed it to her. “Eat up; you’re going to need your strength. We have a whole week out here together and I have it in mind to tire you out.”

   She glared at him, not at all pleased when he chuckled, kissed her forehead and rose to his feet. She bit into the apple though as he grinned at her. “I have to return to the palace for a bit
. There are some things I must take care of.”

   “Ok.”

   “I won’t be gone long, and Jack is here in case you get bored or want to go for a walk.”

   “I’ll be fine,” she assured him. He squeezed her hand and turned to walk away. “Braith, I know you never wanted to change me before
, but do you want to now that there is a better chance I will survive?”

   He froze in the doorway, his hands grasped hold of the frame as he shuddered but didn’t look
back at her. “I want to do whatever makes you happy, but yes Aria I want to change you.”

   She opened her mouth to tell him that doing this would make her happy but the words froze in her throat. She couldn’t shake the niggling fear that she wouldn’t survive, and though she craved nothing more than an eternity with him, she was terrified of losing the years of happiness they could have if she simply remained human.

   He waited for a minute more before his shoulders slumped and he slipped away from the door. Her heart ached for the torment she felt within him. No matter what he’d said in the past, no matter what he said now, she knew that what he wanted most was to make her immortal.

   She should eat but she couldn’t bring herself to put one more bite of food in her mouth. The front door opened and closed as he left. She’d never felt more alone in her life. She sat for awhile, idly twirling a piece of bread as she tried to sort out the jumbled mess of her emotions.

   Shoving away from the table she rose to her feet. Grabbing the black cloak by the door, she swung it around her shoulders and opened the door. The crisp air hit her, winter would be arriving soon and for the first time in her life she didn’t have to worry about freezing to death.

   Jack was already on his way up when she stepped onto the porch. He stopped when he saw her, his head tilted to the side. “I’d like to go for a walk,” she declared.

   His eyebrows shot into his hairline, his mouth quirked in a small smile. “Already ordering people around your highness?”

   She scowled at him. “You don’t have to come with me.”

   “Well thank you for the permission to stay behind.”

   She clasped the cloak more firmly around her neck as it dragged across the ground behind her. “I’m sorry.” She was being a jerk, she knew it, but she felt like a tightly coiled spring about ready to explode. “I just need to get out for a bit.”

   “I can help with that.” Though he was smiling, it didn’t reach his eyes; eyes that came alive when he was truly happy. She slipped her arm into the one he offered her and walked with him down the ramp.

   “The house is beautiful Jack, I love it. Thank you.”

   He pat her hand mildly, uncomfortable with her gratitude. “Yeah, well I was bored. After all the excitement of the past couple months, I had to have something to keep me occupied.”

   “I’m happy you did.”

   They slipped into the woods, moving in companionable silence as they traveled through the trees and deeper into the forest. It wasn’t until they were almost there that she realized where she had been unconsciously leading them the whole time.

   “The banquet tree.” She tilted her head back to look into its massive leafy bowers.

   There were no apples now and the leaves had already started to turn subtle hues of gold and orange that shimmered in the sunlight. She released Jack’s arm, grabbed hold of the lower limb and lifted herself easily into the branches. She didn’t scurry up the tree as she had as a child, didn’t rush from limb to limb bouncing and hopping amongst the branches. Instead, she took her time, savoring in the feel of the bark and the scent of the tree as it wrapped her in the security of childhood memories. She could almost hear William’s laughter floating to her from below as he ran about trying to catch the apples she plucked and tossed down to him.   

   It wasn’t until she was near the top that she saw something shining in the tree. She moved faster, climbing rapidly and with purpose now. There was only one other person that would have climbed up there, that would have risked the thinness of the upper branches. She burst upward, desperately seizing hold of the object entwined in the tree. A sob burned her throat, tears streamed down her cheeks as she opened her hand to reveal the delicate, silver horse head brooch that had been her mother’s. It was the same brooch her father had given to Jack upon his return to the palace in search of her, the one that had let her know she could trust him.

   Near the brooch, tied around a branch, was what appeared to be some sort of oilskin cloth. She tugged the strings free from the tree and pulled the skin off. She nearly fell over, nearly slipped from the tree in surprise, but managed to catch herself and keep her hold on the thin limbs. It was the drawing that Daniel had made for her; the one of her sitting in Braith’s lap as he read to her by the lake. Daniel had managed to capture every ounce of the love they shared for each other in the fine lines and details.

    She opened her hand to study the brooch and the drawing. Her father had known there was a chance he might not survive to speak with her, to guide her, and this had been his way of doing so. She and William had thought they’d kept the location of the tree secret, but of course their father would follow them, of course he would know where they were going. He was their father, their protector, and he’d loved them.

   She was unable to stifle the sob that escaped her. He’d known that eventually she would come here, and if he didn’t survive she would find these things and she would know that though he was afraid for her, he supported her, and he trusted Braith.

   This was his way of letting her go.

   She lifted her head to stare over the treetops at the glittering palace in the distance. She’d looked at it often as a child, and questioned what had driven the humans to such depths as to betray their own kind in favor of a race that had enslaved them. She’d also speculated about that race, and what had driven them to be so cruel and heartless, so brutal and hideous, and she’d hated them with every ounce of her being.

   Now, she was going to become one of them.

   Rolling the parchment back up, she tucked it into the waistband of her pants and started down. She knew Braith was there before she spotted him below with Jack. His head was tilted back as he watched her descend. She dropped soundlessly from the tree. He looked as if he was going to grab for her, but his hands remained at his sides as his fingers twitched.

   She opened her hand to reveal the brooch. Jack’s startled gaze darted back to the top of the tree before returning to her hand. She pulled Daniel’s drawing out and handed it to Braith. His eyes stayed on her as he unrolled it, he finally glanced at the drawing, back at her, and then his eyes shot back to the parchment in his hand. Jack peered over his shoulder at it.

   “It’s from the lake.”

   “I remember,” Braith murmured his brow furrowed as he studied it.

   “Daniel stumbled upon us by accident. He said that was the day he realized what was between us was real, and that it was more than just love. I gave it to William to keep it safe; my father discovered it and kept it. He put it there with the brooch so that I would have it again, so that I would know that he accepted this, accepted me and you. That he supported whatever choice I made.” She tilted her head back to look into the tree again. “You can see the palace from up there; I used to watch it when I was a child, and wonder. I don’t wonder anymore.”

   Braith and Jack were both staring at her now. Braith’s hands shook slightly as he held the drawing. She opened the brooch and pinned it at her neck to hold the cloak together. “No more doubts, no more waiting. I’m ready. Today.”

CHAPTER 21

   She was ready for the pain, braced for it. Braith had told her over and over again that it would hurt, that it may even last for days. She’d experienced pain before though, she could handle it.

   She wasn’t ready for the bliss that came before the pain. The floating, drifting sensation that came from holding him, sustaining him, giving him what he coveted, and had so often denied himself. He’d never have to deny himself again when she wasn’t human any longer. She’d be able to give him as much as he needed whenever he needed it. It may not fill him in the same way as human blood would, but hers would always be the only blood he craved. Her heart hammered with the realization, excitement tingled through her as he drank from her not in greedy gulps, but in gentle pulls that shook her to her very core.

   Her fingers curled through his hair even as she felt a weakening in her body that signaled her life was draining away. She hadn’t experienced this, not even the first time, when he’d been so eager to have her that he’d lost control and nearly killed her. He would kill her now. The thought didn’t terrify her, she thought she was a little insane for that, but she couldn’t find fear in his arms.

   She felt the weakening pulse of her heart as he pulled away from her. His fingers were tender on her face as they stroked over her. She tried to open her eyes to look at him, but she was tired and her lids were unbelievably heavy. She felt the press of his wrist against her lips and she opened them to receive him.

   “I love you.” The words were whispered against her ear, she yearned to return them but his blood was flowing into her. “Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.”

   They echoed what he’d said to her that first time when she’d mistakenly thought she’d been dreaming the words. She couldn’t find the words to tell him that she would never leave him and that this was far easier than he’d said it would be. His fangs sank into her once more as he continued to let his blood flow into her.

   Her body stiffened as her heart skipped a beat,
that
hadn’t happened the first time. She tried to remain relaxed, tried to keep her body as still as possible so that he wouldn’t feel the anxiety that shot through her. She knew that he already had though as his hand constricted in her hair and he hesitated for a moment. She worried that he would retreat, that he would change his mind and wouldn’t continue. 

   Then, with a low growl, he bit down harder and she realized that there wouldn’t have been any stopping him, not at this point.

   Aria inhaled sharply, her body became completely rigid; her eyes flew open involuntarily as her fingers constricted on his head. She was acutely aware of the fact that her heart had stopped beating, and there was no air within her lungs. A scream stuck in her chest, she didn’t have the breath to release it. She hadn’t expected this nothingness, this waiting, this feeling of being trapped within her own body, unable to move, but still fully aware of her surroundings, and thoughts.

   He was above her, his eyes searching and
petrified. She was looking back at him, she was seeing him, but her eyes were as frozen as the rest of her. They were locked upon him, still as stone, as immobile as if she were actually dead.

   It hit her like a ton of bricks, she
was
dead, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

   She took it back, this wasn’t easy. She would have far preferred agony over this frozen uncertainty. He’d said there would be rigor mortis, but was this it? So soon? It took hours after a person died for rigor mortis to sink in; she knew that, she’d seen it. Although, this wasn’t a normal death. She wasn’t dead, not completely. She was confined to a husk that no longer moved and no longer offered her the life support she had once required. She could feel his fingers on her cheeks; even feel the drop of a tear as it landed upon her skin. It left a cool trail on her cheek as it slid toward her neck. Braith was crying. For her, and there was nothing she could do to ease his worry.

   She didn’t know how long she was trapped in a world where all she had were her thoughts, none of which were entirely pleasant at the moment. She wanted to cry, wanted to do anything other than just lie here like this. Braith sat with her, his arms around her, his hands on her face, and in her hair. The look on his face, the fright in his eyes was almost as awful as this endless uncertainty.

   Then a warming sensation started in the tips of her toes, and gradually began to spread upward. At first it wasn’t unpleasant, and she welcomed anything over the nothingness that had encompassed her. The tingling reminded her of holding her frozen hands over a fire and heating them too quickly as it began to prick at her skin. It quickly became unpleasant, but if she could grit her teeth she could get through it. Unfortunately her mouth wasn’t unfrozen yet.

   The tingling worked its way through her arms, up to her shoulders, across her neck, and into her chest. She tried to fist her hands against the pain, they wouldn’t move. Frustration filled her, she tried to scream, she tried to cry; she tried to do anything other than lay here like a useless lump.

   A plea began inside of her; the only problem was she didn’t know what she was pleading for at the moment… a true death to free her from this relentless pain, or eternal life.

   The heat pierced her heart; her
non
-beating heart. She’d never experienced anything like this, never expected to hear the silence of the vital organ that had once pulsated so fluidly within her. She hadn’t realized how much of a constant part of her it had been until she was blanketed by the heavy cloak of silence that followed its cessation.

   Tendrils of heat brushed against the organ as gentle and
quiet as a butterfly’s wings. The heat retreated for a moment before surging into it once more. It slipped inside and began to sluggishly spread throughout. She didn’t know what the heat was, but she pictured Braith’s blood flowing in to fill the spaces that her blood had left behind. Pictured it filling her cells, rehydrating them with his power; his life. She tried to keep that image in her mind; it was far more pleasant than the uncertainty threatening to consume her.

   The heat filled her deadened heart again; her fingers flickered as she felt a heaving inside her chest before it seeped out again. Hope swelled within her. She had moved, she’d
moved
! It was only a small bit of progress but at least it was something different, it was something more than this hideous nothing.

   The heat began to increase; her body was on fire as it prickled through her extremities. She lurched, her body jerked as warmth slammed into her heart once more, but it didn’t beat again and she knew that it would remain still forever. The tingling, prickling sensation in her fingers and toes started to worsen as it spread into her torso. A scream welled inside of her, but her mouth wouldn’t open to release the agony that was consuming her from the inside out.

   Braith’s fingers brushed her face as he leaned over her. Her skin felt as if it had been scrubbed away to expose her nerve endings. His silky touch was more than she could stand. She couldn’t cringe away from the contact though, couldn’t pull away, as her body still wasn’t hers. It was this fleshy shell that had become her coffin.

   “Aria?”

   Just when she thought she couldn’t take anymore, her body broke free of its paralysis. Braith leaned over her as she opened her mouth and the scream she had been unable to release for so long, ripped free of her in an unending echo that left her throat ravaged and her body drained as she fell lifelessly back to the bed.

   Braith reached for her but she moved away from him, unable to bear his touch on her brutalized skin. She curled into the fetal position, but even that was almost too much to bear. Her body shook and shivered, she was hot, she was cold, she was dying, she was living, and she was doing it all too fast. Braith’s hand fell back to his side; hopelessness filled his gaze as her teeth began to chatter.

   She yearned to tell him that she would be alright, but she wasn’t going to lie, she wasn’t alright, and the mere idea of moving was more than she could handle right now. Every muscle in her body screamed, her bones felt as if they were being shattered into a million little pieces. Everything inside of her felt as if it were changing, and somehow rearranging.

   What had she done?

   The thought was fleeting. It didn’t matter, it was done. There was no turning back, and no matter how badly this hurt, she wouldn’t have changed it. She forced herself to open her hand toward him. Seeming to sense that she couldn’t stand much of his touch, he simply placed two of his fingers lightly into her palm. The small connection helped to ease her slightly. She kept her eyes focused on him as she struggled to simply survive her own death.

***

   “You look like shit.”

   Braith could barely lift his head to look at Jack. He felt
beaten and drained in ways he hadn’t thought possible. He hated himself, he hated this whole awful mess, and he wished he’d never agreed to this. She’d told him it was his decision to make, and though he’d been terrified she would die, petrified of losing her, there had been another part so entirely enthralled with the prospect of having her by his side forever that he’d talked himself into believing that this would be ok, that they could get through this.

   Now, he knew that he’d been completely wrong. He’d do anything to take this from her, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t even
touch
her without causing her to moan or scream. He’d seen a lot of wretchedness and death in his extensive life, but he’d never experienced anything like this. Even the one attempt at the change he’d witnessed was nothing compared to this, but then that person hadn’t been Aria, and he hadn’t cared about what they’d endured, or whether they would survive.

   Aria was the strongest person he knew,
and she was falling apart before him, swamped within the nightmare he’d created for her. He’d never hated himself more, he didn’t have a clue how to make it better, and at the moment he would have willingly offered up his own life to go back in time and decide against doing this. What had he been thinking?

   He hadn’t, and now she was the one paying for his lack of good judgment. Ashby had once said that eventually he would end up changing her no matter what, that he wouldn’t be able to resist. He didn’t believe that was true, he believed he could have refrained from doing so. However, he couldn’t deny the fact that when she’d agreed to this, a part of him, the darkest and most primeval part had thrilled at the prospect and wouldn’t have been stopped by anything, or anyone.

   It was a piece of himself he didn’t like, but over the past few months he’d come to accept that there was no denying it, or the fact that the person that brought it out, and kept it under control the most, was Aria.

   “How bad is it Braith?”

   He tiredly ran a hand through his sweaty, tangled hair. His muscles were twisted from being tensed at her side all night, he was exhausted from lack of sleep, and yet it should be worse, he should be even more miserable. It was nothing compared to what she was going through. He was barely able to hold Jack’s gaze for more than a moment. “Bad, real bad.”

   Xavier stood behind Jack, his head bowed and his hands enfolded in his voluminous cloak. Jack placed a jug of blood on the kitchen table. “Did you get any sleep?”

   Braith shook his head. “No.”

   “Did she?”

   “She’s sleeping now, but not well.”

   “You should take a break. Why don’t you let us watch over her while you take a shower, maybe a nap?”

   “No.”

   “Braith…”

   He shook his head as he glanced over his shoulder at the shadowed bedroom. He tried to pick up on some clue that she had awakened and needed him. He wasn’t doing her any good, but he was going to do everything he could for her, especially since any second might be her last. His teeth clenched, his hands tensed around the doorframe, he had to fight the urge to rip something to shreds; he wanted to rip
himself
to shreds.

   “If she dies…” he broke off as he strained to get the words out. “I would have been the one to kill her.”

   Jack and Xavier exchanged a glance. “You said you could handle this Braith,” Jack said worriedly.

   He shook his head, fighting the urge to start screaming, to destroy everything around him. He’d lost it when she’d left him, but she’d still been alive then. Now he was certain she was dying, that she wouldn’t survive whatever was happening to her body. She was strong, his blood was powerful, but so few made it through and now she was
barely clinging to what little fight she had left in her.

   How had he ever believed that he could endure
the consequences of this?

   Because he had to, he reminded himself. He simply had to. There were so many lives hanging in the balance now. So much that still needed to be done, so much that he meant to accomplish, and he had promised her that he would survive. So he would somehow, but he would never be the same if she died, never be whole again. She’d entered his life and turned it upside down. He’d had everything he’d ever required since birth, and he had been completely empty until he’d seen her standing on that stage, proud and defiant, even while facing her death. He’d had it all, but he’d had nothing until that moment.