Stolen Night (15 page)

‘You don’t understand.’

Rhode’s voice. I drift back towards the ground, the air supporting my body as though I’m a bird. I hover even lower and I’m below a black ceiling. I am on my feet, standing
in a room. This is not the bedroom – I am somewhere else. Rhode kneels on the floor, his head bowed.

‘You don’t see,’ Rhode is saying to someone in the room. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t. What you ask is too much. Your demands are too great.’

I turn to see who he is speaking to, but it is all shadow.

‘It’s too much,’ Rhode says again.

I am aware of my mortal body lying in a bed. The straw bed? No. It’s softer. I am sleeping in my bed at Wickham Boarding School.

I want to wake up. Wake up, Lenah. The white light of the Aeris that has been haunting me flashes before my eyes. There – there is that vampire mouth again, the one where there are no
fangs. Gaping black holes are where his fangs should be. Wake up, Lenah!

Wake up!

My eyes flew open.

I gasped and cool air rushed down my throat. Through the open door of my bedroom, the television showed the early-morning news. The grey candle had long burned out. Vicken had fallen asleep and
all I could see of him were his motorcycle boots dangling off the end of the couch. He snored in a rhythmic pattern.

I breathed out and sat up. A small line of sweat ran down my forehead. I wiped it away and ran a hand over my hair, my pulse racing. The cut on my collarbone burned so I hunched a bit and
touched at the sensitive wound.
Rhode
, my heart said.
Rhode
.

But Rhode was across campus without me.

I got out of bed because I wanted to find Rhode; I wanted his eyes burning into mine. But what I wanted and what I needed had now become two drastically different things. I stopped, holding a
blouse in my hand. Despite the heat and closeness I’d felt to Rhode in that dream, he would reject me if I surprised him at his room. What I needed was someone who would comfort me. Someone
who would accept my touch when I gave it.

I needed Justin.

When I stepped out of the newly broken side door (thanks to Vicken earlier that week), dark blue and black clouds swarmed across the grey sky. It was just before sunrise, an
hour at most. I knew I wasn’t supposed to travel on campus alone. The cut on my collarbone pulsed as I stepped down the path, a reminder that I was breaking the rules. I brought my fingers to
it and the crackled blood and scab were rough under my fingers.

I checked to see if anyone was on the pathway that ran from Seeker to the bay, then checked behind me at the parking lot. Besides the security guards’ booth, only one van was parked near
Hopper. With another scan of the campus ahead of me, I darted down the side of the pathway, making sure to keep to the sides of the buildings and the darkness that still lingered.

I knew Justin’s single room had been moved for his senior year and was now on the first floor of Quartz, facing the woods and the ocean beyond. The wind whispered through the trees,
shaking their orange and gold leaves. A shiver rolled over me and I looked down the path to the beach, momentarily expecting Suleen to be standing there, waiting for me. But it was empty.

When
did
Suleen think it was important to show himself? Before or after I was almost murdered by a hungering vampire? He said he would come when I most needed him. How about now?

A car pulled past the school on Main Street, making a whooshing sound. My hair lifted from my ears as a gust of wind breezed through the campus. No. It couldn’t be. No one would be
watching me now. Surely my fake ritual was keeping Odette and her coven busy.

Run, Lenah . . .

I didn’t want to look behind me at the alleyway of Seeker. What if one of the members of her coven was in those shadows? Someone she had sent to watch me. I told myself to walk faster. If
someone was behind me, they would grab me by the shoulders.
A little faster now
. I took short breaths; the union was just ahead.

Faster, Lenah. They could come at any moment.

I skirted by the greenhouse and the science building and then looked back at the path. If a guard caught me, I would lose privileges, and I needed as much freedom as possible, given the
situation with Odette.

I ran towards Quartz dorm, ducked around the back of the building and pressed my back against the stone. In the woods, a yellow light fell in long vertical lines down the bark of the trees.

The first-floor windows stretched along the building. They were long windows, like those in the gymnasium, and opened by turning a metal handle.

Justin’s room. Justin’s room . . . which one? Yes. There it was. Even though all the windows were the same, his curtains were pulled back. Beyond the windows I could see various
lacrosse sticks, and a foot dangled off the end of the bed.

I knocked on the glass twice, standing to the side of the window so as not to scare him. There was movement inside and a small grunt. I knocked again.

‘Jesus!’ I heard footsteps. The window squeaked open. I stepped in front of it. Justin’s hair was messy from sleep. He wore no shirt, just sweatpants. Even at that time in the
morning, he looked incredible.

Absolutely incredible.

‘Um,’ I said, taking a step back on to the strip of grass that separated the back of the dorm from the woods. He leaned on the window frame.

‘Lenah? What are you doing here?’ His voice sounded gentle, happy.

I stood in the morning sunrise and pulled the neck of my thin T-shirt to one side, exposing the long cut that ran along my collarbone.

‘Holy crap!’ he said. ‘Get in here.’

I leaned into the room, grasping the ledge. When I pulled myself up, the wound throbbed and I nearly fell back on to the ground outside. Justin grabbed me and hauled me inside.

‘Sit, sit,’ he said, and led me to his bed. Flashes popped into my mind of our bodies tangled under the covers of his bed last year. He knelt before me for a moment. He pulled my
shirt down again to examine the cut.

‘Ouch,’ he whispered. He met my eyes. ‘You should probably take that off and let me clean it up,’ he said.

‘My shirt?’

He stood up and my gaze rested on his defined stomach. I looked all the way up his chest to his eyes, passing over the necklace he wore. I saw then, in the morning light, the pendant. It was a
silver disc that fell at the base of his throat. I knew that symbol.

‘A knowledge rune,’ I said, and stood up. I touched the pendant with my fingertips.

‘Yeah, I just got it the other day,’ he replied.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘I got it in town,’ he said. ‘Supposed to help make sense of everything. When that guy with the turban did the water barrier – I just . . . I don’t know. I had to
try to make sense of everything. Make sense of you.’

‘Me?’

‘You, the ritual, Rhode. Why you’re still alive.’ He got up and walked to the back of the room. ‘Anyway, I have a first-aid kit in my lacrosse bag.’

I was touched by the gesture and let the topic drop. Justin had purposefully sought out an object that would connect him to my dark, unearthly world. I was sure then that I had made the right
choice in coming to him that morning. He was doing his best to understand me.

He rummaged in the corner of the room and I looked out through the window to the woods. In between the darkness of the trees, I could see myself as a vampire. Sauntering from the back of the
woods towards the dormitory in an enormous red gown, my hair long and flowing over my shoulders. My fangs dripping with blood.

‘Lenah,’ Justin said, kneeling before me again. When I looked back at the woods, the ghost from my past was gone and the woods empty. ‘Your shirt,’ Justin said.

‘Oh!’ I said, and lifted it from my body, exposing my bra. Justin leaned forward so he was kneeling before me and dabbed something on a white cloth along the line of my collarbone. I
winced at the stinging feeling. Justin blew on the skin and dabbed at the cut. He lifted his face to mine.

‘Should I stop?’ he asked.

‘No. It just burns a bit,’ I whispered.

We hovered there for a moment. Then Justin lifted himself higher on his knees. His lips came closer and closer until they were on mine and our lips traced each other’s movements. My
heartbeat sped up and I wanted him to keep kissing me. So I could pretend that I was never that beast in the woods. He started to crawl on to the bed and I lay down. Just as his body pressure was
on top of mine, he pulled away suddenly. I brought my fingers to my lips in surprise and swallowed.

The passion humming between us evaporated.

‘Your cut,’ he said. ‘It still looks bad. Let me try something else.’

He dug in the bag. I came down to the floor so we sat opposite one another. He opened a different bottle and a most familiar smell overwhelmed me. I placed my hand on Justin’s wrist and he
lowered it for me to look at the bottle.

‘My mom makes it,’ he said.

‘This . . .’ I said, taking the bottle from him and sniffing it, ‘is lavender and aloe. A medieval combination.’

‘Well, it should work,’ he said, dabbing at my skin again. I could see the rust-like particles of my blood on the tiny cloth. He dropped it into a bin. ‘We would get hurt all
the time as kids. Mom made this up. I brought it with me to school for lacrosse injuries.’

Next Justin lifted two fingers covered in a gooey ointment and rubbed them along the cut.

‘Anti-bacterial. This way you won’t get an infection.’

After a few more minutes, he had covered various parts of the wound in gauze held on with tape.

‘I won’t ask how you got that cut,’ he said, pulling me back up on to the bed and joining me there.

‘You already know,’ I whispered. ‘You saw her murder Kate on the beach. I couldn’t tell you in the union, but she killed Ms Tate too – not long after she spoke with
me outside Curie.’

The tears rushed to my eyes and I blinked them away. My voice cracked as I said, ‘She’s probably seen you with me, which makes you a target, and I—’

‘I’m not afraid of her,’ he declared, and looked me straight in the eye. ‘I’m not. I’ve seen what a vampire can do.’

‘I just had to see you. I knew you would understand,’ I said, as I blinked away the threat of more tears. He pulled me to him and I rested my cheek against his chest.

A large crack of thunder exploded outside and we both jumped. He hurried to close the window.

‘What does she want? Has she been watching you this whole time? I should stay close to you in case she comes around again . . .’

Justin kept talking but I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. I meant to tell him all about the strange feeling I’d had talking to Ms Tate, but I must have been so tired. I lost myself
in his warmth as he lay beside me. He held me close, and when I just barely opened my eyes sometime later, my nose was nuzzled into his chest. His breathing was slow, steady. I listened to him
breathe in and breathe out until I was moments from sleep again. Then I dreamed . . .

A field of lavender, and the smell is so wonderful, calming and cool. I hold the black fabric of a gown in my hands. The image changes. This is not the lavender field. I am somewhere else. A
masculine hand with a bruised thumb grips a ceramic sink. It grips it harder, the forearm shaking. What happened to the field?

The hands shake and reach up, and in the reflection of the familiar bathroom mirror the hands cradle a face – Rhode’s face.

‘Do you love her?’ Rhode asks the sink.

This is a Wickham bathroom; I recognize the blue-checked tiled floor.

‘You don’t need her,’ Rhode says, looking up at his reflection and quickly tearing his eyes away. In this connection I can feel his distaste as though I am experiencing it
myself. I can feel the misery and hate ripping through the centre of his stomach. It is not hate for me. It is hate . . . for himself.

Rhode lifts his right hand. He has taken off the bandage and long scabs are visible across the knuckles.

‘You don’t
need
her,’ he says again, this time stressing the word
need
. ‘You can do what they ask.’ He surveys his reflection. With a downward cast
of his eyes he says softly, ‘No, you cannot. What they ask of you is too much.’

Like a bolt, he punches the mirror, cracking it into a kaleidoscope of lines. Fresh blood speckles the reflection. His blue eyes are spattered with crimson blots. Rhode repeats, ‘I
can’t, I can’t,’ again and again and again.

I shot up in bed, my chest heaving. The spot next to me was empty. Across the room was a closet filled with lacrosse helmets, men’s shirts and a football.
That’s right.
I was
in Justin’s bed. On his night table, a note read:
Practise, even in the rain!

I threw off the covers, pulled on my T-shirt and slipped on my shoes. When I reached down to do them up, the bandage from Justin’s handiwork the night before pulled on my skin. I touched
it out of instinct. I hesitated before the window and watched the rain pelt the grass and the woods beyond. These dreams of Rhode were becoming so realistic. This one even had the Wickham bathroom
tiles! I unhooked the window clasps, and just as my fingers curled over the slick edge the reality hit me as a punch to my gut. I took a step back because I
knew.
Maybe it was because we
were, as the Aeris said, soulmates, but I knew.

My dream wasn’t a dream at all. It was reality. It was a Wickham dorm bathroom and Rhode was standing before the sink. So it wasn’t just memories but his present-day thoughts I was
accessing too. I ran a hand through my hair and stared at the tiny raindrops smacking the windowsill. So we were soulmates that could no longer be together but I was privy to Rhode’s
thoughts? This was
unnecessarily
cruel. There was nothing I could do about it either. This was what the Aeris decreed. No matter how connected we were, our lives had to remain separate.
Unnecessarily cruel
echoed in my mind again. I stepped on to the window ledge and out into the storm.