The Heart's Ashes (28 page)

“
Ouch, that must have hurt to go so long without
food.”

“
You might say I felt I deserved it.”

I offered a
sympathetic tilt of my head to his bashful smile. “How ‘bout I hurt
you instead—with my teeth. I think that’s a better punishment.”

“
I have to say, I agree.” We both laughed.

My jaw
stretched and my tongue pulled to the back of my throat as I drew
cold air before the bite, practicing the best theatrical version of
a vampire I could manage. My eyes bulged, my mind racing as his
skin cracked open, splitting under my teeth—like bitting into a
cling-wrapped sandwich. Each tiny, straight bone made it through,
deeper where my own puny fangs sat. His blood filled my mouth
again, and I released the tension of my jaw to draw back the
liquid.

It felt good,
a deep kind of good, like that pasta you’ve been craving all week;
when you finally get it, you have to rush it down so you can fit it
all in.

My tongue
guided each drop to the back of my throat as it entered my ravenous
lips, and David squeezed my thighs with his strong hands—wanting
me, loving me, inviting me.

A warm tingle
rose up from my stomach, making my heart thump unnaturally,
bringing a new kind of sensation, almost like being ultimately full
with hot cocoa—your feet warmed by the fire, a soft pillow on your
lap, and a few melted remains of marshmallow on the corner of your
lip. I turned my head away from his skin, dizzy and breathless, yet
so strangely energised, my limbs racing with an almost electrical
charge.

David rolled
onto his back, folding my floppy, overly-relaxed body against his
chest. “Are you okay, my love?”

“
Mm-hm.” I nodded, taking a long, deep breath. “Eric was
right.”

“
About what?” David’s arm tightened around me.

“
Lust.” I could barely stay awake long enough to form words.
“The kill is an act of lust, he told me. Blood
lust...desire.”

“
Yes. It’s not supposed to hurt. Like my brother’s...” he said
the end bit more quietly, probably not intended for my ears, but I
heard it anyway.

“
No. It was nothing like Jason’s. Yours was
like...magic.”

“
Yes.” He swiped my hair back and kissed my head. “Just like
magic.”

“
I like your magic,” I whispered, taking the hand of the
Sandman as he led me away to the world of restful
dreams.

Chapter
9

The daylight
felt unwelcome in my room, even the song of the birds, usually able
to bring me a smile, had intruded on dreams too early. I wanted
more of the night with David—more blood, more of...him.

I inched an
extended arm close to his body, tipping my fingers backward to
trace a gentle line along him under the sheets. Still there. Not a
dream. Real. I pushed up on my elbows, feeling stiff all over, like
I’d just slept for two days, and looked beside me to the pillow
that was usually cold and bare in the morning. My angelic vampire,
laying on his back, his arm still shaped to hold my body, his deep
breath coming softly between loosely parted lips, looked completely
relaxed and so, so human. Trust—implicit and unguarded.

I loved how he could let all his predatory instincts go, and
just rest, as peaceful and relaxed as any human—beside me,
with
me. I wanted to
wake him, but also wanted to watch him sleep.

Emily and Mike
were already up. I could hear them talking in the kitchen, quiet,
but in the still of the morning, it sounded like they were standing
right in my room.

Another wave
of morning sleepiness swept over me. I rolled back from David, and
as I wiped a hand across my mouth, stopped dead with a feeling of
dread when the tiny hairs on my lip pulled against the dried,
crusted blood there.

I felt around
my sheets, lifting them off my body, gasping at the sight. Nothing
had escaped the vestiges of our shared feast last night—not my
brand new, favourite sheets, not my chest, my arms, even the ends
of my hair were all stuck together. I gently lifted the sheet away
from David’s chest and covered my mouth immediately, trying not to
laugh. My lips and face, where I slept against him all morning, had
left a wide smear across his chest; his shoulder was bloodied and
even his hair was red-tipped.

My
grandmother’s mirror across the room did not spare me from the
sight of myself. I reached up and instantly started trying to rub
away the leftovers on my face. It was hard to tell whose blood was
whose, but I knew, as I looked down at my other hand on the
mattress, that the pink, airbrushed look around the dark brown
stain at my fingertips, was mine. I remember that one.

In the mirror,
looking at the long brown hair framing the pale, blood-covered face
of the girl sitting next to the ultimately still guy in her bed, it
looked like the set of a badly done, over-dramatised horror film. I
guess those blood-bath scenes really do look that overdone.

The chuckle of
my self-amusement stopped short at the sound of my doorhandle,
grating in a turn; I clutched the red and white sheet to my chest,
holding a hand out as my eyes met with the whitewash fear in
Emily’s. “Shh. Em—” I pleaded, but she fell against the wall,
screaming.

David jolted
upright, and with wide eyes, turned his head slowly to look at me.
“Shit.”

“
What the hell’s going on?” Mike called, his voice moving with
the speed of his feet, down the hall.

Oh no. This is
bad.

Emily clutched
the hair by her temples, confusion wailing out through her gaping
mouth.

Mike charged
in and scooped the screaming ball into his arms, folding her face
into his chest. He took one look at David, then at my mask of
mortification, and burst out laughing. “Well, looks like you’ve let
the bloody cat out of the bag now.”

“
No pun intended?” David said with a grin.

“
Mike?” Emily looked up at him and then at me. “Why are you
laughing?”

A smile
twitched the corners of my lips. Okay, it is kind of funny.

“
This is a joke?” Emily pushed out from Mike’s hold and walked
over to me. “You guys are punking me. I knew it! I knew—Ah!” She
recoiled, dropping the sheet she tore from my almost completely
naked, blood-covered body. The bite marks were near healed, but
still there, and very bruised.

I looked like
an escaped sample product from a giant-mosquito convention.

Mike raised
his brows at my bare skin; David grabbed the sheet, covering me
over again. “Eyes off, brother.”

“
Sorry. Didn’t mean to look.” He shook his head, scratching
his hairline. “Are you sure you did enough damage there, mate?
You’re supposed to protect her—not eat her.”

“
Shut up.” David threw a pillow at him.

Mike studied
me a little closer, his eyes narrowed, pinpointing my neck. “Did
you bite her?”

David looked
too, and smiled, his eyes becoming small. “Yes.”

A ferocity
that came from deep within Mike rose to his call of guard. “You
promised. No biting.”

“
Relax.” David laid back with his arms crossed behind his
head. “I didn’t use my fangs.”

“
What’d you mean you didn’t use your fangs, how can you not?
Look at those things.”

David smiled
sheepishly, touching his thumb to one. “Same way you bite an
ice-cream that’s too cold for your teeth. Delicately.”

“
That—” Mike pointed to me, “is not delicately.”

“
Will you two shut up!” I said. “Can’t you see Emily’s
freaking out?”

“
Sorry,” they both said.

“
Em?” I reached out with one hand, holding my shame-covering
sheet with the other. “Come sit with me. We need to
talk.”

She looked at Mike; he nodded then sat on the end of the bed,
folding his arms, looking a little smug—obviously curious as to how
we were going to lie our way out of
this
one.

I took a
breath. “Emily, please.”

Her head moved
in a tight, jerking gesture—a no, I think.

“
Emily, there’s a reason for all of this.”
I just have to figure it out as I go along
. “David’s—”

“
David’s a vampire,” Mike interjected.

Emily’s head
whipped around so fast to look at David that I thought it might
come off. She studied him, then dropped her arms and sat between
Mike and I, but said nothing. David just smiled softly, watching
Emily’s face, obviously reading her thought process. Mike watched
her too—his arms still folded.

“
Well,” Emily said, finally, “that makes sense, I suppose.
So—” She looked at me, then David. “So you’re not really
married?”

“
No.” David shook his head, smiling.

She nodded,
breathing out. “I knew it. I just knew it.”

David sat up a
little and touched my hand, linking his fingers through mine,
obviously sensing the ache I felt when Mike wrapped his arms over
Em’s shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Emily?” David said, and she
looked at him. “It’s okay. You know that.”

She nodded.
“Ara, I thought you were dead. And you!” She turned and slapped
Mike on the chest. “You lied to me. You said you didn’t know the
truth.”

“
No, I said if I knew the truth, I most likely would
definitely not be inclined to inform you.” He grinned with that
cheeky smile that always got him out of trouble with me. Emily
didn’t find it so charming.

“
So, you drink each other’s blood?” she asked, pointing to her
own lip, studying mine.

“
Yes,” I said in short, fighting the urge to wipe my
embarrassingly dirty face.

“
My God. Why?” Her lip turned up; Mike laughed
aloud.

“
It’s better than you think,” I said; David added nothing. He
didn’t need to defend what we did. Neither did I, but at the same
time, I also did. In the daylight, I couldn’t see any sense in it
either.

“
So, if you’re a vampire—” she pointed to David, “does that
mean Ja—”

“
Yes,” David said, keeping his serious eyes on her.

“
Jason was a vampire, too?” she confirmed.

“
Yes,” I said as well.

“
How come
you’re
not then, Ara?”

Everyone went
quiet.

“
She can’t be changed.” Mike finally said it for
me.

“
Why?”

“
You have to have a specific gene.”

Her face
folded in confusion. “Is that why you left her, David? Because she
doesn’t have the gene?”

He nodded.

She sighed,
rolling back into Mike’s arms. “That makes so much more sense—all
those things you told me, Ara, about it not being your choice to be
apart.” She considered then, for a second. “Wait, how do you know
you don’t have the right gene?”

“
It’s not why he left you, Emily.” David answered the question
she obviously truly wanted to ask.

“
Who?” Mike asked.

“
Jason,” I said, more familiar with the way David would start
conversations not usually based on spoken words.

Emily looked
down. “Then, why did he leave?”

“
I couldn’t say,” David lied, and it was so obvious he was
lying that even Emily frowned, but she clearly chose to accept that
for now and turned to me.

“
Ara, did you know Jason was a vampire—when we talked in your
room that day—when I told you about him leaving me?”

“
Yes.”

“
You could have told me.” She folded her arms.

“
No, I couldn’t.”

“
Why?”

“
I’m not allowed to tell anyone. I almost did.” David looked
up at me quickly; I took his hand, reassuring him. “But I
couldn’t.”

Emily nodded
and looked more closely at my face, then my neck—both sides.

David
stiffened. “Yes,” he said unexpectedly.

She glared at
him. “What’s yes?”

“
Yes, a vampire attacked Ara last year.”

She covered
her mouth, her eyes tearing. “Oh, Ara. I’m so sorry. Wait—how did
you know what I was thinking, David?”

His crooked
smile gave him away; Emily’s face went blank and pale before
crimson rose up in her cheeks. “Have you always been able to do
that?”

His smile
became wider, his head moving in a yes.

“
Oh, God.” We all heard the shame she tried to hide behind her
hands. “Oh, my God!”

David and Mike
both laughed.

I didn’t,
because I knew exactly how she felt.

“
And—can he read your thoughts too, Ara?”

“
Yes.”

“
Oh, my God! How embarrassing.”

“
Trust me, I know.”

“
So, you’re not like Bella then? You know, you don’t, like,
have a shield?”

We all
laughed, well, except Mike, who never read Twilight. “Um, no.”

I think David
was rather amused at the fact that Emily could no longer look at
him; I wondered exactly what she’d been thinking about him in the
past that would mortify her that much. And I think Mike wondered
the same thing, but didn’t make it obvious.

Then Emily
asked the question we had all asked once, the question no one
wanted to answer. “So, where were you, David, while Ara was being
tortured?”

He nodded to
himself. “I...was at a meeting.”