The Heart's Ashes (40 page)

“
Flirt?” He almost leaped out of his seat. “Ara, that is not
flirting. We’re friends. That’s all.”

I nodded,
tinkering with the rim of my cup. “But she’s...so normal and, I
mean, she’s blonde and pretty and...”

“
Ara, I’m a vampire—” his jaw set stiff as he spoke, “—a
reasonably old one, at that. You know I’ve had other girls. You
know they’ve been different to you, but if they were better, I’d
still be with them. I’d have stuck around when I caught them
kissing their ex-fiancé, I’d have fought to be with them, even
though their life would be at risk for it.”

“
I know.” I shrugged slowly. “But—”

“
But it’s human nature—to wonder,” he said with a
nod.

“
Yes. And, well, I was quietly wondering. You weren’t supposed
to hear that.”

“
But I’m glad I did.” He leaned back, tucking his feet under
the table. “There is only one thing worse than discussing a past
you wish to leave behind, Ara, and that is when people make their
own assumptions based on facts others have given them. So, I’ll
tell you what you want to know.”

“
Really?” A smile lifted my cheeks.

“
Discretionally.”

Which means he
won’t tell me anything, but will make it seem like he has, until I
think carefully about it later. It’s a talent of his. “Is Emily
your type?”

David looked
up at her door, his long fingers tapping the table. “No.”

“
How many girls have you dated?”

He went to laugh, covering his mouth with a soft fist. “Um,
really? You want to know
that
?”

I nodded;
David sat taller.

“
Um, okay. Well, uh—I don’t know.”

“
Ten...fifteen...?”

“
Ara, I’m a hundred-and-twenty years old. I’ve had three
serious relationships in my life, and the rest have
been...”

“
Not so serious?” I suggested.

He looked at
Emily’s door again, scratching his brow; I looked too.

“
What? What’s the deal with Emily?” I said.

“
She’s laughing at me.”

“
Oh.”

“
Look, Ara—” He leaned forward, placing both hands on the
table in front of me. “I dated girls for one reason, and it wasn’t
love. I hardly had time for my own primal needs, let alone
relationships.”

“
So, you were a fly guy?”

“
Something like that.”

“
Were they all vampires?”

He went to
answer but trapped his breath between his lips for a second.
“Yes.”

“
Do you still see any of them, were they from your
Set?”

“
Some.” He nodded. “The vampire community becomes very small
after a few decades, my love. I’m pretty sure everyone’s dated or
been in love with everyone at some point. And there’s really no way
to avoid seeing them again.”

“
I guess that must suck—not really having a great
selection.”

He laughed.
“Yeah.”

“
So, have you ever loved someone enough to want them
for...forever?”

“
Uh, well, not for forever, no. Or I wouldn’t be here. But, I
thought I wanted to marry a girl once.”

I looked up
quickly. “Who?”

“
A girl named Morgaine.”

“
Who was she?”

“
She was a vampire, of sorts. She—we were just too different.”
He shook his head, staring at the table. “But yes, I had
girlfriends, and I loved all of them, in ways—not for long though,
Ara. I’m not...I wasn’t that kinda guy.”

“
So, what happened to her—to Morgaine?”

“
It’s a long story.”

“
I like long stories.”

He nodded,
then motioned toward my cup. “Drink—while it’s hot.”

I took that as
David severing this direction of conversation. But I was in no way
done with our walk through time. “Did you have to give up the love
of a girl when you became a vampire?”

His distant
smile seemed to reflect days gone by. “Not love, no.”

I stared at
him for a moment, waiting for an elaboration. He grabbed my hand
and stood up. “Come on.”

“
Where are we going?”

“
For a walk in the past.”

“
The past?” I moaned, leaving my tasty coffee to go cold on
the table.

“
Yeah, I wanna teach you a thing or two about history.” His
eyes lit up on the corners, a perfect toothy smile slipping across
his lips.

We hopped out
of the car and wandered the wooden steps of the town museum,
featured in an old house donated by one of the founders. It smelled
of polished wood and freshly printed paper, while the cool breeze,
floating through the open space, carried the scent of engine fuel
and aged books. Soft voices of pre-recorded history lectures hummed
gently through the thin walls, making it feel as though someone was
home, despite how empty and quiet it was in here otherwise.

“
I don’t see what
you
can teach me about history that I haven’t already
seen here,” I remarked snidely as we dropped a gold coin in the
wooden box by the door and grabbed a pamphlet.

David strolled
causally with his hands behind his back, a smug grin on his lips.
“We’ll see.”

“
Oh, you just love being right, don’t you?”

“
It’s just so easy for me.”

“
Well, I’m going to make it my mission to prove you wrong
now.”

He nodded,
unperturbed. “You can try.”

“
It’s probably not worth the effort.”

“
See, you’re already learning” he said. “You’ve heard of Harry
Houdini?”

“
Yeah. The magician, right?” We stopped in front of an
aircraft display; the old Cessna on the roof, hoisted to the
rafters by metal cables, still smelled of oil—gritty and
dry.

“
Yes,” David said. “But what most people don’t know, is that
he was also a pioneer of flight.”

My brow
creased. “You’re making that up.”

He dropped his
head and laughed. “No, I’m not, sweetheart. I wouldn’t do that. You
see?” He pressed a fingertip to an image on the carpet-backed
pin-board; two men sitting inside the open-aired cockpit of what
looked like a toy plane. Wings of wood, longer than modern
planes—stacked on top each other—with wheels that belonged on a
bicycle. “That’s Harry Houdini,” he said.

“
Wow. Hey, did you ever meet him?”

“
You lived in Australia, did you ever meet The Crock
Hunter?”

“
No.”

“
Exactly.” He shook his head, looking back at the image. “But,
I know his story. I followed it in the papers. Harry—” he pointed
to the man, “—was the first person ever to fly a powered aircraft
in Australia.”

“
Really? I should’ve known that.”

“
It’s not really common knowledge.”

“
So, what kind of plane is that?” I leaned closer. “I know
what a Cessna and a bi-plane are, but that’s, like, wooden or
something, isn’t it?”

“
It sure is.” He smiled. “It was a French, Voisin bi-plane. He
paid five thousand dollars for it, I believe. Here, it says,
He shipped it over to Australia in
nineteen-ten
.” David rubbed his chin. “I
think it was at Diggers Rest, near Melbourne, that he made the
flight.”

I scrolled down the page of information and, sure enough, the
words
Diggers Rest
stood out. Okay, I’m impressed.

David kind of
skipped on his toe then; his hands behind his back as he walked
away.

“
Guess I was wrong,” I noted, catching up to him. “You did
teach me something I didn’t know.”

“
There’s so much to learn about the world, Ara.” He seemed to
motion around the museum, or maybe the world, with a kind of
fascination I’d never seen alive in him before. “I’ve had nearly
two lifetimes, and I still have not seen even half of its
wonders.”

“
Yet you always seem to know everything.”

“
No, mon amour. I don’t know everything. In fact, when I
visited a museum last, I learned something new.”

“
Really? What was that?” I said with a laugh.

“
That Leonardo da Vinci didn’t, in fact, invent the scissors,
despite what you learned in history class.” He turned his head to
one side, bringing his shoulder up with the rise of a very cheeky
grin.

“
Well, I feel smarter now for having learned that useless
little fact.”

We wandered
side by side through the house, David pointing out interesting
facts from a firsthand experience of history, and as we came to an
almost deserted section, we stopped. “This is why I brought you
here.” He took my hand, shocking me a little; I hadn’t expected
he’d ever touch me again after what I did with Mike.

“
The World War One display?”

“
Yes.” When the other visitors left the room, David looked
over his shoulder, then spun around slowly—checking for more
spectators, I assume. “You’ll love this,” he said, dragging me to
the centre of a large, freestanding pin-board. “I first noticed
this about ten years ago. Ever since, I almost feel like this place
connects me to my old life.”

I stood before the collage of paper cut-outs and faded sepia
images, mixed among black and whites, all thumbtacked carefully to
the carpet wall. “You need to come here to feel connected?” I
didn’t even know he
needed
to feel connected.

“
I still have feelings, Ara. Nostalgia being one of them.” He
looked away. “Sometimes.”

“
Okay, so...what am I looking at here?”

He scrolled
along the different images, then pointed to a group-shot of about
ten men—standing together—some in uniform, some shirtless. “Look
closer at this picture.”

Reluctantly,
since I had no idea why I was looking closer, I leaned over a
little and scanned the image, passing over a boy with a moustache,
a boy holding a gun and a boy smoking, but stopped, stark-still, my
blood running cold in the tops of my arms, when I saw the boy with
dark hair, his easy smile and aura of confidence standing out among
the few, emaciated men beside him. “This is yo—”

“
Shh. It’s not something I like people to know.” He nodded to
an old couple who’d slipped into the room, unnoticed by
me.

“
Sorry,” I said, my cheeks burning. “It’s a dumb thing to say,
but...you look
exactly
the same.”

“
Yeah, will you look at that?” A man, suddenly poking his head
right between David’s and my shoulders, pointed to the picture we
were gawking at. “Ancestor of yours, son?”

“
Uh, yes, he was my great-grandfather,” David said, as though
it was a fact he’d shared many times.

“
Dead-ringer for the old codger, ehy?” the man said, clapping
David on the shoulder.

David just
winked at me, both of us smiling in our private moment of
amusement. When the man and his wife walked away, I took a closer
look at the picture—at my David, looking so dashing in his uniform.
“Was anyone else like you? A—vampire?” I whispered the last
word.

David looked
at the image again, his lips pressed thin. “I wish it had been
possible. I lost a lot of friends.”

“
Did you fight in World War Two, as well?”

Without a
word, he nodded, growing taller.

“
You’re very brave,” I said.

“
No—I’m not, Ara. I went in
knowing
I couldn’t die. But these
guys—” he smiled, nodding at the photo, “—these guys put everything
on the line to protect what they loved—to stand up for what they
believed in. I was just there to eat the bad guys.”

I could tell
from the way he was smiling that he meant that as a joke—a really
bad, vampire-humour joke. “That’s not entirely true, David. You
said your uncle changed you because you wanted to join the army.
So, you can’t have been craving human blood then.”

A broad grin
broke out across his lips, making his eyes sparkle. “Okay, you got
me there. But I wasn’t afraid to die, because I wasn’t going to
war, remember? I joined before war broke out.”

“
Then why did your uncle change you? If there was no risk of
death?”

“
Because, when you join a cause where guns are involved, there
is always death. It was naive of any of us to think otherwise. My
uncle was not so. He’d been around for many centuries and knew
exactly what war entailed.” David leaned a little closer and
whispered the next part. “He fought in wars as far back as The
Hundred Years’ War.”

“
Wow, that is really cool.”

He nodded.
“Yeah. I know. We grew up hearing stories.”

“
So, you always knew what he was then?”

“
It was never a secret.”

“
You must have loved him, to be boys so young and keep that to
yourselves.”

“
There is a certain level of respect my uncle commands.”
David’s shoulders straightened. “Which is why, when Jason and I
told him we wanted to join the army and he insisted we’d be going
to our deaths, we heeded his words—despite what we
believed.”