Heart of Darkness, page 17
part #8 of Dark Secrets Series
My eyes widened and I immediately undressed, thinking better of it and opting for a quick shower first. With my hair pulled into a neat roll at the back, showing my neckline, and a few wispy hairs left down, I zipped the dress up, slipped on some silk flats, and left the room, feeling magnificent.
Being sent away really sucked. Missing my friends, even my annoying brother, sucked, but living this life did have its perks, especially not having to attend school anymore. And being given expensive clothes really didn’t suck too much either.
When I reached the ballroom, Drake met me at the large open doorway and bent to kiss my cheek. “You look stunning.”
“Thanks. I scrub up pretty nice, don't I?” I leaned back and inspected his get-up, nodding with approval. My grandfather scrubbed up all right too. With his thick black hair swept back, revealing more of his face than usual, and a white bow tie and shirt beneath a black coat with tails, he looked more like a hot guy at a party than an ancient and cunning vampire grandfather. “Lookin’ good, Gramps,” I joked.
He smiled affectionately, balancing my wrist against the top of his arm like we were in some cheesy Jane Austen film. “Shall we go in?”
“Beats standing here all night, I guess.”
As we entered, a feeling of space opened up around me, dwarfing us beneath the grandeur of the room. The high white walls gave way to stone pillars that supported an arched ceiling, accents of gold framing the rectangle panels marked out on each wall. Women in cream, white, or gold gowns danced under the warm glow of crystal chandeliers with men in white bowties and black tails, while a gathering of musicians played the strings and piano softly to their steps.
We walked across the room then, well, glided, actually, and I realized only in that moment that dinner was more like hors d’oeuvres and wine, and that the entire night would be filled with dancing and socializing. I just wanted to turn around and go to bed now.
Drake swept me into position among the swirling crowd, without even asking if I’d like to dance. I didn’t feel awkward or out of place though, like I thought I would. I knew all of these dances, from the years of standing on my dad’s toes doing all the steps, so as long as I didn’t have to dance with anyone weird or really creepy, it might actually be an okay night.
“Do you like the ballroom?” Drake asked.
My eyes went to the gilded gold mirrors on every wall panel and the giant paintings of naked women with cloths wrapped around them. “It’s… um… grand?”
“We finished the renovation last month,” he said proudly, eyes following the room as we turned. “Transformed it from something quite medieval to a more Victorian style, like the tea rooms.”
I could tell he was proud of it, even though I didn’t really care, so I put my best efforts in to sounding genuine. “It’s really cool.”
“I’m glad you approve.” Drake laughed to himself, hopefully knowing I meant well.
When the song ended, he bowed to thank me, and a tall guy with sandy hair and broad shoulders stepped in, his thick hand taking mine before I realized the long warm fingers belonged to Falcon. He smiled down at me as I relinquished my freedom to yet another dance. “You look so much like your mother.”
“People keep saying that.”
He laughed, his sharp fangs so perfectly white beneath a set of dark but thin lips. “And you sound like her too.”
I rolled my eyes. Was there no escape from her? “Well, I’m my own person.”
“I don't doubt that.” He drew me a little closer then, in an almost protective way, and I looked up at him to see his gaze on Elias across the room. “He’s going to ask you to dance. Are you comfortable with that?”
I glanced over my shoulder at him as we passed. He stood by the edge of the dance floor, his two big hands clasped at his front, watching the people swirl past him with interest. His white vest, tie, and shirt was exactly the same as what every other man was wearing here tonight, but, somehow, it’s like the suit had been cut just right, just for him, making his shoulders look straight, his legs long, and his chest firm and maybe even smooth beneath all that fabric, like a place to rest my head. “Not really.”
“I can speak to Drake—”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll just dance with him,” I insisted, seeing him smile warmly at someone and wave. “Maybe I can step on his toes and show him how annoying I really am.”
Falcon laughed, and it was warm and honest, not holding anything back. I decided that I liked his laugh. If I had a friend with a laugh like that, I’d make them laugh all the time just to hear it.
“What?” he said.
“You laugh nice.”
He did it again. “I laugh nice, huh?”
“Yeah. Hey”—I folded his hand down a little so I could look at it—“how come you never got married or fell in love?”
“I did.” He squeezed my hand a little. “I just fell in love with the wrong person.”
“My mom?”
“For one, yeah.” He nodded.
“Wasn’t that the curse though?”
“Some of it, maybe.”
“And the rest?”
“She was just really easy to love.”
“So you still love her?”
“I don't think anyone that loved your mom can ever fall out of love with her,” he advised.
“So… you're just alone. Forever?”
“I love my job, Aubrey. It’s the only other thing that makes me feel complete. I’m happy that way.”
“Are you though?” I scrutinized him.
He smiled, with a glint of sincerity in his eyes. And I believed it. “I’m immortal,” he said. “I don't doubt that I’ll one day find love.”
“Or are you holding out for my mom to leave my dad?” I teased. “Like maybe the abuse will get too much, and she’ll dump him.”
Falcon’s eyes darkened and he lowered his head regretfully. “You shouldn’t talk about that here—so openly. There are only three people in the world that know about that, and you make four.”
“So you're number three?”
“I was her righthand man for a very long time, Aubrey—”
A stiffening ripple of rage rushed through my core. “Then why didn't you do anything to stop it?”
“She didn’t want me to know. I tried to acknowledge it once and she shut me down and threatened to transfer me, so I watched carefully, from afar. But it wasn’t bad,” he advised, and I rolled my eyes. “She told me that you know about it—”
“And wants you to downplay it?”
“No. She wants me to convey to you that she’s not beaten,” he said firmly, with an air of authority, and intense eyes to match, that made me just shut up and listen to him. “David, despite the hex, still has a lot of control, which… if you knew what that hex did to him in the past, then the fact that he’s only hit her a handful of times in forty years is actually somewhat of a miracle.”
“Do you think she’ll leave him?”
He laughed loudly, shaking his head. “No. I once asked Elora to look at all possible outcomes for the future—”
“But she’s unreliable. Her visions are garbage—”
“Yes.” He laughed, but it was unexpected enough that he had to wipe the corner of his lip on the back of his wrist after. “Which is why she refused. But she did a tarot reading instead and she said there wasn't one conceivable outcome where she left him because of the abuse. So, no. She won’t.”
I nodded, relieved. The only thing worse than my mom being abused by my dad would, in all honesty, be if she had to live without him. “Elora said she didn’t know about the abuse,” I said sadly. “When I told her about it, she said she didn’t know.”
“She didn’t. Not about the hex,” he advised. “I went to her after your father had given Ara a particularly brutal beating while he was still human—when she didn’t have her memories.”
“What happened?”
“He went psychotic. Tried to beat the old version of her to the surface. So I asked Elora if Ara would leave him because of that—when she got her memories back.”
Oh boy. His intentions in that act were written all over his cute face. “Is that because you wanted to swoop in?”
“Yes.”
I nodded, grateful for his honesty. “So what do we do?”
“We help them. We talk to Mike so he can step in if David’s having a surge. He can protect them both.”
“So you're not just waiting on the sidelines anymore, hoping she’ll leave him?”
“Aubrey, she would never be okay if she left him. She can handle this, handle the hex, the surge, but she can’t handle life without him.” Falcon lifted his chin and stood taller, looking dead ahead. “And I would be wasting my time hoping for it.”
“Wow.” I snorted, seeing how deeply in love he was with her that, even though he knew that, he was still waiting for her, deny it as he might. “She really messed you up good, didn’t she?”
He laughed again, slowing our steps as the song ended. “I’m sure you’ll do the same.” He nodded in the direction of Elias, headed this way. “I think it’s in your blood.”
I grimaced, trying to prepare myself and plan out some ways I’d show Elias that I wasn’t anything he wanted to waste his time on. I could be annoying. Bratty. Bitchy. I’d show him all my worst qualities in the short three minutes he’d have me in his arms, and by the end of the song, he’d be convinced I was just a pain in the ass. I even started mustering up a big, obnoxious burp to let out.
He and Falcon exchanged a polite bow, and Elias turned to me.
“May I?” he asked, offering his hand. I was shocked a bit by his accent then. I’d forgotten about it since breakfast, and as I laid my hand in his, a small shiver of something oddly warm went through me from the place where we touched. Elias looked down at our hands, spreading his fingers as it sparked in him too, and we closed them together in a non-traditional way, interlaced.
When I stepped into his arms and the music began, we didn’t move in time. Each step we took ended for a moment, a breath, as Elias seemed to read and pause, unsure what it meant, unsure what to do next. After a moment, he found the rhythm, brushing off whatever it was that confused him a moment ago, and we glided around in time with the music, like the rest of the guests.
“I feel I must apologize,” Elias said softly.
“What for?” I asked, too afraid to look up and meet those pretty blue eyes because, suddenly, I couldn’t remember all the snarky things I had planned to turn him against me.
“I’ve made you uncomfortable—with my staring.”
I smiled to myself, letting out a small chuckle. “I’m just not to use to it. I thought maybe I had something on my face.”
“If that were the case, I would not have stared. I’d have”—he removed his hand from the small of my back and dipped his head sheepishly, scratching at a spot on his cheek as if to indicate something on mine.
I nodded, looking away again with a smile that I didn't even need to force.
“Please understand, it is not my intention to make you uncomfortable, nor is it my intention to court you, being so young,” he advised. “I wasn’t aware of your age when I first saw you but…”
“But?” I prompted.
“I am not too man to admit that… I was struck by you, Aubrey. And I cannot rightly say that has ever happened to me before.”
Okay, that was kind of lame but also kind of sweet, because I knew he actually meant it. And suddenly, the idea of a millennial-old vampire didn't seem so bad. He was at least way more mature than the boys at school. And for some reason, I actually couldn’t find it in my heart to be mean to Elias. It normally came easy for me. I didn’t care if I hurt their feelings, as long as it deflected the attention off the fact that I liked them. But… this guy, I couldn’t even make myself step on his toes.
“Drake tells me you have a rare skill,” Elias offered.
“He told you about that?” I rolled my head up to look at him, instantly regretting it as the kindness in his eyes struck me, changing my opinion of him entirely. “That’s my family’s best-kept secret.”
“I believe he told me as a warning,” he said, smiling to himself. “I have a… let us say, deep aversion to the spirit form, and I assume he meant for me to run the other way, so to speak.”
I laughed up a crass grumble of mockery in the back of my throat. “You're afraid of ghosts?”
“Deathly.”
I laughed again. Boy, he picked the wrong person to hang around then. “Well, you should be. The ghosts I’ve met can hurt you.”
“One hurt you?”
“He broke my leg.” I nodded.
Elias’s eyes went down my body, coming back up in surprise. “Do you have a manor with which to defend yourself?”
“Nope.” I shrugged. “That’s kinda why I’m here. Aunt Morgana is helping me find a way to defend myself and also…” I didn’t want to tell him the next bit.
“A cure for the touch of death,” he said with a nod.
“So Drake told you that too, huh?”
“He did.” His hand very gently squeezed mine, as if maybe to test out the cursed touch or maybe, just maybe, to comfort me because of it. “I’m sorry, that must have been quite an ordeal.”
Right there, in the middle of the dance floor, in a stranger’s arms, I almost cried. There were just so many layers of understanding in his voice that I felt like he knew exactly how much that hurt me. “It was.”
He sighed, and his hands came down from mine, pressing instead to the back of my head and my shoulder to hold me close to him. It felt weird, because it was like a hug, but I didn’t know him at all. And yet, at the same time, as the music surrounded us and filled in the blank spaces through every corner of my soul, I felt okay with it. It was even kind of nice.
“Does it fill you up with guilt—this death?” Elias asked softly, as though his voice might break through his chest and bust my ear if he spoke too loudly.
“Not like it should.”
“In what way then?” He drew back, looking down at me.
Good question. The truth was, it filled me with exactly the kind of guilt that it should, yet I couldn't admit that. It would make me feel weak and vulnerable to tell him that I cried at night because Sawyer would never graduate, or have kids, or buy a house. He’d never do any of those things, and that was my fault.
“I was on a date with him when he died,” I confessed, ignoring the stares of everyone nearby who was unimpressed about us just standing here in the middle of the dance floor. But they all blended away as a wash of sympathy softened Elias’s eyes.
“And you were punished?” he asked.
“Sent away.” I motioned around the room, giving a nonchalant shrug to hide the devastating sense of betrayal and sadness.
“I can see you cared for this boy,” he offered with an empathetic tilt of his head. “I am sorry for your loss, Aubrey. If it is, at all, any consolation, I do understand completely how you feel.”
“You do?”
We started dancing again as another song began and a few old men moved past us, clearing their throats suggestively.
“I became close with a woman once, and I killed her.”
“Why?”
“I’m a vampire,” he said simply. “I hadn’t intended to kill her, but these things happen, and the guilt I suffered for that was immense.”
I nodded, burying my own guilt a little bit deeper.
“You're not alone,” he offered. “Almost every person in this room has killed someone they cared for, and we all feel guilt and shame. But please do not feel like a monster for that, Aubrey. Because if you are, indeed, a monster, then you are in the company of many more just like you.”
I felt warm all over my entire body then. That did make me feel better. A lot better. I hugged him again, just wanting to relive the way his big hard chest and strong arms made me feel a moment ago. “Thanks, Elias.”
“You are most welcome.” He drew a long breath and let it out slowly, his deep voice coming through his chest with the sound. “May I call on you in a year? Perhaps court you then?”
The teenage girl in me, who’d literally just left the modern world of high school and picking on boys all the time, wanted to laugh. She wanted to say no and tell him to go gain a few modern phrases and come back down to earth. But I couldn’t say it.
I didn't mean for this, to feel like I was falling for him when I didn't even know his middle name. But something about dancing with him like this… it felt like I was falling in to him, like being breathed in, absorbed. And I’d never felt like that before.
What was it about this guy, no… this man that could make me feel this way?
“Um… yeah,” I said instead, smiling to myself. “If you're still interested then.”
The music stopped, and Elias stepped back, standing so tall and straight that it looked like he couldn’t breathe. His eyes searched mine, fixing there for a moment, a thousand words exchanging between us without a thing being said. I knew he’d come to find me in a year. I knew he’d seen something in my eyes that he couldn’t explain, and I knew that, because I’d seen it in his too.
He didn't say a word after that. He just bowed, his hand across his midsection, and left the room, grabbing a bottle of wine off a silver tray on the way out. And I stood in the middle of the dance floor, stunned into speechlessness, until I felt a pair of eyes on me.
“Beth,” I called, darting after her. “Beth, wait.”
Aunt Lily cut in front of me then, barring me from going any further. “Do not speak to my daughter,” she warned.
“Please, Aunt Lily—”
“And do not address me as such. I am your queen, and you will respect me with my proper title.”
“But—”
“Go.” She aimed a finger across the room like I was a naughty puppy. “If you try to speak to her again, I will have you whipped.”
