I frown. ‘Yes. Isn’t that why you brought me here? To see this?’
He stops and turns, coming back to me. He stares down at me, his face shadowed. ‘I brought you here because I could. Because that’s the reality of your world.’ He pauses. ‘And also because you looked like you wanted out.’
‘Wh-what?’ My voice is a whisper. Something passes between us, as though a ribbon is binding us together, tightening. His body is close to mine, his violet scent all around me.
He leans in.
I swallow. My eyes close.
Cool breath mists across my lips.
There’s a screeching noise, the flap of wings, the clatter of branches. I tense, my eyes coming open, and take a step back. ‘What’s that?’ I gasp.
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Probably an owl, hunting.’
Hunting.
The spell breaks and I remember I’m alone in the woods. With a vampire. This is everything my parents have ever warned me against. He leans in again and I panic. What the hell is he doing? One minute he seems to hate me, and now he’s trying tokiss me? My heart is pounding, thunder in my ears. I force myself to calm down, using the control I’ve been practising since I was a child, the ways of making myself less tempting, less human, less vulnerable. I turn my head, stepping back.
‘What was that writing I saw tonight?’ I say, hoping it will break the tension.
‘What writing?’ Kyle also steps back. It’s a relief, but at the same time part of me feels bereft. I squash that part down, stamping on it.
‘The North Wind will blow. What’s that? A new band I don’t know about?’
‘Where’d you see that?’ There’s a subtle tension in his voice that wasn’t there before.
‘In Dark Haven. On the wall of the burned building. So, what is it?’
Kyle doesn’t say anything for a moment. I start to feel nervous, like I’ve said something wrong. Finally, he speaks.
‘You remember earlier tonight, when Ira mentioned unrest? And what I told you?’
My eyebrows shoot up. ‘What? You’re saying the North Wind is… the human uprising?’
He nods.
I laugh, because it’s ridiculous. ‘They can’t imagine they can beat us, can they?’
Kyle raises his eyebrows. ‘You’d be surprised.’
He’s right. I’d be totally fucking surprised if humans thought they had any chance rebelling against vampires. But I don’t know what else to say so I change the subject, hoping to hang onto the faint thread of connection still hanging between us.
‘Is that the Safe Zone? It looks beautiful from here.’ I point at the faint glow, just visible through the trees.
‘A lot of things do from a distance.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ His tone is curt. The thread breaks.
I frown. ‘I’ve heard it’s a pretty nice place.’
‘Have you? Because the way I see it, it’s your family farm. One of many.’
Something about the way Kyle describes it as a farm makes me uncomfortable. ‘But it’s a good place to live, right?’
This is literally the basis of my plan to get away, so I hope it is. I silently curse my sheltered life, the way I’ve been kept in the dark, both literally and figuratively. Yet I know what I’ve seen, watching videos in the library alone. What a human life, lived in the light, is like. It’s what I want, more than anything.
