Ethan nodded. “He lives like a pig but nothing was disturbed, I couldn’t smell anything. The lights were on, the same ones the fool saw on at night. He didn’t notice they never turned off.” Karson exhaled a burst of oxygen. “He could have been snatched from the fields. I don’t know.”
Guilt spread dark wings over my shoulders, sinking down my stomach. Thompson might have been murdered, brutally. Cole ordered it—probably. If I’d just told Ethan to do what he needed to, Thompson would be alive. I swallowed.
The world is not black and white but a murky shade of red.
Ethan glanced at me and seemed to read the expression on my face. “He had a lot of bills he couldn’t pay. He was way over his head in debt. He’d be fearful for his life, maybe it was all too much, and he’s done a runner.”
“If he had bills then why not take Cole’s money?” Karson mused, negating his comment. Ethan threw him a pointed look. Karson looked at me and the penny dropped. He grimaced.
I blanked my face and cleared my throat. “Did he pack any clothes?”
Ethan’s awkward stare was enough to tell me he didn’t.
I turned and walked up the stairs. Dark wings pressing on my shoulders.
Chapter 61
Two Sides Of Me
A few weeks passed quickly. I continued to train. Slowly, my body hardened. Muscles I never knew I had bulged on my arms and shoulders. I’d gotten fitter and better, I spent less time on the matt and more time punching, kicking, and blocking Ethan. My runs were no longer slow and leisurely. Now they were hard and fast. Some days Ethan would push me until I vomited. As much as I thought I might hate him in the moment, we became much closer. He never mentioned it, but the threat of attack, and having to go into battle, hung over us like an encroaching darkness.
Dahlia continued to train my powers. We used knives, arrows, balls, branches, anything I could throw with my mind against a bullseye in the distance. I practiced throwing things in the air, holding them suspended, then shooting them off to wherever I wanted them to land. I found this relatively easy and tedious. She taught me how to shoot a bow. Physically, without the use of powers. I was yet to master it. Like healing, it wasn’t a gift bestowed upon me. And my invisible barriers or walls were as shaky as ancient ruins.
She taught me how to recognize a witch’s vibration, a vampire’s, and a human’s, without the need to touch them. Just by simply entering a room. A witch’s vibration, whilst similar to a vampire’s, was much faster than a normal human, but it also had a different feel. It was more a tingle to my senses, rather than the pressure of a vampire’s vibration.
Between all the training, I tried to juggle normal life. It was as if I walked two separate lives, lived in two worlds simultaneously. One leg in the normal everyday world where I would meet friends for drinks, talk about ordinary things, like work, boys, gossip, and crack smutty jokes. It was a world, by comparison, that was as light and fluffy and as palatable as fairy floss.
The other leg was planted in the supernatural world, where creatures thought to be myth stalked the night and drank blood from unwitting people who would wake in the light of day with no memory that they were last night’s blood bag. A place where magic not only existed, but surrounded us in abundance, unnoticed by a mainstream, oblivious world.
Behind closed doors I could pass a drink to Karson with the flick of my hand. Turn on music, play any song just by thought. Sometimes it was hard to keep the two sides of me separated. I felt guilty for not being able to share with my friends, other than BJ, who I truly was. I wore my ring every time I went out so I didn’t accidentally forget which Amy I was meant to be in that moment. Also,someone trying to kill me if they knew what I was, was a strong incentive to keep it on.
I stretched my legs out, marveling at the long, sleek muscle that hugged my thighs.
Karson and I had just finished dinner, well, I ate, he didn’t. We were seated on the balcony of his apartment above the bar and overlooking the street.
Twilight burned a pretty orange glow across the horizon. The light from inside cast half of our silhouettes into a shadowed light. I took a sip of wine and glanced across at Karson. His face held a softness, indicative of a mind at peace. It was a face he kept hidden from the outside world. Maybe he thought it reflected weakness, and weakness in his species was preyed upon. When he held that organic state, his ethereal beauty radiated. My heart fluttered.
He caught my admiring stares and cocked his head to the side like he was a puppy trying to work out what I was thinking.
“How many of you are there worldwide?” I asked, as the thought came unbidden.
“Hundreds, maybe thousands. Many major cities would have a reasonable population.”
“How many are like you, born vampires?”
“I do not know for certain. We stay apart mostly, some stay hidden. I have only ever met five others. I assume there are a few more.” He stared absently into the distance, not exactly engaged in the conversation.
“Why do you stay apart?”
He looked back, appearing bored, like he was at work repeating the same idea over and over. “Aside from one that I have a friendship with, the rest I have met like to control their domain and will fight to protect it. First-borns are dangerous to each other, it’s best for everyone if we remain apart. It’s an unspoken respect we adhere to, we can’t afford to draw attention to our kind.”
“What happens when a vampire draws attention to themselves?”
“We seek them out and remove them and anyone who we consider a threat. Our kind must remain a secret to the general population.”
I knew what removing them meant, but I also knew what would happen if they were discovered by the mainstream population. The thought dwelled in a deeply disturbing place. I didn’t have to wonder what it felt like to constantly have to hide what you were, to live a half-life lie. I knew, though I couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to have centuries of it. To be actively hunted . . .
I finished off the wine in one last mouthful.
