“I know you. My soul knows you, Maris. I have looked a very long time for you. I have searched for you in every face I’ve seen. I did not dare dream that I would ever find you. There is no other soul in this world or the next that matters to me. Only you.Just you.”
“Julian.” Maris has stopped looking like she’s trying to get away. She leans forward, the dig of her knees into my chest sharpens. Her dark eyes move over my face and then lower to my chest. She reaches a hand down and touches my chest, her touch is featherlight, fingers just skimming my body. I’m practically purring with satisfaction when she touches me with her other hand too. This one slowly moves up my cheek and into my hair. There’s a slight tug as she sinks her fingers into my hair and cradles my head in her hand. Vampires are dominate by nature, predators that calculate their next move five steps in advance to never leave themselves open to attack. What I’m doing now? Giving up my dominance to Maris, no not giving it up, I’m handing it over to her on a silver platter. Submitting eagerly. There’s not another vampire I can think of that would do this. They would never let a human have this kind of power over them, and never would they put themselves on their knees like I am, but I do it with a smile on my face.
I will. For her.
Maris swallows hard and presses her palm flat to my chest. Her fingers are warm on my skin. I drink it up, let her warmth soak right into me like it belongs there.
“You’re not human,” she says finally.
“No, I’m not.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Kill you? If I had to damn the world to save you, to even be with you for this one night, I would happily do it.” I moveforward then. Maris gasps but doesn’t drop her hold on me, in fact the woman holds on tighter. The hand in my hair twists and pulls, the sting of it adds the sweet edge I expected from Maris. “I would never harm you. My life is yours, do you understand me? I do not live without you. I would not live if you willed it that way. I am yours and fuck this world if you are not mine.” I grip the edges of her seat and the wood creaks beneath my grip asI look up at the woman meant to be mine.
“We’re mates, Maris.”
Twenty-Seven
MARIS
Ithought about running for town to get help. I stood there on the side of the house with the wastebasket in my shaking hands for a second before I pulled out my phone and hit the light to get a better look at the bandage in the trash bin.
There wasn’t a drop of blood on it.
“I spent a lot of years studying the body to know when one is in trouble and trust me, I’m fine. Let’s go home.”
Holy fucking shit when Julian asked for the tape…when he said that to me, he was already healed.
“He was pretending.” I look back at the house and then back at the waste basket. What the fuck do I do? I drop down into a squat, clutching the damn trash basket to my chest like a deranged hoarder and take in a deep breath to try and calm myself down.
If I go to town, what the hell am I going to tell them? I think the new hot doctor that you all saw take a knife for me is a monster? I don’t think he’s human? There’s something seriously supernatural about him because he doesn’t bleed?
“No, he bled,” I remind myself. It’s true. “She stabbed him. I saw it.” His shirt is stained through with blood, ripped and cut where the knife sank in. Jesus Christ, she stabbed him morethan once didn’t she? That’s the only way his shirt would be cut the way it is. I didn’t realize it. I don’t think anyone did.
“Practically a paper cut.”
That’s what Julian called the wound Aria gave him.
“He was lying, you idiot.” I lean forward, forehead to my knees and try to breathe. It’s hard. I have to put the waste basket down on the grass beside me and get on my hands and knees so I don’t throw up. Julian bled, the proof is on his shirt, but it was only an instant if he was healed by the time he taped himself. I take in a deep breath and let it out. Maybe he bled for a minute at the most? That’s all the time that really passed between Aria’s drunken stabbing and the EMT showing up.
“What the fuck is going on?” I whisper. I don’t know what to do. Yes, Julian is miraculously healed, but hesavedme. If he hadn’t stepped in, I’d be in the hospital. I wasn’t fast enough to react when she lunged at me. Multiple stab wounds might even have put me in the ground.And it’s not the first time he saved you, my idiot brain reminds me. I lift a shaking hand and touch my face. He fixed me. Healed me. Whatever he did to me wasn’t normal, I knew that somewhere deep down but now seeing him completely healed, I understand it.
How did he heal me? Did he change me?
I rock back on my heels with a ragged breath and look up at the stars. A gust of wind blows my hair in my face and my vision blurs from the cold air. The stars overhead lose shape, the pinpricks of light get swallowed up by each other until I can’t make sense of the sky.
“What is he?” I ask the heavens like the stars might answer back. Nothing comes though, it’s just the sound of the wind in my ears and the night. Even if there was some celestial being capable of answering me, they wouldn’t. I know that. I’m cursed.
I’m a killer.
If anyone would answer me, they’re not in the heavens. Then how is Julian here when he seems like an angel? I don’t even mean it in the metaphorical way either. He’s completely healed. He could be an angel, couldn’t he?
I put a hand down on the ground beside me and dig my fingers into the dewey grass. I’m half tempted to ask my question again but this time to the earth. I know my place. If there was any cosmic intervention coming on my behalf it would come from below. I’ve become every bit the monster Vesper Point has made me out to be. Maybe that’s because they’re all monsters too. How could they turn on me the way they had when that fucking man had come into my home?
He’d destroyed my only connection to home, to family. He tried to take that away from me. He deserved exactly what happened to him. And maybe I wouldn’t be like this if everyone hadn’t abandoned me. They were all too happy to see me fall off the pedestal this stupid town had put me on and me like an idiot, I stayed. I stayed because I had nowhere to go, is the lie I told myself. There were plenty of options for me to leave town after everything.
The truth is, I was too scared to leave. Too terrified of who I really was and leaving would mean finding out so I stayed like a coward and now here I fucking am, on the ground wondering if the first person to treat me kindly is a goddamned angel. I have to be losing my damn mind.
