David covered the belly of his aunt and sat up suddenly, his ears pricked, his shoulders tense, eyes wide. Then, he launched to his feet and extended his hand toward the door. “Jason. Don’t come in!”
A boy, an exact copy of David, stopped dead in the doorway—his boisterous smile slipping away at the sight of his blood-covered brother.
“Get Uncle, Jason. Get Uncle!” David yelled his command, but Jason was already gone. Swift and graceful, he tore down the street, his lanky limbs blurring with speed until he disappeared from David’s sight.
David turned back to his aunt and fell to his knees, weeping. “I’m so sorry, Aunty. I should...I should have been here—” His body submitted to grief, but stopped suddenly as the deathly figure beneath him groaned. “Aunty!” He held his breath. “Aunty!”
“Da-v-id—” She moved her hand to reach for him, her soft gaze suddenly slipping past him to a white look of terror. Like a tidal wave preparing itself for slaughter, the silence drew in around them, then cracked apart, like a shattering vile of terror; the woman clutched her belly and rolled upward, screeching for all the pain Hell had summoned.
“Aunty? What can I do?” The boy’s voice trembled with helplessness. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
“Save him! Save my baby!” She rolled away, covering her stomach in a tight, protective embrace.
The memory faded out to white dots around the edges of the film, and the birds in the tree above us sang a melody I had no mind for a moment ago, but was completely aware of.
I lifted my eyelids, blinking against the grey day, and turned my head to look at David—the grown up David. “You found her?”
“I delivered her baby.”
I covered my mouth. “But you were just a child. How did you do that?”
He swallowed a hard lump. “I was simply there to hold her as she was born. I did little else, and there was nothing I could do to help my aunt.” His fists clenched. “No one came to the sound of her screaming. No one called for a doctor. She was a woman scorned for her sins, and they let her die like a dog.” His lip stiffened and anger flooded his voice, a kind of anger I’d never, ever seen in him. “I wrapped the child in my jacket and laid in my aunt’s arms until nightfall.
“By the time I heard footsteps on the porch outside, I was numb—completely numb. I simply stood, held the baby out to my uncle as he burst through the door, and told him, “I lost her.”
“Arthur took the child from my arms and, though I knew nothing of the world, I saw a piece of his soul die then; he closed her eyelids and covered her face delicately with my jacket.
“I will never truly understand what my uncle lost that night and, at the time, I thought nothing of the fact that he fell to the floor beside Arietta, with his child crushed against his chest, and laid there until the dawn. Only now do I see it for the madness it stirred within him.”
“Did he ever recover?”
“Can someone recover from that?” David asked rhetorically. “He went on with normal life, like any wise vampire on the World Council would, but he never spoke of her. Even now, the mention of children sends his eyes soulless.” David reached over and wiped a warm tear from my cheek, then smiled softly. “The police came; they took Victor and charged him with aggravated assault. He was jailed for a month, then released with a warning, since the evidence was inconclusive.”
“That’s it? He killed her and he got a month?” I almost rocketed forward in protest.
David nodded and clapped his hands together, letting his elbows fall loosely over his knees. “And life went on. Uncle Arthur left town for a while, promising to return when he had made arrangements for Jason and I.” He brushed his palm across the headstone behind him and nodded toward it. “We buried her on a warm spring day, with her baby in her arms, where she will lay evermore.”
“David, that’s so sad,” I whispered, feeling the rise of little bumps over my cold skin.
“Hers has been a loss I have never moved past.” He inclined his head to his position on her grave. “And this is where I’ll sit one day, feeling the grief for another—with no hope of ever holding her again. Only…the name will read a different story; it will be one of true love, lost tragically to eternal sadness.” He looked down at the ground. “For me, Ara, your death will be only but a breath away; a second in time and you will be gone. You have your whole life ahead of you, but for a vampire...it’s nothing but a heartbeat.”
“I’m sorry, David. I wish with all of my heart it were different.”
“I know. But you will never feel the pain of it as I will.” He sniffed once, nodded, then looked at me. “When you die, I will never see you again. Can you comprehend what that feels like for me?”
His words were almost enough to make me change my mind in that breath—to save him from this horrible reality. It all just seemed so hopeless.
“Come on.” He stood in front of me, his hand outstretched. “I heard the ogre complaining about ten minutes ago. Let’s get some food.”
“Okay.” Gravity bequeathed me with excess weight as I rose to my feet and followed David, stealing a glance back to the hill where Arietta would stay. Once, she had been promised immortality and now, she was in the ground—never to know her child’s name. I could see myself sitting up there beside her; my feet led me away, but my heart remained where, one day, my body would return to meet it. And that idea scared me to the point of shaking—the idea of death. It never used to, but seeing those graves painted the truth on a canvas of reality—textured in rough strokes of dark grey, blue, and black.
It was real. Death was real, and it was coming for me—a little closer every day.
But it was normal—the way things were supposed to be.
Sitting by those graves made me see how deep David’s pain would go. He would lose me one day, and I wasn’t sure I could live with the fact that he’d mourn me forever. It felt wrong, like I was being selfish. But I couldn’t lose the hope of seeing Mum and Harry again, or just switch off the desire to have a child, and I wouldn’t give away the magic of life for an eternity of blood—even if that same fate meant saving David from eternal agony.
Emily cursed, fumbling with the tray, nearly dropping the whole thing as she placed it on the counter in front of our designated lane at the bowl. She straightened the cups, then held up the list of orders. “Okay, fries and shake?”