A Dark Night (Book One of The Grandor Descendant series) (26 page)

Chapter 1
6- Finally

“Do you have a death wish?” Ragon asked Ari, when they were alone in the car together.

Cambridge drove behind them in Clyde’s car, with Larissa, Sandra and Thomas for passengers
, while Clyde followed the coven on foot, ensuring that the group were not followed. Only Sameth remained behind at the party, insisting someone should find out what had happened to Kiara. 

“She told me what happened to my parents?” Ari said flatly. “Why?”

The mystery of how she had managed to get away from Kiara was completely irrelevant to her. All Ari cared about was finding out what had happened to her when she had been a baby. Ragon knew the answers to her questions; it had been he who had saved her, but he had kept this from her… so the question was why?

“I don’t know why she ki
lled your parents-” Ragon began to say, but Ari cut him off.

“No. That’s not the quest
ion. The question is why
you
didn’t tell me?”

“I wanted to,” he
said, his eyes searching the black bitchermen road before sighing loudly.  

“But you didn’t. I don’t h
ave a death wish. I had to know; I needed to know. You’re a vampire. I get that you don’t care about anything living, but these were my parents. And because of Kiara I missed out on a childhood; she took that from me.” 

“I tried to tell you,” Ragon confessed, “but every time I went to…
I didn’t want you to hate me.”

“Hate you
… for saving me?” Ari asked incredulously, unable to make sense of Ragon’s lame justification.

“
Hate me because the reason Kiara killed your parents was so she could lure me back to her,” Ragon explained sadly. “If it weren’t for me you would have a family.”

“She didn’t take me to lure you back; she told me that
she wanted me dead,” said Ari. “When did you try to tell me?”

“In
the alley way after-” he began, but Ari cut him off once again.

“
-so that’s what you meant the first time you went hunting with me at that club, when I asked you why you choose me. That’s when you should have told me,” she said flatly.

“You weren’t special because Kiara had taken you; you were special because I wanted to save you. You were crying when
I took you from her, screaming, and the moment I held you in my arms, you quietened. I felt you fall asleep as I raced you away from her, and for the first time in many, many years, I felt something. There you were this bundle of life, not recoiling away from me, not shivering at my touch, and you made me feel… alive; like it was ok for me to live again. You don’t know how hard it was for me to let you go, to give you to the orphanage. But I knew I couldn’t look after you, or give you a proper childhood. I watched you go inside and unable to look away, I watched you grow up. I was determined to keep you safe and so I kept you always in my sight; it was selfish, but I needed you… needed to know that you would be ok,” said Ragon.

Ar
i listened to him intently as he recanted the missing pieces of her life’s story.

As soon as the car stopped, Ari jumped out. Sandra was besides her in a flash, and soon Clyde ran up to her also. They were looking at her with concern. One of her angel wings had been crushed by the way she had sat in the car, and it hung down low, giving her the appearance of a wounded bird. Ari was not oblivious to the way the rest of the coven looked at her, but she wasn’t in the mood to talk to any of them. When Ragon opened the front door a few moments later, she moved straight inside, heard loud music and gasped.

In the living room was Patrick dressed as a zombie sailor, and Ryder, wearing a queen of hearts costume. They were playing twister, their arms and legs wrapped intricately around each other, placed on various shades of coloured circles.

“What the hell?”
Ari said.

“What?”
asked Patrick, looking up at her in surprise, “I told you that I was ordering in; did I miss something?”

It was all too much. Ari flung her
diamonte headpiece onto the floor and ran for her room, with Ragon following quickly behind. She did not collapse as she might have wanted to, but got down onto her hands and knees and began groping underneath her bed for something. She heard her bedroom door open behind her, but did not stop until she had found what she was looking for. When she turned around, Ragon was staring at her, his wide eyes looking in horror from Ari and down to the small wooden box that she was carrying.

“You wrote this?”
she asked, opening the box and thrusting the crumpled piece of paper into his hands.

Ragon didn’t need to look at the small hand written note in her trembling hands
, to know what it was. Ari had seen how he had looked away from the piece of paper that she had spent every night re-reading as she went to bed. For a moment she clung to it desperately then she drew in a deep harsh breath and let it fall from her hand, as she re-sited the words that she knew by heart:

“
To the sisters of the Grace Valley Orphanage, I found this little girl dumped outside of the Prince Charles Hospital on February the 2
nd
. Please ensure that she is cared for. You will be able to do a better job than I am capable of…”
recited Ari, but before she could finish the note, Ragon had picked it up from where it had fallen, and without looking at it either, locked eyes with Ari and spoke.

“
What happened to her family I cannot guess, but surely they do not want her if they left her in such a way. She was wrapped in this blanket and there was a hospital bracelet on her arm that said: ‘Ariana Sol. I trust you will look after her,”
he said.

Ari could not look Ragon in the eyes.
Everything she thought she knew about herself was a lie.

“I have been protecting you for a long time,”
he said. “I’m sorry.”

Ari blinked back more tears but shook her head. She didn’t know what to say
or do.

“If there was some way that I could have changed all of this, been there a few moments earlier to save your parents from Kiara... I
would have done anything to change what happened that night,” he said.

Listening to Ragon’s words
bought more tears to her eyes. She knew why he hadn’t told her, even understood, but it didn’t change the fact that for more than twenty years she had wondered what had happened to her parents, and now, tonight, she knew.

“I should have realised that you needed to know. And tonight you almost died trying to find out. I won’t ever keep anyt
hing from you again,” he added.

Ari looked up
at him gingerly.

“You have said that to me before,” she said, just as Ragon reached for her hand and directed her to the bedroom door.

“I need to show you something. You need to understand,” he said, pulling her with him as he raced down the hallway and pushed open the hidden door that would take them to his library.

Ragon finally released her once they were inside, quickly closing the door behind them and then racing up the stairs to his desk. Ari was just about to ask what the hell was going on, when Ragon reappeared with several canvases in his arms.

“
I didn’t keep it from you because I don’t care… I kept it from you because I do,” he said, showing her one of the canvases. “When you asked me why I went to library, what I was sketching… it was you- it’s always been you.”

Ari looked down just as Ragon held out one of the canvases for her. It was an enormous black and white drawing, one which she hadn’t notice the last time sh
e had been in the library. The sketch was of an old Victorian building, in front of which a small girl sat alone on a child’s swing set. Ari didn’t need to see the date below which told her Ragon had drawn it in 1990, nor the familiar high arches of the Grace Valley Orphanage; she knew exactly who the four year old girl in the painting was; it was her. She remembered the old rusty playground from her childhood.

Next Ragon held out a smaller sketch, one with a more recent image of Ari. Ari stared at the smudged charcoal etch and blinked in disbelief. It was a picture of Ari sitting behind a desk at the University of Brisbane. Her head was down and she was studying, her desk piled high with many veterinary textbooks.

“You asked me once what I was doing at the library,” he said, placing the canvases against the wall as he reached to trace his hand down her cheek. “I was making sure you were alright. All these years I’ve watched you, hoped for you, cried with you, but now I see that all I have done is bought you more pain. Maybe it is time that I let you go; let you have a chance to live a normal life. I can take you far away; hide you from all of this…” Suddenly his hand was in hers and he drew it to his mouth, kissing it once on the palm before locking eyes with her, his lips paused over the vein in her wrist. “I can make you forget, make you forget all of this; it could be just as it was before you met me. All the hurt gone, all the pain forgotten,” he whispered feverishly.

The moment he sai
d this, Ari’s heart had hastened in fear. Since first Ragon had rescued her, Ari had thought that eventually she would be able to return to her mundane existence. But after everything that she had found out tonight, she knew that she would never be able to settle down and have a normal life. Everything had changed, and she couldn’t go back- she didn’t want to.

Q
uickly Ari pulled her hand away from Ragon, fearful that he would disassociate her. She had to decide right here and right now; was she going to forgive Ragon for keeping her past a secret from her, or was she going to thank him for giving her a future? In truth she had already decided.

“What happened
wasn’t your fault. You saved me; I know you care for me,” she said, and she knew the moment these words left her lips, that she meant them. “I love you.”

It took all her strength to say these
last three words. But loving Ragon was not an option, it simply was. She was too far gone to turn back, and all she could do was hope and pray that this time, when she exposed her heart, Ragon would not break it.  

“I’ve loved you since I first saved you,”
he replied, reaching down and lifting her into his arms. “But I fell in love with you when you came into my life a few months ago.”

Ari let him carry her up the spiral staircase and settle her onto his desk. She sat facing him, her large angel wings jutting out behind her. With one hand he began wiping her tears away. But the moment Ragon had spoken, she had stopped crying, and soon there were no more tears for Ragon to brush away. For a moment the pair remained locked in each other’s eyes, but then Ragon lent towards her and kissed her hungrily, cupping her cheeks with both his hands.

Too soon
Ragon pulled away.

“Wait,” he said, moving to look Ari in the eyes
again, “perhaps tonight is not the night; you’ve been through so much…” he began, but Ari pulled him back to her and kissed him, silencing his worries.

She heard him sigh and then give in
, reaching quickly for her large angel wings and gently pulling them away from her shoulders. The black feathered wings fell softly to the floor, and Ragon moved to undo her dress. Ari mimicked his actions, reaching for his shirt and pulling it up over his head in one quick motion. His perfect stomach was revealed and she bent down to kiss along the creases of his muscles, but Ragon pulled her face back towards him and recommenced kissing her. As he did so, he forced her dress down past her stomach, so that it crumpled around her thighs. After that he slipped his fingers under her bra straps and let them fall so that they were loose half way down her arm. Releasing Ragon’s hair, Ari reached behind her back and unclasped her bra, letting it fall to the floor so as to join her wings.

Fumbling for Ragon’s pants, Ari tried to undo
them, but her hands were shaking from the adrenaline and after a few moments Ragon smiled. Pausing in kissing her, he reached down to help her. Ari looked up blushing, feeling something hard pressed low against her stomach. Instantly Ragon’s hands were back on her, tracing the contours of her body as he lowered her so that she was lying down on his desk.

Still pressed close to her, Ragon
let one of his hands slip from her face, past her breasts and down to her legs. For a moment he paused along the inside of her thigh, but then continued to trace inwards, until his fingers reached their target. Ari let out a small moan next to his ear, and opened her mouth in ecstasy.

“I can hear your heart pumping harder and harder
; it’s shouting at me,” he whispered, “I wonder…” he mused, smiling hopefully as he gently rubbed her clit, and listened for the increased heart rate, smiling wickedly to himself as soon as it came.

Ari couldn’t
help it, she bit down hard on his ear and in response, Ragon pulled on her hair, forcing her head back and exposing her neck. Instantly he leaned close and interchanged between kissing and biting at his leisure, careful never to break Ari’s skin. Soon Ari’s gasps of pleasure became too much for him and he suddenly reached for her waist, gently lifting her up off the desk, so as to force her out of the remaining half of her black dress and her underwear. Ari blushed when she realised that they were both naked.