A Trail of Echoes (4 page)

A
fter the noises
disappeared a few minutes later, I was surrounded again by the sound of water lapping against the boat.

My breathing was quick and shallow as the prickling in my arm began to subside. Looking down at the skin around the etching, I could’ve sworn that it was glowing with a slight tinge of red.

My hands were trembling.

I’d been alarmed when Ben had told me about it, but experiencing it for myself was an entirely different matter.

I’d thought that perhaps he was just suffering from trauma. But what was the likelihood of me experiencing exactly the same symptoms?

Something else was at work here, and the unknown was terrifying.

Clutching the blanket close to me, I sat next to Ben as he navigated the boat. After a couple of hours, he put it on autopilot and we both went to sit beneath a small shelter on the deck.

By now we had exhausted the topic of what could be happening to us, so I changed the subject.

“So, um, what’s it like in The Shade?” I asked, trying to fix my mind on more positive things.

Ben cleared his throat. “Dark. It’s forever night there.”

I stared at him. “Seriously?”

“Yes, we have witches who’ve cast a spell on the island—a spell that also makes it invisible to everyone.”

“A-and it’s full of vampires?”

“Vampires, werewolves, some witches—even an ogre.”

“An ogre?”

“As I said, it’s a refuge for supernaturals.”

Still taking in his words, I looked down at my feet, drawing my knees up to my chest and holding them tight against me.

I wondered if someone there really would be able to cure me. Whether I would be able to return to my family without fear of being hunted down. Whether I could ever live a normal life again, or if that had been snatched from me forever.

Ben shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Hunger pangs,” he said, rolling his eyes. “The smell of all those humans really brought my appetite to the surface.”

I’d expected that the amount of blood he’d consumed would last much longer. If he was feeling hungry now, when we had only just started out on our journey, God knew what state he would be in when we arrived.

“How will you manage?” I asked.

“I’ll figure something out,” he said grimly.

I stood up, keeping the blanket around me, and walked out from under the shelter and into the sun.

I faced directly toward it, its rays upon my skin. I closed my eyes and relished the warmth. I didn’t feel pain from the sun as vampires did. But perhaps I would if I stayed in it long enough.

I walked to the edge of the boat and leaned my back against the railing, soaking up the sun from this angle while Ben remained in the shade.

I found myself stealing glances at him from across the deck, averting my gaze each time I sensed that he was about to look my way.

The sky began to darken. I looked upward to see a cloud had formed in what had previously been a blue sky. It blocked out the sun and cast a shadow over the boat and the surrounding waters.

I felt a drop of rain fall upon my cheek. The water was cool, and oddly thick. I brushed it aside with the back of my hand.

“Wha—What is that?” Ben said, staring at me.

“What?”

He shot to his feet and closed the distance between us. He was gazing down at me, a look of disbelief in his eyes. His thumb brushed against my skin where the drop had fallen, and when he lifted it again, it was tinged with red.

I looked down at the back of my hand.

Also stained with red.

I gaped up at the sky, at the cloud above, as droplets fell upon us more rapidly, until a shower of the thick red liquid pounded against the deck.

Blood.

It’s raining blood.

E
ven as I
stared at the blood in horror, my body ached to taste it.

I shook myself, trying to rein in my bloodlust, ashamed that I could be so under its control even at a time like this.

What is happening?

I kept asking myself the question as I stared up at the cloud, squinting through the droplets of blood.

And then I heard it.

A voice, male or female I didn’t know. It was too soft, too echoing, to tell.

It started out quiet, so quiet that I could barely understand what it was saying. Then it grew louder and louder, until it was echoing in my ears so loudly that the words couldn’t be mistaken:

“Come back, Benjamin Novak.”

My name. How does it know my name?

The resounding voice repeated again and again in some kind of sinister chant. I clutched my ears, as if that would make any difference.

“We know who you are, and we know what you want.”

We? Who’s we?

I staggered to the edge of the ship, clutching the sides and staring up at the sky, blood now streaming down my face.

Despite my mind being preoccupied, my body was aching for the blood. I reached up to my face, touching the blood, and then moved to taste it.

Human blood.

It’s raining human blood.

“Come back, Benjamin Novak…”

Suddenly the tattoo seared severely—more severely than I remembered experiencing before. My legs gave way beneath me and I fell to the deck, crouched on all fours as I clenched my jaw against the pain.

By my side, River crouched down and touched my shoulder.

I was so consumed by the burning, I could barely see. Then I felt a different type of sensation—a burning not just in my upper arm, but the rest of my body too.

River tugged on me.

“Ben, you need to get out of the sun.”

The sun. It had broken through the sky.

The blood stopped. The cloud vanished.

The pain in my tattoo ebbing away, I crawled toward the shelter.

“What’s wrong?” River asked, looking at me worriedly.

Still recovering, all I could manage to reply was:

“We need to get you to The Shade.”

C
aleb
and I sat on the steps of our mountain cabin, admiring the magnificent view of the island. The ocean in the distance shimmered beneath pale moonlight and a cool breeze rustled the leaves of the redwoods. We planned to move into a new penthouse soon, near the Residences with the other vampires, but for now we were still enjoying this mountain location.

Aside from the strange gray ships moored outside the boundary, things in The Shade had been peaceful since our wedding and the departure of the dragon prince. I wasn’t going to complain. We had all had enough drama recently.

I took a sip from my mug of hot chocolate, while Caleb took the last draught from his glass of blood. We sat in silence, content with each other’s presence.

I glanced down at the beautiful ring on my finger. It was still bizarre to think that I was married.

Married
.

I looked sideways at my new husband. His eyes looked slightly glazed as he looked out toward the ocean in the distance.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked softly, leaning in and resting my head against his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around me, his hand on my thigh as he pulled me closer toward him.

“A lot of things.” He averted his eyes away from the ocean and looked down at me, a mischievous glint in his gaze. “One of them being… How much longer do I have to wait for you to finish that hot chocolate so I can take you to bed?”

His gaze gave me butterflies. He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off me since we’d exchanged vows. While previously he had been restrained, he was certainly making up for it now… which sure suited me.

I sloshed the liquid in the cup. It had cooled by now. I swallowed the last two mouthfuls within the space of a few seconds, then showed him the empty cup. “No more need to wonder about that,” I said, giving him a sultry look.

His hands reaching around my back and beneath my knees, he swept me up into his arms and carried me back into the cabin. Closing the door behind us, he headed straight for the bedroom and placed me down in the center of the bed. I was expecting him to begin removing his shirt, but instead he paused, giving me a thoughtful look.

“Something else I was thinking about was… our honeymoon,” he said.

I raised a brow, moving back toward the headboard and sitting upright. “Oh?”

“I know you said that you don’t mind waiting for now, since I’m a vampire and traveling anywhere is going to be difficult. But it doesn’t have to be.” He reached for the nearby table and slid open the top drawer. He pulled out a sheet of paper filled with sketches and various mathematical notes. It all looked rather complicated, but I focused on the diagram in the center of the paper as he sat next to me and spread the sheet out on the mattress. It was a fairly large boat, about twenty-five feet long and eighteen feet wide according to the notes, and a shelter of some sort covered the entire deck.

“What are you suggesting exactly?” I asked.

“You’ve never visited New Zealand, have you?”

My pulse quickened in excitement just at the thought. “No.”

“Then how about we go on a little tour, stopping by some of the most remote islands in the Pacific Ocean, and make our destination New Zealand?” His brown eyes warmed as he watched my reaction. “This boat is something that I’ve been working on. Ibrahim would help me to equip it with an exceptionally powerful engine. If it all comes out right, we could stay in the boat by day and at night explore the land.”

I couldn’t nod more enthusiastically, but there were some things that bothered me about the plan.

He seemed to read my mind and answered my first objection before I even asked it. “Yes, we could just take a submarine, and that way we’d be hidden away from the sun… But we will be spending all the daylight hours on the boat, and we will likely be gone for weeks—there’s only so long you can feel comfortable trapped within the hull of a submarine. We’d both be craving the open sea air.”

My stomach churned a little. “But what about the hunters?”

“We’ll ask Corrine to place a spell over the boat.”

“That’s while we are at sea, but what about night time, when we reach land?”

“Rose, the places I have in mind to take you to… I doubt we will meet any hunters there. We’ll stick to the remote areas and avoid people.”

I paused, still uncertain. But the confidence in his expression soon convinced me.

“So”—he moved the plan of the boat aside and leaned in closer to me, his mouth a few inches away from mine—“what do you say, Mrs. Achilles?”

He placed his hands on either side of my hips, brushing gently against me with his thumbs.

A smile spread across my face. Caleb knew how to melt me.

“Sail away with me, Captain.”

W
hen I broke
the news to my parents about our plan for a honeymoon, they both voiced worries similar to mine about Caleb being a vampire and the threat of the hunters. I let Caleb reassure them in the same way that he had done with me. My father was especially concerned about the hunters because he had been keeping watch on them near the shore. Caleb’s words seemed to satisfy my parents for the most part, although my father still seemed tense. I didn’t like him to be worried, but I couldn’t help but feel warmed on witnessing how genuinely he cared about Caleb’s safety. Not so long ago, my father had believed him to be a traitor and tried to kill him.

Now that Caleb and I had made this plan, we didn’t want to delay. Caleb finished the boat quickly with the help of Ibrahim, while I took on the task of packing everything I could think of that we might need. Caleb wasn’t sure how long it might take us to get to New Zealand, and of course it depended on so many things—how long we decided to spend on each island we stopped at, how rough the weather was, whether we just got lost in each other’s eyes in the middle of the ocean for a few days…

The night of our planned departure soon arrived. My parents came early that evening to the cabin, and helped us carry all our baggage to the boat.

When I arrived at the end of the jetty, it was the first time that I had seen the boat completed. It was gorgeous. The covering over the wide deck Caleb had created to give shelter from the sun was made of a dark teak wood, and there was a long sofa in the center with a walnut coffee table, directly in front of the small control room. Beneath the deck were all the amenities we might need—a bedroom with a large window of tinted glass that gave a stunning view of the ocean, an en suite bathroom, a small living room and a storage room equipped with enough supplies to last a month in case of an emergency.

Corrine, Ibrahim, my grandfather, Vivienne and Xavier were waiting for us on the deck. I hugged them each one by one.

“The invisibility and protective spells we’ve placed over the boat will come into play as soon as you leave The Shade’s boundary,” Ibrahim said.

“You two be careful,” Vivienne murmured, worry in her eyes.

“We will,” Caleb said, making his way with a large suitcase toward the staircase leading down to the lower deck.

My parents and I followed him, carrying all the luggage downstairs before returning to say one final goodbye. My mother pulled me close and kissed my cheek.

“Enjoy yourself, sweetheart,” she said, squeezing me tight. “And please… try to stay out of trouble.”

“We won’t be going anywhere where there’s trouble.” I chuckled, kissing her back.

I drew away from my mother and wrapped my arms around my father. His hug lifted my feet off the ground.

“Goodbye, darling,” he said. “Your mother and I will miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too,” I said, pressing my warm cheek against his.

Then my parents said goodbye to Caleb and stepped back onto the jetty with Vivienne, Xavier, Corrine, Ibrahim, my grandfather and a crowd of people who’d just gathered.

Caleb and I were due to leave now, but we stepped off the boat to say goodbye to the rest of them. Micah was standing—in his wolf form—near the front with his girlfriend, Kira.

“Have a good one,” he growled, butting Caleb in the side with his head.

Then he nuzzled my leg.

“Bye, Micah.” I ran my fingers through the fur on his neck and gave him a pat.

Then we spent the next ten minutes saying goodbye to Claudia, Yuri, Anna, Kyle, Griffin, his parents, half a dozen of my girlfriends, and finally, just as we were about to head back toward the boat, I noticed that at the back of the crowd, Jeriad was standing with his girl of choice, Sylvia.

Leaving Caleb, I walked toward the shifter. I was surprised to see him present. I’d hardly seen any of the dragons since my wedding. It was as if they were avoiding me.

He looked at me steadily as I approached.

“Hi, Jeriad,” I said, looking from him to Sylvia, whose arm was looped through his.

“I wish you a safe journey,” he said, his voice deep and rumbling.

“Thanks,” I replied, eyeing him closely. I was about to ask how he and his companions had been, but he didn’t give me a chance. Taking Sylvia by the waist, he walked off with her into the woods.

I looked over at Caleb. He raised a brow. I shrugged and made my way back over to him.

“Not sure what’s going on with those dragons,” I muttered, sliding my hand into his.

We said our final goodbyes and then, clutching the bag of chocolate bunnies Griffin had given me for the journey, I boarded the boat with Caleb. He headed to the control room, while I remained at the stern of the boat, waving and blowing kisses as Caleb navigated the ship to the boundary. As the figures on the beach grew tiny, I joined my husband. I took a seat by his side and looked at him.

His eyes were fixed forward in concentration. I followed his gaze, then spotted the hunters’ gray ships surrounding our island.

“Do you think they’ll detect us?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Caleb replied. “But it doesn’t matter too much. As long as none of them follow us.”

“Yeah… That wouldn’t make for such a relaxing trip.”

Even though I knew we were safe within the witch’s spell, my palms still grew sweaty as Caleb navigated the boat beyond the boundary. He moved slowly at first, skirting close to the boundary as he kept watch on the ships, and then he began speeding us away along the choppy waves, toward the wide-open waters.

Once we had traveled miles and the ships were nothing but dots in the distance, I was able to breathe more easily.

After two hours, Caleb was confident enough to put the boat on autopilot. He stood up and looked down at me, a small smile curving his lips. Taking my hand, he led me out of the control room and onto the moonlit deck. I breathed in the fresh salt air and looked around at the endless expanse of water, relishing the cool wind against my skin. The star-strewn sky was breathtaking. We walked to the front of the boat and stood listening to the rolling waves.

He stood behind me and his mouth found the back of my neck. He trailed kisses along my skin, which heated up beneath his touch. I bent my head backward so he could claim my lips. I felt his body tense against me. The next thing I knew, he was pulling me across the deck, down the staircase and into our bedroom. We took turns undressing each other, and then made love between the silk sheets.

Each time Caleb had slept with me since our wedding had been magic, but there was something about being on a boat again that made that night even more exhilarating. Our first time had been on a boat. That beautiful boat he had constructed for my birthday…

I’d been under the impression that the first time was always awkward, but it hadn’t felt like that with Caleb. He’d taken me as he’d said he would. He’d made me feel owned, possessed, cherished, and he’d left no room for doubt or uncertainty.

Being so intimate with a vampire, I’d expected to feel more pain. But except for a dull ache between my thighs, I had barely felt discomfort. I wondered if my body was tougher than that of a regular human, or, perhaps more likely, the pleasure I found in Caleb’s arms was too overpowering to feel much else.

Caleb often tensed up, and I could sense what a struggle it still was for him to reel in his craving for my blood. But he did. His fangs hadn’t yet broken my skin. There were times, in the heat of his passion, when he seemed to forget his strength, but I was so used to Caleb being gentle around me that, if I was honest with myself, I relished those moments of roughness and reveled in his abandon.

Hours passed, and by the time Caleb and I reached our climax again, morning had arrived.

I lay breathless against him, our legs still intertwined. He ran a broad hand down my back as his lips pressed against mine.

“You’re on fire,” he whispered, pulling me flush against his cool body.

“Now you know why I married you,” I breathed back. “I needed a portable A/C unit.”

His chest vibrated as he chuckled.

I imagined that had he been a human, I would be feeling far too hot to be so close to him right now. But Caleb being a vampire meant that there was rarely a time when I didn’t cherish his embrace.

I blew out a sigh and nestled my head against his chest. Listening to the beating of his heart, I looked out of the tinted window at the sun’s first rays reflecting in the waves.

The question that Claudia had asked me during her and Yuri’s welcome-home dinner played in my mind.

“Are you going to turn into a vampire, Rose?”

It was a question that had been at the back of my mind ever since Caleb had proposed to me. Of course, I’d always expected that I would turn as soon as my parents allowed it—but being married to a vampire made the issue more pressing.

There wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t worry about Ben. None of us had any idea of when he would return. Or even if he would ever return. I couldn’t lie to myself and pretend that question hadn’t passed through my head, although I tried not to entertain the thought.

In the meantime, it was frustrating not knowing what was to become of my future. I didn’t want to risk turning and becoming the same crazed bloodsucker my brother had woken up as. I couldn’t become a risk to our people like he was.

And yet I felt that I had no choice but to turn into a vampire. My whole family were vampires now—except my father, although he would turn back into one soon. And most of my closest friends were supernaturals. Even if Caleb was willing to turn into a human for me, which I knew he was, I just couldn’t imagine living my life as a mortal and leaving everyone behind.

No. I had to turn into a vampire. And we had to find a way to solve my brother’s problem, not run away from it.

I chewed on my lower lip.

“What’s wrong?” Caleb asked, frowning as he looked down at me.

“What if I don’t turn out like my brother?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“What if Ben turned out the way he did not because of our blood? What if it’s something unique to him?”

“You’re twins. What makes you think that could be the case?”

“I’m not sure. I’m just thinking that all this time we’ve been assuming there is a danger of me turning out like him. But what if we’re assuming wrong?”

Caleb remained staring at me, waiting for me to continue. Detaching myself from him, I rolled onto my back and gazed up at the ceiling. “When Ben and I were newborns, we got separated. He was taken to Aviary… by none other than Kiev. I just wonder if the Hawks could’ve done something to him that even Kiev wasn’t aware of. Or if the atmosphere affected him somehow. I already mentioned the idea to my parents, but of course, there is no way that we would know for certain… unless you tried turning me.”

Caleb sat upright. I could see from the expression on his face that he didn’t like where I was going with this. But I continued all the same. “If you tried turning me, one of two things would happen. I could turn out exactly like my brother, or I could turn into a normal vampire. If it was the former, we’d know for sure that there’s something strange about our blood that causes this reaction, and we could eliminate the Aviary theory. But if I turned out all right… we’d be a step closer to understanding what’s wrong with my brother, however small a step that might be.”

“Why don’t we save this talk of turning for when we return from our honeymoon? We’ll have plenty of time to discuss this then with your parents and family.”

I bit my lip. “The thing is… if we’re going to try this, it would make sense to do it while we are away from The Shade, away from our humans, floating on a boat where you can control me…”

Caleb shot to his feet, wrapping a sheet around his waist. He stared down at me incredulously. “Is this supposed to be a joke?”

I shook my head.

He breathed out sharply. “What if you turned out exactly like him? Then what?”

“Then we’d have the opportunity to experiment on me, and figure out how to make me normal.”

He looked at me in disbelief. “Rose, this is supposed to be a honeymoon. Honeymoon. Do you know what that word means? I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean. A crazy, dangerous experiment in which neither of us understand what the hell we are doing and which could end up with you turning into a rampaging bloodsucker for all eternity.”

Despite the seriousness of the subject, I couldn’t help but find amusement in Caleb’s exasperation.

“If things got really, really bad,” I said, “we could return to The Shade and I could just take the cure.”

Caleb scoffed. “‘Just take the cure.’ You speak of it like it’s popping a pill. You have no idea how painful it is.”

“I do have an idea. My parents told me how much it hurts.” I got up from the bed and walked over to him. Reaching for his hands, I held them gently and stopped him pacing.

He looked down at me, concern filling his eyes. “But just like turning into a vampire,” he said, “it doesn’t matter how much people have told you about the experience. There’s no way to prepare for the agony.”

“Maybe, Caleb,” I replied softly. “But please understand… I need to try this, for my brother’s sake and mine.” I reached up to kiss his jawline. “And for our peace of mind.”

He wet his lower lip. “And what about our children?” he asked, his brown eyes boring into mine. “Say for the sake of argument the turning did go fine, then what? If we want children, I would have to become a human in a few years anyway. What’s the point in your becoming a vampire now when you would have to turn back soon? You’d be putting yourself through an unnecessary amount of pain—and risk.”

“Because I don’t want to wait that long. I’m fed up with living in uncertainty about our future and about my brother. I just want to at least do what’s within our power to try to understand the situation.”

Caleb turned his back on me and faced the window, leaning an arm against the frame. I remained in my spot a few feet away from him and didn’t say a word. I needed to let him think.

When he finally turned back around to face me, I was relieved to see a look of resolve in his eyes.