Aria and Will (17 page)

It was the first time I slept with her in my
arms—the first of many.

Chapter 19

Coming home alone that morning and going to bed without
having the faintest idea whether Will would join her or not had been very
difficult for Aria. If she had not been so exhausted, she would not have
managed to sleep at all. Even when she did fall asleep, part of her remained on
alert, as she had the last few days whenever she caught some rest on the edge
of the battlefield. Only when Will joined her did she truly start to dream.

She woke up a few hours later, feeling more rested
than she had been in a long time. As slowly as she could, she turned in Will’s
embrace to face him. For a little while, she let herself drift, awake yet
clinging to her fading dreams, her eyes open just enough to assure herself that
Will was truly next to her. His face seemed more relaxed in sleep than she had
ever seen him before. She resisted as long as she could, but eventually she had
to touch him, even if she ended up waking him—or maybe for that very purpose.

With just the tips of her fingers, she traced his
eyebrows, then caressed his cheek. She slid down his neck, then over the fabric
of his t-shirt, her hand coming to rest in the center of his chest. A stray
thought floated through her mind, and she wondered, for a second or two, what
it would have been like to feel his heart beat against her hand. She knew
nothing of his human life; she had never asked. Would he answer if she did?

His eyelids finally fluttered open. With the lack of
light, his eyes seemed darker than usual, the green accents swallowed by brown.
At once, they focused on Aria’s, and he smiled. Warmth settled over her,
comfortable as a cherished blanket.

“Hey,” she murmured, returning his smile.

“Good afternoon. Did you sleep well?” The words
rumbled, almost like a purr.

Aria stretched and slid closer to Will until she could
tuck her head beneath his chin. “Very well. You?”

“I did, yes.”

She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Standard
Guard-issued soap had never smelled so good. She felt so comfortable that she
started drifting back to sleep. She didn’t want to, though, not when Will was
there with her.

“This is nice,” she said, trying to keep herself
awake. “I could easily get used to it.”

Will chuckled soundlessly against her. “So could I.”

With some regret, Aria pulled back, trading closeness
for the ability to watch Will’s reactions. His hand lifted from her waist to
come up and brush away a strand of hair that had fallen across her cheek. She
hummed at the feel of his fingers.

“Does that mean,” she asked, keeping her voice low,
“you’re going to make a habit of sleeping in my bed?”

His thumb slid across her cheek, stroking her lips
once.

“Well, if you have objections…”

“No objections, no, definitely not.” She covered his
hand with hers, pressing it to her face. “I only had one request. If you’re
here, I guess you’re fine with it.”

A shadow crossed his features. “Fine is maybe a too
strong word.”

She couldn’t help frowning at that. Had she seen too
much in his presence in her apartment? She had been so sure that she had made
herself clear that morning when she had given him what amounted to an ultimatum.
She raised herself up onto her forearm, but Will didn’t give her a chance to
ask what was on his mind. He mirrored her stance and, rather than evading as he
so often had, he simply told her.

“I’ll never like the idea of you being in any kind of
danger—”

“Will,” she tried to cut in, but he shook his head and
she fell silent again.

“I’ll never like it,” he repeated. “If that’s what you
want, I can say it doesn’t bother me that you’re risking your life. But it’d be
a lie.”

Aria’s half-formed fantasy of what life might be like
with Will by her side started crumbling in a cloud of dust that choked her and
made it painful to talk.

“Then why did you come?”

“Because not liking something doesn’t mean I can’t
live with it.” He leaned in closer and rested his forehead against Aria’s.
“Because,” he added, barely louder than a whisper, “I love you.”

Aria blinked a few times very quickly. She didn’t want
to tear up now, not when Will’s lips were touching hers, very gentle and almost
questioning. He had given an answer to her ultimatum, she realized, and now he
was waiting to see if it was enough.

She tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. She
answered with a kiss, as soft as his had been. At once, Will pushed forward
until she rolled onto her back. Lying against her, he pressed in for a deeper
kiss, his tentativeness replaced by fire when she responded to his touch. She
clutched at his shoulders even as his hand rested at her waist. Her tongue
joined his in a new yet familiar dance. They had never exchanged more than a
few kisses, and she couldn’t wait to finally share more with him, and show him
how much she loved him.

The too loud and too persistent ringing of the phone
broke the perfection of the moment.

Aria pulled away and stared at the ceiling, sighing.
Next to her, Will rolled onto his back. The phone continued to shriek for
attention

“It’s never a good sign when I get a call in the
afternoon,” she said as she got up.

Pain lanced through her thigh, reminding her of her
injury. She grimaced, and tried not to limp too heavily on her way to the
kitchenette. She heard Will get out of bed and follow.

“It might not be for you. I told them I’d be here.”

She glanced back at him, her eyebrows raised in
surprise. Just a few days earlier, he had been wary of the Guard thinking they
were involved. She had to marvel at how much things had changed; how much he
was willing to let them change.

She picked up the phone, and quickly passed it to
Will. It was indeed for him. He leaned against the counter and she busied
herself behind him, pulling a blood container from the small fridge and heating
it up in the microwave. While she waited for it to be done, she turned back to
Will and listened to the one-sided conversation, trying to understand what news
he was getting.

After a few seconds, he looked back at her before
pressing the conference call button so she could hear. She smiled, grateful.
The conversation consisted of an exchange of numbers and short orders. Most of
it was routine, including the decision as to which squadrons would be on duty
that night.

The entire call took no more time than the blood
needed to warm up. Will was about to hang up when Aria pulled the container out
of the microwave. She motioned for him to wait and traded him the phone
receiver for the blood.

“Captain Vanyard speaking. When you send the off-duty
call to my squadron, add that we will meet right after sunset in front of the
Remembrance Wall.”

She listened as the secretary repeated her message,
thanked him and hung up the phone. When she turned back to Will, he handed her
a glass full of blood. He had already finished his own. His expression was
almost wary.

“I’m not trying to keep you away from the fight,” he
said very quickly. “Your squadron was next in the off-duty rotation.”

She hid her grin by taking a sip of blood.

“I know.”

He nodded, clearly relieved. “I wish I could stay,
but—”

“You’ve got work to do.” She stood toe-to-toe with him
and kissed him quickly. “And so do I. I’ll see you tonight on the walls.”

She wasn’t proud to be testing him like this, but she
had to. He had told her what she wanted to hear; she needed to know if it was
more than words. A few seconds passed, and she started worrying. Finally, the
visible tension in Will’s neck relaxed.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he repeated.

A brief kiss later, he was walking out of her
apartment. Aria finished feeding, then placed the glass in the sink, next to
Will’s. A wide grin burst to her lips at the innocent sight, and it was all she
could do to stop herself from laughing aloud. She had dreamed for a long time
of having an equal, someone who would fight alongside her without smothering
her. She had dreamed of having Will’s love. She could hardly believe she now
had both.

Humming a wordless tune, she tidied up the small
apartment and changed the sheets. It took her a little while to find the
emergency candles she had kept for blackouts since her human days. She placed
each one in a glass and set them around the bedroom, a lighter next to the one
on the nightstand. She hoped it would be a quiet night on the walls, and that
they would be able to come home early.

* * * *

It wasn’t a quiet night, far from it. It wasn’t as
bad as the past few nights, thankfully, but demons came, and the Guard fought.
The battle went on until almost sunrise.

Aria and I were on the walls when the alarm
sounded. We were talking. I honestly couldn’t tell you what we were talking
about, but I have in my mind the still vivid image of Aria throwing her head
back and laughing. Moonlight caressed her throat and wove silver accents in her
hair. Her laughter remained quiet; we were all still mourning. Just the same, I
couldn’t remember ever seeing her so… I want to say happy.

Now, I’m not conceited enough to think she had
never been happy before me. It was just the first time I had not been too
jealous to notice. The first time those sparkling eyes and smile had been
directed at me, unequivocally.

My first reaction, when the approach of demons
became known, was to look at Aria’s cane. The idea that she might try to fight
with her injured leg twisted my stomach in a very unpleasant knot. I had to say
something or she’d run to the fight, I was sure of it, but I was scared that
even the gentlest reminder that she was hurt would be badly received. She
caught my eyes and shook her head.

“I’m not an idiot,” she said, the faintest smile
brightening her words. “I came here to be with you, not to fight and damage my
leg even more. I’ll stay behind with the support troops.” She leaned forward,
just long enough to brush her mouth against mine. When she drew back, she
pointed at the sword at my hip, its forged hilt recognizable anywhere. “First
time you’ll fight with it. I hope it serves you well.”

I pulled the sword out of its scabbard and raised
it in front of me so that I could see the words engraved beneath the hilt.

“I’m sure it will,” I said, and left her to join
the fight.

Aria’s love was right there, inscribed in the
steel, and would be with me on the battlefield.

As promised, she stayed behind the walls,
organizing, looking at the fight from above and strategizing. When it was over
and I returned inside, she was right there, waiting for me. She was there, just
as I had hoped—as I had known—she would be.

We went home exhausted; at least, I was. I
accompanied her to her apartment. There were candles all around the bedroom,
waiting to be lit. Clearly she had hoped something would happen. So had I, to
tell the truth.

We shared three minutes of hot water, went to bed
together, kissed for a little while… and… well, I’ve got to admit I just fell
asleep in her arms. Try fighting demons for hours at a time, and we’ll see how
you fare.

Three hours later, however… Well, you can imagine
what we did.

What, you want details? And you truly think I’m
going to give them to you?

A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell. Especially when
he does a lot more than kissing.

Epilogue

If Aria half closed her eyes, she could almost see the
garden as it had been when she had been no more than a child. Gone, in her
mind, were the neat rows of vegetables and the lined-up orchards. In their
place, she could see the ornamental trees, planted at irregular intervals, some
in clusters, others lonely and majestic. They had given the place a peaceful
atmosphere appropriate for a graveyard, an atmosphere she needed now.

Almost sixty years had passed since the graves had
been emptied and the cemetery transformed into fields. She had warned Will then
that riots would erupt if he asked the habitants of Newhaven to let go of their
graveyard. She had been wrong. He had assured the population that the bodies
would be treated with all the respect they were due, that commemorative stelae
would be erected, and, above all, that the land would yield enough food to stop
the shortages. Aria was sure that it was that last part that had decided them.
They had trusted him, putting their deaths in his hands as well as their lives.

Shaking the memories away, she blinked and focused on
the present and the marble stelae she could see a hundred yards ahead of her.
The past, however, refused to relinquish its hold on her, and as she approached
the monuments, she stepped back through time until she felt like she was twelve
years old again, rather than a vampire approaching a century and half of
existence.

She had been so scared that night. So scared, and so
determined. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if Will had not found her
and brought her home. A small smile crossed her lips as she thought of him.
Without thinking about what she was doing, she reached with her free hand
inside her jacket and touched the square of fabric sewn into the lining, a
gesture so habitual she never noticed it anymore.

She finally reached the solemn blocks of white marble
that had been placed in the northern part of the garden. A wooden fence
separated the two spaces. Aria paused briefly at the entrance. The ten stelae
towered over her, lined up next to each other, all but two covered in names
engraved in black. She approached the fourth one from the left, her eyes
already searching the lines two feet above eye-level. Even without the light of
the almost full moon, she would have been able to read the names easily. She
quickly found her father’s name and placed the few roses she had brought at the
foot of the stone.

For a moment, her eyes remained on the flowers, so white
they made the marble seem gray. Few flowers were still cultivated in the city,
but white roses remained. They were traditionally reserved for the dead, but
Aria had lost count of how many of them Will had offered her over the decades
they had spent together.

When she looked up again, she reached to brush her
fingers against her father’s name. As she did, she wondered if anyone would
mourn her when she finally died. Her mother and brother had died long before,
and she had no idea whether Paul had ever had children. For all she knew, she
was the last of her family. She also didn’t know whether her Sire was still
alive. Once when she had broached the subject, Will had assured her she would
know the instant Lorenzo died, but she had trouble believing him. The blood
link between her and her Sire had never been very strong.

Her troops would miss her, she thought and hoped. She
had kept enough of them alive until retirement age that new recruits often
requested being assigned to one of her squadrons. They were her family. Them,
and Will.

Slow steps behind her announced another late-night
visitor. Aria didn’t look back but merely waited. Seconds later, a familiar
hand slipped into hers.

“Ready?” Will asked quietly.

She eased her sword a few inches out of its scabbard
and let it slide back down, feeling its familiar weight.

“I am.”

She gave the sword at Will’s side an absent look as
they walked away, hand in hand. The weapon had endured through decades, while
Aria had needed to replace her own sword a few times already.

They left together, without a word, like they had left
that cemetery so many years earlier. She could never have guessed how important
meeting Will would turn out to be. That simple walk in the night had changed
her life.

She wondered if this night would change her life
again. Newhaven wouldn’t merely fight back a demon attack tonight. The best
fighters of the Guard would attack, and for the first time they had a pretty
good chance at winning. They knew how to close the tear between worlds through
which the demons had come relentlessly for decades. It wouldn’t be easy, but
they could do it. They were ready.

She looked at Will again. He returned her look and
smiled.

As long as Will was with her, she was ready for
anything.

* * * *

And as long as she was with me, I was ready for
anything, too. Ready to walk right through that rip through reality and never
look back if that was what we needed to do.

And it was.

In the middle of the battle, when I looked at the
ground between two slashes of my sword and saw more dead humans than demons,
when I looked at the desperation of the soldiers we had hand-picked for this,
at the mages who still weren’t done closing that damn gaping hole, it became
obvious. They needed more time. They needed the demon reinforcements to stop
crossing over and disrupting their magic. We could buy them more time, Aria and
I. We could go through, stand guard over the rip, stop demons from passing
through and allow our mages to put an end to all of this. The possibility had
been raised during our planning. It was a last resort option. We would be
trapped when the rip closed, but it would be worth it. Newhaven would be safe,
and we would still be together—to live or die, but together.

I continued fighting, but now my focus shifted
toward the other side of the camp, where a shimmering, wavering circle hovered
just a foot from the ground. Maybe eight feet in circumference, I couldn’t
quite see what waited on the other side. A foggy curtain only revealed shadows
of demons before they crossed through, teeth bared and snarling. When I looked
away, my eyes found Aria’s. She glanced at the rip, then looked at me again,
her eyebrow raised in a question she didn’t need to voice. I knew her face well
enough to interpret her expression, even with splatters of blood marring her
cheek—not her blood, I was sure of it.

Are you thinking of going through? I’m game if you
are.

Right there, with a demon trying to kill me,
another one trying to kill her, with so many duels going on around us and magic
crackling in the air, I could only think of one thing. How much I loved her.
How much I wanted her. I fought just a little harder so I could go to her and
steal one of those battlefield kisses that were always so dangerous—and yet,
oh, so necessary. One of those kisses that we have shared for more than a
century and that always seemed to amuse the Guard to no end.

For the past dozen decades, she was by my side
every night. I kept fighting for her even when it seemed like a doomed fight,
even when I craved to leave Newhaven and the responsibilities I had never
wanted.

I fought for the little girl I had found in a dark
graveyard, a little girl whose bright eyes and broken heart had made me ache
and feel human for the first time in centuries. I fought for the angry teenager
who had been ready to take on the world to get her wish to fight. So stubborn,
so convinced she knew better than the adults around her, so human and fragile
and strong. I fought for the young woman who died and the vampire who was
reborn. For the leader who broke out of her fighter shell to become more than I
ever imagined she could be. For the woman who has gone to sleep in my arms, who
has wrapped hers around me, every day for more than a century.

It’s for her I stayed in Newhaven, for her I took over
the Guard, for her I watched so many people die under my command. All of it.
It’s for her, with her, with her sword and her love, that I marched with our
best troops to close that rip and end the demon attacks on our town, like they
had been stopped successfully elsewhere in the world.

Did we go through the rip?

I nodded at her after the kiss, asked her if she
was ready, and she merely answered with a smile. Side by side, we started
toward the rip. There was no reason to say anything more than that.

We hadn’t taken more than a few steps when we were
stopped. On my left side, it was Corina who put a hand on my arm. For Aria, it
was Pat. They were two of the best fighters in the Guard. He wasn’t even
twenty; she was barely any older. Children, like my Aria had been.

“Not this time, sir,” she said with a grim smile.

“What—” I started, but Pat didn’t let me finish.

“You’ve taken care of Newhaven long enough,” he
said, his gaze going from Aria to me. “Our turn. You keep the mages safe, we’ll
take care of the rest.”

We didn’t have time to protest, or say anything,
really. Corina raised her sword, let out a battle cry, and all around us the
soldiers responded with matching shouts. All at once, they abandoned their
fights and ran to the rip, jumping through without showing any hesitation. Most
of the demons they had been fighting followed, chasing after what they had to
see as weak prey fleeing from them. Only a few demons remained.

I’ll admit I was stunned. I’d never have imagined
anything like this. I was the Commander. I took care of Newhaven. Aria and I
did. We took care of our soldiers as though they had been our children, not the
other way around. Except… they had done just that, hadn’t they? They had
offered us a chance, if we just lived long enough to take it.

“The mages!” Aria shouted, jolting me back to the
present and to the demons closing in on the best chance we had ever had of
winning this war.

We ran. We fought.

Did we win?

Well, I’m here and telling you about it, am I not?

No, let me correct that. We are.

The End