Crave (20 page)

“No,” I whispered, my body frozen in fear, suspended in Grayson’s arms and still in the dressing area of the club. When our eyes locked, the smirk fell from his lips as his fangs slowly protruded from his gums. His confusion turned to hunger.

It had all been a lie.

My heart broke, not because my death was imminent, but because I had a glimpse of how ordinary life could be before it would be snatched away. Tears fell to my chest as I gave up, unable to fight any longer.

Grayson’s nose had skimmed along my jaw before his teeth roamed over the flesh of my neck. That’s when it washed over me, so subtle I almost missed it. Beneath the haze of my own panic was remorse, but it was not my own. Grayson had meant what he’d said when he’d told me he loved me and now, the inkling of human emotion that he clung to, might be able to save my life.

“Grayson, I love you. This isn’t you,” The tears poured from my eyes as I pleaded with him to remember what we’d had. He was a much younger vampire than Elijah, and I knew that meant he would be less predictable and more animalistic. But I had to take a chance.

With the sounds of Elijah and Olivie fighting to the death in the distance, I was soft spoken and whispering sweet-nothings to Grayson, in hopes of saving my own life. If I was honest, I was making peace with my demise. I was okay with things ending this way because I couldn’t picture any other outcome.

Love didn’t conquer all.

In the real world, there was pain and disappointment, and in those tragic moments, we know we’ve really lived. I think that’s why they tell you to pinch yourself when you are overwhelmed with joy. Because the feeling of happiness and love are just an illusion that we create for ourselves to make our meaningless existence more bearable.

I felt that pain now, wafting through the air in Grayson’s remorse as his fangs sank into the soft flesh of my throat. His bites were not gentle, but neither was his affection. He was wild and wanton with his emotions in life as he now was in limbo.

As my body weakened so did, the pain and I smiled through the tears as Elijah screamed my name, no doubt feeling the life drain from our connection. I’d felt his agony as it ebbed and flowed around me. He was being set free from me as well, no longer saddled with the burden of my affection. I wished I could suffer the quick snap of a broken neck, ripping off the Band-Aid with one quick motion. Instead, we all suffered through my slow demise.

Everyone fears the physical pain of their death but that was nothing more than a mosquito bite across the course of an entire lifetime.

The real pain was those last few moments when the body dies but the brain still contains a spark and you are trapped alone, inside of your head and lost in all of your regrets.

Your life
literally
flashes before your eyes and it has nothing to do with a God or religion. Only regret. Only selfishly thinking about all of the things you’ll miss.

“It was you,” I felt Elijah’s words vibrate through every fiber of my being and I felt at peace. Everything I’d thought I’d known about vampires was wrong. They couldn’t all be painted with the same brush.

The very thing that had killed me, taken from me, had also given me life and love.

“It was you,” he screamed, the pain of his words slicing through my heart. “Wake up, Eva.”

I struggled to scream back and let him know I would be okay. I wasn’t going to a better place, but I was going… fading… making peace with what my fate had turned out to be.

The flicker, the spark inside of me began to dwindle.

“Eva, It was
you
all along,” he pleaded.

The sharp thud of my heart caused my eyes to shoot open and I sucked in a ragged breath, burning my lungs as they struggled to take in more air.

“It’s you,” he pleaded and my skin began to cool where the sun had warmed it only moments before. My hands unclenched and blades of grass fell from my grip, pulled from my twisted imagination.
Grayson laid only a few feet from me, his eyes still open and looking at nothing, the light behind them gone. Grayson was dead.

I was on the floor of the club, chaos surrounding me. My eyes locked with Elijah’s briefly and I felt my heart surge. He was coated in crimson and I hoped, in a moment of selfishness that it belonged to someone else, that it wasn’t his own blood. I looked off to the small group of vampires gathered just a few feet away from him, waiting for their chance to be able to get their shot at him. He was hunched in a defensive crouch, his hands extended in front of him, ready to grab and rip apart anyone who tried to advance. I gripped my hand over my mouth and let out a devastating cry as Olivie took her shot, jumping on him from behind.

Elijah’s growl was so intense and full of agony it felt like it had vibrated through my bones. I shoved to my feet, wobbling before I grabbed the broken leg of a chair, charging toward him.

He was on his back and Olivie had sunk her fangs into his throat, ripping and tearing the flesh from his body.

Closing my eyes when I leaped, it felt almost like I was flying. But I didn’t disappear into oblivion. Instead, I was knocked from the air when my body collided with another. I screamed, when my hand slid down the length of the chair leg, lodging a large splinter into the palm of my hand.

The other end slid effortlessly into Olivie’s back, missing her heart, so the blow was nothing more than an irritation, a bug bite to someone of her strength. But I knew all too well what a mere bug bite can turn into. Death.

That simple distraction was enough to take her attention away from Elijah, who grabbed a small knife from his belt, shoving it into her stomach and upward, lodging it under her ribcage.

She sputtered, blood pouring from her lips that quirked up into a smirk. “You think if you kill me this will end?” she asked, struggling to laugh and spraying a few drops of blood onto Elijah’s face. “The Elders will come for her. They won’t stop until they have her. Until
Moses
has her.”

“Moses,” he whispered, his face going white.

“You can’t save her.”

“I won’t let that happen,” he growled, his anger so intense and thick in the air around me I could barely breathe in his crippling rage.

He grunted as his hand followed into the wound. I covered my mouth, gagging but thankful I couldn’t see him reaching inside of her stomach and sliding under her ribcage, clutching her heart in the palm of his fist and ripping it from her chest.

Her back bowed as she let out a blood-curdling scream. The other vampires froze and I seized their moment of uncertainty as they watched one of their Elders being eviscerated.

I stumbled to Elijah, pressing my hand over the wound on his neck, struggling to keep the life from draining from him. He growled, fangs extended.

“You’re bleeding. I can’t be near you. Go! You have to go!”

I shook my head, struggling to keep myself from crying as I held my aching palm against him until his blood caused my wound to fade away.

“You said we’d walk out of this together. I won’t leave you.”

“I need to feed so I can heal,” he groaned. “It’s too deep.”

“Feed from me,” I pleaded, although I was still lightheaded from Grayson’s attack.

“No. I’ll kill you.”

“You didn’t kill me last time. You stopped. I know you can stop.”

“Eva, I was only able to stop because Olivie pulled me off you.”

“They are going to kill you if you don’t heal!” I looked to the small gathering of vampires who hadn’t made any attempt to continue their attack. They turned and ran, leaving me alone with my bleeding vamp. “Why? Why aren’t they killing us right now?”

My eyes went back to Elijah as he looked at the doorway they’d just exited. “Because I killed an Elder.” His eyes met mine again, searching for some understanding but I had no idea why that had caused them to stop advancing. “Because I’m already dead.”

“
What
?”

“They already know she’s gone. They will be here for us and there is nowhere we can hide that we will be safe.”

“Why are they doing this to us. What do they want from us?”

“It’s not us they want. It’s
you
.”

“I don’t understand. W-what did I do wrong?”

“I was supposed to bring you to them. That was my job. But I couldn’t. I’m so sorry, Eva.” My mind raced as I thought back to the hidden phone I’d found in our bag and the mysterious Porter duties.

“No,” I wiped the tears from my cheek, smearing Elijah’s blood across my face. “No, you can’t just give up!” I pushed to my feet, grabbing his arm and struggling to help him stand. He groaned but stood as well, leaning against me for support.

“You can’t save me, Eva. I’m already gone.” He laughed sardonically. “I was gone before you ever met me. I’m not human anymore.”

“That’s not true. You know it’s not true. You care about me. I can
feel
it. I know you can feel it too.”

His eyebrows pulled together as his mouth turned down. “I hadn’t been able to feel anything since I’d turned… until I met
you
.” He smiled, his hand cupping my cheek and his thumb sliding over my skin. “I’ve lived more in these last few days than I had in two hundred years. I will never be able to thank you enough.” He pressed his lips against my forehead and his eyes fell closed. “You should have kept walking, Eva. I should have told them I couldn’t find you. I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist you and it would end this way, but I couldn’t help myself.”

I pictured the moment I had walked by him on the street, cloaked in darkness. “Why didn’t you?” It hurt to hear him confess he wished I’d never met him but I knew he meant because I would be safe.

“When you stood on that ledge-”

“Wait, you saw me on the hotel roof?” I took a small step back as he steadied himself. He nodded, not hiding the guilt he felt. I could feel it too, like a dense rain cloud threatening to let the storm break free. “You were the porter they sent for me. That’s why Olivie came looking for us herself.” I swallowed hard trying to process the events of that day. “Why not just kill me?”

“They wanted you alive. You are special.”

“There’s nothing special about me. I’m just an ordinary human.”

He smiled, shaking his head. “You are anything but ordinary. I felt a pulling to you before I ever saw your face.”

“How is that possible?” I asked, my lip quivering. “I thought you had to… care about someone to be able to feel each other the way we do.”

“You have to love them,” he confessed using the word I so desperately wanted to speak but was too afraid.

I knew it was absurd standing in a building full of dead vampires and worrying over sharing my feelings.

“It wasn’t until I saw your face on that street that I knew how I could feel bonded to a stranger. I’ve loved you for hundreds of years.”

“What?” I took a step back, stumbling and hoping that someone would pinch me and wake me from a crazy, fever-induced dream.

His eyes closed and he hung his head. Now he was the one not sure of what to say, choosing his words carefully.

“I don’t know how, or why you…” He let his hand fall, revealing the wound that had begun to heal but hadn’t quite disappeared. I could see that he was in pain and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the bite or what he was trying to explain.

“The man who turned me wasn’t an ordinary vampire. He called himself Moses.”

“Like from the Bible?”

“The very same. Things were very different back then, especially in a place like New Orleans. Viviana’s fathered owed Moses for a ceremony he’d performed. He claimed he was the reason he’d been wealthy and successful. But he never paid, so Moses collected his debt. I was never meant to be there. When I followed Viviana, he decided to kill two birds… so to speak. Viviana’s death would be payment for what was owed, and I would become someone he could teach.”

“What do you mean
teach
?”

“There are many worse things out there than eternal life. Much
darker
things.”

“Like voodoo?”

“There was no name for it back then but they say it had been around since before man was even created. Now it’s referred to as hoodoo. They believed God was the quintessential hoodoo doctor and Moses was a great conjurer.”

“I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

“I’ve only fallen in love once, Eva. When I met Viviana, I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. When she… she died, I knew I would never be able to love anyone else. So I tried everything I could to bring her back to me. I spent years at Moses side, learning everything he had to offer in hopes of finding a way to bring her back to me. Moses claimed to be a necromancer, to talk to the dead, but not even he could make her rise. When there was nothing left for him to teach me, I vowed to kill him for what he’d made me do to her.”

This must be what it feels like to be staked in the heart.
“Oh,” I whispered, fighting back my devastation that I knew he could feel as I looked at the blood-slicked floor between us. “Did you?”

He shook his head swallowing hard. “No. He turned dozens of vampires to protect himself from me. I spent years killing his scions until I was the only one left born of his blood. But by then, no one had heard from Moses in a hundred years. Olivie must have made a deal with him for something, maybe her seat on the council. Who knows how many of the members he has control over. I had no idea who I was being sent to find, Eva. I didn’t know it was you.”

“I still don’t understand, Elijah. What is it they want from me?”

“Do you believe in soul mates?” He asked and I cringed because I didn’t want him to continue on about his love for Viviana. Placing his finger under my chin, he tilted my face up to look at him. “Because that’s what we are. That’s what we’ve always been. I lost you that day in the French Quarter.”

I shook my head, pulling back from his touch. “That’s not possible.”

“Some people believe that we never actually die…”

“You’re a vampire.”

“I mean humans. Some believe
humans
never truly die. That their soul comes back over and over again.”

“Reincarnation? That’s impossible.”

“It
was
impossible. Look around you. Look at me?” His eyes were pleading with me to understand. “I shouldn’t even be here, Eva. I should have been dead hundreds of years ago. I’ve tried to kill myself in more ways than you could even imagine but I could never go through with it. I held onto hope that one day I would find a conjure that would bring you back. The reason Moses was never successful was because he had to be in love for it to work. But I’ve always loved you. You are one of a kind, Eva. Could you imagine how powerful vampires would become if they could come back from the dead? The human race would be wiped out. You are the pin to their grenade.”

“I’m not Viviana,” I replied defensively as I folded my arms across my chest, hugging myself as if trying to hold onto my sanity.

“No. You’re not. You are Eva, but your soul is the one I was meant to be with. You’ve lived countless lives and I was forced to suffer through this
one
for eternity... waiting.”

I reached up to his face, running my fingers along his stubbled jaw.

“I know you’ve felt it too, Eva. It’s like we’ve
always
known each other. It’s why you were comfortable with me from the first day we spoke. And now I finally have you, and I’m the one who is going to die.”

“I won’t let them hurt you,” my voice quivered.

The corner of his mouth quirked up into a sad smile as he brushed my hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. “Maybe this way I get to come back.” There was hope in his eyes. “Will you wait for me in your next life?” he asked and a sob broke free from my chest because I knew he had given up and was just trying to comfort me.

“Forever,” I whispered.

He nodded, fighting back his own tears. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you but I’m not sorry that you didn’t become like me.” I could tell he had waited his entire vampire life to say those words. He thought he’d failed Viviana, he thought he’d failed me.

“Don’t be. Maybe it was meant to be this way.”

He looked pained by my words but he was right. There was something different about me. I wasn’t ordinary. That place I slipped to inside of my mind wasn’t just my imagination and it wasn’t Olivie controlling it. My eyes danced over the blades of grass that lay scattered on the floor.

“Maybe I can save
you
.”

“Eva, I won’t let you get yourself killed for me.”

“It was
me
all along,” I repeated his words back to him that pulled me from my dreamlike state that had put me in the forest with Grayson.

“Yes, it was you that I loved,” he confessed, looking confused but I could feel his anxiety. He wasn’t being honest.

“No… That isn’t what you meant. That’s not
why
you said it. Something else you’d tried back then
had
worked, hadn’t it? Something Moses doesn’t know about. I can… I can do something.” I was so excited my words all ran together just as jumbled as my thoughts. I flung my arms around Elijah, pulling his body against mine. His arms looped around my waist and he hugged me so tightly it felt like my bones were going to snap under the intense pressure.

I squeezed my eyes closed, willing my mind to slip elsewhere but when I opened them again, we still stood inside of the nearly destroyed club.

“I don’t understand.”

“I know this doesn’t make sense to you but-” Elijah began but I cut him off.

“Why isn’t it working?”

His brow furrowed and he looked pained. “Because you have to be close to death, Eva.” He shook his head, losing his last glimmer of hope.

“Do you believe the Elders?”

“What?” he asked, looking at me as if I’d lost my mind.

“Do you believe that my blood can give someone else a chance to come back?”

“Why are you asking me this, Eva?”

“Feed from me.”

“Eva, I am too hungry. It is taking everything I have in me not to bite you right now. If I get another taste of your blood, I could kill you.”

“You won’t. I won’t let that happen. Just… just
trust
me,” I begged.

“I won’t risk your life for mine.”

“I only have this life because of you. You don’t have a choice. When the Elders come, it’s all over for us. It’s all over for the entire world,” I threatened. “This is our
only
chance to be together.”

He eyed me intently before his fangs protruded and he slowly leaned down, pressing their points against the flesh of my neck. “I love you, Eva. I always have and I always will,” he confessed, his lips moving against my skin.

“I love you, Elijah,” I whispered as his teeth sank into my throat.

I watched his wound heal before my eyes leaving behind nothing but his torn shirt and drying blood. My body grew weak in his arms as he grew stronger and his appetite intensified. I had no idea if any of this would work or how much of my blood he would need to ingest, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Every time I’d been able to disappear into my own mind, it had been on the verge of losing my own life. I just had to hold on a little longer.

My knees began to buckle and Elijah held me firmly against him as if I was weightless. My vision blurred and my head lulled as I struggle to keep consciousness.

But that was where I was wrong. I needed to let go. I needed to take the leap of faith. My eyes fluttered closed and I felt myself being pulled into a sleep-like state, trapped in limbo. Flickers of past and present morphed into a final collage of my life. I saw people I’d loved and lost, people who wanting nothing more than for me to be happy. But I never was because it had always felt like something was missing. That’s when I saw Elijah and I felt whole again.

I reached into my memory and turned around on the edge of the hotel ledge. There he stood, cloaked in shadows.

Our eyes met and I felt the butterflies take flight in my stomach as he smiled. I smiled. As he took a step toward me, I felt the warmth of the sun as it began to rise over the buildings.

“Eva, what are you doing?” His panic wafted through the air like the scent of a freshly baked pie on a window sill.

“It’s okay,” I assured him as he continued closer. “Remember in the hospital when I said your skin had felt warm?” I asked and he nodded as he stopped in front of me.

“I felt it. All of it,” he confessed and my smile broadened.

“What if it was me that needed to save you for us to be together, not the other way around?” I asked as he slipped his hand in mine and stepped up on the ledge. We both turned to face the rising sun, his hand gripping mine tightly as we watched it break free from above the other buildings.

“Don’t be scared,” I whispered as my eyes locked onto his. He did not look away as the warmth enveloped us. He winced and I could tell he was in pain but when he saw my concern… he smiled.

His other hand went to his chest, his eyes widening before he let out a loud laugh. “Eva,” he sighed, taking my hand and placing it over his heart.

I felt the steady thumping against my fingers for a moment before looking up at him, unable to contain my own joyful laugh. “Your heart is beating.”

“Only for you,” he whispered, pressing his lips to my forehead. I let my eyes close, relishing in this brief moment that we were able to stand hand and hand, both human and both infatuated.

“We can’t go back.”

He pulled back to let his eyes roam over my face, memorizing it before replying. “I know.”

“Do you think we will remember any of this?” I asked as I looked out over the grassy meadow below us that was surrounded by large trees and the creek he’d taken me to the first night we’d met. I inhaled deeply, breathing in the smell of the honeysuckle from my memory.

“Even if we don’t, our souls are connected. We will find each other,” he reassured me.

I nodded, unable to hide my fear but excited for the unknown. The chance for us to have a life together. It was scary not knowing what that future would hold but I hoped that by that time, vampires would be eradicated.

I turned to Elijah, rising up to my toes to press my mouth against his. He looped his arms around my waist, lifting me off the ground, his mouth on mine, and together we fell.

We fell in love.

We fell
for
love.

We died for each other again.