Haven (25 page)

I took a deep, steadying breath. In through my nose, out through my mouth. “It wasn’t much of a fight,” I said at last. “I’ll get over it.”

“So, what do you guys do?” Sophie asked. “You and Aidan, I mean. You’re always off somewhere together, but no one really knows what you’re up to.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, we just hang out and talk, mostly.”

Kate lay back on the bed, propping herself up on one elbow. “Yeah, but about what? I mean, I don’t mean this to sound bitchy, but do you even have anything in common?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, hedging. I mean, it’s not like I could say,
Well, he’s a vampire, and I’m a vampire slayer—there you have it.
“Like, our taste in music and movies and stuff like that?”

“Just . . . anything,” Kate said with a shrug. “You two seem so . . . different.”

“I guess we
are
pretty different, but you know what they say—opposites attract, and all that.” I laughed uneasily. “It’s not like you and Jack have all that much in common either, do you? I mean, he spends almost as much time in the lab as Aidan does.”

“Touché,” Kate said with a scowl. “Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s where he is right now.”

“But the two of you must do something other than sit around talking all the time,” Sophie pressed. “You’ve been disappearing with him every single night lately.”

I couldn’t tell them about the training, so I needed to think up a lie, and fast. “He’s been tutoring me again. I’m still a little behind in some of my classes, and—”

“Oh, give me a break!” Sophie waved one hand in dismissal. “I’ve seen your grades; you’re doing great. If you don’t want to tell us, fine, but at least you could come up with a better lie than that.”

“We’re not the virtue police, you know,” Kate said, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “Apparently, that’s Marissa’s job. If the two of you are busy hooking up, it’s not like we’d blame you.”

I feigned an embarrassed smile and shrugged. “Maybe we are, and maybe we aren’t,” I said coyly. Let them think whatever they wanted; it was better than them knowing the truth. “Hey, you want to go to the café?”

“Sure,” Kate said.

“Yeah, I guess,” Sophie agreed, but I could hear the reluctance in her voice.

She’s worried about me,
I realized, feeling like a total jerk.
She knows there’s more to the story, stuff I’m keeping from her.

But really, what choice did I have?

“Okay, try again,” Aidan said, and I closed my eyes while he studied the photograph he held in his hand. We’d been doing this for nearly an hour now—he would look at the picture, and I was supposed to describe exactly what he saw. Apparently this was different from simply reading his mind—more visual. Whatever it was, I couldn’t seem to get the hang of it.

I took a deep breath and attempted to focus, to see the picture through Aidan’s eyes. But all I saw was a blur, muted colors swimming in and out of focus in my mind’s eye. I concentrated harder.
Something green. Like a solid blanket of color, dotted with colorful little splotches.
But what was it?

“I don’t know,” I finally said, shaking my head. “A field of wildflowers, maybe?”

He sighed loudly, and I could hear his frustration.
Wrong again.

“You’re not focusing, Violet. C’mon, keep trying.”

“I can’t.” I let out my breath in a rush. “Enough for today, okay?” Exhausted, I collapsed back against the blanket spread on the loft’s dusty floor. The sun was just beginning to set, and candles lit the space, throwing flickering golden light about
us. I’d just handed in a big research paper in English class that morning, one I’d been working on for weeks, and I was totally brain-dead.

“You’re a slave driver,” I said, glaring up at him. “How do you find time to work in the lab anymore?”

He sounded slightly annoyed when he answered. “I make time.”

Which meant he didn’t sleep.

Two days after our big “fight,” we’d made up. Correction— Aidan had made up. He’d apologized profusely, nearly to the point of groveling—and I’d accepted. How could I not? He was so contrite, and let’s face it, the guy hadn’t had a real relationship in more than a century. I had to cut him a little slack. Besides, two days of total telepathic silence from him was about as much as I could take.

Ever since then, we’d spent every evening in the loft, training. He must have been working in the lab late into the night. The shadows under his eyes were the worst I’d ever seen them, and he seemed constantly irritated with me, as if I weren’t trying hard enough.

“When are you going to admit that I’m not ready for this yet?” I snapped, knowing that as far as
Sâbbat
legend went, I hadn’t come of age. I wasn’t supposed to be able to do this stuff yet. Still, he insisted on trying to teach me, which only
made me feel like a failure when I couldn’t get it right. “Ten tries, and I got, what? Two right? I just can’t do it.”

“You
can
do it,” he countered. “You can breach my mind and hear my thoughts. This isn’t all that different. Which reminds me, did you ever try with Dr. Blackwell?”

“Yeah, in class the other day. Nothing.”
More
failure.

He nodded. “I didn’t really expect you to be able to. Like I said, he’s a special case. It’s too bad there aren’t any other vampires around for you try it out on.”

“Are you kidding me?” I asked, my voice rising. “Anyway, I should be in the gym right now, practicing. For the upcoming tournament. We’re in the regional finals, you know.” I had a title to defend.

His steely gaze softened. “I know, and I’m sorry, Vi. Maybe I
have
been pushing you too hard.”

“You think?” I said acidly.

“It’s just that spring’s almost here, and we need to be prepared. Just in case. I can’t take any chances with your life, not when—”

“According to my visions, it’s
your
life we should be worried about,” I snapped. “Yet you refuse to even talk to Dr. Blackwell about it—”

“I’m taking every precaution necessary, Violet.” He reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, and immediately I felt bad.
He looked exhausted. Paler than usual, his eyes the only bright spot of color in his face.

“I’m sorry, Aidan,” I said, my voice breaking. “I’m tired, and I miss just hanging out with you. You know, staring at the stars, talking about whatever. All this training is killing me.”

He reached for my hand, and I shivered when he laced his cold fingers with mine. An electric jolt went through my body at his touch—our connection. So it wasn’t totally gone, not yet.

“You’re right, it’s too much. It’s easy to forget that you’re not . . . well, that you’re a mortal, with a mortal’s limitations.”

He looked so sad, so lonely. I gave his hand a squeeze and scooted closer to him. “So, is it happening yet? You know, your feelings for me, changing?”

He smiled—a slow, bittersweet smile that made my breath hitch in my chest. “Do you want to check for yourself? Go on, read my thoughts,” he offered.

“I’d rather you just told me.”

A dark look flashed across his face, and then it was gone. He bent his head toward me, his lips just inches away from mine. “No, Violet. My feelings haven’t changed. Do you wish they had?”

“Of course not,” I whispered, my heart hammering against
my ribs. We stayed just like that—staring into each other’s eyes, his mouth inches from mine—for several moments.

And then his mouth came down on mine—hard. I felt myself shudder, a ribbon of cold running down my spine. A fierce heat soon replaced the cold as he pressed me back against the blanket, his body held rigid above me while his lips crushed mine. I couldn’t help myself—my hands were under his shirt before I thought better of it, exploring the taut muscles of his stomach, his chest. My fingers tingled as they skimmed over his cold skin, as if electric currents flowed between us.

Somehow I was pushing up the soft material of his shirt, wanting it off, wanting to remove the barriers between us. I felt him shudder, heard him say my name against my lips.

Next thing I knew, my wrists were manacled in his grip as he dragged me to a sitting position beside him. “You’ve got to stop that,” he groaned, his face buried in my neck. “My God, I can barely control . . . I can hardly rein it in anymore.”

Every reasonable part of my brain told me that I should shove him away; that his teeth were way too close to my neck. And yet . . . I didn’t. I couldn’t. My mind was spinning, trying to find a solution, something that would satisfy us both.

“What if I pricked my finger or something?”
Oh my God,
what was I saying?
I couldn’t stop the crazy words from spilling from my mouth. “Would it help if you had just a taste, or—”

“I would suck you dry in a matter of minutes,” he said, thrusting me aside. “Don’t ever suggest something like that again, do you hear me? Just . . . just give me a second.”

He was fighting against it, the bloodlust. By now I recognized the signs. The cords on his neck stood out, a vein in his temple throbbed. His jaw was clenched, his hands fisted by his sides.

Sadness filled me as I watched his struggle, knowing there was nothing I could do to help him; there would never be anything I could do to help him.

“Aidan, look at me,” I said miserably. “Please, just look at me.”

He did, and I sucked in my breath at the sight of his eyes glowing faintly red, his canine teeth just a little longer than usual. Would I ever get used to it, seeing him like this?

“I don’t understand what’s happening . . . this change,” he said, sounding almost strangled. “The hunger . . . it’s never before been associated with physical desire, not for me. And now, with you, the two are somehow intertwined. I don’t want to hurt you. I swore I wouldn’t.”

“You won’t hurt me, Aidan,” I said, feeling less sure of it
than I sounded. It was a stupid thing to say, anyway, with the evidence to the contrary right before my eyes. I scrabbled away from him, wanting to make it easier on him.

He dropped his head into his hands. “I want to be rid of this,” he said, his voice breaking. “A few more years and . . .” He trailed off, raising his gaze back to mine. I could have sworn his eyes were damp. I’d never seen him like this—weak and vulnerable. It nearly cleaved my heart in two.

“It gets worse as a vampire ages, you know,” he continued. “More and more, they disconnect from the mortal self they used to be. You can tell by looking at their eyes. The paler, more washed-out they are, the older, more dangerous a vampire is. It will happen to me, sooner or later.”

“But not for a while, right?” I ventured. After all, he was already pretty old, and I couldn’t see any of what he described in his eyes. Time moved slowly in vampire years.

“Yes, but don’t you see? The stakes are higher now. You’ve given me hope, when I had none. I cannot fail, not now.”

I just swallowed hard, unsure of what to say, how to comfort him. It seemed best to keep my distance, and yet I wanted to hold him, to wrap him in my arms and tell him that everything would be okay. But it wouldn’t—how could it? How could I make such a promise, knowing full well that if he
didn’t find his cure, he was doomed to this existence forever?

“What’s going to happen to us?” I asked, my voice nearly a whisper. “I mean, how is this going to end? I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you.”

He took a deep, ragged breath before he spoke, his eyes full of despair. “There are only two ways it can end, Violet. Either I find a cure, or you fulfill your destiny and destroy me. There’s no other way.”

“Then find a cure, Aidan,” I said, my voice shaky. “And find it fast.”

Practice was canceled. Three of my teammates were down with a stomach bug, and in the interest of keeping everyone else healthy, the coach decided it was probably better if we took the rest of the week off.

I glanced at my watch, wondering where Aidan was and what he was doing. He’d been pretty scarce the past couple of weeks, throwing himself back into his research, more determined than ever to find his cure.

I’ll go to the lab and see how it’s going
. Once or twice I’d joined him there, but I mostly felt in the way. It wasn’t like I was any help.

Still, I wanted to see him. Needed to. I knew what he was
doing was important, that he felt the time slipping away more keenly than I did. But it didn’t change the fact that I missed him. I would stop by and say hi, that was all—I wouldn’t disturb him if he was busy working.

I jogged to the lab, figuring I could use the exercise. A few minutes later, I pushed open the door and stepped inside, slightly breathless from taking the stairs two at a time. Aidan was there alone, slumped in a chair, a hypodermic needle lying on the black-topped table in front of him.

“What are you doing?” Wincing at the stitch in my side, I hurried over to where he sat, looking almost lifeless.

He shook his head, barely acknowledging my presence. “Nothing. Damn it, nothing.”

I noticed then that one of his sleeves was rolled up to his shoulder, exposing one pale bicep. Reaching down, I ran the pads of my fingers over his smooth skin and across what was clearly a needle-puncture mark. “Is that what you do? Inject yourself with whatever you’re working on? I thought the elixir was something you drank?”

“It is,” he answered distractedly, “but the cure has to be injected intravenously. I really thought I had it this time. There don’t seem to be any ill effects. Just . . . nothing.”

My stomach knotted with fear. “Ill effects? What, you mean like a reaction or something?”

He finally swiveled his head around to look at me. “There’s no other way to test the cure but to inject it in myself.”

“But . . . but is that safe?” I stuttered, horrified by the idea of him using himself as a guinea pig. “There must be some other way to test it out.”

He shook his head. “There’s no other way. Anyway, what’s the worst that could happen? Turn myself into some
other
kind of monster?”

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” I snapped.

“Sorry, Vi.” He reached for my hand and held it tightly in his. “Anyway, I’m usually pretty careful, and if there was any other way . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head. “But there isn’t, and occasionally I have to pay the price.”