Legacy (Endlessly Book 2) (16 page)

“Like zombies?” Angie asked.

Exactly like zombies,
I told them.
They are mindless, clumsy vampires. I don’t create them, but I’m able to control them. I destroy the brain before they have a chance to return. That’s what Jesse wanted—an army at his beck and call. He wanted to rule the world.
I gave a weak laugh.

So Verloren’s death wasn’t exactly for nothing,
Christina said.

Rage ripped through me, aiming straight for my hands. They vibrated and tingled violently. The dragons watched my hands
, confused, and shared something of my anger.

“Jason,” I said, keeping the bitterness out of my voice, “could you please bring me a drink?” I took slow deep breaths to ease the pain. My whole body shook.

As Jason fixed the drink, the dragons watched me try to control my fury. They knew it had flared in response to Christina’s comment, but they didn’t yet understand the whole of it. I didn’t either. Jason stomped in and handed me a large glass of vodka before going back to the kitchen. I drank half of it and waited to feel the effects before I returned my attention to the group. As the vodka tingled in my stomach the vibrations started to die.

No… Verloren’s death wasn’t for nothing. It had real, concrete results. It made me into the most terrifying monster you will ever meet. I make everyone miserable. Imagine a life where all you ever feel is murderous rage. You all know what a demon is capable of, right?
I looked around. They knew, yet they didn’t know. I took another big gulp, gave it time to burn, then went on:
When I drank the demon’s blood I gained his ability.

Zola’s jaw dropped. Larry and Christina seemed hurt.

With me it emerges from anger because that’s all I feel, but any intense emotion will set it off.
The drink kicked in quickly on my empty stomach. I drank the rest, and set the glass down clumsily. My eyelids drooped.
What was I saying?
I glanced at Zola.
Oh yeah, you need to screw Jason.

Everyone laughed
as Zola shrunk back in embarrassment. Her face burned scarlet. I remembered a time when my face would burn with embarrassment. What had happened?

The virus
… the mutated virus… my virus.
My mind was foggy and I was struggling to keep my line of thought.
When he ate it, it made some strange link between us. Now he won’t leave me alone, and I won’t give him any. He needs to get laid.
I pointed my thumb toward the kitchen. The girls giggled at my brutal honesty. It was the alcohol talking.
You could probably use it too, you know. Recharge the batteries.

Larry cleared his throat. Angie was blushing. He sat close to her, holding her hand.

“That’s nice, you know.” I weaved and leaned forward in the chair. “You found your soul mate before you knew what you were.”

As I felt the dagger piercing my heart, Christina winced. My face contorted as
something cold touched my cheek. When I reached up to brush it away I realized it was a tear. Seeing it unleashed a stream I couldn’t stop.

As I looked around the room it was as if I were surrounded by mirrors, each reflecting a different face, and each face crying with me. Angie resembled me most. Her mascara ran as she cried and her tears were almost as dark as mine.

Jason appeared in the doorway. “I think that’s enough for one day,” he told the group.

I stood, hoping to retreat to my apartment, but my legs weren’t steady. Black tears clouded my vision and alcohol fogged my head. I gripped the chair to keep from falling. Jason shed no tears. He walked in, picked me up, and carried me to my apartment.

I buried my face into his neck and sobbed. “I’m sorry,” I managed to say. “I just miss him so much… I’m sorry. I can’t give you what you want, Jason. I just can’t…”

“Shhhhh,” he whispered, laying me in my bed. He pushed the hair out of my face. “Don’t be sorry. This was bound to happen.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say that everything is going to be okay?” I asked.

“No.” He gave me a hard, unemotional look, then said: “Everything won’t be okay, Ashley. You know it deep down. As long as he’s not with you, you’re never going to be whole. You’re going to have to accept the fact that he’s gone forever.”

With his words the pain crashed down on me, welled up, and spread through every part of me. Faint cries sounded from down the hall where the others felt my hurt. My breathing stopped, as did my tears. I rolled over and buried my face into the pillow, craving death, but air forced itself into my lungs. I hadn’t inhaled. It was Larry’s mind forcing my lungs to take air.

As the bedroom door shut I sobbed into my pillow. I was alone. I’d thought I could avoid this feeling until I got to the beach. There I would’ve had the comfort of memories from our happiest times. But feelings don’t wait. I could not stop time. The pain was here, and I would have to deal with it. The world was going to move on, and I would move through it alone until the day I died. My soul mate was gone forever. He could never be replaced.

I kept crying. Eventually exhaustion set in. I slept.

2
2 clear image

My ailments were huge and unreal. It felt like someone was squeezing my lungs. A small bean with the weight of a huge boulder sat on my chest. It was the stone, still set in its leather cord. Yet nothing was physically wrong with me.

Within twenty-four hours the numbness returned, but this time it froze my brain instead of my body. Everything from the neck down hurt. I was still in a fog. Often I had to ask people to repeat themselves. I could perform all bodily functions, but my actions were mindless. I walked through the world with a weak smile. When others spoke I listened, giving automatic responses. I never went out of my way to do anything. The pain was too big
of an obstacle.

Every night the pain throbbed as I cried myself to sleep. Time had no meaning. I went two weeks without knowing what day it was. Still, the pain was easier to bear than the anger.

Jason watched me, terrified I would slip back into my catatonic state.

One day as the others talked, I sat on a sofa, off in my void of nothingness. Jason sat across from me. Someone asked me a seemingly pointless question to which I only nodded. Jason paid little attention. He was more interested
in the rest of the conversation and knew I wasn’t concerned with it.

My eyes followed his tan arm, and suddenly I realized he was holding hands with Zola. The others took note of my awareness, then quickly withdrew their attention. It was as
if they’d seen something spill and their immediate reaction was to avoid getting stained.

It’s about time,
I told only Jason.

But she’s not the one,
he replied.

I saw Zola nod with his statement.

But it’s better than nothing, right?

The tiny boulder on my chest suddenly weighed a ton. I left the room and got a drink from the bar, pouring myself a double. I retreated to my apartment and turned on the television for noise. I cried quietly and drank myself stupid. This was becoming a part of my daily routine.

It was two days after that when Coylene arrived. She greeted the dragons, but her main mission was to drop off donated blood. Even she was afraid to have a real conversation with me.

As the others ate their lunches I opened one of the containers. Everyone watched as I added rum to the blood before drinking it. “Now that’s a bloody Mary,” Larry joked.

Everyone laughed and I forced myself to chuckle. Like all my other smiles, laughs, and chuckles, this one was forced. I didn’t know “funny” or “tasty” or any other sensation. Those had died with him. I was a marionette with no visible strings. I didn’t want to move any more than I wanted to live, yet some unseen force made me.

The day of Coylene’s visit was warm. Everyone went outside, dragging me along. My feelings softened when I saw the other three dragons in their shifts. It was as if I got a glimpse of clarity. Their shifts looked almost identical to mine: black scales and red eyes. But they each had their own individual characteristics. Larry’s wings had a wider span than the other two. Zola’s horns spiraled in the opposite direction of her fellow dragons, and Christina stood taller than the others.

They flew among the treetops as Jason, Angie and I watched. Once they landed they returned to their human forms and played with their elements. Jason and Larry bickered over which element was best for defense. All eyes seemed to linger on me for a moment, then the guys started backing up.

Jason defended Zola. “I mean, come on…
air?” he taunted Larry. “What can you do? Blow me down?”

Zola knocked down a tree without touching it. It shook the ground as it landed.

I watched Jason fill his lungs and pop his eyes in mockery of air as an element.

“You need it to live don’t you?” Larry noted, whirling a tiny tornado around Jason’s feet. “You also need it to talk smack.” Larry laughed, then took Angie’s hand and strolled down the overgrown path to the beach.

Rain fell onto Jason’s head, but there wasn’t a cloud in sight. Christina laughed.

“What the fuck? Is it gang up on Jason day?” he complained.

Christina followed Larry and Angie down the path. When Jason shook his wet hair at Zola she giggled and tried to shield herself. They locked hands and she pulled him to follow the others. Jason glanced back to see if I was following.

I didn’t. I wouldn’t set foot on that beach until a year had passed. Instead I returned to the underground house where I helped Coylene pack up to leave. Then I made myself another drink.

The visit from the dragons had been a nice change.
A month passed and it was just me and Jason again. He was happier. I was glad; I couldn’t have defended myself against a verbal attack. I felt thin and translucent like tissue paper. If someone had yelled at me my body would have crumbled.

I spent most of my time on the Internet ordering camping stuff. I had it shipped to the abandoned hou
se where we stored our vehicles and I went there every couple of days to pick up the packages. I wasn’t completely sure why I was ordering the stuff, but now I can see it was my escape plan.

Jason never asked me about it. H
e knew what was going to happen and he wasn’t going to fight me.

I bought a large waterproof backpack and
a tent. I ordered hiking boots and wore them from the abandoned house back to our underground quarters to break them in. I packed away Lex’s good raincoat in my apartment.

In the week leading up to the anniversary of the fatal events on the beach, I drank more heavily.
I read without seeing the words and watched TV without seeing the screen. I pushed back on the boulder, inhaling deeply in an attempt to stretch my lungs. Every night I stumbled down the hallway to my bed where I cried myself to sleep. I let the pain have its way.

The day arrived quicker
than I expected. Time does that and you can’t fight it. Only one thing is certain in a vampire’s life, and that is time. I knew what I had to do.

I did not drink that day. This was something th
at I couldn’t drown with a bottle. I had to face it sober. That afternoon I walked out into the game room where Jason was watching television.

“I’m going to the beach,” I told him.

He started up from his seat. “You want me to go with you?”

“No.”

He sat back down, eying me. “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.”

“It’s something I must do alone. If I’m not back in a week, check on me.” I started for the door.

“Don’t.” He jumped to his feet. “Don’t do anything stupid, Ashley.”

“I won’t make promises,” I told him coldly as I left.

As my words sunk in I felt his stinging response. I climbed the stairs. I didn’t care if I hurt him or myself. The temperature was almost exactly the same as it had been on the day I took Verloren out to the rock. Sunlight slipped through the trees. I walked down the path, keeping my eyes on my feet. I didn’t want to see my pain coming. The path was getting overgrown. Few had used it since that grim night. When I heard the faint roar of the ocean I stopped. Wind blew through the trees. I inhaled deeply. The rotting wood of fallen branches smelled sweet, reminding me of our first day there.

For a moment I stopped
and let memories wash over me. Then I pushed on. The sounds of the ocean grew more distinct and the forest thinned. I caught a glimpse of the sea and stopped. I looked at my feet and felt a swelling panic. I recalled the boulder on my chest. It was getting heavier with each step.
Is this what you really want?
I asked myself.

Someone or something knocked the breath out of me. I doubled over, gripping my knees. I gulped for air as my eyes welled with tears. I forced myself to stand up. I had to do this. It was my only hope for accepting
the truth. Jason had said I must “reinvest in a new reality.” This was my only chance.

A part of me didn’t want to let go. It would’ve been so easy to keep wallowing in my misery. That part of me wanted to shrivel up and die, joining him. I looked back, then forward. I forced myself toward the beach. My hands trembled and my heart raced. I found the will to go on toward my confrontation. I need
ed to face this monster. It was the only way to find out whether I would conquer it or be destroyed.

I came to the cliff overlooking the beach and grief nearly overwhelmed me. My throat tightened. I could barely swallow.

Let me make it down there first,
I thought.

When I reached the sand
, cold wind whipped my hair and I shivered. The sun had lost out to clouds and I felt a few raindrops. I whimpered, took a deep breath, and climbed over the trunks of fallen trees. At the water’s edge I turned around, making a complete circle. Here were the waves, then the shoreline stretching north and south toward points on the horizon. There were the remains of our many campfires and the fallen trees I’d climbed over. Finally I saw the rock jutting up from the water. It was the one I’d flown out to with Verloren.

That’s when it happened. All the
emotions surrounding that night and all the losses I’d suffered now multiplied tenfold. The rain pounded harder as the ocean roared. I competed with this din by screaming. I wanted to become all the sounds, roaring, screaming, then winding down into nothingness. I wanted this empty path to take me to Verloren. I wanted to be nothing… just like him.

As the sun set, rain pelted me. Night fell. The only thing that faded was the light. The waves still pounded, the wind still whipped, and my anger was a strong as
ever. I recalled our campfires and tried to build one. The elements defeated every effort. I did manage to find our tent and finally crawled into it and fell into a dreamless sleep.

I awakened to a rush of m
emories. When I heard the ocean and saw the leaking tent roof, I half expected to roll over and find Verloren. When he wasn’t there I lost all motivation and didn’t leave the tent the whole day.

I don’t know how long I stayed at the beach. Jason never came looking for me. Days passed. I finally left the tent and survived in the open. That encouraged me to face my emotions. I couldn’t do it all at once, but as my strength returned, I came to the realization of what I had to do.

It was on my last day there I finally looked out at the rock again. The monster still held me, but its grip was slipping. I smiled, fighting back tears. This was it, wasn’t it? This was letting go. I could never let it all go, but I could learn to live with it. Even after centuries I would never forget. When he died, a part of me died too. I would never get it back, but I would hold the memory always.

As I walked back through the woods I suddenly saw Verloren laughing. It was a crystal clear image. When I saw it I realized that in the year since his death I hadn’t seen him clearly at all. Now that I could
, the image was laughter. I laughed too.

When the last echoes of laughter died in the forest, I sprinted the rest of the way home. I was racing against all that I had lost to see what might be found.