Authors: Chelsea M. Cameron
Neither (33 page)
I think I hear Dad in the hallway, but then the footsteps fade. Mom closes her eyes, as if she's pulling out every reserve of energy she has.
“Be careful with your heart. I know you've given it to Peter, and I know you are tied to him, but I just want you to make sure that is what you want. If you love him and he makes you happier than you ever thought you could be, then I give my blessing to be with him. If he ever makes you sad, or upset or hurts you, he isn't the boy for you. If you decide to spend your life, or more than that with him, that is also your choice. I will support anything you do. Even if that means you become an immortal.”
That makes me sit up and look at her.
“I know. I thought a lot about it, and I'm not going to stand in the way of getting what you want. If you want to spend eternity with Peter, you can. I don't want you to live with regrets, or worry about what I would have thought. I want you to do what makes you unbelievably happy, even if it's that. It’s going to be dark for a while, but your dawn will come, and it’s going to be glorious.”
She has another coughing fit and I hand her a glass of water. She's only able to take a little sip, and it spills onto her chin. I wipe her mouth and she lies back, closing her eyes again.
“So many people don't get to say good-bye. I've been thinking about this ever since I was diagnosed. I wrote this speech a million times. I decided I wasn't going to get it right.” I sense that's the end of what she wants to say. She hugs me close, her frail body trembling.
“I love you,
ma fleur
. If I hadn't had you, I wouldn't have had much to live for. You are my life, and you will go on after I am gone. My Ava-Claire.”
“I love you, Mommy.” I hug her for what seems like hours, and only a few seconds because Dad is back, with a nurse right behind him.
They want to move her to a hospice, but she refuses.
“I just want to go home.”
Peter
Claire passes away the following morning in her bed with Ava, Sam and Aj standing by her bedside. I am outside under the window. There is a moment of absolute peace when I hear her breathing cease. There is a moment of pure bright silence that rings like a bell.
“I love you,” Ava and Sam say, kissing her forehead.
Ava walks out of the house and down the road without saying a word to her father. He crumples to the floor and Aj comforts him. Hot grief hits me like lightning, and I nearly stumble. Ava starts to run down the road, and I follow her.
“Just kill me, Peter. Just kill me. I can't do it.” She turns to face me, and her grief consumes me. I am breaking, but it can't be anything to what she is facing.
“You have to live for her. Even when it hurts so much you think you can't stand it.”
“I don't want to. It's too much.”
“You can handle it. You are my strong girl. You've faced down immortals. You can face this.” She just keeps shaking her head. “I am never going to leave you. Never.”
“You don't know that. Helena was supposed to find Di, but she hasn't come back. She doesn't have any incentive to help us. She probably ran off. There's nothing we can do. There's a chance that if you change me and make a bind, that it could break the bind with Di. I know that no one has told us that it would work, but I don't trust them. Everyone has something to hide, a reason to lie. Even if it doesn't break the bind, I would be invincible. She would have no way of hurting me. I could fight her. I could fight for us. And Viktor wouldn't be able to exact his revenge. It would give us time. So much time.”
“I will change you, but not now. Not today. Today is for Claire.”
I think she's going to protest, but she makes a strangled sound.
“Today is for her,” Ava says.
Twenty-Nine
Ava
We have the funeral that weekend. I had no idea how many people Mom knew, or knew her. It is all a blur, and to be honest I didn't want to remember it anyway.
Peter is there the whole time, standing beside me, holding my hand, trying to take my pain. It's too much for both of us.
Dad isn't doing well, but Aj has sort of moved in with us to help with everything. It seems like there are a lot of things to be done when someone dies. Paperwork, bills, things to be changed, and lawyers and wills.
I find the box Mom told me about in her closet. There is a note on top with my name on it. I take it to my room, but I can't open it. Maybe someday I will be able to, but I'm not ready yet. I still can't believe that she's gone. The house is too quiet. It doesn't feel like home without her.
I keep forgetting, thinking that she's just at work, or out with the girls, and hasn't come home yet. I feel like I'm constantly waiting for her to come back. But she doesn't.
Tex and Viktor are over a lot, and Dad doesn't really seem to care that I have both Peter and Viktor over. Jamie is there a lot, too, always trying to cheer me up. I ask him if he's heard from Brooke, but he hasn't.
The night after the funeral, I have the burning dream again, and I wake up screaming.
“Shh, I'm here.”
“You have to change me, Peter. You have to.”
“Okay. We will have to make arrangements.”
So we do. We spend the rest of the night thinking logistics. I think back to what Mom said. I do want to spend my eternity with Peter. I'm going to become immortal and then we're going to find a way to take care of Di, with or without Helena. And then Peter and I are going to share our eternity together. If there's anyone who can make sure that it happens, it's my mother.
I plan to spend the following weekend with Tex. I know she'll work as my alibi. As soon as I recover, I'll go home and Peter will help me adjust. I do worry that I will want to kill my father, but I have been dealing with that for a while, and I haven't done it yet. I will cross that bridge when I get there.
Peter
It will be done. She will be mine. I will take her soul. I think about what it will be like, to carry something that precious. I don't want to be responsible for something that precious, but she has asked, and I promised.
Rasha and Kamir leave Ava a note, saying how sorry they are for her loss. She tosses it in the trash, but I retrieve it and save it. She might not want it now, but she will.
We don’t hear from Helena for two days, and Ava starts to worry.
“What if she changed her mind?” Her eyes are permanently red and puffy from crying. We're in her bed, lying as close as two people can be.
“We have to believe that she won't.”
She turns her face up for a kiss. “I love you,” she says. “Thank you for not being responsible and saying that I shouldn't want to make a decision like being immortal at a time like this.”
“I adore you,” I say.
She sits up, looking at my face. “What is it?”
“I am not sure.” Something has come over me, much like when Ava's feelings overcome me. Except, this isn't hers. It's something big and bright, and it hurts and it feels wonderful and astonishing and new and old and...
Ava
He pauses for a moment and I seize him, expecting him turn to ash in my bed.
“I. Love. You.” He says it slowly and deliberately. I throw myself at him, knowing that this is the end. He's gone.
Moments pass. Then minutes. I count my breaths, but he's still solid.
“Ava,” he says, unlatching my hands from around his neck. If he was human, I would have choked the life out of him. “I love you,” he says again. He smiles at me and I push my hands on his chest.
“Why aren't you dead?”
“I don't know.” His calm tone makes me want to yell.
“How did you know it wouldn't kill you?”
“I didn't.”
“Then why did you do it, you moron?!”
“Because I felt it.” I thought I'd gotten rid of my tears, but I still had some.
“You can't do things like that to me, ever again. What the fuck is wrong with you?” I just lost my mother and he takes crazy risks.
“I love you. I love you. I love you.” He says it over and over, putting different emphasis on each word. I'm so angry with him, but after he starts smiling and laughing while saying it, I turn to mush. He loves me. I don't know if it means the bind was void all along, or Helena got to Di, or we'd somehow broken it ourselves.
He loves me.
Epilogue
Ava
Peter and I hash out the rest of my transformation details in the midst of making out. He says he loves me a billion more times. I want him to say it a billion more.
“I love you,” he says. He tries saying it with different emphasis on each word. He says it soft and slow and fast and loud until we're rolling on the bed and laughing.
“I am never going to tire of saying it.”
“Helena must have gotten to Di.”
“She must have.”
“We're going to be together,” I say, my face cracking open with a smile.
“We are.”
“Soon.”
“Very soon,” he says, his hand sliding down my arm to my hip. “I can make love to you. I can marry you. I can try to be everything you deserve.”
“You are more than I deserve.”
“Not possible.” His lips claim mine for a fiery kiss.
Peter
We stay up the rest of the night, kissing and talking.
“You should call Viktor to see if his bind is gone. I don't know how we'll tell, but we need to know if it's just you.”
“Tomorrow,” I say. I just want tonight to belong to us. Just us.
“Okay,” she says, touching my bare chest. “And tomorrow, I'll tell Dad that I'm spending my weekend with Tex. Aj will be here to take care of Dad. I'll have to call Jamie and tell him. There is no way I'm letting him find out after. I owe him, big time. And I have a few things I need to do first.” She grabs her notebook from the side of her bed and flips it open.
“Number one: I need to have one more piece of Miller's pie. Number Two: I want to take one more nap. The last sleep, if you will. Number three: I want to run until I can't breathe so I can remember the feeling —” She goes on to list four more things. All human things she wants to do before becoming immortal.
“And one more. I want you to take me flying, and I don't want there to be anything between us. I want the last thing my human skin feels to be your skin.” Her green eyes meet mine, and our desire explodes, and I capture her lips.
“Yes, my Ava. I will take you flying.” I am not afraid of hurting her anymore. I am not afraid of anything.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“I love you,” she says.
“I. Love. You,” I say, punctuating every word with a kiss. “It’s time for our dawn, Ava-Claire.”
Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of The Noctalis Chronicles, Neverend, which will be out in 2013. Here's a little taste:
Ava
“It’s a good night to die, I guess,” I say. The moon was bright outside when we’d arrived at the little stone church Peter had taken me to before Mom died. I’d chosen it as the place for my immortal transformation.
“I wish it hadn’t come to this. I would not have chosen this for you,” Peter said, holding my face like he was holding the most precious thing in the world.
“I know. But after Mom… I just need to have something that lasts. I need to know that something can last forever. I want that to be us.”
The room was dark, due to the fact that Peter had boarded up every possible light source. During my transformation, light would be fatal to me. Go figure.
I rolled over on the mattress he’d probably stolen, but told me he’d bought.
“I want the last thing to touch me as a human to be you.”
“I know.”
“So…”
In answer he started kissing me…
I'm going to make this short and sweet and say thanks to my family, my friends (old and new), my online family, my blogger besties, my beta, my editor and you. Thanks for hanging on for the ride. I hope it's been worth it.
"All you need is love,"
-The Beatles
Neither is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, business establishments or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2012 Chelsea M. Cameron
About the Author:
Chelsea M. Cameron is a YA/NA writer from Maine. Lover of things random and ridiculous, Jane Austen/Charlotte and Emily Bronte Fangirl, red velvet cake enthusiast, obsessive tea drinker, vegetarian, former cheerleader and world's worst video gamer. When not writing, she enjoys watching infomercials, singing in the car and tweeting. She has a degree in journalism from the University of Maine, Orono that she promptly abandoned to write about the people in her own head. More often than not, these people turn out to be just as weird as she is.
Other books by Chelsea M. Cameron:
Nocturnal (Book One in The Noctalis Chronicles)
Nightmare (Book Two in The Noctalis Chronicles)
Whisper (Book One in The Whisper Trilogy)
My Favorite Mistake (Coming September 29, 2012)
For more information on Chelsea and her books, visit her blog: leftandwrite7.blogspot.com, or follow her on Twitter, or send her an email at: [email protected]
Neither
by
Chelsea M. Cameron
Table of Contents
