Secrets [5] Echoes: Part One (2 page)

He crossed his arms behind his head. “Too bad. Sleep in the spare room then.”

“Fine.” I got up and headed for the door, but he didn't stop me. So I stopped myself. “You’re just going to let me go?”

He shrugged.

“Don’t you care if I’m scared in there?”

“Ara. Grow up. There’s no ghosts in there. Or monsters. Or vampires, or any other creature your imagination cooked up.” He rolled up onto his elbow. “And I'm not closing my blinds. So if you want to sleep in here, you’ll just have to put up with it.”

I stomped back over to my bed and slid in under my blankets. “Jerk.”

“Go to sleep.”

Mike rolled away from me and started snoring before my mind had even drifted, and in the shadows around his room my eyes made monsters out of things that were furniture by day. “Get it together, Ara-Rose,” I whispered to myself. “You’re thirteen years old. Too old to believe in ghosts.”

But real or not, the ghosts followed me as I fell asleep, walking a few steps behind me in a world I knew was just a dream. A kind of scary dream—one I couldn’t wake up from.

The bush land looked different here: the trees were taller and smelled of pine and wet bark, and the sky was a deep dark blue in the distance. It wasn't dark enough that I couldn't see, but it was desolate enough to make me feel very alone, and at the same time feel like I was being watched.

The further in I walked, the clearer things became. And the clearer things became, the less they seemed to make sense.

I couldn't remember kneeling in the dirt, or taking off my clothes, but my legs were bare and my fingers closed around a dagger. I dragged the sharp point down the length of my palm, closing my fist as thick red blood coloured my skin. It didn’t hurt or, if it did, I couldn’t feel it—as if this wasn’t my body. Yet.

I held on to the blood, careful not to lose even one drop.
She
wanted it all. Not one drop should be wasted.

As I stood, the dagger landed in the dirt at my feet with a gentle ‘tink’ like a shovel making a hole. I walked slowly, one foot over the other, toward the Stone, my hair falling in thick, tickly waves over my bare breasts and swaying gently against my full, round belly. My palm stung where the cut tried to heal, using all the force of my natural powers, but the spirit realm forb
ade it. This blood was intended for a higher purpose.

I knelt by the Stone and closed my eyes, and as I laid the bloodied hand flat to its surface, a pink glow coloured the backs of my eyelids.

“You’re not ready to ask this of the Stone,” a pleading tone warned. “You must wait.”

“No more waiting,” I whispered, my voice echoing. I looked up quickly and cast my eyes out to the trees guarding the crossways where the four paths met. The forest was as deep and wide in the night as it was at dawn, but I felt closed in. Surrounded. I spread my fingers against the Stone and closed my eyes again, feeling myself slip through slightly—a physical and spiritual connection.

“Auress,” a deeper voice said, a welcoming voice. I looked around for the face of a man I recognised but did not know. But all I could see was the foggy white smoke of a world I was not ready for yet. And in this world, when I heard that one single word, I understood finally what it meant—all the responsibilities and gifts that came with it. Auress.

“Tell me how to set it free,” I said.

“Go back,” the voice replied. “Go back and the answer will come to you.”

I opened my eyes slowly and
tried to draw away from the Stone, but my hand caught against it by the pull of a wet greenish vine snaking through the Stone from the world beyond, completely embedded in my skin.

“What
is this?” I asked.

“Release it.”

“It won’t break free,” I said, but as I moved my hand the vine shifted and came loose, grains of dirt falling from the Stone where it disconnected. My fingers instinctively closed around the full feeling in my hand. When I got the courage up to peek inside my fist, I saw only a handful of wet brown twigs.

“
Why are you doing this?” I screamed out to the forest, but nothing, not even the call of a bird answered back. I sat there on my knees, by a rock with no warmth, and cried for a moment, letting the tears fall down between my tightly closed fingertips. Until they pulsed—the twigs in my palm. They pulsed and thickened, and as I unfolded my fingertips, the twigs sunk into my skin and a swirling, twisting brown trunk rose up from within, stretching and flourishing, reaching until its wide branches opened like the wings of a small bird.

“Wow,” I whispered.

As the tiny tree extended its limbs to their full length, a purposeful breeze brushed the fine hairs on my wrist, sending swirls of glowing blue flecks slowly up the trunk and around its branches, leaving them covered in a handful of golden and green leaves. I held it up to the rising sun and angled my palm to better look at it.

“Release it,” said the deep voice again.

I shielded my eyes as the bright orange orb blinded me, forcing away everything my mind thought it knew, until who I was or what I thought I knew no longer made sense. I touched my rounded belly with my free hand, feeling life within. Life I knew was connected to me, inside me, but I couldn't remember how it got there. “Where am I?” I called. “Where’s my mum?”

“Release it. Now,” the voice yelled.

“Not until you tell me where I am,” I screamed.

“Ara.” Mike’s face appeared above me. I tried to roll over, but he slid his hands under my legs and waist and scooped me up. “
Wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”

“A nightmare?” As I blinked and tried to focus in the sudden darkness, Mike slid us both into the comfort and safety of his bed, drawing the covers over us like a fortress of warmth. I wriggled down and snuggled as close to him as I could get, for once not so bothered by the newly growing hair on his chest.

“Yes, just another nightmare, baby.” He kissed my head. “You’re okay.”

“I don’t feel right, Mike.”

“What do you mean?”

“I feel like someone emptied me out,” I cried.

“Shh.” He swept my hair back, kissing my head again. “It’s okay.”

I nodded.

“What was the dream about?” he asked, reaching back with one arm to close his blinds.

“I can’t remember it all. I just remember being … I was older. And I was having a baby.”

“Yikes.” He winced. “That
is
scary.”

I laughed. “I just remember feeling like … I knew why I was there. And then I just
forgot
.”

“Just don’t think about it, baby.” He dropped his arm heavily around me and squeezed my shoulders. “You can sleep up here with me, okay.”

“You sure? Will your mum be mad again?”

He laughed. “I think she’s getting used to it.”

“You told her, though, right? That we’re not … you know…”

“Ara,” he said in short. “You’re thirteen. She
knows
I’m not going out with
you
.”

I nodded to hide the slight insult at the way he said that, as though dating me would be the most repulsive thing in the world.

He kissed my head then, invalidating that theory, and whispered goodnight.

“Goodnight, Mike.”

After a few moments of heavy breathing, where I thought he was asleep, he turned my face up to his and smiled. “Hey, Ar?”

“Mm?”

“No wetting the bed, okay?”

“Hey.” I slapped him. “Jerk!”

“Ara, jump.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Of what?” Jase asked with a shrug, his voice carrying up from the bottomless depths below with just a hint too much laughter.

“Gee,” I said sarcastically. “Maybe it’s the six meter drop, I don’t know. Or perhaps the idea of hitting a flat surface at rapid speed.”

“It’s water, Ara. You’ll be fine.”

“Clearly, you’ve never seen me attempt a dive.”

“I’m sure you can handle it. You’re Aussie, right? Don’t you all spend your childhood swinging off ropes into water holes?”

“Ha-ha,” I said, then thought about that for a second. “Okay, maybe that’s half true. But I was never the girl who swung gracefully through the air and landed in the water feet first.”

“Okay, how did
you
land then?”

“Usually?” I waited until he nodded to prompt me onward. “Butt first.”

Jase laughed, the kind, gentle tones of his deeper voice echoing off the rocky falls and darting around the treetops. “It’s okay.” He offered his hand up. “I’ll catch you if you land wrong.”

“Catch me? I’ll land
on
you, Jase. And then—” I motioned to my rounded belly, jutting out awkwardly above my underwear, “—I’m pretty sure I’ll crush you.”

A strange groan bubbled from his lips as he sunk under the water for a second, and I could swear I saw him roll his eyes, even from all the way up here.

“You’ve hardly got a basketball there,” he said, surfacing again. “I highly doubt you can crush me. Now just jump.”

“Argh!” I dropped my arms to my sides, set my sights on the wet, glistening vampire below, and took a leap of faith, tucking my knees up as high as they’d go with a bump there. And the feeling of air between my toes, rushing up past my bare hips and thrashing my hair about, made me hold my breath in mental preparation for the hard slap of the water’s surface. But the chill wrapped my toes instead, forcing my eyes open at the sudden shock, and before my instincts to survive could protest I was dunked under, head and shoulders, as the rest of my body slipped through the surface with ease. My mind sent off some random and rather quirky quip about what I’d expected would meet my feet when I reached the water, but my lips were frozen open in place, waiting for my body to wake up and swim me to the top again so I could gasp.

My fingertips clawed their way through the icy pockets of water, while gravity continued to sink me down into the seemingly bottomless depths of the pool, turning rational thought into panic among the darkness.

I kicked harder toward the light, my lungs taking a massive gulp of air as I splashed into existence again. “Oh my God! That’s freezing.”

Jase grabbed my hand and swam into me, wrapping his slippery arms around my waist. “That’s why it’s called Winter Falls.”

I looked up at the water cascading from the rock I just jumped off: just a thin white wall breaking the small pool’s surface in little more than bubbly ripples. “Yes, it certainly lives up to its reputation. So—” I looked back at Jase and his brilliant smile under the midday sun. “Remind me again why we’re swimming in autumn.”

“Because I want you to heat the water with your blue light,” he said simply.

“What!”

“That day on the beach, Ara, when your hands got hot, you
melted
stone. Your power does more than just shock people and burn their insides. I think you could boil a man to death in a pond as well.”

“Okay.” I considered the two fleshy bodies in said pond. “So, remind me again why we’re
in
the water that I’m supposed to boil.”

He laughed. “Look, I know I should've told you about the experiment before we came out here today—”

“Uh, yeah, because then I could've brought a bathing suit instead of swimming in
white
undies.” I motioned down at my bra, then my knickers. “When I jump out, these will leave
nothing
to the imagination.”

Jase’s head went back,
making his sharp fangs look all too inviting as that boyish laughter moved his throat. “You have made every excuse under the sun to avoid the beach, the bath, anything with water, when it comes to experimenting with your blue light, Ara. I need to show you that it’s really okay. You just need to trust me.”

“Trust you? More like kill you
—
or
the baby. If this goes wrong, Jase—”

“It won
’t.” He grabbed both my hands and held them out of the water between us. “I promise.”

“You can’t make that kind of promise.”

“I can, Ara. I’m a scientist.” He weaved his fingers through mine, our hands touching palm to palm.

“Even scientists make mistakes, Jase.”

“Look, we’ll be fine as long as you don’t shoot me or try to blast rocks while we’re in the water, but … just heat it.”

“I don’t know how.”

He smiled at my lips, then at the line of water just covering my now transparent bra. “I do.”

“If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking
…”

“You’d be right.” He flashed a wildly mischievous grin and dived downward, his fabric-covered butt and hairy legs the last things I saw before he was suddenly gone.

“Jase?”

I made a gentle turn, trying to spot him, but though the surface at this distance from the falls was calm, save for a slight waver here or there, it was also black as night underneath, the bottom and any slimy creature that might be lurking in its depths concealed by the darkness below and the glorious mirror of white-grey sky and moulting trees atop.

“Jase?” I called again, squealing after as a flash of white caught my eye from just below my feet. I launched into a swim, only half noticing when a hand snagged my ankle and a set of long fingertips hooked the rim of my underwear, holding them back as the force of my forward leap slipped my legs clean out of them, leaving my toes behind before I even felt the cold water on the hottest part between my legs.

“Hey!” I bent slightly to cover myself, keeping my thighs fused together as my ankles kicked to keep me afloat.

The thief surfaced then in an eruption of water beads, rising up through the air from one flick of his dark hair, the sun catching them and making them glimmer as bright as the playful glint in his eye. And I found it very hard to be mad at him—even when he held up my undies and said “Missing something?”

“Give those back.” I swam forward, trying not to laugh. “You can’t just play keep-off every time you want me to do something new with my powers.”

“Why not?” He started away, tucking the fabric between his teeth so he could tread with both hands. “It works,” he added, his mouth full.

“Oh my God!” I swam after him, struggling a bit with the drag my belly produced. “Get those out of your mouth. You’re like an undisciplined dog.”

“Dog?” He stopped and drew the undies from his teeth. “Ara, I really hope you never played
this
game with your dog.”

“I never had a dog,” I said, catching up to him, exhausted and huffing pathetically. “Now, give those back and no harm will come to you.”

“You might need to work on the tone of your threats if you want people to take you seriously,” he said, smiling down at me.

“You’re the only one left that’s not threatened by me.”

“That’s because I know you love me too much to follow through on a threat.” He held my undies above his head, his feet touching the sandy surface while I struggled, kicking and splashing, trying to reach up
and
keep one hand over my chest to cover my nipples.

“This isn’t fair. You’re taller than me,” I whinged.

He laughed, wrapping a hand around my waist to give me a little boost, and with his touch, our bellies connected, wet skin touching wet skin, making me take a breath as the reality of our closeness took hold. I wanted to stop covering my breasts and leave myself completely open to him—tilt my neck at an angle that allowed his lips the freedom to search my flesh—let him find the vein there and open it in one swift bite. He’d been immune to my venom now for over three weeks, and I’d been feeding from Sacrificials for too long to handle the sudden rush of desire I got from being this close to his open mouth. This close to a vampire I could bite.

“Can you feel that?” he asked.

“What?”

“Look.” He cupped his hand under my bottom and I wrapped my legs around his waist, resting for a moment. But something had changed. The water was warm and so silky it felt like milk.

“You didn’t just…?” I hinted in disgust.

He laughed so loudly it echoed. “No, I didn’t just pee. You’re doing it, Ara. You’re heating the water.”

“I am?”

He nodded, lowering my undies and placing them in my hand. “Concentrate on it.”

“How?”

“That feeling
—the desire. Concentrate on that.”

I closed my eyes and let myself want Jase
—focusing hard on the feel of his warm hands on my cold, naked skin: my breasts against his chest, my heart seeming to beat enough for the both of us—like the pulse would reach through and into him, bringing his body alive again. Through my mind’s eye I could
see
the beads of water trickle down the chocolaty stubble along his jaw, finding folds and curves to follow from his earlobe, over his throat and across the rolling perfection of his breastbone, coming to rest, finally, just under his dark-pink nipple. I imagined my tongue catching that little droplet, standing every hair under it to attention, calling on the instincts nature embedded in my species when we were first created: to drink. To kill. To lust.

The water became suddenly so buoyant I felt myself bounce a little against Jase, like falling asleep in a boat on a calm lake, his hands under my bottom keeping me anchored to him, my legs and toes wavering freely in the flow while my most intimate cleft was left slightly parted against the firm flesh just under his navel.

“Open your eyes,” he said, angling my face upward with both hands, and when I looked into his eyes, they widened enough that I could see my own frizzy hair in the reflection. “Wow.”

“What’s wow?” I asked.

“Your eyes are so
shockingly
blue right now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And…” He looked down, wriggling uncomfortably. “This is actually getting a bit
too
hot.”

I unwound myself from his body and let him back away, both of us swimming to opposite ends of the pool. The heat dissipated further out, like stepping into an ice-cream store and closing the door on a hot summer’s day.

“Are you satisfied now?” I called.

“With what?”

“That you made me do it. Will you stop trying to make me swim in October?”

“Okay, but you’ll thank me later.”

“Why?”

“Because, just think
…” He started back in my direction. “Whenever you take a bath, you can just heat it up again if it gets cold.”

I considered that, getting lost in thought as I studied the peach skin and soft blue veins on the back of my hand. “I wonder if I can heat a cup of tea.”

“Who knows? One thing’s for certain.” He stopped just in front of me, a little puffed from the swimming. “You can certainly heat me up anytime we get close like that.”

My eyes moved up into my skull, doing a circle before coming back down. “You’re so corny, Jase.”

“I was being serious.”

“I know.” I smiled. “So, what d’you think it’s for? I mean, why would I have this kind of power? Like, what use is it?”

“I don’t think vampires inherit certain powers because of any use they may have or even for a path they might take in the future, but maybe since you’re an Auress as well, your abilities might have some benefit to nature.”

“How so?”

“No idea.” He shrugged. “What good could possibly come from heating water or melting stone?”

I thought about it for a second. “Not anything I can think of.”

He took a deep breath, a little shiver running down his spine, and moved over to grab the rock behind us. “You could always ask the Goddess you speak to in the forest—maybe she can shed some light on it all.”

“Maybe.” I reached down and slipped my undies back on, certain they were
inside out but glad to be covered all the same. “Hey, Jase?”

“Mm?”

“How come you get cold—and puffed out?” I nodded the spot he’d just swam back from.

He shifted awkwardly.

“You’re a vampire, and—”

“We do get cold,” he corrected. “And we sweat. And get puffed out. Just not as easily as you.”

“I know that, but you seem to be so much more human than other vampires—more vulnerable to the elements.”

“I always have been.”

“Why?”

“It’s just a weakness, apparently.”

My brow cocked into a singular arch. “I don’t see it as a weakness.”