Stolen Night (9 page)

‘Rhode,’ I called quietly once he was out the door and a few paces down the hall. ‘Rhode!’ I called again, a little louder. He walked quickly down the hallway. I’d
had enough of being treated like the Invisible Woman. ‘If you don’t turn around,
right now
, I’ll scream bloody murder.’

He turned on his heel and looked at me.

‘There was a vampire in a herb shop,’ I began. ‘Here in Lover’s Bay. I recognized her from Hathersage. The maid I killed before my hibernation. And she knows,’ I
added, ‘about the ritual.’ I stood a foot or so away from Rhode and watched for his reaction. ‘Vicken and I wanted to tell you earlier, but you were unreachable.’

‘Were you hurt?’ he asked, keeping his stance the same, arms folded, back straight.

‘She’s already killed one friend of mine,’ I said simply. ‘She said she’d be back for the ritual.’

It was as though Rhode was having the conversation with me against his better judgement. He was respecting the Aeris’s demand that we stay apart, but surely he was allowed to speak to
me?

‘She’s fashioned her nails to points.’ I gulped, imagining my flesh splitting in two from the strike of her fingers. Rhode brought a gauze-wrapped hand to his chin, nodded once
and kept his eyes on my feet. ‘She created a coven. Vicken and I saw the ceremony ourselves.’

‘Five?’ Rhode asked.

I nodded, but couldn’t help myself. I had to know. ‘What happened to you?’ I asked. ‘You look terrible. What kind of fight did this? Was it because of the
ritual?’

‘No, and I already told you it was nothing.’

‘You’re lying,’ I said in disgust.

‘I have to go,’ Rhode said, but before he turned completely away from me, he added, ‘We should meet tonight. About this coven. I’ll have Vicken alert you when and
where.’ He walked a few steps and I listened to the echo of his heels on the floor. Anger bubbled up inside me.

‘You know,’ I called after him, just a little louder than my natural speaking voice, ‘it was always this way.’

He stopped, keeping his back to me. We were alone again now that the next period had started.

‘For hundreds of years, you were in control and I knew nothing.’

Rhode turned to me now, our eyes locked in a stare.

‘It’s true,’ I said, my voice faint. ‘I had other distractions, but it was always you who held the power. I loved you, so it didn’t matter.’

Rhode walked towards me until we were inches apart. This close, I could see the tiny hairs growing on his chin and the faint bruising along his jawline – bruises I hadn’t noticed
before.

‘I don’t care about power,’ he whispered. He seemed to catch himself in a moment of real anger. He took a deep breath. ‘Always, always my thoughts were with you,’
he said in an angry hiss.

‘You kept me in the dark,’ I challenged. ‘Perhaps if I had known about the particulars of the ritual, I could have helped you. We wouldn’t be stuck, cursed by the Aeris
with no possible way to be together.’

At the back of my mind I wondered why Rhode had said he would never have come back to Wickham, and where he was for the year he was gone. It kept nagging at me. What could possibly be a strong
enough reason for him to stay away? Another secret, another truth he was keeping from me.

‘I told you, I didn’t know we would face these kinds of repercussions from the ritual,’ Rhode said.

‘You said a lot of things, Rhode. Made promises, which you have since broken.’ An image of my sister’s grave laced with jasmine flowers flashed into my mind.

‘Such as?’

‘I do not need to remind you. The point is that if I had helped you with the ritual, if you had told me what you were doing, we might have found another way. Maybe we’d have done
things differently. You wouldn’t have had to fake your death,’ I dared to say.

‘I really do have to go,’ Rhode said. He looked at my lips and my anger dispersed. How quickly it evaporated into the air and away from me. We were
so
close. Close enough that
our lips were just a kiss away. My body wanted it so badly that my muscles ached. His eyes, surrounded by those bloody bruises, gazed at me.

We’d never touched before. Not as mortals.

If he just leaned forward, he’d kiss me, lip to lip, skin to skin, and we’d know what it was like to touch. With human feeling. What we’d craved for hundreds of years. The
Aeris wouldn’t mind.
Would they?
Just a simple kiss . . .

‘Can’t you feel that?’ I asked.

I looked up at him, peering into his eyes. I stared at the purple bruising, wondering if it still hurt.

‘Can’t you?’ I repeated.

In the pit of my stomach was a tornado of feeling, churning and spinning, pulling me towards him. I continued to stare at him, drinking him in. My feet were rooted to the ground, but I swayed
just slightly. My body was on fire, the glorious feeling of blood racing through my veins and my heart. I extended my hand and watched him do the same. His hand, so different from the cool, smooth
skin of a vampire, was now the weathered hand of a human. We stood like that for a moment, almost touching, enjoying the electricity between us. I let every pore, every cell, feel the sensation of
heat.

‘Yes,’ he answered at last, and dropped his hand.

It can’t be like this for everyone
, I thought.
Not everyone feels love like this.

Finally I took a tiny step towards him, but he stopped me.

‘We can’t,’ he said.

I didn’t want to come back. I had to
. His words echoed inside me. I ripped my eyes away, and the space between us opened up.

‘You should leave. Permanently,’ I replied, looking at the ground. I took a step back. ‘If it’s such a torment to be near me. If you didn’t even
want to come
back
, as you said, then go.’ Even as I said it, I knew I didn’t mean it. And Rhode was not so easily fooled.

He blinked slowly. ‘You know I couldn’t leave. Not now.’

My anger bubbled again. I swallowed hard. Rhode inched closer. I could breathe him in: soap, deodorant and his skin too. He smelt sweet, of humanity. He clenched his jaw as though he was
fighting tears, and when our gaze met I saw that his eyes . . . were
glassy
.

‘Lenah,’ he said, drawing my eyes to his, ‘I stay because there is an extraordinary difference between thinking of you and seeing you in the mortal flesh. I stay for the one
moment you smile throughout the day. Or to watch you run your hand through your hair. Because I must, must –’ his breath was short – ‘
must
be near you, in any way I
can.’

I was speechless. I wanted to say something – anything. Tell him I felt exactly the same way, but I couldn’t stop him before he turned from me.

And then . . .

I was engulfed by the pungent smell of ripe apples. Apples everywhere. As though I was standing above a wooden crate holding dozens of shiny red apples from the September harvest. I shook my
head to clear it, but the scent was so strong I was compelled to close my eyes to escape from it for just a moment. Images flooded my mind. A scrapbook of memories from my life ran through my
brain, unstoppable.

Rhode and I are vampires. We kiss on the great hill at the foot of our stone manor
.
I wear a great black gown with a long train. It is moments before sunset. His hands press against my
back, drawing me near. My skin has a porcelain sheen. My lips are rose coloured and I can see the points of my fangs. Why can I see myself? A hand holds a cane. I know that cane and its owl-head
handle made of onyx.

I opened my eyes, shook my head and focused on my breath.
In and out, Lenah
, I thought.
In and out
. Slowly the images dissipated along with the scent of apples. The sound of Rhode
walking away brought me back to the world of the present.

I must be near you
.

My breath couldn’t catch up with me fast enough.

Rhode walked down the hallway, his words ringing in my mind and the smell of apples lingering on the air.

‘It’s September third. We have twenty-seven days before the start of the month of Nuit Rouge,’ Rhode explained that evening.

As promised, Vicken had summoned me to the library after dinner. I stood at the glass window of a study atrium. From the back of the library we faced the great hill that led to the archery
plateau. I tried not to follow the slope of the hill, especially since I intended never to go up there again. I doubted a vampire would watch from there, so exposed. There were no trees to hide
behind and no cover of shadow. Vampires liked to watch and study their victims. By knowing their weaknesses, they could kill them with ease. I pressed my body weight against the glass, letting it
cool my skin. I used to do that as a vampire to make sure I still retained some vestiges of my sense of touch.

I turned from the window to the two men of my past. Vicken leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. His brow creased and he kept his gaze on Rhode. Rhode sat at the table and rested
his bandaged elbow on the study desk.

‘Why does Nuit Rouge matter?’ Vicken asked.

‘It’s when the connection between the supernatural world and the mortal world is at its weakest,’ I said. I could feel Rhode’s gaze upon me. ‘It’s why our
Nuit Rouge party was always particularly bloody. Ever notice you felt stronger on those nights? More . . . animal-like?’

Vicken considered this with a frown. ‘Yes. I guess you’re right.’

‘Until October first, it’s unlikely Odette will be able to attack on the campus,’ Rhode said.

‘She attacked on the beach,’ Vicken said.

‘Technically it’s not within the grounds,’ Rhode replied. ‘The ritual was performed on campus more than once. It might be what called Odette initially, but it may offer
us protection as well. The energy may be lingering, as a shield. At least until October first, when Nuit Rouge will endow her with extra powers.’

‘Brilliant. So in the meantime we’re prisoners in this loony bin,’ Vicken replied.

I ran a hand through my hair, massaging my scalp to relieve some tension. I finally met Rhode’s eyes. There was a zing in my chest as though he was touching something within me, very near
my heart.

I wanted to tell him about Tony’s death and Justin’s defence of me. I wanted to explain how it felt when I was able to wield sunlight. But Rhode had not asked about the coven. He had
not asked how they’d died. Again I reminded myself I still had no clue to his whereabouts the year before. He had revealed nothing.

‘Let’s go, shall we?’ he said. ‘I think we’ve covered everything.’

Vicken turned off the lights to the study atrium, bringing our meeting to a close. Rhode glanced at me just as we walked on to the courtyard in front of the library.

As his bruised eyes locked on to mine, I stopped short, inhaling the smell of apples again. But it was different this time. Now the scent was just like when I was a child. I brought my hand to
my eyes and rubbed at them and brought with it the smell of cider in winter. In the black of my mind, I saw the geology classroom from that morning.

I am sitting at Rhode’s desk at the front of the room. I look up to the doorway and my chest clenches. I see myself walk into the classroom. I am wearing all black, my brown hair
falling over my shoulders.

How can I walk into the classroom and sit at the desk at the same time? This is someone else’s vision. Someone else’s mind!

Beautiful, a voice says. A deep voice, a man’s voice. Someone is looking at me. I am aware of the pain in my hands, the cracking sensation whenever I move my lips. I have been in a
battle.

It was all worth it,
the person thinks. His whole body aches. But there is something else too. As I walk by, the person inhales deeply, hoping to smell something familiar. He grips on to his
notebook so as not to lift a hand to touch me. Just looking at me hurts. This is painful. This love, he thinks, is so deep it cannot be undone.

A realization overwhelms me: I’m in Rhode’s mind. These are Rhode’s thoughts!

I blinked, breathing in the familiar smell of campus: the union, the cut lawns and of course the ocean. The sweet smell of apples had vanished as if it had never been. I took a moment to replay
what I had just seen. I could see myself in geology exactly as Rhode saw me. I smiled at the green grass at my feet.
He thought I was beautiful. This love is so deep it cannot be undone.

With the mechanical click of a lighter, and a plume of cigarette smoke, Vicken tugged at my elbow. Vicken did not fear my touch but Rhode did. With that realization, another burst of happiness
pumped through me. Rhode
wanted
to touch me, but was resisting. I could feel the conflict within him during the vision. Hope rippled through me again as it had in the hallway that
morning.

I stay because there is an extraordinary difference between thinking of you and seeing you in the mortal flesh . . . Because I must, must, must be near you, in any way I can.

‘We will always be in love,’ I said aloud.

‘Oh Lord. Let’s go,’ Vicken growled.

We headed across the courtyard and on to the main pathway.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘The star tower at the top of Curie.’ He called the science building by its official name.

Vicken puffed at his cigarette as a collection of junior girls passed by.

‘Hey . . . Vicken,’ one of the girls said, with a curl of her lip and a breathy tone to her voice. ‘You shouldn’t smoke,’ she added with a giggle. He walked
backwards for a moment to maintain eye contact.

‘I heard it could kill me,’ he said, with his Cheshire Cat grin.

Another round of giggles and I rolled my eyes as we approached Curie.

‘One of them is jealous. She thinks I have a
huge
crush on you,’ Vicken said, and I rolled my eyes a second time.

‘Are you ever going to finish that cigarette?’ I asked.

He drew another puff. ‘I like to fully experience things that are bad for me.’

‘You know,’ I said, as he blew out the last breath of smoke, ‘contrary to when you were living your old life, those will actually kill you.’