The Purity of Blood: Volume I (44 page)

His shoulders
slumped a bit as he sat back down next to me.
 

“I can’t picture
a future without you, Sara.
 
You are my
future.
 
Marriage? – I don’t know.
 
To be honest, before you, I’d never even considered
it.”

“Does that mean
you’re considering it now?”
 

He’d left that
door wide open and I’d walked right through it.

“We’ve only been
together for a short time now, Sara.
 
We
have decades ahead of us.
 
I suppose
anything is possible.”
 

I wanted to say
something like how evasive an answer I thought that was, but hesitated a long
moment before I worked up the courage to do so.

“What if I were
like you – a vampire?”

He closed his
eyes at my words and clenched his teeth tightly as if they’d caused him physical
pain.
 
I could tell I’d upset him, but to
me it had been the elephant in the room for some time now, and it was only a
matter of time before one of us had the courage to speak its name.

“Would you want
to be?” he asked quietly, his eyes still closed.

I thought about
it for a moment, reflecting on the hours of thought I’d given the idea over the
past week.

“I don’t
know.
 
If it meant that I could spend
eternity or close to it with you, then maybe yes.”

“That’s not a
good enough answer, Sara.
 
You can’t realize
what you’d be giving up.
 
What if
something happened to me?
 
What if you
had to spend an eternity without me here on this Earth?
 
How would you feel then?
 
Besides, if you were to become … well, who’s
to say you’d be like me or Randall.
 
It’s
impossible to say what someone will turn into when their transformation is
complete.
 
You think you’d be like us,
but you might be more animal than anything.
 
I would still love you no matter what you were, but … how could I live
with myself knowing what you did for me?
 
No, it’s not an option.”

“Then what is?”

“I don’t know, honey, but we’ll figure it out together.”
 
Then he leaned down and tenderly kissed me on
the side of my head as if to say not to worry so much.

We spent the rest of the evening
curled up in my room watching a couple of old movies on television.
 
We talked, but it was surface chatter.
  
We both knew the ungainly beast of an elephant
was still sitting in the corner of the room.
 
It had a name now that we both knew, and we also knew that it wasn’t
going away anytime soon.
 

At eleven I
walked him down to the lobby.
 
When he finally
let go of my hand, he paused at the door as if hesitant to leave.
 
As he looked down into my eyes, I didn’t
expect him to kiss me goodnight – but he did.
 
Before I knew it, he was pulling me close and I was on the receiving end
of a long, sensual, lingering kiss.
 
His
fingers running through my hair, they began to travel oh so slowly down the
length of my spine.
 
Would it always be
like this?
 
Is this how every girl feels
when she’s been good and kissed?
 
This
tingling in low, exotic places.

Just before my
knees gave way, he released me and I watched as he staggered away into the
darkness, a little less steady on his feet than usual.
 

I sighed.
 

Every time I
watched him walk away, I felt as if he was taking some vital part of me with
him, and that I wouldn’t get it back until I saw him again.
 
It left me to wonder, what if someday he
didn’t come back.

As I walked back
upstairs I wondered what I’d have said if he’d asked me to marry him.
 
I wanted to say yes, desperately.
 
I couldn’t imagine saying no, but the mental
image of us on our fiftieth wedding anniversary still haunted me like a bad
dream I couldn’t forget.
 

I didn’t want to
be a vampire.
 
If I were a better person,
I would have admitted that to him, but I couldn’t.
  
It was not a life, apart from him, that I
would ever choose for myself.
 
A frozen
eternity held no appeal for me.

As I curled up in bed, I tried to put away these thoughts as
best I could.
 
I just wanted to focus on
the here and now, the fact that I loved Daniel and he professed to love
me.
 
Closing my eyes, I concentrated on
the feeling of his arms around me, the way I felt like we were the only two people
in the world when I was there.
 
Why did I
have to worry about a future I had no control over?
  
Tomorrow I would do my best to forget our
conversation and just live each day as if it were my last, and eternity was
never an option.

When morning came I was running
late and had to double time it over to the lecture hall so I wouldn’t be late
for class.
 
Tabitha was standing at the
top of the steps waving at me from across the quad.

“Running a bit
late this morning, are we?”

“Guess so,” was
all I said as we joined the tail end of the crowd heading up the stairs.
 
We took our seats only moments before
Professor Walker and Daniel came in the side door.
 
The Professor walked up to the podium with
his notes in hand while Daniel took Rodney’s normal spot at the table off to
the side.

“Well, how do
you like that?” Tabitha said under her breath.
 

I pretended not
to hear her.

Without offering
any explanation as to where he’d been, the Professor picked up right where
Daniel had left off last Friday as if nothing had happened.
 
When he came to one of his now familiar
pauses where he’d normally have called on me for an answer, he scanned the
room.
 
It was his usual custom to make
the rest of the class squirm ever so slightly before finally calling on
me.
 
But when his eyes finally did come
to rest on me, his question remained unasked.
 
I watched his expression as he stared deep into my eyes for a long
uncomfortably silent moment.
 
Under the weight
of his gaze, I shifted my position in the chair, attempting to prepare myself
for his usual ruthlessly hard question … but none came.
 

Unsure how to
react, I nervously stole a glance at Daniel as if to ask his eyes for an
explanation.
 
As I did, the Professor’s
jaw tensed while his eyes instantly shot to Daniel.
 
I watched in confusion as the Professor’s
usual carefully controlled façade slipped ever so slightly.
 
If his look could have killed, Daniel would
have been lying dead on the floor in a pool of pig’s blood.
 

A second later
the Professor shook it off, and looking back over the class, asked his question
to a girl in the row behind me.
 
As she
fumbled to come up with a response, I could see heads turning to neighbors
commenting on this unusual change in classroom routine.
 
Was I suddenly off the hook?
 

He asked several
additional questions throughout the remainder of class, but his gray eyes never
looked my way again.
 
As his lecture wore
on, I felt free to hazard a guess that he was purposefully avoiding my face.
 
Was Daniel right? Did it have something to do
with our relationship?

As class ended
and everyone started filing out of the hall, I looked down at the podium as I zipped
up my backpack.
 
The Professor was
gathering up his papers with something of a scowl on his face.
 
No students had ventured down to ask questions
today, probably too intimidated by the unusually dower mood he’d sported for
the past hour.
 
After his murderous look
Daniel’s way, he’d never fully recovered his usual carefully controlled
demeanor.
 

I watched as he
stalked past Daniel without a word or a look, letting the door slam shut behind
him as he left the room.
 
Daniel slumped
down in his chair as if his world had just come crashing down on top of
him.
 

When I got to
the end of the row, I mumbled goodbye to Tabitha and started down the stairs,
anxious to see what was the matter.

As I stopped at
the other side of the table, Daniel looked up.
 
He slowly got to his feet and gathered his papers without a word.
 

“What’s wrong?”
I finally asked when I realized he wasn’t going to tell me on his own.
 

“He knows
everything now – about us.”

“What did you
tell him?”

“I didn’t tell
him much of anything.
 
You told him.
 
The minute he looked at you, he saw
everything.
 
He – he can read you much
better than I ever could.”

“Read me?”
 
His mysterious answers were making me overly
anxious.

“Your mind.
 
He can read your mind.
 
I can only sense your emotions, but he can
read every thought that passes through your head.
 
He knew something was up when he looked at
you, but when you looked over at me, all your memories of us surfaced and he
saw it all.”

Suddenly feeling
violated to my core, I did my best to shove my emotions down and stick to the
facts at hand.

“Why should it
matter if he knows?
 
What can he do?”

“Randall is a
very strong willed individual.”
 
I
watched him try to paste a reassuring smile on his lips for me.
 
“But don’t worry, I’ll find out what’s going
on.
 
He can’t keep us apart. – No matter
what he does.”

He leaned over, and
after giving me a chaste kiss on the lips, quickly headed for the door, leaving
me all alone in the cavernous lecture hall.
 
I didn’t see Daniel again for the rest of the day.
 
But his last words echoed in my head the way
they had echoed in the empty lecture hall.
 

No matter what he does.

When I finished dinner that
night, I pushed my tray back and again looked around the dining hall.
 
Still no sign of Daniel.
 

“Where’s that
guy – Daniel?” Ryan asked, snapping me out of my fog.

“I don’t
know.
 
I haven’t seen him since this
morning.”

Mike and Ryan
went back to whatever they had been discussing, but I wasn’t really paying
attention to the conversation.
 
I think
they were talking about a movie they’d seen over the weekend or one they wanted
to go see next weekend.

“Is something
wrong?” Tabitha asked, sounding concerned.
 
I stopped scanning the room and turned to meet her gaze.
 

“I don’t
know.
 
Daniel’s been acting kind of funny
since I got back.
 
All I know is that it
has something to do with the Professor returning from wherever he went.”

“Yeah, now that
Professor Walker is back, I was surprised to see Daniel in class this
morning.
 
I wonder what all that was
about.”

“Daniel was very
cryptic about the whole thing.
 
He said
the Professor didn’t want us to have a relationship, but wouldn’t say why.”

“That’s
strange.
 
Why would the Professor care who
he dated?”

“I don’t know,
but I get the feeling there’s more going on than he’s telling me.
 
Like he’s trying to protect me from
something.”

“Oh, I’m sure it
will all work out.
 
Any fool can see he’s
crazy about you.
 
Guys are weird.
 
They get spooked for the strangest
reasons.
 
Who can tell with them?
 
I’d let it go for now, it will all work out
in the end.
 
Trust me.”

I decided to try to go with her advice.
 
She knew more about men and dating than I
did, and her hopeful words of wisdom I wished would be truth in the end.

I looked over at the clock next
to my bed.
 
It was almost 10:30 at night
and Daniel still hadn’t called.
 
Unable
to stand it any longer, I was about to pick up the phone to call him when it
rang.

Taking a deep
breath, I answered, trying my best to sound casual.

“Sorry I didn’t
call earlier, but the Professor decided to change the curriculum for the rest
of the semester in some of his classes and he’s had me working on it all
day.
 
Going to be a big project for the
next few days.”

“I figured it
was something like that.”
 
Again I tried
to sound casual.
 
It was forced
though.
 

“So how was your
day?”
 
His voice sounded strained, as if
he were trying too hard to sound polite.

“Good.
 
Just another day of classes and
studying.
 
Nothing out of the ordinary.”