The Thirst Within (24 page)

“But I… I can
see
. I don’t need them….”
I look past him to the tile on the wall, and I can see the grout lines distinctively
with the unscratched eye. Not blurry. I look around and can see everything;
then I lean into the mirror and inspect my eye. The contacts are definitely not
in. I look at Corben, scared and thrilled of the explanation my brain provides.
“Did your blood fix my eyesight?”

He looks just as perplexed as I feel. “Can you
see okay now?”

“As if I was wearing my contacts,” I say. “Better.”
This is the single most amazing thing that has happened to me since I learned
that Thierry was a vampire. It’s almost enough to make me forget my other more
pressing concerns.

Corben stares into my eyes, and I have to look
down at myself. I notice my apparel. “What is
this
? What am I wearing?
What happened?”

I ask because I feel like I
have
to
know, but I really don’t want to hear the answer.

He leans back against the tiled wall, putting
some space between us. “I brought you in, took you upstairs to my bathroom, fed
you my blood, removed your wet clothes, put you in a hot bath to raise your
temperature. When you started to revive, I dried you off and put some clothes
on you. I didn’t want to go through your things, so I just gave you some of
mine.”

Halfway through his account I stopped
processing thoughts. I was kind of hoping that he had left me in my underwear,
but no. I cross my arms over my chest. No sports bra. He took
everything
off
.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I needed to do it. You could’ve
caught hypothermia.”

“No, it’s… fine,” I say, trying to keep the
panic out of my voice. The thought of Corben handling my naked body fills me
with horrible embarrassment, yet also a totally unwelcome satisfaction. I push
the thoughts away, and try to let him know I’m grateful that he saved me.
“Thank you.”

“I was tired and weak, so I put you in the bed
beside me, and took a nap. When I woke up, you were….”

“What? Tell me. Please.”

“Will you come upstairs to the living room with
me? I’ll tell you there. It’s cold down here.”

Corben shifts uneasily before me. Seeing him
act like this, like he cares, lifts my spirits a little. My prospect of
happiness is nonexistent, but at least I’m in this house, with him, and he
finally sounds like he gives a damn about me. That’s what keeps me going.

I’m a fool.

“Does the cold bother you?” Is what I ask him,
of all things.

“No, but seeing you cold does,” he says.

***

“What time is it, anyway?” I ask. All my
napping, healing, and sleepwalking have majorly screwed up my internal clock.

“It’s about two in the afternoon. We still have
time to make it to the airport in a few hours.”

“Oh, wow,” I say. It doesn’t feel like the same
day. My sleepwalking dream started with me thinking that it was dawn. This day
has been absolutely strange, but I still get to make it home as planned. But
first, I have to talk to Corben.

I’m snuggled in front of one of the three
fireplaces that this house has, and I have a warm blanket covering me. We’re in
the main level’s living room, neutral territory, and he started a fire just for
me. Well, he just clicked a button and the fire started. I stare at the flames
with my newly fixed eyes.

“I didn’t want to admit it, but the truth is
before me. It’s time you know. The dreams will only get worse.” Corben goes
straight to business.

“You can tell me. I’m not afraid,” I front, but
I totally am.

He’s sitting on a couch opposite me, less than
ten feet away, and I’m having conflicting thoughts of agreeing with and hating
the arrangement at the same time.

“Okay.” He exhales audibly. “First, you were
badly hurt. I did what I did because I didn’t want to take you to a hospital
and wait it out. I didn’t know the extent of your injuries; only that you
looked terrible. You passed out on me, Tori.”

On me
. The words send a thrill down my
spine. He cares.

“That’s okay,” I say. “I don’t mind. On the
contrary, thank you… for helping me.”

“It was my pleasure. But please believe me; I
didn’t realize what would happen.”

“What… happened?” I ask carefully. This doesn’t
sound good.

He turns his head away from me, towards the
fire. He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers.
Now I’m nervous. It doesn’t help that I have no memory of him feeding me his
blood.

“First you must know, Charlotte was a vampire.”
He opens his eyes and looks straight at me. I pretend it doesn’t surprise me.
After a second he adds, “And she was the one who turned me.”

Okay, now I do flinch in surprise. “What? Why?”

He shakes his head. “That’s another story for
another day.”

I’m severely disappointed. I want to know how
long they roamed the earth as a vampire couple. How old she was when they met,
whether they fed on humans together—oh! Whether they could feed off each
other….

“What matters for what I’m about to tell you
is, when a vampire turns a human, the human’s blood fuses with the vampire’s,”
he continues.

“Oh….” I say, remembering Thierry’s account from
a particular conversation I didn’t like. “Thierry mentioned something like
that.”

“He did?”

“Yeah. He said his blood was mixed with yours,
and that he was attuned to your feelings, or whatever. Because your blood runs
through his veins.”

His eyes narrow slightly as if wondering why
would Thierry tell me that, but doesn’t ask me to expand. Instead he just says,
“Yes. So you know. Well, then, Charlotte’s blood mixed with mine.”

He pauses and looks at the fire again. “Which
is, by the way, one of the reasons I vividly remember her; part of her is
literally
in
me.”

Gaah. Not again. I don’t want to talk about how
much he misses his wife, so I don’t answer.

“Anyway, to the point: her blood is in me, and as
of this morning, it’s in you, too.”

Oh.

I stiffen in surprise, and feel my eyes widen. My
mouth opens to say
holy shit
, but no sound comes out.

“And that, I think, is what triggered your
sleepwalking when you woke up,” he concludes.

Speechless. I’m disgusted and speechless. I
didn’t realize until now how much I disliked the dead chick. But the fact that
her blood
lives
in Corben, even if diluted with his, and that some of it
is in me, freaks me the hell out.

“I really didn’t know this would happen,” he repeats
when I don’t speak.

I struggle to find my voice. “So….” I have to
clear my throat, because it comes out small and disbelieving. “So you think she
possessed me or something?” I’m not sure what I want to believe. I’m actually
half relieved that it wasn’t me acting that way in Corben’s bed, that I can
blame it on possession; but at the same time I’m half outraged that the ghost
of Corben’s wife is possessing me.

“No…” he says. He rests his elbows on his legs
and leans down into his hands, as if defeated. “I don’t believe it works that
way. Her spirit doesn’t roam free; she can’t possess you. It’s more that you’re
predisposed to… act like her. And her blood awakened that within you.”

“What? No,” I refute him. I don’t want to be
anything like her. “Why, because I look like her? You know how many people I
look like? Three very different celebrities… at least. Or so my friends used to
say.”

“Not just looks, Tori.” He’s now circumventing
something larger. I can tell that he’s nervous, which doubles my anxiety. He
runs a hand through his hair, apparently at a loss for words, and I can’t bear
the silence.

“What, my ‘disposition,’ too?” I make air
quotes. He looks at me. “That’s what Thierry called it. Of all the women out
there, isn’t it a little too coincidental that
I’m
susceptible to her?
That she can haunt me, make feel this way, act this way?”

“What do you mean, coincidental?” he asks
suspiciously. “What are you suggesting?”

“You’re saying that I’m susceptible to acting
like her because we look alike
and
have similar dispositions. So that
would be me and maybe a handful of other people, total, right?”

“No, not a handful. It’s just you, Tori.”

What? “Me? Of all the women out there? Me, who
also happens to be Thierry’s girlfriend.” There. Girlfriend. I said it.
Thierry’s never said it, but I don’t care. He loves me.

“There is no coincidence,” Corben says. “It has
to do with who you are, not who else looks like you, or whom you are seeing.”

Seeing
. He totally degraded my
relationship. Doesn’t matter. The rest of his words take a little bit of effort
to process. I choose my words carefully.

“Still. ‘Who I am,’ you say. Why do
I
have
to be the one? Me, some girl that lives a thousand miles away? And more
importantly, that happens to be dating your brother of sorts? Don’t you think
it’s rather peculiar?”

“No,” he says simply. “It’s not peculiar.”

Blood rushes to my head. I don’t believe him. “Would
it still be me if I wasn’t dating Thierry?”

“
Yes
,” he says fervently, as if it was
obvious, and I shouldn’t be trying to trick him to say otherwise.

Oh.

His tone disarms me. “Then it’s… extremely
coincidental that I met Thierry on that aisle three months ago. The
one
person that can remind his brother of his dead sister-in-law….” I lose my train
of thought and can’t even finish the sentence.

“No, Tori. It isn’t. That wasn’t a
coincidence.”

My heart starts pounding loudly in my chest, to
shun out the words he says. I feel my nose reddening. I start shaking. “No. It
was
,”
I insist, although I have no valid counterargument.

“I
asked
him to,” he says, and his voice
is so quiet that I barely hear him.

And it hurts.

“Why would you do that?” My voice is a whisper,
like his. “You didn’t know me. You couldn’t know me.” It comes off almost
accusingly, denying everything that I’m starting to see.

He reclines back where he sits, moving away
from me, his hands in the air as if shielding himself from my impending wrath.
But he doesn’t need to; I’m shocked, and hurt. Not angry. I don’t get his
defensive stance.

“Tori,” he says each word carefully. “I
did
know you. I’ve
always
known you.”

“Please,” I say. It doesn’t make sense. “Just
give it to me straight. No more cryptic half answers.”

“No, really. That’s as straight as can be. I’ve
known you since you were
born
, Tori.”

What? I just stare at him.

He doesn’t seem inclined to expand on that,
either. When he doesn’t want to, I
want
him to.

“What do you mean.” It’s a question, but
there’s no intonation in my voice. It’s flat.

“Don’t be upset, please,” he says.

When he starts that way, I have the feeling
that I will be upset. “Just
tell
me.”

“I….” He takes a deep breath that he doesn’t
need. “When you were born, I felt it. Thierry and I were in New York then. I
moved us here, to the Midwest, looking for you.” He stops to gauge my reaction.
But I have none. I’m sitting across from him, my expression frozen, my unshed
tears frozen.

What. The. Shit.

“Tori, I don’t want to frighten you. But you
know how I said I can feel your feelings? You can feel mine, too. What you’ve
been feeling—it’s my fault. You’ve been picking up on my feelings.”

“Why?” I try to say, but no sound comes out.

“Because you… your soul, that is… knows me. As
mine knows yours. I felt when you were
born
,” he repeats. “I came here
looking for you. But I found you, and I didn’t see a single thing in you that
reminded me of….”

“Of her?”

“Of Charlotte. Yes.”

He stops abruptly.

“Why would I remind you of her?” I think I know
the answer, but I can’t say it out loud. I need to hear it from him.

He looks away, opens his mouth, and closes it
again.

“Tell me,” I say again. It comes off impatient
and bossy.

He shifts his eyes away, as if thinking what to
say.

“What are you afraid of?” I ask him.

“I’m afraid that you’ll get upset and run off
screaming,” Corben says, and he does sound afraid.

“Funny, Thierry said that once,” I notice.

“Rightfully so.”

I look at him directly, although it takes a lot
of effort because I’m a mess of nerves when I take his perfection full-on.
“Will I live the rest of my life not knowing?”

“You could,” he says, but he doesn’t sound so
certain.

“Could I live the rest of my life not knowing
and
still be… with Thierry?”

He sighs. “No, probably not.”

“So tell me, because I’m going to have to know
eventually,” I reason.

He closes his eyes. “You don’t know how much I
want to tell you.”

Funny, I don’t see you telling me
, I
want to say, but I don’t argue. I simply say, “So tell me… Corben.” When I say
his name, his eyes open partially, and they almost glow with their intensity.
“Why could you feel me being born? Am I….”

I can’t even form the question. Am I someone
else? I feel like I lived a life before that has only now started to manifest
through my dreams. Like someone else is inside, wanting to get out. The thought
is unbearable.

Tears finally spill down my cheeks. He won’t
say it. At length, I ask.

“Am I
her
?”

His eyes bore into mine, and his expression
softens. For the first time I recognize something like regard.

“You
are
Charlotte.”