Winter's Kiss (8 page)

She frowned when her father’s hand moved from her coat collar to her cheek. It was so cold. She placed her free hand over it and held it against her face, hoping he could feel her and she could warm him. She tried to tell herself that he would be all right but she knew that she was losing him. Tears streaked her cheeks, hot lines that froze in the cold air, and blurred her vision.

“You,” he whispered.

Nika blinked, not understanding. Her? It couldn’t be her. She couldn’t be responsible for all this death. She hadn’t done anything wrong, hadn’t provoked their attack on her last night and this one on her village tonight. The thought turned her blood to ice. She trembled.

“Me?” she whispered as quiet as he had, the chill of being to blame for all this death stealing her voice. It couldn’t be true. She shook head slowly, unable to believe it. She hadn’t provoked the werewolves. She hadn’t. They had attacked her, made her like them. It didn’t make sense. Why was she to blame for all this death and suffering?

“The pact.” He coughed again and she held him a little tighter until the fit had passed. His breathing was rough and laboured, each wheeze crushing her chest with fear. “Your hand… to protect village. Pact broken… vampire… kept you… from him.”

She didn’t understand. Her eyes immediately sought Winter’s and she silently pleaded him to have an answer, to make the confusion go away and help her understand what had happened at the village. The last of her strength was rapidly leaving her. She didn’t want this.

She didn’t want her father to die. She didn’t want to be alone in this terrifying world.

Winter frowned heavily and looked down at her father. He removed the glove from his left hand and pressed his fingers against her father’s neck. Something dawned on Nika when she saw the colour of Winter’s eyes and the way they reflected like mirrors as the firelight shone on them.

“Bite him!” She dropped her father’s hand and grabbed Winter’s, clutching it tight. Her fingers clawed at it, pulled. Winter looked at her, expression emotionless, not budging an inch as she yanked on his hand. “Please. Bite him. If you change him, he doesn’t have to die. We can find out what happened here. We can save him. Please? Don’t let
him die. Don’t let my father die!”

His purple eyes bore into hers and she squeezed his hand so tight that she was afraid that she would hurt him. Desperation consumed her, fierce and powerful, controlling her actions. She pulled on Winter’s hand with all her might, tugging him towards her father, as though she could force him to turn him. Could he turn her father?

Winter shook his head.

“I cannot,” he said with the slightest note of regret in his voice.

“You can’t or you won’t?” Nika snapped back at him, convinced that he was choosing to let her father die. Tears tumbled down her cheeks as she stared at Winter, contempt filling her at the thought that he was going to sit there and do nothing when he could save the man that meant the world to her. “You won’t… I don’t believe—” “Nika,” her father whispered and her attention was immediately with him. His eyes were dull and glassy as he looked at her. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” She released Winter’s hand and took hold of her father’s again. Sniffing back her tears, she managed another smile for him. “What’s there to be sorry for? You’re not going anywhere. I won’t let you.”

He smiled. “I’m sorry… I should’ve told… you about pact. Wanted to. Willem forced… everyone silent.” He drew a long slow breath that spoke of pain and closed his eyes. A tear slid down his temple from the corner of his eye. “Made me call you back… from city… so he could… have you. Sorry… I gave you… promised you… to him.”

Nika stared wide-eyed in horror as it all sunk in and her father slumped in her arms, limp and cold. She swallowed reflexively, not seeing her father’s pale face, but seeing all
the times that she had passed in the village. They had always treated her differently since the wolf attack when she was a child. Everyone had been so kind to her since then. They had looked after her, each family treating her as though she was one of their children. Was this the reason why?

Her father had promised her to a werewolf in order to protect the village?

A cold chill settled in her bones and her skin turned to gooseflesh. She closed her eyes against the knowledge of what her father had done and the price the village had paid. Her father’s pact with this Willem had only delayed their deaths. Her father’s betrayal had left her feeling
more
alone than ever.

Grabbing his shoulders, Nika shook him, angry and confused by everything. “I don’t understand. Why?”

His still face mocked her.

She shook him hard, tears blurring her vision and stealing her breath. “Why? Why! How could you do that to me? Didn’t you love me? You gave me away like an animal. You never told me. Why? Tell me why!”

Sobs wracked her. She bent over her father’s body, still shaking him, trembling so badly and so weak that it was hard to hold him.

“Why?” She shook him again and then stopped when Winter touched her shoulder.

His un-gloved hand claimed hers, his skin cold against her.

Her eyes
met
his. “Why?”

“I do not have an answer.” There was regret in his eyes again, anguish that she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand anything anymore. He cast his gaze down,
away from her, as though he didn’t want to look at her. “He cannot answer you either. He is dead, Nika. It is too late for anger. We must leave.”

She glared at Winter, focussing all of her anger on him.

“Why didn’t you change him for me?”

“That was not the answer. He wanted to die.”

She couldn’t believe those words. “Why? Why would he
want
to
die?”

Winter stood and towered over her, menacing in the warm firelight, more frightening than he had ever been in the darkness. His dark eyes shimmered whenever the light caught them, focussed intently on her.

“Nobody wants to die, Winter!”

He frowned. “Sometimes, they do. We must leave.”

Sometimes they do? Nika looked hard at him, wondering if he had been one of those times. From what she had learnt of vampires from movies and books, humans had to die to become them. He had died once. Had he chosen to die and had awoken as a vampire? Was he speaking of himself or someone else?

She looked down at her father. Had he wanted to die? Why would he want to? Why would anyone?

Laying her father’s body down on the snowy ground, she stared at him a moment longer, mulling over the questions in her head and growing slowly aware of how cold it was. Her knees were damp where they pressed into the dirt and her bones felt cold enough to snap in two should the slightest breeze blow.

Looking up at Winter, she tried to figure him out and understand why he believed her father had wanted to die.
The strange look was back in Winter’s eyes as he watched the fire, the warm light on his face. Her new senses told her that he was on edge and, in her heart, she knew that it wasn’t just the wolves that had rattled him. There was something else. There was so much pain in his eyes, pain that had she had seen in the square too. Why had the fire upset him and why had he wanted to
die?

She opened her mouth to speak but he beat her to it.

“It was his penance, Nika. He chose death in order to pay for what he had done in giving away his daughter to a demon.”

Those words were a harsh reality check for her. Winter was right. Her father had given her away in order to protect the village. He had hidden her future from her, weaving dreams in her mind of education and a good job in the city. Why? Why had he lied to her all those times that she had sought comfort from him and the promise of a better life? He had known all along that the man, Willem, would come back for her and her life would be over.

It was over.

Not only had she become a demon, but the one person she trusted implicitly had betrayed her and soon the only other person she felt she could grow to trust was going to leave too. Soon she would be alone.

No, not alone.

Willem would come. She closed her eyes against the thought, not wanting to picture her future as a werewolf and a slave to the man who had bitten her. Opening her eyes, she looked at Winter. If only he had bitten her. She would have willingly given herself to him. If she had realised what he was before all this had happened she would have begged him to change her, to make her like him. Perhaps that was hindsight speaking, a desire to
escape her new life and world. A beautiful fantasy.

“We must leave,” Winter said, voice low and caressing her ears. He extended a hand to her and, for the first time in what seemed like hours, she listened to what he was saying.

We.

Not her or him, but them, together.

They had to leave.

A howl cut through the sound of the wood in the houses splintering under the intense heat of flames. Instinct made her tense and she turned to face the direction it had come from. Another joined it. The first sounded again, sending a chill down her spine. Willem.

Winter’s fingers flexed, drawing her back to them. With an anxious expression, his gaze darted around their surroundings. She could sense a difference in him as though it was a physical change. Her senses spoke of power and strength, of a man who could kill her with one blow. They told her to flee. Instead, she placed her hand into his and allowed him to help her to her feet.

Her leg hurt. Before she could form a protest, Winter had pulled her to him and turned his back. She blushed at the thought of riding his back again and then told herself not to be so ridiculous, not when she longed to be close to him. His presence made her feel safe. His strength radiated through her. Her new instincts labelled him a threat while her heart clung to the belief that, should anything happen, he would protect her as he had tried to the night that she had been bitten.

She hauled herself up onto his back and sighed as she settled against him. It wasn’t quite the hug she needed, but the feel of his hands holding her legs and his body
against hers was comforting nonetheless. The only thing in the world that was more comforting was the thought that he might have changed his mind. He might not leave her after all.

“Hold on,” he whispered and she looped her arms around his neck, closed her eyes and rested her cheek against his back.

She didn’t care where he took her. If it was away from here and he was there, she would be happy. If Winter remained with her, she could bear the weight of the attack on the village and what her father had done. She could face her uncertain future and this strange new world when he was by her side.

He started to run, leaving behind the village and the smell of fire.

Nika whispered goodbye to her old life and tightened her hold on
Winter,
embracing her
new
one.

Winter slowed when he reached the perimeter of the Validus territory. He breathed deep of the clean forest
air, desperate
to clear his senses of the smell of burning flesh and the memory of fire. His hands still trembled slightly, a bare tremor that no one but him would notice, a sign that he still hadn’t fully conquered the intense fear and pain that had seized him back at the village. The screams, the smell, the flames, it had almost been too much for him. He hadn’t felt so unsettled in centuries and he knew that it was affecting his judgement. It had to be or he wouldn’t have brought Nika here, to a place where she would be in more danger than ever.

Only her voice had brought him back from the nightmare of his past.

Now they both had to face the nightmare of her future. The destruction of the village and the death of her father had taken its toll on her. She had been quiet since they had fled the scene but her heart hadn’t slowed. She was so close to him that he could sense her crushing fear and hurt as though it was his own. Those emotions only increased his desire to protect her. They had brought him to a dangerous decision, one that might prove to be both of their downfalls.

He walked tentatively over the invisible threshold of his bloodline’s territory and felt a pull inside. Fear. In all his years, he hadn’t forgotten the human emotions that had once ruled him. They had dulled during his lifetime as a vampire, but had never fully disappeared, and now they were playing havoc with him. The first night he had seen Nika as a grown woman, his feelings had returned full

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force, so potent that he had wondered if he felt emotions even keener as a vampire than he had ever done as a human. He moved his hands against the underside of her thighs, absorbing her warmth through his gloves and cursing the soft feel of her body. Her breath tickled his neck, stirring the fine hairs and luring him into closing his eyes so he would feel everything more intensely.

She murmured something about her leg and him putting her down. He couldn’t allow her to walk now. One set of footsteps on someone’s senses was better than two.

Nika pushed against him but he held her tighter, unwilling to let her down and to lose the feel of her against him. She sniffed and he could smell the tears drying on her cheeks. On their way here, she had cried now and then, always stifling her sobs in a clear effort to hide them. It was impossible to conceal them from him. Even though she was putting on a brave face, he could see through it to her underlying fear and fatigue. Since the attack in the wood, she had been under constant assault. First the attack itself and then the revelation that she was becoming a creature of darkness, and then she had figured out that he was going to leave her. He had seen it in her eyes when she had and her demeanour towards him had changed abruptly. And then the village. He closed his eyes against the onslaught of tangled memories, a twisted vision of what had happened all those years ago and tonight. Dragging himself back to her, he realised that everything was against her. Now, she had no one in this world and that thought only made him want to stay with her. For a split second, he found the strength in his heart to turn his back on his kin and continue to love her, ignoring the danger. Only for a split second.