Ageless (12 page)

“Elysa seems to be a good girl, but
she spends entirely too much time with the wrong crowd,” Riveka
said, settling herself onto one of the cushioned sofas. Violet saw
that the front part of the car was set up as a small sitting room
with a plush sofas separated from two wingback chairs by a small
coffee table. As one moved toward the back of the car, there were
two booths, one on each side, and a kitchenette area along the back
wall. Past the kitchenette was a small hallway that led to the door
at the back of the car. It was luxurious and cozy all at the same
time.

Violet sat down on the edge of a
sofa, facing her grandmother, and set the dress down on the cushion
beside her. “I’ve never been on a train before,” she said, not
meaning to speak the words out loud. She heard a loud whistle that
pierced her eardrums and made her wince. She felt the slow rocking
as the car began to move. She looked back at the platform and saw
that trio of vampires were gone. It made her uneasy wondering where
on the train they had settled.

Her grandfather slipped inside and immediately
headed to the back of the car to pour himself a drink. Violet
desperately wanted one at that moment. She looked back at her
grandmother and found Riveka studying her with a glint in her
eyes.

Under her grandmother’s intense
stare, Violet felt extremely uncomfortable. She shifted in her
seat, and then felt like the railcar, even though it had just the
three of them in it, was suddenly small and confining. She stood up
and walked to the front of the car.

“I need some air,” she shot over
her shoulder. She expected Riveka to say something to stop her, but
then Violet realized that they were on a moving train picking up
speed rapidly. As much as she may want to get away from her
grandmother, they both knew she wasn’t going to throw herself off
of it. There were only so many places that she could go.

Violet pushed the door open. The
sound of the train was much louder outside, but after all of the
silence she welcomed anything that could drown out her thoughts.
She stepped out into the cool night air, which was made all the
colder by the fact that it was rushing past her body. She shivered
and wished for a sweater, but she wasn’t about to go back inside to
see if she could dig one up. Violet stepped to the railing and
stared at the engine in front of her. She couldn’t see anything
through the smoky glass other than a few hulking dark figures. It
appeared that Elysa’s companions were hanging out up front with the
conductor.

Violet rested her hip against the railing and
focused on the trees that were rushing by on the right side. She
expected to see open spaces, towns, houses at least, but there was
nothing but thick trees that seemed to hide the rest of the world.
She wondered if the vampires had somehow made the rest of the world
disappear. Having grown up in well-populated cities, this plunge
into isolation was strange. Nonetheless, she was grateful to
finally be alone. She had time to think.

Her life had been completely turned upside down in a
shockingly short amount of time. She started to catalog everything
that she had been told. Two days ago, the most stressful thing in
her life was worrying about writing her term paper and passing her
finals. Now she was a chess piece in a game that spanned centuries.
She wished she truly understood her part in all of it. The idea
that she was some kind of critical missing piece was slightly cool.
Violet was still stunned that everything that had happened had all
been because of her.

But beyond that, she had met a man
who set her pulse racing and made her head spin. She wasn’t
completely naive to having guys interested in her. She had a few
brief flirtations. But Jeremiah Montrose wasn’t a boy. While she
found Jonah equally handsome, it was Jeremiah who set her blood
ablaze. He was a man in every sense of the word, and so much more
than that. Jeremiah’s life spanned centuries. Although he seemed to
be interested in her, she found herself hoping that there was more
to it than just a desire to get her to join his cause. Certainly he
had found many charming and beautiful women to captivate his
attention over the years; Elysa being a very relevant example. That
led her back to the conclusion that Jeremiah’s interest had to be
something other than her charming personality. It had to do with
what she represented; what he could use her for. The idea made her
frown.

“Thinking about Jeremiah, are we?”
Elysa’s lilting voice came chuckling out of the
darkness.

Violet whirled around and found the tall vampire
standing behind her. Elysa was leaning back against the railing and
had a wry grin on her face.

“I’d like to be left alone if you
don’t mind,” Violet said, swishing her hair over her shoulder and
deliberately looking in the other direction. She tried to channel
Riveka. When Riveka made that kind of gesture, anyone with a
ten-foot radius scattered. Annoyed, she could tell that Elysa
hadn’t moved an inch.

After several minutes of silence,
Violet turned and glared. Elysa was watching her with an openly
amused look. “You’re spunky,” Elysa said. “I like that.”

Violet rolled her eyes. She knew
that she should be scared that she was standing less than five feet
away from a being who could rip her throat out and toss her dying
body over the side, but the intensity of the last twenty-four hours
and her lack of sleep made her bold. She squinted up into the sky.
“The sun’s coming up. Don’t you have some coffin to go crawl
into?”

Elysa shook her head. “Didn’t they
teach you anything? Let me just put it this way; I have some
privileges that others do not. I can walk in the daylight with just
slight discomfort.”

“Privileges? Is that because
you’re
really
old?” Violet quipped.

“One hundred and twenty-five,”
Elysa said. “But no, that’s not what I meant.” She was unfazed by
Violet’s sarcasm. “If a vampire is old enough to have passed the
point where sunlight is detrimental, that benefit can be passed
along to those he sires, if they’re lucky. Which I was.”

Violet realized with a start that
Elysa was implying she had been sired by someone like Jeremiah.
That would make perfect sense, if she and Jeremiah had a
relationship once, but the idea still made her jealous. She
wondered what type of woman would pique his interest. She wanted to
know if she possessed any of those qualities.

“What were you like before you
became a vampire?” Violet said before she could catch herself. Her
curiosity about Jeremiah was winning out over her dislike of Elysa.
She was also trying to determine how the world she knew before
could intersect and co-exist with the world where vampires
existed.

Elysa looked surprised by the
question. She studied Violet’s face as if trying to determine if
the question was genuine or not. “I was just a child really,” she
said finally, crossing her arms. “I lived in a small town in
Louisiana with my family. I married my childhood sweetheart. My
life was simple and quiet. Then the war came and my husband thought
it was his duty to fight for our country. Needless to say, he never
came home.”

“What happened?” Violet
asked.

Elysa smirked. “I was young and
lonely, so that’s really the wrong question. The right question
is
who
happened.”

“Oh,” Violet said. “You don’t have
to tell me anything else.” With the way Elysa was smiling, she
realized that she didn’t really want to know more about that part
of the story.

“You seem so enamored with
Jeremiah. I think you should know more about the man that you were
so willing to throw in with a few hours ago, don’t you?”

“I made the decision to stay in the
place where I felt safe as opposed to going off with some strange
woman who barged in the door uninvited,” Violet
retorted.

“Safe? You think you were safe
there?” Elysa openly laughed, holding her stomach. “Oh, they did
have the wool pulled over your eyes. He must have had Jonah doing
his dirty work.”

Violet felt anger growing inside of
her. If there was one thing she detested, it was being laughed at.
“No. I trust my friend, Margo.”

Elysa stopped laughing with a
start. “Margo, eh? Well then, you would think that you and I would
get along like BFFs, Violet.”

“Why’s that?” Violet said, slightly
surprised at Elysa’s ability to use current slang so
appropriately.

“Well, for one thing, Margo is my
cousin.”

Violet thought that there was
nothing that could surprise her anymore that evening, but that
revelation was the last straw. “I want to be left
alone.”

She stormed inside the car and
found that the sitting area was empty. Stalking to the back, she
saw that there was a door on each side of the short hallway that
led to the door at the back of the car. There was a small piece of
paper taped to the door on the right that said “Violet.”

Blinking away tears, she pushed the
door open and practically fell into the small space. It was barely
bigger than a closet but she didn’t care as long as there were no
vampires inside. There was a small bed and a shelf up above. A
narrow wooden bench seat was just across from it, and her duffel
bag was sitting on it. The red dress hung on the small rod of the
exposed closet. Apparently their trip was going to be longer than
just a few hours.

Violet locked the door behind her,
knowing that if someone really wanted to get in they could. It
still made her feel better. She was exhausted. She didn’t bother
taking off her clothes, but crawled under the sheets of the small
bed. Lying on her back, there was just an inch between her arm and
the wall. Part of her wanted to process what she had just been
told, but the other part just wanted to close her eyes and try to
forget. In the end, mental exhaustion won out and Violet rolled to
face the wall. As sleep overtook her, she hoped that when she woke
up she would find it had all been a bad dream.

Violet’s dream was dark. She didn’t
know how she knew that she was dreaming, but she did. She was
standing in the middle of a huge cemetery. Gravestones, large and
small, were scattered all around her. She looked down and saw that
she was wearing a white nightgown. It had an empire waist and long
billowing sleeves. Her hair was loose and she could feel it flowing
down her back. Her attention was drawn to a copse of trees on top
of a hilltop on the other side of the cemetery. Her feet moved in
that direction.

As she glided among the tombstones,
she tried to see the names that were on some of them, but the words
were all blurred out. Violet didn’t feel anything menacing around
her, just stillness and calm, as if the place was waiting for
something. She ran her fingertips over the tops of the hard stones
as she passed each of them. For some reason she felt light and
weightless. It made her want to dance, but that would be
inappropriate. So she skipped instead.

Violet didn’t go directly to the
hillside. She zigzagged between some of the bigger tombstones. One
was much larger than the others, and she realized that it was a
mausoleum. It had stone steps that led up to a small outcropping
along the front, and her feet took her right up to stand there
looking curiously at the doors. She took a step backwards,
balancing precariously at the edge, trying to see the name engraved
at the top. She gave a small growl of frustration as she saw the
letters were blurred once again. She wished she understood why the
name was being hidden from her.

A movement out of the corner of her
eye caught her attention. She whipped her head around, feeling
certain at that moment that she wasn’t alone in the cemetery.
Suddenly she felt the weight of many eyes on her and goose bumps
ran up her forearms. She rubbed her arms to try to warm them as she
shivered. All the playfulness that existed moments before was
gone.

She searched the darkness between
the gravestones from her slightly elevated vantage point, but
couldn’t see any other movement. Her eyes were drawn again to the
trees on the hilltop. That’s where she was supposed to be going.
She had gotten distracted. Eager now to find out what was up there,
Violet lightly tread back down the stairs to the soft
ground.

Now she tried to find the most
direct path to her destination. The tombstones ended just at the
bottom of the hill, and then she began her climb. There was grass
almost as high as the top of her thighs, and she found that pushing
through it was more difficult than she imagined. The incline
increased and her breath was coming in shorter gasps. Finally, she
stood at the top of the hill looking at the outside of a circular
ring of evergreen trees. But it wasn’t the trees that she had
climbed up the hill to see. She wanted to see what was inside the
ring.

Not wanting to get scratched up by the needles by
trying to wedge through the tree wall, she decided to check around
it first. On the backside of the ring, she found a small path that
wound its way into the inner sanctum. It was exactly what she had
been looking for.

Violet stepped onto the path. The bits of gravel bit
into the soft skin on the bottom of her foot and she bit back a
gasp. More gingerly this time, she stepped forward, brushing the
thinner tree branches away that were in her way. A second later she
was inside. The first thing she noticed was how warm it was there.
A sweat broke out across her forehead. But then she forgot about
the temperature because her eyes were drawn to the large monument
in front of her.