B00AO57VOY EBOK (25 page)

“I’ve gotten used to it,” I
told him with a sad smile. 

“But you shouldn’t have had
to,” he whispered.  “Anyway, when you realized I wasn’t going to give you what
you wanted, you went out and had that cross made.  You said that if I had to
bear the burden of that accursed mark, that you would bear it with me.  From
the day the jeweler handed it to you, you never took it off.”

He touched the cross at my
throat and I reached up to hold his hand against my chest over the heart that
belonged to him.  I couldn’t take away the pain of his past, no matter how much
I wanted to, but I could give him a future full of happiness it he would let
me.  I could love him enough for all of us, me and the women I had been. 

“I should have known it was
never meant to last,” Nathan said, his voice turning bitter.  “The damned
aren’t meant to be happy, you know?  Otherwise, we wouldn’t be damned.”

 “So…what happened?” I
asked. 

I mean, I already knew, but
I still wanted to hear the gory details.  The details were important.  I felt
like I was on the edge of an epiphany.  If I could just get all the details, I
would know what to do.

“Your fiancé finally caught
up with you,” he whispered.  The tormented look on his face was terrible to
behold.  “I had only left you for a little more than an hour to feed. I was on
my way back to you when I felt it.  It was like someone had reached into my
chest and torn out my heart just as surely as you had stolen it.  I knew then
that you were gone. 

“All the light faded out of
my world the second you did.  It was the worst pain I had ever known.  It was
worse than watching Mikhail slaughter my family.  It was worse than being
turned and realizing I was a monster.  It was…”

He glanced over at me and
saw the tears falling down my cheeks that I couldn’t hold back.  Holding my
gaze, he reached out and gently brushed them away with his fingertips before
bringing them to his own lips.  I watched in utter fascination, devastated by
his story and still holding it together enough to realize how amazingly tender
that gesture was.

“That fire burned half the
city, but nowhere was it as hot as it was in the house you had lived in.  No
matter how much water they threw on the flames, they just kept burning.  When
they finally burned out, I found you tied to one of the support beams,” he
said, closing his eyes and looking away again as he continued.  “The second I
touched you, you just…disintegrated right there at my feet.  I fell to my
knees, gathering all that remained of the only light I’d ever really known in
my hands as I howled my anger, my torment, to the heavens, uncaring who might
hear me. 

“I didn’t realize I had an
audience until he started laughing.  I never thought the bastard would stay and
wait for me.  I had only been a vampire for a little over four decades then, so
I didn’t realize what he was.  I attacked, so blinded by grief that my only
thought was to make him feel as terrible as I did, to make him feel the pain I
felt.  But, every time I would attack, he would evade me.

“He hadn’t stayed to fight
me, baby,” Nathan said, hearing my gasp of horror.  “He stayed to taunt me.  He
was a demon.  That was the only way he could have evaded the wrath of a vampire,
especially one in the kind of blind rage I was in.  He made a prophecy to me
that night that I would never have you.  Never.”

But, he did have me.  And my
guess would be that he’d had me each and every time.  Honestly, I couldn’t see
how anyone could resist him.  God knows I had tried, but even I hadn’t been
able to deny him.  I would be his until the end of time.  My heart and soul
belonged to him.  Nothing Bastian could do would change that.

The second time we fell in
love, I was a ballerina in the Russian ballet by the name of Elena Bogdanov.  I
had been delicate and graceful and kind of ethereal with long, flowing, blonde
hair and an amazing sense of what I wanted and who I was. 

“I searched for this for
years,” he said, opening his partially healed fist and staring down at the
locket he still hadn’t let go of.  He held the locket up so I could see it
without touching it and I saw that, like my cross, it was engraved with the
same trinity-heart design as the marks both Nathan and I had engraved in our skin. 
“I had it made for you the day before I revealed what I really was to you.  I
knew what you would ask and I knew I would deny you.  So I gave you my mark the
only way I felt I could.”

 “What happened that time?”
I asked, almost whisper-soft, when Nathan stopped speaking again and dropped
his head into his hands.

“You attracted the attention
of the wrong fan.  You were so beautiful and you radiated such light.  You were
irresistible,” he mumbled, his hands making his words sound garbled. 

“I was waiting for you after
your show one night and you didn’t come out when you should have.  The other
dancers had already left, and still I waited.  Worried, I finally went inside
to check on you.  He waited for me to witness it that time.”  

The anger in his voice had
me scooting away from him, but he laid a hand on my knee to stop my retreat. 
His jaw was so tight that I couldn’t believe that he wasn’t in pain and his
eyes were closed again.  When he opened them again, they were glowing white,
his anger too much for him to hold inside.

“You were tied to one of the
props, a tree of all things, and the moment I set foot on the stage, he…”  

He didn’t have to tell me
what had happened; I had seen it firsthand when Grams had given me that
locket.  I had burned and he had been forced to watch it.  I knew he had
because I had heard his agony…and the laughter of the sick, twisted monster
that had lit the match.

I shuddered as the vision
decided to play out again in my mind.  I’ve read about the witch hunts.  When
we had gone over it in History I had actually had to leave the room in tears. 
I had refused to go back to class until the section was complete.  It was the
only section in History I had ever failed.  My parents had had a field day with
that.

The memory of that horrible
chapter in History got me thinking, though.  Had I been a witch even then?  Was
that why the evil, sadistic little shit kept burning me?  Or had he simply
known that I
would
be a witch eventually?  I couldn’t help but wonder if
that’s what had prompted his actions.  Maybe demons knew more than we gave them
credit for.  I would have to look into that.

“What about the last time?”
I asked, wanting the trip down nightmare lane over and done with.  “You said
we’ve done this three times before.  What was I like the third time?”

To my surprise, he actually
smiled and there was a devilish gleam in his eyes when he looked back at me. 
Without any warning, he jumped to his feet and jogged into the house.  He was
back a few seconds later, holding a small square of fabric in his hands that
looked like a handkerchief.  Taking his seat next to me again, he unfolded it
to reveal a piece of wood that had the shape of a heart carved into it and
handed it to me.  The edges of the wood were jagged, like it had been gouged
straight out of a tree.  I almost smiled at the romanticism of it all when I
realized it
had
been.

I peered closely at the
carving in the wood and the smile that hadn’t quite made it to my lips finally
reached them, even if it was a sad smile.  Inside the carved heart were the
initials N.A. and E.B. and one other word. 

Inseparable.

“I met you in May of 1901. 
Your name was Emily Bowden,” Nathan said, brushing the hair from my cheeks. 
“I’ve kept that piece of wood safe for more than a hundred years.  I wanted to
have something to show you, a piece of our history, if I ever found you again. 
And now I have.”

I stared at the carved
initials in the bark, my mind working overtime.  Nathan had said we had to look
for patterns to unravel the mystery of our demon, and I was seeing patterns
everywhere.  First, the initials.  My initials had always been E.B.  Then,
there were the ways I had died.  I couldn’t seem to shake that section of
History on the witch trials.  I had been burned at the stake—or fake tree—twice. 
Coincidence?  Maybe.  But, I didn’t think it was.  I thought it was all part of
the pattern, part of the plan.  I couldn’t be sure of that one yet, though.  I
hadn’t heard how I died the last time. 

And the demon Nathan had met
the night I died the first time had made a prophecy that he would never have
me.  Now I was being hunted by yet another demon.  If I had a million dollars,
I would have bet it on the fact that the guy who killed me the third time
hadn’t been any more human than the first one and I knew for sure that the
second one hadn’t.  Otherwise, my locket wouldn’t have ended up in a box of
demon treasures. 

 “So, tell me about…me,” I
murmured, holding out his memento of another lifetime I hadn’t gotten to finish
out.

 “You were the only child of
a very wealthy rancher in Montana, spoiled to the point where it was almost
criminal.  You were the rudest, most pigheaded woman I had ever encountered in
my life,” Nathan said, actually laughing.  “I was madly in love with you from
the first words that left your lips.  Why, I don’t know, considering they were
far from friendly.

“You were asleep in the
grass next to a stream when I first saw you,” Nathan said, taking the piece of
wood from me and wrapping it back up in the handkerchief before pulling me into
his arms.  “You were a vision.  You had taken your hair down and it was flowing
around you, a veritable sea of mahogany silk curls. 

“My welcome was less than
warm,” he continued, starting to laugh again.  “You shot me in the leg.”

“
What
?” I wailed,
totally embarrassed even though I had had no control over anything my former
self had done.  “Please tell me you’re joking!  I actually
shot
you?”

“Yep, right in the thigh.  I
think I might still have the scar.  Want to see?”

He reached for the button on
his jeans and I blushed so red that I was pretty sure the air around us warmed
by ten degrees.  Yeah, like he even
had
a scar.  He was just being a
perv.  Vampires don’t scar.  I had figured that out the day he used his own arm
to prove to me that he really was a vampire.  If there really was a scar, it
was something he’d already had when I—well, the other me—shot him. 

Laughing, he removed his
hands from the waistband of his jeans and instead wrapped his arms around me
again.  I settled back against him, listening to the story unfold in my ear in
that wonderful voice.

“No matter how charming I
was, you continued to detest me,” he whispered, chuckling softly and sending
these
really
delicious chills down my spine.  “It took me almost a month
of practically stalking your every move to wear down your resistance.  And, if
it hadn’t been for the horse…”

He just left that little
tidbit hanging and I waited with bated breath to hear the rest of the story. 
When he hadn’t said anything for a few seconds, I gave him a not-so-gentle
nudge with my elbow to let him know that I was tired of waiting.

“You lost control of your
horse one afternoon when you were riding,” he said, really laughing now.  “Of
course, it was partly my fault.  If I hadn’t stepped out in front of you, it
might never have happened.  You might not have sensed what I was, but that
stallion certainly did.  No gentle mare for you, my love.  You had to have the
wildest of the lot.  I caught you just as the damned animal bucked you off.  If
I hadn’t been there, you probably would have broken your pretty little neck.”

Okay, now you have to admit
that was romantic.  My Nathan, always the Knight in Shining Armor.  I couldn’t
help but giggle at the mental picture I had of it.  I could almost envision
myself dangling from the saddle and Nathan smoothly catching me just as I slid
off.  Obviously, I have read
way
too many romance novels.

“Romance novels are usually
pretty accurate, if a little dramatic,” Nathan breathed in my ear, making me
blush again.  “That was pretty much exactly how it happened.  I caught you just
before you hit the ground.  And, boy, were you
pissed
.  You ranted and
raved at me for ten solid minutes before I gave up and just kissed you.”

God, I could only hope I had
slapped him last time, too.  I had a pretty good idea that I hadn’t, though,
and his next softly whispered words confirmed that suspicion.

“I’ve only ever had one
other kiss like that, and
you
gave it to me the day you finally gave up
and admitted you weren’t immune to me after all.  In fact, if you’re
interested, I’d be happy to see if we can improve on it.”

Now that was a tempting
offer.  But I really thought that I should probably hear the end of the tragic
tale before we started making out again.  That was the thing about Nathan. 
Once I started kissing him, I didn’t want to stop. 

“Stop stalling, Nathan,” I
said gently, reminding myself that this was a painful subject for him.  “Tell
me what happened.”

He was quiet for so long
that I thought he wasn’t going to answer me.  In the end, I took matters into
my own hands.  Turning in his lap, I took his face between my hands and looked
deep into his eyes.

“Tell me,” I whispered. 
“Nathan, I need to know.”

“We found you actually tied
to a
stake
in the north pasture,” he said, sounding more tortured than
he had when he had told me of my other lives.  “I could hear your screams as I
rode up to the house to ask your father for your hand in marriage.  You were
still burning when I found you.” 

I could still hear him
talking, but I wasn’t really listening to him anymore.  He had given me the
last piece of evidence I needed for my hypothesis.  My dreams weren’t dreams,
they were memories.  I had been terrified of fire my entire life because part
of me knew I was fated to burn.  I had burned every single time.  And, if my
vision came true, I was going to burn again.