Captured Sun (17 page)

"Gino seems to feel somewhat protective of you, Mairin. He is afraid that in my anger I will harm you," Alfred explained when the other vampire refused to leave.

"I'm safe, Gino," I smiled at the vampire, unsure how to proceed. "Thank you for saving me earlier today."

"You are welcome, little queen," he said. His voice was deep and smooth.

"Um, you don't have to stay," I said. "Alfred won't hurt me."

"As you wish," Gino said, bowing. He left, but I saw out of the corner of my eye that he stood near the living room door.

Chills ran down my spine. It appeared as though I not only had a bevy of slaves, but now I had a body guard as well. "How do I make that stop?"

"I have no idea," Alfred said bitterly. "If I knew, I would certainly share the secret for I have no desire to remain bound to you."

"Believe it or not, Alfred, the thought of you dogging my every step until I die isn't particularly appealing to me either." I snapped. "I didn't ask for this. All I wanted was to keep Serina from turning Mathias into a pyre on which she could throw my own body."

"Would knowing this connection could be an outcome of what you did in England, would you have chosen a different path?" Alfred asked.

"Are you saying you would prefer I had let Mathias die rather than being tied to me?"

Alfred grimaced and glanced at Mathias. "No, I would not prefer my son's death to this bond," he said.

"Well, that's comforting," I said. "I suppose we could try the simple approach," I said. "Alfred, I order you to not be bound to me." I watched Alfred's face as he grimaced. "Sheesh, don't be so freaking grim," I grumbled.

Alfred's expression didn't change, but a tiny bit of light came into his eyes. "I feel like I should smile, but I do not feel compelled to do so." His gaze flicked to Mathias who stood behind me. "It feels much as Serina's pull did when I'd refused to go to her. It is there, but weaker and easier to ignore."

"Great," I said. "Get the others back in here and I'll do the same for them."

"It isn't that simple, Mairin," Alfred said. "They need far more supervision and control than I do. Serina made them slaves. It will take time for them to become individuals capable of independent thought. I think if you release them from their bond to you, you will be doing them a disservice." Alfred sighed with obvious irritation. "And you will be putting humans at risk. These vampires have no impulse control when it comes to feeding. Serina taught them to take what they wanted when the opportunity arose to feed. Until they can learn to be more civilized, I am sure you will agree that releasing them is not in anyone's best interest."

I ground my teeth. I was getting tired of hearing what was or was not in my best interest. "But I can't have slaves. I'd look kind of dumb walking down the hall at school with twenty vampires trailing after me like puppies."

"What you want and what you are responsible for are two different things," Mathias said.

"Well, you'd know about that, wouldn't you," I snapped. The anger I'd held in check for so long burst to the surface. Mathias had left me, without a thought for what I wanted and needed and had only returned when he'd felt responsible for others in Highland Home and East Hampton. It was time to have it out with him.

"I will leave you to this, Mathias." Alfred said, rising. "I will take the others to the club for the night. I have no desire to witness the fight I see brewing."

"I will stay with the little queen," Gino said from his post at the door.

"Gino, you need to feed," I said, noting the dark bruises under his eyes. "Please go with Alfred. Take care of yourself."

Gino took a stuttering step toward me. "You would send me away?"

"No. I'm not sending you away," I said, my gut twisting with guilt and fear. Would I never be able to simply deal with my own junk or would I always have to be concerned with the emotional baggage of everyone around me? "I'm asking you to please go to the club with Alfred so you can feed."

Gino nodded and followed Alfred, but I could see he was reluctant to leave me. That was going to become an issue really fast. The last thing I wanted was some love-sick bodyguard trailing behind me, especially when right now I just wanted to scream at Mathias.

"Gino is a good protector for you, Mairin. You will need him." Mathias' eyes were dark and blank, the way they were when he had made a decision that he knew would bring us both pain.

I shook my head. I didn't want Gino to protect me. For that matter I didn't really want anyone to protect me, but if I had to have a vampire in my life, I knew which one I wanted. I walked through the house to the kitchen and out onto the deck, not waiting to see if Mathias would follow me. I knew he would. He wanted to tell me he was leaving again and I wanted to punch him. The wind on the deck was cool, a portend of the coming fall and a remnant of the morning storm. The ocean rose and crashed against the beach again and again, always the same and yet different each time. The sound of the crashing waves soothed me and I sighed.

"I wish I could hear your thoughts," Mathias mused. I looked away from the ocean to see him watching me from the kitchen doorway.

"Why?"

"Because then I would know what to say to take the pain from you."

"You left," I said simply. "You took my soul and ran with it to California. I never meant to make you feel responsible for me, to feel chained to me. I thought..." I stopped. I couldn't utter the last words. I'd believed he loved me.

He stepped onto the deck and crossed very slowly to me. His hesitation cut me ever deeper and the scabs fell away once again.

"You thought what?" he asked when he reached me.

I shook my head and stared at my feet. Mathias lifted my chin, forcing me to see him. "You thought what, my heart?" he whispered.

"Don't call me that. You know it's a lie." I sobbed and pulled away from him.

"Mairin..."

"No. Don't you understand, Mathias? I saw you, I heard you. My dreams showed me..."

"I was afraid they had shown you things I would have kept from you. That's why I left. I cannot forgive myself and I cannot ask you to forgive me." Mathias leaned against the deck rail, his back to the ocean. "You saw me break my promise, saw me feed and take the lives of those women. I cannot undo what was done, nor can I expect you to forgive me."

"You think I'm angry with you because I saw you feed?" I asked. "I've seen you feed hundreds of times in my dreams. The difference this time was you did it to survive. Serina would have starved you if you hadn't fed when she made you take those women."

"You do not hate me for being a killer?" he asked softly.

I shook my head. "I don't hate you at all," I said. "I'm hurt and I'm angry, but how could I ever hate you? You're a part of my soul."

"I do not understand you, Mairin."

"I know," I said. "I came here today to scream at you, to make you hurt the way you hurt me, but I can't do it. No matter how much I might believe hurting you would make me feel better, I know it won't. Instead I need you to know that you're free. Whatever chains you think bind you to me, they're gone. You don't have anything to regret."

Mathias sighed. "I have many regrets, Mairin. Chief among them is the danger I have brought into your life. No matter what I've done in this life or will do in the rest of eternity, nothing could be as evil as allowing my selfish nature to put you in the kind of danger you have been in since the moment I decided to follow you and your family home from the beach a year ago."

"I hate to be the one to break this to you, Mathias," I said, "but you didn't drag the metaphysical crap into my life. It's been there my whole life. You don't get to claim the danger I live in everyday as a good reason for ripping out my heart and leaving me behind."

"If not for me, Mairin, Serina would not have been near Highland Home. She came looking for Alfred, who had come seeking me. If not for my selfish love of your presence in my life, she would have had no leverage over me, no way of taking me away from here and you would never have needed to follow me to that hellish place. I was afraid your dreams had shown you that I'd killed while under her control. Afraid that knowledge would further harm you and it has."

Mathias shuddered and rubbed the scars on his wrists. "But that still wasn't the worst of it. Had I not turned on that mongrel last year, his father wouldn't have come for revenge. If I had come to Highland Home, taken what I needed and left, you would still be safe with your family. But I couldn't. I let my selfish nature take over and I let myself love you, no matter the consequences. I had to leave. I had to give you the chance to be safe. I left for your own good."

"For my own good," I spat bitterly. "Was it for my own good that you took away from me the one thing in this world that made me feel whole and real? Was it for my own good that when you left, you ripped something vital and necessary from my soul and left behind a ghost? Was it for my own good, you antiquated chauvinist, when you left without letting me fight for what I know I need in order to live?"

I gasped for breath, unable to contain the boiling rage that had lain dormant under the crushing pain I'd lived with from the moment in the hospital when I'd realized Mathias intended to leave me.

H looked at me now, sadness replacing the blank expression he used to mask his own pain, but I wasn't going to let his pain stop me now. He had to know everything so we could both move on.

"I know you have more regrets than the danger you think you're responsible for. I heard you tell Alfred you regretted having to rush to my rescue. That you regretted being bound to me..."

"Mairin, never..."

I cut him off with a harsh swipe of my hand. "Let me finish," I said. "I meant what I said before. You're free. I'll work out what to do with Gino and the others, but I don't want...you're not bound to me like they are. You don't have to stay."

I stood facing him, only inches separating us physically, but staring into the black abyss that truly separated us now. I'd told him he could go, he was free and I was dying slowly as I waited for him to go. When he reached for me, I flinched but I didn't stop him.

"Mairin," he whispered, brushing his knuckles down my cheek and along my jaw.

"Don't," I begged. "If you're leaving, this will kill me."

"I am going nowhere," he said. "I thought my most evil act of this second life was taking my Kathryn's life, but I see now it was not. Kathryn's death was clean. She didn't suffer. I have left you in this pain and did so because I believed it would be better for you to live a normal, human life without me."

"I think normal was never in the cards for me, Mathias."

"Yes, I'm beginning to see that." He brushed his lips against my forehead and I shuddered. "I have many regrets, Mairin, but you must never again believe that I regret loving you. If it takes the rest of my eternity, I will do everything in my power to find a way to deserve you and your forgiveness."

I looked up at Mathias, seeing the twisted scar encircling his neck and traced a finger over it. "I think these scars are payment enough," I said. "You wouldn't have them if you hadn't been trying to protect me. Can you forgive me?"

"Forgive you?" his voice was incredulous. "You silly, beautiful, overly sensitive and detrimentally selfless girl, there is nothing for me to forgive."

"You arrogant, self-centered, jerk," I whispered, leaning down to kiss each of his wrists. He shuddered again and I looked up, locking his gaze to mine. "This is why you're never allowed to do anything 'for my own good' ever again. Yes, you changed my life when you stayed in Highland Home. Yes, there's been some danger that might not have been there had you left, but let's be honest, the metaphysical crap follows me around. That's not your fault. What is your fault is that instead of being the ghost I was for sixteen years, I'm whole and human and people see me. I can live with that, but I can't live without you."

I wrapped his arms around my waist and leaned against his chest. I could feel him trembling and I smiled. "I'm so mad at you right now that I'd love to punch you, but I'm pretty sure that would just bruise my hand."

"Very likely, my heart," he said, humor clearly evident in his voice. His arms tightened around me and I lay my ear against his chest and listened to him breathe.

"You are not responsible for me, Mathias," I said. "I have to be responsible for myself. I cannot let you be chained, captured, just because you feel honor-bound to stand in the way of any danger that comes toward me." I sighed. "You have to be free and you have to let me be the one who decides what is best for me. You're right that you can't protect me from everything. No one can. You have to let me make mistakes and scrape my knees and all that crap."

"Honor is not what ties me to you," he said softly, kissing the top of my head.

"Then what is it?" My heart thumped heavily. Hope is an evil thing when you know your entire life's happiness might rest in her fickle hands.

"Love, you silly girl," he said, laying his cheek against my hair. "Yes, I am captured and chained, but it is a captivity I would die to remain in. If you can ever forgive me, I will love you every day of eternity. If not, I will leave and I will watch, but I will not interfere."

I gazed up at his beloved face. "No more white knight crap? No more doing things for my own good without consulting me?"

His blazing bright smile lit his features. "No more white knight crap, as you say, or taking your decisions from you without consulting you."

"And you will never leave me again." I thumped his chest with my fist. "You can't leave me, Mathias. You are my sun and I can't live without the sun."

"I will be your captured sun for eternity, my heart. I will not leave you unless you once again order me away."

"Swear it," I said. "Swear on your life."

"I will do one better, my heart. I will swear it on yours."