Fading Darkness (Bloodmarked #1) (41 page)

“Well, you should really take your own
advice,” I said as I swung a fist directly at his face. My moves felt quicker
and more precise than they had ever been. There was nothing left in me now but
the fight, the anger. When my fist struck his nose, causing him to step back, I
noted a satisfying look of surprise on his face.

After a moment, I came at him again, but he
dodged my advance, disappearing again. “Do you really want to do this again?
Haven’t we been here before, several times?” he said, sounding exhausted. His
voice came from the ledge of the rooftop, and I followed it until I caught his
eyes, which were pleading with mine.

“We’re going to keep doing it until you’re
dead,” I spat.

“What if that doesn’t happen? What’s plan
B?” he goaded. “What’s the other option?”

“There is no other option,” I said.

“There is. There is always another option.
Another choice,” he said, again in that wiser than thou voice.

“Oh yeah, and what’s that? Keep you alive,”
I nearly choked on a laugh. If he thought he could talk his way out of this, he
had another thing coming. He made me feel things for him. There was no way I
was about to forget that kind of betrayal.

“No. Hear me out. You still want the truth,
don’t you? You’re still desperate for all those answers?” he said.

Was he trying to bribe his way out of death?
“Oh sure, now that I’m going to kill you, you’re willing to talk. What about
all those times I asked you for answers and you refused?”

“I told you. You weren’t ready for the
truth. I knew if you found out I had something to do with your mother’s death,
you’d try to kill me. Based on your actions so far, can you blame me?”

“So you were just trying to save your own
ass by hiding it from me?”

“No. I was trying to protect you. That’s all
I’ve ever tried to do, but you can’t see that. You don’t know the whole story,”
he said.

“I didn’t
need
protecting! I didn’t
need
your evasions. I didn’t need
you
but you refused to leave me alone. So
since I was stuck with you, what I needed was honesty. What I needed was an
equal partner in this. I needed help!” I shouted hysterically, almost at the
breaking point.

“Lucy…” he hesitated, shaken by my outburst.
I must have gotten through to him, or he saw just how crazy I felt at the
moment and was worried. “I’m sorry, I…”

“I don’t need your apologies either,” I
choked back the lump forming in my throat. I had so many emotions roiling and
churning within me, I didn’t even know what I needed anymore. I was wound so
tight I thought I might actually break apart from the shear pressure of emotional
buildup. I couldn’t speak. He had to be the next to talk because I was afraid
of how those emotions might manifest themselves verbally.

“Lucy, I was going to tell you the truth
tonight. You’re right. It was wrong of me to keep everything from you for so
long. I made the wrong choice, and I hope someday you can forgive me for that.
I’ll tell you what happened if you still want to know,” he said cautiously.

As much as I yearned to drive a stake
through his heart right now, a part of me yearned to know why all this
happened. “And what’s that?” I asked, coolly. I didn’t want him thinking he was
off the hook.

“I tried to save her. When I came across
your mother, she was out at night, alone and very pregnant with you, so
vulnerable. Any vampire within a mile radius would have sensed her. I heard her
cry out, and came to see what happened. When I reached her, one had already
gotten to her. He was feeding on her, and something in me stirred. I rushed
over to her, dispatching the vampire quickly, but there was already a lot of
damage done.

“She looked at me with so much
determination, the same I see in you, and she begged me to save you. At first I
didn’t understand, but then I knew what she was getting at. She had lost so
much blood and knew she would die, but she begged me to attempt the
transformation. It would kill her, but she had so much faith that my blood
would save you, that you were strong enough. She made me promise, so I did. I
tried taking her to the hospital, but it was too late. Lucy, I didn’t have a
choice,” he said, begging me to understand.

“No choice. No choice!” I screamed
incredulously. “You’re a hypocrite!”

He continued, as if barely noting my
outburst. “At least that was what I told myself because it made me sick that I
did
choose that life for you. For the longest time, I struggled with that choice I
made for you. I never wanted this life for you, but now I believe I made the
right choice.”

“What?!” I screamed furiously. I charged
him, but when I lunged, he moved around me, and I nearly hurled myself off the
edge of the roof. I felt his hands around my waist, steadying me, and then they
were gone. When I turned around, he was on the opposite ledge.

He kept talking, like nothing happened. “I
don’t regret saving you, because at least you have a life, Lucille. You may not
think you deserve it, because you blame yourself for all those bad things in
your life, but your mother thought you deserved to live.”

“Don’t,” I warned. He knew nothing about my
mother, and neither did I, because of him.

“You think you’re a monster, but you’re
not,” he said.

“I think you’re the monster! You killed her!
You made me this way,” I shouted, my eyes stinging with the tears that
threatened to shatter me into tiny pieces.

I needed to blame him. It was easier than
thinking my mother gave up her life for me. I hopped off the ledge and bent to
sit on it as I wrapped my arms around my chest to keep myself from breaking,
and when I crossed my arms over one another, my fingers brushed against the
charm on my other wrist. Luckily, I hadn’t added my good luck charm to it yet. I
yanked it free and threw it with perfect aim at the base of the ledge just
below where Gavin stood.

He jumped down to retrieve it. In a fluid
motion he took it in his hand and rushed over to me, holding it out for me to
take it back. I watched his outstretched hand and was disgusted with myself for
taking anything from him in the first place. “Get away from me,” I said, my
voice shaking.

“This wasn’t from me. It was from her.”

I looked up to search his eyes for the lie,
but they were steady and solemn. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you before without
telling you about her and how I got it. She gave it to me before she died in
the hospital. She had wanted me to give it to you when you learned the truth,
almost like she had known all along she wouldn’t be around to see you grow up
herself.”

I took it, holding it out in my palm to examine
it. The fire in me dulled and began to numb me from the inside out. “She knew
about vampires?” Obviously, she had to know something, if she thought Gavin
could save me.

I looked up at him when he didn’t respond.
He simply nodded slowly before answering. “There’s a lot more to the story,
Lucy. She knew about the prophecy.”

“What?” I snapped.

“She wanted you to fulfill your destiny
because she had been just as big a part of the battle against vampires as you
are now. She was just human, but she knew you stood a better chance against
them, and she told me you needed to live to put an end to it all.”

“No. No, you’re lying!” I yelled, standing
to meet him eye-to-eye, or eye-to-shoulder. I couldn’t believe my own mother
would have wanted this for me. After all that time I spent feeling guilty for
killing her. “No, that can’t be true,” I said defiantly.

“Lucy,” he said, looking down. He sounded
tired. “She believed in you and so do I,” he said, looking back at me.

“So that’s it. That’s why you need me? So
you can play out this whole destiny thing?” I accused.

“Why does there always have to be reason and
motives with you? You can’t just have faith in someone?” he asked, and I didn’t
miss the fact that he didn’t really answer the question.

“No, and it turns out I was right not to
trust anyone. Especially when they hide things from me,” I said, icily.

He went rigid and his anger matched mine.
“You act as if you’re unaffected by anything. You deny your own humanity, but I
know you’re capable of feelings. Your mother gave up her life so that you could
live, but you’re dead inside,” he said.

His words hit me like razorblades to my
heart. “You’re telling me to live a happy, human life? You, of all people,
Mr.-I-drink-stolen-blood-and-live-in-the-shadows. You are a hypocrite.” I hated
finding common ground with him. It scared me to know we were similar in certain
ways.

When he didn’t say anything, I continued,
“Someone who goes around stealing blood when they were designed to kill for it
isn’t exactly embracing his true self. You’re not exactly being what you are,
why should I?”

“You don’t even know exactly what you are?
And it’s not what you are that counts, it’s who you are. The monster inside of
me doesn’t define who I am, which is why I choose not to kill. Just because I
have demons doesn’t make me evil. Anyone has the choice to do good, to trust
their instincts to do the right thing.” A shadow danced behind his eyes. There
was more to what he was saying than what he led on. He looked at me then,
really looked at me.

I felt myself getting lost in those deep
blue eyes, but dragged myself out and glanced down. “What exactly am I then,
since you seem to know everything about me?” I asked angrily.

“You’re not like other vampires, Lucy. Your
mom knew that, which is why she wanted to protect you so much. She knew other
vampires would kill you instantly if they knew what you were,” he had calmed
down, and measured me a moment when I looked at him. When he knew he had my
attention, he continued. “There are two kinds of vampires. One kind is like the
ones you’ve seen before. Old vampire texts, like the ones that talk about the
prophecy, refer to this kind as the
Dark Ones
. Lucy, you come from a
different line of vampires. Have you ever considered the meaning of your name?
Your mom wanted you to understand exactly what you were when she gave you your
name.”

“Of the Light,” I recalled the meaning of my
name woodenly.

“Exactly,” he said. “If they knew what you
were, they’d kill you instantly. I’ve done everything in my power to keep your
secret, but you haven’t made it easy.”

“Why?” I snapped. “Why are you protecting me?”
I asked again, hoping for a straight answer.

He sighed heavily. “Lucy, when you came into
my life…” he stopped and looked into my eyes, searching for something. “I can’t
explain in a way that would make you believe.”

“Try,” I said, but I didn’t even recognize
my own voice. There was a calm confidence in it that evened it out. There was
no hate or anger in it.

“Lucy,” he whispered. “I know you think
there is evil inside you, but I don’t know how that could be true when even the
worst parts of you have managed to create the best parts of me. I wasn’t always
a decent guy. You’ve made me a better man. You made me want things I never
thought I could ever possibly want or need. When you came into my life, I felt…
alive
for the first time since I had been human. You made me want to
live, really live, and I knew I had to protect you at all costs. I just needed
you. And you need me, now. We need each other,” he pleaded.

Yeah. He needed me for his stupid prophecy,
I thought to myself. What I needed was to squash this growing ache in my chest
that his words caused because nothing made sense to me anymore. It may have
been irrational, but I wasn’t about to analyze my theory for truth. I was done hearing
the truth. It was too much to take in at the moment. “No,” I said firmly. “I
don’t need you anymore. I don’t need anyone,” I said.

“You’re so stubborn,” he said with an
exhausted grin.

“Screw you. I’m out of here,” I said as I
turned on my heel toward the door.

“Don’t be afraid to let yourself live,” he
called after me.

I spun to let him have the full force of my wrath.
“Don’t tell me how to live my life. You’ve done enough by letting me live. So
do me a favor and stay the hell out of my life for good. Don’t save me anymore.
Don’t try to protect me. I don’t care what my mother may have wanted nineteen
years ago. It should have been me that died that night, so if I’m in danger of
dying now, it’s long overdue. You made that choice for me then. I won’t let you
do that again. If I’m going to die, don’t save me.”

He paused a moment, with worry in his eyes
before responding. “When you’re ready for the whole story, I’m here. I only
ever wanted you to find yourself. I may have kept things from you, but my
actions always spoke the truth, Lucy.”

The look on his face told me he wasn’t going
to argue with me, but the expression morphed into something that nearly knocked
me backwards. I was overwhelmed by the pain in his eyes. It wasn’t the response
I expected, and I couldn’t stand to watch any longer. This was all too much to
take and once I hit the stairwell, I ran, and ran, unsure of where I was going,
but just needing to get away.

I ran circles around the city just trying to
lose myself in the adrenaline of speed. My world was spinning out of control
and I didn’t know how to take back that control. I felt powerless in my own
skin. What I thought I knew about my life was in question. I may have been
ready to hear the truth, but I didn’t know if I believed it.

Before exhaustion sank in and dawn broke on
the horizon, I found myself standing at the gates of the only safe haven I had
left in town, my place of peace. It was the only place I could go where I
wouldn’t hurt anybody just by being in their life, tainting it. Because
everyone here was already dead. The gate was still closed, but I jumped the
wall and made my way through the garden of the dead, the gravestones each
bearing the extra weight of the recent snow that came through yesterday. The
frozen grass crunched under my boots. I veered off my usual path and headed in
the opposite direction of my weeping angel. Instead, I walked slowly up the
low-lying hill with small grave markers, some nearly lost under the snow cover.

When I came to a stop, I knelt down in front
of the small headstone I hadn’t visited in years. It stood about two feet off
the ground. There was a light dusting of snow on the front of it. I reached out
to brush the snow off to reveal the engraving:
Linda Masters, 1960-1990,
Loving wife and mother.

“Hi mom,” I said stonily. I wasn’t sure why
I came. This woman was a stranger to me. I never knew anything about her, but I
guess I was looking for guidance. She knew everything about who I was,
according to Gavin. Every part of me wanted to hate him for what he did to her,
to me, but I couldn’t, and every part of me didn’t want to believe his story,
but I did. And every part of me wanted to hate her for wanting this for me, for
condemning me to this life, but I’ve never been a mother, and I didn’t know
what her life had been like. It was getting harder and harder to hold on to all
that anger I harbored all these years when there was nothing I could do to
change it. This was my life, and I had to somehow learn to accept it.

Everything that happened in the past, with
Gavin, with my mother, I could accept, but now I needed to cope with where it left
me, what it made me. I had to accept what I was- a vampire. Apparently, a very
rare kind of vampire that the other vampires didn’t like very much. Well, I’ve
already accepted that they all hated me anyway, so I guess it wouldn’t be too
difficult to deal with. But what the hell was a vampire of the Light?

I felt the cold through my jeans, and the
snow under my legs began to melt, soaking through to my knees. I shifted
forward, about to push myself up to my feet. I leaned over and put a hand on
the ground in front of me but drew it back when it crushed something underneath
the snow. I brushed the snow away and found myself staring at a single rose
that looked bright red and fresh but sparkled with the thin layer of frost
covering it. It couldn’t have been very old.

I picked it up with fascination, and
something caught my eye. There was an unevenness at the base of my mom’s
tombstone. It was a piece of paper or something under the snow that was propped
up against it. I reached for it and brushed it off, revealing a picture. It was
of two smiling women, one who I had never seen but easily recognized as my
mother. The features were undeniably familiar. It was like looking at a picture
of myself, if I had grown up in the eighties and had big hair and acid washed
jeans. The other woman was a mystery. I flipped it over for any information I
could find.
Jackpot!
There were names written. Linda Masters and Helen
Lancaster.

Helen Lancaster? Helen Lancaster?

Something nagged at the back of my mind.
Finally, it hit me. I thrust my hand into my coat pocket and fished out the
silver charm bracelet. Right next to the angel with my initials was the angel
that had the hidden initials. It read, H.L. Helen Lancaster.

Before I had a chance to process this, there
was a sudden interruption in the silence, a cooing sound coming from about
fifty feet away. When I followed the sound, I spotted a dove sitting on the
bare skeletal branches of a tree. It cooed again, its eyes trained on mine with
age-old knowledge and wisdom. It lingered a moment longer before taking off out
of sight. I always thought doves came in pairs and in warmer temperatures, but
this one was all by its lonesome. I looked back down to my mom’s grave, feeling
my eyebrow lifting in speculation.

“Nah,” I said, brushing off the strange
coincidence.

I looked back to the picture. Just below the
names there was an address scribbled on the back. 4421 West Spruce Apt. #38B.
Was this Helen’s current address? Was she trying to make contact with me? Did
she hold the answers I was searching for? I could write the dove off as a
coincidence, but this picture and the rose hadn’t been here that long. It
couldn’t have been here more than a day. Did Helen know I would come here
eventually?

It was the only real lead I had, so I
couldn’t ignore it. I had to check out the apartment, but at the moment, I
really needed sleep before I passed out on the frozen tundra. As I turned to
leave, I looked back. “Thanks mom,” I said, and immediately felt like an idiot
for searching the tree. When I turned to go, I had the feeling like I was being
watched, but it wasn’t a creepy or eerie feeling, more of a protective one.
Maybe it was the exhaustion setting in.

†

Ten minutes later, I stood on the catwalk in
front of my old apartment, key in hand. It felt strange coming back after all
this time, but I was on my own now, completely. I pushed through the door, and
drew in a sudden intake of breath when I saw everything that had been here
before. It looked completely untouched, not that my futon and tiny television
set was much to start with. I made my way to the back of the apartment to my
old bedroom, and had another startling moment when I walked in to find the same
nice comforter and bed set I had gotten used to in the past couple of months.
My clothes were also hung neatly in my closet.
Unbelievable
. He was just
so… frustrating. It was obnoxious how well he knew me. But I couldn’t help the
smile from spreading across my face.

Finally, overcome with the exhaustion, I
fell to the bed, face first, and felt myself sinking further into
unconsciousness. I didn’t resurface until nightfall. After showering and
grabbing a quick meal, I stood at the bathroom sink pulling my hair back in a
messy bun.

It had been a while since I really looked at
myself, but as I stood there gazing at my reflection, I clutched the picture of
my mother and her friend in my hand, glancing back and forth between my face
and hers. My mother’s features might have been called plain by some, but she
was beautiful to me because she had that very…
human
look about her. My
features were similar but more pronounced. My mother’s face was softer,
rounder, but mine had sharper angles. My lips were fuller but shaped in the
same curve as hers. My nose was a straight line but held the same upturned tip
that hers had. Both of our eyes were wide but hers were a more dull green,
while mine were bright green and stood out like two very sore thumbs. The
attention my unnatural looks got me was annoying to say the least. I wished I
could have looked more like her. Stuffing the picture in my back pocket, I
turned back to my bedroom to collect my phone and my coat and realized my phone
had died. When I plugged it back into the charger, I gave it a few seconds
before turning it on.

After the power-on tone chimed, it beeped to
indicate I had a new voicemail. When I checked the missed call list, it showed
I had eight missed calls, the last one from about nine ‘o clock. It was almost
half past nine now, and I hurried through the menus to get to my voicemail.
Once I called it, I waited impatiently for the automated voice to finish saying
Holly’s number. When her voice came through, it was panicked, urgent, and
filled with fear. “Luce, I’m in trouble. I need you. Please call me. He’s going
to kill me,” she said, her voice cracking on the last words.

My entire body went still and suddenly felt
cold all over. My heart stopped and my blood froze in my veins. I couldn’t
think. My fingers took action first, fumbling over the keypad on my phone,
searching for Holly’s number. My mind kept getting stuck on one question. What
if I couldn’t save her? But there was a mental block that prevented me from
getting to an answer. I couldn’t even process that right now. All I needed to
do was stay focused on finding her. When I found her number, I dialed, and put
the phone to my ear. Four agonizing rings later, there was an answer.

“Luce?” she whispered.

“Hol, where are you?” I asked, my panic
rising.

“The old nightclub that burned down,” she
said, voice low.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” I said, my legs
already carrying me out the door. When I hit the cold, I realized I hadn’t even
put a coat on over my old hoodie. The chill, however, didn’t even bother me
that much anymore. “Hol, it’s okay. I’m on my way. Who has you?”

“Lucy. I never had many friends, but you
were by far the best there ever was. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you last
night. I went out on my own, but I want you to know that I don’t blame you for
any of this. Whatever happens to me, don’t blame yourself, please. It was my
choice, not yours,” she confessed.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Don’t talk like it’s
over, Hol. I’m two minutes away,” I said evenly as I raced through the streets
at what felt like my fastest speed yet.

“Luce, he’s here. It’s too late,” she said
in a hurry.

“Holly, who’s
he
?” I asked.

There was a scuffling sound and then another
voice broke through the static noise. “Hey baby. What took you so long? I’ve
been waiting over an hour,” the familiar voice said.

“
You
. All this time, it was you,” I
accused. All that time I spent wondering who the Ghost could have been and I
never considered it was Shane because I never saw him as a very big threat. All
that time, I kept my eyes open for something bigger, something worse, like an
assassin or one of the First. I never trusted him, but I never thought he was
capable of a scheme this big, at least not by himself. I had underestimated my
enemy, as someone once informed me was exactly what I should not do. But it
began to make sense. He seemed stronger than he had been before, and his
superior vampire attitude should have tipped me off right away.
Sneaky
bastard!
All that time, he was manipulating me to turn against Gavin every
chance he got.

“Lucy, your ignorance has been my best
asset. If you had figured it out sooner, I wouldn’t be able to twist your mind
in ways that benefited me,” he said arrogantly.

“Before you get off on pride, I just want
you to know that if you hurt Holly, I’ll make sure and drag out your death for
days until you beg to be sent to your real grave, six feet underground,” I
threatened.

“Oh, that reminds me,” there was a brief
pause, and then there was a blood curdling scream.
Holly!
“I wanted to
take something from you, like you took my business from me. Now, I know you’re
on your way, so I’m going to give you a few minutes alone. I’ll be in touch.”

The phone went dead, and I shoved it into my
back pocket with the picture. Everything went black in front of me for a moment
before I refocused on where I was. I approached the old night club, still
blackened and worn by the fire. Bursting through the front door, I felt the
nausea building. A vampire came at me from the side, and I spun to put a stake
through his heart. One down, two to go. Another came at me from behind, but the
desire to get to Holly was so strong, these bastards only felt like little
pests, flies that just needed to be swatted. I made light work of the second
vampire, and I heard someone breathing, uneven weak breaths.

Holly was upstairs in the old VIP section. I
raced across the main floor, through the charred remains of a dance club that
looked more like just another old abandoned warehouse. The third vampire came
at me from the stairs, but his movements seemed to be in slow motion. As I
focused my rage, I blocked a right hook, snaking my other arm under his and drove
a stake through his heart.

I was up the stairs in less than a second,
but when I saw Holly’s crumpled body, my steps came slower and slower until I
came to a full stop, standing directly above her. There was a throbbing pain in
my chest and a swelling in my throat. She lifted her eyelids with great effort
to meet mine evenly. The knife through her stomach made it difficult for her to
say anything, so I bent down to cradle her head in my hands, lifting it off the
floor.

She opened her mouth to speak, but I stopped
her. “Shhh. Holly, don’t talk,” I soothed. “Stay with me. I’m calling 911.” I
dialed, and when the operator asked what my emergency was, I gave her a brief
answer leaving out the whole paranormal aspect, and then hung up.

“Okay, Hol. The ambulance is on the way.
Stay with me. Please. Please, stay with me,” I begged, my words sounding
methodical but eventually morphing into a low chant of pleading and a little
bit of praying. Those words stayed on repeat in my head, like if I focused all
my energy into it I could keep her alive. It was the closest I’ve ever come to
faith. I needed to believe she would live. In some way it had to help her. It
had to.

She struggled to hold my attention, and when
she opened her mouth, she choked on her own blood before she manage to whisper,
“Not…your….fault.” Her eyes became unfocused and her lids drooped over them
heavily. Her breathing hitched once before faltering and eventually stopped.

“Hol?” I gasped. My voice became more
frantic and desperate. “Holly, no. Please. Please don’t…. Hol, stay with me.
Please. You can’t…. I don’t want you to…” My throat kept choking on that one
word. I couldn’t even think that word in my mind. It would be too real, and I
refused to process that outcome. It couldn’t just end this way, not like this.
It was never supposed to be like this.