What Kills Me (25 page)

“We shall make no sudden movements.
But we must leave here, carefully, quietly.”

“Where will we go?”

“I have other refuges,” she said.
“Your obaia has had centuries to build her own empire. I have sent
servants ahead of us to make sure the path is secure. They will
report back tomorrow and we will escape.”

“And if the Aramatta come before
then?”

“My servants live along the mountain
edges. They will know and they’ll warn us.”

She took a teacup and held it up. We
toasted and drank the blood.

“It’s fresh. Yung found some
hikers…”

She trailed off after seeing Lucas
shake his head.

“Oh, my apologies, Axelia,” she said.
“In any case, it is rude to talk about the food.”

She clapped her hands twice and Yung
came out to refill our cups, though I wasn’t feeling so hungry
anymore.

***

After we’d been fed, Yung and another
servant, Ai-Leen, led us into the forest. The wind rustled the
trees and occasionally it snowed tiny leaves. Lucas hung behind
talking to Nuwa, who walked with an indigo paper parasol. Her
slippered feet seemed not to make any noise, while I crunched
leaves and twigs and booted rocks with Samira’s sneakers. They
spoke in low murmurs; I heard Nuwa say Taren and Noel’s names but I
tried not to listen. I stayed close to the servants and babbled
about how I almost fell while climbing, though they appeared not to
speak English.

Then I heard rushing water, constant
and loud like static. We walked until Yung and Ai-Leen parted some
leaves to reveal a waterfall.

“Wow!” I turned back to grin,
open-mouthed, at Nuwa and Lucas.

“Look at how excited she is,” Nuwa
said, with a chuckle.

We descended stone stairs,
moss-covered, jagged, and cracked. At the base of the waterfall,
foamy white water poured over large rocks and into a milky,
light-blue stream. Ai-Leen smiled at me; she had puffy cheeks and
deep-set dimples, like buttons in a tufted couch. She was squat,
with an ample chest and rounded hips. She put a green silk bag down
on a rock and loosened the drawstring, then pulled out a towel and
what appeared to be a roll of cream linen.

Lucas was already stepping on the
heels of his shoes to remove them. When he peeled off his shirt,
Ai-Leen tittered.

“I’m also working on my eight pack,” I
told her while patting my stomach.

Lucas dived in with his pants on. He
didn’t surface. The servants started tugging at my
shirt.

“Whoa,” I said with a nervous giggle,
pushing my shirt down.

“It’s all right, Axelia. Let them
bathe you.”

“Um, I’m okay. I can bathe
myself.”

“Please,” she said. “It will cleanse
the body and the spirit.”

The servants pulled my shirt over my
head and I turned away from the water and crossed my arms over my
chest. Ai-Leen took the roll of fabric and started winding it
around my torso. It was light, like gauze.

“Are you making me a bathing suit?” I
asked. She just smiled. “Are they making me a bathing
suit?”

“They are giving you privacy,” Nuwa
said.

Yung covered my lower half with the
towel while Ai-Leen made me a skirt, then shorts with the strips of
cloth. Yung rolled up her pant legs over her knees and led me into
the water. She looked to be in her late thirties; her eyebrows were
shaped like tadpoles, bushy and then thin over her small dark brown
eyes.

Nuwa settled on the grass,
cross-legged, the umbrella over her shoulder. Ai-Leen dipped a
bucket of water into the stream and dumped it over my head. She
opened a jar and started smearing a gray-green paste into my hair.
“What is it?” I asked her.

“It is plants and mushrooms, and
spices for scent,” Nuwa said. “It will make your hair soft like
rabbit fur.”

Lucas was floating on his back at the
base of the waterfall. He looked so carefree.

“Nuwa? Thank you again for taking us
in,” I said. “It means a lot to Lucas.”

Yung plucked one of my feet from the
water and started scrubbing it with a bar of soap. She started to
hum and then stopped abruptly as if catching herself.

“It was without question, Axelia,”
Nuwa said. She watched me for a few minutes and said, “You must
mean a lot to Lucas for him to help you like this.”

“I’m so grateful. I wouldn’t be here
if it wasn’t for him. But I feel…”

“You feel responsible.”

“I do, yes. If I hadn’t come into his
life, he wouldn’t be in this mess. And Noel…”

“You mustn’t blame yourself,
Axelia.”

“But Lucas…”

“Lucas makes his own decisions. He
chooses to be here with you. You know, we will do almost anything
for the one we love.”

“Oh,” I said as Ai-Leen dropped
another bucket of water over me. “It’s not like that. Lucas and I
are just friends.”

“I see,” she said. “You don’t love
him?”

“Well, I care about him a lot,” I
said. “But—we just met.”

“He loves you.”

Stunned, I looked over at
him.

“He said that?” I whispered to
Nuwa.

She laughed. “No. But an obaia can
tell these things.”

Blushing, I stared down at Yung, who
was splashing my thighs with water. She was looking at me. Her
mouth was tight, as if she was chewing on the insides of her
cheeks. She didn’t blink. It made me uncomfortable so I patted her
on the shoulder and stood.

“Thank you,” I said to them. “I’ve
never been so clean in my life.”

I pushed off the rock and swam into
the middle of the stream. The servants waddled back to the shore. I
turned onto my back to look at the stars.

Could he possibly love
me?
And do I love him?
I thought of the way I felt with him. I thought of the way he
smiled. I thought of his laughter in the hot springs, how rare it
seemed and how precious.

This is perfect—now I’m
going to be all weird around him until I figure out how I
feel.

I was so preoccupied that I didn’t
notice Lucas surface beside me. He didn’t look at me or say
anything. He must have heard my conversation with Nuwa but he was
pretending not to have, which bothered me. With a single kick he
propelled himself toward the shore so I followed him, silently
sulking. I clomped out of the water and the servants covered me
with a black robe.

“Come children,” Nuwa said. “We have
some time to train before dawn.”

She doesn’t know that I
can go out in the sun.

“You’ll enjoy training Axelia,” Lucas
said. “She’s an incredibly fast learner.”

“Is that so?”

Nuwa rose from the grass and closed
her parasol. She placed the tip on the ground. With a flick of the
handle, she whacked a rock at me. Without a thought I snatched it
out of the air an inch from my face. It was so quick, the servants
flinched only after the rock had buried itself in my
hand.

Nuwa nodded, her eyes hungry. “Good
reflexes.”

I dropped the rock onto the soft
grass. The indents from the stone faded from my palm and I smiled.
I had impressed myself.

We returned to the temple
at a brisk pace. Lucas marched with his chin high; he seemed
excited to train with Nuwa.
Like they used
to when he was a young vampire.
She
disappeared inside the temple to change. In the rock garden Lucas
handed me my sword and leaned into me.

“Don’t mention the sunlight thing
yet,” he whispered.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to unnerve her with too
much information in one night.”

Right, we don’t want to
freak her out by telling her that I’m a monster destined to
slaughter the vampire race.

He cocked his head and clucked his
tongue, reading my thoughts. “We’ll tell her tomorrow,” he said.
“And I assume that you’ll want to go exploring in the
day.”

“Maybe just around the
garden?”

“Fine. But don’t wander
off.”

I nodded and moved away from him. Yung
was standing at the entrance to the temple, her hands clasped in
front of her, her eyes glowing in the dark. I bowed my head to her.
She just kept staring.

“Lucas, how do you say, ‘How are you?’
in Mandarin?”

“Ni hao
ma
.”

I repeated it immediately to Yung. She
didn’t respond.

“Did I say it right?” I asked
Lucas.

“Sort of.”

Yung murmured something. I turned to
Lucas. He was already practicing with his swords on the terrace.
“She said you remind her of her daughter,” he said.

“You have a daughter?” I asked Yung.
But she just shook her head.

You had a
daughter.

Nuwa returned in a loose black shirt
and pants, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She waved
at Yung and spoke in Mandarin. Yung hesitated before retreating. I
stared at the closed door after she had gone and I felt sad. She
seemed lonely.

“Hey Trouble, don’t fall over the
edge, okay?” Lucas said, interrupting my reverie. I unsheathed my
sword and joined him on the terrace.

“Even if I do fall, you’ll rescue me,
won’t you?” I said.

Nuwa had a long sword in her hand. She
leaped from the veranda, over the rock garden, onto the terrace. It
was as if she walked on air. She pulled her blade from its black
sheath and smiled.

“Let’s see what you are capable of,”
she said.

I couldn’t get Nuwa’s words
out of my head.
He loves you.
I obsessed over it all morning, unable to
concentrate on the tour that Ai-Leen was giving me of Nuwa’s
underground lair. The temple was a surface marker, a buoy.
Underneath, Nuwa’s home extended for miles of corridors,
staircases, and rooms, each modestly decorated with red rugs,
scroll paintings, and mahogany furniture.

I reclined on a burgundy chaise longue
in a library and pretended to flip through a book of photographs
depicting Chinese landscapes. Having never been in love, I couldn’t
be sure that I loved him and having had only two boyfriends—Steve
Salgado in third grade and Jay Carey in eleventh grade—I had no
fair comparison. Not that any human comparison could be made. My
days with Lucas had been filled with terror and tragedy, but when
we weren’t screaming or fighting or running, I had enjoyed being
with him. I had wanted to kiss him.

I’m attracted to Lucas. I
will allow that.

This confession was
followed by the thought that it might be better to quell my
feelings.
I can’t allow myself to like
him. He’s my only friend. Feelings will only complicate the
situation. And despite what Nuwa said, he probably doesn’t care
about me like that. If he thinks I like him, he might want to
distance himself from me. And I don’t know what I’d do if he didn’t
want to be friends anymore.

Nuwa walked into the room with Ai-Leen
in tow.

“Are you all right, Axelia?” Nuwa
asked.

“Yes, Nuwa. Thank you.”

Ai-Leen presented me with a folded
blanket. “Thank you,” I said. I laid it in my lap and stroked the
red knit.

“You look upset,” Nuwa said. “What is
on your mind, child?” She lowered herself into a chair.

“Nothing. I’m okay. It’s just been a
lot to deal with this week.”

“Given the circumstances, I think you
are being very courageous.”

“I don’t think so. I’m scared to
death.”

“Courage, my child, is not the absence
of fear. It’s the triumph over fear. It’s how you handle yourself
in these times, and these times are not for the weak of
heart.”

“It’s Lucas, really. If he wasn’t
always rescuing me or fighting for me or telling me not to be a
baby, I might be dead.”

“If you weren’t who you are, he might
not have fought for you.”

“I just wish I could do more to
protect him.”

“You are what keeps him
going.”

We sat in silence for a moment as I
digested her words. I didn’t know if I believed her, but I was
warmed by the possibility.

“Lucas told me that he has always
wanted to come find you,” I said.

She nodded. “I was sorry to leave him.
I know what it is like to be separated from your
family.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to
you.”

“It was a long time ago,” she said.
“Did he tell you my history?”

“He told me about his sisters. About
the general.”

She leaned back in the chair. She had
a faraway look in her eyes. A sadness.

“Hmm. Yes. The general. You know,
Axelia, when he was human, he was legendary. He was the commander
of great armies, and his forces were the only human warriors able
to mount an admirable resistance against the Aramatta. The humans
died of course, but the Monarchy was impressed with the general and
he was blessed.