I screamed until my breath gave out, then started sobbing again as I gasped for air. "Eric?" I begged.
"Sshh, sshh, you're OK," a male voice soothed me.
"Eric?" I asked again, turning towards the voice.
I was in my bedroom now, the third place I'd been in as many minutes, and my head swam with disorientation. I blinked the tears out of my eyes, looking around to see who else was here.
Not Eric. Quinn.
I sprang out of bed, running through the hallway to the phone in my kitchen, rushing so much I almost tripped over my own legs. My fingers dialed his number and I pressed the phone to my ear, hoping, praying...
"Well hello, lover," Eric's voice purred in my ear.
All the air rushed out of my lungs. "You're OK," I gasped. "You're OK."
"You had a nightmare," he told me. He sounded almost... pleased?
I suddenly felt really stupid. "You're alive," I muttered.
He let out a long belly laugh. "Lover, you must still be asleep. I haven't been alive for a thousand years."
"Oh." I felt like a moron.
"What are you wearing?" he thankfully changed the subject, sounding much more interested in this topic of conversation.
I glanced down, and told him the truth - "Nothing" - before I thought better of it. I'd jumped out of bed without even thinking about clothes, I was so worried about him. A second later, I clicked my fingers and I was wearing my favorite old pink nightgown, which felt better.
"That's what I hoped you would say." His voice was all husky and hoarse. "You are in your kitchen, yes? I remember you naked in your kitchen, lover. I remember sitting you on your kitchen bench and fucking you 'til you screamed for me. I am very glad I regained that memory." Boy, did he mean that; his tone of voice made it clear. "Do you remember that, lover? Those benches are just the right height for me... very convenient, really. Do you think of me fucking you on that bench while you prepare your meals?"
"Eric," I groaned, wondering why he had to make everything about sex.
"Yes, that's how you moaned my name... You do remember. Do you think of it, while you pleasure yourself? Do you think of it, while that stupid smelly animal is-"
"I've got clothes on, now." I realized as soon as I said it, that it wasn't going to shut him up.
"I can come over and fix that, if you wish?" he offered cheekily. He sounded like he was, um, amusing himself while he spoke to me.
I was just about to explain why that wasn't going to happen, when I heard a soft little humph through the phone. A female humph.
I hung up on him and left the phone off the hook, then leaned against the wall. Those horrible images were still haunting me, making me tremble and sob. (I told myself that was the only thing upsetting me.) Slowly, I sank down to the ground, my heart still not believing it was only a dream.
A warm hand touched my shoulder, dragging me back to reality. "Hey," was all Quinn said to me, wondering if I was actually awake.
I looked right at him for a moment, finally registering the worry on his face, the buzz of concern in his mind, that he was crouched right beside me...
"So many people have died because of me," I wept, my eyes misting over again. "They all died so I could live. And Eric's gonna be next. He's gonna get himself killed for me. He's-" My voice broke up as I started sobbing again, thinking of Claudine, Crystal and their daughters, and Tray, and Eric... especially Eric.
Strong fingers rubbed my shoulders, because that was all Quinn could think to do to comfort me.
Then, abruptly, Hunter plonked down on my lap, his non-plastered arm draped around my neck. "It's not the future," he assured me. "It's all in your brain."
I stared at him in shock. "Eric's not gonna die?"
"Not now. We all keep each other alive." He was completely confident about that, and his confidence was infectious.
"So... none of what I saw was real?"
He shook his head. "Just a dream." He wouldn't say it aloud, but he thought it was a little, quote, con-seated to think there would be a separate afterlife just for people who died because of me. (He had a good vocabulary for a child his age, but some words, he was still figuring out.) He was right.
"Sorry I woke you," I apologized.
"Sorry Claudine and Crystal died before my cousins got born," he replied sadly. He was as disappointed as I was, that he never got to meet them. "Tray was gonna die anyway," he added. "If not then, the next month or later this year... he died right."
I caught some little echo of a future that was no longer possible (something he couldn't usually see), and even though I couldn't quite catch the images, I could feel that dying to save me felt honorable to Tray; far more so than the other two possibilities. One of the other options was something to do with Were politics, which he hated, and the third was a work-related accident; something blowing up next to him. I would never feel good that Tray was gone, but knowing he died in the way he would've preferred was a small comfort to me.
"Let's get you back to bed," I told Hunter, kissing his forehead.
He nodded, suddenly heavy and sleepy in my arms. His work here was done, so he was already drifting off again.
I held him tightly and Quinn helped us both up, then silently followed as I took my nephew back to his room. I tucked him back into my old bed, then gave him another kiss on the forehead.
"Goodnight," I whispered as I stood up again.
"'Night, cub," Quinn added, bending down to kiss him goodnight, too.
'Cub' was the nickname most weretiger parents gave their sons ('kitten' was preferred for daughters; it drew less suspicion from humans than calling a girl 'cub'), and hearing him say it reminded me of a conversation they'd had the previous afternoon, about teaching Hunter to use his newfound shape-shifting abilities. I couldn't help but smile.
My boyfriend went to give my nephew a quick peck on the forehead, like I'd done, but Hunter threw his covers off and gave him a big hug, thinking that he needed it. 'Hearing' that gave me pause, and I quickly realized it was true. Quinn had a way of focusing his attention on whatever needed to be done, then processing his feelings about it later. Sometimes much later. Right now, he was getting Hunter and I back to sleep so we'd get enough rest, and that was the content of all his conscious thoughts... but under the surface, there was something else: concern over me dreaming about Eric again, a question mark about what it meant, and a whole lot of hurt that no matter what he did, he could never mean more to me than my ex, who had joined a part of my soul to him.
Watching my boyfriend tuck Hunter back into bed, my heart ached for him. If he regularly said someone else's name in his sleep, I'd be devastated. Heck, if he even did that once... and yet, he tried to be understanding and kind about this. It made no sense to me. I was used to men who were furious with me simply for having male friends - murderous if I dared hug one of them - but this man tolerated me having an ex I wasn't fully over yet.
I turned off the light as he finished tucking Hunter back into bed and stood up to leave, then took his hand to lead him the few steps back to our bedroom. I was trying to think of something to say, because 'sorry' just didn't seem to cut it, this time. He sensed my unease and pulled me into bed with him, cuddling up to me. I was just starting to get comfortable when there was a knock on my front door.
"Bill," he and I said in unison.
I was guessing, based on the time and circumstances. All I really knew was, it was a vampire - I could feel the void of an undead mind at my door. But only one vampire came to comfort me when I had nightmares, and that was my neighbor, so I assumed it was him.
My boyfriend knew for sure. He had that shifter sense of smell: like an animal's, but somehow enhanced by his shifter magic. He smelled Bill; he smelled the cotton of Bill's shirt and trousers and the leather of his shoes; he smelled Selah's blood, sweat and fluids all over Bill's body; he smelled the disturbed earth and leaves along the path Bill had taken to my front door; he smelled a faint underlying whiff of day-old bubble bath, still clinging to Bill's skin... I'd heard that for dogs, smell was like a four-dimensional picture of everything around them (time being the fourth dimension). They didn't have to see something to know exactly what happened; they didn't even have to be there when it happened; all they had to do was sniff the site or anyone involved. Quinn's sense of smell was even more powerful: not only could he tell what a person had done and eaten for the last few days, he could even smell the biochemical changes that accompanied their moods. The surge of adrenaline that came with fear was especially distinct, but sadness, worry, anger, happiness, disgust, contempt and lust also had their own aromas.
Bill didn't smell even slightly worried; he smelled happy instead. 'Hearing' that, I was reminded that to Bill, my every nightmare was an opportunity: a chance to regain my favor; a chance to learn something he could report to someone who wanted to kidnap me. I was appalled.
"Do you want to talk to him?" my boyfriend asked me.
"No," I answered too emphatically. I sounded rude. "I just wanna go back to sleep," I added. I didn't have to fake the yawn that followed.
"OK." He was already sliding out of bed to go deal with my unwanted visitor, but I grabbed his hand to stop him for a moment.
Discovering how Bill really felt about my nightmares - that his friendly concern wasn't genuine and probably never had been - made me want to know how my boyfriend felt about them, too. I probed his mind quickly, then squeezed his hand and let go of it.
"Thank you," I said weakly. "I'm really tired."
He nodded and walked out of the room, wondering why I was poking around in his brain, but not really minding that I had.
As I listened to him politely send my neighbor away, I untangled the feelings I'd just read from him. There were a whole mix of emotions there, but thankfully being pleased I had a nightmare wasn't one of them. The most prominent was simple discomfort: he hated seeing me unhappy, because knowing I felt bad made him feel bad, too. Not only out of empathy, but also out of a misguided sense of responsibility: he believed that being a good mate meant helping me have whatever I needed in my life to be happy. If I wasn't happy, he wasn't a good enough mate, in his estimation. There was also a strong sense of impotence there, knowing my nightmares were something he couldn't fix; that all he could do was offer me any support I needed as I slowly worked through the emotional trauma that caused them. He'd learned the hard way that when it came to dealing with trauma, talk was every bit as important as action, but even after years of therapy to deal with his own issues, it still wasn't his natural way of doing things. Given a choice, he would always prefer to fight, or run, or work, or fuck, than sit around discussing how he felt - it was only experience that told him talking was sometimes necessary. Boy, could I relate to that.
By the time he got back, I knew this was one of those times. He slid into bed next to me again, and I snuggled in under his arm, pressing my body against his and clinging to his broad, strong chest. I silently told him it was only Bill I didn't want to talk to, and he immediately realized what I meant. But he didn't ask right away, waiting instead until Bill was well out of earshot, to be sure I wasn't caught in my lie. As I waited, my mind drifted to what I'd caught from Hunter before: that my boyfriend was really hurt by me dreaming about my ex again.
"Tell me about your dream?" he quietly asked, a full two minutes later.
By the time I was done telling him about it, I was sobbing again.
"How horrible," he hugged me even tighter. "You blame yourself for all those people's deaths?"
"It was my fault. Every one of them died because of me. Because of things I did. I've gotten so many people killed, and-"
"Babe, Claudine, Crystal, their unborn children and Tray all died because Niall was at war with his enemies. You didn't cause that; the war was brewing long before you were born. Sophie-Anne and Sigebert died because de Castro's a grandiose little prick who thinks he deserves to be America's first Emperor, and since no-one here wants an Emperor, he's decided to conquer their territories one by one instead. Debbie Pelt died because she was vindictive, spiteful, and arrogant enough to underestimate you. She left you no choice but to kill her, so really, she chose exactly what she got. Acting in self-defense is your absolute right. Don't ever forget that.
"The other people you mentioned... I don't know who Jerry Falcon was, but-"
"A Were who came to kill me but Bubba killed him first," I hastily explained.
"Oh, you know Bubba?" he smiled. Apparently, Bubba was one of the few vampires he actually liked. "Well, if Jerry Falcon was trying to kill you, I'm glad Bubba was there to stop him... The others you mentioned, they were all vamps, right?"
I nodded.
"Look, more often than not, being made vampire lessens the number of years a person spends on earth. A helluva lot of them are like Hadley, and meet their final death long before their human lifespan would've ended. Eric's exceptional to have lived so long, and Bill's probably bang on average, as far as vamp lifespan goes. You've seen the way they all plot and scheme against each other. They don't respect vampire un-life any more than they respect human life, really. Sending someone else to their final death is a means to an end, for most vamps, so it's not your fault so many you've known have died."
"Oh." I'd really never thought of it that way before. I tried to look at how I contributed to a situation and what I could've done differently to change the outcome, before I pointed fingers at anyone else... but there was a certain amount of sense in what he said.
"As for Eric being in danger because of you... he's been around for a thousand years. He knows how to not get killed." He didn't say any more, just held me and let all that he'd said slowly sink in.
As I lay in his arms thinking about it, it felt like a weight lifted off my chest. I hadn't grieved my cousin, my sister-in-law or my friend yet; I couldn't think of them without drowning in guilt, so I locked them away in a corner of my mind and left them there, where I wouldn't have to contemplate their loss. But thinking of what he said - that I wasn't the direct cause of their deaths, and that even as far as indirect causes go, I wasn't the main one - gave me some small measure of peace. There had been days when I felt like I had killed them, as surely as if I had poisoned or stabbed or crucified them myself. But that wasn't true; my great-grandfather's war was what really happened to the three of them. I breathed an actual sigh of relief, finally realizing I wasn't to blame - that I had barely escaped the Fairy War with my own life, despite the sacrifice so many made for me. Claudine and Tray chose to protect me, and as Quinn told me in the dark days when I wasn't sure I could go on, the only way I could honor their sacrifice was to make every day of my life worthy of them.
As my guilt over the deaths of people I cared about ebbed away, another, different surge of guilt swept in. My poor boyfriend woke to the sound of me screaming Eric's name again, although thankfully this time it wasn't in a sexy way. But still, he held me, comforted me and tried to sooth me back to sleep, trying not to feel hurt about it. He didn't want to share me, but I couldn't break my bond to Eric, no matter how much I wanted to move on.
I wondered what I could ever do to make that up to him.