Thank you so much to all the fantastic, cosmic people who took time out to tell me what they thought last time round. Thank you to: Dead Flower, Persephone, Starwisher, Cath, Myst, Tough Fluff, Night Goddess, Kittykatt, and last, the fabulous Cynical Leaf.
it now, I guess! Thanks – I'm going to need all the luck I can get!)
Comments are adored like a good book; read, savoured, appreciated, adored and cherished.
The lyrics are from Smashing Pumpkins 'Bullet With Butterfly Wings' which has been drowning out the neighbours pneumatic drill!
Remember Part Four
Someone will say what is lost can never be saved.
Tam could not believe this was happening. One second ago, Aspen had been proclaiming she was his to love, next minute, he was choking the life out of her. She clawed at his grip, but he was impossibly strong, strong as the roots of a mountain, lack of air sprinkling her vision with dots of black and red.
She was going to define exactly what love meant to him at some point. With a crowbar.
He repeated the question, shaking her with each word until she thought her spine would snap. "How do you know what the Nightworld is?"
How am I supposed to answer the question if you're choking the life out of me? she thought frantically, just as he let go, and her body crumpled. She caught herself, forced her body straight.
"Well?" A cold wind blew in his voice, so beautiful she wanted to crawl to him and beg for forgiveness.
Beg? Even lack of oxygen shouldn't make her this brainless.
She was swaying, and Tam cursed herself for that, concentrating on inhaling and ignoring the jagged edge of pain in her gullet. All her vision could lock on was his eyes, those eyes so unique, glowing the white-blue of a pulsar star and the turgid, smoky red of hell, stark against the ivory luminosity of his skin.
"This is the last time I am going to repeat this," he said flatly. Where was the eager, frightened boy who had been so concerned for her? "How do you know about the Nightworld?"
She couldn't betray the vampire hunters. "Woman's intuition."
"Are you trying to be smart?" Incredulity swelling in his voice. "Do you know what I am?"
"Certifiable?"
His eyes widened and for a moment he did look young and naïve. "I'm not playing with you." He made a motion towards her, and Tam moved back, one hand still rubbing at her aching throat. How the hell was she going to explain away the bruises from this one to Ellie?
That surprised her. She was actually going to try and hide Aspen from Ellie. He was a vampire. Didn't he deserve to be hunted down and killed, scattered across the winds like the dust he came from?
There was an odd plea in his eyes. "Tell me, vermin girl. I don't want to hurt you, but I will. Don't make me like hurting you."
The words caught at her, and she stopped listening to the words themselves and listened to his voice. There was fear in it. Fear and a kind of desire that he couldn't stop. Part of him wanted to hear her scream. That crazy, untameable part that had crushed her throat in his hand and sank his teeth into her.
"What the hell are you?" she asked, hardly aware that the words were falling from her lips like tiny bombs each one, that made him flinch a little. "I've met vampires before, but they haven't been like you. Some of them have been killers, and some of them were ordinary...but none have been both."
He shivered. "Don't."
He was on the defensive now, and Tam pressed her advantage. "Don't what? Why are you so screwed up?" Her voice was hurting and husky, but she made the words clear. The abnormal radiance was gone from his face, leaving him that strange, scared kid.
She was reminded of the dog Rob used to have, a big beagle that padded through the woods with the pair of them when they went sailing on the lake. That beast had gone rabid two years back before anyone knew, and had nearly bitten Rob. So his father had gotten the gun that had never killed anything worse than pheasants and the odd rabbit, and shot the dog. He had hit it, but it hadn't died straight away.
While it lay there dying, all the rabid darkness had drained out of its eyes and left them uncomprehending and wounded, unable to understand why it had been hurt so.
That was what Aspen looked like.
"I am not screwed up!" he shouted, his stained lips drawn back to show his fangs, gleaming with a pearly light, but bespattered with dull red. My life on his teeth, she thought. "There's nothing wrong with me!"
There's everything wrong with you, decided Tam, but didn't say it.
"Now tell me what I want to know." Flat calm in his tones, and his face was pale but composed.
His eyes were dead.
A wave of excruciating pain hit her head, and Tam heard her own breath sawing at the air as she tried to breathe in enough to let out the red-hot screams that were scratching at her. Endless grey and crimson streamers lined with razors ripped through her head, until she didn't know which way was which.
Then the pain turned off, and she heard furious shouting. Open your eyes, she urged herself. Something interesting might be going on.
Something was. Rob had arrived.
X - X - X - X - X
Therese chuckled as the sounds of the fight drifted to her and Blue. The corridor was only a few twists and turns away, and their vampire senses were sharp enough to pick up the sound of someone being thrown across the room. And it wasn't the human boy.
"He's quite feisty, isn't he?" she remarked. "I'm going to have to sample him."
"Will you? Why, exactly?"
The icy smile said he already knew...Blue had always been able to read her mind without difficulty. But he wanted to make Therese admit the truth to herself. She had once told him that she was the most human of them all, and he hadn't stopped laughing for a good hour or so after. And he had never forgotten.
Therese licked her lips with a forked tongue. Her mouth was watering at the thought of how piercingly sweet his blood would be; the human boy had smelled like popcorn mixed with the headiness of a thunderstorm, and she had liked it. "He's too soft. Innocent. He annoys me...he's too human."
He nodded, showing neither approval nor disapproval, then reeled off an address. "You can find him there," he drawled. "The vermin are always there playing pool. They invited me over."
"You won, I assume?"
The smile flashed then, and with it came ferns of silver light creeping into his eyes. "I lost all three games. It's amazing how much more they liked me afterwards."
She stared at him. "Is that how you manage to have so little trouble fitting in here?"
"It's my overwhelmingly likeable personality, my dear spider. And the fact that unlike you and Martin, I'm sane." Therese didn't bother to deny it. He gave the easy, rich laugh that meant nothing but trouble. "I think I will go to their little soiree tonight. I have the feeling they might want to tell me something."
"You caught that too?" In the mind of the human boy, Rob, there had been an underlying thought about his group of friends. Buried, but the sinister fear surrounding it had been enough to make Therese wonder.
"I did." They both paused to listen to a particularly nasty stream of abuse that Aspen was spouting. "Someone should mention to Aspen that certain aspects of that are neither physically nor biologically possible. Besides, the vermin boy knows we're both vampires. Won't it be entertaining to go and see just how much he and his friends know about the Nightworld?"
That viper's tongue flickered at him. "Don't you hurt that human one, Bane. He's my meal."
"Free-range dregs? How quaint. Why don't you come along too? Mix business and pleasure."
X - X - X - X - X
Tam was watching, astonished as a furious Rob actually held his own in this fight. He was a human, and he was managing to hold off a vampire. An angry, crazed vampire who was snarling like that rabid dog had, and who didn't to seem at all averse to using teeth and elbows in this fight.
And there was another problem.
Every time Rob hit Aspen, it doubled her over in pain. She could hardly find time to think as fresh aches blossomed on her face, her stomach, her shoulders, her legs.
Got to get up, she thought determinedly. A part of her was screaming that her soulmate was being hurt, and she had to stop it. It was warring with the part that saw her best friend in danger. She managed eventually.
So far today, she had been bitten, strangled and beaten. She could hear the talkshows calling.
Tam hovered for a moment, breathing through the pain – she was getting good at it – and waiting for them to break apart. When Aspen threw Rob back a foot or two, she stepped between them.
Rob hissed at her, not noticing the blood that trickled onto his eyelashes. "Tam, get out of the way!"
She ignored him, and turned her attention to Aspen. His eyes were almost all white and black, only two rings of violet and leaf-green showing like halos around them, and she could tell he wasn't seeing her anymore, that he was out of control.
But she could feel his mind, that swift, self-contained vortex tugging at her, telling her what he would do.
As Rob gaped, she dodged the blow the vampire aimed at her with a dancer's grace – so easy - and leaned in to put her hand against his face, knowing she would have to endure the next strike to touch him.
He did hit her, but at the same moment, she felt a rip in his mind, and Tam saw herself as he did.
Was she really that unruffled, almost disdainful? She had never seen that her eyes, velvet as soot, held a contentment Aspen couldn't understand, or that the black, crimped hair shimmered like oil against the bronzed skin. And over her face, for a second, she saw another laid – a face that was aristocratic and proud – before the memory slid away, because like her, he could only recall fragments of that odd dream.
All that she saw, while she felt herself drop, landing on her side. For a moment she thought he had fallen too, then realised he had her cradled in his arms, the maelstrom replaced with horror.
"Vermin girl!" he stammered, stroking her face, her hair, shivering himself. He was talking so fast it made no sense at all. "I'm so sorry, please forgive me, I didn't mean to do that, I didn't want to, only I did and you got me so mad, I wish I hadn't hurt you and I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Her head pounded like a pneumatic drill. "Damn right you are," Tam croaked.
Rob was there too, and she knew his first words were going to be laced with threats and abuse. "You—"
"No!" she shouted, sitting up, making her own head ring so much that she collapsed into Aspen's protective hold. His hands curled about her almost furtively, aware that this was against everything he had been taught. Both of the boys shut up, mostly, she suspected, out of sheer surprise.
"Enough. Neither of you know the full story."
"He's a goddamn vampire," Rob spat, the first venom she had ever seen him show. Aspen bared his fangs and snapped them like a cheated crocodile. "We should give him over to...you know."
"Did I just hear that?"
Confused, Rob took a step back as Tam elbowed Aspen until he let go of her and got to her feet, albeit waveringly. "Look at him, Tam! Can't you see what he is? I didn't think I'd ever say this, but he's a monster. For chrissake, look at yourself. You're bleeding all over! And your neck—" Rob stilled, and his voice went dangerously quiet. "Oh my god, the son-of-a-bitch bit you."
Aspen was on his feet, so fast it made her blink. "Don't you call me that! My blood's purer than she is!" He gestured at Tam.
She didn't know whether to laugh or scream. "Would you shut up? Or shall I go away and let you two get on with marking your territory or whatever the hell this is?"
Rob seemed to have fixed on one fact. She took a look at him, and knew that shock had closed down his mind to everything except a rigid structure of denial, disbelief, fury and fixation. "He bit you."
He took one step forward and Tam pushed him back with all her might. It moved him about a millimetre. "No...Rob, you don't understand! Aren't you even going to let me explain?"
He took a deep breath. "Guess I owe you that."
"He did bite me," Tam said evenly, trying to get the message into Rob's suddenly exceptionally thick skull. "And yeah...I didn't like it. It was like rape, I guess. But then something weird happened. This is going to sound really bizarre...in fact," she added to Aspen, "maybe you'd better tell it."
She glanced at the vampire's face and saw that chilling vulnerability there, coupled with the demented fear. She knew he wouldn't be saying anything; he couldn't. Those eyes were looking at her like she was the only thing that could save him now. He was shuddering, and surprising herself, Tam approached him.
His breath rasped in her ears, and those hopeless, trapped eyes stared at her. God, what had someone done to make him like this?
She put a hand on his arm, and he flinched, turning his head and closing his eyes as if he had expected her to hit him. Tam waited a moment, felt him still, and turn to her slowly, eyelids lifting open, peering at her from under his eyelashes. Then she let her hand move up his arm, the soul-link dim and misty.
Across his shoulder, firm and still quivering, up the curve of his collarbone, now with a trail of diamond sparks lighting her mind, and over that clenched jaw to where his mouth trembled.
Tam didn't understand this power he had over her, simply by being. The mute appeal in that flinch had called out to her, because it was a reaction she recognised.
She didn't say anything, but looked up into the dilated eyes, and let her hand drift through his already mussed hair, running her finger along one of those blond streaks. It was touch he needed, she somehow knew. Simple human contact, like a hurt kid, to let him know that here was someone to take comfort from.
Even so, she was startled when he moved with that supple ease she admired so, and simply flung his arms around her, burying his head in her neck. It sent a pang through her, the desperate way he clung to her.
It wasn't because it was her, she understood, stroking the back of his neck and wondering what on earth Rob was making of this without caring how disgusted he was. The vampire just needed someone to hold. If it had been anyone (except possibly Rob), he would have done the same. She could feel his breath, warm and humid on her neck, making the place he had bitten tingle.
He lifted his head to nuzzle her cheek, those tormented eyes making her sorry – sorry! – that she had yelled at him. And now she wished that the wildness would come back and cover up this horrible secret that lurked in his soul, that he had been shredded into pieces held together only by pretence and illusion.
Let him be angry, and cruel, and uncontrolled, if it would make him forget.
His lips moved, saying words that were almost a mantra. Vous êtes mon âme. And from the way he shyly kissed her on the cheek with a chasteness that was completely opposite to the way he had kissed her before, and the awe, the wonder in his eyes, she knew that he meant it.
It made her forget the bruises, the aches, the anger.
"Um...are you two done re-enacting 'The Lion King', or do I have to wait for a rendition of 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight'?" The hesitant voice cut into that startling intimacy, making his pupils shrink, and the screen roll over them. "And...you don't need to explain. I get it." Rob sounded distinctly uncomfortable.
She raised her eyebrows at Aspen. He let her go, some of the old confidence coming back in the delighted curve of his mouth, with his pain once again concealed.
"Anyway..." continued Rob doggedly, despite his cut forehead, the blood turning his bronze hair a clammy brown, and despite what had to be a fairly serious case of concussion, not to mention the severe trauma he had just experienced, "I did have a reason for finding you."
"Shoot," Tam said. She could live with her new husky voice. Explaining it would be a problem. Still, if she could just avoid Ellie—
"We have to go to that party tonight."
What party? She actually jumped at Aspen's voice. Only this wasn't a voice. It was more texture than anything; the same feeling as silky water easing down her hair, water charged with electricity. Rob was giving her a frankly startled look.
Great. Caught between a jock and a hardcase. "Oh...god."
"And if you and him are really..." It took Rob three tries to get the word out. "Together, then we have to start finding some reasons why you look like an extra for ER."
What party? Aspen said, louder. He snaked an arm round her waist, if somewhat hesitantly, and pulled her closer so he could whisper in her ear. "I'm not good at secrets."
"Well, I'm giving you some practise," she whispered back. "This isn't your business."
I'm your soulmate! he snapped, reverting to telepathy so he could shout. You are my business.
Are you going to threaten me again?
Vermin girl—
Tam forcibly removed his arm. "It's Tamara, okay? And keep out of it, or this is the last you'll see of me."
Briefly, the shield slipped from his eyes and she wished she hadn't said that. "I understand...Tamara."
"Good." She left him standing there, and treading on Rob's foot as she went past (it was her way of telling him he'd messed up), went to find somewhere to clean up, and start discussing lies. "Rob, are you coming or not? We need to talk about Ellie."
"You bet we do," she heard Rob mutter. Neither noticed the pair of people climbing through the window behind them.
X - X - X - X - X
"Well," purred Therese as she fit her flexible, and in Aspen's opinion, disgustingly emaciated body through the window with spidery smoothness. Blue was dusting off his hands, and looking disarmingly harmless. "You seem quite taken with her. Have you finally found your dushka?"
"Shut up, you damn arachnid," he snapped, as he watched his human - was she his dushka, his dear heart? – walk away with that bloody vermin boy at her side. "I don't know why you're looking so smug."
"Because," she said in a sing-song voice, "we're going to crash their little party."
Aspen felt his heart skip a beat, before a growing glee overcame the fear he had tried so hard to push away. A fear that had only been drowned by the warmth of her arms. She...Tamara...hadn't been afraid of him.
He had never known that.
"Are you in or out?" Blue said, sounding uninterested. "There's something those would-be anarchists are hiding, and I think the pair of you will be interested when you find out what it is."
"How do you know?" Therese said, turning void eyes on him. But there was respect in her stance.
"I can make an educated guess," Blue murmured, and for all the other two knew, he was lying through those wicked teeth. Or maybe he was just guessing. "What they're hiding...well, it's rather vexing. So we thought we'd have a murder-mystery evening. Meal inclusive."
"What's the mystery, Mal?" he asked, recognising the fidgety movements of Therese's hands that meant she was excited.
"How many humans can you kill in a night?" The cobalt eyes glinted. "In or out?"
She would be there. If Blue or Telerana got hold of her... He grinned savagely. "In. Very, very in."
Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.
X - X - X - X - X
Thanks for reading!