Frozen.
Falling.
The world tilted on its axis.
A scream slithered up Evie's throat but died on her tongue, drowned by the stuttering gasp she pulled in through her teeth.
Ringing, then roaring.
Her eardrums throbbed with the rush of blood to her head. An ocean's wave crashed down on her, a tsunami. She was caught in the thundering wail of a hurricane's winds. Sinking, drowning, she was being dragged under, crushed beneath the weight of two words that left her struggling for the strength to stand, for breath, for reason.
"Hello, darling."
He was here. Walt was here. And he could not be here. Her mind grappled with the two truths. Walter De Ville, Lord of New Carfax Abbey, lounged in the second-hand leather chair she had found in a consignment shop the same month her mother was diagnosed, and Walter De Ville, Lord of New Carfax Abbey, was dead.
Killed—murdered—by her own hand.
Evie met his eyes, his piercing, blue eyes, the color and depth like a child's idea of a crystalline lake from a fairy tale. In them, she saw curiosity, amusement, and a sort of unbridled delight, but there were other things there, too. Darker things. Colder things. She felt that flash-tingle of terror light up her skin and stiffen her fingers at just the hint of them. It was as though a hundred spiders made entirely of electricity crawled across her flesh. Her heart clenched beneath her breast, and the feel of it was so odd, she could not reconcile it, just as she could not reconcile Walt's presence. She could not reconcile it, because it was a sense of fear that made it clench, but also a peculiar and appalling jubilance.
Walt was here, alive, somehow, and she was utterly horrified, and utterly relieved.
And utterly unprepared.
The roaring in Evie's ears lessened and her mind steadied enough that she no longer felt as though she walked through the spinning tunnel of a carnival funhouse. Her thoughts remained in disarray, however, and her emotions were a jumble of sharp and discordant fragments. She desperately sifted through them, trying to find a way to feel, to be. As she stared at Walt, and he stared back at her with a smile that was equal parts seduction and censure, there was one thought that declared itself clearly in her mind.
Run.
Evie took one halting step back, then another. Drawing in a great breath, she spun, her eyes tracing the path to the door. She hadn't yet lifted a foot from the floor to flee when she felt Walt's grasp, his long fingers wrapping warmly over her bare shoulders.
"Wait," he said softly. "Please." His lips nearly caressed her hair as he spoke. She was still trying to understand how he was right there, touching her, when he'd just been sitting, as his palms ghosted down her arms. The gesture was meant to soothe her, she thought, but the tiny hairs on her arms and neck prickled uncomfortably and she shivered, feeling it from her scalp to her toes. She closed her eyes, willing the staccato thudding of her heart to calm.
"How are you here?" she whispered when she found her voice. "You're dead."
Walt laughed, the sound of it low and rough, rumbling up from his chest. He was close enough that she could feel the vibration against her back.
"Evie, Evie…" His tone was the same he would use if scolding a child for foolishness. She felt foolish, at least until that feeling was swept away and replaced by something else entirely when he moved his lips to her ear and murmured, "I have walked this earth for hundreds of years, stepping over the corpses of those who meant me harm. Countless men, and some women, yes. Kings and paupers. Generals and foot soldiers. The fanatical and the ambitious. But here I remain because I…" He paused, tracing the shell of her ear with his nose, inhaling her perfume before continuing, "…am not so easy to kill."
She worked to keep her voice steady. "Well, that's a shame."
Walt chuckled, moving around her, placing himself between her and the door. His hands went to her hips, and she could feel the outline of his fingers through the fabric of her dress. "You wish you meant that," he said, and he sounded just as she remembered, his tone raspy and hypnotic, "but you don't."
Evie wanted to scoff. She wanted to tell him that he didn't know what she meant, or what she felt. That he couldn't know what she thought of him or his being here or even the fact that he had somehow survived the blood-fueled violence she'd unleashed to save herself and Diya.
And how had he survived? It seemed impossible, and yet, here he stood, the amber and citrus and jasmine of his cologne lightly scenting the very air she breathed.
She might've sneered and told him he was mistaken, that she did mean it. She might've demanded he explain how a vampire who had aged in an instant before being set alight now stood before her in all his youthful perfection. She might've called him a monster and spat in his face.
Instead, she asked the question which had plagued her all day.
"Where were you?"
The words surprised Evie, even though she'd been the one to speak them. She hadn't meant to ask that. And she certainly hadn't meant to ask it in a voice that sounded so…
Hurt?
It was a vague sort of question. Walt might've thought she was asking after his travels over the past year, or where he'd gone to lick his wounds and heal from the devastation she'd wrought. And those were indeed things she wished to know, and intended to inquire after, in time. But what she'd meant was, where had he been all day? When she'd expected to see him in the crowd on the sidewalk as she drove past, or strolling by the restaurant window she'd gazed out of during her meal with Grace? When he might've been one of two hundred art patrons drifting in and out of the gallery tonight, his dark hair and granite jawline giving him away in a glimpse just before he disappeared?
His absence had set her on edge, perhaps even more than his presence in her apartment did now. Seeing that he was, indeed, alive, and here, made her believe it had all been purposeful. That he'd been avoiding her.
Walt breathed in and pulled her closer, placing his lips on her forehead. "Never far, my love. But I didn't wish to distract you on such an important day."
"You did, though." She breathed the words, the sound of them so soft, she couldn't be sure Walt even heard her. She hoped he hadn't. Of all the things she could have said in that moment, all the things that swirled in her head, fighting for expression, how was it the one thing that made her appear pleading and aggrieved was the one thing she was able to voice?
What the fuck, Evie? Get it together.
She pushed back from him, enough that she could tilt her head and study his expression. Walt's brow puckered with regret. "Oh, I am sorry. That was never my intention."
"What was your intention?"
"To give you space…"
"Sitting in my darkened apartment, waiting for me to show up isn't exactly 'giving me my space,' Walt," she hissed.
"…so that you could shine tonight, without the burden of our unresolved tensions at the forefront of your mind."
Evie stepped back, folding her arms across her chest, and nearly snorted. "Unresolved tensions? I'm not sure that adequately describes what's between us, Lord De Ville." She spoke his title like an insult, her lip curling as she did.
"Well, however you'd like to label our issues…"
"How about if we say it's like I'm playing the lead in a horror film?"
Walt gave a wry laugh. "What, with me cast in the villain role?"
"So, you do understand," was her sarcastic reply.
His expression hardened, just a touch, but as he stared down at her, blue eyes roving over her face and down her neck, he swallowed. His gaze gentled. "Lay all the blame at my feet if you must, draga mea, but if I'm the monster of your horror film, you should ask yourself what it says about you that you crave my attention so much." Evie's indignant gasp brought a smile to Walter's lips. "Perhaps we are both of us monsters."
"I don't crave your attention," she insisted.
He chuckled. "Let's not add liar to your list of sins, darling."
"And you're the murderer here, not me!"
"Mr. Field might offer a counterpoint to your argument," Walt said lightly, "if only he could be here to do so. Unfortunately, he was run through with the sharp end of a ceremonial spear."
"That was self-defense!"
"And did you really threaten to bludgeon Oliver with a baseball bat?"
"That was Grace! I can't believe he told you…"
Walt gave her a slight shake of his head. "I haven't spoken to him since the wedding. You told me."
"I didn't tell…" Evie hesitated, biting her lip, and taking another step back. Bits of a dream played in her head, a conversation she'd had with Walt while they lay in bed with their legs entwined. The two of them had laughed as she told the story of her sleuthing with Grace, tracking down her Alexander cousin in London and threatening him until he agreed to help her. She'd needed a passport and identification to get back to the States, since hers had been lost in the fire at Carfax, and she hadn't wanted to explain the why of it to the embassy. It wouldn't do to have anyone associate her with the burning of an historic manor house in Whitby, or the destruction of the priceless art collection contained therein.
That still pained her greatly. The sculptures in the second-floor gallery alone…
"Wait," she said, brows pinching in as she glanced up at Walt. "Are you saying… those weren't dreams? That you were actually here, with me? That we… we spoke?"
His only answer was a grin as he closed the space between them once again. "Come now, my love," he said, his head tilting to one side. He cupped her face between his hands, thumbs stroking down each side of her neck. Wildly, she wondered if it was merely coincidence that he was tracing the twin paths of her carotid arteries, or if he meant to locate the optimal spot from which to drain her. "Surely you recall that we did more than speak."
Evie's head swam with his closeness, with the irritatingly wonderful scent of his cologne, with the feel of his fingertips against her cheeks. Every second, he drew closer to something, to some action she was certain would lay waste to the life she had spent the last year building. But she couldn't tell if he meant to kiss her or kill her.
Her expression was pained as she whispered, "How?"
"You keep asking how when that's the least interesting thing about all this. Don't you wish to know why?" He walked her backwards until her calves met the cushioned seat of her sofa. Walt guided her to sit, kneeling before her as she settled. It called to mind a chilling image of the two of them in this same position, a year past, in the library at New Carfax. It was the moment the reality of her situation, and Walt's nature, had come crashing down on her.
"Alright. Why?"
"Because you are my wife, and I will always come for you."
Evie was shaking her head before Walt could even finish speaking. "No."
"Yes." He reached out and took her hands, pressing a kiss first to one palm, and then to the other. "We are bound, my darling. By will, and by vow, and by blood."
She understood him well enough. He was referring to her flippant and insincere agreement to his marriage proposal, the proposal she thought was made in jest. And to their profane wedding ceremony, truncated though it may have been. And to her consuming his blood to seal their pact.
"By trickery, and coercion, and the will to survive, you mean. It was nothing more than that."
Walt sighed, and he seemed more sad than annoyed. "You may tell yourself that, Evie. You may even believe it. But neither of those things will alter the truth."
"Whose truth?" Her lip curled into a sneer. "Your truth?"
"There is no your truth, or my truth. There is only the truth."
"I don't see it that way," she seethed, glaring down at his upturned face, ignoring the plea she read in his eyes.
"Mmm." He turned his attention to her wrist, slowly dropping his lips there, kissing her just over her pulse. "Perhaps you don't see it," he murmured. "Perhaps you can ignore it through sheer willfulness." She felt something warm and wet then, just at the spot where his lips had rested. It was his tongue, tracing her artery. The pace of her heart quickened, and she wasn't sure if it was driven by fear or desire. "But you cannot deny that you feel it, however blind you may be."
"Walt," she breathed. Why did she say his name? Was it a warning? An appeal?
"You have felt it," he said, his manner so certain, it didn't occur to her that she should object. He was still bent over her wrist, but instead of stroking her skin with the tip of his tongue, he was using his finger now. "The strength. The vigor. The hunger."
She swallowed. "I don't know what you mean."
"Don't you?" He tilted his head up then, catching her eyes. "How much do you sleep?"
"I… the nightmares…"
He made a skeptical sound in the back of his throat. "Nightmares," he chuckled darkly, shaking his head at her, an admonishment. "And in the small hours, when you're awake, what do you do?" He didn't wait for her answer, seemingly knowing it already. "In the mornings, are you fatigued? Unproductive? Or is your mind sharp and clear?"
The haze that had settled over her at Walt's touch, his kiss, began to fade. She sat up a little straighter.
"What are you saying? That being productive at four in the morning proves I'm your wife? That after a sleepless night, taking a meeting with Joanna at ten a.m. without yawning means you and I have some sort of bond?"
He shrugged. "Small benefits of our blood pact, yes, but benefits nonetheless."
"Blood pact?" The way Evie spat the words back at him indicated her alarm and disgust at such an idea, even if she didn't fully understand what he meant by it.
Walt leaned back on his heels, drawing in a great breath, and expelling it forcefully from his nose. Impatience shaped his perfect lips into a frown. He stood, pacing away from her, and it had the effect of making Evie regret her words. Or at least her manner in using them.
She bristled. Regret?
That's idiotic, she told herself. And maybe it was, but there was a part of her that wished him to return, dropping to his knees before her again, taking her hand, holding it just as he had moments earlier. She was distracted from berating herself for such a ridiculous desire by Walter's words.
"This is my fault." His back was turned to her, head bent, and arms crossed so that he could cuff them with his own hands.
Yes! she screamed internally. This is your fault! All of it!
The blood, the terror, the trauma of it all. And the longing. The unendurable craving. Revulsion and yearning, twined and fused, wrapping around her like a lover's embrace. Like a noose. She sank into it and choked on it.
"I should have introduced the idea to you slowly. Been gentler in my approach." Walt turned to face her, dropping his arms to his sides, and slipping his hands in the pockets of his impeccably tailored trousers. He leaned forward slightly on the balls of his feet. The posture made the moment more intimate, somehow. "But I was too eager to have you. Too happy." The small, bitter laugh he gave then pricked at her. "I thought…"
In spite of herself, Evie leaned forward, bracing her elbows against her knees. "Thought what, Walt?"
He shook his head. "Never mind. It doesn't matter."
Evie glanced at the door again, at the path that would take her to it from the sofa, past Walt. Then she brought her eyes back to his, locking gazes with him a moment and trying to decipher what she saw there. Whatever it was, it pulled her to her feet. To him. She moved slowly, every step weighted with choice. When she reached him, she stopped, stretching out her hand to place her palm over his heart.
To place it where she'd stabbed him with the iron spindle of a candle holder.
"I'd…" She breathed in, steeling herself. "I'd like to know."
He slipped his hand over hers, pinning it firmly to his chest. His brow wrinkled as though he were trying to puzzle out if she were being sincere or merely playing a trick on him. Finally, he sighed.
"Alright, then." Walt gave her a half-smile. "I never could deny you. Besides, this conversation is long overdue. You want to talk? Let's talk."
