Stolen Nights

  He placed the book back in the trunk, shut the lid and sat down on top of it.

  What if I can never forgive her?

  I put on the earrings and surveyed my reflection again. My hair fell down my back over the thin gauze of the tangerine blouse I had bought at the mall. I wanted the studs to be my mother’s earrings, the hoops that were lost in the fire. Sadly that was not possible. I watched as my nostrils flared and I clenched my jaw again.

  ‘Anam Cara,’ I said aloud, letting the expression roll around on my tongue.

  ‘Well,’ Vicken said, pressing his hands on his thighs and standing up, ‘I guess you’re still going to go to this party despite the news of the mind meld.’

  ‘You’re damn right I’m going.’

  ‘All righty,’ said Vicken, and dropped two daggers, one into each boot. He then slid another into a leather strap hidden up his shirtsleeve.

  ‘Preparing, are we?’ I asked.

  ‘Your life has been threatened twice and you’re willing to risk it for a little campfire? I have an idea. I’ll light a fire on the balcony and sing you “Happy Birthday”.’

  ‘I know it’s strange,’ I said.

  ‘No, it’s bloody ridiculous,’ Vicken replied. ‘But I’m not letting you go alone. I’d chain you to the wall if it wasn’t against school policy.’

  I opened the door. Vicken was following directly behind me.

  ‘You don’t have to come to the party,’ I said, knowing that Vicken would, of course, come.

  ‘You got that right. With those screaming loons? Knowing them, they’ll get lost and we’ll have to search the woods to find them – it’ll be a mortal mess.’

  ‘So where are you going to be?’ I asked.

  ‘Watching the perimeter of the woods. Making sure no one with fangs crosses into the park.’

  ‘There’ll be too many people surrounding me. Don’t you think they’ll be less likely to attack when they’re outnumbered? I wouldn’t have attacked in those circumstances.’

  ‘Maybe . . .’ Vicken said as we descended the stairs.

  ‘Also, it’s my birthday! You realize this means I’m actually ageing.’

  ‘Really? How old are you?’ Vicken asked as we walked down the stairwell. His smile was a sly one.

  ‘Seventeen,’ I replied.

  ‘Really? You look so much older.’ I could have slapped him if it wasn’t so . . . well, Vicken to say something like that.

  A few moments later, we were heading down Main Street towards the camping ground. I listened to the chatter of people around us. We parted as a woman walking her dog stepped between us.

  ‘Maybe Rhode is connected to your mind too,’ Vicken offered.

  ‘There’s no way to know. He refuses to touch me and is barely speaking to me,’ I said as the smell of coffee wafted over us from the Lovers Bay Cafe. ‘You know, there’s other things, stranger things that I’ve seen outside of his memories. I see his thoughts too.’

  I turned my head as we walked past the busy cafe. To be honest, I wouldn’t have minded an evening sipping a cup of coffee and chatting to Vicken. One evening to forget about Odette and Rhode and all that lay before me. We kept on walking up Main Street and I explained about Rhode’s odd behaviour when he punched the mirror. But when I opened my mouth to mention Tony I glanced at Vicken keeping pace beside me and said something else instead.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ I said, ‘he punched the mirror and said, I can’t, over and over.’

  ‘Rhode? Going insane? It doesn’t make sense,’ Vicken said. His gaze did not pause scanning the road, back and forth.

  ‘I think it’s deep-rooted. That he doesn’t think he deserves his humanity or something. I told you, he kept saying, I can’t.’

  Vicken let this hang in the air between us, then said, ‘Can’t what?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just want to make it better,’ I replied. And I knew a way to alleviate Rhode’s pain. I had wanted to do it for days now: call on Suleen. Or perhaps the Aeris. Call on someone, anyone, who could help him. Perhaps Rhode hurt because we couldn’t be together. Or, and I didn’t want to admit this because I didn’t want it to be true, perhaps Rhode did not believe he deserved to survive the ritual and be human. He had meant to die – we both had. It was our connection as soulmates that linked us to this world.

  My head hurt.

  ‘Don’t worry about Rhode,’ Vicken said as we walked in the crisp air of the late summer night. We entered the camping ground. ‘Try to have fun with the . . . screaming loons, was it?’ He placed a cigarette between his lips.

  ‘Precisely,’ I replied.

  I heard the music first. Something with electric guitars and a light melody. I remembered the hundreds of times over hundreds of years when I had stepped over branches, parted leaves and walked through woods. Never, not once, had electronic instruments echoed through the trees and undergrowth.

  Ahead of me was the orange glow of the fire. When I came upon two or three cars parked facing the campsite, I knew this was the place. Music played out of Justin’s silver SUV. Claudia and Tracy sat by the fire with a few others, drinking out of big red cups. Tracy was talking very closely with a guy from the lacrosse team whom I didn’t know. Justin looked up at me from unpacking some hamburger buns and a small charcoal grill.

  Claudia jumped up when she saw me.

  ‘Happy birthday!’ she cried, and wrapped her arms around me. She had to rise on to her tiptoes to hug me, but when she came back down she reached into a pocket of her light jacket and pulled out a small card in a purple envelope.

  ‘For you,’ she said.

  ‘Claudia . . .’ I said. ‘You didn’t . . .’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ She nodded.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, genuinely touched. I held the card in my hand.

  ‘This party was my idea. Don’t let Justin fool you – I suggested it.’ She glanced back at him and gave a playful smile.

  I opened my present. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been given an actual gift. One that didn’t involve its immediate murder, anyway. I opened the flap and inside the envelope was a small plastic card, like a credit card, but on it were the words Cape Cod Mall.

  ‘A gift card,’ Claudia said. ‘It seemed like you had a good time when we went to the mall. And you’re wearing the shirt!’

  A gift? For me? I turned the card over and over, marvelling at the small present in the flickering light from the campfire.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said to Claudia, whose eyes were warm.

  Tracy looked up and gave me a half-smile, as if she didn’t really mean it. She was roasting a marshmallow on a long stick. It looked wonderful and gooey. Her hair glimmered with the flicker of the fire and her angular features looked more pronounced to me than they had a few days before. Perhaps I was only just noticing it now, but she looked as if she had lost a lot of weight in a short time.

  I slid the gift card into my back pocket. As I watched the marshmallow melt away in the heat of the fire, another bunch of Wickham students walked on to the camping ground. They were the normal variety – athletes, academics, just kids looking for a party. But when I really looked I pulled back and blinked a few times to make sure I was in my right mind. Had I just . . . ? Had I really mistaken one of these high-school students . . . for Rhode?

  But no. There he was, trailing behind everyone.

  ‘Hey! Hey!’ Someone at the front of the group called out and hoisted some paper bags in the air.

  ‘My peach schnapps is here!’ Claudia cried.

  Rhode was all in black and I couldn’t look away. How did he know where I was? For a moment, I felt like I was a disobedient child. Then I lifted my chin in defiance.

  Claudia spun around and gave a tiny gasp. ‘There’s Rhode,’ she murmured to me. ‘Have fun . . .’ and she went to join Tracy.

  I stood up. Rhode walked in long strides and stopped directly in front of me. When he breathed out, he dug a hand into his pocket. With the image of vampire Rhode
still in my mind, I noticed the small, human things, the pouted mouth, the need to inhale and the band of sweat across his brow. He reached deeper into his pocket and pulled out a tiny black bag. He nodded his head towards the woods. ‘Could you come talk to me for a moment?’

  ‘Sure,’ I replied, as casually as possible.

  He wasn’t here because he’d changed his mind; I knew that much. He had made that plain when he told me he couldn’t love me any more. I followed him into the woods down a worn path, until the fire and campsite chatter were far enough away that no one would overhear us. He looked up through a break in the branches. There were long stringy clouds over the moon.

  ‘Lace on the moon,’ he said before I could. And when the wind moved the clouds out of the way he added, ‘You remember the first time we saw that?’

  I nodded and smiled. ‘Of course. You showed me in 1604, during carnevale in Venice.’

  We both knew lace on the moon was a harbinger of change – something was coming.

  Rhode took a step towards me but this time I stepped back, unsure of his intentions. ‘Now you fear me?’ he asked.

  ‘I could never fear you,’ I whispered.

  What if I can never forgive her? Rhode had said.

  The hurt from his words churned in my stomach again. I wanted to ask if he had, in fact, forgiven me. If he had found a way to see past my horrible actions and manipulations as a vampire.

  ‘If you don’t fear me,’ he said, drawing my eyes to his, ‘then open your hand.’ And I held up my palm as though for his heart.

  The contents of a tiny black velvet bag spilled out.

  Anam Cara.

  I didn’t look up at Rhode – not yet. My heart pounded deep inside my chest. My fingers curled around two small objects. Gold. They felt cool to the touch. I looked down. My mother’s earrings. He had saved them from the fire.

  ‘Lenah?’ Justin’s voice interrupted, echoing towards us. ‘Come back! Food’s ready!’

  I looked back up at Rhode. ‘Happy birthday,’ he murmured. His quiet, forlorn expression drew me in, but he couldn’t look at me for more than a few seconds.

  ‘Rhode . . .’ I said, and reached out towards him. He backed up a couple of steps.

  I drew in a breath as tears stung my eyes. I so badly wanted to touch him it made my teeth ache. The pain of wanting him ran down through my arms, into my fingers – it radiated deep into my soul.

  ‘They were all I could bring back. I only had a few moments. I jumped out of your bedroom window. Punched out the glass.’

  I recalled my dream, remembering his fist propelling into the mirror, sending it into a thousand fragments of light.

  ‘I used a chair first,’ he clarified.

  His eyes searched my face. His brow furrowed so a line settled deep between his eyes. Blue. The ocean. The sky. The love of my life.

  ‘Happy seventeenth birthday,’ he said quickly, and turned on his heel.

  He set off quickly through the wood back in the direction of Main Street.

  ‘Wait,’ I called quietly after him.

  He turned, highlighted only by the faint moonlight filtering through the clouds, before he moved on further into the woods. Pain stabbed in my chest deeper than I ever thought it could.

  ‘Rhode, you’ll get lost,’ I called after him, my voice cracking. ‘It’s dangerous.’ He looked up at the sky, at the stars and the lace on the moon.

  ‘Who taught you how to use the movement of the constellations to find your way?’ he asked, but by now he was just a black silhouette. I wanted to walk by his side, go home with him, talk and touch him – skin on skin.

  I wanted someone to hold me and tell me it would be all right. To assure me that the sun, moon and stars were not governed by invisible forces. I wanted to believe that I was free and had a will of my own. But in the depths of these thoughts I knew the truth – Rhode and I were not free and never would be.

  And he could not love me any more.

  I watched him weave his way through the shadowy forest until he was indistinguishable from the trees. I knew Vicken would patrol all night. Rhode might too. And maybe it was selfish of me, but I stood in those woods with the ghosts of my past resting in two earrings lying in the palm of my hand.

  With a heavy sigh I walked back towards the party, listening to the leaves crunching under my feet. I saw that most of the senior class had come to the camping ground. There were a lot more red cups and many more people milling about.

  I stood at the entrance to the path where Rhode had led me into the woods. I looked back, knowing he was gone – but knowing that the spot where he placed the earrings in my hands would always be ours.

  ‘Happy birthday to you . . .’ a group of people sang together.

  A tiny candle bobbed in the darkness towards me. Justin handed it to Claudia, who walked towards me with Tracy. They were carrying an extravagantly decorated cupcake. Chocolate frosting twisted and turned in a decadent swirl and in the centre of it a small candle flamed.

  Justin sang the loudest of them all, and I wished – oh how I wished – that Tony was there.

  The candle flickered and I met Justin’s eyes above the little flame.

  ‘Well,’ he said, leaning close to my ear, ‘make a wish.’

  ‘A wish?’ I said, looking into his eyes. ‘What do I wish?’

  ‘Anything you want,’ he said, nuzzling close to my neck. My body reacted with goosebumps rippling over my skin. ‘Any wish for your birthday.’

  I closed my eyes, blew out the candle and made a wish.

  I wish first for our safety. All of us – Vicken, Rhode, Justin and me. And for Wickham. But my heart wants the hurt to go away. I wish for someone to tell me I am all right. That who I am and what I did is forgiven.

  As I opened my eyes, the wish still swirling in my mind, Justin’s happy expression shone back at me from behind the flickering candle. He really did throw this party just for me.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ he said. He took my hand, running his fingers over my skin.

  Someone placed a cup in my other hand. I took a sip and the slick tangy peach liquor slipped down my throat. Still holding my hand, Justin drew me around the side of his car. He had set up a small tent next to it. He took my drink and placed it on the ground, then brought his hands up and cupped my face. With thoughts of Rhode and the earrings still pulsating in my mind, I wasn’t sure what to do. And if Vicken was walking the perimeter, he could see us.

  ‘I know you love Rhode. You’ve loved him for six hundred years,’ Justin said. His body heat warmed me. ‘I can’t compete with that.’

  ‘What?’ I barely whispered. His words were so true that they took my breath away.

  In the dark, Justin’s expression was ferocious. He leaned forward and whispered in my ear, in a low growl, ‘But he has no idea who you are as a human. Not like me.’

  ‘Justin . . .’ I said, surprise rolling over me, down my back to my toes.

  ‘No,’ he said, and he cupped a hand behind my head. ‘I want to be the one to show you what it’s like to survive a ritual, Lenah. What it means to live. He doesn’t know you like I do.’ His sincerity pierced me. He meant it and I could feel it in the locked gaze. ‘Let me in, Lenah,’ he said, and the intensity was in the rush of his words and the tightness of his jaw. ‘Let me in,’ he said, his voice husky.

  He brought my face close to his and leaned in for a kiss. He groaned as though he was hungry. My shoulders relaxed. My chest released. Because I wanted touch, I wanted warmth, I wanted what I could not have when I was a vampire. He pulled away and we both took a breath. Wow – I did love his kiss. As he pulled away, I saw the silver rune at the base of his throat.

  I had to try to make sense of everything. Make sense of you.

  I relived that moment in Justin’s bedroom when he had delicately cleaned my collarbone wound. I touched the pendant lightly with my fingertips.

  He put an arm around me, pulling me close. I could feel passion emanating from h
im. ‘I need you,’ Justin said. His eyes were fierce and he didn’t move. ‘So whatever you did with that ritual doesn’t matter to me. I want . . .’

  Claudia appeared around the side of the tent. She wasn’t alone, I realized. Tracy stood behind her, looking unamused. As if she had been forced to be there.

  ‘Come on, Justin, you can’t keep Lenah all to yourself tonight.’ She grabbed my hand, and with a tug I was back at the party around the campfire. Throughout the rest of the night I danced, drank peach schnapps and melted into the warmth of Justin’s embrace.

  Justin kept my arm in his, parading us around the party as though we were royalty. I didn’t fear the woods. I didn’t fear the vampires. The presence of so many other Wickham students helped to ensure my safety. They were grieving for Tony and Kate and Ms Tate and trying to forget the violence. I was revelling in the humanness of it all. I let Justin’s hold ground me. When we were touching, skin on skin, I knew which version of Lenah Beaudonte I was meant to be. I could smile. I could be human.

  There were no strange smells of apples. I was not a crazed vampire who could not be forgiven. I had already been forgiven. I was just a seventeen-year-old girl celebrating her birthday. We leaned our backs against a large oak tree and watched as a small circle formed. Claudia danced in the middle of it, shaking her body and laughing with some of the other senior girls. Tracy stood on the outside, watching. She did not smile, at least not like everyone else. Her smile was just a lazy lift of the left side of her mouth.

  As the night went on, Rhode’s gesture in giving me the earrings was easier to forget. They sat deep in my pocket where I need not touch them. I could wrap my fingers around Justin’s skin instead.

  Hour by hour.

  Sip by sip.

  It didn’t really matter at all . . . did it? So easy to forget on a warm night with friends. With Justin and his soft touch. He whispered words in my ear.

  I missed you so much.

  Don’t go back to campus.

  Words like this led to . . .

  Justin’s arms around me.

  A sleeping bag . . .

  Inside a tent.