Stolen Nights

  He looked to the other bodies scattered about the floor. His eyes met vampire Lenah’s. She held his gaze for a few moments.

  ‘Why . . . ?’ he asked.

  ‘Why? Her blood is the purest!’ My vampire self walked to the feet of the body of the young girl, still in her white dress, and merrily scattered even more flowers over her.

  ‘No more!’ Rhode yelled. He gripped my shoulders, sending me back against the wall with a thud. ‘Lenah, what have you become?’

  Lenah laughed at his earnest gaze. ‘Oh, come on, I’ll have someone bury her again when the party is over.’

  He growled and it was almost a scream. His eyebrows furrowed together in a pinch. This was the pain of a vampire who wanted to cry. Rhode gripped vampire Lenah again and shook her so hard that her shoulders vibrated and her teeth chattered. I hated watching myself like this.

  ‘Why can’t you just let me love you?’ Rhode said, his teeth clenched together.

  ‘Because I am unravelling,’ my vampire self said. ‘And only power can relieve the pain. Not love.’

  He let go and swept away from her then, leaving down the darkened hallway. I watched my vampire self run after him into the distance. I followed, Justin and Vicken in my wake.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she cried. ‘Rhode!’

  But he did not answer. He kept walking until he reached the hall in the front of the house. By the door was a small black leather bag; he grabbed the handle and whipped open the door. The sunset, a burning orange, scorched my eyes. Vampire Lenah instinctively threw her hands across her face, but this was 1740, and after three hundred and twenty-two years she did not need to fear the sun.

  ‘Rhode!’ she called.

  ‘You are reckless,’ Rhode hissed, whipping around. ‘Power will not save you. It will only further the deterioration of your mind.’ He walked out of the door and away from the house towards the endless sweeping hills. Vampire Lenah took a few steps after him.

  ‘I know what I am doing,’ she said, bringing her feet together and raising her chin defiantly.

  Vicken, Justin and I watched from the doorway. Rhode stopped and turned to face vampire Lenah again.

  ‘Do you?’ Rhode moved closer until he was an inch from her face. His fangs showed as he whispered, ‘Do you? You murdered a child. A child, Lenah.’

  ‘You always said that infant blood was the sweetest. The most pure.’

  Rhode looked horror-stricken. He backed away from her.

  ‘I said it as a fact, not as an invitation to sample it. You have changed. You are no longer the girl in the white nightgown I loved in your father’s orchard.’

  His eyes had a misty look and, even as a memory, I could tell he was formulating his thoughts. ‘I told you to concentrate on me tonight. That if you can focus on the love you feel for me . . . you can break free. But you can’t do that; I see that now,’ he said. I watched myself try to speak, but Rhode continued before Lenah could find the words. ‘You’ve seen it yourself. Vampires your age begin to lose their minds. Most choose fire or a stake through the heart to bring them to their deaths, to avoid a slow descent into insanity. The prospect of forever is too much. And for you the life you lost has made you insane. Living on this earth for all eternity has brought your mind to a place where I can no longer reach you.’

  ‘I’m not insane, Rhode. I’m a vampire.’

  ‘You make me regret what I did in that orchard,’ he said sadly, turning back to the path to the hills.

  ‘You regret me?’

  ‘Find yourself, Lenah. When you do, I will return.’

  My human self remembered this moment so clearly. Back then, I could have watched him leave. I could have followed his frame with my gaze until he was out of my sight, but this time the pain was too much. I wanted out of that blue light, out of that memory. Instead, I watched my vampire self turn and walk back into the brightly lit hall. Music echoed from the ballroom but it was another world to me. My vampire self placed a hand on the stone wall. I remembered that the stones had no temperature, nor could I feel the thick ridges beneath my fingers.

  Nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing.

  ‘I want out!’ I yelled, falling to my knees. The house was gone. My life was Wickham now. ‘Out!’ I screamed.

  A blast of blue light and the cold sand of Lovers Bay beach hit my knees. I held my face in my hands. A kind of cry ripped through me. A huge surge of sadness. I had to draw in a breath; I could smell the salt of the sea and amber resin on my hands. I wept, a horrible wailing kind of sobbing. The tears slicked my hands, and as I drew in ragged breaths of salty air I let the horror of that memory wash over me in waves of embarrassment and shame.

  Justin and Vicken were silent.

  I had not brought Suleen to me. I had summoned the truth, a reminder of my nature. I was a killer.

  And I deserved no help.

  CHAPTER 20

  I ran as fast as I could, sprinting down the long street away from the beach.

  Come and get me, Odette. My chest ached from how hard my lungs had to work as I ran, but I kept going. The sound of feet slamming the pavement again and again and again echoed behind me.

  ‘Lenah!’ Justin’s voice. ‘Lenah, it’s not safe!’

  I didn’t reply. The biting wind nipped at my cheeks. A car engine revved and then screamed to a stop ahead of me. The headlights of my blue car swung around and the car cut me off from running any further. I backed away and brought the heels of my hands to my eyes.

  I heard the slam of a door. Vicken’s boots walked to me on the concrete. The sound of Justin’s feet hitting the pavement caught up behind me, then stopped.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ I screamed. The words burned my throat.

  I looked to my palms.

  ‘How much blood did we shed, Vicken?’ I asked. My back shuddered as tears pushed their way through me and down my cheeks. ‘Answer me.’

  I shoved him on the chest so he fell back a few steps.

  ‘I can’t do this. I can’t kill her. I’ve tried and I can’t.’

  Vicken came to me and silently wrapped his arms around me. I cried into his chest until his shirt was wet through.

  ‘You can do this. We’ll help you,’ Vicken said.

  His eyes stabbed to Justin and they shared a look, one that said, Yes, we’re in this together.

  Somehow I walked back to the car; somehow I climbed in; and I knew that somehow I would have to find the killer within myself once more, and finish Odette.

  I was silent in the passenger seat, my hand resting on the car window as we made our way back to Wickham. The sky still held a blue twinge, like the blue of the orb that had showed us my past. My horrible past. As Vicken drove, I could only guess what he was thinking. I had explained it to him so many times but now, finally, he had seen a glimpse of my life before 1850, before he joined my madness.

  Justin sat in the back throwing questions at Vicken. ‘What the hell was that?’

  He avoided answering. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But why did we see it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Vicken said again.

  ‘But we . . .’

  ‘Look, mate. Just shut it, all right?’

  When we pulled on to Wickham campus, everyone was in full preparation mode for the Halloween carnival and dance. I got out of the car and inhaled cider and cinnamon coming from the union. I started down the main path. How strange, I thought as I walked out of the parking lot and on to the grass. Vicken and Justin’s footsteps echoed behind me. But they were like drumbeats to me. How strange, I thought, as orange pumpkins and black streamers blurred into October colours. Like a Monet painting. It was all just a mess of colour I couldn’t understand.

  Students wound black lines of ribbon around lamp posts. A crew far out on the lacrosse field was putting up tents and booths. They didn’t seem like students. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t know what I was any more.

  ‘Wait,’ Justin called softly. I kept walking.

>   ‘Let her go,’ I heard Vicken say.

  I walked past Seeker, past the Curie Building, where once I couldn’t dissect a frog because I couldn’t destroy another creature.

  I continued past Hopper Building. A hallowed place where I could not even glance up at the great stone tower because two of my friends had died within those walls.

  ‘Lenah!’ Tracy called to me as I walked by Quartz dorm. She sat out front on a blanket alone, reading a book. I could not explain what had happened so I ignored her. I went to the greenhouse and opened the door. The misty, humid air engulfed me, and I hurried down the aisle, snatching roses, sage and lavender from various pots. I held them in my fists and clenched hard. The petals crumpled under the pressure of my fingers. I sank to the floor.

  That child . . .

  There was a creak from the door behind me. Sneakers squeaked on the wet concrete. The sudden gust of fresh air brought with it the humid smell of the greenhouse mixed with the smoke of a summoning spell gone wrong. Justin sank to his knees next to me. His warm hand slid over my palm and curled over the petals in my hands and between my fingers.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ I whispered. It was all I could say.

  ‘You were . . .’ Justin started to say. ‘You were really powerful.’

  I lifted my eyes to him slowly. He leaned towards me and kept my gaze.

  ‘Is that what you saw?’ I asked. ‘Power?’

  He opened his mouth to speak. All he was able to get out was a no, then he immediately dropped his hand from mine. ‘I don’t mean it like that. Just that . . . you didn’t fear anything back then. You were . . .’

  ‘Pure madness. Nothing more. Nothing less.’

  ‘True, it was. But . . .’

  When I met his eyes, even the green colour looked different. I was not reminded of the trees swaying on his parents’ street. I did not see the evergreen leaves of the woods that surrounded Wickham Boarding School. Despite his best efforts, he would never understand me. He could not possibly know what it meant to be alive after being dead for so long. To have kissed death and lived to tell the tale.

  Justin grasped my hand. The warmth of his grip grounded me in the greenhouse. I blinked away the image of the little girl. Instead I focused on the sounds of the plant misters and the glimpses of the orange and black streamers outside. In this space, with the flowers and herbs, I was quiet, my mind able to soften the atrocity of what I had done. Justin rubbed his hand over mine. Last year, with all its beauty and happiness and its horrors, had made me a different person. I wasn’t supposed to survive that ritual, but I had. And so had Rhode. Things between Justin and me were never going to be like they had been. Too much had changed. I had changed.

  I would never love Justin.

  I could go through every motion, wear the clothes, wear the perfume and say all there was to say, but I was never meant to live in this modern world. I was never meant to be here.

  I would live my life for Rhode even if it meant I had to live without him. He was the only person. My soulmate. My love.

  Even if he could never forgive me.

  Even if it was over.

  CHAPTER 21

  Once, long ago, I ran through an apple orchard dusted with snow. The wind bit at the tip of my nose. Arms out, I ran and ran, wind flying through my fingers and through my hair.

  ‘Lenah! Lenah!’ my mother called from the doorway of our house. She smiled at me as I turned and ran into the depths of the orchard. It was the fifteenth century, which meant we would burn the fires at all hours. Without it, we would die in the cold.

  I stopped at the end of a long lane formed by two rows of apple trees. The chill licked at my nose and I could feel it in the air, not as a vampire would, but as a child of the medieval world. Spring was upon us; the falling snow was wet, almost rain. I stood at the edge of my father’s land and looked out at the great world beyond it. The woods were my favourite place at that time of year, the beautiful trees laced with silver and diamonds of ice. I drew in breaths of cool fresh air. I stared into those woods, absolutely unafraid of the world beyond.

  *

  ‘So you’ll get the costumes?’ Justin asked Rhode, who nodded. ‘We can hide the weapons that way.’

  I stood in the study atrium with my back to the window on the night before Halloween. Justin, Rhode and Vicken sat at a table looking over a drawing Rhode had made of the gymnasium.

  ‘Everyone know your positions?’ Rhode asked, looking up from his drawing. ‘Lenah?’

  I had looked at that sketch ten times now. I knew exactly what I would have to do; I just hoped I could do it.

  ‘Let’s go over it one more time,’ Rhode said.

  I sighed and recited the plan for what seemed like the millionth time.

  ‘We’ll isolate the members of her coven so I can get a clean shot. One stab,’ I said, finally meeting his eyes as I tried to convince myself. ‘One stab to the heart.’

  That night, I dreamed of vampires with no fangs. They were faceless demons: no eyes, no nose, just mouths with gaping holes in the gums. Blood rolled from their smirking lips and on to their chins.

  It was hard to shake the image when I awoke on Halloween morning. What helped was that the campus had gone through a complete metamorphosis. Banners read Happy Halloween; pumpkins lined the pathways and decorated entrances to many buildings. Classes were cancelled. After Rhode returned from buying costumes, we decided that it would be best if we stayed among other students all day. I had knocked on Justin’s door twice, but he had not answered. He was, I guessed, already out and about with friends. I wondered why he hadn’t checked in with me, after everything that had happened the day before.

  I stood staring at a carnival booth displaying dozens of bowls of goldfish.

  ‘Oh, just play the game,’ Vicken said. ‘One game in honour of Nuit Rouge. And this one won’t involve you murdering someone for sport.’ He rolled his eyes at me. ‘You’re not abandoning the school if you win a fish.’

  If I tossed a small ball into a bowl, I would take the tank home and keep that fish for a pet. I scoffed. Me? Keep something . . . alive?

  As Vicken leaned his back against the booth of the Goldfish Toss, there was a boom-boom, boom-boom of bass drums.

  ‘Oh no, here they come . . . again,’ he groaned. For the fourth time that afternoon, the school band banged on their drums and marched across the football field towards the carnival. They wore funny hats with what looked like a bright gold quill pen on the top; one of the Wickham School colours. Many of the students around us abandoned carnival games mid-turn and ran towards the football field. Vicken motioned with a disgusted wave of his arm.

  ‘Look at them all! Abandoning their games. If I was in the middle of the ring toss, I would most certainly not quit!’

  ‘You would take it so seriously,’ I said, eyeing the dozens of fishbowls, each with a graceful goldfish swishing its tail.

  Vicken reached into his jacket pocket for a cigarette, then patted down each pocket of his trousers in search of a lighter. There was a mechanical click and then a plume of smoke as Vicken took a sharp drag of his cigarette and exhaled.

  ‘Look, all I’m saying is, if you’re going to do something, do it right.’

  ‘Vicken Clough! You put that out right now!’

  Ms Warner, the school nurse, blazed towards Vicken, her finger pointed directly at his chest. Vicken dropped the cigarette and stamped it out with his boot.

  ‘My dear Ms Warner! You’re looking lovely today.’

  ‘How many times do I need to tell you, Vicken? Smoking is not allowed on campus. And you’re not eighteen – it’s illegal. Hand it over.’

  ‘Hand what over?’

  ‘The pack.’

  Vicken scoffed.

  ‘Do not scoff at me, Vicken. Hand them over.’

  I abandoned my potential fish to a more capable owner and put the ball down.

  ‘Not gonna throw?’ the man operating the booth asked.

&
nbsp; ‘Not today,’ I said.

  As I walked away from Vicken and Ms Warner, I thought about those goldfish. How they would live their whole life in that tiny bubble. They would swim, swish, roll up and around in their tiny world.

  Ahead of me, I saw that the rowing crew had changed the boat cabin into a haunted house. Wispy strands of fake cobwebs hung in lazy designs across the windows. Someone had hung a black curtain so people couldn’t see inside. The door burst open and a student dressed in a white sheet pushed out two Wickham underclassmen. The couple grinned at each other and ran back towards the football field.

  The girl giggled. ‘That was actually kind of scary!’

  The ghost looked at me from two cut-out eyeholes.

  ‘Come in! If you dare . . .’

  I glanced back to see if Vicken was following but there was too much of a crowd. Students ran from booth to booth; the band gathered far down at the end of the field and launched into a synchronized march. Suddenly Rhode appeared around a corner and I froze. He smiled at me just a little, so that one corner of his mouth raised.

  We shared that small moment, but it was over too soon.

  ‘Come in! Come in!’ Ms Williams said, gesturing towards the haunted house.

  ‘In a minute,’ I said to the headmistress, who was dressed as a cat, with black fuzzy ears, tail and all. Rhode stopped next to me and I waited for a moment to try to talk to him. Vicken emerged from the crowd with what seemed like every single candy and sweet at the carnival.

  A candy apple in his mouth, he said, ‘What?’

  ‘I can see you’re just frightened to death about tonight,’ Rhode said.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like something sweet before I have to fight for my life.’

  ‘Lenah! Vicken,’ Tracy called to us. Her tone was off kilter, a line creasing between her eyebrows. She seemed even more porcelain-skinned with her hair so dark.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Vicken asked, as more students ran by us into the haunted house.

  ‘It’s Justin. He never checked in with the resident advisor last night. Hasn’t been seen today either. The school has called the police.’