Stolen Nights

  ‘It’s just ahead,’ Rhode said. There it was. I stared at the house in the orchard.

  ‘It’s the same,’ I whispered. ‘It’s just as it is in my memory.’

  The same slate roof and evenly spaced stones. The same two-storey manor overlooking manicured lanes of trees that stretched back in straight vertical lines so far that I couldn’t see their end. And the trees were in bloom. Green, green everywhere, lime green, sea green, bottle green, and long grass that tickled your ankles.

  I gripped the heavy fabric of my gown, lifting it up so as not to drag it along the muddy ground.

  ‘I don’t believe anyone is at home,’ Rhode said, as he took in the smokeless chimney.

  It didn’t matter to me either way. I pressed my hands against the glass, wondering if it was cool – I could not sense its temperature. As a vampire ages, her sense of touch deadens. I leaned in closer. The wooden beams on the ceiling had been reinforced over time but it all looked the same. The familiarity sent a wave of comfort over me and that feeling overtook the anger, pain and misery that so overwhelmed me as a vampire. The comfort was a gift.

  ‘Lenah, look,’ Rhode said from behind me. ‘There are—’

  ‘Fifty acres,’ I finished for him, turning from the window. A sense of calm overwhelmed me as I looked at him. I expected him to be marvelling at the acres and acres of land.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Tombstones.’

  As though I had been drenched from head to toe in icy water, the calm vanished. It was replaced by the unrelenting familiar constant: grief. The most common feeling of the vampire. Grief. Loss. Pain.

  My eyes followed the direction in which Rhode was pointing. I paused at the doorstep a few moments before walking towards the little graveyard. Rhode had squatted down on his heels and was running his index finger along a deep engraving on the front of one of the gravestones.

  As I walked past the house, I glanced at my reflection in the windows. So many years before, I had seen myself as a child in the wavy lines of the glass. Now, in the same glass, I saw my long dark hair falling over my shoulders. The black of my dress stood out against the lush green of the rows of trees behind me. I took another step to the side of the house and entered the cemetery.

  Rhode’s finger was tracing the L in my name.

  It was my gravestone.

  God, it was a rotten piece of stone, but despite three hundred years out in the elements my name was still etched clearly. There was no epitaph.

  LENAH BEAUDONTE

  1402 – 1418

  Long ago, I thought. Long ago, I belonged to the world. I could have made a difference to my family, to my neighbours, to the monks and to myself.

  ‘Now you know,’ Rhode said quietly, and stood back up. ‘You were given a tombstone.’ That had been one of my many questions about my human death.

  ‘I wanted to see it,’ I replied with a nod. ‘No matter how painful.’

  ‘Your father died not long after you,’ Rhode said.

  The tombstone next to mine plainly read that Aden Beaudonte died in 1420. Next to the rounded curve of his gravestone was jasmine. Jasmine flowers are dainty and white; they grow together in clusters. Grow jasmine if you need to live, someone had once told me, not just exist but live. Grow jasmine so you’ll never be alone. I took a step, leaned forward and plucked three sprays of flowers. When I turned back to my father’s grave, Rhode had stepped away and was standing at the end of a row, staring down at another tombstone.

  I placed one jasmine spray on my mother’s grave; she had died alone in 1451.

  ‘Lenah . . .’ Rhode whispered. I looked at him. His chin pointed towards his chest and his eyes were fixed on the stone before him. He squatted down. I walked towards him, and once I was by his side I saw the name on the tombstone. I gripped his shoulder, stumbling backwards. I had no breath to take. No heart to thud. Just the simple shock of seeing the name:

  GENEVIEVE BEAUDONTE

  MOTHER AND SISTER

  1420–1473

  ‘You had a sister,’ said Rhode in awe. ‘She was born two years after your disappearance.’

  A sister. I had a sister? I stared at the name, unmoving. If I’d known she’d existed, I could have come to see her, could have watched her live. I spun from the tombstone, walked past the graves and back to the orchard. The train of my gown trailed behind me over the dirt of my father’s land.

  ‘Lenah!’ Rhode called.

  What had they told her? That her sister had been taken away by demons? That she was there but then gone? My sister lived to be 53, uncommonly old for her time. She outlived my mother. My mother wasn’t alone. I stopped once I reached the orchard.

  A sister.

  I heard the sound of Rhode’s footsteps over the grass and he stopped right behind me.

  ‘You were right. You had to come. To find out about your family,’ he said gently.

  Now that the sunset had almost fully settled over the land, I knew that if I scanned the sky I would see the beginnings of the constellation of Andromeda. I brought my eyes back to the orchard. Whoever lived in my house would return soon. They were most likely at the evening service at the church.

  Rhode’s hand linked through mine. When two vampires love one another, their touch will produce warmth. Without love, we feel nothing. In that moment, his touch was like the brightest sunlight on the warmest day.

  ‘Lenah, every tombstone in that graveyard carries the name Beaudonte.’ He motioned with his head towards the house. ‘Your family lives there . . . even now.’

  I grasped my hands around Rhode, pulling him to me. Our bodies were intertwined in the middle of that lane. We, demons of bloodlust, held one another close.

  ‘Promise me,’ I urged. ‘Promise that no matter what happens, you will always be there for me.’ I pulled away and looked into Rhode’s vampire eyes. So glorious, they were the colour of a summer sky. My sky. ‘We don’t know what will come, but if I know you will always be there for me, I can bear it.’

  ‘I promise,’ he said. ‘No matter what may come.’

  He took my hand into his. With a glance back at the house and the graveyard beyond, the burn of tears that would never come stung my eyes. So I let the only person left in my heart take me away. As darkness swept over the long lane leading out, I could hear the singing of a few people in the meadow behind the old monastery. They were heading away from us, back towards the orchard. That was my family singing. Although they were many generations later, they were still my blood. I gripped Rhode harder, and let him take me, as he had done three hundred years before, into the night.

  CHAPTER 4

  Present day

  Time does not tick on for the dead. After we die, we cannot keep it. It is the master of the living. For the dead, for the vampire, time is a hornets’ nest. Dangerous, best to be avoided – always humming in your ear.

  When Rhode had run from me after our meeting with Suleen and the Aeris, he was leaving me for the second time in our long history. The first time had been in 1740, when my mind was starting to string itself into pieces of lace. He had said, ‘I will never leave you,’ hundreds of times, thousands of times. Vampires like to count; they like to tally their sadness.

  The last time Rhode left me, I went mad. The last time Rhode left me, I had created a very different kind of family for myself. The last time Rhode left me – I had made a coven of vampires. This time I vowed, standing on that Wickham Boarding School pathway, with the moon filtering through the lattice of branches, I would not relive that misery. I would resolve to be me . . . whoever that was.

  But where had he gone this time? Back to where he was hiding during the year I believed him dead? What could possibly have been strong enough to keep him from me?

  His words gnawed at my mind.

  I didn’t want to come back, he had said. I had to.

  Rhode had said he would never leave me. He said that as we stood in the lanes of my father’s orchard hundreds of years ago.

  Securit
y vans pulled through the campus. Guards and police officers corralled students and pointed them to their dorms. Trees swayed and the stars above twinkled in a lazy dance.

  ‘Hey, you!’

  I turned. A security guard I had never seen before walked towards me in the darkness. His badge shone under the pathway lights, which seemed brighter than usual.

  ‘Curfew is 9 p.m. tonight, which is in fifteen minutes. Let me see your ID.’

  I reached into my pocket, extended my hand with the ID held between my fingers. The guard reached for it then froze, motionless, as though he was struck dumb.

  ‘Sir?’ I said, but he stared into the distance. Unmoving.

  After a moment, he shook his head quickly and then turned on the spot, heading down the pathway away from me.

  I stood on the path, unsure of what had just happened.

  Suleen stepped out from the shadow of a building nearby, making me jump.

  ‘Walk with me,’ he said.

  ‘How did you do that?’ I asked, breathless.

  He did not answer. We went in silence down the path alongside the building, past maintenance crews working in the dark. I could not tell what they were doing but sparks flew into the air like tiny fireworks.

  ‘They are changing the locks,’ Suleen said. We were quiet again as we crossed the campus and approached the beach. Across the steps that led down to the sand was a strip of yellow tape that read: POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS.

  Suleen lifted the tape up right beside a police officer who was reading something from a clipboard. We ducked under the tape, and the officer gave no indication that he had seen us.

  When we reached the beach, they had already moved the body but Kate’s blood was still soaked into the sand.

  Suleen and I stood in the light of the moon. The summer wind blew gently and I admired my silent protector. I wondered why he had involved himself in my life for so long. And how it was that he had such power. It radiated off him; it positively hummed.

  I inhaled the scent of ocean and salt. When I was a vampire, I could not smell anything other than flesh and blood. My sight, on the other hand, was unlimited, needed for hunting, and resulting in countless murders. I could see the veins in my victims’ skin, the flow of their blood. But touch and feeling? There was none. And taste?

  ‘All you shall taste is blood and it shall be the fruit of your darkness. So say the books on vampirism,’ I said aloud.

  ‘Vampires love to record and pass on their misery. They use anything they can find to do so. Ancient documents, printed and scrawled on the oddest of paper, the bark of trees or on human skin,’ Suleen replied.

  I was quiet for a moment.

  Then, ‘I created the vampire who killed Kate Pierson,’ I confessed.

  He nodded. ‘As you saw tonight,’ he said, ‘our past is not an immovable thing. It defines us; it can undo our future.’

  I exhaled loudly. ‘How do the Aeris have so much power? Are they actually capable of time travel? Could they have sent me back in time?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. You see, in this particular decree they are trying to repair the damage you have done.’ Suleen seemed to think about his words for a moment, then said, ‘The Aeris are not human. They do not have human desires or wish you any ill.’

  ‘Yet they’re hurting me in the most effective way possible – separating me from Rhode.’

  Suleen drew in a deep breath, which surprised me. I watched him inhale, though he would never need the air. He drew it in, and when he breathed out he blew towards the ground, so the grains travelled in infinitesimal movements, making patterns on the sand.

  When he was done, a faint outline lay at our feet. Like a silver ghost, Kate’s body lay on its side, mouth gaping open exactly as Justin and I had last seen her.

  The wind picked up but Kate’s apparition still glowed on the sand.

  ‘They said Rhode and I could talk and touch but we couldn’t commit to one another.’ The word commit hung in the air for a few seconds.

  ‘Yes, this is the rejoining of soulmates. If you choose to form a life together, if you give in to your love despite their warning, you will return to the fifteenth century and Rhode to the fourteenth.’

  My vision blurred, the ocean a mess of watery lines – I didn’t dare meet Suleen’s eyes and pressed my lips together hard. The images from my first human life swam before my eyes: a graveyard peppered with ancient stones, hazy light cast through thick glass, and monks chanting in the night.

  Kate’s misty body glowed underneath the bright moonlight. If I went back to the fifteenth century, as the Aeris threatened, no one I loved from this world would be there. No Vicken. No Justin. Wickham wouldn’t have even been built yet – no Lovers Bay Main Street.

  Kate would be alive, however. Tony too.

  ‘Be the human you wanted to be. Revel in it,’ Suleen said.

  ‘How can I be that human when it’s so dangerous here?’ I met Suleen’s eyes and then sighed. ‘The blonde vampire has most likely returned for revenge. She seemed so delighted with herself and her murder.’

  It came to me then: Suleen should stay. Suleen could help me!

  ‘Stay,’ I said simply. ‘With you here, no vampire would dare attack.’ Suleen’s expression was one that I had seen before but not in a very long time. A kind of parental concern. Emotional pain rippled in my chest. I visualized my father and mother in the white light of the Aeris. I could only imagine what my disappearance had done to their lives.

  ‘Your father was no victim,’ Suleen said, reading my emotions and perhaps my thoughts.

  I fell to my knees and Suleen joined me so we both knelt on the ground.

  ‘You made a choice on that archery field, Lenah,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then you know you chose to stay here, in this world. That means you must deal with the repercussions, even if that means fighting this vampire.’

  I didn’t want to fight the vampire. Not alone.

  ‘What about the Aeris?’ I asked.

  ‘No supernatural being has ever accomplished what you and Rhode have. Just as the Aeris did not interfere with you and Rhode, they cannot interfere with this vampire.’

  Guilt spread over me. The only hope I had was that Suleen would stay.

  ‘I cannot,’ he said, reading my thoughts once again. He hesitated a moment, looking over Kate’s body, then said, ‘May I tell you why elemental magic is so powerful? Why your ritual called the Aeris?’

  I nodded, saying nothing.

  ‘Elemental magic is life magic,’ Suleen continued. ‘We, vampires, take life. It is our curse. The more powerful the magic, the more we are drawn to it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Magic is drawn from the elements. Supernaturals have summoned it, created it with our power. That is why when a spell is performed, vampires can sense it if we are near. We crave it like we crave blood. It reminds us that we have some control in this world that ticks by without us.’

  ‘I didn’t know the consequences.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ Suleen replied, and even as I said it I knew that he was right. At the time, I didn’t care about the power of the ritual. I put my selfish wishes above all else. ‘And so does this vampire, who has come to Lovers Bay. She craves that magic.’

  ‘If you can’t help me, then why are you telling me this?’

  ‘We are much more connected than perhaps you realize.’

  My lips parted. ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘That is for another time,’ he replied. ‘Just know, when you most need me, I’ll find you.’

  Suleen stood above the body and held a palm above Kate. He moved his hand as if he was simply wiping the air, and the sand looked as it had before we arrived. We walked back to the pathway on to the campus and Suleen stood with me at the entrance to Seeker.

  ‘I suggest you get inside,’ he said.

  ‘I could die,’ I said to him.

  He examined my face a moment, then the corners of his
lips lifted, just barely. Just enough that a smile shone from behind his eyes.

  ‘Not a girl like you . . .’ he said.

  I blinked. That was all it took. In that fraction of a second I stood alone. No one walked along the path. No one called to me from the meadow. All around me was the pervasive sound of silence.

  CHAPTER 5

  I stood outside the glass doors of Seeker dorm looking at the reflection of the sixteen-year-old girl standing there alone. Almost seventeen. How I had longed to make it here. I would age this year.

  But the foyer was the same as last year and the familiar guard sat behind her desk, in her blue uniform, speaking into a walkie-talkie.

  I took in my appearance. Same thin nose. Same brown hair that reached down to my ribs. Long, lanky legs, clad in black combat boots. The shadowy light illuminated my humanness. My white perfect skin used to glow in the moonlight. It healed instantly if anything or anyone dared to sully it. But now red raised scrapes marked my hands. I turned my cheek to see another, smaller scrape. These were the physical reminders that Justin and I had crawled through the brush of the Wickham woods while Kate was being murdered.

  Justin.

  I sighed, feeling the weight of the night’s ordeals in a slouch of my shoulders. I had to enter alone and go back up to my apartment. I pushed open the door and walked inside.

  ‘Lenah Beaudonte has checked in,’ said the security guard into her walkie-talkie, and checked my name off a list. As I headed for the stairwell, from the long hallway on the first floor of rooms I could hear people speculating about the police cars on campus.

  I heard Kate Pierson died.

  First Tony, now Kate.

  Has anyone seen Tracy?

  I listened to the whispers all the way up to the top floor. When I opened the door to my apartment, I found a glass ashtray blackened by cigarette butts, dirty plates in the sink and three empty pizza boxes on my coffee table. Next to them was a familiar silver flask given to Vicken by some count in the 1890s. I picked it up and opened the top, expecting to find, as usual, a stash of blood. I sniffed for the metallic rusty scent but instead found . . . whiskey? I shook my head, unable to stop a smile.