Intertwined

CHAPTER 15

“Aden. Aden, wake up!”

“Oh, thank God, he’s here.”

“He popped out of nowhere. Didn’t he? Did I imagine that?”

“Aden, can you hear me?”

Aden fought his way out of that long, dark tunnel a second time, afraid of what he’d find. His temples throbbed and blood rushed through his veins too quickly. His muscles were stiff, heavy. At least his companions were quiet as they, too, struggled to orient themselves.

He pried his lashes apart. Muted sunlight streamed in from a large bay window, throwing spots in his line of vision. Subdued though that light was, it still proved to be too bright and his eyes teared.

“Give him space,” a deep male voice said. Riley.

Riley was still part of his life, then. That had to mean Victoria was, as well. Please, please let it mean that she was.

Two sets of footsteps shuffled. A girl said, “I can’t,” then white-hot, trembling hands pressed to his cheeks. He turned his head, sinking into the heat. Victoria loomed over him, dark ponytail falling over her shoulder and tickling his neck.

Thank God.

“Hey you,” she said gently. Soft fingers smoothed the hair from his brow.

“Hey. How long was I gone?” He wasn’t sure why he didn’t just reappear seconds—or even the very moment—after he disappeared, as if he’d never left at all. But no, he didn’t. He didn’t know why new memories didn’t seep into his head, if he had indeed changed his past. But again, no. Time travel and its intricacies simply baffled him. “How long?” he repeated.

“A few hours.”

Not good. He tried to pull himself into a sitting position. “Is Mary Ann—” A sharp pain sliced through his head, and he groaned.

“Gently,” Victoria said.

When he was up, he dragged his knees to his chest and rested his forehead against them. He was panting. “Is Mary Ann here?”

“I am. What happened?” she’d asked, concern dripping from the words.

All of his friends—plus Riley—were accounted for. Never had he been more relieved. If he’d had the energy, he would have leapt up and hugged them all. “I need a minute to think.”

Everything was fuzzy. From more than just traveling back to the present, he suspected. A return had never left him this groggy.

Okay, so. What had happened? Obviously, he’d changed the past. He’d told Dr. Gray things he hadn’t told him before. Dr. Gray had flipped, just as Elijah had predicted. Since Aden had still met Mary Ann, Dr. Gray had later taken an interest in him. Which meant one of the souls would soon be freed.

His lips lifted in a slow grin. They’d done it, then. They’d really done it.

Had anything else changed?

“Do I live at the D and M with Dan Reeves?” he asked Mary Ann.

“You don’t remember?”

“Do I?” he insisted.

“Yes. You do.” Mary Ann rubbed her arms. “You’re scaring me, Aden.”

“You will cease scaring her immediately,” Riley snapped. So much for his seeming concern about Aden.

“Tell us what happened,” Victoria pleaded.

He sighed. “I went back in time, to a therapy session I had when I was eleven.” He raised his head, fought the dizziness as he pinned Mary Ann with a tortured gaze. “It was with your father.”

She blinked in confusion. “My father? I don’t understand.”

“He was my doctor for a time, in one of the institutions I stayed at. I don’t remember which one. And I didn’t realize he was your dad until today. He was nice, truly listened to me. I liked him. I, well, I told him what had happened, that I lived here and you were my friend. That you had dated Tucker. He kind of freaked out, tried to throw me out of his office.”

She was shaking her head before he finished. “That doesn’t sound like my dad. He would have considered you delusional, but he would never throw a patient out.”

Aden let that go, knowing it would do no good to insist or tarnish her image of her father. “Does he keep records of his patients?” he asked, though he already knew the answer. All doctors did.

“Of course.”

“Then he’ll have a record of me. I’d like to read his thoughts about me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s not only illegal, it’s unethical. He would never give the files to me.”

Aden met her stare, unwavering. “I didn’t want you to ask for them.”

Her mouth floundered open, closed. “That would be stealing.”

Victoria’s hand traveled the length of his spine, up, then down, a soothing caress meant to comfort him. “Actually, that would be helping a friend in need.”

Mary Ann licked her lips and gazed up at Riley, perhaps searching for support. He just shrugged. As innocent as she was and as uneventful a life as she’d probably led, the thought of stealing must frighten her.

“Please, Mary Ann,” he said. “Get those files. Something I said caused your dad to compare me to someone else and I want to know who it was. And, because of my confession to him, I could have changed something here in the present. Maybe it was only his mind. His thoughts. But there’s only one way to find out.”

Still she was silent.

He tried another approach. “Did he ever ask you about a boy named Aden?”

She thought for a moment, gasped. “Not by name, no, but once, right after I introduced him to Tucker, he sat me down and asked about my friends, if I had any new ones and if one liked to talk to himself. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was a joke.” She scrubbed a hand down her face. “I’ll do it,” she said in a soft whisper.

“Thank you.” His relief was palpable, he was sure.

“It’ll be hard, though,” she added. “His old files are in storage. And those he’s actually put in his computer are in password-protected archives.”

“All I ask is that you try.” He pushed to his feet, his legs a bit unsteady. Victoria kept her arm around his waist. He didn’t need to, not to remain standing, but he leaned against her. “What time is it?”

“Seven-eighteen,” Victoria said.

“PM?” He almost moaned. “I need to get back. Dan said my chores and homework had to be done before bed. Otherwise, I’ll never be allowed to go anywhere after school again.”

“I’ll go with you,” Victoria said. “I’ll change his mind.”

Riley sighed, flicked a regretful glance to Mary Ann. “That means I have to go, too.”

Victoria gazed at him pleadingly. “I’ll be fine. Promise. Besides, you need to look after the human.”

With another look to Mary Ann, Riley shifted from one foot to the other, popped his jaw, then finally nodded. “Fine. You’ve got one hour to return for me.”

“Thank you,” she said and ushered Aden forward. “Hurry, before he changes his mind.”

They quickly reached the line of trees that separated neighborhood from forest. This far away, even someone with Riley’s supercharged hearing couldn’t detect their words.

“Thank God he stayed behind.”

“I know,” Victoria said, grinning. “I expected him to balk. As he is charged with my protection, if something were to happen to me, he would be executed.” Without breaking her graceful glide, she bent down and picked up several fallen acorns. “He must like Mary Ann more than I realized.”

For the first time, Aden was glad about that.

Victoria glanced around. “We have an hour before I have to return. Want to spend it here?”

“Dan—”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of him.”

“All right.”

She stopped, the acorns balanced perfectly in her hand, not even rolling. Aden stopped, too, facing her. Waning sunlight filtered through the treetops, a haze of pink, violet and gold that worshipped her pale skin.

Skin that couldn’t be cut, he recalled. “What could happen to you that would cause Riley to get into trouble?”

“I can be kidnapped,” she said, dropping one of the acorns. “Held for ransom by someone who dislikes my father.” Another acorn fell. “And I can be hurt.” The rest slammed into the ground, forming a pile.

He didn’t like the sound of that and found himself skimming his gaze through the surrounding area, searching for any threat that might be lurking nearby. But as usual, even the insects were quiet, perhaps sensing he and Victoria were more than human and thereby dangerous.

“I want to know how you can be hurt.” That way, he, too, could learn to protect her from harm.

She backed away from him to lean against a tree trunk. “Telling anyone of a vampire’s weakness is punishable by death, for both the vampire who tells and the one she confides in. That is why my mother was left in Romania. She spilled our secrets to a human and is now locked away until my father decides how best to slay her.” There at the end, her voice trembled.

“I’m sorry about your mom. I don’t want anything like that to happen to you, so please don’t tell me.” He didn’t fear for himself, but for her. He’d find out some other way. Through Riley, maybe. They had their moments of civility.

Strangely enough, his companions didn’t react to her pronouncement. They’d been silent since he’d woken up in this new present, actually. Yes, they normally remained silent after a trip into the past, but not for long. By now, they should have been back to their normal selves.

He could feel them, so he knew they were in there. Why weren’t they talking?

Victoria peered down at her feet. The slipper shoes were gone, exposing her black-painted toenails. Black. Huh. She enjoyed colors; he remembered her wistful smile while she’d gazed around Mary Ann’s home. He wondered if colored polish was against vampire rules. If so, had she gotten in trouble for dyeing sections of her hair blue?

“I didn’t tell you the punishment for sharing vampire secrets to scare you,” she said, “only to warn you what can happen to us if you tell anyone else. Even Mary Ann.”

“Seriously. You don’t have to tell me.”

“I want to.” Deep breath in, out. “Vampires are vulnerable in our eyes and inside our ears,” her hand moved to each place as she spoke, “two places our hardened skin cannot protect.” Now she held out that hand to him. “Let me see one of your daggers.”

“No way. I don’t want a demonstration.”

A laugh bubbled from her. “Silly human. I’m not going to poke out one of my own eyes.”

Then what was she going to do? His arm was shaky as he handed her the blade.

“Watch.” Gaze never leaving his, she raised the weapon and struck herself in the chest.

“No!” he shouted, grabbing for her wrist and jerking it back. He was too late, and he expected to see blood. All he saw was a torn T-shirt. The skin underneath bore not a scratch. Didn’t matter to his nervous system, though. His heart was racing uncontrollably, and sweat was beading on his skin. “Don’t ever do that again, Victoria. I’m serious.”

Another of her carefree laughs drifted between them. “You are sweet. But there can be no stake through the heart for one such as me, so worry not. A blade such as this is nothing to me.” She held it up and he saw that the middle was bent. “To kill us, though, to burn through our skin and reach our sensitive organs, all an enemy needs is this.” She dropped the knife and lifted her hand, the opal ring she always wore glinting.

Keeping her palm flat, she slid her thumb over the jewel, pushing the opal over the gold and revealing a small tumbler filled with a thick, bright blue paste.

“Je la nune,” she said. “This is…well, I guess the best way to describe it is to say that it is fire dipped in acid then wrapped in poison and sprinkled with radiation. Never touch it.”

The warning was unnecessary. He’d already backed up a step. “So why do you carry it around?”

“Not all vampires follow my father. There are rebels out there who would love nothing more than to hurt me. This way, I can hurt them.”

“If it’s so corrosive, how does the ring hold it?”

“Just as there are fire-resistant safes for human valuables, there are je la nune resistant metals. Not many, but a few. My nails are painted with one of those melted metals to keep them from burning off.”

She dipped a long, square-shaped nail into it, closed it, then raised her other arm and slashed her wrist. Flesh sizzled and blood instantly sprang free, trickling down her arm. She was grimacing, pressing her lips together to silence her moans.

“Why did you do that?” he snapped. “I told you I didn’t need a demonstration.”

A moment passed before she was able to speak, panting as she was. “I wanted you to see. To understand its power.”

He wrapped his fingers around her wrist, holding her arm steady for her. “Will you heal?”

“Yes.”

He could still hear the pain in her voice. The skin remained broken and torn, the blood still leaking. That blood was redder than any he’d ever seen, brighter, with what looked to be tiny little crystals that caught the fading sunlight and sparkled. “When?”

“Soon.” Her eyes closed—but not before he’d seen her gaze stray once more to the pulse hammering in his neck. Her teeth clenched together, sharpened.

Still she continued to bleed, to pant. Why would—Realization hit and he scowled. She’d never planned to tell him. Would have just suffered until they separated. “You’ll heal when you drink, won’t you?”

She nodded, lids slowly opening, gaze finding his, locking. A shuddering gasp left her. The force of her hunger was like a living thing between them. Thankfully, her resistance was crumbling; he knew it was. Finally.

He released her arm to cup her cheeks. “Drink from me, then. Please. I want you to.”

Those sharpened teeth sank into her lower lip. “Don’t worry. I can feed later tonight. I’ll be fine.”

“I want to be the one to help you. To heal you the way you healed my lip that night.”

Her hands tangled in his hair, her expression tortured. “What if you hate me for feeding from you? What if I disgust you? What if I become addicted to your blood and try to take from you every day?”

Oh, yes. She was crumbling. He leaned down, slowly, so slowly she could stop him at any moment, and pressed his lips against hers. “I could never hate you. You could never disgust me. And I’d love to see you every day. I’ve told you that already.”

Her lashes, so impossibly long, fused together as her lids dropped to half-mast. “Aden,” she breathed, and then kissed him. Her beautiful lips parted and her tongue flicked out. He opened his mouth, welcoming her inside, then met her tongue with his own.

She tasted of the honeysuckle she smelled like, sweet and floral. Her arms wound around him, holding him close. It was a strong grip, bruising, and he loved it. His hands slid into her hair, one gripping, the other angling her for deeper contact. His first kiss, and it was with the girl he’d dreamed about, wanted for so long, would perhaps want forever.

It was everything he’d craved, yet so much more. She was so soft against him, soft where he was hard, the little moans in the back of her throat so sweet. The rest of the world faded until only she mattered. Until she became his world, his anchor in this increasingly wild storm.

Everything Elijah had predicted was coming true. First his meeting with Victoria, then this soul-shattering kiss. He knew what would follow, was expecting it, but nothing could have prepared him for the wondrous moment when she pulled from his lips, lowered her head to his neck and sank her teeth deep. There was a sharp sting, but it was fleeting, an intoxicating warmth soon replacing it, as if she were pumping drugs straight into his vein while she drank from him.

“I’m fine,” he told her, in case she worried. He didn’t want her to stop. Even when dizziness swirled in his mind, his body becoming weightless, he didn’t want her to stop. He stroked her hair, urging her to continue.

Her hands tangled in his hair, massaging his scalp. Her tongue pushed against his flesh, urging the blood to flow straight into her mouth. Distantly, he could hear her swallowing. Finally, though, she pulled back, panting.

He moaned at the loss of her. “You shouldn’t have feared that,” he said. Had he gotten drunk and walked into a tunnel? His words were slurred and he sounded far away. “I loved it. Didn’t think you were an animal at all, promise.”

“Aden?” she said, horror in her tone. It was the last thing he heard before his knees gave out and he collapsed onto the ground.