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The sun set beyond the distant mountain scape. Annalise had been watching the horizon for hours, trying to make sense of her redefined reality. The peaceful setting seemed at such odds with the crisis ahead, and yet, she couldn’t ask for a prettier setting if she had to pick a place to die.
The land unfolded in shades of green, painted gold beneath the radiant sky. And as dusk came, the trees and old farmhouses lost their luster to a star pierced sky that blanketed the earth in deep blue silk with silver buttons.
She had no appetite tonight. When they finally left the bedroom, she needed space from all of them, and so she’d been sitting on the porch ever since dinner.
Her fingers, resting at her shoulder, drifted to her neck. Smooth skin met her touch, completely unbroken in any way.
She let a man drink from her. And yet ... no mark.
She knew what they were.
Thoughts of every vampire she could recall since Sesame Street’s Count Von Count, dashed through her mind, but none compared to Adam. Not terrifying Lestat or self-deprecating Louis. Certainly not Bram Stoker’s friends. Not the glittering Cullens or the True Blood gang. None of them. Because, according to Adam, they weren’t vampires. They were immortals. But, for him, that could soon change.
Adam’s family was unlike anything the world of fiction could have prepared her for. They weren’t broody or cruel. They didn’t laze about all day and pass the evenings in exploited luxury.
A silent chuckle filled her head. In comparison, their refined family life held more charm and appeal than her solitaire existence at home. If someone compared the two and asked who the vampire was, they’d probably guess her—the always out late, tired during the day, loner who had no one waiting up for her and no one to care if she went missing for days.
Her fingers drifted to the base of her skull where a soft touch feathered at the base of her skull. She smiled.
Adam...
She shut her eyes and gave a mental push back, unsure if he’d feel it, but appreciating his comfort all the same. While he couldn’t read her thoughts like Grace, he had no problem sensing her emotions from far away. He’d gotten even better since taking her blood.
Ugh, he drank her blood. Her stomach tossed like a sloshing flood in the cabin of a ship.
The blood thing might be a deal breaker for her. She got it—they lived off an animal rich diet. They had the perfect place to sustain their needs, and while Adam claimed to come this far on animal blood, he also said nothing compared to the blood of a mate.
She was the mate. Her mouth twisted. Her life wasn’t set up for a serious relationship. She anticipated meeting her husband years from now when she had her career secured. And all those real grown up things figured out, like a decent car, a savings account, and a thirty-year fixed mortgage she’d probably never pay off.
Tucking her feet onto the seat of the rocking chair, she hugged her knees. Did she really want all those things? When Adam asked about the work she’d do, the thought of filing and scheduling didn’t necessarily spark joy. But the idea of self-reliance did.
And scrubs. She really liked the idea of not having to think too hard about what to wear to work every day.
Her fingers rubbed over the simple cotton dress covering her legs. Well, clothes certainly wouldn’t be an issue here.
But could she do it? Could she actually stay and say goodbye to everything she knew? Could she do it for him, a man she just met who wasn’t a man at all?
Her chair rocked under the weight of such heavy decisions. Who could decide things like that?
She didn’t want Adam to go to the Council. She didn’t want him to suffer at all. But she didn’t want to die.
That’s what it would be—death. Her human life—should she agree to the bonding thing—would go away forever. She’d be trapped here, at least for a while, as she figured out how to live as ... an immortal.
She thought of Larissa. Maybe there was no escape once you were in. While Adam made plenty of promises to see to her happiness, the women here were oppressed.
She winced. That seemed too harsh a word even for her own private thoughts. They weren’t oppressed... but they also weren’t treated as equals. While an older female might rule the house, acting as queen bee while the man of the house was away, the second he returned she’d relent, handing over the reins and all authority.
She saw it with Abilene. She heard it from Adam. And she would never forget the way Larissa went from regal to submissive within a single heartbeat when her husband picked her up today.
She shivered, recalling Larissa’s downcast eyes and the way she followed his command without objection. Annalise could never live like that. It wasn’t in her blood and she feared—if she changed—her blood would as well. She didn’t want to become some Stepford puppet.
She had so many questions and couldn’t help the creeping suspicions that kept cropping up. She’d asked Adam about the basics, garlic, mirrors, crucifixes... All the novels were wrong. None of that stuff had any power over them. They didn’t have mirrors on the walls because they were Amish, not because of any vampire folklore.
With so many differences between his culture and hers, discerning which differences were due to their faith and which were due to their biology could be confusing. But the combination of immortality and Amish? Brilliant. They truly were safe here.
The screen door creaked. “Anna? Are you sure you won’t eat?” Grace’s soft-spoken question proved, once again, that they we’re not the evil creatures so many assumed, sketched in fictional worlds where coffins and castles were king.
“No, thank you.” She couldn’t eat. Her head was too—
“A little food will clarify your thoughts.”
Please get out of my head...
Dropping her gaze with a look of contrition on her face, Grace nodded and returned inside the house. Annalise sensed Adam’s concern the moment Grace must have relayed that she’d been turned down.
Lost in a maze of questions, she went back to rocking and thinking—no closer to deciding than she’d been days ago, when he brought her here. She simply couldn’t picture what her life would look like if she agreed to this.
Would they actually be a married couple, or would it be a marriage of convenience to save his life? Again, her hand went to the back of her neck. Adam would never settle for less than an actual marriage.
He was very old fashioned in his thinking as well as his lifestyle. But that’s what made him special. He took his position very seriously and saw his duty to protect her as a great honor. True, he had a way of exaggerating the danger in her world. There hadn’t been any danger before she met him.
Her mind always went back to the same place. But had she known him when her mother had been suffering... Would he have protected her then? Somehow saved her battered heart? Maybe he could have helped her mother fight the cancer even though he said it didn’t work that way.
She was reaching. But he would have protected her. He would have been there with her, beside her, helping her make all the tough decisions and holding her when she just couldn’t keep herself together anymore. Looking back, it made her sad she hadn’t met him yet.
Those were the worst months of her life. Every day she battled the guilt of wondering when it would end, while also begging for one more day. She knew the second the doctors told them it was terminal that her life would never be the same.
Some daughters fought with their moms over curfews and dating. Annalise never had that sort of relationship with her mother. They were more like friends than parent and child. And when she died, a piece of Annalise died with her.
Her father, a man she’d never met face to face, had only just begun to acknowledge her presence. After the funeral, Annalise had reached out to him, hoping to find ... something. But he didn’t want the connection she so desperately needed at the time.
He had a family, and a wife of over thirty-five years. None of them knew about the sophomore he’d fooled around with twenty-three years ago. And her mother kept her promise not to tell of the married man who got her pregnant.
But when the will was read and the keys to the safety deposit box were turned over, all those missing puzzle pieces fell into place, painting a new picture of family Annalise didn’t recognize.
She resisted the urge to look for a man who never looked for her, but that only lasted so long. One quick Internet search and there was her father—still married and tenured at the school where he’d met her mother.
A few months of social media stalking, and she mustered the courage to reach out to him in a private message. His responses were slow and measured. But he seemed curious. He liked asking about her schooling and grades.
She’d been the one to suggest they meet. At first, he delayed an encounter, but after several requests, he finally agreed. The first time he stood her up had been due to a flat tire—supposedly. The second time it was a stomach bug. After that, the excuses got worse. And the last time he hadn’t bothered to make one at all.
She wasn’t even sure she liked the man. She didn’t want a relationship with a parent who didn’t want her. But she wanted a family again, that sense of belonging to someone, of knowing you’re loved and safe and will always have an emotional haven to call home.
Her mind immediately turned to Adam. She didn’t doubt he could be all those things, but she also didn’t want to stay with him for selfish reasons. She wanted to stay because...
Because he looked at her like no one else ever had. Because he cared when she was upset and pestered her to eat and rest when she was weary. Because he cared about her and when he kissed her, her whole body felt it.
Those little details that hinted at possibly falling in love for the first time in her life were why she should want to stay, but every time she thought to leave, she didn’t think of those lovely reasons to stay. She thought of a world without Adam. She thought of him suffering because she was too selfish to save him. She thought of all the pressure to change everything in order to save a man she hardly knew.
And those were not the intimate reasons she hoped would convince her to stay. They were the impersonal consequences of why she shouldn’t go.
Maybe she was a fool to try to romanticize anything that boiled down to a life or death choice. But she wanted the fairy tale. This was her life and the more she considered possibly rerouting all of it, the more the little girl with big dreams inside of her insisted she should stay. But every part of her wanted it to be for love more than anything else.
Could she love Adam?
Did he love her? He claimed to, but her mom used to say, never trust a man’s promise if it’s made in bed.
Biting her nails down to nubs didn’t bring her any closer to answers. Nipping one cuticle too short, she tsked as a hangnail started to bleed.
She stilled and scanned the porch, listening for the others inside. She covered the bleeding finger with her other hand, putting pressure on the cut. Could they smell that?
What about turning into other things, like bats? That seemed ridiculous, but she didn’t believe in any of this a few days ago.
And what about actors like Reese Witherspoon? The woman still looked like a teenager and had the energy to act and manage a growing empire, yet she was born in the seventies. She seriously hadn’t aged. Was she immortal, too?
Everything was moving too fast. She wished she knew exactly how much longer Adam had before losing his humanity.
Hours of thinking and she was no closer to a decision. The be-all and end-all that kept running through her head. She didn’t want Adam to die.
But, she also wasn’t ready to make a lifelong commitment to someone she just met. Nor was she sold on giving up her creature comforts like microwaves, and cell phones, and elastic banded underwear. But the no bra thing was nice. And for the love of God, could a girl get some shoes?
Why couldn’t she save Adam and live out in the real world? Would anyone really hold it against him if she made it a condition?
They wouldn’t have to get married or live on the farm. They could just ... date. Do the modern world immortal thing. Have fun with it and...
The thought of sharing him with the world turned her stomach. She wasn’t a possessive person, but she also didn’t want women looking at him or flirting with him. He was hers.
But what if someone else came along and he no longer wanted her? What if he got tired of her? Eternity was a long-ass time to stay with one partner.
Slow, approaching footsteps drew her attention to the front gate. Jonas, Adam’s father, met her stare and nodded a silent greeting as he returned from his after dinner stroll to check the animals.
She dropped her feet to the floor and sat up. “I was just—”
He held up a hand, saving her the need for any excuse. “Our home is yours.”
She smiled with appreciation for his hospitality. “Thanks.”
“Mind if I sit?”
She wasn’t about to tell him no. “Not at all.”
The rocker whined under his weight. They stared into the distance. At first the silence was nice, but as it stretched, the more she felt this wasn’t an accidental visit.
They swayed in unison, a soft breeze cutting across the porch and carrying the scent of flowers from the gate. The still beauty encapsulated this place in time, far enough removed that it could easily seem like no other world existed.
“You like it here.”
She turned at his comment. He wasn’t asking but observing. She smiled. “How could I not? It’s beautiful.”
He nodded. “Very different from what you’re used to, I assume.”
“Extremely. But not in a bad way. It’s much more peaceful here.”
“Did Adam ever speak to you of his great-uncle Isaiah?”
He’d mentioned a lot of names since arriving on the farm, but that wasn’t one she recognized. “I don’t think so.”
“He was my uncle, brother to my father, Ezekiel. An impressive man.”
Adam had mentioned his grandfather several times. He often sought advice from him and apparently, he was part of the Council of Elders who made the rules. But she was pretty sure he never mentioned him having a brother.
“Adam mentioned taking me to meet his older relatives.”
“You won’t meet Isaiah. He was lost to our kind decades ago.”
She should have caught on that he’d been speaking in past tense, but she hadn’t been expecting an immortal to die. Her mind immediately wondered how.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Adam tells me you’ve recently lost your mother. I, too, am sorry.”
Her heart still stung over condolences. “Thank you.”
“The grief of losing my uncle pained me for a long time. The ache is still there, but somehow, I’ve learned to live with it like an appendage. I doubt the loss ever fully disappears.”
She doubted it as well. While she’d come to carry her grief without complaint or tears, the weight never left her. Sometimes it got lighter and sometimes it felt crushing, but it was always there.
“Will you tell me about him?”
Jonas rocked slowly, the planks of the porch giving a soothing, broken in moan with each sway. “He was kind, generous, and patient with the children. Adored by all. When I think back to my youth, he held an almost mythological presence in my life, sort of like the man you English call Saint Nicholas.”
“How did you lose him?”
His eyes never left the black horizon. “One day, he fell from a horse. It’s rare for our kind to suffer clumsiness, but he’d lost his balance and the fall knocked him unconscious. He was out for days, which is also rare. When he came to, his motor skills were impaired and his agility...”
“I thought your kind...”
“It’s true we have accelerated healing abilities, but when we are called, a sort of cellular mutation takes place, faster in some than others. Every immortal is different. Our human nature becomes diseased and our animal nature takes over.”
“Darwinism.” When he gave her a confused look, she explained, “It’s the natural selection of every species. No matter what we are, we all evolve in order to survive.”
Jonas gave a solemn nod. “Survival is the last remaining instinct.” His gaze focused on a faraway memory. “I had never witnessed such an extreme change in one of our kind. He could hardly walk some days and I waited for him to heal, but as time went on his condition only degenerated. It pained me to see him suffer. It pained me to see him go. But I knew by then, it was necessary.”
“How old was he when this started happening?” Her mind immediately went into fact checking mode. Maybe their definition for immortality was actually just an expanded life and a strong immune system.
“Isaiah was quite old, one of the first to settle here after living several lifetimes in Europe.”
His gaze remained pinned to the distant mountains, but he stopped rocking. Anna stopped as well. When he spoke again, his voice dropped to a near whisper.
“Abilene prepared a basket of food one morning. I was to take it to my uncle and check that he was managing on his own. He lived alone, without children or a mate, and since the fall he’d kept to himself more than usual.”
His fingers tightened on the arms of the chair, his voice sounding slightly haunted by whatever memory he saw.
“When I entered his dwelling, the house reeked of death. Moans echoed from the bedroom. I ran up the stairs and found him unconscious, tossing and turning as if in pain. Our kind only dream when we’re called. But these were not the sounds of a man receiving a blessing. These were the pained cries of a man without hope.”
Her skin prickled. “Were they nightmares?”
“No. He described them as glimpses of heaven.”
She didn’t understand. “But you said he made pained cries of a man without hope.”
“Sometimes love is cruel. When we covet something unattainable, the heart suffers a great deal. For reason we don’t know, my uncle could not get to his mate. Perhaps he lost time, waiting for his injuries to heal. The signs weren’t there for him to follow, but not enough. He went mad with his need to find her.”
He let out a long breath. “He became a recluse, forced inside by the sun as his body and appetite dwindled. Eventually, even a swallow of water would make him violently ill.”
Her mind flashed to a peach hospital cup, the straw pressed to her mother’s dry lips as she coughed and hacked, trying to keep a mere sip down. Her pain and struggle had always been so excruciating to watch. And she’d been helpless.
“It had to be incredibly difficult to see him so weak.”
Jonas nodded. “As the days went on, he withdrew deeper into the house, moving into the root cellar where sun couldn’t penetrate. Without plants and animals in our diet, our ability to withstand light disappears. Sun and fire become one in the same and the slightest exposure can burn the flesh right off the bone.”
Adam had complained earlier about the sun. When he returned home, she saw the pain in his eyes. But there had been no physical damage. Perhaps that meant they still had time.
“The more symptoms he suffered, the more death surrounded him. The stench of rotting life touched every inch of his home as his soul fouled what hid within. Weakness hobbled him. He grew fearful and irrational, untrusting of others, including those he depended on.”
“Why didn’t he try to find her?”
“No one knows. Such resistance to the call was unheard of. But by this point, it was too late. My father argued with him to the point of bloodshed. Isaiah refused to leave his house. He threw us out and told us to leave him to his misery. My father was devastated. We all were.
“The man I adored was gone. The husk of a man remained, without humanity, and only a rotting soul at his core. As an Elder on the Council, Isaiah’s absence didn’t go unnoticed and soon the order came to put him down.”
She thought of her mother in the final stages, how her thumb clung to the morphine, and Annalise helplessly watched her endure the slow agony of death. She often wondered, during those long, final days, if her mother’s passing would be a blessing for all. Such a wretched thought that still filled her with shame, but she couldn’t bear to watch her suffer anymore. She resented her inability to bring her mother a quicker end. To bring her peace.
Wiping a tear away from the soft skin beneath her eyes, she whispered, “Sometimes death is a blessing.”
Jonas nodded. “Especially to a man whose life became a curse.”
“I’m sorry, Jonas. I know how difficult that must have been.” She wanted to take his hand, but something told her he wouldn’t allow it. Whether it was pride or propriety, she didn’t know.
“He was suffering. Animal blood could no longer sustain him, and as soon as night fell, he’d hunt.”
“Hunt?”
“His animal instincts took over. Corpses fell in his wake. Flocks of sheep slaughtered in one night. An entire herd of cattle bled dry in a week’s time. Yet he remained ravenous. It was too late. Even if he found his mate, he’d already lost his soul. The beast consumed what was left of him and eventually broke free.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We couldn’t contain him. He’d escape to the woods, leaving a trail of carnage in his tracks, venturing farther and farther every night until one dawn he didn’t return. He’d reached the town, and brutalized women. In a bloodthirsty hunt for his illusive mate, he raped and murdered countless innocents.”
Her hand closed around her throat. Could such a fate happen to Adam? Is that what he’d become without her blood? And what if she gave him blood, but refused to bond?
She finally understood what he’d been trying to tell her. There was no other option. Without bonding, he would die. An execution would only protect others, and save Adam pain. There could be no saving himself. That responsibility fell to her.
“Can that—”
“Yes,” Jonas answered, without needing to hear her question. “My son’s time is limited.”
Maybe Adam was different. He was gentle and good, but Jonas described Isaiah similarly. She couldn’t understand how someone so good could become so evil. Then she realized if Adam lost his humanity, he would lose all the pieces of him that made him good, all the parts she cared about.
“I see the desperation in your eyes. You want to find a way to save him without sacrifice.” He turned to look at her. “I love my children very much, Annalise. If there were another way to save him, I would gladly tell you. But there’s not. The same beast that overtook my uncle lives in all of us. Adam is battling it every day. He won’t win the battle. Not without you.”
She struggled to swallow. “How much time will my blood buy him?”
“No one knows for sure. Each couple is different. Sometimes the bonding is first and the rest comes second. Adam is trying to do right by you, and it’s costing him.”
“He’s asking me to give up my entire life.”
“But he’s also offering to sacrifice his. I see what he’s doing, and I can only respect him for trying to hold onto his honor until the very end. But there will come an end, Annalise. This place, these people... There is life here. There’s hope. And there will always be memories if you choose to walk away.”
Guilt swamped her and she wrapped her arms protectively around her stomach. “I’m trying to make the right decision. But I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“If we were only given the things we asked for, imagine how many gifts would be missed. Sometimes, God gives us exactly what we need, no more, no less.”
She envied their beliefs. Her own weren’t as strong.
“My father saw my uncle’s treachery as his responsibility. Family is a great honor and obligation. The lives lost were our burden to bear. We had a duty to find him. To ... end him.”
She sat up, realizing this story might not have a happy ending. “Did you?”
“We found him deep in the northern woods, just beyond the border of Canada. The scent of bloodshed saturated the air around him. He’d been draining the body of a woman who had drawn her last breath hours before. Fetid blood can cause insanity, and by the trail of bodies we’d found, he’d been living off the blood of corpses for weeks. Not just drinking them, but...” He looked away. “He’d use them until there was nothing left, shredding their flesh like ribbons, claws buried as their organs fell out.”
Each breath became a chore as she tried not to imagine such a grotesque sight. She could envision the monster so clearly the hair rose at the back of her neck. She’d glimpsed Adam’s rage in the field, when his twin thought to pretend he was Adam. She’d thought an animal had attacked, but no.
“It was up until that moment,” Jonas continued, “seeing my uncle rutting into a corpse, feeding on her cold blood as it leaked from her scored belly and stained his skin, that I believed there might be a chance he could still be saved.” He shook his head. “We were so naïve. A soulless monster... It would have destroyed Isaiah to know what he’d become. But he was already gone.”
“Did you kill him?”
“There’s a potency to human blood that animal blood lacks. He’d glutted himself for weeks and his strength surpassed ours. He nearly killed my father, almost severing his head completely from his neck and spine. I had to pump his heart with my bare hands while others fed him blood, his own spilling too fast to heal his injuries.”
Her hand lifted to her racing heart. The painful memory etched into Jonas’s face, setting deep lines of tension around his mouth and eyes.
“My father’s hair turned white that night. A streak, right here. Our kind doesn’t get gray hair. Our bodies remain in their prime, never appearing to age beyond early adulthood.” He touched his jaw. “It’s why we don’t wear full beards.”
“But your father survived.”
“Yes. Though he couldn’t speak of his brother for many years.”
He stood and Annalise suffered a rush of uncertainty. How could she live with herself if such a fate took Adam?
“Only you can save my son.”
Her vision wavered under a wall of unshed tears. She nodded, unable to make any promises, but now truly understanding the consequences of her options.
Seeing her understand, he placed a hand briefly on her shoulder and walked away.
A chill raced up her spine and she stood. “Jonas?”
His eyes found hers, his expression weathered with worry and tension. “Yes, my child.”
“What happened to Isaiah?”
He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “We can only hope he’s dead.”