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I
t took a long while for Brody to explain everything to the emergency crews who had arrived. Once they understood and statements were taken, Brody herded everyone into his car. Aleksandar rode in the back beside Brendon, who stared with the same blank expression he had worn for the past hour. He didn’t seem to notice when they stopped at Alicia’s house and she vanished from the car, returning with a single large suitcase.
He barely even noticed when the car pulled up to the mansion in which he lived. He exited the car woodenly, his movements the jerky slow motions of someone who had lost contact with reality.
His condition did not improve once they were all inside the house. He stood in the foyer and stared blankly at the stairs.
“Maybe we should take him to the hospital,” Alicia murmured.
“Brendon,” Aleksandar said, his voice its usual soft level. “I need to talk to you about something.”
Brendon’s eyes shifted to Aleksandar’s face. They were still glazed and distant, but he had heard Aleksandar and understood the words.
“I need you to go upstairs and pack your bags. The police will be here tomorrow morning to take you to a secure location.”
In a dark flash, the glaze from Brendon’s eyes dropped. “What?” he said.
“It’s not safe for you here anymore, Brendon,” Aleksandar explained, careful to keep his voice level and soothing. “They’re going to take you under police protection until the person responsible is caught.”
“No,” Brendon said almost automatically. “I’m not leaving.”
“Brendon, you have to.”
“No!” Brendon shouted, tears striking his eyes. “I’m not leaving you!”
“It’s not safe, Brendon,” Aleksandar repeated.
“I don’t care!” Brendon replied, still shouting. “I’m not leaving! He was my friend!”
Aleksandar took a deep breath to try reasoning with the youth when Brendon said in a soft voice, “Make me like you.”
Aleksandar looked at him sharply, robbed of his words by the surprise request.
“What?” Brody asked, unable to trust his own ears.
“I know what you are,” Brendon said to Aleksandar, ignoring the detective. “I figured it out ages ago. I want in. I want to make them pay!”
“No,” Aleksandar replied at last.
“You have to,” Brendon said. “I loved him too!”
“I will not!” Aleksandar said, his voice rising for the first time. He immediately softened again. “You don’t know what you ask.”
“Yes, I do,” Brendon said firmly. “I am asking you to make me strong enough to make them pay for what they did to Stoyan.”
“No,” Aleksandar said. “You don’t know. You don’t know the pain of the Embrace. Or the cost of selling your soul. You cannot fathom the depth and strength of the hunger that will always plague you. You can’t know. I will not Embrace you, Brendon. I cannot. Don’t ask it of me.”
“Fine. I’ll find someone else to do it.”
“And if you turn? And then you kill the person responsible for Stoyan’s death. What then? Stoyan will still be dead. And you will live on; an eternity of hunger and emptiness that stretches like a yawning chasm into madness and despair, forever bereft of the reason you chose such a life. Believe me, you don’t want that.”
“I am not you,” Brendon whispered, the fire in his voice taken by the bare confession Aleksandar had laid before him.
“No,” Aleksandar agreed, stepping forward. “And you never will be. Not if I can help it.” He wrapped Brendon in a tight embrace. “There is so much promise in your life, Brendon. Promise me you won’t throw it all away.”
Brendon broke down, sobbing against Aleksandar again. “I want them to pay,” he said between choking sobs.
“And they will,” Aleksandar said as Brendon lifted his arms to hug him. “I swear it. They will pay.”
Alicia shut the door softly behind her. Brendon was fast asleep, grief yielding to exhaustion sometime around midnight. Brody slept in the apartment with him, his gun in his shoulder holster. She had helped Brendon pack as Brody stood guard. The boy had been largely silent, and spent the majority of his time fighting back tears that periodically threatened.
Outside, an entire squadron of police guards patrolled the grounds, with observers and gunmen stationed at every possible entrance on the ground floor. Aleksandar had protested, saying such a drain of resources was unnecessary, but Brody would not hear it.
After they were done, she and Brendon had sat in silence at his dining room table over a hot pot of tea.
“He’ll get them,” Brendon had said softly. “No one messes with Aleksandar. Stoyan told me so.”
Alicia had simply smiled at him, her heart cracking.
Now she walked quietly from the guest room down the hall to Aleksandar’s room. The door was open, and the soft gold flickering light of a fire illuminated the room.
Aleksandar leant against his writing desk in a pair of long pyjama pants, his powerful chest bare. The windows were open and moonlight streamed in through the translucent curtains onto his half-naked form. He stared down at something in his hand.
“You should probably stay away from open windows,” Alicia said softly from the entrance. “It’s easy to get a clear shot at you.”
“That would be a clean death,” Aleksandar answered, not turning around. “If he wanted that, he’d have done it long ago.”
Alicia nodded. That much was true.
“How is Brendon?” Aleksandar asked softly.
“Grieving,” Alicia answered. “But he has utmost faith in you.”
Still not turning around, Aleksandar shook his head. Alicia observed him a moment. His back still held various scars, which she recognised as knife wounds. It was one of the things she had wondered about when she learned what he was. She walked into the room so that she stood directly behind his desk.
“Why do you have these scars?” Alicia asked him. She reached out and touched one particularly long scar. Aleksandar responded to the touch, straightening slightly, but still not turning around. “Shouldn’t they have healed?”
“They are older than the curse I carry, and have healed,” Aleksandar replied. “And so my change had no effect on them. It is the wounds I incurred after turning that leave no mark.”
“Oh.” Now that she had breached the space between them, Alicia was in no hurry to distance herself again. Though she hated to admit it, she had missed him. She missed his quiet strength beside her at night. She missed his gentle voice and soft smiles. And her physical need of him had accompanied many a sleepless night. She did not have to be trapped in his gaze to find his presence intoxicating. She let her fingers travel from scar to scar, relishing the feeling of cool skin covering taught muscle.
“Why did you choose to become... to do this to yourself?” Alicia asked.
Aleksandar stood upright, sliding whatever he held in his hand into the wallet that had been sitting beside him on the desk. He turned.
“Why are you here, Alicia?” he asked, his voice cold and his expression distant.
The sound of his voice uttering her name gave Alicia more pleasure than she though it could. That fact numbed her tongue, robbing her of something witty with which to respond to Aleksandar’s question. She could not utter a word. When the silence had stretched on for too long, Aleksandar turned away again.
“I want to hate you,” Alicia said, drawing him back to face her once more. She turned her gaze to the ground, unable to withstand the fathomless depths of his midnight eyes. “I want to be able to forget about you, to move on. And God knows I’ve tried. I’ve been on dates. I’ve done cooking classes, and joined casual softball leagues, and even signed up to learn French at one point. But all those things feel so empty and none of the men I dated... Well, they couldn’t compare.”
Aleksandar remained silent, searching Alicia’s face.
“They weren’t you,” Alicia ended lamely.
This time it was Aleksandar’s silence that stretched on too long. Alicia rubbed the back of her neck in discomfort.
“I just... I’m sorry,” she said. “Whatever Brody thinks, I don’t believe you’re evil. I am so sorry I did not give you the benefit of the doubt. Of course,” she added, “that could just be your vampire mind control talking.” She offered Aleksandar a small smile. It was not returned.
“Anyway, I should get to bed.” Alicia turned away, feeling the hot flush of embarrassment colour her cheeks, and the crushing weight of rejection press on her chest. She had meant to try and make amends. Despite herself, she had wanted to be welcomed back, to be held close, to be told that Aleksandar still loved her.
She felt Aleksandar’s cool hand on her arm as she started to walk away. She looked up at him in surprise.
“Stay,” Aleksandar whispered. “Please. Just for tonight. Let me pretend you love me.”
Alicia turned to him, feeling his strong arms wrap around her waist. She leant against his chest. “It is not a pretence, Aleksandar. I love you.”
Aleksandar placed his bent finger beneath her chin and lifted her face. He kissed each cheek slowly, letting his lips caress her skin, then the tip of her nose, then, at last, her lips. It was a long time before either of them stopped kissing enough to breathe. Alicia felt her body leap to life, her skin tingling as if touched by fire. That fire scalded between her legs, making movement a strange mix of pleasure and pain, an effect amplified by his proximity to her. Her breath came in short, ragged pants as she felt him slowly unbutton her pyjama top.
He kissed her again as the shirt fell to the ground. Having this moment plague her dreams, Alicia was lost to all but Aleksandar by the time her clothes had been removed. The world did not matter. The danger she was in was but a distant memory and utterly irrelevant. All that mattered now was his flesh against hers, the softness of his touch, the trail of fire left in its wake, the sharp ache between her legs that demanded a release.
Starved of Aleksandar’s skill for so long, it did not take much to reduce her to the most basic aspect of herself; the hungry animal that hides in the breasts of all people. Her submission to him was utter and complete.
As was his to her.
For a night, Aleksandar let himself believe in angels. He let himself believe that Alicia did love him, and that the curse he carried in his blood had no hold over her. For a night, Aleksandar was human again, yielding to the promise of a rich life with the one he loved.
Hours later, they lay in each other’s arms, Alicia fighting sleep as Aleksandar rested his head on her chest, listening to her beating heart and wishing his could join the rhythm. The dull rush of his blood, circulated without a functioning heart, sounded a constant dull hum in his ear. He had lived with it for almost seven hundred years, and only now did it feel alien to him.
“Can I ask you a question?” Alicia murmured. “About Theodore?” She took Aleksandar’s silence as acquiescence. “Did he love you the way you loved him?”
The question sent Aleksandar’s mind back to the long life he had shared with Theodore after he had been embraced; the laughter and mischief and the fighting. There had been a lot of fighting. Every so often, Theodore would tire of Aleksandar, and take a new lover. Aleksandar never railed against being driven away, and so Theodore would chase him with harsh words and harder blows. They had once beaten each other bloody as Theodore spat hateful things at Aleksandar until he had driven his scion from him. Then Prince Theodore would strut around with a new lover, flaunting them in front of Aleksandar in an effort to illicit a jealous rage. Aleksandar would not utter a word. If he hurt enough, he would simply turn and walk away, once vanishing from the House for so long several people thought him dead.
When Theodore’s moods lifted, he would come seeking Aleksandar, begging forgiveness. And Aleksandar always forgave. How could he not? He loved Theodore.
“He tried.”