Authors: Marissa Farrar
The man’s dreadlocks had fallen away from his face, so they spread like knotted ropes across the ground. As Sebastian watched, the dead man’s eyelids flickered. His body convulsed again, more violently this time. The tremors gripped the man’s entire body
.
He
shook and jerked on the forest floor as though he were still alive and suffering a seizure.
Suddenly
,
he fell still. His eyes blinked open and he sat up. His nostrils flared as he turned his head, one way and then another, before catching sight of Sebastian.
The man glared at S
ebastian. Pale-
face
d and
drained
of
blood, only
his
eyes were
forked with
bloodshot
veins
.
The creature moved with slow, jerky movements, loosening the muscles that had taken on the beginnings of rigor mortis
.
The dead man got to his feet.
Sebastian stepped back. S
omething
was
different about this creature. Different from the bodies he’d previously seen reanimate.
The thing took staggered steps toward
him, its arms outstretched, head
tilted
to one side. Dead eyes locked on Sebastian’s face. It stumbled over the rough ground
,
but regained its balance and kept coming. The creature opened its mouth.
A
bloated tongue darted out over cracked lips and it
issued a long, hoarse breath—a
death rattle—as it approached.
Intent
, Sebastian realized. That was the thing different to the others. This creature moved with intent
.
And
from the glare in the dead man’s eyes, he g
uessed its
intention
s
weren’t good.
Wasting no more time, Sebastian darted around the man and caught him from behind, wrapping his arm around his throat. With a vicious twist, he broke
the creature’s
neck.
The body fell to the ground and Sebastian stood frozen above him. No more movement came.
He
still need
ed
to bury the
corpse
.
Sebastian turned away and crouched to dig the body’s final resting place. The top layer of leaves and dirt felt dry, the leaves
crunchy
and brittle, but beneath the first layer, the ground grew soft and damp. The earthy scent of soil filled his nostrils.
Movement from behind—a scraping of a foot against the ground, the cracking of bone—caught his attention and Sebastian spun around, leaping to his feet.
The dead man stood
, its head lolling at an unnatural angle. Fierce hatred burned in its eyes as it stared directly at Sebastian.
“What the hell
...
?
”
He wasn’t frightened of this thing—he didn’t think he had a reason to be—but
its
very presence unnerved him. He’d never seen anything like
this before
,
and the fact that he’d been the one who killed the man
set his nerves on edge.
The thing took one unsteady step toward him and then another. All around them
,
the forest remained silent. Only the crack of twigs and crunch of dried leaves
beneath the dead man’s feet broke the unnatural silence.
Not wasting another second, Sebastian raced at the dead man. With a single movement, he tore the thing’s head off with his bare hands, wrenching bone, tendon and flesh apart with a wet, sickening
riiiiip
.
Tiny droplets of cold, dead blood splattered Sebastian’s clothes.
Blood
no longer flowed
through the body, so the spray was minimal, but it was there. He grimaced in disgust. The scent of dead blood was nothing like fresh. The vibrant life that normally drew him in was gone and the fluid smelled only of death.
Sebastian dropped the head to the gr
ound. The body took a couple more
steps before folding at the knees and collapsing
,
chest down.
What the hell
i
s going on?
The bodies sometimes
came back, but not like that. Had he done something else to the body at the time he’d killed it?
Drawing a total blank about
the feed, he had no way of knowing.
Sebastian looked down at the carnage he’d created.
“Shit.”
Someone stumbling upon a decomposing body in the depths of the forest would always cause a stir, but someone stumbling across a body with its head torn off would create a different sort of panic entirely.
He
dropped to his knees and dug into the rough earth. He always liked to bury the bodies, or at least leave them somewhere they wouldn’t normally escape from, but this one needed to be deeper than before. Not only did he want
to reduce the chance of the body
being found, but the image of this thing reaching out
,
finding its own head
and replacing it upon its shoulders plagued him.
He tore away clods of earth, his strength making it easy for him to dig deep within on
ly a few minutes.
With the unmarked grave now easily six feet in depth,
he
got to his feet. He drew back his foot
and
kicked the head. The dreadlocks wound around the head like a coil of dead snakes as it flew through the air and landed in the pit. It bounced and then came to rest.
Sebastian bent and
hoisted in the rest of the body.
With Sebastian gone, Serenity had
little to do but wait. It wasn’t as though she could go after him. He’d be half
way across the city before she
even left the front door.
He would come around. She had enough faith in him to know
his senses
would win him over. After all, he would hav
e to forgive her eventually. H
e could
n’t
force her to get married and he
would never
change her mind, so the only other option was to forget this painful, embarrassing evening ever happened. Unless, of course, he decided he didn’t want to be with her
anymore
.
The thought caused her stomach to clench in anxiety. He’d left her once before, but that had been a long time ago. Sebastian loved her
and
Elizabeth. He’d
proven the lengths he would go to in order to keep them safe
,
time and time again. She shouldn’t be comparing the person he was now to the one she’d met eight years ago. He’d spent years searching for her and taking care of Elizabeth. Something like her not wanting to get married wouldn’t change how he felt about her.
So where was he now?
Serenity paced to the living room window and peered out
toward the driveway. The night remained
still and empty. She chewed at a sharp hangnail on her thumb and closed her eyes. Could she sense him? Now
that
she regularly took drops of his blood, she sometimes pick
ed
up on his emotions or ca
ught
a glimpse of his thoughts, but right now
she didn’t sense any
thing.
She was alone.
A painful ball knotted in her throat and her eyes filled with tears. She wished Elizabeth wasn’t off
on her
trip.
At least with Elizabeth
here she’d have something to distract her. She could go and sit on the edge of her daughter’s bed and remind herself that
they were a unit, a family. Being
separate
d
didn’t feel right.
She let out a sigh, one that came from the very bottom of her lungs, and flicked off the couple of table lamps li
ghting
the room. She left the light on the hall console by the front door on, partly for security, but also for
a
practical reason. Unlike Sebastian, she couldn’t see in the dark.
Though she wanted to spend as much time as possible with Sebastian, even with Elizabeth away, she found
herself unable to
stay awake all night and sleep all day. Doing so made her brain foggy and her limbs heavy. Instead, she stayed up with Sebastian and
headed to bed in the early hours of the morning. She’
d get up with Elizabeth first thing and then take herself back to bed for a few hours in the afternoon.
On
weekends, Elizabeth also stayed up too late in order to spend time with her father, so she
,
too
,
was always keen for an afternoon nap.
Right now, Serenity saw
no reason to
sit up all night waiting for Sebastian
. She knew he’d be home before dawn. He didn’t have much choice in the matter.
Another sigh
morphed into a yawn and
she
plodded her way up the stairs, toward thei
r bedroom. Sebastian had gotten
over his self
-
consciousness about allowing her to see him in his sleepin
g state and she had grown
used to curling up against the cold, inert form lying beside her.
With a heavy heart, she crossed the room, using a band on her wrist to knot her long, dark hair on top of her head. She slid out of the dress she’d worn especially for dinner and dropped it in a pile on the floor at the bottom of the big bed. A rueful smile accompanied the action.
That certainly wasn’t how she
imagined the dress being removed
while dressing
earlier that evening.
Serenity climbed up onto the mattress and slid her bare legs beneath the sheets. The soft cotton sli
pped
against her skin and she curled up on her side, her head crushing the feather pillow. She wanted to sleep, but her mind wouldn’t rest. She hoped Sebastian was all right. The memory of the dark
ness
passing over his face
sent a
shudder
racing down her spine. She was sure she hadn’t only seen a shadow, a play of light
. Something as innocuous as a shadow wouldn’t have caused such a
n extreme
reaction in her. If
he
hadn’t surprised her with the proposal, she would have pressed him further on what happened.
Instead
,
in Sebastian’s eyes at least,
the darkness had been all but forgotten.
Sebastian entered the house in
near silence. He cracked open the front door and peered into the wide hallway, wondering what would be waiting for him. Would Serenity be furious with him for walking out on their conversation? Would she be crying? Would she even be speaking to him? Somehow
,
he doubted she’d give him the
silent treatment. After years of being forced to hold her tongue
with Jackson
, she
didn’t normally hold back from saying what she thought.
Stepping inside,
he realized he could hear the steady thump of her heartbeat and her slow breath
ing
coming from upstairs. She was asleep.
His heart
sank
. He’d so wanted to talk to her about what happened tonight—both
the marriage proposal and what
happened later. He didn’t like to think she’d gone to bed still angry or upset with him.
His whole world revolved around her and Elizabeth
.
His
whole reason for survival
was
two fragile humans.
Nothing else mattered.
Sebastian closed his eyes briefly and shook his head at himself. What was he thinking?
A vampire marrying a human?
A
vampire getting married at all! He would be
the laughing stock of his kind e
verywhere
.
But
what did he care? The opinion of other vampires meant nothing to him. The only people whose opinions mattered lived beneath the same roof.
Light-footed, he ran
up the stairs to their bedroom and carefully pushed open the door.
The sight of her made his heart ache. Serenity slept in her usual position—curled up on her side with her hand
beneath her cheek. Her features were
soft
ened
in sleep. She didn’t look as though she’d been crying—no red blotches marred her
creamy
complexion.
Her dress lay pooled on the floor
at the edge
of the bed.
He
pressed his lips together. He’d not planne
d for her to undress alone to
night.
Crossing the room, he
slid onto the bed beside her.
S
everal hours
remained
until morning, but he didn’t want to leave her again.
Should I wake her
?
He desperately wanted to talk to her.
He reached out and touched her cheek. She exhaled in response to his touch and rolled over, so he was left with only her back to him. She’d pulled her hair up onto the top of her head, exposing the long line of her neck. With the tips of his fingers, he traced a line down the side of her throat, his sensitive
fingertips
picking up the steady thump of her pulse beneath her soft skin. He continued across her bare shoulder, part of him hoping the contact would wake her. His touch elicited a race of goose bumps to erupt over her flesh and she shrugged away.
Sebastian pulled the sheet up over her naked shoulder and her breathing settled back down into a deep sleep.
He
sighed and
rolled to his back.
Perhaps the missing memory occurred because he’d been upset about Serenity? Had he even overreacted to the man’s body coming back?
Perhaps
the body’s time
to reanimate
had already come, he’d just not known
because of the missing hours
.
No,
he thought. That man came back unlike anything else he’d seen before. Something was going on here and he couldn’t explain what. He just hoped it had nothing to do with the people he loved.
Not wanting to wake her, he leaned over and pressed a cool kiss against Serenity’s shoulder.
“I love you,” he whispered. “Whatever else happens, always remember that I love you.”
Serenity blinked awake and immediately
rolled over. She let out a sigh of relief. Sebastian lay beside her, his eyes closed, his hands folded over his chest. With the exception of his shoes and jacket, he was still fully dressed. His fringe of dark lashes rested on his pale cheek, his full lips slightly parted in his rest.
Despite knowing he wouldn’t hear her, she snuggled up beside him and reached out and touched his cold, smooth cheek.
“I’m glad you’re home. I missed you.”
Something caught her attention and she frowned. Dark brown flecks stained the collar of his white shirt. She drew back, her heart sinking, the organ suddenly fat and heavy in her chest. Serenity knew what those spots meant. She’d spent enough time trying to get her own dried blood out of her clothing
while
married to Jackson.
Blood.
Something inside her tore a tiny bit. So he’d gone out and fed.
All because she’d told him no
.
She didn’t like the idea that, albeit inadvertently, she was responsible for an innocent person’s death. She wasn’t naive—she
knew
Sebastian killed to survive—but to do so out of anger
went
against everything she’d tried to form her new life into.
Her insides twisted and she gritted her jaw. Her emotions would always be
at war
because of his need to kill. No one wanted to think the person they loved
was
capable of harm, but with Sebastian she had no choice. At least
when he only killed in order
to
survive,
she could make some kind of peace with it.
Even though Sebastian tried to hide it from her, she
always knew when his time ca
me
to feed
. He grew pale
r and became highly strung,
snap
ping
at
her and
Elizabeth for no reas
on. Then he’d make excuses to go out
or wait until he thought
she was asleep and slip away. The
next night
,
he’d be back to himself again.
She knew he’d not reached
that place yet.
“Why, Sebastian?” she said to his inert body. “Why did you do it?”
No
w they had two issues to contend
with—her refusing his proposal and him going out a
nd
feeding unnecessarily. Sh
e knew she couldn’t control him
and she wouldn’t want to
.
H
e was a
grown man and a
force in his own right, but Sebastian had his boundaries and compromising them made her
worry about what else might be wrong.
Serenity wanted to talk to him, make things right between them again
.
But, however mu
ch she wa
nted to speak to him, she had
to wait until nightfall.
She sighed and went to her closet and pulled out a t-shirt and pair of jeans. She dressed quickly, not bothering to try to keep quiet, knowing he’d never hear her. Her day stretched ahead of her, long and alone
, too many hours remaining for her to fret over Sebastian
. She wished Elizabeth was home. With Elizabeth around
,
she was never in danger of bei
ng lonely during the
day. Even with
her daughter at school,
she had
enough to
do
between pick
-
up and drop
-
off. Elizabeth’s clothes and toys would be scattered all over the floor, her breakfast things left out. Doing chores might seem mundane to many people, but
considering her
reality
, it sometimes seemed
like the only part of her life
that contained
any semblance of normality.