“If I could take it back, I would.”
He sighs and pulls me back into his embrace.
Then, he starts searching my past life by stimulating my memories.
Happy scenes of my childhood in our cottage west of St. David's in Pembrokeshire on the southwest coast of Wales, the warmth of the large kitchen with the bright yellow curtains at the window overlooking a spray of wildflowers in the garden and beyond it the ocean. The smell of baking bread in the old cooker stove my mother rescued and refurbished at great expense, the heat of the wood stove on my face and hands after playing in the surf. The scent of salt water in the wind as I play along the rocky shore, the seabirds wheeling in the sky above me, diving down in a circuit for the bits of bread I throw to them.
The clear crisp starlit nights when my father took me out to watch the meteor showers, lying on our backs on sleeping bags, oohing and ahhing as the meteors burned across the heavens. Watching the moon through binoculars, joking that it looked like it was made of blue cheese not Swiss, and then later, seeing Saturn through our backyard telescope and taking a long-exposure photograph with our new camera. Hours of piano lessons spent alone in the quiet study, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling shelves of books and family photographs, practicing arpeggios and scales till my fingers hurt.
Then, the trip to Hungary, the narrow streets and limited horizon such a change from the wide-open spaces of the Pembrokeshire coast. Dirty old buildings, the cobblestone streets of the old market square, the babble of an incomprehensible language surrounding me. The crisp white blouse and woolen skirt of my uniform, my mother patiently braiding my long fair hair into coils on my head as was the local fashion among girls of my age. To the one memory I want to deny – Boston, the university, my mother's death. I try to shut him out and he rises up and looks at my face.
"Don't shut me out," he says, his voice thick with emotion.
"Not there," I say, covering my eyes.
His voice pleads.
"I won't go back there, I promise. Just let me in."
I close my eyes and think about him, welcoming him in. It works immediately, and I feel him enter my consciousness as if a wind has blown in through an open window. He begins searching through my memories, and settles on one from before my mother died. I was seated in a salon in Prague just before we moved back to Boston, playing the piano surrounded by my father's friends and some prospective teachers. The huge room has high ceilings and windows, the walls covered in gilded paper and full-sized portraits of eighteenth century lords and ladies. I play on an old grand and those gathered to judge me sit and listen, assessing my skill, my touch, my interpretation of the music. I play a theme from a Beethoven concerto and there are tears in my father's eyes. I'm so happy, pleased that my father's proud of me. I crave his approval and work diligently in order to get it, performing to his standards so I'll get more attention.
Michel moves on, searching for more memories. One from a few years earlier in Wales in which I lie on the couch beside my mother, sick with a cold, my throat aching, my nose plugged. I'm happy though, because she's stroking me, smoothing my hair, my head in her lap. I'm perfectly content to be home from school watching cartoons on television while she reads a book.
Another memory of walking home from school in London with my babysitter. Rain falls and I stop to explore the streams and puddles formed along the gutters, the tiny rivers carrying leaves and twigs along to the drains. We make a boat out of a piece of paper from my backpack and I kneel, umbrella over my head, and watch it float along on the water's surface to the drain, spinning in a circle as it reaches the larger puddle.
Christmas in Boston, attending the cathedral in the city for Mass, the incense, the stained glass, the priest in his colorful vestments, the murmur of the congregation repeating the litany. I enter the church, dipping my fingers in the font, genuflecting at the side of the pew, the wooden bench hard against my bony knees, enjoying the sense of awe I felt being in such a holy place.
It's the last time I go into a church except for her mass and the last time I felt any connection to a god. The next day my mother dies in front of me, gasping from a bite wound on her neck, bright red arterial froth foaming at the wound, dripping from her mouth as I lean over her and try to stem it.
Stop!Grief overwhelms me and I shut him out, covering my eyes, the memory far too real, the emotions too intense.
"I'm sorry." He takes me in his arms. "I didn't try to go there," he says. "You went there."
"No I didn't," I say and wipe my eyes. "Why do you want to go there?"
"I don't. You keep thinking of that day as if you really want to go back, but you're afraid to do it alone."
I don't reply, just lie there with his arms around me. Like before, bits of him seep through when he can't hold it back and I understand the great loneliness the vampires feel as immortals, my heart breaking at their despair at ever getting back what they'd lost. Only in these brief moments when they connect with a mortal and even more so with an Adept can they begin to feel as they once did. Human. I have to forgive him because this bliss of union is almost too much for a human to bear. It will be mine for as long as I want it – until it's time for me to leave and kill Soren.
Chapter 25
"We know the truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart."
Pascal
"I WANT TO MEET WITH SOMEONE IN THE COUNCIL," I say the next evening, after the sun sets and Michel comes to me.
"We'll talk of that later," he says, sitting on the sofa in the library, opening his arms to me. "Come, feed."
"I'm fine," I reply and pace the floor in front of the window. "I've been thinking all day. Soren will have to think you and I have parted. We'll have to either break up or I'll have to be taken from you somehow."
"Yes. Now, come here," he says again, patting his lap. "Don't wait until you're sick. Have some now and you'll be good all night. You can feed again before dawn and then you'll be good all day."
He holds his hand out to me, as if impatient to have me comply. I stop and consider his offer.
"If I feed more often, is there any chance that I'll become more addicted?"
"You'll get used to taking less, but more often. To change the schedule would mean you'd be uncomfortable for a while, but no, you won't become more addicted. At least, not physically."