My courage was dwindling, though I didn’t believe his intention was to kill me. My memories had led me to believe that we had been close, once. That he hadn’t meant to end my life. But then, he was human when I had known him; now his eyes burned and his soul was submerged in blackness. What had become of him, and how?
The mare began pacing nervously backward. I patted her neck and felt the wetness of the steam rising from her coat. As though she was able to sense that whoever or whatever had been inside the forest was now edging closer. She knew that this game of hide-and-seek was over before it had really begun.
A stray twig in the bush snapped as a heavy weight fell. That was all it took. I was thrown off balance as the mare reared with a panicked snort. I braced myself to hit the ground; instead a pair of arms wrapped around me, breaking my fall. The mare bolted and was gone before I had a chance to see where.
“You never belonged to the Scouts? ‘Be prepared,’ remember?” Jonah’s voice cut through the eeriness of the now motionless backdrop and I was momentarily relieved that it was him.
Sitting in his lap, I searched the trees ahead of me. Ethan was gone. But I would find him again, or more likely he would find me first.
I scuffled about, tilting my head up to meet Jonah’s face. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“Behind you. After yesterday, you think I’d let you do a runner in the middle of the night, all by yourself?”
“I get the feeling you’ve always got one eye on me, regardless of the day’s events. Do you remember what I said? You know, about finding another hobby?”
He wrinkled his nose and said teasingly, “You gonna get off my lap now?”
“Yes!”
I stumbled to my feet, dusting myself off in the process.
“Any particular reason you decided to take a random midnight stroll, steal a horse, and go galloping out to the middle of nowhere?” He vaulted from the grass, far more impressively than I had.
“No,” I lied.
“Come on.”
He signaled for me to jump on his back, but I protested with a firm shake of my head.
“Err, no thanks, I’d rather walk. You go on ahead, I’ll follow.”
“And miss the opportunity to play question time? I think not! We’ll take a walk together and you can tell me what happened to you yesterday, and all the other days of your two-hundred-year-long existence.”
Arching his eyebrows at me, he stretched out his arm, pawing through my knotted hair. He was feeling the now closed-up scar that had formed a bump on the outside of my skull.
I paced next to him, subdued, weighing my options. I had wanted to speak with Gabriel, but now I didn’t care. As I thought of him and Hanora my stomach did backflips.
“Can I?” Jonah asked, gesturing to my shoulder blade—the one I had managed to keep hidden from him since it had been stitched up.
There was no point hiding it now, so I nodded and came to a stop. Lifting the sweater over my head, I pulled down the collar of my T-shirt.
Almost apprehensively, he swept my curls across my neck and brushed the back of his hand over my cold skin. “How long did it take to heal?” he asked.
“Not long, only left the faintest of scars this time.”
He released my hair, but before I had time to squeeze the sweater back on he asked, “This time … how many scars do you have?”
He trod carefully with his questions, softening them for my benefit.
“A few. The one down my back is the worst. But at least I know how I got that one.”
Without asking, he slid his fingertips up the length of my spine and I winced.
“If Frederic wasn’t gone, I would end him myself. I would take my time.” His tone flipped to sinister and I didn’t doubt that he meant every word.
I pulled on my sweater and walked back toward the house.
“You gonna tell me what happened to you in the market?”
There it was: the first potent question of many, and I decided there and then that I would tell him. Never mind what Gabriel thought; he was obviously too busy with Hanora to be bothered. I would, however, omit the detail about Ethan. If Jonah knew there was a Vampire here he would insist on moving us on, and I wanted to connect with Ethan. We shared a history and I now had an opportunity to discover the detail firsthand. Hopefully including the part where I woke up immortal.
“I have visions of the past, memories of times gone by. They are windows into my own lives, events I can’t remember.”
“You said that the wound wouldn’t kill you again. That it was two hundred years old.”
“Sometimes when I have a vision, I don’t just watch the past. I don’t know how, but I fall back into my body and I relive it. Today, I had a memory of my first life, when I was mortal. I relived the very moment I was killed. Somehow the physical trauma transitions into my present reality, but the damage seems to recede. I feel it, but it doesn’t affect me in the here and now to the same degree. That’s why it didn’t kill me again.” I was whispering. I wasn’t sure why. It was just he and I alone.
“And you’ve lived for two hundred years?” he asked, his face absent of any emotion.
“Near enough, that’s what Gabriel tells me. When I was killed, I woke up again. Only I was different, I was changed. I became immortal, and before you ask, I don’t know why.”
Lightening to gray, the day was dawning, and I shivered. Jonah removed his jacket and secured it around me, taking the edge off the chill.
“Thanks.”
“So you knew Gabriel back then?”
“Yes. When I died he left. He thought I was mortal, finished. I found him again when I found you.” I pulled Jonah’s jacket tighter. “Every time I die, I wake up. I don’t remember anything about the past. I have some fragile recollection of who I am, who I was.… The memories, the visions are the only insight I have. Some days, they seem more of a curse than a gift.”
Today was one of those days.
“You don’t know what you are?” Jonah asked.
I felt my eyes well up. It might have been the question; it might have been my mind conjuring images of Gabriel against my will. Regardless of the situation, he always teetered on the fringes of my consciousness.
“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t need to get upset,” Jonah said, rubbing my arm with his firm hands, and I allowed him a small smile.