Intertwined

CHAPTER 21

It was after Aden finished his nightly chores that he noticed his eyes were shutting down, narrowing his field of vision until he saw only slivers of light. Unsure what was happening, he holed up in his bedroom. He couldn’t lock the door because, as of today, Shannon was his new roommate. Apparently Ozzie had been caught sneaking drugs into Aden’s room earlier that day (just as Aden had feared).

For once, luck had been on his side and Dan had witnessed what was happening from outside the window. Or maybe it had been an aftereffect of his time traveling. Either way, the police had come out and carted Ozzie off. He was currently being held in a detention center and would not be returning to the ranch.

That eliminated one of Aden’s worries.

Dan had noticed the new friendship between Aden and Shannon and, in an apparent effort to encourage it, had moved Shannon into Aden’s room. It was weird, no longer being alone at the ranch. Even weirder, Brian, Terry, Ryder and Seth had been nice to him all day. Without Ozzie’s influence, they now seemed to consider him one of their own.

Aden felt as if he’d somehow ended up in a new dimension, or an alternate world.

He stumbled his way to the bed, the bottom bunk, and sprawled out. What was wrong with him? Was he going blind? If so, why? Even as he wondered, what little light he could see was disappearing, leaving only shrouding black.

“What’s wrong with me?” he muttered, panicking.

Victoria’s blood, maybe, Eve said.

She did warn you there would be complications, Caleb said. Then he whistled. God, she’s hot. When are you going to kiss her again?

Victoria’s blood. Of course. Relief sparked inside him, only to be quickly doused. A dull ache sprang to life in his head, knocking against his temples. How long would the pain and blindness last?

The door squeaked open, then closed. Footsteps shuffled, clothes rustled.

“You okay, man?” Shannon asked. His voice was rough, his throat still clearly raw. “You look awful.”

He hadn’t stuttered, even a little. Perhaps the lack of Ozzie’s constant teasing and the confidence of knowing he had real friends had had an impact.

“Not doing so well.” Aden could feel his friend’s body heat, and knew he was close. “Are we alone?”

“Yes.”

If Victoria came over—where was she? What was she doing? — he wanted to be ready. Well, as ready as a guy in his condition could be.

“The window…girl…”

“Say no more. I’ll leave it unlocked.”

A moan escaped him as the ache in his head mutated into a sharp throb, pounding against every inch of his skull like a battering ram, determined to split it open. He almost hoped it did. Then the pain could escape. Pain so intense even his companions felt it, moaning along with him.

Just when he thought he could stand it no longer, multihued pinpricks of light suddenly flared—behind his eyes. A scene began to take shape: a darkened alleyway, softly lit by the streetlights beyond it. Every so often a car would pass the alley, but hidden as he was, he was safe from observation. He was glad. His keen sense of smell let him know that no one besides him and his meal were present, no one could watch what he was about to do, and that was good, he thought, very good. Only, it wasn’t his thought. It didn’t spring from his mind. It was a little desperate, a lot hungry. Even shamed.

He was standing behind a man, a man who appeared to be of average height, and yet Aden was at eye level instead of towering over him. He had one pale, dainty hand on the guy’s head, angling it to the side, the other on the guy’s shoulder, holding him steady.

Pale? Dainty? Those were not his hands, yet they were extensions of his body. He glanced down. Nope. Not his body, either. This one wore a black robe and had sweet curves.

Victoria, he realized. He must be living this scene through Victoria’s eyes. Was it happening now? Or had it happened earlier? Was it a memory?

“You are a naughty boy,” Aden said, but it wasn’t his voice. It was Victoria’s. Never had he heard such a cold, unrelenting tone. He could feel her fury, could still taste her consuming hunger, yet she gave neither away.

Have to stay strong, she was thinking. Have to protect Aden, Riley and Mary Ann. My friends. My only friends. Oh, God. When Aden learns about Dmitri…don’t think about that right now. Eat.

Aden experienced a jolt. Dmitri, the boy who had come to Aden’s window, who had watched him with Victoria, who had scared Victoria enough to send her fleeing. His hands fisted the cotton beneath him.

“You hit your wife and your son, and you think yourself so superior,” she sneered. “When the truth is you’re really just a sniveling coward who deserves to die in this urine-scented alley.”

The man trembled. She’d already commanded his lips to remain sealed, his voice box to cease working, so he couldn’t talk, couldn’t even whimper.

“But I won’t kill you. That would be too easy. Now you’ll get to live with the knowledge that you were bested by a little girl.” She laughed cruelly. “A little girl who will hunt you down if ever you touch your wife and child in anger again. And if you think I will not know, think again. I saw what you did to them only this morning, didn’t I?”

The man’s trembling increased.

Having made her point, Victoria savagely bit into his neck. There was nothing slow and gentle about it, as she’d done to Aden. She dug her fangs deep, hitting tendon. The man’s body jerked, his muscles spasmed. She was careful not to allow any of her saliva to seep into his vein, which would have made the experience better for him. It would have drugged him, as Aden had felt drugged.

The metallic smell of blood saturated the air, and Aden breathed it in deeply, exactly as Victoria was doing. She loved it, her hunger luxuriating in it, and he found that through her senses, he loved it too. His mouth was watering, his throat swelling with need.

Why can’t I change their natures? Why can I only play with their memories? What good do I do? On and on she drank, until the man’s legs buckled. That’s when the direction of her thoughts changed. Thank God Aden isn’t here. I’m an animal, an animal with blood all over her face.

Her teeth pulled free, and she released him. He fell to the pavement, his head knocking against the Dumpster in front of him.

Victoria bent and cupped his chin in her hands. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, choppy. Blood dripped from two puncture wounds in his neck.

“You will not remember me or what I did and said to you. You will remember only the fear you felt at my words.” And maybe, just maybe, that fear would actually spur him to change his ways. Maybe not. Either way, she’d done all she could. Except kill him, and that she was forbidden to do.

One did not go against her father’s laws. The first time she’d accidentally killed, she’d been warned. The next and final time—for she’d learned her lesson well—she’d been flogged with a whip laced with je la nune, the substance in her ring.

She opened that ring now, dipped a finger inside and pressed her nail against her fingertip. Instantly her skin sizzled open, creating a pinprick wound. The burn…it rushed through every part of her, blistering, leaving her gasping and out of breath.

Aden cried out, feeling it himself.

Twice she’d done that for him, first to show him that she could and then to feed him her blood, yet she’d never betrayed the brutality of her pain. Because she hadn’t wanted him to feel guilty, he realized. Not when she already felt so undeserving of him.

He shook his head in wonder.

Not wanting to put her mouth on the man again and lick him to health, she placed a drop of her blood on each of the punctures. Flesh began to weave back together, pink and healthy as it closed the wounds, leaving no trace of injury. She stood, hunger assuaged, body strong—fury renewed. She hated relying on the depraved for her survival, but preferred them to the innocent and purposely sought them out.

Never again, Aden thought. He would make himself and his blood readily available to her. She would drink from no one but him. He would hide the wounds so that no one saw them or she would heal them. But either way, she wasn’t hurting herself like that again.

“Better?” a deep voice asked from behind her.

Slowly she spun. Her gaze lifted and Dmitri came into view. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his massive chest. At least six-foot-four, he towered over Victoria. Blond hair was smoothed back from his perfect face. His pale skin seemed to glow. But Aden knew all that beauty hid a monster.

She wiped her face with the back of her wrist and nodded. “You need to return to the house,” she said, giving the falling moon a pointed glance. “You have a long run and morning is fast approaching.”

Lips cocked in a fond smile, he straightened and closed the distance between them. He reached out and wiped a smear of blood from her chin. She turned her head, dislodging his touch, and his smile flipped into a frown. “From now on, you’re supposed to go where I go. That means you return home with me.”

Control your anger. Do not challenge him. She smiled sweetly. “Every time you force my hand, I only hate you more.”

His eyes narrowed. “Resisting me is pointless, princess.”

“Actually, it’s not. Anything that keeps you away from me serves a very important purpose.”

A red glow seeped into the darkness of his eyes. “This is about the boy, isn’t it?”

She raised her chin to hide her tremor of fear. “This is about you and the fact that I want nothing to do with you.”

Faster than the eye—even her eye—could see, he leaned down, placing them nose to nose. “I am everything you need. Strong, capable.”

“You are just like my father,” she countered, refusing to back down. “You see others’ spirit as an insult to your prowess. You rule with an iron fist, you punish indiscriminately.”

He waved a dismissing hand. “Without order, there would be chaos.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Is that what the boy offers you? Chaos? I am not as stupid as you must think. I know you want him.” He wrapped his hands around her forearms and shook her. “You will not be returning to that mortal school, princess. I forbid it.”

Control, control, control. “That is not for you to decide.”

“It should be.” He gave her one final shake, then released her, doing his best to appear unaffected. “One day, it will be.”

“But for now, it isn’t.” She couldn’t stop her smile. Putting the bane of her existence in his place was like finding a chalice that never ran out of blood. “You are still answerable to my father.”

He bared his sharp teeth in a scowl. His fangs were so long they cut into his bottom lip. “That will not always be the case.”

“That sounds like a threat. You know the penalty for that, yes? Even for you, a prince in your own right.”

Dmitri stared down at her for a long while. Finally, he said, “Go. Have your fun. Enjoy your chaos. It will end soon whether you want it to or not.”

Victoria remained in place as he stalked away, breathing in the night to calm herself. Finally, when he disappeared, she leapt into motion, racing, the wind in her hair, free to be herself, to enjoy. Buildings whizzed past her, then trees. On and on she traveled, worries falling away from her as the leaves fell from their branches. The scents of the night drifted to Aden’s nose, dew and dirt and animal.

Only when the D and M came into view did she slow. There, up ahead, was his window. Open for her. Two heartbeats were beyond it. She recognized both: Aden’s, a little faster than normal, and Shannon’s, slow and steady. One was lost in a vision, she would bet, the other sleeping peacefully.

Almost there…She glided past the glass.

Warm hands banded around Aden’s shoulders and shook him. He blinked open his eyes, surprised and disappointed to find the bedroom coming into focus. Even though he should be relieved his blindness had ended, he wasn’t ready to leave Victoria’s head. He marveled anew at her strength. She had lived through that, had stood toe to toe with Dmitri and hadn’t backed down.

Aden had wanted to leap between them, throw the vampire male to the ground and cart Victoria away.

“Aden,” she whispered.

Like the first time he’d seen her, she hovered over him, hair cascading around his face and enclosing them in a dark curtain. Unable to stop himself, he reached up and traced a finger over her cheek. She closed her eyes, black lashes casting shadows over her cheeks.

“Shannon is—”

“Sleeping,” she told him.

Yes, he’d known that. Because of Victoria, he’d even sensed his friend’s heartbeat for a moment. “Thank you. For everything.”

She regarded him, unsure, but she didn’t pull from his touch. “What did you see?”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “You, feeding. You and Dmitri talking.”

“Everything, then.” She sighed. “You’re probably wondering how that’s possible.”

He nodded.

“Once a vampire ingests human blood, it enters our system and…transforms, I guess is the word. It becomes alive with all that we are. Our thoughts, our emotions, our very essence. The small portion I gave you healed your injuries, but it also linked you to my mind.”

“Will I be able to see things through your eyes again?”

“I don’t know.” A butterfly touch caressed the side of his now healed eye. He felt the fire of her skin and loved it. “While I’ve heard of a few others doing so, I’ve never shared my blood with another. Well, I do share droplets to close the puncture wounds, as I told you, but because it isn’t ingested, the humans never link to me.”

So she’d given him what she’d never given another. His love for her grew, spread. “Who is Dmitri to you?” The guy had spoken as if he owned her, and that had burned Aden up inside.

Her gaze lowered to his chest, and her fingers soon followed, playing over him. “He is someone I despise very much. Someone I—” Her ears perked and she straightened. “Riley is here. His heart is racing.” Her brow furrowed, her head tilted and she frowned. “He needs us right away.”

Aden rose without hesitation and glanced down at himself. He was dressed in the clothes he’d worn all day, wrinkled and dirty from his work in the barn. “I need five minutes.”

“Very well. He says we will be gone all weekend and has even ensured no one will miss us,” Victoria said. “Pack a bag and I will take care of Dan and the boys. They’ll never know you left. I’ll meet you outside.” With that, she was off.

He showered quickly, dressed and packed a bag as she’d suggested, throwing in a pair of jeans, a few T-shirts, his toothbrush and toothpaste. Bad breath was not something he wanted to have while around Victoria. Already her senses were better than most.

As promised, she was waiting for him outside. Wet as his hair was, the cool night air gave him a chill and he had to wrap an arm around her to warm back up.

Riley and Mary Ann had a new, probably stolen sedan parked about a half mile from the ranch. Riley stood outside it, tugging a shirt over his head when they emerged from the shadows.

“Get in,” the shape-shifter said. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.” He slipped into the driver’s seat, and Mary Ann leaned into him, head remaining buried in a notebook.

Aden and Victoria claimed the back. Victoria rested her head against his shoulder. Not because she was sleepy—Aden hadn’t sensed fatigue in her and wasn’t sure she even needed rest—but simply to be near him. He was glad. A part of him feared he could lose her any moment, that someone—Dmitri perhaps—would rip her away from him and he’d never see her again. Did she fear the same thing?

“We won’t be parted,” he assured them both and she nodded.

We would never let that happen, Julian said.

Elijah sighed. As if we could stop it. From the very beginning, I warned you bad things would happen if you followed Mary Ann.

Yes, he had. Aden had run full speed ahead anyway, and he still couldn’t regret it.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“I’ll let Mary Ann tell you,” Riley said.

Mary Ann just mumbled something unintelligible under her breath and kept reading.

Aden let it drop, not wanting to interrupt whatever had the girl so entranced. He soon regretted the decision, though. A long while passed in silence, Mary Ann never looking up from that book, Riley concentrating on the road and Victoria lost in thought. Curiosity pounded him.

Aden closed his eyes. With as little rest as he’d gotten lately, his body constantly wired and ready to fight, a nap might do him good. In and out he breathed, forcing the tension to leave him with every exhalation.

After a while, he thought he heard Riley say softly, “You have to tell him, Vic.”

“I will,” Victoria replied just as softly, her words barely audible. “And don’t call me that.”

Tell him what? He waited for their conversation to continue, but it never did. “So what’s going on?” he asked, straightening. Victoria jumped, hand fluttering over her heart.

“Oh my God,” Mary Ann said, preventing the others from replying.

“What?” they all asked in unison.

Mary Ann turned and faced him, watery eyes rimmed with red. “You’re not going to believe this. Our mothers—wait.” She rubbed at her temples. “I think I need to start at the beginning. Otherwise, you’ll never believe me. First, our birth certificates came, and it turns out I have two moms. The one who died after giving birth to me and the one who raised me. Second…” She showed Aden the two birth certificates. His eyes widened as he noted their matching birthdays and the exact place of their birth.

“What does it mean?” he asked. “About you and me?”

Her gaze was solemn. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. All I know right now is that my mother, my real mother, could time travel like you until she got pregnant with me, and that she lived next door to yours. Look here.” She held up the certificates again and pointed to their addresses. “I missed it the first few glances because I was so hung up on our birth date and the hospital thing. Actually, I don’t think I would have realized it at all if not for my mother’s journal.

“In one passage, she talked about her neighbor Paula, who was pregnant, as well, only two weeks ahead of her. She talked about how she’d felt calmer when she was around Paula, after an initial creep-out—her words, not mine—so she talked my dad into giving up their apartment and renting the house next door to Paula. But the more advanced her and Paula’s pregnancies became, the more the creep-out feeling returned until they stopped hanging out. She said it became painful for her to be near the woman. Aden, your mother’s name is Paula. They were pregnant with us.”

What did it mean that their mothers had lived next to each other, felt drawn to each other? Enough to have their children on the same day? What did it mean that it had become painful for them to be around each other?

So your parents lived next to each other, and you were born on the same day, Elijah said, and in the same place. There was something in his tone, something both hard and soft that Aden couldn’t identify. Were they on the same wavelength? And you can now do what her mother used to do, what Mary Ann stopped her mother from doing. What she stops you from being able to do.

Maybe not. “What are you saying?” he demanded.

Everyone in the car eyed him strangely.

“Give me a minute,” he said. Their brows remained puckered, but they nodded. He closed his eyes, concentrating only on the people inside his head. “Elijah?”

Think about it, about the similarities.

Similarities. Aden’s mom had calmed Mary Ann’s mom. Mary Ann now stopped Aden. But the fact that Aden could do so, the fact that he possessed the same ability…Dear God.

Eve gasped. I’ve connected the dots. You can’t mean—

I do, Elijah replied flatly.

A tremor moved through Aden. The thought was surreal and wild. Could it be true, though?

“You’ve felt connected to her since the beginning, Eve,” he said.

Yes, I have, but that doesn’t mean what you’re thinking.

“What if I did indeed draw you into my head the day of my birth? We agree you’re human souls without bodies of your own. What if you’re actually ghosts? What if you died the day of my birth, in the hospital I was in? What if you, Eve, really are Mary Ann’s—

I can’t be her mother! I just can’t. I would remember my own child.

And there it was. Out in the open. Eve might very well be Mary Ann’s mother.

“Had you remained outside my body, yes, you might have. But you didn’t. You were sucked into me, or maybe even forced yourself into me for whatever reason, your memories washed. Probably because I was just an infant and my mind wasn’t capable of containing or processing four full lifetimes.”

No, she said on a trembling breath. No. There’s just no way.

He didn’t give up. Now that the idea had been planted, he couldn’t. “That would explain why I’ve wanted to hug her, why she’s wanted to hug me. I think you sensed each other on a soul-deep level.”

“What are you saying, Aden?” Mary Ann’s voice reached him from the darkness, trembling and unsure.

Just like that, another realization slammed into Aden. If the souls were indeed confused ghosts, then he had only to help them to free them. He had only to help them do the one thing they regretted not being able to do. Like John, they would then float away, presumably to the hereafter. They wouldn’t get bodies of their own, but at least they would have peace.

Elijah had already predicted it. One of his companions would soon go free. Which meant, one of his companions was about to have their last wish granted. As motherly as she was, would Eve’s last regret have been not seeing her daughter? Not talking with her, not holding her? Would that be what she’d craved above all else?

There was only one way to find out…

“Pull over, Riley. I think it’s time for Mary Ann to meet her mother.”