Absolution Read online

  Guilt over the thousands of lives I have taken dizzies me if I let myself wallow in it for long.

  Only when I think about making up for my mistakes do I feel any form of release. Though I’m only atoning for my sins by refraining from killing humans, it makes me think I’m a step closer to absolution than I ever could have been if I didn’t have this link to Ellie.

  Her refusal to hunt humans, her disgust of blood consumption, has filtered through to me also. The girl is so averse to our natural food source that the idea makes me feel sick too. So much so that I haven’t sipped a single drop of human blood since I fed on Ellie, not even when she gives in to her thirst and reluctantly feeds on hospitals’ donated supply.

  Her hatred of this act, and of herself as she does it, is so intense that it reaches me through our unexplainable connection. I cringe with her as her sharp teeth pierce through the plastic bags and she sucks in the cold crimson liquid. We both shudder together afterwards.

  That’s what she has done to me.

  And I have no complaints. Honestly, I am better off living on animal blood instead, a trick I wish I could share with Ellie so she wouldn’t starve herself for weeks and suffer in the process of abstinence. She doesn’t deserve the pain, the burning that intensifies with each day she abstains. She doesn’t deserve the fate I have banished her to.

  I will never forgive myself for damning her to immortality.

  Slightly comforting is the fact that hers is the only mortal life I have claimed since I turned her into one of us, almost exactly 6 months ago. She will be the last human I kill, the last vampire I create.

  The last vampire I love.

  Love.

  Is Ellie falling in love over in London? If she is still in London… As I’ve been trying not to utilise this direct link to her, the only time I become aware of her whereabouts, her mental state, is when she feels any strong emotion.

  At first, it was impossible to block her out. So often would I be hit by the intensity with which she fumed over her mother, so many times would I feel elation as she practically stalked her biological father.

  Quickly, Ellie learned not to let her anger and obsession taint her every thought, and I became more proficient in creating a blockade in our bond. These days, the only time she breaks through the barrier is when she grudgingly satiates her thirst.

  It’s been weeks since she last fed, so I have no idea what she’s up to.

  Something tells me she’s falling for someone she has only just met, perhaps just this morning. I would have sensed it if she had met him before today. If she was becoming close to someone over a prolonged period of time.

  So, love at first sight? That would be so like Ellie! I sigh. It was bound to happen sooner or later, I just wasn’t expecting it to be so soon. For some unfathomable reason, I was secretly thinking - and if I’m really honest, hoping - that Ellie would love me.

  Can I bring myself to feel happy for her? Can I trust that she has chosen someone worthy? What kind of immortal has managed to win the heart of the Slayer-turned-vampire?

  Human.

  Sitting up straight in a flash, I wonder why the word human enters my mind. Deep down, I think I know why, but I refuse to explore the discovery. Instead, I scan my immediate area and decide that there’s no point in continuing after Kristy. She must be long gone by now. Like so many times this week, I’ll have to start tracking her from scratch.

  Not yet though. Right now, I just want to recuperate.

  It’s peaceful here in the forest, the morning sun streaming through the greenery and making my skin sparkle. I watch the beams of light shatter off my hands. It’s strangely soothing, relaxing.

  Ten minutes later, my skin has hardly warmed in the winter sunshine. Grudgingly, I urge myself to procrastinate no more and think those words. Ellie’s falling for a human. This is so like Ellie too. The girl sure can pick them! When she was human, she chose to run off with a vampire to get even with her mother.

  As a vampire, she falls in love with a human.

  It makes complete sense though. There is no way Ellie would love a fellow vampire, a monster, a demon, a killer. A blood drinker. She absolutely loathes what we are. She could never love another immortal.

  She could never love me.

  But there’s no way she could actually be with a human. She could kill him simply by kissing him, crush him whilst hugging him, and she would never be able to make love to him. The only reason it worked between us is because I have mastered the art of controlling my superior strength, and Ellie was incredibly strong for a human.

  After all, she was the Slayer.

  Besides, her human lover would eventually die. And she wouldn’t. She’d remain her perfect 17-year-old self and her man would leave her. Whenever a vampire falls for a human, he or she creates an immortal out of the object of their desires and they live happily ever after. Most of us mate for eternity. Ellie would never take that course of action though, not even if the man was ready and willing to exchange mortality for immortality.

  So, she would love him forever and be alone for eons.

  A dry smile curls my lips as I think how her fate will mirror mine exactly. But I don’t smile for long. An ache throbs in my heart, in that hole the Slayer’s blood left in me. I don’t like the idea of her being alone and heartbroken for so long.

  This notion hurts more than the fact that she will never love me.

  What pains me further is the knowledge that this is my fault. If she was still human, she could love anyone she wanted. Have the happy life she deserves. At least a good shot at it.

  Not only did I take away her life, her destiny, I also took away her right to happiness.

  Suddenly, I realise that I can fix this. Will she like it? No, but she can’t stop me from doing it anyway…

  I can’t change her back to a human, but I can change her human love into a being that can be hers forever. I may be serving penance by depriving myself of human blood, by refraining from killing, but in doing right by Ellie would I truly be paying for my crimes. Yes, I had vowed never to take another life, never create another vampire, but I’ll be doing this for Ellie.

  It can’t be a crime to give her happiness.

  Looks like I’ve made my decision so I won’t justify it further. I will go to London and change the man she loves into one of us. Ellie might not approve of my actions, but she won’t be able to turn her back on her new mate.

  One day, she’ll stop hating me for changing her. We live for so long that she might even stop hating me for killing the human in the man she loves. Will we live long enough for her to eventually feel grateful that I did what she wouldn’t have been able to? Perhaps not. But I don’t care.

  I have to do this for her.

  Chapter 20: Possessed

  No one at The System knows where I am right now. Mac and Lydia are under the impression that I’m in the US, lending an invisible hand in cleaning up after a messy mission. If in the unlikely event that either of them enquires about me, they won’t be surprised to learn that the US HQ hasn’t seen me - they’re not supposed to.

  As for Darryl, Lydia thinks he’s tracking Kristy, that the unattainable vampire has led him all the way to Australia. Actually, he is in Sydney, and I am shielding him from Lydia’s foresight, but I told our top agent to have a little holiday so I could come after Kristy instead.

  Now though, Kristy is the last thing on my mind. Ellie, and how to unite her with the man she loves, is the new mission I have assigned myself. A mission that will be much simpler and easier than the one I have abandoned for the time being. Once I pinpoint Ellie’s whereabouts, learn the identity of the individual she loves, I will get to him as soon as I can. Then, it’s just a case of using my biggest strength - my invisibility cloak, as Ellie called it - to abduct, bite, and create a vampire out of him. Simple.

  Just as I run through these plans for the hundredth time and decide that I should allow myself to finally seek Ellie out through our connection, a st
range crippling feeling knocks the breath out of me. I swear, if I wasn’t sitting down, I would have fallen again.

  This time not from pleasant loving feelings, but from sheer dread.

  Such acute fear, I choke on it.

  Of course, it’s not my own fear. I am not afraid. But Ellie is. She is absolutely terrified.

  And that horrifies me too.

  I don’t need to close my eyes, think of her, concentrate on locating her, focus on seeing the world through her eyes. I don’t need to find her. She finds me.

  She becomes me and I become her.

  I see and hear and think and feel everything she is seeing and hearing and thinking and feeling at this precise moment. Unknowingly projecting all of her on to me, Ellie momentarily possesses me, simply because she is experiencing something so intense and overwhelming that it spreads through our bond.

  Mentally and spiritually transported to where she is, I try to hold onto myself but I can’t.

  I’m gone.

  Somehow I am still sitting. I’m the only one sitting. The entire train is on its feet, slowly and determinedly converging towards us.

  Towards me.

  “Its okay, Ellie,” Aiden says to me. “Kim, Amber, and you, will be no match for them. Amber can knock them all out in one go.” He turns eagerly to his sister. “What are you waiting for?”

  “You think I haven’t been trying to send them flying backwards ever since I saw Marcus make the decision?” she retorts angrily. “It’s not working! They’re all wearing protection charms - my protection charms - as well as taking power boosters. Kim won’t be able to defeat them by herself. And Ellie…” She looks down at me despairingly.

  I know she can’t read my mind or see my future, but she obviously saw something that told her that I wasn’t going to fight these innocent people. Yes, they are innocent. Soldiers following commands from high above.

  They’re not evil.

  I can’t kill them. Because to fight them, even to defend myself, is to kill them. One punch, one kick, perhaps even a slap to their faces, will crush their bones.

  I wasn’t born to harm innocents, but to protect them.

  This instinct is so strong that I cower backwards across the seat, in fear of hurting people I shouldn’t, until I hit the window behind me. This is the last thing I should be doing.

  I know what I ought to be doing, but to do that I need the train to stop. A few more minutes…

  “It’s going to be alright, honey,” mum finally says to me. “I won’t let them touch you.”

  She takes one long stride and positions herself between me and what’s coming. She doesn’t take out any of the weaponry she brought with her, which makes me think that she really doesn’t want to kill these council members either.

  Amber and Aiden go and flank her as the ambush approaches. My hands reach towards Aiden, wanting to pull him to me. Hold him within my arms, shield him with my body. Can he fight? He has no supernatural abilities so he shouldn’t be involved in this.

  “Aiden,” I hiss, getting to my feet.

  His head turns to me immediately but quickly looks away.

  “Come and stand behind me,” I urge him desperately. “I’ll protect you.” I want to put myself between him and anything that wants to harm him.

  His reply is just the movement of his lips but I can hear it clearly. “The three of us can handle them.”

  “But these aren’t the only ones,” I argue. “There’s more.”

  They’re waiting for me.

  I need to get off this train! Then I have to run. Not as fast as I can, but as slow as I can. At human speed, if I can manage it. I’ll have to manage it! I can’t afford to be invisible. The soldiers have to see me. See me so that they can follow me. Chase me and leave behind my mother, my new friend and would-have-been-protector Amber and my… my Aiden.

  Aiden.

  Just thinking about leaving him here unprotected sends a shiver down my frame. But I can’t protect him by being here. I can only do that by leaving him.

  Leaving him so soon after finding him.

  Only by letting The Council’s fighters think that they can catch me, do I stand any chance of luring them away from Aiden, his sister, and my mum. I’m certain that every single one of those brave warriors on the train, and the ones waiting for me on the platforms in London, will come after me. Even if they wonder why I’m not running at the speeds I can achieve, they’ll know better than to think that killing me will be as easy as catching me.

  Of course I won’t let them catch me, but half of me thinks that I should let them. At the end of the day, I am a creature that shouldn’t exist. If I were to die, it would save everyone I love.

  Surely, The Council has no enmity with mum or Amber or Aiden, and once I’m gone, everything can go back to how it was. It would be as though I’d never come back home. As though I died the night Christian made me.

  I should have died the night Christian made me.

  Should I die today?

  “No,” says a voice in my head but I say, “Yes” in return. “No,” repeats that strange voice which must surely be my survival instinct, because it’s definitely not me.

  Those assassins are nearly within a yard of the front put up by the three people intent on protecting me. I don’t think my bodyguards stand a chance against this army. All three of them might die, and if The Council ordered their fighters not to kill any Council members, then mum, Aiden and Amber will still get hurt in shielding me.

  What if I stop the fight from ensuing in the first place? What if I just did The Council (and The System) a favour by ripping my own head off?

  I’m pretty sure I can manage it. While my loved ones freeze in shock and pain, the soldiers will come at my beheaded body like a swarm of bees attacking a honey spill and chop me into smithereens.

  Then they’ll set fire to the train, burning me to ashes so I can’t put myself together again. Of course, they’ll save themselves from the flames, taking mum, Aiden and Amber with them, and that will be that.

  The end of me.

  “No!” cries a voice in my head and I get the strangest feeling that it’s a man’s voice…

  It can’t be. I’m just anxious about my suicide, that’s all.

  It’s not been a second since I thought about how close the army had come to my friends and family. Thanks to our brains being able to work so fast, I have managed to plan my next - and final - step before all the humans took a breath.

  I take one last, long intake of breath myself and silently say goodbye to everyone.

  Jake. Heather. Mum. Amber.

  Aiden.

  And even Christian.

  As I prepare to cut myself off from the world, from the people who care about me, I hope they forgive me for this.

  I hope they understand I am doing this for them.

  Chapter 21: Discovery

  “NO!” I scream out loud, finally able to find my voice. “No, Ellie, no!” I shout, breathless. But she can’t hear me. By cutting herself off from the world, she has cut me off too. That’s why I am back, why I can think and speak as me again.

  She had taken me over so completely that it was a struggle to think my own thoughts. I may have managed to get a couple of pleas of “No” through to her, but I’m not surprised she didn’t detect that it was me.

  While I think all this, a small portion of my psyche tries to make sense of why Ellie is currently on a train with her mother Kim, the witch Amber, and… Aiden, the witch’s elder brother. All three of these individuals are part of The Council, one of the two major organisations I am cloaking Ellie from.

  How did they find her?

  And if Ellie sought them out, how was she visible to them while she was still under my veil?

  Though I’d initially hidden her from the vision and awareness of almost every vampire in the world - in other words, everyone I myself was concealed from - I had to make a few alterations soon after. For some reason, it weakened me and my magic
cloak if I hid us both from as many beings as I was. Exhausted from maintaining the blanket of secrecy over us, I would also get something close to headaches.

  And vampires don’t get headaches!

  It was as though I was stretching my shield, and there was only so much distance it could cover. Eventually, I had to pull it back so it was just concealing us from the most important individuals and groups - The Council and The System (bar Mac, Lydia and a few others, but only when necessary). Only then did I feel comfortable.

  So how were these three Council members and the soldiers able to see Ellie?

  Fleetingly, I wonder whether the army isn’t actually part of The Council. Maybe they’ve hired help from outside? I did think it strange that there were so many of those assassins. The Council had never been much of a challenge for us in terms of numbers. As for Kim and the annoying siblings, had they left their employers? It can’t be.

  The Council needs all three of them.

  They definitely wouldn’t let Amber leave; she is their strongest weapon.

  After Ellie that is. And they want to eliminate her?

  Unable to make sense of any of this, I shake my head and decide it doesn’t really matter how it happened. They’ve seen Ellie, they’re with her now and she’s about to…

  Closing my eyes, aiming to calm my ragged breathing, I pray that Ellie hasn’t taken her own life. But I could feel how unwavering her resolve was. How strongly she believed in what she was about to do. How determined she was.

  Has she done it?

  “I sure hope not,” laughs a chillingly unfamiliar voice.

  But I know exactly who it is. This alluring, sweet voice can only belong to a vampire.

  “Kristy.” The word rips out of my mouth before I can stop it and is answered by a childish giggle. The sound tells me exactly where she is and I am facing her before the second is over.

  Wearing an ankle-length black fitted winter coat, the incredibly tall and slim female is a hundred yards away from me, smiling as though she is amused. Her shoulder-length sleek black hair is darker than her coat, making her complexion even more strikingly white. Ellie would think her beautiful, if a little too skinny, but to me, Kristy is just another pale-faced immortal.