Absolution Read online

  In the middle of twisting the doorknob, Ellie turned to see what was so amusing.

  So I told her. “I can catch you with my eyes closed.” Sniggering, I ran my fingers through my short black hair. She did that Whatever! head-shake that she likes to do and twisted back around.

  My mind raced though I knew it had no reason to. She wasn’t going to escape, even if she had opened the door. And if she did make it out the flat, I could easily bring her back inside. So why was I fearing that I might not finish it tonight? I had to. If she got away, my cover would be blown. This was my last chance to do it, and do it virtually undetected by The Council.

  She couldn’t run from me again, not tonight.

  Not before I got to kiss her lips.

  What?

  Acting on instinct and without answering my own confused enquiry as to why I was suddenly craving to touch my lips to hers, I went up behind her and pushed the door shut with one hand. Putting my hands on her waist, I pulled her around to face me. My arms wrapped all the way around her and I felt how hot her body was compared to every other being I had ever held.

  Then I realised I’d acted blindingly fast, my moves hadn’t lasted a heartbeat’s length. I should have been more careful with the speed, I moaned to myself as I saw her eyes close from dizziness, her head loll back a tiny bit. She felt a little limp in my arms too. Holding her tighter to me, I pressed us against the door so she was no longer sagging in either direction.

  I swear I don’t know why I ached to protect her.

  She had to be alright, I prayed internally. She couldn’t have been hurt by that. One half of my head asked why on earth I was worrying about what my speedy actions had done to her when I was going to kill her in the next few seconds.

  I am, aren’t I?

  Her eyes remained shut but I felt her warm breath on my face, lingering around my neck. Leaning close to her ear, I said, “Open your eyes.”

  Taking a deep breath, inhaling my scent and seemingly liking it, Ellie moved her head so it was upright again. She seemed like she could stand on her own two feet without my support. Unwrapping my arms from around her, I braced them against the door on either side of her, my face automatically lowering to her level.

  “How d-did you do that?” she asked, eyes finally opening.

  “Do what?”

  “Oh, I’m not in the mood for this.” Her words and tone did not convey that sentiment however.

  “From the extremely fast beating of your heart, the rushing of blood through your veins, the ringing in your ears, and from your ragged inhaling and exhaling, I think you are in the mood, Ellie.”

  “Its fear, you idiot,” she snapped.

  “Of course you’re scared. But that goes away very quickly,” I assured her. I would kill her very quickly. So fast that she wouldn’t even feel it. Instant death. I did not wish to cause her the kind of suffering I had planned initially.

  I did not wish to kill either.

  I desired something else of her and it terrified me to let myself entertain the thought.

  “Listen, Christian,” Ellie pleaded shakily. “Not now okay, not tonight.”

  Those words of hers took away my fear. She wants me. Probably in the same way I wanted her. Suddenly. Irrationally. Without knowing why.

  “You want to wait?” I knew she did not want to wait at all so I chuckled.

  Everything about her body, her face, her eyes, they were now screaming at me to touch her. Kiss her. Venom began to flow in my mouth, welled like tears in my eyes, at the prospect of touching my cold mouth to her warm lips.

  They were practically burning for me to do so.

  “Yes,” she blurted out. “I mean, no. I mean, I don’t know.” She did know. If I knew then of course she knew that she wanted me right now and not later. After a few silent, contemplative moments, she gasped the words, “Please, let me go.”

  While I stared intently at her, the venom in my eyes dissolved my contact lenses completely. Regarding her with my glinting red eyes, I said, “One kiss.” Or rather, I pleaded. It felt like I was begging her for a kiss. “If I let you go now,” I whispered close to her face, “you will never let yourself be alone with me again and I will never know what it’s like to kiss you. And I would really like to know.”

  I really, really wanted to know.

  I couldn’t believe what I was most afraid of - not being able to kiss her if I let her walk away from here. I should have been worried about another failed attempt at killing her when I had the chance. I should have been anxious about her mother and her trackers finding out about me. I should have been nervous about what Lydia and Mac would do when they found out I had her in the apartment and let her go without so much a scratch on her beautiful soft skin.

  Beautiful, I thought, gazing at her face as she gazed curiously at mine. More specifically, at my brilliant red eyes. Before she made any sense of how my eyes had gone from dark purple to red, I leaned in and kissed her.

  Chapter 13: Light

  She gasped as my lips met hers and I thought I’d not been as gentle with her as I should have been. I pulled back a little. She was a human after all, and I was a million times stronger. I could crush her lips with mine, quite literally.

  But then she tentatively kissed my upper lip and I realised she hadn’t been hurt at all - she had simply been surprised by the temperature of my icy skin. Quickly though, Ellie became accustomed to it and even warmed my lips with hers. Kissing me back eagerly, her fingers interlocked around my neck.

  She truly wanted me.

  The thought thrilled me to my core.

  Twice, she tried to brush my tongue with hers but I kept mine as far back in my mouth as I could, protecting her from the venom it was coated in. To ensure her lips and tongue came nowhere near my sharp, venomous teeth, I took full control of the kiss, like taking the lead with a dance partner. It was incredibly difficult to maintain this restraint. To not hold her tighter than I was. To hold back when I wanted to let go.

  But my desire to cause her no harm seemed to overpower everything else.

  We kissed for what felt like hours. At times I felt like a novice, because, after becoming a vampire, I’d never kissed a human and the temperature and texture of her lips, her mouth, was so different to what I was used to.

  But it felt so good.

  The softness, the plumpness, the give of her skin. And the warmth, it seeped through my diamond hard skin. The heat of her body warmed mine.

  I almost felt human again.

  When her hands traced the line of my spine down to the bottom of my T-shirt, gently pulling it up, my mouth stopped working against hers for the briefest of moments. Opening my eyes, I saw her closed lids, lost in the passion, as she began to yank my shirt up slowly.

  With absolute certainty that she was mine, my hands took on a life of their own and started flying around her, undressing her in less than a second and taking her to the bed the next instant. I undressed just as fast but let her pull my T-shirt over my head as she was still in the middle of trying to take it off.

  Eyes still closed, lips still kissing mine, she was completely unaware of what I’d just done. What I shouldn’t have done. Not that fast anyway. We had been airborne, as I leaped from the doorstep to the bed with Ellie in my arms. What if she noticed, remembered later what she had barely acknowledged in the heat of the moment? How would I explain? And even if I could, could I trust her to not tell anyone, particularly her mother?

  Then a little voice spoke in my mind. You’re not going to let her go, are you?

  I don’t know, I answered.

  I should know! I reprimanded myself. And I should know that of course I wasn’t letting her leave this room alive. Before I could scold myself further, Ellie turned away from the kiss, her cheek pressing against the pillow.

  “Christian,” she breathed. “I’m not… I can’t… I don’t…”

  As she stuttered nervously, I got that feeling again, that if I still had a heart that worked,
it would have reacted to what she was trying to say. She didn’t want me anymore. Or wasn’t ready to do what we were very close to doing.

  Stupidly, I thought that the reaction of my heart would have been to break.

  Heartbroken because she wanted to stop? Really? I shook my head disapprovingly at that absurd thought and immediately realised what it would look like to Ellie. She’d think I was objecting to her attempts at holding back.

  Thankfully, she hadn’t seen this.

  “I’ve never…” She faced me, her cheeks flaming red. “Well, I’m not… this will be my… first time…” She turned her head away again, embarrassed. “If I do anything wrong then I’m… sorry?”

  “You don’t have to say sorry,” I assured her, my voice a soft whisper.

  “Will you tell me if I don’t… get it right?” she asked awkwardly.

  It thrilled me that she wasn’t backing out. At the same time, the depth of the relief I felt over this concerned me.

  Turning to me again, she waited for my answer in self-conscious silence. I felt like telling her that this would be my first time too… with a human, after becoming a vampire.

  Suddenly, I was just as nervous as she looked.

  Our first kiss had been intoxicating, lifting us up from reality, making us forget ourselves. And now, as we lay naked in bed, the gravity of the situation dawned on us. While she worried about her first time with someone more experienced than her, I asked myself if I really had the strength to control myself, be gentle with her, not hurt her in the process of loving her.

  You’re going to kill her anyway, right? the little voice in my head tried to confirm.

  This time I retorted with the words, Yes, but not like that! Not before or during, but after I knew what it was like to be with her. I wanted her so bad that I ached to kiss her again, feel her body close to me.

  The ache was all in my head of course, but it was there.

  *

  An odd sort of clarity engulfed me in the final moments of our union. I was submerged into blinding white light. I’d never experienced that before, whatever it was. The voice that had invaded my mind earlier, spoke again. The words stunned me to my core. The light flashed inside me, reaching the area where my heart used to beat but now sat like a frozen stone.

  A few moments later, I heard Ellie say something. From her tone, I suspected she was repeating herself. I forced myself to turn away from the blinding white light in my head to understand what she was asking me. I was still on top of her, my head buried in the bend of shoulders, the fragrance of her hair smothering me, my elbows resting on either side of her.

  “Was it okay?” she repeated.

  Realising exactly what she was enquiring about, I lifted my head to face her and nodded.

  She gave me a small, shy smile. “I’m so relieved because I… that was… amazing.” She blushed deeply. “I was afraid I might ruin it for you…”

  It was clear she had indeed been afraid and extremely nervous. I didn’t notice any of this during the time. She didn’t do anything wrong. She did everything right. She was… “Perfect,” I finished that thought out loud. She frowned, confused because she hadn’t heard the beginning of that sentence. So I clarified. “You were wonderfully perfect Ellie.” I don’t know why those words were a whisper, why I swallowed. “Wonderful and perfect.”

  Before she could respond with words, though her lips twitched and the heat of her body increased, I began repeating what that voice had said to me in the blinding whiteness. I spoke so fast that to her, it sounded like a low buzzing sound, as though I was making a silly noise for a short second.

  But I was telling her the truth. I had to tell her.

  “You are my enemy Ellie. You will be the end of me, my kind, and I can’t let you do that. So I can’t let you leave this room alive. But I can’t be the end of you. I have no choice but to do what I will do next. I’m sorry but I can’t let you live. Forgive me.”

  “What was that?” she chuckled when the short buzzing ceased.

  “Moan of desire,” I answered dryly.

  She laughed. “You made a few strange noises when we were… sort of like growling.”

  I tried not to think about the noises she’d made, mostly how she said my name. It sounded so beautiful. I would never hear such sounds again.

  If I had a heart, it really would have broken at this truth.

  “What’s wrong?” Ellie asked, concerned.

  “Just wondering what you’d say if I kissed you again.” I shrugged sombrely.

  “Now you ask permission?” She grinned, rolling her eyes.

  As her gaze settled on me again, I held it for what felt like a long time. She went from being amused to curious to confused to hungry. For a kiss. Yes, I was going to kiss her.

  Then I was going to bite her.

  Chapter 14: Soul

  Slowly, and with what felt like a heavy, ice-cold heart, I lowered my mouth to hers. Knowing that this was the last time I could do this, I kissed her slowly, deeply. I even let her tongue brush against mine for the tiniest second when she reached for it before withdrawing from her lips completely. Mentally shaking my head at how I was protecting her tongue from my venom when it would soon enter her entire system, I kissed the corner of her mouth, her jaw, under her chin, her throat and then moved to the side of her neck.

  The instant my teeth punctured her skin, the venom fired into her body. I almost felt stung by the jerking movements her limbs made at the pain of being bitten and then poisoned.

  Just as instantly, she went limp. The venom has an incapacitating effect at the same time that it burns your veins.

  Because I was focusing on her reactions, I noticed the burning of my own lips a little too late. I should have just bitten her and removed my lips immediately. But they had remained in place. It felt like my lips were on fire. When I sunk my teeth into her, Ellie’s blood had gushed out and coated my lips. Some of it washed over my teeth and welled in the space around them.

  “Aargh!” I growled at the pain and also the pleasure.

  Her blood was like liquid fire and also like liquid bliss. It tasted so sweet. Sweeter than any human I’d ever fed on. I swallowed some of it and it incinerated my mouth and throat as it went.

  But it tasted so good.

  Almost as good as the feeling I got when I made love to Ellie.

  Instinct took over and I began to drink.

  Even though I knew it would kill me.

  I couldn’t help myself; she was just too delicious to describe. I had only bitten her to save her from her end, but I was ending her to feed myself.

  Saving her was the last thing on my priority list at that moment.

  Far, far, far behind the top priority: drinking her.

  The demon inside us takes over when we eat. The beast, the monster, controls our every thought and action. The animal, the predator within becomes us and we lose ourselves to the moment. The tastier the blood, the hungrier we become for more. If there are other humans nearby, we’ll take them too.

  It’s like we’re possessed.

  As I sucked the poison blood and let it burn it’s way down my throat, I thought it was so worth it. It was worth deciding not to kill her. Worth deciding to turn her into an immortal. Worth letting the vampire in me feast on her.

  Her blood was worth dying for.

  When I gave my all into furiously dragging the red nectar to my mouth, Ellie sighed. It was a content sound, similar to ones she’d let out when we slept together. That reminded me of how content I’d been in her arms. How wonderful it was when she curved her arms around me. How lovely her soft warm skin felt under my fingers. She was truly stunning.

  I couldn’t get enough of her.

  And now I would never have anything of hers. She would be gone. I would be her killer. Her end, something I thought right down to my core I could never be.

  Silly, I know, but for some reason I decided that the bright light that had filled me earlier was something clos
e to my… soul? It had filtered right down to my chest and I imagined it melting my ice-cold heart, bringing it back to life. If it wasn’t my soul, it was definitely something and it was inside me, right where my heart is.

  My heart didn’t want to destroy Ellie.

  When she sighed again, I realised I was still feeding on her, my reflexes taking over while I was lost in thought. I wanted to see her face, the expression on it. I’d repeatedly fantasised about the look she would wear on her baby-face while I drank her. Now though, I just couldn’t stop from sucking on her neck. The monster was controlling that side of me and as I thought about regaining control, pushing the beast aside, I moaned internally at having to give up such heavenly blood.

  That’s when I hated myself for what I was doing to her, even though she seemed to be enjoying it. I knew she was still burning from my venom. Just like I was burning from her poison. I deserved it. Deserved to burn with her.

  But if I kept drinking her, both of us would die.

  If I stopped, she would become the vampire I’d intended to make her and I would die.

  She would be the end of me.

  Not necessarily, the strange voice in my mind informed me and I recalled what else it had said when I was drowning in the blinding light. Bite her once and cough out any blood that makes it down your throat, it had instructed. Yes, that was the plan but I wasn’t favouring it so much anymore. I wanted to die for taking away her humanity, her soul.

  For taking her away from me.

  When she became a vampire, she couldn’t stay with me, I couldn’t stay with her.

  The next second, I growled in true agony. Survival instincts kicked in and I jerked away from her, rolling onto my side of the bed. The flames I had been happily enduring to savour the taste of her delightful blood exploded like a bomb inside me. Somehow, it felt like I had heartburn.

  My chest was on fire.

  My heart was on fire.

  I pushed my cold hands to the spot where the heat was most acute but it didn’t lessen anything. Rolling off the bed, I landed on the floor and crawled into a ball, trying not to scream.