The Other Side Of Midnight

He looks down. “I have made sure you will be wealthy for the rest of your life. The hard part will be to never contact anyone from the past. Also really important: you must never again send your blood to any company promising to do a health check on you, or allow anyone to do a DNA test on you. The instant your details are uploaded onto anyone’s database they will be able to track you.”

I push my hair out of my face. “Where am I going?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Los… Ange… les,” I repeat slowly. “I’ve never been there.”

“You’ll be living in Los Angeles, the art city of America and with the greatest concentration of artists, but you’ll also own a pretty cottage five minutes from the beach in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.”

I push my hands through my hair. “God, I feel so lost. I can’t take any of this in. I think I’m still in shock.”

“You have two days to get used to the idea and you must never leave this house until then.”

I swing my head towards him. “What about my work at the gallery?”

“You can never go back there, Autumn.”

“It’s not a coincidence that I came to work at Larry’s gallery, is it?”

“No. I arranged it.”

“So Larry lied to me.”

“No, he didn’t. We are able to subtly hypnotize humans and compel them to do certain things without them knowing why they are doing it. It’s a form of glamor. I put the desire to come to Hunter’s Cross into your head and put hiring you into Larry’s head.”

I remember the way Larry had literally run out of the restaurant that first night. He felt so bad he couldn’t even look me in the eye the next morning.

I stare into Rocco’s beautiful eyes. “Did you never feel anything at all for me?”

His jaws clench so hard a little muscle ticks in his cheek, and he speaks, his voice strained. “Yes, of course. It is only natural.”

His answer hurt me in a way I cannot describe. I swallow hard. “Do you still love Polly?”

He turns to look at me and smiles sadly. “Polly? It's been more than two hundred and fifty years since she was mine, Autumn. For many years I lived alone and without servants in our castle. Even as it began to crumble around me I spent the nights roaming the empty corridors like a madman. Even when bats and wolves came to live within the walls I didn’t want to leave, but in the end the worst of the pain was gone, and I left Bavaria never to return. Still, she will remain in my heart until the day I am no more because of how she changed me.”

And then I do something stupid. Something really, really stupid.

Chapter 58

Autumn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X_ViIPA-Gc

-I’d do Anything For Love-

I put my wrist against his mouth, and softly say, “Go on, drink. Drink my blood.”

He leaps away from me so fast, he is a blur of movement. He stops about ten feet away, his face white and fierce, and his eyes blazing with… hunger. A hunger so feral it shocks me. He had described it, but I never imagined, never understood it could be like this. Blood lust is frightening.

He stood before me, a predator!

In a flash I feel ashamed of myself. He had turned away from his own nature because he wanted to be good, to be compassionate to my species. He chose to walk a difficult, lonely path untrodden by any of his kind. And what did I do? I gave in to a childish, petty impulse to provoke him and in doing that threw the great sacrifice he had made back in his face.

“Why did you do that?” he snarls.

I stand and take a step towards him.

Breathing hard, he takes a backward step. He is so furious I can barely recognize him. “Don’t come any closer,” he warns, his nostrils flaring.

“Rocco,” I whisper, full of remorse.

He puts a hand out, palm facing me. “Just stay there for a moment. Don’t move. Don’t say anything. Calm yourself. Your heart is beating too fast.”

It is true, in the strange silence of the room I can hear my heart racing. I freeze and try to compose myself, but I can see him losing the struggle to control himself. For hundreds of years he had held back the terrible need, and now it has come crashing into him. Reminding him it was never gone. It is as if I had put a syringe full of heroin in front of a junkie.

He takes a step towards me, but his eyes are glazed and unrecognizable. I feel a flash of fear. Instantly, I see a corresponding reaction in him. It makes his eyes glitter dangerously. He takes another step, but this time I face him bravely. I know he is not lost to me. He is mine. I will never be afraid of him. Not when I know I can reach into his head. We are connected. I didn’t have to look for him tonight. I knew exactly where he was. And I had painted the castle that was the symbol of his greatest pain.