The Heart's Ashes
Page 56

I loved how he could let all his predatory instincts go, and just rest, as peaceful and relaxed as any human—beside me, with me. I wanted to wake him, but also wanted to watch him sleep.
Emily and Mike were already up. I could hear them talking in the kitchen, quiet, but in the still of the morning, it sounded like they were standing right in my room.
Another wave of morning sleepiness swept over me. I rolled back from David, and as I wiped a hand across my mouth, stopped dead with a feeling of dread when the tiny hairs on my lip pulled against the dried, crusted blood there.
I felt around my sheets, lifting them off my body, gasping at the sight. Nothing had escaped the vestiges of our shared feast last night—not my brand new, favourite sheets, not my chest, my arms, even the ends of my hair were all stuck together. I gently lifted the sheet away from David’s chest and covered my mouth immediately, trying not to laugh. My lips and face, where I slept against him all morning, had left a wide smear across his chest; his shoulder was bloodied and even his hair was red-tipped.
My grandmother’s mirror across the room did not spare me from the sight of myself. I reached up and instantly started trying to rub away the leftovers on my face. It was hard to tell whose blood was whose, but I knew, as I looked down at my other hand on the mattress, that the pink, airbrushed look around the dark brown stain at my fingertips, was mine. I remember that one.
In the mirror, looking at the long brown hair framing the pale, blood-covered face of the girl sitting next to the ultimately still guy in her bed, it looked like the set of a badly done, over-dramatised horror film. I guess those blood-bath scenes really do look that overdone.
The chuckle of my self-amusement stopped short at the sound of my doorhandle, grating in a turn; I clutched the red and white sheet to my chest, holding a hand out as my eyes met with the whitewash fear in Emily’s. “Shh. Em—” I pleaded, but she fell against the wall, screaming.
David jolted upright, and with wide eyes, turned his head slowly to look at me. “Shit.”
“What the hell’s going on?” Mike called, his voice moving with the speed of his feet, down the hall.
Oh no. This is bad.
Emily clutched the hair by her temples, confusion wailing out through her gaping mouth.
Mike charged in and scooped the screaming ball into his arms, folding her face into his chest. He took one look at David, then at my mask of mortification, and burst out laughing. “Well, looks like you’ve let the bloody cat out of the bag now.”
“No pun intended?” David said with a grin.
“Mike?” Emily looked up at him and then at me. “Why are you laughing?”
A smile twitched the corners of my lips. Okay, it is kind of funny.
“This is a joke?” Emily pushed out from Mike’s hold and walked over to me. “You guys are punking me. I knew it! I knew—Ah!” She recoiled, dropping the sheet she tore from my almost completely naked, blood-covered body. The bite marks were near healed, but still there, and very bruised.
I looked like an escaped sample product from a giant-mosquito convention.
Mike raised his brows at my bare skin; David grabbed the sheet, covering me over again. “Eyes off, brother.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to look.” He shook his head, scratching his hairline. “Are you sure you did enough damage there, mate? You’re supposed to protect her—not eat her.”
“Shut up.” David threw a pillow at him.
Mike studied me a little closer, his eyes narrowed, pinpointing my neck. “Did you bite her?”
David looked too, and smiled, his eyes becoming small. “Yes.”
A ferocity that came from deep within Mike rose to his call of guard. “You promised. No biting.”
“Relax.” David laid back with his arms crossed behind his head. “I didn’t use my fangs.”
“What’d you mean you didn’t use your fangs, how can you not? Look at those things.”
David smiled sheepishly, touching his thumb to one. “Same way you bite an ice-cream that’s too cold for your teeth. Delicately.”
“That—” Mike pointed to me, “is not delicately.”
“Will you two shut up!” I said. “Can’t you see Emily’s freaking out?”
“Sorry,” they both said.
“Em?” I reached out with one hand, holding my shame-covering sheet with the other. “Come sit with me. We need to talk.”
She looked at Mike; he nodded then sat on the end of the bed, folding his arms, looking a little smug—obviously curious as to how we were going to lie our way out of this one.
I took a breath. “Emily, please.”
Her head moved in a tight, jerking gesture—a no, I think.
“Emily, there’s a reason for all of this.” I just have to figure it out as I go along. “David’s—”
“David’s a vampire,” Mike interjected.
Emily’s head whipped around so fast to look at David that I thought it might come off. She studied him, then dropped her arms and sat between Mike and I, but said nothing. David just smiled softly, watching Emily’s face, obviously reading her thought process. Mike watched her too—his arms still folded.
“Well,” Emily said, finally, “that makes sense, I suppose. So—” She looked at me, then David. “So you’re not really married?”
“No.” David shook his head, smiling.
She nodded, breathing out. “I knew it. I just knew it.”
David sat up a little and touched my hand, linking his fingers through mine, obviously sensing the ache I felt when Mike wrapped his arms over Em’s shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Emily?” David said, and she looked at him. “It’s okay. You know that.”
She nodded. “Ara, I thought you were dead. And you!” She turned and slapped Mike on the chest. “You lied to me. You said you didn’t know the truth.”
“No, I said if I knew the truth, I most likely would definitely not be inclined to inform you.” He grinned with that cheeky smile that always got him out of trouble with me. Emily didn’t find it so charming.
“So, you drink each other’s blood?” she asked, pointing to her own lip, studying mine.
“Yes,” I said in short, fighting the urge to wipe my embarrassingly dirty face.