Vampires of Eden (Alexander #2)

16. Daniel

CHAPTER 16

Daniel

O n Sunday mornings, I wake up early. This particular morning is radiant with the sunlight streaming through the windows of my bedroom and pouring over my bed like melted butter. The rain has finally ceased. My health is still dubious, but I want to take advantage of this day. I’ll go slowly.

After I make a quick visit to the ensuite bathroom to tie my hair up and quickly brush my teeth, I head back into my bedroom and roll out my yoga mat.

The sun is warm on my body as I stretch and focus inward. Clearing my mind and breathing. I start with several standing poses—mountain, warrior and triangle before I shift into crescent lunge, then down to a spinal twist. If I’m feeling up for it, I’ll challenge myself with a warrior three or dancer’s pose.

In the early days, Josefina would tell me that I had the body and grace of a dancer. Long, tastefully sculpted legs and arms. A strong back and slender torso. She’d trace the lines of my body and whisper sweetly that I was the most gorgeous and alluring vampire she had ever met. I was mesmerized by her adoring attention and affection.

In the end, when she tired of me and became engaged to a purebred from the south, I was relegated to a “sickly sad sack of bones.” She’d tell me that I looked like the walking dead. A shameful creature that she barely wanted to cast her gaze upon.

Sitting down in lotus position, I close my eyes and let those thoughts drop. They’re unproductive. When I used to fixate on them, it made me miserable. Believing her words. Beating myself up for the choices I made when I was younger—feeling irresponsible and ashamed. I’ve been there. I’m done with it.

I’m not that vampire anymore.

After doing a few more sitting poses, I roll my yoga mat up and set it back at the end of my bed. I’m looking forward to warmer days when I can do this routine outside.

The next stop is the kitchen for a cup of tea and a humble breakfast, then I need to water all my plants and spend some time in the garden. My turnips are growing out of control. Pulling those should be a fairly easy task. I have to get that done today.

When I step into the brightly lit kitchen, Leoni stands at the counter. The waxy, heart-shaped leaves and vines of the overgrown pathos plant hanging above the window are like a frame around her body as she turns to look at me, smiling.

“Morning.”

“Good morning,” I say. I take a deep breath, filling my nostrils. “You’re having tea?” The air is earthy but laced with the sweet light liquoring of Ceylon tea leaves, bergamot orange and a hint of lemon. Earl Gray green tea. My absolute favorite.

“I am,” she says. “I figured you’d want some so I made a pot. It’s good to take a break from coffee, occasionally.” Stepping up to the counter, I peek over and notice that she’s cutting up one of the apples that Alexander brought us yesterday.

“Are you feeling stronger this morning?” she asks.

“I am. I slept well. Do you want to do some work in the vineyard today?”

With her sliced apples and a piece of buttered and toasted ciabatta bread on a small plate, she moves over to the round kitchen table where her tea cup is already waiting. “Maybe later in the afternoon once the sun has dried things out more. But not you, cari?o. I’m glad you feel better, but don’t overdo it today.”

After I’ve poured my tea, I head toward the table. “We’re going to need a lot of help once the weather is warmer.”

She sighs. “I know, I know.”

“Let’s hire staff and manage the vineyard properly.”

She shakes her head. “No, Danny. It’s asking too much of you—you already financially support Kat and Roland. It’ll be burdensome to take on the vineyard as well.”

Holding the mug with my palms, I revel in the warmth floating into my hands and up my arms. “It’s not asking too much if I offer it. I have the resources, so let me use them the way I want? I’m happy to do these things—they’re investments into causes that I find valuable.”

Leoni bites into a crisp apple slice and I suddenly have fruit envy. Standing, I go to the refrigerator and grab the leftover bowl of strawberries.

“Are you going to Kat and Roland’s this week, or should you stay home and recover?” she asks before taking another bite.

“I would like to go. Alexander and I… we’re going to sand and stain the kitchen chairs and table. That shouldn’t be too arduous of a task.” Sitting back down, I pick up a strawberry and bite into the soft flesh. Enjoying its ripe sweetness and texture.

For a long time, my nature has been like a cold, dead fish sitting in my gut. After the intense pain of the withdrawal and rejection from Josefina, all I felt was bitterness and regret. On better days, I felt nothing. Negative nothing.

Talking to and being around Alexander doesn’t feel like nothing. Unquestionably, it feels like something , and that continual revelation frightens me. I feel split in two halves. Rationally, I do not want whatever this is. But instinctively and emotionally, my nature keeps leaning into it. Into him, as if I haven’t been burned and ravaged by this exact kind of situation.

Feeling something for a purebred vampire.

What’s worse, our mutual auras don’t feel polarized. When I let my guard down, I can sense some invisible force moving and flowing between us, quietly buzzing like a static haze. Sweet and prickly.

Am I losing my mind? Could he… Is it possible that Alexander feels this, too?

Whatever this is?

Leoni brings her tea cup toward her mouth in a weak attempt to hide her smile. “It was thoughtful of Alexander to come visit you yesterday with groceries.”

Exhaling a sigh, I nod. “It was.”

“Did you enjoy hanging out with him?”

“I did.”

“Mm.” Leoni scrunches her nose in an obvious gesture and takes a sip of her tea.

“Don’t do that.”

She chuckles, exclaiming. “Do what ?”

“You know exactly what you’re doing. Just stop it.”

“I overheard you two while I was in the kitchen washing and prepping the strawberries. You’re both so cute?—”

“Leoni.”

“What’s wrong with being his friend, Danny? Why can’t you admit that much, at least? That you like him as a friend.”

My heart swells and fills my throat. “Because I— because …” I lift a palm to my face, bewildered. All the peace that I achieved earlier from meditation and yoga are gone. “This is insane! How can I like him in any capacity after what I’ve been through? Why should I willingly submit to this? History has taught me that this will not end well.”

“History has nothing to do with what’s happening right now,” Leoni argues. “From my perspective, this circumstance is totally different?—”

“Is it?” I ask, my voice going shrill. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath, then speak more calmly. “I like to believe that I’ve healed emotionally from what Josefina did to me. That I’ve become wiser since then and learned from the poor choices that I made. But ‘liking’ Alexander—a royal Eden purebred that’s far beyond my reach?—”

“I hear you Danny, but again, Alexander is nothing like my sister,” Leoni says, almost pleading. “He’s not beyond your reach. He drove two hours to see you at our cottage because you weren’t feeling well. When you were falling ill and losing your strength before, did Josefina lift a pinky finger to help you? Did she care?”

My shoulders drop in dejection. “She didn’t.” Josefina watched my slow decline, which she was largely responsible for, and shamed me for it. She was repulsed by it.

“And Alexander comes to Kat and Roland’s twice a week to spend time?—”

“That’s another thing—his parents don’t know anything about this,” I counter, feeling more and more anxious. “Aside from you, no one in his life would approve of his spending this much time with me. Liking him is… preposterous. Pointless.”

This entire conversation is moot. Add to it, Alexander thinks I’m an asshole. He feels nothing for me, friend or otherwise, because he’s too busy mooning over Oliver.

Depleted, I shake my head. “I don’t know if this decision to be nice to him is helpful for me anymore. It might be a mistake.”

I’m comfortable being malnourished. I’ve been this way for two years and I’ve grown accustomed to it. I’m okay with what I see when I look in the mirror—the pale gauntness of my skin and the discoloration of my eyes. My weak muscles.

I’m fine with all of that. I accept it.

But hope? Yearning for something more than this and liking another purebred? It’s uncomfortable and confusing. It’s terrifying and I don’t want to do it.

At the same time, I can’t stop myself.

“So, what will you do?” Leoni asks. “Avoid him? Be mean to him again?”

Exhaling yet another heavy sigh, I lift my hand and massage the top of my head, driving my fingers beneath my loose bun. “No, of course not. I… I enjoy spending time with him. He makes me laugh.” He also smells like orange trees blossoming in the springtime, has beautiful, golden-brown eyes and an ass that looks great in whatever pants he’s wearing.

Fuck me.

I’m not saying any of this aloud because the fact that I’m even thinking it is ridiculous.

“Did you tell him about Josefina?”

“I did. Yesterday.”

“What did he say?”

I chuckle, dropping my hand. “That she was a ‘literal monster of a purebred’ and a nightmare.”

Leoni nods, still cupping her mug of tea. “Yes, that’s correct. She was awful to Puercoespín growing up—she made him cry a lot. I can’t even tell you why. Maybe… because Ansv?d is wealthier and more internationally well-known than our father? She could have been jealous that they lived in Central Eden. I dunno.”

After calming my heart rate, I pop another strawberry into my mouth and speak around it. “Who can say?” Josefina is a complex and prideful vampire. I spent years trying to understand her and failed.

Finishing off her tea, Leoni stands from the table. “About liking Alexander, just… go with the flow, Danny. Don’t fight this. Trust your instincts.”

I laugh, mirthless as I reach across the table to grab one of her apple slices. “My instincts are trash.” Talking with him about Josefina yesterday drudged up these bitter feelings. It’s made me hesitant and uncertain. Paranoid that, if I stay on this path, history is doomed to repeat itself.

“How long are you going to punish and condemn yourself for a cruelty that someone else committed, Danny? Why are you still letting my sister have power over you?”

Damn. Her questions catch me off guard and I blink. “That’s unfair. I-I am not ?—”

“You are.” She pushes the plate of apple slices toward me, then goes to set her tea cup in the sink .

Leoni exits the kitchen, leaving me alone with the plate of apple slices, my tumultuous thoughts and a looming headache.

“You do it every single morning?” Alexander asks.

“I try to. My body gets stiff overnight, so I find that stretching and meditation help to loosen and warm me up. It sets my mind at ease, too.” Vigorously, I rub the sanding sponge along the edge of the chair seat. I’m sitting on the floor in the kitchen at Kat and Roland’s with my legs folded. Alexander is beside me, working on his own chair.

“I’ve never done yoga before,” he says, crouched and sanding the flat seat of his chair. “Never even considered it. When did you start?”

“Hm, about two years ago. In the aftermath of Josefina, it really helped me manage the pain and withdrawal.”

Alexander stops sanding. “How bad was it? The withdrawal.”

“It was…” My mind drifts back to that time. The muscle aches and spasms. Shooting pains in my abdomen and spine like someone carving at my insides with the sharpened tip of a knife. The sleepless and delirious nights with my incisors throbbing in hunger.

I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy.

“It was rough,” I tell him. I look up and his vivid eyes are serious and filled with concern. Empathy. “I’m okay now, relax.”

“That’s good,” he says, sounding unconvinced. “It’s terrible that she put you through something so awful.”

“Well, when you’ve been feeding from a vampire for many years and there’s an emotional attachment, it can also manifest biologically. It’s like, your nature is anticipating the next step—to be permanently entwined with this vampire. When that doesn’t happen, the outcome is devastating.”

Alexander stretches his spine in his squatted position. A palpable unease and tension are settled in his visage. “It sounds horrific.”

I’m fairly certain that he’s still feeding from Oliver. Alexander would drop off bags of his own blood to the cottage when his ex-fiancé was living with us, so it’s probable that he still has a supply of Oliver’s blood.

When he decides to finally wean himself off of that stock, it won’t be pretty, but…

“The situation was much worse for me because her blood was so potent compared with mine,” I add. “I think if we’d both been purebred, perhaps I wouldn’t have been so violently ill.” This is my meager attempt to put his mind at ease without revealing what I suspect to be true.

Nodding, he sets his jaw. “Why… didn’t you ever ask Leoni to feed you? I’m sure she would have, given your friendship.”

“She offered, but I did not want to be addicted to and dependent upon her in that way. I didn’t want to put her or myself in that awful situation.”

“Right, okay. That makes sense. Can I ask one more question?”

“Yes.”

“Is Josefina the reason why you stopped playing the piano?”

I take a deep breath, then silently exhale through my nose. “She is.” The shame around this topic floods my chest and throat like bile, but I shake it off. I need to face this.

After my conversation in the kitchen with Leoni, the more I thought about it, in some ways, I agreed with her assessment. I don’t want Josefina to have this power over me anymore.

“I was hired to play for the álvarez Estate,” I go on, “for dinner parties, and on a few occasions, a small and private concerto, like the one you attended with your father. Josefina took a strong interest in me and well, long story short, she wanted me all to herself. I willingly obliged. At first, anyway. But then…”

I pause and take another breath. This is the hardest part to wrestle with. The part that I don’t even confess to Leoni .

“But then?” Alexander encourages.

I continue sanding because doing something with my hands while I talk helps to ease the emotional strain. “There was definitely some manipulation of her power as a purebred over me. It became harder and harder to resist her will—as if she was drowning me in her influence and aura to keep me close. To keep me addicted to her.”

Alexander listens with rapt attention, as if he’s hanging onto my every word. His intense eyes are piercing and it creates a warm, feathery feeling in my belly.

“It’s disgusting that she used her essence that way,” he says, “for harm and for the benefit of her own selfish desires…” He looks away as if something is on his mind.

“What is it?” I ask.

Abruptly, he meets my gaze once more. “Nothing… so, why don’t you play the piano now?”

I shrug. “What piano would I play? Like you observed, there’s not one at the cottage nor anywhere I frequent. I spent so many years playing for Josefina and her tastes that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to play for myself. I would need time to figure that out. Kind of hard to do when there’s no piano around.”

Alexander nods in his absorbed state. It makes me self-conscious so I lift my chin. “You can’t talk and sand at the same time? You do everything so slowly as it is—get to work.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes. Trance broken. He continues sanding. After a healthy pause where the only sound filling the room is the raspy back-and-forth of our sponges on wood, he stops once more.

“Thank you for telling me all of that.”

“You’re welcome,” I say, bending to start buffing the legs.

Casually, I glance over. He’s re-focused on his task now that I’ve scolded him. Alexander listens so intently when I speak, as if he genuinely values what I say. Whether it’s about something sensitive like Oliver and their relationship, or trivial, like my opinion on a television show. I’m amazed at how engrossed he is, every time.

It’s insufferably attractive. That I can converse with him the same way I would with Leoni, except something in his eyes stirs me. Something in his citrusy-sweet and zesty scent is alluring.

Despite my repulsive state and weakened nature, he senses me. Could that mean there’s something more? If I were healthy and strong, would he be properly attracted to me?

I stop sanding and bring my wrist to my forehead, massaging and breathing. For the love of God. I have got to stop thinking about this. There’s no way in hell he feels anything for me.

Maybe pity? That would make the most sense.

“I have to admit,” Alexander announces, breaking the comfortable silence. “I can’t get over the fact that you were in love with Josefina, of all vampires.”

“There were vampires around me who discouraged the choices I made with her, but when you’re young and operating under the guise of ‘love,’ you don’t see things clearly.”

“True,” Alexander agrees. “You’re still young and I’m not judging you. I’m just like—what could he possibly have seen in her? What would bring them together?” He smirks, eyeing me with familiar mischief. “But then I remember that you’re both mean, so I guess it kind of makes sense? Like, evil attracts evil.”

I frown. I know that he’s joking, but I feel genuinely affronted. Without thinking, I take a page from Leoni’s book and my hand mechanically darts out and pinches him in the curve of his waist. He yelps in a squeaky, surprised sound like a mouse and tumbles over onto his ass.

“ Enough . Stop calling me mean! I’m not evil and I’m trying to do better, alright? You have no idea how hard this is for…” My breathing hitches as I watch something truly magnificent happen.

Alexander looks at me from his awkward and crumpled state. Slowly, his eyes spark and alight into a vivid golden hue. They glow like the blaze of a summer sun. Like a fire burning and smoldering everything in its path.

The air between us becomes charged with a frenetic energy and it pulls . It feels good, like nothing I’ve ever felt or experienced. It warms me all over and makes my weakened nature churn and flip inside my belly. I haven’t felt this stirred or alive in years. It leaves me breathless.

Swallowing hard, I need to say something, I have to… “Alexander?—”

“ No .” He whips his head away from me. In a bustle of movement, he stands to his feet. He looks at me with his luminous eyes beneath his heavy lashes, then down to the chair, away and toward the door. It’s as if his mind is in chaos and he doesn’t know where to look or what to do with himself. He takes a step back. “No—I… I don’t… I have to go.”

I watch, dumbfounded as he turns, then stalks toward the kitchen door without another word. “Alexander!” He’s gone and I’m left sitting on the floor with my heart racing. My hands trembling.

To my surprise, I hear the front door to the cottage open, then shut. I scramble upright and to my feet, then rush out of the kitchen, following the sweet haze of his orange-blossom wake.

The moment I swing the front door open, I see his little black sports car traversing down the dirt driveway and away from the house, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. I blink with my mouth hanging open because I truly cannot believe it. Any of it.

“Where is Alexander going?” Roland walks up behind me, looking over my shoulder just as Alexander’s car disappears out of sight.

Winded and with my heart pounding in my ears, I stare out at the empty driveway. “He… he ran away.”