Aria and Will Read online

  One last thing I recall—he didn’t say goodbye and he didn’t look back, but I knew, there and then, that I’d see him again. I didn’t imagine I’d be a vampire too eventually, of course not, but I was sure we’d meet again. Call it wishful thinking or premonition; the truth is, I was right. Less than a year passed before we met again.

  Chapter 2

  As useless as he knew it was with the alarm sirens blaring every few seconds, Wilhelm couldn’t help keeping an ear out for sounds of battle in the distance. By Central Command’s best estimations the demons were an hour away from the city walls, still much too far for him to hear even the stomping noises of an army. The town had resisted assaults from small groups of demons for years, with only a few managing to breach the defenses and rampage over the town before they could be stopped. However, there had never been more than a hundred or so demons trying to take the town walls at any given time. There was three times that number advancing toward Newhaven now.

  “Sir? We’ve evacuated the entire block. The refugees are en route to the shelters; they should arrive within ten minutes.”

  Wilhelm spared a look at the soldier. His voice held the slight tremor that came with nervousness, but he held himself upright, and his eyes looked straight ahead without wavering. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. The Guard accepted children as young as seventeen, now. Wilhelm hated it, but he had been the one to convince Commander Bergsen of the necessity of it. They needed more troops, and that meant either opening the ranks to younger volunteers, or establishing a mandatory draft for the able-bodied men and women in town. It would come to that eventually, Wilhelm was sure of it, but Bergsen still couldn’t resolve himself to it.

  With a nod of thanks to the soldier, Wilhelm looked down at the map spread over the car trunk in front of him. He trailed a finger over the evacuated area and continued farther inside the city. The walls would be breached, this time, they all knew it. The question was, how far would the demons advance before the fifteen hundred men of the Guard managed to stop them and start pushing them back? And the Guard had to win. The alternative would mean carnage. The city was full of refugees who had fled other towns destroyed by demon attacks; there would be no escaping this time. All Central Command could do was hope the Guard held strong.

  “How full are the shelters?” Wilhelm asked when his finger stopped over the name of a small street he had visited almost nightly for the better part of the past year.

  “Most report being filled to maximum capacity. But almost all of them say they can make room for at most a dozen more people if needed.”

  Wilhelm nodded again as he folded the map. “Then we’re clearing out the next street. Same as before, two soldiers per household, civilians can take no more than one bag per family. I want the entire street cleared in twenty minutes. Stop the sirens as soon as it’s done.”

  The soldier saluted before hurrying away. They always did, however often Wilhelm reminded them that he was not part of the Guard and military protocol did not apply to him. Bergsen snorted every time he heard Wilhelm say it. He had long since stopped trying to push a military rank on Wilhelm, but he still encouraged his troops to treat him as his second in command.

  In private, they both knew who led and who followed, and Bergsen, thankfully, had no problem in taking orders from a vampire.

  Following the flow of soldiers, Wilhelm pulled out his cell phone and called Bergsen. The Commander was at the wall, where they expected the first wave of attack to come, keeping an eye on the advance of the demons and on the preparations of the Guard.

  “We’re evacuating one more street in the north west quadrant,” Wilhelm said without preamble. “I’ll be back to the front within half an hour.”

  “Latest estimates show approximately three hundred and seventy demons,” Bergsen replied. “And they’re walking faster than expected. If you take more than half an hour, you’ll miss the beginning of the festivities.”

  Information exchanged, Wilhelm flipped his phone shut and hailed the two soldiers who were about to walk into the fenced yard of a house.

  “I’ll take this one,” he told them. “Move on to the next house.”

  The two women exchanged a quick glance. No doubt, they found it strange that he would take part in the evacuation himself. He owed them no explanation however, and at his raised eyebrow, they saluted him before hurrying off to the next yard. One of them was a vampire, but he could never have guessed from simply looking at her if he hadn’t recruited her himself. The first vampires who had joined the Guard had demanded a special insignia, but Wilhelm had fought that idea with all his might. Distinguishing between humans and vampires would have led to nothing good.

  He couldn’t help glancing at the second floor window as he walked toward the front door. The light was on behind the pink curtains despite the late hour. The wooden lattice that had once run down the facade of the house had been torn away days after he had visited the house, almost a year earlier.

  He raked his fingers through his messy curls when he reached the door, then pressed the bell. The three chimes were the same as he remembered, but when the door opened, the woman behind it was much different from the grief-struck widow he had once met. A hint of fear clung to her scent, but she showed none of it and the way she stood straight screamed her determination.

  “Your street is being evacuated,” he said, wondering if she would recognize him. “Your family has three minutes to pack one bag before we take you to safety.”

  He saw her gulp, but she nodded before turning back toward the inside of the house and calling out very calmly: “Paul, Aria, we’re leaving.”

  Within seconds, the two children were descending the staircase while their mother picked up the travel bag resting against the wall. Clearly, they had listened to the emergency instructions broadcasted earlier. If everyone had prepared like them, Wilhelm thought grimly, the evacuation could have been finished in half the time.

  Both Paul and Ariadne opened wide eyes when they saw Wilhelm, and the girl gave him a shy smile; they recognized him, even if their mother did not, but neither of them said anything as she motioned for them to step out. She closed and locked the door behind her; when she rested her palm against the white wood for an instant, her lips moving soundlessly, Wilhelm guessed that she was praying she would still have a home when it was over. He felt a slight pang at that. There was no place he called home anymore. No place he would miss if he needed to leave town.

  “The trucks are this way,” he gestured toward the end of the street, and the three humans started walking behind him. There were other groups walking up the street, all of them accompanied by soldiers. They had learned the hard way that they needed to accompany the evacuees to the trucks if they wanted a fast evacuation.

  Wilhelm was startled when a small, warm hand slipped into his. He looked down and met Ariadne’s eyes. She had grown, since he had first met her, and her head almost reached his shoulder.

  “You’re Will, aren’t you?” she asked quietly.

  “And you’re Ariadne. I remember you.”

  Her smile widened, just a little.

  “I’ve seen you,” she murmured. “When you walk down our street. You always look at my window.”

  Both Paul and his mother were observing the exchange, Wilhelm noticed, and neither seemed pleased by it. Uncomfortable, he freed his hand from Ariadne’s.

  “I just wanted to make sure you were safe,” he replied, shrugging to make his words more casual. “You haven’t been walking around at night anymore, have you?”

  A quiet gasp from the mother revealed that she understood, at last, who Wilhelm was. When he glanced at her, she looked away, her cheeks suddenly very pale.

  “I haven’t,” Ariadne said with a shake of her head. “But I’ll join the Guard, when I’m old enough. They will let me, won’t they?”

  Paul muttered something under his breath that might have been a curse. His mother was more vocal.

  “Ariadne, that’
s enough.”

  The thread of fear in her voice caught Wilhelm’s attention, and he looked at her again, wondering why she was so upset. Did she believe he would take Ariadne at her word and give her a sword right there and then? Who did she think he was?

  “Maybe by the time you’re old enough,” he told the child just as they were reaching the trucks, “the war will be over and there won’t be need for the Guard anymore.”

  Paul let out a bark of dry laughter at that; he was shaking his head while he climbed into the back of the truck and helped his mother. Ariadne was last, and she turned a large smile toward Wilhelm before following them.

  “Good luck,” she said. “I’ll wave at you next time you walk in front of our house.”

  He managed to smile at her then turned away and quickly strode to where the soldiers who would soon to go the front were gathering. He looked at all of them with new eyes, his fatigue from the past days all of a sudden lifted. Each one of them had volunteered to be there and believed in what they did. Maybe the battle wouldn’t turn out so badly, after all.

  * * * *

  Are you trying to make me look like a Lolita, and Will like a pervert? Let’s set things straight, all right? I was twenty-two when he first let me kiss him, and it was five years later before we did anything more than that. The age difference will always be there, of course, but you don’t have to make it look so bad.

  While we’re at it, that’s not how I remember the events of that night. I do remember squeezing his hand, because I wanted to say thank you—for bringing me home, months earlier, for talking to my mother, for being kind—but I didn’t quite know how. Also, I don’t think I was smiling that much. Hell, the sirens had been blaring for at least two hours when we evacuated. I was scared I was going to die, or if not me, Mom or Paul. I can’t possibly have smiled that much. I don’t care what you think you know, I just didn’t.

  As for Will… You’re not explaining much about him, are you? I guess that means I have to.

  The reason why he came to our door was the same reason he had for walking through my street so often when he patrolled the town, or even for deciding to evacuate my street and not the next one. It’s also the same reason why he kisses me every time we leave for a fight. As old as he is, with everything he has seen, all the battles he has fought, he still needs something to fight for. He needs an image at the back of his mind of the people he’s helping to keep safe.

  When he first met me, in the cemetery, he didn’t have that connection anymore, he told me, long after we had become lovers. So, he picked me and my family as the people he’d fight for, the people he would do everything in his power to protect. With his influence in town, ‘everything in his power’ turned out to be quite a lot when I joined the Guard, and we had a couple of heated arguments about that. He can be so stubborn!

  His need for someone to keep alive was also why he was so upset when I was turned. I thought he would kill my Sire when I rose as a vampire. For the longest time, I told myself he had just been jealous that he wasn’t the one to turn me, but now I know better. I know him better. Still, even after all this time, he always manages to surprise me.

  The last time he did was just days ago, after our last big battle. As soon as it was clear that the demons had retreated for good and wouldn’t be back for a while, he gave his orders to his second in command and then led me to a car with blacked out windows, on the other side of town, where it would have been safe even if the demons had pushed further in. We were both covered in mud and blood, and I was dying for a bath, but he shushed my protests and made me climb in. He drove for the remainder of the night, too fast for someone who had fought for hours. I dozed off after a little while; even if he drove fast, I knew he wouldn’t run us off the road.

  When he woke me, the sun was beginning to appear above the horizon and I didn’t have time to really see where we were. We hurried into a small house. There were white roses just about everywhere, hundreds of them, and I laughed at their scent and beauty. White roses are our flowers. They have become a symbol of mourning for many people, but they have never been so for us.

  Thankfully for him, there also was a tub, in this house—a nice, large one, in which we both fitted easily. We washed each other, and played a little, but we were both too tired for much more. We went to sleep between satin sheets. I hadn’t seen any of those in decades if not more; I have no idea where he found them. We slept the day away, catching up on sleep lost preparing yet one more big battle.

  We rose together by nightfall, and while I warmed up some blood I found in the fridge, he went outside for a moment. When he came back, we fed quickly and then he slipped a blindfold over my eyes and led me out. He made me sit down on the ground before removing the blindfold. He had spread a blanket in front of the house, but that wasn’t what made me open my eyes wide. Just a few steps in front of me, the yard ended in an abrupt cliff, and I could see miles and miles away, small clusters of light where towns lay, and the immensity of the sky above them. It was breathtaking.

  I kept watching when he sat behind me, his legs on each side of me, and pulled me to rest against his chest. He tugged at my robe’s belt and pulled it open, baring me to the night. His hands played over my body, soft and gentle, arousing me slowly but with the confidence brought by decades of sharing the same bed. We made love blanketed by the night, and lay together afterwards, watching the stars together, reminding each other of the names we gave the constellations more than a hundred years ago until there was nothing left to say. And then…

  “This is why I fought last night,” he murmured, and I knew he wasn’t talking about the stars.

  Chapter 3

  “So we’re back to square one.”

  Bergsen’s voice reflected his frustration and tiredness, and Wilhelm could not blame him. They had both been hopeful that the new ammunition perfected by the research labs would prove key to turning the odds against the demons in their favor. It had taken them years to reformulate the metal casings and powder components into something that would have an effect on the demons, and for the past week, soldiers had used the new riffles and ammo whenever demons had approached the walls. After some good news on the first night, the results had ended up disappointing. It was almost as though demons had instantly adapted to this new threat.

  From that first night, three decades earlier, when demons had appeared seemingly out of nowhere all over the planet, humans had fought back with their best weaponry, guns, assault riffles, automatic weapons that could pierce through any kind of body armor and tear a man to shreds within seconds. Yet everywhere, the same reports had come. Bullets simply did not work. The demons’ wounds healed within seconds, fast enough for the gunner to see the flesh repair itself—if the gunner lived that long. A shaky, grainy video had even showed to the consternation of military advisors all over the world that the more bullets fired into a demon, the faster it healed.

  Fire had looked like a promising alternative at first, but the incredible heat required to slow down the demons, let alone incapacitate them, made it too cumbersome. In time, the disruption of fuel supplies had rendered it even more inconvenient.

  Chemical weapons could have posed an ethical dilemma if their first use had not proven that demons were immune to them.

  In the end, resorting to bows, blades and other close range weapons had been a necessity. For the first time in military history, the advantage didn’t belong to those who had the technical and numerical strength, and soldiers all over the world had traded their guns for swords, axes, spears and halberds. Museums had been ransacked and weapons of the past had been reproduced with the techniques and metal alloys of the day. It had taken long, bloody weeks before the first troops had gone into the battle with the slightest chance of coming back alive.

  “All this work for nothing,” Bergsen griped again. His hand clenched around the report he had been reading, tearing pages and crumbling them into a ball.

  “At least now we know what doesn’t
work,” Wilhelm commented coolly. He was just as upset by the news, but complaining wouldn’t change the report’s conclusions. “That leaves us other options to explore. We’ll find a solution, eventually.”

  Bergsen snorted. “’Eventually’ might be fine for you, Will, but it’ll be too late for me and many others. You might have all the time in the world, but we don’t.”

  Wilhelm’s answer was no more than a cold look. Bergsen sighed and nodded as though he had answered in words.

  “Of course I’m not blaming you,” he said, his voice calmer now. “I’m just so… tired.”

  It was Wilhelm’s turn to nod his understanding. They had all been fighting for too long. Nevertheless, none of them could afford to take a day off.

  “What should we have the labs work on?” he asked, bringing Bergsen back to a hopefully more productive line of thought. “Did you see—”

  A sharp knock on the door interrupted him.

  “Come in,” Bergsen called out.

  A soldier stepped in, his salute perfect as he looked straight ahead rather than at either men seated at the desk.

  “A prospective recruit is requesting a meeting with you, sir.”

  A flicker of the soldier’s eyes toward him left Wilhelm confused. Not only was this Bergsen’s office, but also, Wilhelm rarely ever met with recruits unless he sought them out in the first place.

  “Direct him to the recruiters’ barracks,” Wilhelm said. “I don’t have time for this now. There are other vampires there who will talk to him.”

  “Sir, it’s a girl, a teenager, and I do not believe she is a vampire.”

  Wilhelm shrugged. “I still don’t have time.”

  With a gesture, Bergsen dismissed the soldier and they resumed their talk, the incident already forgotten. However, after a few minutes, a second knock revealed the same soldier, and even though his voice remained steady, he seemed flustered.