Consume. Melissa Darnell

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СКАЧАТЬ And it’s a mistake you can’t ever take back once you make it.

      That would have been enough of an explanation to make the old Tristan release his captive. But the new Tristan only raised his head a few inches and stared at me over one hunched shoulder, his red lips parted as if even this one small pause in feeding was excruciating to him. Gone was the boy I had loved for so long, replaced by a nearly mindless predator bent on ending someone’s life for his own pleasure. He had become everything I feared I might turn into if I made the wrong decisions or lost control for even an instant.

      Something rang deep and hollow through me, reverberating off the core of love for Tristan that had always seemed so rock solid inside me and leaving behind a single, long crack. The strange sensation left me shaken inside and out. But I didn’t have time to figure it out right now. Something else to deal with some other day.

      I had to find some way to convince Tristan not to kill this man. But what? He had no memories of his own to guide him, and obviously the few he’d gotten from my blood weren’t helping, either. Neither was trying to reason with him. If not for whatever blood bond we shared, he would have already drained the guy dry. He still could.

      And if he killed this human with my dad as a witness, the vampire council would eventually read my dad’s memories of it. They would know we had been unable to prevent Tristan from losing control around a human.

      I swallowed hard, my pulse beating at the base of my throat hard enough to rock my entire body. Tristan, if you hurt this human, I’ll—I’ll leave you. It was sheer desperation that made this thought pop into my head, and panic that had me latching on to it as the only threat that might get his attention.

      His shoulders jerked up a couple of inches, his shock and hurt knifing through us both. You’d leave me? Over a stranger? But you made me this way!

      I nodded and tried to ignore my own pain. This wasn’t about me. This was about saving Tristan. You’re right, I did turn you. But just because we’re different now doesn’t mean we have to hurt others. We still have a choice. We don’t have to be killers. And if you hurt this human, even if you get away with it, someday when you’re back to your old self and remember this moment, it will destroy you. And maybe what we have together, too. You might start to blame me for not finding a way to stop you. You would want me to do whatever it took to keep you from making this mistake.

      I could see our future then, how his guilty conscience would tear him apart, how he would grow to hate himself. And me, too, even if he didn’t want to, because not only had I turned him but I’d failed to stop him from killing someone.

      This moment would destroy us one way or another if I didn’t do whatever it took to stop him.

      Curiosity kicked in within him. He cocked his head to the side, the human trapped beneath his grip all but forgotten. How are we different now?

      You haven’t been this way for long. Before last night, you would never have even thought about attacking an innocent person like this.

      And before last night, before I became...like this...were we always together?

      We were best friends first, years ago as little kids. But I’ve always loved you. Since the beginning of time, it felt like. I’d give anything to go back in time to when things were so much easier for us.

      You’re sad. You...don’t like me now because I’m different. Different how?

      I love you, I thought fiercely, taking a step closer to him. I will always love you. But I do miss the way you used to be. The Tristan I fell in love with, my first best friend, would never hurt someone like this. I purposely remembered the day he’d helped one of my best friends, Michelle, off the high school track at an eighth-grade track meet when shin splints made it nearly impossible for her to walk on her own to the stands after her long-distance run. He hadn’t even known her, and it had happened before we’d started dating when his parents were still forbidding him from being friends with me. He hadn’t helped Michelle for me. He’d done it because he’d seen a stranger hurting and no one else had stepped up and helped.

      He frowned as he watched that memory replay in my mind and tried to adjust his faint concept of himself with that brief glimpse of who he once was. The seconds ticked by, his broad palm still firm beneath his prey’s chin as he wrestled with his instincts.

      I have no memory of this person you say I used to be, he finally thought. All I remember are moments of the two of us sitting by a stream somewhere and in a mirrored room dancing together. And something about you in a white dress with...wings?

      A tear slid down my cheek. I wiped it away as one corner of my lips twitched with the urge to smile. He remembered our dancing together at the Charmers masq ball fundraiser two years ago when we’d first begun to secretly date.

      It was a Halloween costume, I silently explained.

      Why can’t I remember much? His frown deepened as tinges of cold fear trickled from him. I feel like I should be able to remember more, but when I try, it’s like getting lost in a fog.

      It’ll all come back. I promise. I’ll help you remember. But until your memory comes back, can you please just trust me and let this man go?

      You won’t leave me?

      I swallowed down the hard lump in my throat and shook my head. We’ll figure this out together.

      Taking a deep breath, Tristan stepped away from the human, releasing him and moving to my side in a blur even my own eyes struggled to follow. The human started to slump down the bare hardwood tree’s trunk in shock. Dad darted forward and caught him before he hit the ground, pulling him to his feet then capturing the man’s gaze with his own. Under the thrall of the vampire gaze daze, the man’s eyes widened then went blank as Dad began to murmur instructions to him to alter his memory and send him safely home.

      If only recovering Tristan’s memory could be as easy as making this human forget part of his.

      My own knees weak with relief, I slipped an arm around Tristan’s waist and slowly led him through the woods back toward the cabin. And tried not to think about how much the sweet, delicious scent of blood on his lips made my stomach clench and my heart race with need.

      We spent every waking moment of the next five months training Tristan to control the speed of his reflexes and movements using tai chi, because it had worked so well for both my dad and me. Dad’s theory was that a lot of a fledgling’s control issues came from the fact that our bodies moved even faster than our minds, so instinctual urges to feed kicked in and made us attack before we could even realize what we were doing and make a conscious decision to stop ourselves.

      The longer Tristan practiced tai chi, the more I began to see hints of the Tristan I’d loved for so long. His movements became less like a bird’s and more fluid, like the human athlete he used to be. As Tristan developed self-control, he also gained something other than his memory loss to focus on, which allowed him to relax and gradually become more independent.

      When I wasn’t helping Dad train Tristan, I was working on homework. And there was a lot of it. I’d figured Tristan and I could retake our junior year of high school someday after Tristan got his memory back. If we were both going to live forever, what was one year’s delay in our education going to matter? But Dad insisted on signing us up for homeschooling via the internet and having me do both Tristan’s and my homework so we wouldn’t fall behind. Once Tristan’s memory returned, the plan was to have him speed-read over everything he’d missed to get caught up.

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