Page 30 of The Reveal
There’s an unpleasant sort of jarring sensation deep inside of me, and for a moment I truly believe I’m about to throw up. There’s a ringing in my ears and a sharp, sickening horror in my gut.
Because it looks a lot like another tattoo I know. Two tattoos, in fact.
The ones that Augie and I got on our eighteenth birthday. Matching phoenixes that look a lot like this vampire’s boldly drawn, sweeping rendition, dark feathers and all. Mine is more delicate, a splash of bold lines on the right side of my abdomen. Augie’s is on the left side of his.
Two firebirds in a pod,he said back then.
His medallion is around my neck, and it feels like it’s burning my skin. The fact that we have basically the same tattoo as this vampire king makes my head hurt. I feel hungover and drunk at the same time.
I watch as he walks to a desk I didn’t even notice over in one corner, surrounded by a high counter. Behind it are the sort of prosaic things you might expect in any martial arts studio. Even knowing nothing about martial arts myself, I can see that there are pants like the ones Ariel is wearing hanging on the wall. What looks like duffel bags, marked with the gym’s branding. Various fighting things like gloves and helmets, though I’m not sure what immortal killers want training equipment for.
He walks behind the counter and rummages around, then shrugs on a T-shirt.
That doesn’t really help. Something about this man in a black T-shirt withArchangelstamped on one pec makes him that much more ... dangerous-looking. I wish I could say I mean that in the sense of the supernatural abilities and general vampirism.
But I’m afraid what I really mean is tome. Personally.
Looking at him makes me feel like I’ve never seen a real man before in my entire life.
I grit my teeth, and when that doesn’t snap me out of it, I bite my own tongue.
That sucks. I wince a bit. But when I look at him again, that high tide of hunger inside me ebbs. Just a little.
I think of Gran’s words abouthunger, and shudder. The tide ebbs even further.
“Did you invite me down here for some martial arts lessons?” I ask into the pressing silence. “Because I love the idea of turning myself into John Wick, but there’s enough random violence in my life already, I think.”
“It never ceases to amaze me,” he says quietly, though I can hear him perfectly. Like he’s speaking directly into my ear. “The commitment that fragile, mortal creatures have to pretending they do not fear death.”
“Do we fear death more or less than you immortal creatures?” I ask, without pausing to question whether or not it’s prudent to get philosophical with a fuckingvampire. “It seems to me that when you live a millennia or two, you might want to protect your extremely long life even more than those of us who are lucky to get fifty short years.” I’m aware I’m talking too much again, but I can’t seem to stop it as he stalks toward me. “I never understood all those stories about immortal creatures who were always sodeeply boredby theendless grindof living. Is that what it’s like? Is eternity really that boring? Or is it maybe thatyou’reboring?” I catch myself there, though it’s not soon enough. “Meaning the universalyou, of course.”
His silver eyes glitter. “I never said I was bored.”
One of the biggest problems with life post the Reveal are moments like this. I know the reality is that I’m standing here talking to an ancient vampire. I know who Ariel is. I have a sense that I would know who he was even if I didn’t know his name. He has power all over him, as if it blares out of his skin, and if I listen, I can hear another spate of thatsinging.
There’s a chorus everywhere he goes, proclaiming who he is in a way that makes my bones tremble.
But part of me still can’t believe it. Part of me keeps waiting to wake up.
Some people, I’m well aware, feel these things so keenly that they crack. It happened more often in the beginning. Faced with evidence that monsters were in no way located beneath the bed or in dismissible nightmares but wereeverywhere, a great many good people simply couldn’t take it onboard. Their brains couldn’t handle it.
I don’t know what it says about me that mine could. Well enough to survive this long, anyway.
Jury’s out on whether or not I’m going to survive Ariel Skinner.
To be honest, I’m not even sure I want to, because surviving this moment means that I’ll actually have to live with what I’ve discovered here tonight.
That given the faintest opportunity, I would welcome the chance to succumb to that vampire magic I’ve heard whispered about. That thing they do that makes perfectly rational people strip off their clothes, lose themselves in the vampire sex that everyone claims is better than Ecstasy, and leaves the poor humans who indulge in it mere shells of their former selves. Ruined for anything else, ever after.
I’ve never understood the appeal.
Until now.
“Are you staring at my pulse?” I ask, possibly with some hysteria, as he comes even closer. “Right there in my neck?”
I clap my hand over it. But he only smiles.
“I don’t have to stare at it,” Ariel tells me in that low, commanding tone of his that washes through me and makes everythingsimmer. “Your pulse is so loud they can hear it down the street.”
