The Vampire Legacy; The New Queen Rises (9 page)

"Ash?" He asked me softly, touching my face
with his fingers. I wouldn't answer him, as I tried to catch my
breath. "Ashley, please," he said again softly. "I'm sorry. I
didn't mean to hurt you."

"Why did you do that?" I asked him, softly. I
could see the pain in his eyes. He shook his head, and then lifted
me up and brought me into the bedroom. He laid me down on the bed
and leaned down over me, his hair falling down around his face.
"You hurt me, Quinn, why did you do that."

"I want you, Ash," he told me softly.

"So, do what you want to me now," I told him,
but this seemed to hurt him. "I can't do anything to stop you,
you've proven that already."

"No, I won't," he said and moved away. I
found my strength and sat up.

"You already have," I told him and walked out
of the room. He followed me and grabbed my arm. I looked at him and
sighed. "You confuse me," I said to him, grabbed my jacket and
slipped it on. "I want to leave, now."

The trip home was quiet and I kept looking at
the two small marks on my neck. I knew that Michael and David would
notice them, so I made Quinn stop at a CVS store and I bought
cover-up to hide them.

"Why are you hiding them?" He asked me as I
applied the stuff to my neck. I looked at him and smiled.
"What?"

"Can't you see it now? Michael asks me
exactly what happened to my neck. I tell him, oh, not much, just
Quinn giving into his desires. Yeah, I could just see what happens
next," I told him and then looked back into the mirror. "So, I'm
covering them up."

"To save my ass?" He asked me.

"To save us both, and don't think that this
makes me forget what you did to me," I said to him. His eyes
dropped and then he looked at the road. I watched his mouth move
but I stopped him. "I know you're sorry," I said quickly. Quinn
shook his head and said nothing. "Wake me up when we're almost
there."

I covered my body with my coat and closed my
eyes, but all I kept seeing was Quinn's face so close to mine, and
the way that he felt when he was drinking my blood. I opened my
eyes and looked at him. He was staring at me. This was very odd for
me.

We pulled into the long driveway of the
house, but he stopped before we reached the security house. He put
the car in park and turned to look at me. I sighed and continued to
look straight ahead.

"Ash, look at me," he requested softly. I
shook my head and sighed. He took my hand and I looked over at him.
I looked into his eyes and he caught me there. I heard his voice in
my mind.
I want to make you forget.

"No," I told him. "I want to remember."

You want to remember what I did to you.
Why?
He asked me with his mind. I smiled at him, thought to
myself about why I might want to remember and figured out that I
wasn't sure myself.

"Will it hurt?" I asked him. He shook his
head.

No, there is no pain involved
. He
replied to me. I nodded to him then and he took my other hand.
Look into my eyes; hold them there as long as you can
.
When you can’t hold any longer
,
you won’t remember
anything that happened between us this morning
,
but you’ll
remember everything else
.

I looked into his eyes, the ones that were so
silver before, were now dark and dangerous. I felt something for
Quinn, something I shouldn't, a deep lust that seemed to ignite
every time he touched me. I thought about the events of that
morning, but they seemed to fade out before my eyes and the last
thing that I remembered before arriving at home was Quinn telling
me to get dressed, but this all lingered in the back of my mind as
if something were missing.

When I opened my eyes, I looked at the house
in front of me, and Quinn was just getting out of the car. He
opened my door and looked at me. He reached out a hand, which I
took as he pulled me out and walked with me back to the house,
where Michael and David greeted me with a warm embrace.

Michael stopped and talked to Quinn as David
led me to the parlor. Later that night, as I stood in the sitting
room, by the window, looking out over the green grass to the ocean,
I heard Quinn come in with someone. I assumed he was a business
associate, so I didn't bother running out and talking to him to see
if he had heard anything about Jack yet.

I stood there, dressed in a black skirt and a
wide neck black shirt, with my arms crossed over my chest, hugging
myself. I was thinking about Julian, trying to figure out if he was
out there somewhere, and I wondered if he could hear me when I
wished that he were there with me. My thoughts were interrupted as
Quinn stepped in the room with a young man. I turned, wanting to
say something that was on my mind.

"Quinn, I ..." As I looked up, after I turned
completely, I stopped dead sentence as I looked at the young man
that had walked into the room with Quinn. His long black hair was
pulled back into a neat ponytail, he was dressed in navy blue work
suit that seemed to fit him quite well in all the right places, his
green eyes seemed to pierce my soul as I looked into them and his
childish facial expression of total awe and surprise seemed to make
my heart stop. Suddenly, I caught my breath, inhaling as deeply as
I could to slow my racing heart. "Julian."

The name just flowed off my tongue and I
wasn't sure who was more surprise to hear it, him or I, but the
shock seemed to get me as my knees weakened and I began to fall to
the floor. Arms were around me, strong arms, and my vision cleared
as I looked into those green eyes up close.

"Ashley?" I heard that sweet voice from my
past whisper in my ear as he held me close to him. I couldn't
answer him; my mind was slipping into an unrealistic world, a world
of darkness and dreams. As Julian's voice slipped further away from
my conscious mind, my subconscious seemed to find the memories that
Quinn had wanted me to forget.

I felt his hand in my hair and his strong arm
on my back. His moist lips on my neck and then those razor sharp
points on my neck, then the pain. How could I have forgotten that
pain? It had been like nothing I had ever felt before, pain so
intense that I couldn't move. At the same time, as I thought back
to it, I remembered also feeling the ecstasy under it. Quinn had
unlocked the vampire in me, which I knew now, but it seemed that
Julian would have to be the one to help me control it.

Julian, how the name seemed to bring new
light to my world. How just the thought of him seemed to make
everything clearer. I thought to myself, as I stood just outside
the darkness, how much I needed him again. To feel myself wrapped
in his arms, this helped me find the light in the darkness, and I
followed that light and slowly opened my eyes.

6

A gentle hand rubbed my forehead with a damp
cloth and when it moved away, I looked into the face of a young
woman, a blond haired woman about my height, but she seemed very
sophisticated. I pushed her hand away when she went to brush my
head again. I sat up quickly and looked at her, as she looked at me
oddly.

"Quinn!" She said in a moderately loud voice,
and I assumed that she said it with her mind. Slowly, the door
opened and Quinn walked in. He smiled at me, which I saw from the
corner of my eye, as I stared at this new woman.

"Ash, this is Cleo Danzeiger," he whispered
in my ear as he pried my fingers from this woman's wrist. I looked
at him suddenly, with a gasp, and he looked me in the eyes. "Ash,
are you alright?"

"Julian?" I asked him. He smiled at me and
then giggled under his breath.

"He's downstairs," Quinn smiled.

"Then he wasn't a dream?" I questioned him
again. Quinn shook his head. I climbed out of the bed quickly, very
unaware of the fact that I was only wearing a long tee shirt, which
barely covered my butt. I walked passed Quinn, in my bare feet, and
made my way down the stairway. As I reached the bottom I faintly
heard Cleo calling my name, but I looked up and down trying to
sense where Julian was.

I turned and made my way toward the sitting
room, where I had fainted the night before, and stopped in the
large doorway to look at the back of the young man who stood almost
exactly where I had been standing the night before. Now, he wore
blue jeans, a white tee shirt small enough to show off his muscles,
and black boots. I held my breath for as long as I could, but then
exhaled loudly. He turned slowly to look at me and I took a couple
steps into the room. He came closer to me, but also stopped.

"You feel so right," I said softly, feeling
my throat thicken and my eyes fill up with tears. I put my hands
over my mouth to calm myself and then I moved them and sighed.
"After all these years, I can still feel you in my blood, in my
heart. You still feel so right to me."

"Ashley," he whispered. I could feel the
emotion in him, as he tried so hard to hold back the tears in his
own eyes. "I've missed you so much."

I longed to hold him, to touch him, to feel
the power he held over me, but I didn't move. I still couldn't
believe it was him. I couldn't bring myself to imagine that I was
standing in the same room with Julian and he was real. However, as
his arms started to rise, to beckon me to him, I found my movement,
and my feet started to move. Before I knew it, he was holding me so
tight that he picked me off the floor, and he was kissing my
cheeks.

He set me down on my feet and looked into my
eyes, touched my face and my hair. He traced my lips with his
fingers, with his shaking hand and then he kissed me fully on the
lips and the fire sparked again and this time there was no
extinguishing it. When he backed away, still holding my face in his
hands, he laughed softly.

"My God, you’re shaking," he said to me, then
backed away and his smile widened. "And, you're half naked." I
suddenly felt the cold breeze on my bottom and looked down at the
fact that my pants were nonexistent. I laughed at him, then turned
and looked at Cleo standing in the doorway, with her hands over
Quinn's eyes as she smiled at me and waved my pajamas bottoms in
the air. I walked over and took them from her, slipped them on
quickly, and watched her let go of Quinn. Julian walked over to me
and took my hand. His face was sad and his eyes were filled with a
deep sorrow. "I'm sorry about your son."

"Jack is fine. I could feel his presence
yesterday," I said and then realized what I had said. I looked at
Quinn and smiled. "Quinn, without her help I felt him, in fact ..."
I looked back at Julian, "I felt him when you walked into the
room."

"Well, Julian's presence has always been the
strongest to you," Michael said walking into the room. He looked
from me to Julian and smiled. "Maybe, since the two of you are so
connected, Jack found a way to find Julian, which also brought him
to you."

I turned and left the room suddenly. I knew
it left the others a bit confused, but I was even more confused. I
walked outside and stopped just before the steps leading off the
patio. I felt Julian behind me and I turned and looked at him. My
heart fluttered, but I couldn't say anything. I just stepped off
the porch onto the grass and made my way around the house, not
really looking where I was going.

Julian followed me, this I knew without
looking back. I could hear his jeans moving, but he stayed well
enough behind. The wind blew my hair in all directions as I walked
across the damp grass, heading down to the small theater that was
located down near the water. I walked onto its cold red brick and
down the steps to the front of the small stage. I turned in a
circle and then sighed. Julian stepped onto the red brick floor of
the outside theater and looked up at me from there as he played
with his fingers. I looked at him, standing there innocently, and I
wanted to cry, but I didn't. I stepped back to the railing at the
back of the stage and looked out over the ocean. He walked down and
stood by me.

I shivered and rubbed my arms with my hands.
He touched me and then moved away. I couldn't think of anything to
say, so I just said whatever seemed to come out when I opened my
mouth.

"I used to hide here at night," I told him
softly. "After my parents feel asleep, and I knew that I wouldn't
be heard, I snuck out of my house and walked over to this place and
sat on this very wall and sang to myself. I sang to you and I
talked to you and I missed you, but then again, I didn't know it
was you that I missed so much. I had no idea why this place
infatuated me so much, but I knew that it was linked to the hole in
my heart, the one I just couldn't quite fill."

I turned and looked at him as he now looked
out over the water, away from my eyes and he smiled shyly, as if he
had been caught peeking at a present. I laughed at him and then
walked over to the bench and sat down. He turned and leaned against
the rail and looked at me.

"I watched you, you know." I smiled at him.
"When we came back to visit, for the first couple summers, I
watched you from right where you’re sitting. You would walk over
the walkway, over there, and stand on the deck and watch the waves
come crashing into the shore. Your hair would be down and the wind
would blow it wildly around, and I didn't know why I looked, but I
couldn't take my eyes away. I told myself that if I were smart, I
would walk up to you and say hello, because I had never seen you
with a girl, and boy wouldn't my mother freak out when I brought
you home." I laughed at him and he smiled as he watched me.

Julian walked over to me and knelt on the
ground, in front of my legs. He put his hands gently on my waist
and looked deep into my eyes. He sighed quietly and then leaned
close to me.

"I watched you, too." He laughed at me. I
smiled and touched his cheek. "I saw you from my room, every
afternoon, walking over here and I thought about how much I just
wanted to run down and hold you in my arms and kiss you." His face
grew solemn and he lowered his eyes. "Quinn would tell me that it
was all right to think I had lost you, because then I would be
twice as happy when I found you again. I couldn't let go. I would
never let go."