17. HEART-TO-HEART

            My eyes shot open and I woke from my dream shaking and gasping for air. Thick, sticky sweat (venom) drenched my body and plastered my hair to my forehead. I closed my eyes and took deep, calming breaths, but after a few seconds I snapped them back open. Bright, silver eyes were staring at me from behind my eyelids, menacing and hateful. I slowly sat up in my bed and looked around me, trying to calm myself with the familiar objects surrounding me; my books, my knick-knacks, my Ryan. . .

            “Gah!” I gasped. Ryan was sitting rigid in the chair at my desk. The look on his face was one of terrified panic.

            “I’m sorry I startled you,” he murmured softly. “I didn’t mean to—”

            “…No, it’s fine,” I cut him off. “I just didn’t expect to see you here.” I took a deep breath. “Why are you here?”

            A look of hurt crossed his face and he began to lift himself from the chair. “If you want me to go…”

            “No!” I shrieked, a little too loudly. I took another deep breath. “Stay,” I commanded, trying to keep my voice level.

            He sat back down in the desk chair, letting his eyes slide over my disgruntled appearance; I probably looked like crap…perfect.

            I self-consciously pulled at the covers, but they were all twisted around my body. Ryan didn’t seem to notice my sudden embarrassment because he looked deep into my eyes and asked, “Are you alright?”

            I sniffed. No, I wasn’t alright! Did it look like I was alright? Why had he even asked? It was glaringly obvious that I was not alright. “I had a nightmare,” I mumbled.

            “I know. Do you want to talk about it?”

            “What?”

            “Do you want to—”

            “…No,” I interrupted. I mean, how did you know I had a nightmare?”

            He hesitated. “I…I sensed it.”

            I raised my eyebrows at him. Huh? “What do you mean you sensed it?”

            “I don’t know,” he muttered, sounding a bit frustrated. “I just knew something was wrong. I raced over here as fast as I could. It…it scared me.”

            I just looked at him, trying to make sense of what he had just said. “But how did you—”

            “…I don’t know!” he all but shouted.

            I flinched.

            “I’m sorry,” he sighed, sounding out of patience. “It’s just that…ugh! It didn’t make any sense. You were sleeping; why would you be in danger?”

            “I dreamt about Sam,” I confessed, glancing down.

            Ryan’s eyes shot back to mine. “What happened?” he asked anxiously.

            “Umm,” I stalled. I really did not want to talk about the dream. It had been too terrifying…and heartbreaking. Heartbreaking. That reminded me of the phone call. Okay, I was not going to talk about that. I guess the dream was my only choice.

            “Well, everybody was getting ready for the…battle…and Sam flew me to some meadow. He seemed all happy and stuff, but then he said he was going to kill me. And then he…he…”

            “He killed you,” Ryan finished for me.

            I looked away from him, cringing. “Well, he’s never actually killed me,” I said slowly, unwillingly thinking back to the dream—and the others like it. “He always attacks me, and then I wake up.” I paused. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually died,” I added.

            The look Ryan gave me, then, could have set off explosives. “So you’ve had this dream before?” he asked, the emotions on his face flickering to anger, to curiosity, to speculation, to wonder.

            “Um.” I hesitated. “Not this exact dream...others like it.”

            “What others?” he demanded.

            “I-I don’t know,” I stuttered, shocked by his sudden intensity. “Um, there was one a few days ago. We were, umm…”

            “Think, Emma,” Ryan commanded, his voice strained.

            “We were at his college,” I suddenly remembered.  

            Ryan’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, but he didn’t say anything.

            “And, well”—I hesitated, deliberating whether or not I should leave out the more scary details. Ryan looked at me expectantly.—“I killed him.”

            He looked unfazed, but he still didn’t speak.

            “Then”—I went on—“I laughed at him. And then I ran. I ran into trees—a forest. And I ran into you.”

            Ryan reacted to this. His face fell and his eyebrows cast his green eyes in shadow. “And…” he prompted, gently.                                                                                                            

“There was”—I tried to remember exactly what had happened next—“There was some sort of force field around you. You told me that Sam would not have killed me—that he didn’t want to…Then you ran away from me.” I sniffed and my heart hurt a little. “Why did you run away from me?” I asked him.

            “I-I don’t know. Emma, it was only a dream.”

            I looked down at my sheets. I didn’t know why I was suddenly so irritated by the fact that Ryan had run from me in my dream…maybe it was because I felt—since my phone call with Sam—that I deserved to be left.

            Damn Sam! I thought, furiously. He’d put me in a bad mood, which I really didn’t need right now. I had too many other things to worry about without worrying about him and his stupid lawyer justice crap.

            “Was that the only other one?”

            “I don’t know!” I snapped at Ryan. He bit his lip and looked away.

            “I mean, I can’t remember all of my dreams all the time,” I  explained. “As far as I know, there’s only been the two.”

            He looked back at me. His expression was as hard as stone. “Maybe this means something,” he muttered, a look of concentration falling across his face.

            “What do you mean?” I asked.

            “Well…” he began.

            I looked at him expectantly.

            “Maybe, since you and Sam are so close”—he paused, apparently trying to figure out how to word what he was going to say next right—“Maybe it means that you know—deep down—that he doesn’t want to fight you, either. You said he never kills you, right?”

            I nodded, a sense of unease slowly trickling through me.

            “So, maybe you just keep having these dreams because you know there’s going to be a battle—you know that’s how it’s supposed to be. But, maybe you know that, even though it shouldn’t be this way, Sam doesn’t want to kill you, either.” He nodded, pleased with his dream analysis.

            I just looked at him and let him soak up the moment for a while. He looked content.

            He raised his eyebrows at me, waiting for my response to his theory. I hated to burst his bubble, but…

            “I don’t think that’s right.”

            Instead of looking rejected, he just put his arm against the desk and leaned his head on his hand. “Why not?” The way he said it wasn’t mean, merely curious.

            “I called Sam today.”

            He turned his head to the wall and stared intently at the curtains, as if he were looking out the window. I saw him close his eyes and he muttered, trying to keep his voice calm, “Why did you do that?”

            What? That’s not what I’d been expecting. Maybe a ‘How did it go?’ or ‘What did he say?’ but, no, Ryan had to go all rule-enforcer on me. “I wanted to talk to him,” I admitted, a little defensive.

            “You shouldn’t have done that.”

            “But you said—”

            “…I know what I said,” he snapped.

            I flinched.

            “I didn’t think you’d actually call him, though.”

            “Why can’t I call him? He is my brother,” I argued. Though, I wasn’t planning on calling Sam again anytime soon.

            “It’s not right.”

            “It’s not a rule, though?” I challenged.

            “No, not technically,” he grumbled, sitting up straighter and facing me. “But it’s not wise, either way.”      

            “I don’t see what the problem is,” I disagreed.

            “What did Sam say?” Ryan asked, clipped.

            This was where my defense faltered. I really didn’t want to talk about the details of the phone call—to anyone, even Ryan. But Ryan was waiting... “He said”—I hesitated—“He said we didn’t have a choice.”

            “Right. So…anything else?” he asked.

            “I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumbled.

            “So you see why it’s not a good idea to call him?”

            I sighed noisily. “I don’t know… I guess, sure.”

            “Come on, you must see why it was a bad idea.”

            Of course I couldn’t see why it was a bad idea. Sam’s words had hurt me, cut me deeply, but I still didn’t regret him speaking them. Better to find out the harsh truth now, than to have it bite you in the butt later, I thought, sardonically.

            “Not exactly,” I hedged. Ryan raised an incredulous eyebrow at me. “I mean”—I went on—“Now I know what he’s thinking.” Even if what he’s thinking is crazy, I silently added.

            “What if something goes wrong?” Ryan asked.

            “What do you mean, ‘What if something goes wrong’?”

            “What if he tells someone you called? What if your obvious vulnerability gives them an advantage?”

            There he went with the “them.” They (the Caduto Angelos) were our (the Vampires) sworn enemy.  We were in a continuous war. I suppose I was still having a hard time processing that…

“What?” I spat. “Nothing like that is going to happen! Sam wouldn’t do that to me.”
            “Sam, as in that brother of yours who wants to kill you, who could care less about whether or not you live to see nineteen? That Sam?”

            I couldn’t speak. Why was Ryan being this way? Why was he doing this?

            But what was he doing, exactly? He was…he was…well, he was being an ass is what he was doing!

            “Why are you being this way?”

            “I’m not being any way!” he snapped angrily.

            I flinched, again, then buried my face in my hands, trying to keep myself from screaming at him. I could feel his gaze on me, and his eyes made me feel self-conscious. I shouldn’t be the one restraining tears. No. I needed to be strong and deal with this. I was able to deal with Sam, I should be able to deal with Ryan. But he was being so cruel…

            He sighed. I heard his intake of air as if he were going to speak, but then it cut off and he remained silent. I didn’t risk looking up, out of my hands, from fear of what I would see. But I did listen closely to his every movement, his every breath, waiting…waiting for him to do something that would signal his coming around and telling me why the hell he was being this way. For a while, I heard nothing. But eventually, I heard a faint, thump- thump.  

            I froze, listening intently to the sound, my face still hidden in my hands.

            Thump-thump.

            I carefully tilted my head a degree to the right, listening…

            Thump-thump.

            The noise sounded like a—

            “Emma?” Ryan’s voice cut into my thought. I tried to ignore him and listened again for the faint noise.

            Thump-thump.

            I lifted my face out of my hands (but still didn’t look at Ryan) and pressed two fingers to my wrist. I felt my pulse there, strong and…not in time with the noise.

            Thump-thump.

            I gasped.

“Emma?” Ryan asked again, sounding a little more frantic this time.

            “I think I can hear…your heart.”

            His eyes bulged out of his head and I was suddenly very afraid he would pop a blood vessel and blind himself. I took deep breaths—in. out.—while I watched him try to regain some sort of normalcy in his expression. A few solid minutes went by with us just sitting there, taking calming breaths, until he finally spoke.

            “Are you sure?” he breathed.

            Well, I wasn’t really sure of anything, but… “Yes.”

            He looked down and started mumbling to himself. I caught bits of it: “…this is bad…” “…can’t believe this is happening already…” “…farther along than I’d thought…”

            He stopped mumbling and looked up at me with frightful eyes, but didn’t say anything as he got up out of the chair and started pacing the room.

            I watched him sand the floor—back and forth, back and forth—until I was dizzy. He had a look of serious concentration on his face that could’ve burned a hole in the floor almost as easily was his feet could have.  Suddenly, he stopped cold. “I need you to try something,” he said, not looking at me, still seeming distracted by his thoughts.

            I got hesitantly out of bed, careful not to trip over the sheets and stood, waiting for him to give me further instructions.

            He walked over to the door and cracked it, watching and listening. After a minute or so, he turned his chin in my direction and muttered, “Follow me,” as he stealthily slid through the door.

            I did as he said, not quite sure what he was up to and followed him into the hallway. He crept past the other doors and even past the split in the hallway that opened into the common/living room. He stopped at a door  on the opposite end of the hall. I looked at the number on the door: fifty-three. Julia’s room.

            “Be silent,” Ryan instructed. “Now listen closely. Do you hear anything?”

            I listened, but all I heard was the click of the clock in the common room and the soft twittering of birds outside the window. Then I heard it.

            Thump-thump.

            It was a low, muffled sound coming through the door. I stepped closer and strained my ears to hear better.

            Thump-thump.

            “Oh my god!” I exclaimed.

            “Shhh!” Ryan hissed, cupping his hand over my mouth. Despite the fact that I was completely distracted, waves of electricity shot through me at his touch.

            “What’s happening?” I tried to mumble around his hand, but he only pressed it tighter to my face.

            “Just give me a minute,” he whispered. He looked at me pointedly, then carefully removed his strong hand from my mouth. I opened it and he put a finger to his lips, signaling me to remain quiet. He hesitantly leaned towards Julia’s door and pressed his ear to it, listening intently. After about half a minute, he turned and looked at me. “I can’t hear it,” he murmured.

            “What do you mean?” I whispered.

            “I can’t hear her heartbeat.”

            “But I can?” My eyes widened slightly.

            “Obviously.”

            “Why?”

            He hesitated, thinking. Then he turned and led me quietly into the common room. He sat down in a chair next to the fireplace and gestured for me to do the same. I sat in the other squishy, high-backed chair, then turned my gaze to Ryan and watched him, waiting.

            When he didn’t say anything, I decided I was going to start with the questions. “What exactly is happening?” I asked, curious, and, at the same time, scared to hear the answer.

            “You’re hearing heartbeats,” he explained in a hushed tone. “You heard mine, and you heard Julia’s. I already said that,” he pointed out.

            Ugh. He really was being a jerk.

            “Why?”

            “All Vampires can do it.”

            “But you couldn’t,” I countered.

            “I can,” he snapped. “Just not right now.”

            “Why not?”

            “Because I’m not thirsty,” he hissed, practically glaring at me.

            So, I could hear someone’s heartbeat because I was dehydrated? No, that wasn’t it.

            “You’re thirsty, Emma, aren’t you?” he asked.  

            “Umm…I didn’t think I was…”

            “Well, you’re obviously pretty close if you can hear a heartbeat,” he whispered fiercely, angrily. Whatever had been going on with him earlier was obviously still bothering him. But what had been going on with him?

            “How do I know again if I’m thirsty?” I asked hesitantly, not wanting to upset him again.

            He sighed, exasperated. “Do you want to rip someone’s throat out?”

            “What?!” I shrieked. “Of course not! How could you say that?”

            His eyes widened in fear and he snapped his finger up to his lips, silently demanding me to stay quiet.

            “Sorry,” I half mumbled, half whispered.

            “Think about it,” he commanded. “Does drinking someone’s blood sound in any way appetizing right now?”

            “No,” I said, automatically. I refused to believe that that was what I wanted. I refused to even think about it.

            “Is your throat on fire?” he went on.

            I swallowed the thick bitterness that had slowly been pooling on my tongue. It burned its way down my throat, hot and acidic. “Umm…”

            “Yes or no, Emma,” Ryan demanded. “This isn’t a joke. If you need to feed, you need to do it now.”  His eyes bore into me and I could practically feel him lifting the thoughts from my head.

            “You need to feed,” he concluded.

            “But I didn’t say that—”

            “…You need to. I can tell.”

            “How can you tell? How do you know?” I demanded.

            “I’m not sure. I just do. We don’t have a choice here. You have to get blood in you now.”

            I did not want to do this! I did not want to drink blood. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. “No,” I stated sternly.

            “What do you mean no?” he muttered furiously, under his breath.

            “No. I won’t do it. You’re wrong.”

            “Yes you will. And I’m not wrong.”

            “Ryan, no,” I stated again.

            “Emma, yes.”

            “I can’t!” I whispered fiercely. “I can’t drink someone’s blood!”

            “You can and you must,” he muttered through his teeth. He grabbed my wrist and led me back to my room. He pushed me onto the bed, gently, but with obvious force, and started rummaging through my closet. He pulled out my favorite pair of jeans: a ratty old pair that were insanely comfortable, filled with holes and torn at the ends. He threw them at me and demanded I put them on.

            “Now, wait a second,” I said as my fingers curled incredulously around the worn denim. “What do you think you’re doing? I didn’t agree to this.”

            “You don’t have to agree to it. I’m taking you hunting and that’s that. If I have to carry you through the mountains, I’ll do it. You have to hunt.”

            “But, why?” I demanded.

            “Because you’ll be dangerous if you don’t,” he snapped.

            What was with him this morning? He was being a jerk for no reason. And it was really starting to piss me off. And what did he mean I’d be dangerous?

            “Why are you being such an ass?” I spat at him.

            He stopped rummaging through my closet, but didn’t turn to face me. His shoulders tensed and it looked like he had stopped breathing.

            I just watched him ,waiting…waiting.

            He had better start breathing again soon or he’d—

            He gasped.

 Forgetting about the fact that I was ticked at him, I rushed over to Ryan’s side and gently wrapped my arms around his shoulders, pulling him towards me. “What’s the matter?” I asked, gently, as I sat him down next to me on the bed. I set the holey jeans down on my other side and put my hand on his knee. I caught his eyes and I stared deeply into them, trying to decipher what was hidden in their depths. Hurt, sorrow, loss, and guilt swam like little gold flecks in a pool of melted emerald and flooded his features. His mouth was turned down at the corners and his brow was crinkled painfully.

I took my hand from his knee, my other from his shoulders, and placed them both on either side of his face. I hoped the look on my face was one of sympathy and not of utter confusion, for I was in fact very confused.

“Ryan, what is it?” I asked, my voice cracking in despair. I’d hated when he’d been being mean, but I hated it even more when he was sad like this. I could handle his harsh words and snippy remarks. But this, this pain that was so clearly plastered on his face, this anguish that was disturbing him greatly, this I couldn’t handle. It was like his pain was my pain, and what he felt, I felt. When he’d been snapping at me, I’d been getting angry with him, and now, when his heart was so clearly aching, mine ached, too. I hurt for him; I hurt with him. We were connected in more ways than one; not just by venom, but by heart. I couldn’t let Ryan be in pain because if he was, so was I.

I tilted his head up an inch so he couldn’t look away from me. “What is it?” I asked again, in a soft whisper.

He broke my gaze and glanced to the side. His eyes were filling with thick tears that threatened to overflow. His lips barely parted as he spoke. “One year ago today”—he began, his voice gruff—“was my fight. One year ago today I murdered my sister.”