Page 15 of Night Fall
A memory surfaced in Mya’s mind, like the missing piece of a puzzle. “Is that why you told me you do not deserve me, even though I am yours?”
Erik nodded. When he met her eyes, she saw they were glazed over. In them was nothing more than a heartbroken man.
SIX
It was as if the words were torn from him so breathlessly, so regrettably.
“I kissed you because I want to, constantly. I want you, always. I want you in a way that is uncontrollable, irreversible, infinite. But I cannot have you, Mya.”
Mya shook her head and placed her hands on his chest, hoping she could somehow grasp onto him and shake him from his reasoning. “Tell me why. I may be blind to many things, but I am not blind to the way you are with me. I think you feel the same way about me as I do about you, so—”
“I do,” he admitted.
“Then why—”
“Because you do not know my past, Mya!” Erik roared, ripping himself away from her to pace the wooden floor. “I protected you from it, from me! You do not know.” He shook his head and changed direction, pacing faster, his boots sounding like a stampede against the floorboards even as his voice grew softer. “You do not know.”
His outburst did not shock her, because she felt his pain. “Erik,” she said carefully, “the last person I need protection from is you.”
He froze and turned to her. “That is where you are wrong.”
Mya took a step toward him, but he turned away from her once more. Eyes fixed on the door, he said deeply, “Sit down. Sit down and I will tell you about my horrid past. Maybe then you will finally understand why I do not deserve your love or your heart, nor a single shred of your mind.” Erik held his shaking hand to his face, then shoved it roughly through his hair. “Possibly not even your trust, no matter how much I long to be deserving of it.”
Mya reached out for him, her hand wavering in the air, then stopped herself. She had fought so hard to get him to speak about this. He looked so broken and she knew this would be the only time he would ever give her these answers. She needed them, they needed them.
Mya ignored the voice within her that begged her to reach out for him, touch him, soothe him with her skin, and instead turned and sat on the edge of the bed. She positioned herself where she could track his movements if he continued to pace. Then she did her best to brace herself for whatever pain weighed so heavily on Erik’s heart, because no matter what he thought, she would help heal that pain. She would always be there for him, and she was certain nothing could change her mind.
Erik was a desperate, frantic mass of energy that could not be released. Many times he stopped, looked at Mya, and opened his mouth, only to shake his head and resume battering the floorboard of the cabin. Just as Mya was about to break the electric silence, Erik grabbed the wooden chair and bowed his head. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. When he finally spoke, he did not raise his head.
“There are two things that are needed to turn someone: a want for survival or desire for vampirism, and the blood of a vampire.”
He gripped the chair harder. “I was accidentally turned in the middle of a war that I had been honor-bound to fight in but knew I would not survive. Myself, my father and many of the males in our village set out for this battle, fully aware we may not return home. In the end, I had to watch them die.”
Mya bit her lip hard to keep herself from interrupting, even as Erik’s misery coated the cabin and the distance between them in an unwavering sea of darkness.
“No one was alive when I came back as … this.” He gestured to himself before returning his hands to the back of the chair. “No one taught me how to be a vampire. I … made horrible, unforgivable mistakes.”
Erik shuddered. “I did not know how to control my blood lust. I did not know how to feed properly. I did not know about animal blood. I was turned into a vampire in the middle of a raging war where blood soaked the ground, so I gorged myself on it. Then that battle ended, while my blood lust remained. After a while, I lost consciousness. I was closer to a village than I should have been for the inhabitants’ safety.”
He licked his lips nervously and his hands tightened on the chair, the wood creaking in his grip. “I hid out in the forest, terrified of what I was. I tried to kill myself, but nothing worked. Then I became hungry again. I did my best to keep away from people, I swear I did.” His eyes met hers, filled with sorrow and damnation, before sliding away. “But the armies of our enemies, those that killed me, killed my people, were pillaging the villages, spilling more blood. The scent of it drove me mad, and I gorged myself on it again. Then I discovered desire.”
Mya whispered his name, terrified of where this story would lead, but he was lost to the call of his horrible memories.
“There were women in the village that had escaped into the woods, and I-I…”
Mya pushed herself from the bed. In two strides she was beside Erik, her fingers catching the tears that fell from his eyes just as he said, in barely more than a whisper, “I hunted them. I raped them, Mya.”
Erik pulled away from her. “You know now what it is to lose yourself to your blood lust. How you are there in your mind but not in control of your body.” His Adam’s apple bobbled in the lantern light as he swallowed. “I remember their faces. I remember their cries. I remember how many people I killed while lost to my blood lust.”
Mya covered her mouth to keep her own cries at bay, as tears—tears for him, for them—streamed down her face.
“This went on for fifty years, Mya. I could not find another vampire or immortal. No one helped me. I tried to talk to the medicine men, the physicians of those times, but they could not help me. I tried to lock myself away, but my chains were never strong enough. I employed pirates, mercenaries, the strongest people I could find in the hopes that they may be able to subdue me. It never worked, and when I freed myself, I killed every one of them. For fifty years I tried to control my blood lust, and failed.”
She cupped his cheeks. “What made you stop?”
He looked at her, his eyes drowning in despair. “A little boy who screamed and threw stones at the monster who was raping and butchering his mother. That face—”
Erik shook his head as if he were trying to clear the memory, then pushed away from the table and sat down on the bed, hands clasped between his knees. “That face will haunt me for the rest of my days. When I needed to feed, I used the abhorrence in his expression to make me regain control. I continued to use it until I was able to grasp my limits.”
