The Vampire Executioner (A necromancer romance novel)

Chapter 6: Saying goodbye

Esmeralda

Lucan didn’t really say anything to me except that we would be waking at six in the morning to make sure the zombie got back to his grave before he would just become a corpse again.

He didn’t undress and neither did I as we climbed into our beds. I think we were both too aware of the other persons presence for that. The room felt strangely intimate despite the distance between the beds.

The warm yellow lamplight cast soft shadows across the walls while rain tapped steadily against the windows outside.

Lucan lay on his back with his hands folded loosely over his stomach, eyes closed.

I kept pretending sleep. Honestly, I was terrified to fall asleep before him.

Every time I closed my eyes, I imagined waking up to him standing over me with a stake in his hand and those glowing blue veins beneath his skin.

I didn’t fall asleep until I felt sure he was sleeping first, when I heard his breathing deepen, then I finally managed to fall into a fitful sleep.

I woke up relieved I was still alive, and no stake was sticking out of me.

I sat up slowly to see that Lucan was already prepared to leave.

I did that horribly awkward thing, where I got distracted by how mesmerizing his eyes were so that I was staring him in the eyes, realized what I was doing, tried to stop myself but took too long to drag my gaze away so that he was looking at me with a faintly puzzled look.

Heat flooded my face scorchingly, I praised the lord that my skin was as dark as the night sky without the stars so he couldn’t see how violently I was blushing.

He didn’t say anything, but I felt the suspicion in him raise a few octaves. He grabbed his coat and opened the motel room door, waiting for me to hurriedly put my shoes on before walking out and knocking on next door.

Mrs and Mr Brooke both looked solemn when they opened their door, the smiles from the night before were gone. They knew this was goodbye.

Cold morning fog blanketed the graveyard by the time we arrived, curling low across the damp grass and crooked gravestones. Frost coated the earth silver beneath the weak early dawn.

When we reached the grave, Mrs Brooke was sobbing and Mr Brooke quietly patted her hand that was looped through his arm. “There, there Dorothy, no tears.” His voice was full of heartbreaking tenderness.

“I want you to be happy, to live your life, to move on, spend time with Sarah.” A faint smile crossed his face. “And before you know it, we will see each other again and it won’t have seemed so very long, you’ll see.”

He kissed the top of her head lovingly, and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling down my cheeks. It was heartbreaking to watch, and even more so when I could feel all of Mrs Brooke’s pain and grief, her pain hit me like a tidal wave. It hollows out my chest until breathing became painful.

My gaze shifted toward Lucan. I wondered if he could feel their pain through his power. He was standing firm and solid. Calm. Controlled. Unreadable. But when Mr Brooke let a tear slide down his face, I saw Lucan stumble back slightly before recomposing himself.

It was subtle.

Small enough most people wouldn’t have noticed.

But I did.

For a fraction of a second, his carefully controlled expression shattered completely.

Pain flashed across his face so raw devastating it stole the breath from my lungs.

Not ordinary sadness.

Agony.

Ancient and endless.

Then I blinked and it vanished.

His features smoothed back into that cold neutral mask he wore so perfectly, so you had absolutely no clue what was going on behind those eyes.

But now I understood.

He felt the dead.

Not the living.

The realization sent another chill through me.

Lucan had to step in and help Mr Brooke uncurl his wife’s fingers from his arms. I watched in surprise as Lucan’s face softened. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders from behind, holding her trembling body tightly against his chest.

“Let him go,” he murmured softly near her ear.

His voice barely sounded like the same one he used at work.

“He’s right, it won’t seem so very long before you see him again. You go on that trip with your friend, and you can tell your husband all about it when you see him again. Where he’s going is a place of peace and love, you don’t need to worry about him.”

Mrs Brooke never took her eyes away from her husband, but with such innocence she asked Lucan, “have you seen it?”

“No, we don’t get to see it until it’s our time, not even I have the power Mrs Brooke, but every single spirit I’ve spoken to who has come back from there has only ever said the most incredible things about it, magical things.”

She nodded and looked a little more content, and finally allowed Lucan to use his power to put her husband back to rest in the ground.

It wasn’t as intense, thank goodness, it felt like he simply withdrew the power he had let out of himself and into his zombie and absorbed it back into himself.

When the ground had swallowed Mr Brooke back up, I watched Lucan and noticed he gave a small nod at something or someone we couldn’t see, and then he leaned down into Mrs Brooke’s ear and quietly said, “he crossed over.”

She nodded quietly and sagged weakly against Lucan’s chest with silent tears.

I turned away abruptly, pressing trembling fingers against my mouth as tears spilled freely down my own face. I could feel all her pain, and it took everything in me not to collapse to the floor from the strength of her grief.

Before I could stop myself, I turned back and rushed toward her, grabbing her into a tight hug. She was surprised for a minute and then wrapped her arms around me and we sobbed together.

I hadn’t meant to pry her from Lucan’s arms and I could only imagine what he was thinking about with my bizarre behavior, after all, I wasn’t the one who had just lost her husband.

Slowly, nervously, I lifted my eyes toward Lucan.

And suddenly I very much wanted the ground to swallow ME instead.