"David!"

"I'm sorry."

"How do you know he didn't do anything...unsavoury? I mean, touch me, breathe on me-look at me?"

"I know my brother. He's-for all his faults, violence and depravity are not among them. He wouldn't do anything...dishonourable to you."

"Then why did you study me like that?"

"Involuntary reaction." He shrugged; he looked so human when he did that. "It was silly of me. If he'd bitten you, you'd already be a vampire."

"Do you really think he'd have done that?"

He rubbed his chin. "I don't know. I guess I was just worried he might."

"Why? Isn't it against the law?"

"Yes, but, I-" His gaze drifted into the world of nothing, coming back with a trace of alarm. "If you ever see me or speak to me and you feel something is slightly off, just-just ask me something only I'd know, and don't think about the answer."

"Why? Can he read minds, too?"

"Yes. And not just human minds, either."

"What, like, dogs and cats?"

"And vampires."

"Really?"

"Yes."

I held back the urge to laugh. "So, he's more talented than you. I bet that sucks."

He brushed my hair from my face and stared at me intently, a hint of a smile returning to one corner of his mouth. "What would suck is having your fourteen-year-old brother inherit the height in the family, while you were left...short."

"Hey! I am not short."

He laughed and turned back to the steering wheel. "Yes, you are."

"Well, you make up in annoyance what I lack in height." I folded my arms. "So, can I meet him?"

"Who, Jason?"

"Yeah."

"No," he answered swiftly.

"Why?"

"There's no need-he was obviously satisfied."

"Er! That's so creepy." I dusted myself off as if I'd walked through an empty web.

"I'm sorry, Ara. I'll talk to him, okay?"

I swiped my hair from my face, looking out the window. "You better."

David put the car in gear and we pulled away again, gaining speed a little faster than usual. I sat watching the world go by for a minute, sorting out my inner fears by imagining everything; that vampire slipping through my window, standing over me, his face and his smile just like David's, while his eyes told a different story. And that damn cat. He was on my bed that night. How could he call himself a guard cat if he couldn't even alert me to strange predators sneaking into my room? I bet he would've slept through my death, had it been a murderous vampire. "So, you said I'd already be changed if he'd bitten me. How long does it take?"

"A day or so. For some it can take only hours."

"Why?"

"It's based on the strength of your immune system; the venom kills it slowly, and when it finally gives out, you change permanently into a vampire-assuming you have the gene."

"What if I don't?"

"Well, it won't matter, because you refuse to become what I am. So-"

"David! Tell me. What if he'd bitten me, and I didn't have the gene?"

"Then-" he went quiet again until he looked at me, "-you die."

"Whoa! Hold on. So, you bite someone to feed off them? If they have the gene, they become a vampire, and if not-"

"Something like that." He nodded, scratching the back of his neck. "I've never turned someone. Of all the people I left alive in my years, not one has survived. My uncle is the only person I know who's done it successfully." He picked at the crumbling leather where his fingers had gripped the steering wheel during our abrupt halt. "It's not an easy task; the exact method's a closely-guarded secret-to prevent unauthorised transformations. All I do know is if Jason and I hadn't been compatible for the change, we would have grown ill."

Grown ill? "So, it's kinder to kill them?"

"Yes." He looked back at me. "Our venom numbs the skin and induces euphoria; they desire the bite-we drain them and...they die," his voice softened. "It's peaceful; serene. But if we leave them alive, the venom becomes parasitical; they get a fever, their immune system deteriorates, as do the cognitive functions, then, they fall into a coma. It's a degrading and...painful death."

"Can someone survive-if they don't have the gene?"

His eyes scrunched tightly for a second. "I've heard of a few cases; they recover from near death-go on with normal life, like it never happened. But it's rare, and they're never quite the same again."

"So, I could choose to give up my life-to be with you-and it might not work?"

"It's a possibility. But, do you remember that feeling you had at the lake? The uh-" He smiled, rubbing his chin, "-gravitational pull?"

"Yes?"

"That's how I know you're my soulmate."

I pulled the seatbelt away from my neck a little so I could turn in my seat. "And that means I can be changed?"

"Kind of. You see, soulmates are designed for each other, Ara. If you couldn't be changed, the phenomenon wouldn't have occurred."

"Did you feel that with the person who changed you-with your uncle?"

He laughed. "No. You only feel it with your soulmate, and it's especially rare to feel it with a human. My uncle took a risk changing Jason and I, on the hope we would be more like him, genetically. And there was nothing to lose anyway. We'd just signed up to join the army. He wanted us protected if we ever went to war."

"Really? That's how you became a vampire?"

"Yeah."

"Why would he do that? He could've killed you."

"He swore an oath to protect our bloodline. It was either death by Arthur or by something possibly a lot worse."

"So, he risked killing you-to save you?"

"Love works in mysterious ways, Ara."

"Love? Love is not plunging two barely nineteen-year-old boys into a world of murder."

His knee sunk as he pressed his foot to the clutch and changed to a lower gear, bringing the car smoothly onto the gravelly roadside, then sat staring at the dash for a second. "Being a vampire's not all bad, you know." He twisted the key in the ignition, shutting it off.

"I know. I'm sorry, David." I reached across and grabbed his hand. "I didn't mean to imply your uncle didn't care for you or anything, I just-" Was just implying that if he loved the boys, why would he possibly think a life of vampirism was better than death?

"I've lived a good life, Ara. I have no regrets about immortality." He smiled down at our hands then, opening my palm to trace a line down the middle. "And you wouldn't either, you know-once you got used to it."

"Used to the killing, you mean?"

"There is a bright side." He ran the tip of his finger down the Fate Line on my palm. "You never age."

"I'm seventeen. I think I have a few years before ageing is going to bother me."

"I don't know," he teased, "You're already changing. Look-" He pointed to the line. "This is shorter than it was a week ago."

I snatched my hand back. "Are you saying my days are numbered?"

"No." He smiled to himself. "Just that things are...changing."

"Nothing stays the same forever."

"I do," he said. "Well, physically, anyway."

"I don't know. I think your maturity levels stayed the same as your eighteen-year-old human self."

"Is that so?" His emerald eyes met mine. "This coming from a girl who thinks throwing a tantrum is an acceptable manner of getting her own way."

"I don't think it gets me my own way. It actually does."

He laughed. "Only because your dad's treading on eggshells around you until he's sure you won't run away or commit suicide."

"Then why do my tantrums work on you?"

"Because," he said, taking my hand. "I love you."

I sat back in the chair and let my hand fall into my lap. "I wish we could be like two characters in a book; that some miracle could keep us together."

"I know, my love, but this is life," David said. "And our reality is that fiction doesn't mix with fact."

"Yet I'm sitting beside a vampire right now," I said sarcastically.

"The only thing fictional about vampires is the possibility of one falling for a human."

I smiled to myself.

He stole my hand back and sat quietly then, tracing his fingertip down the middle of my palm again.

"It really bothers you, doesn't it?" I asked.

"What?"

"The lines-the changes."

"It's symbolic of many things, I believe."

"Like what?"

"Perhaps not just the future, but maybe..."

"Maybe?"

"Nothing." He laughed and folded my fingers around his, but the smile faded from his eyes and a flicker of something foreign flashed for only a second before it disappeared. "I'm just being melodramatic."

"David." I squeezed his hand a little tighter. "Is something wrong?"

"I-No." He patted my hand and released it, smiling. "It's nothing. Let's just enjoy this day."

"Okay, but, you'd tell me, right? If there was something wrong?"

"Probably not."

I cleared my throat, unbuckling my seatbelt, but as I turned to open the door, looked up at the vampire standing there.

He offered his hand. "Would you like to go back to the island today?"

"Yeah." I took his hand. "Sounds great."

Raindrops broke the glassy stillness of the water, distorting the deep red reflection of autumn foliage. Ripple upon ripple stretched closer to the shore, pushing the clusters of orange and brown leaves in laps up onto the clay banks. David and I stood at the cusp of the lake, hand in hand, watching the watery road out to the island.

"It's magnificent this time of year, isn't it?"

"It's always magnificent," I said. "But I wish I'd worn a skirt instead of jeans."

"Hm," he hummed, giving an automated smile.