Angel seemed to have an answer, but he didn't reply—years later I realized why, but it's too soon to talk about that now. Instead of talking and arguing and wishing, we summarized all our fears into a long, breathless kiss. Our first. Finally, a good first.
It was a long kiss. I had my eyes closed. I thought he had his closed too. He kissed me the way a man breathes for life. Not in a metaphorical way. He truly sucked my soul into him, and I couldn't understand why I meant so much to him. I couldn't understand how he could so passionately kiss someone he was supposed to kill. I didn't understand where he had been for two years and why he had come back now.
Right now, I am surprised I can't capture the emotions I felt that day on paper. Young love, with all its recklessness and lack of reason or logic, turned out to be a precious, magical feeling that I might have lost to the long and hollow winters of my life. The struggling life I lived after has made this memory a bit too hazy now. I can't even believe I fell for Angel so easily, but it was what my young heart had desired. It was the start of the craziest adventure I ever knew.
My haze of walking dead in the gardens of Styria had ended. I was in love. True Love. The kind of love I'd read about in Shakespeare stories. I was ready to die for Angel in the most unexplained ways.
"Did you feel that?" he said, holding me close.
"I did." I blushed, thinking he was talking about the kiss.
"I think the earth shook beneath us," he said.
I didn't feel the earth shake that day, but looking back now, I think it did. It must have. The earth probably knew the sorrow our coupling was going to bring into our lives. This kiss, as much I cherished it, should have never happened.
22
I could tell you all about when Angel insisted that he'd meet my father and tell him how he felt about me. I could tell you about how it all went wrong. My father, although supportive and considering Angel a great asset against the war on the Sorrows, succumbed to my mother's and Austria's noblemen's objections, and to the world that didn't approve of our love.
I could tell you the details of Night Von Sorrow swearing to kill every Karnstein, including his own son, if Angel and I were to stay together. Night had begun killing many European allies of the Karnsteins already, just to make his point.
I could tell you about the Styrians themselves, shocked that I could only fall in love with our enemy, raging a war across Europe as well.
But I don't see the point in reciting those details. All you need to know is that our love was damned, doomed, and destructive to others.
Angel and I escaped both my family and his to a small cottage in Italy. We rode for days and nights, disguised as beggars, apple traders, and entertainers. Everyone was looking for us—especially for Angel. His pictures were drawn by the most talented artists and hung on every wall in most towns. A recurring description of Angel was of a man with long hair, black as night, a hard-edged face, white as snow, and lips red as blood from the people it was rumored he'd feasted upon. Angel only fed on animals, which he hated, but he had no other choice at the time.
Wherever we escaped, people talked about the half-vampire who'd stood up to his vampire king. They called him Black Death, or sometimes Dracul, which just meant "dragon" in Romanian. Whatever Angel did to become human, mankind wasn't going to accept him. Nor were vampires going to accept him.
Then we started hearing news—rumors, or what people later started calling fairy tales—about a man walking the dense snow between Transylvania and Styria, killing other people. They said he wore black, and was usually surrounded by black crows. They said he stained the white of snow with the red blood of his enemies. People called him the Red Dragon, the Black Snow, and so many other names that revolved around the three colors that later haunted and cursed my life: red, white, and black.
Angel and I continued our escape, all the way through Europe, because we had no place to go.
But Angel sensed my weakness, my inexperience with hiding and enduring such horrendous traveling, and advised me to travel to a safe place while he fought our pursuers—later, I learned he had desired my blood too much and feared he could not hold himself back while we were alone.
Angel drew me a map and ordered me to follow it. He told me he'd meet me seven days later on Murano Island near Italy, the one were glass and mirrors were made. I argued that I couldn't be near mirrors, and Angel blamed my parents for making me think so. He believed nothing would happen to me if I stared in a mirror, but I had lived with the fear for too many years and it had been carved too deeply.
"Also, I won't leave you," I argued, as I could hear the horses of our hunters approaching. "I can't."
"Go." Angel whipped the air to scare my horse away. "I will see you in Murano. Don't fear the mirrors. Ask for Amalie Hassenpflug, my godmother. Tell her I sent you."
I was speechless as my horse took off to my destination. So that was why he had used her last name when he was disguised as an apple trader?
"Carmilla!" Angel, sweaty, exhausted, and ready to kill, summoned me one last time.