“Yes. Or the dimensional plane we collectively agree to call hell.”
I thought he must be joking, but he looked dead serious. “But, if it’s not a physical, y’know, place,” I asked, “how did your brother survive?”
Adrian started to speak, then stopped. “I—I’ve never been. Some of us have. It’s been explained to me that it’s a bit like when you’re e-mailing someone a picture. The visual information—colors and shadows and lines—it all gets converted to ones and zeroes and compressed before it’s transmitted. Apparently Lucian’s body was like that—stored, indefinitely, as information. As an idea.”
Well, that one was certainly hard to wrap my head around.
He smiled uncomfortably. “The more science progresses, the more we understand particles and light and time, the more it seems to wrap right back around into myth.” He shook his head. “The point is, we found him—which was unprecedented—and took him back—which was even more unprecedented.” He risked a glance up at me.
“So,” I said slowly. “You’re immortal. Your dad’s a demon. You absorb emotions as energy. You can do freaky things with your eyes and make people forget stuff, your brother was stored digitally in hell, and for some grand, mysterious reason, I am being intentionally informed about your secret vampire society.”
He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. The point of all this has to do with Lucian—and you. Julian, Mariana, and I are all lost causes as far as our father is concerned. But when you invest ten years in a kid, like our father did with Lucian, you’re gonna be a little pissed if he’s taken away. We knew he was going to come looking, which is why Lucian came to live with us. We’re remote, unlike most others of our kind, who prefer high-density population centers. If there was going to be any kind of altercation, the collateral damage would be minimal out here. But we had no idea that he’d be so close when he came. Usually, it’s very difficult to pinpoint where you come through. When you travel between dimensions, you sort of upset physics. It literally agitates the fabric of the universe. Anyway—he opens a gateway, we get a freak storm.”
I stared at Adrian. “So I just happened to be sitting right there when an interdimensional portal opened up next to your house?”
He nodded.
“Okay,” I said, “but, so what? You rescued me, the storm’s over, I’m safe now.” When he didn’t respond, I followed up with a prompting “I’m safe, right?”
He leaned in close, even took my hand in his and stared down at it like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Whatever he was about to say, it was bad.
“Your mom had died only a few days before,” he began. “You were, quite understandably, upset. If my father had come through in the city, he could have latched on to anyone, but there are so few people up here, and you were—emotional enough to draw attention. We could feel you, and we knew he’d head straight for you to strengthen whatever body he’d managed to create for himself. But I found you before he did. And I had to—”
He shook his head and sat back, a disgusted look on his face.
My stomach felt slimy. “What?”
His glance flicked up at me. “There’s no good way to say this.” He grimaced. “I had to drain you.”
“You had to—what?”
He let out a long breath. “In order to keep you from being detected, I siphoned off your emotion—all of it. I had to make even you forget you existed. That’s why you couldn’t remember the storm, and that’s why you were so weak. I nearly killed you, to keep you alive.”
I stared at him.
He scrubbed a hand across the bridge of his nose. “The stupid thing is, that should have been it. You were safe, you were home, our father left, we scared him off. Even Lucian was safe.” He looked tired suddenly. “Except Mariana had a dream about you.”
I stared at him. “What sort of dream?”
He shrugged. “She didn’t tell me much—she rarely does. They’re abstract and open to interpretation and that can mess with things. All I was told was that it had something to do with our father wanting to locate you.”
“But—it’s just a dream. Right?”
He shook his head. “No. No, unfortunately, it’s not just a dream. You’d already left residual emotional energy all over the place, like heat coming off pavement after a day in the sun. He still noticed you. Mariana’s vision confirms that.”
He glanced at me. “Since we go to the same school, it was my job to keep an eye on you after that, give you information as needed. My sister’s vision could mean nothing, but that’s rare. We don’t know what will happen, we don’t know when it will happen—but we do know it will revolve around you.”
A pregnant silence followed his statement as we stared at each other. I was, apparently, at the epicenter of a crazy demon vision, and Adrian was my vampire liaison.