Chapter 8
The sun rose and then it set, and still Eric didn’t have any answers. Not that Mitchell hadn’t tried to give them, he had. It was just that Eric couldn’t concentrate. He couldn’t seem to wrap his head around the idea that the girl of his dreams was actually real, alive, and out there somewhere. And it really didn’t help that every five minutes Megan was screaming, and each time she did, it wrecked havoc on his heart. Mitchell said it was a good thing that she was screaming. It meant that she was still alive, but Eric couldn’t stand her feeling so scared.
“So you don’t have any idea where she is?” Lola asked for at least the hundredth time.
“No,” Eric said, and he ran his hands through his hair. Luke, Lola, Angelle, and Mitchell sat around the round oak kitchen table staring at him. They were all giving him a look that said they didn’t believe him. Did they really think he would be sitting here with them if he knew where she was?
“Well, you need to find her,” Angelle chirped, as if it was the first time it had been said.
When Mitchell said that the soul’s mark gave a vampire a connection to their soulmate, he hadn’t been lying. From what Eric understood, his soul was in Megan, and the mark allowed him to use his soul to, in a sense, push hers out of her body. When that happened, he could then call her to him. Mitchell explained that this usually only happened while the vampire and soulmate were asleep, like a vivid dream.
In the dream state, Eric could also use the mark to force his soul out of her body for a limited amount of time. And this was exactly what Mitchell wanted him to do. If Eric did, then he would appear where she was, and he might be able to narrow down her physical location.
“I can’t try if we are both awake, now can I?” Eric snapped, frustrated and annoyed, and maybe a little hungry.
Since Eric seemed to have absolutely no self-control, Mitchell had insisted that he needed to learn some. He claimed that it would help find Megan, and self-control was allegedly the only way their race could survive, although Eric thought his father was just trying to punish him. For what, he didn’t know, but there always seemed to be a reason. All he wanted to do was find Megan, but each time he did, Mitchell would force him to stop, and Eric was really getting tired of having a broken neck. Eric knew Mitchell was doing it to keep Megan safe. The only times he had been able to grip onto her spirit was when she was running for her life, but still, it was infuriating.
They had wandered around Willowberg for ten hours in the frigid snow while Mitchell introduced him to fear, love, and anger. Forcing the emotions on him and making him breathe in the scents that came from them. And then, when Eric thought he would surely die of starvation, Mitchell had forced him to walk away. Walk away from the pounding hearts, the sound of blood quickening in their veins, and not give in to the temptation.
It had been the worst lesson yet. There was something about the strong emotions that made the blood sweeter. Alluring. Magical. Just the thought of it made his teeth sharpen, ripping through his gums like thick needles through flesh. And with all the insane emotions he was feeling with Megan’s fear rupturing inside him, mixed with the lesson, he was famished.
But the lesson, not that Eric would ever tell Mitchell, had worked. When Megan screamed, it was easier to keep control and let her run instead of bringing her to him.
“You actually saw her?” Luke asked Mitchell, his hazel eyes questioning.
“No,” Mitchell said, shaking his head. “I didn’t have time to look. But she was here, and as soon as I heard her voice, I stopped him.”
“How?” Luke asked simply, before Eric had a chance to spit out exactly what he thought of Mitchell stopping him.
“Before the fire …” Mitchell started, and then stopped, swallowing hard. He glanced out the window, but by the look on his face, Eric was pretty sure Mitchell wasn’t actually seeing anything. The silence grew thick in the air, and Eric noticed that the others were looking at Mitchell with deep sympathy.
“Mitch, you don’t have to talk about her,” Angelle said, breaking the awkward stretch of silence. She pulled her chair closer to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulder, giving him a squeeze.
Mitchell smiled, a sad kind of smile, and then he took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. “When Amelia was scared, when her emotions were running wild, I could latch onto her and pull her out while we were awake. When I did, well she appeared as herself, and anyone around could see her, touch her, as if she was really, fully there.”
Eric blinked, and then blinked again. What? Who was Amelia? What fire? How many things did he not know? Or maybe the better question was how many of Mitchell’s lessons had he ignored?
“She used your vampiric energy to gain substance,” Lola said matter-of-factly. Everyone looked at her then, and she shrugged. “What? After she died, I did some research about the connection. It’s more common than you think, especially when the connection is strong.”
They were all still gaping at Lola as if they had never seen her before, when Eric blurted, “Who is Amelia?”
Mitchell opened his mouth to speak, but to Eric’s amazement, he closed it just as quickly. For the first time since Eric met him, Mitchell looked … broken. Utterly and completely broken. There was no mask. His emotions were thick in the air; cold, broken, and empty. It was as if a piece of him died at the mention of her name, but behind the brokenness, Eric also caught something else, self-loathing and a burning hatred. Even Eric knew that was a dangerous mixture.
“She’s Mitchell’s soulmate,” Angelle said. She whispered a few soothing notes in Mitchell’s ear and rubbed his shoulder, her arm still wrapped tightly around him, before she continued. “She was burned as a witch just over three-hundred years ago, and he hasn’t been able to find her since.”
“She died, and you’re still looking?” Eric said it as a question, because well, it was. Mitchell smiled at him, or that’s what Eric thought it was supposed it be. It looked more like a freaked-out sneer than a smile.
“Eric, no human really dies,” Mitchell said, his voice thick with emotion. “Their body may, but the soul never does. Even if you don’t find Megan in this lifetime, she’ll come back to you in another.” He offered another scary looking smile, and Eric cringed.
Not find Megan? That wasn’t a scenario that Eric wanted to think about. It was right then that he decided what he would do. The others continued on, telling him about the mark and some kind of bond that happens after a human gets bitten by their vampire soulmate, but Eric wasn’t listening. No, he was too busy forming a plan. A plan to find Megan before whatever, or whoever, was after her found her first.