His gaze cleared. "No, Mariel. But I have been in love."
Clay's hand tightened around hers. "What happened to her?"
Vellum sighed, as if weary. "She hung herself when she learned what I had become. She understood, even if you can't, that life with a vampire is impossible."
~~~~~
On they rode, the mountain grew ever nearer, like foreboding rising up to greet them. Mariel much preferred the sight of Scar Tooth during the day, in the hour or so before she fell asleep. At any other time the mountain was colored by sunset and appeared to drip with blood. Or else it hunched as it did now, black and malevolent-looking.
She found her appetite waning as they traveled. Clay hadn't been able to locate saberwolves this close to the mountain and had switched to hunting down the rock goats whose meat was gamey and chewy. Mariel tossed her half-eaten piece in the fire. Then, after checking that Clay was busy tending to their horses, she set off to find their wayward companion.
Mariel spotted Vellum about twenty yards out from camp, staring at Scar Tooth as though facing off against an opponent. They would reach the mountain in another day or so, and she could tell that she wasn’t the only one nervous about that fact.
Ahead lay only danger. Mariel understood that Vellum needed vengeance, but it scared her that this was the only way the vampire felt he could find it. The creature who had turned Vellum into a vampire was older than he was and likely more experienced. Did Vellum plan to set a trap for him? Was Vellum a skillful fighter? Did vampires even fight as humans did? She was afraid to ask him any details in case the answers were ones she couldn't live with.
"Mariel."
She wasn't surprised that he'd heard her approach. He had excellent hearing, something she and Clay had learned to their chagrin and occasionally still forgot. Fortunately the only times Vellum had caught them talking about him were when they were discussing being intimate with him, in which case the outcome was always positive.
"I don't want to bother you if you'd prefer to be alone," Mariel said as she drew abreast of him.
"No one ever prefers to be alone, Mariel."
Vellum was smiling faintly. The moonlight adored him and Mariel could sympathize. His elegance, so striking in the rough and tumble territories, compelled the eye to devour him. But Vellum was no pretty dandy. There was a hardness to him, an alienness that stiffened your spine when you first came upon him. Mariel had once been intimidated by it. Now, she was only aroused by it. Fascinated by it.
However, had she met him as a human she would have loved him even then. Maybe moreso, because that faint air of melancholy that she sometimes sensed from him would have been absent.
"We don't have to go on," she blurted. She winced and checked his reaction, but he didn't appear to be angry.
"You don't," he said calmly, "but I do. It's the only thing I can do."
"Wrong. You can stay here with Clay and me. We'll turn our back on the mountain and never look at it or think of it again."
He turned away from the monolith to study her. He was no longer human, but he still possessed human emotions despite what he claimed. That was what Mariel believed, anyway, when he looked at her this way. She saw longing in his obsidian eyes, and she doubted vampires longed for anything except more blood. Clay had fed Vellum earlier tonight, so he couldn’t be hungry.
But he was hungry for companionship, and maybe understanding.
"I have to find him, Mariel. He stole my life."
"If you can't find him," Mariel said hesitantly, "what will you do?"
"Keep looking. I have all the time in the world."
Mariel licked her lips. "What if Clay and I asked you to put off your hunt? For the time that he and I are alive? After we're gone, you can resume your hunt then."
Something flashed in his eyes, something she recognized and was shocked by.
She reached up and cupped his smooth cheek. He was built like alabaster, firm and hard and impossibly polished. But there was warmth beneath his skin now that he had fed. The blood that ran through his veins belonged to her and to Clay. They gave him life. He was theirs more than he realized.
"You're afraid of us dying," she murmured, searching his eyes. "That's why you kept pushing us away."
"I'm afraid of nothing," he said flatly.
But he was lying. He feared losing more lovers. It was a declaration of love without words, and it made Mariel's heart ache for him. He would walk the earth forever, and for most of that time he would do it alone.