Chapter 6

Ben Wake

Ivy's grandmother's behavior puzzles me. Why did she stand well out of my reach inside the house, offering her hand, but not inviting me in? There's no way she could know I'm a vampire. One thing all of the clans have always agreed on is that we keep our existence secret to only the most select few. Even many of the claimed never know that their lover is immortal. My clan, the Negre, keep very meticulous records on which of the warm know about us, whether they learned from us or from another clan. I checked the records in the clan archives before moving to Stokers Mill, and saw that there were no known warm in the area aware of us. Once my eyes settled on Ivy, and I learned her surname was Sparks, I certainly would have recalled anybody else with that name I had come across in the archives.

The fact that a thrope is practically part of the family is even more disconcerting. Have they abandoned their own ancient tradition of secrecy as well? Has Carl told Ivy's grandmother not only about the thropes but about the vampires as well? How else would the old woman know about my inability to enter a dwelling unless invited?

Of course, I could just be paranoid, and it could have just been her way trying to intimidate me in front of Ivy – put me in a place where I could either brush past her, uninvited to shake her hand, or just walk away in defeat. In my time, I've met no shortage of overprotective women who've made any number of silly attempts to scare me off.

All of that is distraction, though. Whatever she knows, if she knows it today, she'll still know it tomorrow. Tonight, though, right now, Ivy's hand is in the crook of my arm, and she's looking at me, expectantly. We're at the motorcycle, and I'm just standing there.

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" I ask her, smiling.

"Yes," she says.

I unclip the bungee net holding my spare gear to the saddle and offer it to her. "I'm sorry that I don't have an extra pair of leather pants in your size." I unroll the gear and offering her the overpants. "The textile is much more adjustable for different sizes. Just unzip those two long zippers along either leg, and step in."

I can't help but watch as Ivy dons the pants, wiggling and bouncing a bit this way and that to get them on and close the long zippers up either outseam. In a way, it's like a strip tease in reverse, where putting clothes on is where the thrill is at. Next comes the leather jacket, which requires no explanation, and also a lot less movement of her body. Once she's got it zipped up, though, I must admit that she wears it well. Even with the extra layers for warmth, underneath a man's heavy jacket, she still manages to look deliciously feminine.

"Ok. Helmet next." I show her how to get it on and fasten the chin strap properly. "Now, lean your head back," I say, both so I can make sure she's got it on and adjusted correctly, but also because it gives me one more look at her lovely, pale neck. I see just the slightest hint of her pulse running through the vein beneath the skin.

It reminds me that I took a couple rabbits over the past few days, but it's been a long time since I've fed to the point I was truly satisfied. I need that distraction now even less than I needed my pondering of her grandmother's actions, and turn away from her delicately exposed throat to grab a pair of gloves for her.

Once she's got them on, I show her how to lift and close the visor on the helmet.

"You'll want it down as soon as we start moving. Keep the bugs out of your face and eyes, and cut the wind noise. That noise can actually fatigue you surprisingly fast," I tell her while I zip my jacket back up and put on my own helmet and gloves.

"I'm surprised that you even own one of those," Ivy tells me, tapping the top of the helmet.

"The last place I lived had a helmet law."

"You should wear it anyways. I never like seeing people ride without one," she tells me.

"Maybe someday, you'll be privileged to talk me into it," I say.

Through her visor, I see her smile shyly at that remark.

"Ok. I'm going to get on the bike, start it, and then raise the kickstand. Wait until I tell you, then climb on behind me. The easiest way will be for you to put your hands on my shoulders, plant your foot on the left peg there, and throw your right over the saddle. Got it?"

"Got it," she says.

"And the most important thing to remember is to never fight me and the bike in curves or turns. We need to all lean together. The easiest way to keep you in sync with me is for you to just look over my inside shoulder. Meaning as soon as you feel me start leaning right, I want you to look over my right shoulder. Same when you feel me start to lean left. You do that one thing for me, and we'll have a safe ride."

She hesitates for a second, then nods. I ask if she's sure she's ready for this, and she nods again, a little more confidently this time. I'm glad to see that little bit of uncertainty in her, but not any overt fear. The first time somebody rides the back of a bike, it's good for them to have that little twinge to make sure they respect the machine and the road.

I settle onto the bike and get her started and then steady and balanced for Ivy. "Ready to feel more alive than you have all week?" I ask.

"I already do," she says.

"Get on."

Instead of taking her up the sharp switchbacks that lead up out of the valley, I drive along the river road. It's a nice, clean highway, good shoulders and a lot of long, sweeping curves where I can lean the bike over just a little bit, but for a few long seconds. It's a beginner's road, just wiggly enough that you that you feel a proper ride in your core, but not so challenging as to leave a new rider or passenger constantly anxious from one technically challenging stretch to the next.

Ivy does great behind me, always looking over the correct shoulder and leaning in and out of the curves with me. We're both wearing way too many layers, two of them leather, for me to really feel the contours of her torso pressed tight against my back, but I am constantly aware of her thighs straddling my hips. A couple of times, I drop a gear and rev the engine, setting a wave of vibrations coursing from the engine, up through the frame, where they're barely dampened by the padded saddle before tingling into flesh. Every time I do so, I feel her squeeze me tighter.

Ten miles up the road, she is mostly relaxed against me, and takes the curves even easier. We are in a near-perfect moment, her holding onto me, her body following mine so closely it's almost as if she's anticipating my every move. We're in nearly perfect synchronicity. If there were not so much warm and protective clothing between us, I'm sure our hearts would start to beat together.

But as glorious as this moment is, I also picked this particular road for its potential for something even closer to a moment of perfection. Just around the next curve there's pull off that overlooks a particularly picturesque stretch of the river. I slow the bike way down to make sure I don't skid out as I turn onto the gravel pad, and roll up to a parking spot. Once I get the bike braced and shut off, I tap Ivy's thigh to signal her to dismount.

I watch her as she takes off her helmet and slowly shakes her head side to side to try loosen up her cascade of long, dark hair from the grip of helmet head. I realize this is the first time I'm seeing her face in darkness, instead of under the painful glare of sunlight, or the much more tolerable but still sterile artificial light. I'm seeing her, finally, in my most natural conditions, and I find myself briefly transfixed. This is a woman who was designed from the soul outwards to be seen under the pale and soft light crescent moon and a million stars.

Just before she notices me staring at her, I snap out of it and ask, "How was it?"

"Once I relaxed, a lot of fun. Thank you."

"Good," I say. "So we don't need to call somebody to drive you home from here in a car?"

Ivy laughs. "Not unless you're planning on going back into idiot mode for the trip back."

"No," I tell her. "Never again, whether you're there to see me or not."

The evening is mild enough that we're comfortable enough after we take off our riding gear. I walk over to a bench overlooking the river and sit down. Ivy sits down close to me. That distance where we're clearly separated, but all it will take is just a little lean for us to touch. I wouldn't measure it in inches, but in potential. It is her telling me that the night is mine to lose.

"Have people been giving you a hard time about me?" I ask her.

"I don't want to talk about other people right now," she says. "I want to know what brings you to Nowhere, Colorado. Population: Too few to be interesting."

I hate to lie to her, but, 'I'm a vampire on the run from my clan because I've crossed them too many times and now they want to kill me,' would not win the night for me. I had prepared a few stories in advance, just for this moment. I opt for the one that is least far from the truth.

"Hiding," I say. "My parents and I, we're hiding from the rest of our family."

Ivy looks at me, searching my face in the dark. I feel a little bit guilty that I have such the advantage over her right now. I know that my face is nearly featureless to her now, while I've never before seen her so clearly, more clearly than she sees me even under the bright and burning sun.

"Like, mafia or something?" she asks. I can hear the skepticism in her voice.

"No," I say. "Nothing like that. We're not criminals, just wealthy, powerful, and terribly dishonest. We're not hiding from them because we're afraid of harm. We just don't want anything to do with them, and we don't want anybody to know that we're related to them. People would try to use us as leverage if they found out. So mom asked for just enough money, an early inheritance basically, to keep us comfortable. In exchange, we agreed to change our names and hide all ties we have with them."

I can see several competing expressions cross Ivy's face as she decides whether to believe me or not. The quality of my riding gear (and me having two sets of it), the well-tended vintage bike and the car I drive, my clothes. Once I embraced my immortality and the boundless wealth I had enjoyed when I was in favor with the Negre clan, I had developed a style that whispered 'money' instead of shouting it.

"I don't suppose you can tell me who your family is, can you?"

"Someday. Not today, though. Much like you, I don't feel much like talking about other people right now."

Ivy laughs. "Fair enough. Tell me how you found this place, then." She waves her arm to take in the overlook.

"I've always been fascinated by rivers. All this water that comes from somewhere and it flows on and on, never stopping. Sometimes in flood, sometimes low, but always flowing on toward somewhere else." I gesture at the canyon the river has carved in the valley floor. "Given enough time, that constant flow of soft water defeats even hard, ancient rock. I take this road a lot, because I love to just follow the river through the valley. I think it only took me two or three times passing by here to just know I needed to stop and savor the view."

"I've lived in Stokers Mill all my life. I'm on this road at least a couple times a month, and it never once occurred to me to pull over here."

"They say that's the problem with living somewhere all your life. You grow up and everything is so familiar by the time you learn to be curious that you miss so much beauty around you."

"You've lived many places?" Ivy asks.

"It was my birth that really drove my parents to break ties with the family. They didn't want to raise a child in that place. My whole life, we've moved every two or three years."

"So you get a lot of chances to see the hidden beauty in new places?"

"I do," I tell her. Then a truth I wasn't ready to reveal slips out. "But it's so lonely. You just start to know some place or somebody, like truly and deeply know them, and then you leave. The places, you say goodbye to them forever. The people, you try to keep in touch, but it rarely works for very long. Relationships are built on shared experience, and once you stop sharing experiences with someone, their shared experiences with other people turn into other important relationships to them, and you drift apart."

Ivy turns to face me. In the process, her leg brushes against mine. Neither of us breaks the contact. "Is that why you're so unreachable now?"

I sigh. "I won't say that I've given up trying, but with every move, I find it harder to start again. The same introduction over and over again, the same process of finding the people you are drawn toward, of opening up parts of yourself to let them in. And all so you can lose everything again the next time the seasons change. So I find myself spending more time with places than with people with every move. Places are easy to fall in love with, and you don't fool yourself into thinking you'll always love them no matter how far apart fate takes you. People are harder to fall in love with, infinitely harder to leave."

Ivy turns a little more, so she's sitting sideways on the bench, facing me. "That poem you left me," she says. "That tells me you still have some fight in you."

"I didn't even try, the last place I was at," I say. "Here is different. I've just turned eighteen, you know. I don't have to follow my parents anymore. If they want to move again, I can stay if I want to, or I can move to someplace else without them."

Ivy locks eyes with me for a couple of seconds, then, looks down. I'm doing everything I can to not let her know how hard my heart is pounding in my chest, how my breath keeps catching in my throat. I glance at her neck, looking to see if her blood is also flowing faster and stronger, then look away from her as well when I realize that my fangs are aching.

"I have been working on another one," I say.

"What?" Ivy asks, looking back up at me, a little puzzled. But I'm glad of the distraction of her eyes to take my attention from her neck.

"Another poem," I say. "It's a triolet, a French style, very short. At some point in my life I realized that no matter where I go, how many places and people I leave behind, the sky is always the same."

"Can I hear it," Ivy asks.

I have a copy of it in my pocket, but I choose to bring it up from memory.

"Under the moon's most gentle light[Text Wrapping Break]Could anything else be more true?[Text Wrapping Break]We need not see, just touch at night.[Text Wrapping Break]Under the moon's most gentle light[Text Wrapping Break]Well hidden from mere mortal sight.[Text Wrapping Break]A moment freed for me with you[Text Wrapping Break]Under the moon's most gentle light[Text Wrapping Break]Could anything else be more true?"

Ivy sits there in silence, but the look on her face speaks with great eloquence.

Our legs are still touching.

I reach a hand out and touch her cheek. It's warm, and trembles slightly. I wait until she lifts her eyes to mine, she swallows and smiles.

I part my lips slightly and lean forward. She closes her eyes and tilts her head a little bit to the side. I close my eyes as well, using the sound of her breath to guide me the rest of the way to her. The first brush of our lips is tentative, cautious, light as a lock of hair brushed across your face by a gentle breeze. She takes a deep breath in as I break the kiss and back off just a touch. Ivy cranes her neck toward me and I back away again, keeping just close enough that we can feel each other's breath on our lips.

"Don't tease," Ivy says.

I move my hand to the back of her head and gently pull us together. The second kiss is still light, careful, but it lingers for a long while until we pull away and open our eyes to look at each other.

They say the third time is a charm. Our third kiss works an undeniable magic upon me. We kiss deeper this time, her lips part as well as mine, and shyly, the tips of our tongues touch, fleeting little passes. I put my other hand on her shoulder. She puts an arm around me, exploring my back, while she lets the other rest on my chest. Pretty soon, we fall into a rhythm, kissing deeper and lighter in time with her breathing in and out.

We reach a moment when I find my hand wandering from her shoulder down the front of her chest, but I stop myself before I reach her breast. It's not yet time for that.

"I hate to say this, Ivy, but I should really take you home now."

Her breath is ragged, her cheeks flushed, her mouth still slightly open, hungry. "I hate to agree with you, but yes," she says. She rolls her head back a little bit and closes her eyes.

I will not lie. I took the ride home as slow as I could without making it obvious that I was making it last as long as I possibly could. Feeling her body up against my back again, arms wrapped around me, legs holding me a little closer than they did on the ride out. That near-perfect feeling on the way to the river was replaced by a sense of utter perfection as we left it behind us. There was nothing in the world I would have changed in that moment.