propping himself up against the old paisley couch. He hadn’t noticed the details before. The fading fabric. The tears at every corner. It wasn’t from his time, or even his father’s. Just as Elisabeth was not.
Elisabeth.
He looked around, searching for her. The cabin, in daylight, was even more run-down that it had been lit only by the light of the moon. But it was still just one big room. A small kitchenette, a rickety table with two chairs, a straw mattress lying upon the floor in the corner, and this couch.
He started to call her name, but the words died on his tongue.
Kieran rose. His entire body screamed at him, every bone, every joint. He felt as if he’d been in a series of MMA matches the night before.
Well. Something like that.
His cheeks flushed as the memories of the night before came rolling back. How her soft, unmarred flesh felt as his fingers passed down the curve of her hips. The way she begged him to go harder, to go softer, to go longer. He hadn’t known he had such stamina, but she’d shown him precisely where to find it.
Elisabeth.
Kieran stumbled toward the door. He shielded his eyes and looked around. Sunlight bounced off the standing water of the bayou. The song of the swamp grated on him, splitting his head open as if hungover on the cheapest liquor he could find.
“Elisabeth,” he said, finally, but his voice cracked. He couldn’t wrap himself around any of it anymore. Every second that passed, the events of the night before, from Darcy, to the cabin, to the Rougarou, seemed more and more as if he’d hallucinated them. They couldn’t possibly be real. Not one of those things. Certainly not all of those things.
He stepped back inside. He looked around for a note, and then almost laughed at himself. A note. A vampire wouldn’t leave a note. If she even was a vampire. If last night had even happened.
But if it hadn’t happened, how did he get here?
And where was here, exactly?
Kieran bowed over the counter, searching for his bearings.
The carnival. The details stitched together, slowly. Darcy. All the blood. That poorly stitched bear swimming in it.
Elisabeth.
The car. The boat.
Here. This cabin.
Her story. All those things she’d told him; things he could never learn from a book, or a movie.
Her truth.
His fear.
The Rougarou.
Grandma Lucy is still alive. I’ll go to her. I’ll tell her what happened. I’ll tell her you didn’t leave her—
No. I would rather she believe I ran off than know this was my fate. She would be old now. She deserves peace.
No, no, no!
Kieran winced as a fresh pain sounded from his back. A new memory ripped through him. Bending Elisabeth over the arm of the couch as he took her from behind. His nose tickled with the memory of her locket brushing his flesh as she moved in perfect rhythm.
This same woman—this vampire—who had killed Darcy.
No, she’s more than that. You saw it in her. She wants to be more than what she is.
But she wasn’t. She was a vampire. Vampire, vampire, vampire.
And yet, she let you live.
Kieran straightened. The realization of his words spread from heart to head. She had let him live. She wasn’t hiding in the brush, waiting to catch him unawares for her next meal. He didn’t sense her at all anymore. She was gone.
He’d saved her life, and in turn, she had spared his.
He should be glad of this. The relief should be so overwhelming to him that it brought him to his knees.
And yet...
“Elisabeth,” he said again, and now a new ache appeared, but this one in his chest. He could say her name a thousand times and she’d never hear a single one.
She wasn’t coming back.
Kieran stepped again toward the doorway. He surveyed the bayou before him, knowing full well that he would never be able to retrace the route Elisabeth had taken to bring them here. Everything looked different in daylight. Everything felt different.
He might never know why he drew the straw that brought him to this cabin, with this vampire, but Kieran couldn’t help thinking that both he and Elisabeth had been tied to this place by their grandfathers. It had to mean something. He’d never been the kind of young man who could accept a world without explanation.
He reached into his pocket for his phone, but then remembered she’d taken that long ago, before throwing him into the trunk in New Orleans. He hadn’t seen it anywhere inside. It