That doesn’t sound too bad. Almost romantic, even.
Jaxon leans forward and sweeps me off my feet, one arm under my shoulders and the other under my knees. Once I’m safely balanced in his arms, he looks down at me and winks. “Ready?”
Not even close. I give him a thumbs-up. “Yeah, absolutely.”
“Hang on!” he warns, then waits until I wrap both my arms around his neck as tightly as I can.
Once I do, he shoots me a grin. And then he starts to run.
Except it’s not like any running I’ve ever experienced before. In fact, it’s not like running at all. If I had to guess, it’s more like we’re disappearing from one place to the next in rapid succession, too fast for me to get my bearings on the new location before we disappear again.
It’s strange and terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time, and I hold on as hard as I can, afraid of what will happen if I let go, even though Jaxon has his arms gripping me tightly against his chest.
As he fades again and again, I keep trying to think, trying to focus on what I want to say to the Bloodletter or how I can lock Hudson out of my mind, but we’re going so fast that real thinking is impossible. Instead, there’s only instinct and the most basic follow-through of thought.
It’s the strangest feeling in the world. And also one of the most freeing.
I don’t have a clue how long we’ve been traveling when Jaxon finally stops at the top of a mountain. He sets me down slowly, which I’m grateful for, since my legs suddenly feel like rubber.
“Are we there?” I ask, looking around for a cave entrance.
Jaxon grins and, not for the first time, I realize how nice it is that Jaxon doesn’t have to cover every inch of exposed skin the way I do when we’re outside. I like being able to see his face, like even more being able to gauge his reaction to my words. “I wanted to show you the view. And I thought you might like a break.”
“A break? We’ve only been moving a few minutes.”
His grin becomes a laugh. “It’s been more like an hour and a half. And we’ve gone almost three hundred miles.”
“Three hundred miles? But that means we’ve been traveling at close to—”
“Two hundred miles an hour, yeah. Fading is more than just movement. I don’t know how to describe it; it’s kind of like flying—without a body. Every vampire starts practicing it at a young age, but I was always very, very good at it.” He looks like a little kid, absurdly proud of himself.
“That’s…incredible.” No wonder I was having such a hard time holding on to images and thoughts as Jaxon faded. We weren’t so much moving as bending reality.
As I turn all this information over in my head, I can’t help thinking about a book I read in seventh grade, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. In it, he talks about people driving cars superfast on the regular highways—like 130 miles an hour fast—and the government condoning it, because it keeps people from thinking. They have to concentrate on driving, and not dying, to the exclusion of everything else.
It felt a little like that when Jaxon was fading. Like everything else in my life, even the bad stuff, just disappeared, leaving only the most basic survival instincts in its place. I know Bradbury meant his book to be a warning, but fading is so cool that I can’t help wondering how Jaxon feels about it.
I wonder if it feels for him the way it did for me, or if vampires are more able to handle it because they’re built to go those kinds of speeds. I almost ask him, but he seems happy—really happy—and I don’t want to ruin that with questions that might be hard to answer.
So I don’t say anything at all, at least not until Jaxon turns me around and I get to see the view from the very top of this very tall mountain. And it is breathtaking. Massive peaks as far as the eye can see, miles upon miles of snow packed onto the tops and sides of mountains in a kind of frozen wonderland made even more precious by the fact that we really might be the only two people to ever stand here.
It’s an awe-inspiring feeling…and a humbling one, which only grows as astronomical twilight closes in around