WUTHERING BITES

Chapter Thirty-seven: Eternal

Chapter Thirty-seven

Eternal

The Grange was decorated like something out of the 1920s. Light filled the room. It was surprising to Katarina that she felt so happy. Hinton had not expected her acceptance. Together they worked.

Though she could only recall the length of her mother's hair, her large, pretty eyes and the warmth of her touch – barely – Kate's writing brought her back to Katarina. She could not, of course, detail her transformation into the girl in the attic that day and Katarina resolved that the more fantastical elements of her visit to The Hall might have been a terrible dream or vision.

Katarina had each of the journals stored in a locked drawer of her desk. They represented a year of Kate's life on this earth, and Katarina had read all of them. The words began in large, childish letters, written in an unsophisticated way. Kate had skipped forward to the good parts, and that was how she knew that Heath was her father, although she never thought of him as that. Not yet. Not ever. They were how she had learnt of the existence of hybrids and humans and vampires and bloodsucking and night terrors. It was where she began to believe in the secrets of the impossible.

The day in the mist, the last time Katarina had seen him, had been the day he started to disappear. Heath had begun to move faster, some say at the speed of light. His powers were so diverse now. He thought they might have brought him happiness but eternity without the one he loved was...worthless. He waited for her.

It was not meant to be that way. He'd been waiting for a long time. But a vampire turned by a hybrid is the longest hibernation of all. Twenty years, he'd been told. And even then, she'd need another eight to reach maturity (girl hybrids aged until twenty-eight when they sometimes attained immortality). It was a risk. There was a chance.

For twenty years the teenage girl had hidden and grown, showing herself only in the early dawn of first light. She could not speak to him or any other person, let alone touch them. Recently, she began to attain human form, as she had been the day she saw Katarina.

For the past month, Kate had come to him in the night, older, not translucent anymore, still talkative, like a child. Her skin had transformed from see through to pale. She no longer took the form of a ghost.

Heath was preparing their first moments together. Their first trip to Italy, where he intended to take her, was to coincide with Kate's twenty-first birthday as a hybrid. He'd been told it was different for women. She'd take longer to emerge.

Tomorrow would be the day. Tomorrow eternity began.

Kate had writhed in pain for months in her attic space, hidden in corners, curled up in blankets. Heath had wandered the heath in the evening to spare himself the pain of her suffering. No one else could hear or see her and he couldn't help her, could not even touch her. He was sure she must regret her choice but when her memory returned, from the wild dark spirit she had become, she reminded him constantly, how much she loved him. It was the pain of seeing Katarina for the first time that rendered her silent. Unable to speak to her grown child, or touch her, she'd disappeared for a long time into the dark. No one could ever find her when they went looking, not even Heath. Kate languished in a ghostly form, pined to hold her daughter, longed to take human shape. It was no use.

Tomorrow, however, they would be free to roam together. Heath would give up his human form for now and they would no longer be seen by the rest of the world, at least until her transition was complete. One day hybrids and vampires would be accepted by the human race but that day had not yet arrived and it would not be safe for them to reveal themselves. Those were the rules. Being hybrid, Heath could only turn one human and that human, being part vampire, had had to wait two decades for restoration. Kate's form would be human, her body hybrid, with all the term implied. Neither of them would ever look older than their mid-twenties. Heath would be there to help her final transition, to encourage her, to love her.