Totally a Vampire Thing || ONC 2024 ||

Chapter 12. Light in the Dark

Cruz's lips were cold, but his kiss wasn't. It was heart-achingly sweet. I reached out to him at first and met the pressure of his lips on mine. The tentative contact changed to surprise, to disbelief, to full commitment to this one kiss.

It was also weightier than any smooches I shared with Dylan.

I tasted Cruz's worst fear that had just come true, the smartening of the wound. But there was the desire to survive it too. He was in turmoil, accepting so much and hurting so much that it was on the edge of my ability to comprehend. I tried.

My eyes closed, as I tried to give back all the tenderness I could give a boy. Comfort him from all the terrible pain Freida had inflicted. I was only guessing at the darkness that would always haunt him after today. I wanted to keep it at least an inch above his head, without crushing on him with its full weight.

It was amazing that I, Zoe Green, could do something so magical as kiss Cruz in this starless realm.

Finally, he let me come up for air, because he didn't need a break. I inhaled and sighed with a deep, full feeling.

"Zoe, open your eyes," Cruz whispered, turning me around by the shoulders toward the moist waft coming from the lake. "You have to see this."

The light was so faint I didn't know if it seeped through my eyelids or I caught the first glimmer of it just as I reluctantly lifted them. Yet, the familiar bluish glow intensified as more and more water lilies buds floated to the previously lifeless water's surface and opened up.

"Wow!" As if spurred on by my gasp, sand broke up around us, letting through growing spikes that opened up into dry-land lilies like in a montage film. "More lilies?"

"Lilies are just like the vampires...us. A dead thing, sleeping for most of the year only to bloom with eternal beauty of youth."

"I hope you don't sleep away my entire life."

"Well..." Cruz chewed his lip, pierced it with his fang, cried out and stuck his lower lip forward and up in a desperate effort to hide his developing vampiric teeth. Luckily, he never scratched my lips with them. Or, more likely, he was concious of it. He was this kind of guy. "I guess, it's one way to keep you safe from me."

I bopped his shoulder. "Don't you dare, Cruz Triana. We'll figure something out. Your grandpa will help too..." I trailed off instead of saying, if he comes back for us, but even unsaid, the thought hung in the air between us.

"Grandpa isn't here," Cruz said thickly, "and in a few hours the pangs of hunger will come back. I won't be myself any longer."

I reached for my belt. Freida's dagger wasn't there, and no wonder! We tumbled out of a crumbling building, fell into a lake and crawled through the sand. It was for the best that I left my wallet and phone back at the Eternal Acres.

My movement didn't escape Cruz. He blanched. "If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, then absolutely not."

"But you said it yourself that you can't go hungry!" I argued. "The more control you have—"

"You will not be my feeder!" Cruz jumped to his feet and ran to the water's edge. His hands raked through his hair as he walked along it. "Never. Never! I love you, Zoe, and you are clueless about what happens when...what happens if...my grandparents...anyway, absolutely not!"

I hugged my knees to my chest, watching him, because I was tired and because the strangest thing was happening.

While Cruz left our private lily bed to do his pacing, new flowers popped up wherever he stepped, until he left a border of lilies in his wake. It was wonderfully straight and perfectly spaced. I doubted any master-gardener could have done a better job.