Bitter Fruits by Sarah Daltry Page B

that.”
    “I still don’t understand how this all led to what you are today.”
    “Neither do I,” he confesses. “I don’t know how or why he murdered me. We had had a fight, but it was the same sort of fight we had every day. He demanded that I do something, I teased him and refused, and after he left in a huff, I got to work. Something changed, though, and he returned this time. All I know is that I was awoken days later in a place I had never seen before.”
    “Awoken? By whom?”
    “A woman. She was beautiful. She raised me and made love to me all night; I didn’t know then what she was, nor did I know what I was. It was only in the morning, when the sun rose and she hid me in a cave lest we burn to ash, that I knew something had changed.”
    Jealousy rages through me, but I tell myself it is unreasonable. It was ages ago, and were it not for this woman, Alec would not be here today. Neither of us is a virgin; why, then, does it bother me to hear it? Did I really think he saved himself for eternity, until I came along? It’s foolish, and I choke down the envy with reluctance. The past matters only in how it shapes the future. I kiss him along his chest and neck, seeing the marks for the first time hidden under wisps of his hair. My fingertips touch them but they burn me; he gasps and pushes me away.
    “It is a curse, Nora. I know you and your friends partake in this fascination with vampires and werewolves and all that is unholy, but my brother and I are a scourge. We are hunting our mother in order to stop the evil, to free our souls finally from the darkness.”
    “There are werewolves?” I ask, my excitement hard to contain.
    “No.”
    “But you said...”
    “I was making a point,” he says. “Which, since you seem to have missed it, is that my brother and I are not worth your admiration, but your hate. We chose to pervert the will of Heaven.”
    “Did Caleb ask her to turn you?”
    “No, it was the other way around.”
    “Why?” I ask.
    “It doesn’t matter. I was naïve and thought that it would change something. All that matters now, however, is that I was the first and it falls on me to find her and stop her this time.”
    “What if you can’t? What happens then?”
    He looks at the ground, his shoulders revealing that he has lost hope of succeeding. “The cycle goes on. My brother turns on me, kills me, and then, several days or years later, we start anew. A new life elsewhere, hunting for our mother. It has happened every fifty years and we are closing on the end of this cycle.”
    I take his hand in mine. “Alec, if you die, I will be with you when you wake. We would still have fifty years, although I’ll grow old. We can hunt her together and we will succeed - if not this time, then the next.”
    He grips my hand tight. “You must understand, Nora. When I die, I must shed all that comes from this life. That means all of my mortal connections die with me. My brother will see that you do not follow.”
    “What if he doesn’t? What if he refuses to kill me?”
    “He won’t. He knows how to do what must be done. There is more, but I think now we must go.” He stands and brushes himself off. “I’ve told you a great deal, but there is the pressing matter of finding your Henry.”
    I rise as well, although I’m not satisfied with his explanation. There must be a way to change Caleb’s mind, to prevent him from killing me. If so, I only need to live without Alec for a short period of time and then, we can dedicate our lives to hunting this creature and getting him what he needs. It strikes me that there must be other ways - letting the cycle remain incomplete, fighting back, something. I imagine there are reasons that they follow this concept so blindly, but it is yet another question to be answered. There is so much more that I must know, but first there is a debt to pay, to both Henry and Scarlet. I follow Alec further into the woods, and deeper into the