She stopped in front of me and lifted her hand toward me. She was holding something in her hand. A wooden stake. She placed its pointed end against my heart. I looked up, straight into her eyes. Big brown ones, peering through long thick lashes. She was an exotic beauty, olive-skinned, beautiful heart-shaped face, full lips, long wavy brown hair…

“You’re a hunter.” I said. It was rhetoric. I wondered what was keeping her from driving the stake right through my heart. Was it because I just saved her life from that panther? She didn’t even seem to be grateful for it back at the shore.

“You’re cursed.”

“That I am.” I scoffed.

She pushed the stake forward, just enough to break my skin and draw blood. I saw bewilderment in her eyes.

“You just killed a panther with your bare hands…” she spoke. “What’s keeping you from killing me?”

“I’ve never killed a human being in my life. I’m not about to start today. If your conscience can take ending my life, then go ahead and be done with it.”

I wondered what was keeping her from killing me. Back when I was a hunter, I wouldn’t have given it a moment’s thought before ending a vampire’s life – and I ended many. I saw them as cursed, remorseless, wicked creatures who took life without inhibition – the same way one of their kind took my mother’s life. I saw vampires as immortals dead to their conscience. I never thought they were capable of emotion until I became one of them.

I looked into this young woman’s brown eyes and wondered what all the vampires I murdered felt when they looked into my eyes. Did they feel as I felt at that moment? Did they anticipate the moment the stake would drive through their heart? Were they begging to be freed from their accursed immortality?

It felt like an eternity before our eyes unlocked and she sank into the ground, pulling the stake from my chest. She watched as the wound caused by her stake healed.

“I’m not a hunter,” she admitted.

I smirked. “I can see that. If you were a hunter, I’d be dead by now.”

“You’re not what they say you are, not what I expect you to be.”

I couldn’t find a proper response to that statement, so I introduced myself instead. “I’m Derek Novak.”

She stared at me for a couple of minutes before finally deciding that I deserved a name to call her by.

“You can call me Cora.”

The lighthouse became my refuge through all the terror and bloodshed that happened in that forsaken island in its first hundred years. The people who got to enter it were the people I trusted enough to completely let into my life. Only two had made it within its walls. Cora and Vivienne.

That night, a third person was about to enter my sanctuary. She was the first person I allowed in by choice. As I gently laid a hand on the small of Sofia’s back, guiding her up the winding staircase that would lead to its topmost room, I realized that I was something that I hadn’t been in a very long time: terrified.

CHAPTER 37: SOFIA

I raised the lantern Derek gave me over my head as we continued to climb to the top of the lighthouse. I found myself a bit confused and more than a little surprised. I thought I was imagining things, but I could swear that the hand Derek laid on my back was shaking.

Derek Novak? Nervous? Will wonders never cease?

As we neared our destination, I felt a mixture of dread and anticipation. It was obvious that this place held a lot of meaning to Derek and I was excited to find out why, but there was also a sense of foreboding that came with it, as if the lighthouse also housed something dark and disturbing.

I was relieved – and out of breath – when we finally reached the top of the lighthouse. Derek, who was at my rear the whole time, took the lead during the last few steps. He retrieved a metal skeleton key from his jeans’ side pocket and unlocked the arched rosewood door.

His hand was already on the latch that would open the door, but he took several breaths before finally pushing it open.

I sensed his anxiety. “Derek?” I asked as I stepped beside him. “Are you alright?”

I kept my gaze on his face, paying no attention to the room I just stepped into. Considering the unexpected turn of events that welcomed me to The Shade, it was the first time since I got back that I found myself once again struck by his appearance. He towered at least half a foot over me. His hair was as black as night, his skin as pale as snow. His blue eyes changed shades with his mood. This time, they were a deep dark shade of blue as if a storm was brewing in them, with his pupils as the storm’s center.

He faced me and gave me one small smile. Bitter. Heartbroken. Disturbed. Afraid. He didn’t say anything. He just stepped aside to give me a better view of the room.

The octagonal room had four large windows on every other wall. Each window had heavy red drapes drawn to the sides, allowing us a view of the starry night skies within the lines that defined the island. The strange thing was that from our vantage point, it was clear to see where the night stopped and where the day began. Miles away from us was a bright, sunny day, marking the boundaries where the light cast out by the lighthouse’s lantern was wholly unnecessary.

I turned around to find Derek standing at the very center of the room. His eyes were beginning to moisten and I realized then that I’d never actually seen him cry. “Vivienne. She maintained the room all these years.”

I took small steps over the hardwood floor as I perused the rest of the room. Framed photos were all over the walls. Unlit candles surrounded the room. A sectional velvet couch was on one side, right in front of a fire place mounted on one windowless wall. A coffee table was set up in front of the couch and over it was a large leather-bound book that looked like it belonged to the fifteenth century.

To me, the room was a well-decorated place that provided the perfect retreat to anyone who wanted to get away from the confines of The Shade. To Derek, however, it looked like the room meant so much more.

I stopped right in front of him and looked up at his face, breath-taken by the intensity of emotion I saw in there. “What is this place, Derek?”

“I told you… it’s my sanctuary.” One side of his lips curved up into a side smile as he held my hand and led me toward the couch. He sat down and pulled me to sit right beside him. He sat up straight, leaning his elbows over his knees as he took the book on top of the coffee table and placed it on his lap.

“If you’re going to stay here, you need to know about The Shade and everything it cost to make it what it is now.” He paused, a pensive expression coming over his face. “More than that, I need you to know me. Everything about me.”

And that, I realized, was the reason he was so terrified.

CHAPTER 38: DEREK

I opened the leather-bound book that showed pages upon pages of inked letters written in long handwriting. “These pages contain the chronicles of The Shade’s history,” I explained. “It is basically a record of how The Shade came to be.” I gently closed it and handed it to her. “The book cannot leave the lighthouse, so if you want to read it, you have to come here.”

The thought of her reading into the deepest secrets of The Shade made my stomach turn. Just thinking of how she would look at me after reading those pages broke me in a way I didn’t even know was possible. A tear ran down my cheek before I could stop it.

“Derek…” She seemed surprised, definitely moved by what she saw on my face. She brushed her soft fingers over my cheekbone, using her thumb to wipe the tear away.

I stared at the book and wondered if I was doing the right thing. I couldn’t bear to look at her, so I looked away. “If you think what I did to Ashley was bad, Sofia, you’ll find that I’ve done a lot of worse things to protect my family and The Shade.” I returned my gaze to the book on her lap. “Read, Sofia.”

She opened the book to the first page. I flinched as she began to read out loud. It felt like we spent hours inside the lighthouse as she read page after page after page, gasping at certain parts, tearing up at others. At some points, she would look up at me – a million questions in her eyes, as if wondering how I was able to live with myself having committed such atrocities.

I couldn’t live with myself, Sofia. That’s why I asked Cora to put me in a sleep that I could never wake up from. I still don’t understand why she broke her promise and made me wake up four hundred years later. I wanted to explain myself to Sofia, but I kept my mouth shut through the whole thing.

At times, it was worth watching her reactions as she continued to read. Sometimes, she would pause and stare at me with admiration. Or at least, what I thought was admiration. It felt like I was fooling myself to even entertain the notion that she could admire me after reading about the grisly history of The Shade. The shipwreck, the lighthouse, the caves, First Blood, the slaves, the Wall, the beasts…

When she began reading the thoughts I’d written down about the uprising and the subsequent massacre, tears began trickling down her face and she started sobbing. I was convinced at that moment: That’s it. I’ve lost her. She stopped reading and continued to cry quietly, mourning the loss of all those slaves who dared rise up against us.

I sat still, my fingers gently brushing against her hair as I waited for her sobs to subside. When the sound became unbearable, I withdrew my touch. I barely managed to say the words, my own guilt choking me.

“I guess now you know exactly what I am.”

I didn’t expect the way she responded at all. She took hold of the hand that I drew away from her and pressed its palm over the side of her face, her fingers caressing the back of my hand. “I think I’ve always known exactly what you are, Derek. The thing is … I don’t think you do.”

I had no idea what she meant, but if her touch wasn’t already healing balm in itself, her seeming acceptance of me – in spite of the monster I believed I was – caused me to hope again.

She shut the book and gently tossed it back to its place at the coffee table. “I’m horrified,” she admitted. “I can’t fully understand how you could have been capable of making those choices…”