Page 5 of Illuminated

I stiffened, and he turned his head toward me. He was so close, and my spine tingled, though not with fear, not only with fear. I had another, mind-bogglingly strong feeling of déjà-vu.

“Do you mind it?” he asked, voice calm.

“What?”

“A man’s arm around you. Do you mind it?”

Of all the things to talk about, of all the things that had happened tonight, a vampire asking me how gay I was took the cake, and I started giggling.

“I don’t mind it, but just for your information, I’m bi. Not a phase on my way to realizing I was gay all along, just bi, okay?”

He cocked his head. “Okay.” He sounded amused, not like someone who’d just been bled in a church.

My giggles -- nervous, desperate, a little out of it -- ebbed before long, and Auris once more led me down the street, not a word spoken between us, his arm firm and steady around me. I noticed the sound my feet made on the cobblestones, but he made no sound at all. Wind caught my hair. I had a hair tie in my bag for when it got very windy, and I felt like I wanted that all of a sudden, but this was a breeze at best. Nerves. It was all nerves.

We turned right, followed a short bend in the road, then crossed beneath a skyway that looked like it had grown naturally with the city, the weather-beaten stone illuminated by light set into the façades of the buildings it connected.

Past that, there were pedestrians, some masked and walking briskly like they had places to be, others just out for a stroll and enjoying what might be their first vacation in close to two years.

I tried to look at people, tell them that I needed help with just my eyes. The funny thing was, if they looked at all, it was a brief glance that quickly shifted to Auris because he was tall and beautiful. But for the most part, people looked at their phones or talked with the man or woman at their side. They didn’t care about anything else, certainly not a stranger.

“Don’t be frustrated,” Auris said, drawing me just a fraction closer. His voice warmed me, and I couldn’t help liking it. “It’s one part herd mentality and one part self-absorption, I think. I could be wrong.”

That felt hurtful. People were better than that, they had to be, even if this person, this vampire, didn’t see it.

“I helped you,” I said. “I could have run but I didn’t.”

He stared at me, and I could feel the regard of his black eyes. The skin at the back of my neck prickled. I didn’t want to meet his eyes. We walked for long enough that I thought he wouldn’t bother answering.

“Most wouldn’t have. You’re different, Ethan,” he said at last.

But I wasn’t, not really. People had helped each other out a lot over the past one-and-a-half years. Not all, sure, but most.

I thought about pulling free, running up to someone, telling them he was abducting me, but almost as soon as the thought came, Auris put his other hand on my arm. The touch wasn’t painful or threatening. In fact, I knew that while he held me, no one else would lay a hand on me unless he allowed it, and I was positive about this although I had not a shred of evidence to back it up.

“Can you read my mind?” I asked him, my desire to run just barely curbed.

“Not like this, no. A little, when I entranced you earlier.” I could feel his shrug. “Your body gives you away. People never realize how loud the body speaks.”

He led me down another street. This one was quieter, and my footfalls once more echoed against the cobblestones. Geraniums sat out in planters along the street, and the red of the petals pulled me right back to the church, to what had happened there. To the noises.

Once more, Auris put his free hand on my arm, although this time, this was not to hold me closer, but instead to comfort me. It felt like that. At least to me.

He tugged me toward the left, down a staircase and to a big wooden door that announced masks were required inside. It was a restaurant, of all places. He held the heavy door for me, pushed me inside.

Once he was next to me and the door closed behind us, I was surprised to see that the place was almost empty. Still, I thought -- hoped -- they’d kick us out on account of neither of us wearing masks, although I probably had a spare in my back pocket. It seemed like a very nice restaurant with the white tablecloths and the servers dressed in matching black jackets and white shirts. This was the kind of place the locals went for a special night out, a place the tourists would only find if they went looking for it or happened upon it by sheer luck.

I wanted to walk inside, maybe because I wanted them to kick us out, or because it was an automatic reaction, but Auris held me back by the arm. The eyes of everyone in the place seemed to turn to him. Even the cooks came out of the kitchen to stare. After moments of them looking at Auris either completely blank or rapt, they turned back to what they had been looking at. They returned to cooking or cutting vegetables, to pouring wine at the dark wooden counter, to talking to one another and enjoying their respective meals. It was the strangest thing. None of the serving staff raised an eyebrow at our unmasked states.

“Come,” Auris said and now led me through the room and to the back part of the restaurant. There was no one else there, just three empty tables. This would have been a perfect spot for a date, for quiet conversation. I wondered if I was the first person Auris had ever taken here or if this was the vampire version of a last meal for his… meals.

He pulled out a chair for me. I sat, and he took the chair opposite mine.

One of the servers brought a bottle to our table, and two glasses as well. The server put the glasses down, then opened the bottle and poured. It was the kind of place that should have let you taste the wine before filling both glasses, but there was none of that. In fact, the server said not a word to either of us at all, just left the bottle and went back to whatever he had been doing.

“Have some wine,” Auris said with that smooth, warm voice.

“I don’t want to have wine right now. What is this?” I said, swiping up the table and the wine between us in a gesture.

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