Rogue Darkness by Dianne Duvall

Thank goodness that hadn’t worked out the way Cliff had expected.

“No regrets?” Bastien couldn’t resist asking.

Emma chose that moment to wave.

Grinning, Cliff waved back. “No regrets.”

Bastien fought a strange urge to fidget.

“What’s on your mind, Bastien?” Cliff asked without looking at him. “I can practically hear the wheels turning.”

“Melanie,” he quipped lightly. “Naked. Always.”

Cliff laughed. “Aside from that.”

He shrugged. “It’s kind of hard to think about anything else when Melanie is up in my head, tempting me by—”

“Don’t you dare say it!” she shouted across the clearing.

All the immortals present laughed while the mortals—who lacked their hyperacute hearing and weren’t aware of the conversation—looked puzzled.

Once everyone returned to their conversations, Cliff looked at Bastien. “I know you better than anyone other than Melanie. Something’s troubling you. Tell me what it is.”

For a moment, he considered lying. But Bastien needed to know. “Don’t you wish you could’ve become immortal instead of human again?”

“No.” No hesitation tinged Cliff’s response, nothing to indicate he held even a tiny shred of doubt. His tone turned gentle, coaxing, maybe even a little apologetic. “I’m not like you, Bastien.” He nodded toward the immortals milling about his backyard. “I’m not like any of you immortals. I wasn’t born with special gifts I had to hide. I didn’t have to isolate myself from others to keep them from realizing I was different so they wouldn’t hunt me, capture me, or try to kill me. I was born human. I had an ordinary childhood. Lots of friends and adventures. Lots of long summer days spent bike riding; going to the beach; and playing baseball, basketball, or soccer until my mom or dad called me in for supper. I had two parents who loved each other as much as I love Emma and you love Melanie. Parents whose love shaped my dreams for the future.”

His gaze fastened on Emma. “I may not have been ready to settle down when I went away to college, but I knew what I wanted. I wanted to marry a woman who would be my best friend. Someone who would share the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Buy a house in the burbs or in the country. Raise children together. Have grandchildren. Spoil them rotten. Live happily ever after. And the vampire who transformed me took that away from me in an instant. All I’ve wanted since then was for life to go back to normal.”

Bastien had heard him say as much too many times to count during their years of friendship.

Cliff’s smile faded. “I admit, the idea of never growing old and of spending the rest of eternity with Emma sounds phenomenal. But I would’ve had to sacrifice the rest of my dream. A dream she and I both share. We want children. I want to watch her stomach get so big that she looks like she swallowed a beach ball. I want to rub her feet and her aching back and be there for her when she goes into labor. I want to hold our tiny newborn in my arms. Teach our children to walk. Take them to the playground on sunny afternoons. Spend the day at the zoo. Picnic on the beach and build sandcastles. All the things my parents did with me.”

Bastien wanted that, too. Not being able to father children with Melanie was one of his deepest regrets. And while he knew they could adopt, what kind of life could they offer a child? He couldn’t do the things Cliff mentioned, the things Bastien would want to if he were a father. He couldn’t go outside during daylight hours because of his damned photosensitivity. And he’d seen how Roland and Marcus looked each time they sent their little ones to the playground with Sheldon during the day because they couldn’t go themselves.

“If I had turned immortal,” Cliff continued, “Emma would’ve had to choose between growing old while I didn’t or transforming to stay forever young with me. And once she transformed, she would’ve had to miss out on all of those things.”

Bastien knew Emma would’ve transformed for Cliff and understood well the sacrifices she would’ve had to make. They were the same ones Melanie had made. But there had been no other choice in Melanie’s case.

“And…” Uncertainty crept into Cliff’s expression, stealing his smile.

“And?” Bastien prodded.

Cliff sighed. “If I were an Immortal Guardian, I would have to spend the rest of my nights hunting and slaying vampires, especially since Gershom left so damn many behind.” Tension crept into his posture as he shook his head and stared off into the distance. “Do you know how fucked up that would’ve been for me?”

He did. Cliff had been so disturbed by hunting other vampires that he had insisted on sneaking back into network headquarters so the other vampires housed there wouldn’t see or smell the blood that stained his clothing. He wouldn’t have hunted vampires at all if he hadn’t desperately needed an outlet for the violence the insanity incited. “Yes.”

Cliff motioned to the other Immortal Guardians present. “They don’t. You and Melanie do, but the rest of them? They don’t know what it’s like to be a vampire. To lose a little piece of yourself every day, no matter how hard you fight to keep it as the madness grows inside you. To struggle with every breath of your being to hold on to who you are while everything inside urges you to become a monster.”