Karizma

Kristopher stared down at Ryleigh as she lay in bed beside him. Her emerald eyes were open but distant, fixated on the ceiling above her. Kristopher was propped on his elbow, his free hand rested on her chest over her heart. After their conversation in the shower about her magic growing stronger, she had shut down. She had not spoken since, and it worried him. She was lost in her thoughts and keeping him on the outside of it all. “What troubles you, pet?” he whispered.

Ryleigh sighed and shifted her eyes to fixate on his brown ones. “Everything, but, at the moment, you.” She rolled on to her side to look at him. “I will die, Kristopher. A vampire will find me, and you need to accept that.”

“I refuse to,” Kristopher growled. He slipped his arm around her and drew her close to him. “My entire life was dedicated to killing your kind. I am more than strong enough to kill someone who thinks that they can kill you.”

“You can’t be with me every second of every day, Kristopher. It just won’t happen.”

“I could always turn you,” he said abruptly. The more that she talked about her being hunted, the more that the thought crossed his mind. If he turned her, she would be damn near impossible to kill, and he would know that she was safe. And it would guarantee a long life with her, he thought.

Ryleigh tensed and shook her head. “No.”

“Pet, it would help you—”

“We don’t know that, Kristopher,” Ryleigh said. “We don’t know what my magic would do to the vampirism, or what the vampirism would do to my magic. Vampirism is a disease, an infection, and my magic would attempt to fight it off. What if it can’t fight it? What if the vampirism dominates my magic and eliminates it from my blood?”

“Then you will just be a vampire, pet, but you will be alive.”

“You don’t get it,” Ryleigh whispered bitterly. She pushed herself into a sitting position and looked down at Kristopher. He reluctantly removed his grasp from her, sensing that she needed some space with the troubling thoughts.

“Kristopher, all that I have ever known, all that I am, is my magic. I can’t survive without it. And then there’s the other issue to consider…” she trailed off.

“What other issue?”

“Kristopher,” Ryleigh sighed. “If I bond with the vampirism, and my magic accepts it and remains intact, we will have another problem to worry about. Right now, you cannot get me pregnant because we are two different species; but, if we are both vampires…the Karizma line thrives through its female descendants, because the magic is strongest in the females. If I become pregnant, and I birth a daughter, she will carry the Karizma magic in her bloodline as well. Kristopher, our daughter would be right where I am now…hunted by vampires with a lifespan of twenty-three. Her immortality would be useless in that regard. You don’t want me to die, I know, but can you really wish that type of life on your child just to save me?”

Kristopher growled darkly at the thought. It was a brief thought that he had considered, but simply dismissed it with the knowledge that Ryleigh would be alive if she was turned. To him, Ryleigh’s life was all that mattered; to her, she had considered all possibilities of her turn being successful. I just want her, he thought. I would deal with the repercussions of her turn after the fact. His fangs tore through his gums at the threat of his child being hunted like Ryleigh was, being slaughtered like he had done to Ryleigh’s ancestors over the centuries.

Kristopher’s eyes shifted to Ryleigh’s hand cupping his face. “I am sorry, Kristopher,” she whispered softly. “But there is no future with me that does not involve breaking your heart, in one way or another. I will not become a vampire that you can wed and have a family with.” Kristopher inhaled sharply and pushed his fangs back into his gums. He sat up and pulled Ryleigh into his lap. His brown eyes found her dimmed emerald ones and he cupped her face with both of his hands.

“Pet, my future is with you, vampire or not. I just want you in it and turning you would promise me that.”

“But I will not turn, Kristopher. I can’t. It won’t be just my life on the line, it would be our child’s. The Karizma line needs to stop with me, it has to. I will be sure that it does,” she added as she bit her lip. He looked at her curiously as he heard her heart rate quicken with anxiety. He pressed his forehead against hers, his breath against her lips as he spoke.

“What secret are you hiding from me, baby?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked quickly.

“Ryleigh, sometimes you forget how much a vampire knows,” Kristopher smirked. He pulled back gently and looked into her eyes. “I heard your heart rate change right then, when you said that you would be sure that the Karizma line would end with you. You’re not so sure that it will. Why is that?” His eyes flickered down to her stomach briefly, then returned to her eyes. “There is no way that you are pregnant currently, and you have said that you will not allow me to impregnate you in the future. Are you anticipating that someone else will?” The question burned through him like acid, eating through his heart and dropping it into his stomach. The thought of her with anyone else caused this reaction within him, but his face remained calm and neutral as he awaited her reply. She was already processing enough on her own to deal with his emotional break at the possibility of her future with another.

Ryleigh sighed and closed her eyes. “It’s not that simple, Kristopher.”

“Humans are not promised to another, so unless you’ve got a secret boyfriend and you’ve just been stringing my ass along, then simplicity is not the problem here,” he growled lightly. He heard her heart rate spike again, and he tensed. “There is a secret someone.”

“Kristopher—”

“Do you have someone else?”

“Kristopher, it’s not that simple—”

“Ryleigh, baby, it really is. Tell me the truth. Who are you hiding from me? I am not forcing you to be with me. Leave if you are so inclined, but I will not be a part of this secret relationship anymore.” Rage induced tremors along his skin, his body vibrating with the knowledge that there was someone else in her life. He fell in love with her, and she had claimed to love him as well. What other man there was, whoever he was, Kristopher was fighting the beast within from reacting and tracking the bastard down. Ryleigh was his; he made damn certain to claim her in all ways possible. He took her blood, her womb, her skin; her laid claim to every part of her that mattered, and now she was revealing that there was someone else who had more of her than he ever would.

Pain dulled Ryleigh’s eyes to a murky green, the emerald fire lost to the swamp. “Please, don’t ask this of me,” she begged.

“I’m beyond asking, pet. We went from talking about a child together to you hiding another relationship from me. I’m demanding it at this point.”

“It isn’t what you think, truly.”

“Ryleigh, tell me, or I walk out that door, and our relationship is gone,” Kristopher threatened. He would not completely abandon her, of course; he would become her new stalker, observing her from a distance and killing anyone that tried to harm her. But our relationship would be gone, he vowed. His newly warmed heart began to freeze over in preparation for the end of this. Icicles began to encase his heart once again, and he snarled lightly. He felt the pain struggling to break the icicles, but the pain was the reason for their creation.

Kristopher saw Ryleigh blink back a tear that threatened to fall, and the action alone hurt him. She was in pain, and he was causing it in this moment. She can only imagine how I feel, he thought, bitterly. “There is someone else, but I promise you, it is not what you think at all.”

“Tell me.”

“I had to know that I could trust you first, and I had to know that you could trust me.”

“Tell me!” Kristopher snapped.

“My secret relationship…it isn’t with another lover. I care for you more than you will ever understand for that to never be a concern of yours,” she whispered as her voice broke. “Kristopher…I have a younger sister. She is the last of the Karizma bloodline, not me.”