Forever Valentine Read Free Page B

the glass as if it held the most precious thing in the universe. And for him, perhaps it did.
    Jena’s newly changed friends had told her just a bit about the vampire’s relationship to wine and how alcohol somehow reacted with their body chemistry to heal them. It was about the only thing they could ingest without becoming ill and it held an almost mystical significance to them. It was their one last link to the sun.
    Her friends wouldn’t tell her much more, but just knowing of the existence of vampires in the world fascinated Jena. It amazed her to think her newly-turned friends would live on long after she was dead. They would remember her and perhaps in that way, she’d leave just a little of herself behind.
    Depressing thoughts bothered her more and more often these days. Part of it was seeing her friends’ happiness and wondering how she might find just a small portion of the same before her short time on earth was up.
    They sat quietly for a while in companionable silence while the night wore on. Jena thought of the miserable date she’d just ended and the rotten luck she had with men and with Valentine’s Day in particular. She’d never had a successful date on a Valentine’s Day and thought the holiday was vastly overrated. Jena sighed as she sipped her wine.
    “This whole Valentine’s thing is for suckers.”
    Ian chuckled as he poured more wine for them both.
    “I knew a man once who guarded Valentine in Rome, a thousand years before I was born. Valentine was a humble priest when the emperor outlawed marriage among his young soldiers. Seems he thought single men made better soldiers with no one at home to worry about. Valentine was imprisoned and killed for the crime of marrying off youngsters who had every reason in the world not to marry. Romantic fool that he was, he claimed the only true reason to wed was love.”
    “You’re talking about Saint Valentine?” Again Jena was fascinated by the idea that this man had walked the earth for centuries and had known others who were even more ancient.
    Ian nodded. “Legend has it he wrote the first Valentine note to the daughter of his jailer, a blind girl who befriended him. When she opened his note, God granted her a miracle and she could suddenly see. He’d signed the note simply, ‘Your Valentine’.”
    “That’s such a beautiful story.”
    “My friend often said Valentine would have been tickled to see what’s become of his name and his legend. He was a pious man for all that he enjoyed seeing young love in bloom.”
    “When did he live?"
    Ian shrugged. “Oh, somewhere around 270 A.D., I think.”
    Jena was stunned by the idea. “Just how old are you, Ian?” Her whispered words reached out through the darkness.
     
    Ian dreaded the question. At no time since his conversion had he felt the weight of his years more acutely than when sitting across from this young, vital woman. But yet, something inside him longed to be open with her, when he hadn’t talked of his past with anyone in decades…perhaps centuries.
    “Not quite that old, Jena. I was born in 1232, or thereabouts. Back then, the common folk didn’t keep such rigorous track of the years as we do now.” He waited, but Jena was silent, which surprised him. She didn’t ask questions about his life, she merely waited, as if prepared to accept whatever he chose to share. Somehow that made it easier. “The Crusades were mostly over by then, but I only realize that now, by virtue of being able to look back at what seemed so important to me at the time, through the lens of history. Even though I knew it was foolhardy, I trained as a knight and followed King Louis—the ninth one—to lay siege to Tunis. Got sick as a dog from some gut rot that was going around.” Ian sipped at his wine, remembering. “Louis actually died from it. To this day, I still think it was sabotage, but we couldn’t prove anything.”
    “So you were still…human then.”
    Ian’s eyes challenged her.