“No, but he wouldn’t be doing any of this if he didn’t think they could hold their own.”
“So we’re basically fucked?” Antoni growled. “And Nora is gone and our town is being burned to the ground and all because you couldn’t just share this information with us?”
“It was decided that—”
“But that’s the thing, isn’t it? You and Octavia and Lena and Athos make these choices that affect all of us and decide just how much to tell us. What else are you keeping from us? How much information that you don’t consider important is just not being shared here? And you expect me to what? Help you pack everything up? Abandon Nora? Continue this heartless, fucking religion you have been feeding us all along?”
“Antoni, I understand you are frustrated, but this isn’t helping anyone.”
Marcel knew Antoni was right, though. They all had known that sooner or later this would come bite them in the ass. They just didn’t expect it to happen at the same time as Ben’s attack on their clan.
Antoni was confused. Marcel was their second in command. Their leader while all the elders were gone resting or off living a new life after years underground. The elders made the important choices, but it was Marcel that had been taking care of them all this time.
“Wait, doesn’t that mean that he can probably track Nora down?” Elise said, directing everyone’s attention back to Fletcher, “I mean, she’s fed from him and he did find us, so, maybe…”
“Do you know where he is keeping her?” Marcel asked, turning to Fletcher. “Can you see anything? Hear anything?”
“I don’t know,” Fletcher sunk into his seat. “I just found out about all of this. I don’t know what brought me here, but I couldn’t just leave, I had to help. I can feel her pain. There’s something burning into her skin, cutting into it…”
“Silver. The bastard is using silver on her.” Antoni turned to Marcel, honestly surprised at how much he wanted to get Nora back in spite of all the competitiveness she inspired in him. And maybe that was it. They were constantly pushing each other to be stronger and better, and things just didn’t feel right now that she was gone. He couldn’t bear the thought of her being tortured either.
“He knows she’s yours,” Fletcher said suddenly, his face drained, white, his heartbeat dropping. “He wants to know where you are. He knows that you’ll come out of your hiding place if he kills her and leaves her outside the main building to burst into flames in front of all the faculty and students still attending morning lessons.” Fletcher stood,
“How many are with him?” Marcel asked.
“I don’t know how many. I just know he’s not alone. There’s a woman with him, she’s—” he paused, glancing at Elise, “She’s helping him.”
“Well, we’re useless. We can’t fucking help her right now, can we?” Antoni dropped his body onto the couch, letting silence settle heavily between them as the dark of the night began to fade.
“I have an idea…” Fletcher’s voice was low, as if speaking to himself.
Chapter 21
“You want me to do what?”
Jason had stared at Fletcher like he was a mad-man. He had to be after spending the whole night out and waking him up at the crack of fucking dawn to tell him that he needed his help, doing what? Defeating evil vampires? It was a difficult pill to swallow even when he was only half conscious.
But he’d done it. Against all odds. It was true that Jason was not the sharpest tool in the box, or even the kindest at the best of times, but he had an over-developed sense of loyalty that Fletcher was relying on when he dragged him out of bed that morning and made him run around town purchasing gasoline and the closest thing he could find to a thick, black body-bag. Jason had asked repeatedly what the body bag was for, but Fletcher promised to explain later, when they were closer to their goal. A goal that, Jason feared, took them closer and closer to Fletch confessing he was the crazy person behind all those killings.
“It wasn’t me,” he said it, as if he could read Jason’s thoughts as they sat together in the car.
“I didn’t say anything,” Jason replied, shifting gears and making a left turn as the navigator on his phone told him to. This whole day had been surreal and there was oddly something comforting about having his phone talking to him; telling him to turn left.
“You’re thinking it, though. I just thought you’d want me to put your mind at ease.”
“You have to admit it makes far more sense than your story about vampires,” he said, glancing sideways at this friend before returning his eyes to the road. “Not that you look like a serial killer, but, you know what I mean.”
“I do?”
“Dude, you woke me up this morning and made me crawl into a body-bag to make sure that no sun, whatsoever, was touching my skin. Which was weird and uncomfortable and now I smell of sweat and body-bag. So I think that I get to have my doubts about whether or not you are a serial killer.”
“Fair enough,” Fletcher laughed.
“And I have to say, man, I’m not convinced. Like, okay, who are we burning?”
The car stopped before the large house Fletcher had seen in his visions. The same visions that had showed him Nora, the face of the man they were looking for, and this place, this house.
“If we do this right, we’re going to get our town back,” Fletcher began, “but I’m going to need you to move quick and make sure that the front door is clear for me to exit. I’m going to be carrying Nora, so I can’t find an another exit while the house burns.”
“Nora? The Nora who’s no one?” Jason grinned. “I bet you’re glad coach made us run with those sacks of potatoes, aren’t you?”
Ah, Jason. Fletcher used to think he had the worst comedic timing. But as they sat there, he thought maybe he had it all wrong. Maybe Jason knew exactly when to make a joke, and it was just the people around him that took themselves way too seriously to get it or be amused by it.
“See you on the other side?” Fletch asked, trying to hide the fact that he was more terrified than he had been in his entire life. More than he even thought possible in a world without killer psychopath vampires.
“Be safe, brother.” Jason held his fist up to be bumped. “And run like the fucking wind once you find her, yeah? Don’t stop.”
Fletcher bumped the fist offered to him with little conviction and then got out of the car, throwing the body bag over his shoulder. He rushed up the front door-steps to disappear into the house.
Jason got out of the car and pulled out the first gallon of gasoline, beginning to walk a line in front of the house, becoming distracted only when he saw Fletcher snatch a curtain open inside the house.
The plan was simple enough, but depended entirely on Fletcher, Jason, and their athletic strength. Fletcher marched into the room where Ben slept – the room where he was keeping Nora. He opened the window. Fletcher had no more than two minutes to slip in there, stuff her into the body-bag, throw Ben into the fire and carry Nora out. He hadn’t considered the knife Ben slept with, or how in his weakest moment he was still stronger than most.
Swiftly, Fletcher slipped the body-bag under and around Nora’s death-like sleeping body. He looked down at Ben as he slept so deeply. How could one so young and innocent-looking wreak such havoc? So much evil. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jason throwing gasoline onto the curtains and lighting a match. Jason had done his work well. Flames crept up the wall, swiftly swallowing curtains, cushions, the carpet … Fletcher reached down and, with every ounce of strength and resolve within him, wrapped both arms around Ben’s sleeping body, lugging him to the flames, holding him there. He felt Ben burning against his flesh, watched him catch fire.
He could hear screams and felt the heat rising with the flames. Then nothing.
Chapter 22
Nora woke up to see Marcel sitting on her bed. He smiled down at her, grazing her cheek with his fingers, brushing a strand of hair from her face.
“You’re back,�
� he murmured, his eyes warm and moist.
“What happened?” she asked, terrified to hear, but needing to. She sat up, eagerly listening.
Marcel told her about Fletcher’s attempt to save her; his plan. He told her about Ben; and the fact that Ben was his kindred soul. And he explained kindred souls and what it was about Fletcher that made him remember her.
Norah fell back onto the pillow, shocked beyond words. She felt validated and relieved, at least until she registered something else in Marcel’s expression. Something between fear, regret and maybe even pity. It had been two days before she’d awakened in intensive care with multiple burns and significant blood loss. They had managed, then, to move her to the manor without incident.
“None of us were there,” he explained, “but I felt Ben burning, I felt Fletcher holding him down in the fire until he was gone.”
*
Marcel pieced what had happened together, and related what he knew. Jason had rushed into the already-burning house and carried both Fletcher’s burned body and Nora’s body-bag out. He’d called an ambulance and invented a tale about how Fletcher had tried to save those in the burning house. Leaving Nora in the backseat of the car, he waited in the hospital room while they put Fletcher on a ventilator, administered oxygen, anti-biotics, and finally, steroids. Smoke inhalation was deadly, they said. After getting the bad news late that night Jason plodded back to his car. Tears coursed down the cheeks of the big, burly man.
There, standing by the car he ‘d found Marcel and Elise waiting for him. They explained to him that they had taken Nora into Emergency, thanking him profusely for his part in all that had occurred. Elise fed on him, then and there, erasing the details from Jason’s mind permanently.
Then they stole into Fletcher’s room, scooped him from his bed, and bore him out. Back to the mansion.
Nora listened, wide-eyed. “Is he dead?” she asked Marcel fearfully.
“You know the answer to that,” Marcel smiled. “but he’s in bad shape. He’s been having a rough time. The doctor told Jason he wouldn’t make it.”
“I need to go to him.”
“He’s here. We’ve been keeping him alive with my blood. It works because there’s some of it in you. But he needs to be turned, soon, or the damage to his mortal body could be too much for it to endure the process. We’re not even sure he will be able to go through it right now, but it’s his best chance.”
“Wait, turn him?” Nora’s brows met over the bridge of her nose. “You’d allow that?”
“He fixed it,” Marcel said. “He killed Ben and his nomads. He saved you, and now things will slowly but surely go back to normal. We don’t know what the long-term damage will be, or if people will just stop coming to university here, but the horror is over and it’s all because of him and that dopey friend of his.”
“Really?”
Marcel nodded. “We decided that the boy needs to live, especially since he’s your kindred. He has proved that he cares about your well-being, and he was fearless. If Ben had been like that, at all, this would have been a very different story.”
She still couldn’t believe it! “What are you saying, Marcel?”
“I’m saying that we have decided to make an exception to the rule when a kindred soul is found that deserves an exception, like Fletcher. He will die in his human form, so it’s the only choice. Athos, Octavia and Lena agreed that he is worthy to be one of us, and that you are the only one who can turn him. He will, of course, be your responsibility but you don’t have to worry about that until he’s fully healed.
With tears streaming down her cheeks, Nora threw herself at Marcel, hugging him tightly, before climbing out of her bed and rushing out of the pitch black darkness of her room.
She could feel him close, so close. She just needed to get there and then it would all be fine. She’d embrace him and when he woke up again, she would show him the world. How amazing it would all look through his brand new eyes. How to hunt, how much to drink and just how much more rough, vicious and delicious fucking could be.
Already slightly turned on at the idea, she shut the door behind her and moved towards the bed where Fletcher lay.
Chapter 23
Nora and Fletcher left town a week after Ben's death.
Marcel had insisted they should stay and help the clan build everything that had been destroyed back up. Nora didn't have the proper training and it was best for new vampires like Fletcher to grow and learn surrounded and protected by a clan. Out there, they were rogues. Even with the Aóratos clan backing them, there was very little the clan and its elders could do for them if they ever found themselves in trouble somewhere in California.
It had taken Nora days to convince Marcel. Elise and Antoni had been completely against it. They had to stay together and be a family, now more than ever, both said. What good could it do for Nora to grab this baby vamp and hide halfway across the country? Nora had smiled as Antoni argued against her departure almost as passionately as Elise had. Things had changed between the two of them since Ben and his group of killers had threatened not only their sire, but the life their entire clan had built, along with the safety of every vampire living in the manor.
Finally, they all agreed that it was all right for Nora and Fletcher to go for a little while. Ben's loss had been hard enough on Marcel. No matter how necessary Ben’s death had been, he and Marcel had been connected to a degree that was bound to take its toll. Nora didn't want to burden him with having to watch the relationship she shared with Fletcher growing. She had loved Marcel for so long, so fiercely, that it almost seemed wrong to be anyone else's lover.
Maybe that was it for Nora. The guilt. Knowing that no matter how supportive he'd always be, this was hurting Marcel. Not just because it was Nora, but because she was leaving him for something that had endangered them all. Someone he had lost. What Nora and Fletcher had was something that Marcel never would. His kindred soul was gone. And whether she wanted to admit it or not, she felt guilty over it. She suspected there would always be a part of her that wanted to please Marcel, no matter how deep her connection with Fletcher.
She didn’t want to admit how uncomfortable it made her either.
It was enough for her to pack a suitcase full of her belongings and travel halfway across the country. To leave everything she knew and everyone she had loved for decades. To forget about a life built with a clan, and her place in making it all work as well as it had before Ben showed up and threatened to ruin everything. None of it was easy, but Nora understood it was best for everyone. Best to give Marcel time to adjust. Best to let the clan members who resented the hasty way in which Fletcher had been embraced into their life get over it. The process was usually such a complex one. They all had questions about exceptions. Elise and Antoni would have to take care of those until all of them were satisfied.
The place was called Red Lake, a small town with an active night-life situated right by the beach just a short drive from San Diego. Marcel, in the name of the clan that had promised to protect them, arranged accommodations and a monthly income for the two of them to live comfortably until it was time to return home.
Marcel gave them instructions. His delivery was cold and methodical instead of the warm, casual way he usually had. A way that she’d become accustomed to after over a century being his disciple and lover. It made her feel strange – out of place. Like they were going through something that resembled a breakup, but could not possibly be added up as something so simple. It was true. What she felt for Fletcher was stronger than she could have predicted. And there was some strange force reassuring her – telling her that it would all be okay.
Reluctant as she had always been about this sort of thing, she believed in that gut feeling. And so, she followed it away from what now felt like the only life she had ever known.
How Fletcher’s training was supposed to work so far away from the very family he was being coached to love, respect and protect, Nora wasn’t quite sure.
> That was Elise’s greatest fear. That in escaping the rest of the clan, they would find the freedom so many rogue vampires found and stuck to. Moving around, never being tied down by rules and regulations. In fact, Elise had dreamed about some handsome foreign vampire showing up and stealing her away from all the responsibilities that came with being part, an important part, of a clan.
“You’re going to disappear,” Elise whined from the bed as Nora packed her things. “You are going to love that soul-mate life and disappear and we will only ever know what you are doing because of your link to Marcel as your maker.”
“You’re being melodramatic.” Nora swallowed hard over the lump in her throat. She would miss her funny little sister.
“I’m being realistic. They are giving you a beautiful house by the beach and sending you off on your own personal vampiric honeymoon. Why would you want to return from that?”
Kindred Souls: Entire Series Books 1 - 5 Page 10