by L. L. Ash
Every head swung our way, and a couple bodies stood. Eddie being one of them. His face looked worried as he clutched his mug.
“How do you feel?” he asked, taking a step toward me but looking at Clarence too, as if for permission.
“I feel good, actually,” I said, looking at the other faces I recognized. Adonis and Raymond sat on the floor, holding their own coffees, and Mason sat across from Evelyn, both holding glasses in their laps.
The entire scene was so completely suburban, it made me laugh. Not a feminine chuckle, but a gut-bursting roar.
Everyone looked at me like I was insane, except Clarence. The corners of his mouth twisted up as if he too was privy to my internal thoughts.
“That’s it folks, she’s officially gone insane,” Mason announced and stood, making his way over to me.
“I’m not insane,” I told him as he looked into my eyes, searching for something. “I’m happy to be alive. And you all look like you’re sitting here, waiting to give me an intervention.”
Lips tweaked up into little smiles and a round of chuckles passed, but Eddie just looked at me, grinning as he shook his head slowly.
“Still have your humor I see,” Eddie said, setting his cup down on the coffee table.
“It’s pretty much what gets me through the day anymore.”
He nodded and came toward me, lacing his arms around me in a tight hug. He nuzzled his head into my neck and I hugged him back, but felt nothing besides camaraderie and friendship for him.
He eased up and leaned back, meeting my eyes with a pained smile before kissing my forehead and backing up with a faint nod.
Clarence stepped up beside me, not touching, but his presence was overwhelming.
“Now stick your tongue out,” Mason told me, tapping my nose.
I did as he asked.
He laughed and waved his hand at me.
“Don’t do everything a doctor tells you to do, Sweet pea.”
I glared at him playfully and looked around the room again.
“I guess you weren’t lying,” I said to Evelyn who sat quietly and reserved in a dark blue chair.
“I may not always be truthful, Darling,” she said in a gentle voice. “But I never lie.”
“Imagine our surprise when she showed up to Eddie’s place,” Clarence said beside me.
“We were ready to tear her apart when she produced your necklace,” Eddie chipped in. “I called the brothers after that and they came in to take over. I may be king of my own castle, but vampires are out of my realm.”
“Some,” Mason agreed. “But you sure took care of that bastard nightwalking executioner. Bruce, wasn’t it? Bruce Longfellow I believe?”
Evelyn nodded.
“We had thought she’d stolen the necklace to manipulate us,” Clarence said softly. “Until I heard her mention strawberries. Chocolate covered strawberries.”
His eyes glowed with warmth and I knew he knew what it meant.
“What the hell is it with the chocolate strawberries, anyway?” Mason asked, obnoxious as ever.
“It’s none of your business,” Clarence told him sharply before motioning him to sit in his chair.
He went to his brother and snatched up the glass Mason had previously put down to examine me. Bringing the glass over, he put it in my hands and told me to drink. I did, slamming the glass of substance down my throat until my belly was cool and full.
“I hope you enjoyed my lunch,” Mason called sarcastically.
“I did. Thanks a bunch.”
He rolled his eyes and crossed his legs again, mirroring Evelyn.
“Does everyone want to keep dancing around the fact that we have someone from the inside?” Adonis suddenly chipped in. “A traitor maybe, but she knows all kinds of things about the people hunting Addie.”
“They’re not just hunting me anymore,” I told him. “They tortured me to find out where Mason and Clarence were. They are also gathering a strength of wolves to attack your fortress, Eddie,”
At that, Adonis shut up.
“What wolves?” he asked.
“There was one with the man Bruce,” I told him. “He called him Rory.”
Eddie’s face glowered.
“Cache Rory,” he mumbled, looking at his companions.
“Rory’s been after your pack for years,” Raymond said.
“And Jo,” Adonis added.
“He has Jo,” I announced. “According to him at least. Evidently she was how they knew I was alive and where I was. It was Rory that bit me.”
Eddie nodded slowly, dragging his fingers down his face.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” was all he said, looking at his friend and brother again.
“You still never decided what to do with the traitor,” Mason said flippantly, glaring over at Evelyn.
“She saved my life,” I told him. “What could we do with her but to trust her?”
“Unless she’s a plant.”
“I’m not a plant,” Evelyn countered. “I’ve made myself their enemy by growing a conscience. You’ve every right to hate me and you too, Cyryl, but I want to help. And I will if you let me.”
“You’ll only betray us. That’s what you do,” Mason growled.
Evelyn dipped her head in shame.
“I did. I know what I used to be. But I am not that creature anymore.”
“Says the biggest con-artist of the last 4 centuries!”
Evelyn flinched.
“I will let Addie decide. If you want nothing to do with me, I shall disappear and you’ll never see me again. I will remove myself from this war and hie my way to a cold, dark and quiet climate.”
“Not back to Russia I hope,” Mason clipped.
“I happen to like Russia. And I can live there if I wish.”
Mason rolled his eyes in frustration and dragged his nails across the arms of his chair before making fists with each.
“Evelyn has wronged me too, Mason,” Clarence took a step toward his brother, brushing his fingers down my arm gently before leaving me. “But if she has changed, she can be an insurmountable help to us. Evelyn could tip the tides our way. You know that if Bruce Longfellow was involved, his master is not far away. Only blood would make a man like Jasper leave his castle and concubines in England.”
Mason glared up at his brother, then across the room at Evelyn before storming up from his seat and stomping out of the room.
“I did a great misdeed to him, Cyryl. You know this. Give him time. He may never forgive me or trust me, but he is an extremely intelligent man. He’ll learn to deal with my presence.”
“Who’s Cyryl?” Eddie asked, looking from Clarence to Evelyn.
“It is the name she previously knew me by,” Clarence told him. “She will soon be used to our modern names.”
“I apologize.. Clarence, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he nodded once at her.
His words were in her favor, but his body language and tone were frosty. Evelyn had no friends in the room and she knew it. She threw her future at my feet and the responsibility was enormous.
“We have to give her a chance,” I said to Clarence in a soft voice, though I knew everyone could hear what I wanted to be a private conversation.
“I agree with you,” he nodded.
Silence filled the room before Eddie stood again.
“Wait for me at the car,” he told Raymond and Adonis who immediately left the room.
“Some privacy,” Clarence said to Evelyn and she nodded, heading towards the back rooms.
Within 60 seconds I was alone with Clarence and Eddie.
“How do you feel?” Eddie asked again. “I can imagine what waking up like this must have been like after watching you freak out about being a werewolf.”
“It hasn’t sunk in yet,” I told him honestly.
He nodded.
“I guess you’re staying here, then?” he sighed, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
I found Clarence’
s hand beside me and squeezed it before asking, “Can I have a second, please?”
Clarence looked between Eddie and me before nodding just as Evelyn did and left the room, going out onto the balcony that looked over the dark city. Closing the door behind him, we had relative silence.
“You feel different,” Eddie said quietly.
“I do feel different,” I agreed. “I don’t know what changed but something did.”
“You don’t love me,” he stated.
I swallowed hard and shook my head.
“I think we were in lust, not love.”
“Speak for yourself.”
I clamped my arms around my chest before sighing.
“I’m sorry, Eddie. When I was one of you… I don’t know… I couldn’t control myself. It’s like when I’m a beast and you’re a beast we’re two pieces to the same puzzle.”
“But when you’re not?”
“I don’t feel much of anything,” I admitted. “I love you, but only as a friend. And I don’t lust for you like I used to. I can’t quite understand it myself.”
“But you lust for Clarence.”
“No, I don’t lust for him. I love him. I always have. I was just mad at him.”
Blowing out a long breath, Eddie pushed his hair back, revealing the little black gauges in his ears that was normally covered with his shaggy waves.
“Ok,” was all he said.
“Ok?”
“What the hell else and I supposed to say?”
He looked hurt, and I understood why. Something deep in my heart hurt too. I was just too cold inside to quite feel it.
“I’m sorry you lost your queen, Eddie.”
“Both of them,” he quirked a smile.
“It’s my fault...”
“I was thinking of getting rid of her a long time ago,” he waved his hand. “I only gained the courage to do it when I saw her hurt you. It’s like something in me just snapped. I don’t ever want to see you hurt again, Addie. I’m going to help find this Jasper guy, and I’m going to tear his head off his body like I did to his psycho torturer pet.”
Shivering at the hazy memory, I put my arms around him and hugged him fiercely.
“I was in heat… we...”
“It’s not possible,” he shook his head, reading my mind. “Between the chemicals, whatever the fuck they were, and the stab wound, then the vampire blood on top of that… If there was a pup in there, it’s long gone now.”
I gulped again.
“I’m sorry, Eddie.”
“Stop apologizing,” he shrugged. “I guess something in me knew I was more invested than you were. I lost my heart to you and you were just making the best of a situation. And shit, when you’re in heat, you can’t really control yourself anyway. It’s a natural, base instinct that cannot be denied. It’s my problem if I made it more then it was. Sex is sex, right?”
I wasn’t sure if I should agree or adamantly disagree.
He didn’t make me decide. He moved toward the door instead. “We’ll still be seeing each other. And if the vamp can’t satisfy you, you know where I live.”
“Actually, I don’t,” I chuckled.
“Fine,” he put a smile on his face. “Call me and I’ll come to you.”
“Thank you, for everything Eddie.”
He shrugged.
“It was worth it.”
With that he opened the door, slipped through and left me alone. I locked it behind him, as if the door would keep anyone but humans out, then went to the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. Clarence still stood there, bent over the rail as he looked over the darkened city, lights twinkling like stars underneath. Tapping on the glass, he turned and smiled when he saw me.
“Sorry about that,” I told him, opening the door to join him outside. “We needed to say some things to each other.”
“It’s not my place to question,” was all he said, looking back out into the night.
“I know I hurt you, it hurt you when I was bitten.”
He shrugged, a frown on his face.
“Eddie is the one with the big mouth and even bigger ego.”
I laughed at that. It was incredibly true.
“Even still… I’m sorry. I had these… animal instincts that I couldn’t control and it messed with my mind.”
“You were not mine to be jealous over, Addie,” he shrugged. “I made a decision and lost your trust. I lost you, really. I don’t get to be hurt that you decided to be with another man.”
“Does that mean you’re not hurt or upset then?”
He scoffed.
“Of course not. I’m just saying I don’t have a right to be.”
“You’re feeling human emotions and don’t like them, huh?”
He smiled.
“Yeah, I guess so. I thought I was rid of the last of my humanity decades ago.”
It was my turn to scoff.
“You’ll never be rid of it, Clee. You love too deeply to ever be rid of it.”
“A hopeless romantic,” he chuckled.
“I like that about you.”
He paused, and we both watched his fingers twist around each other for a moment.
“May I ask you a question, Addie? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to or if you’re not ready.”
“Shoot.”
“Do you love him?”
“No,” I answered quickly, assuredly.
His shoulders sagged in relief and he breathed a heavy sigh.
“And no, I never did. It was the animal, I think. And the desperation. I was so lonely for you, I found another avenue to release it.”
His body turned and his eyes met mine.
“It hurt me that you didn’t fight for me.”
“I thought you despised me.”
“I loved you. I still love you. You’re my entire world, Clee. And I think that’s why I’m not freaking out so much right now with the threat of forever in my future. Because I have you to lead me through it.”
He took a step forward, touched my cheek with his cool hand and pressed his lips to mine. Shivers went all through me at the contact of his mouth touching mine. My entire body cried in relief, in joy. Slipping both hands into his fuzzy, newly shorn hair, I locked my fingers behind his head, pressing us as close as we could get. For the first time our kisses weren’t interrupted with the labor of breathing. We only needed breath to make the little noises that sung in our throats at the beauty of our contact.
“I love you,” he breathed against my lips and I returned the sentiment. His fingers dragged through the ratty hairs at the back of my head.
“Are you mine, Addie?” he asked, pulling himself away from me long enough to look into my eyes.
He expected an answer, a permanent answer.
Looking into the swirling, infinite depth of his eyes, my heart bled out in response, and my head managed to agree.
“Yes. Always. Forever yours, Clee.”
He exhaled sharply, as if he didn’t expect that response, but after searching my face, he must have seen the truth there because he came at me with renewed enthusiasm.
Fingers groped at each other’s faces and hair, holding the other closer as if afraid of losing them again.
“I’m not afraid anymore,” I told him as I stroked his face. “I’m not afraid of loving you.”
“Then I am the most fortunate man in the world,” he said back, running his thumb over a brow and over one eye, touching, feeling my face like a blind man.
I didn’t say another word. I just opened the door again and led him inside, back down the hall to the room I’d woken up in only a short time before.
Who knew all it took was death to come to terms with what one really wanted in life?
When I sat in that chair, slowly losing feeling of my body and trying to sleep through the residual burning pain, all I saw was Clarence. I saw his face, I felt his touch, imagined his eyes. His memory in my head was all that got me through. And I promised myself
that if I ever got out of there, that I would beg his forgiveness and give him mine before doing any and everything in my power to be with him.
“I missed you,” I told him, whispered in his ear after closing the door behind us. “I miss your touch.”
“Then you shall have it,” he answered, lifting his shirt off a moment after I did mine.
I wiggled out of my shorts, realizing that my clothes were all different and I was clean. It definitely hadn’t been the case before he’d come and rescued me.
“Evelyn,” he said, touching my shoulder with the back of his fingers. “We bathed you when we got you here.”
“You did?” I asked in embarrassment, knowing I was covered in pee, my jeans soaked in it when I was in that basement.
“Their treatment of you was incredibly cruel,” his face turned pained again. “One wouldn’t even treat animals as they treated you. We’re lucky to have found you alive. You’re a strong woman, and an incredible survivor.”
Wanting to shut the entire experience out of my mind, I stood on tiptoes and embraced his mouth again. I wiggled out of my stretchy cotton shorts.
“It’s too soon,” he told me, his voice strained. “You need to rest and recuperate.”
“But I need you, Clee. I need to feel you.”
“And you will. Lay down.” I stepped into the cold bed box quickly and he followed me. We sank down on the mattress before he closed the lid on top of us.
We were plunged in darkness and I started to feel an anxiety attack creep up, visions of sitting in the pitch black for hours in the basement.
I clutched onto him and whimpered before he took me in his arms and reached over me, flipping on a switch. A faint glow illuminated the box, just enough to see but not enough to be bright.
“Can we sleep with that on?” I asked him, my voice trembling against my will.
“I was planning on it,” he told me, wrapping me tightly again in his arms before moving a sheet over us.
My shivering eased in the coolness, and in the dusky light of the box I felt secure, safe. I knew Clarence would watch over me as I slept, so after some time of listening to my heart not beat, I fell asleep, aware of the sound of our hearts not beating, together.