by Caris Roane
Don’t worry about me. I’m okay, but I’m hearing what the boy is enduring and it’s bad. I just need to stay focused.
For some reason, because of what she said, Willem grew very still. It was strange feeling his strength, yet to experience his vampire stillness at the same time, almost as though he wasn’t there.
Buoyed by his physical proximity, she turned her mind toward the vision, allowing the screams and painful whimpers to return once more.
The vision opened to her and now she saw a room and a man who wore something covering his head but dressed in blue workman’s overalls.
Willem, I see the boy and the killer.
Where are they?
In a room somewhere, but beyond that I have no real sense of the actual location.
Okay. I know this might not make sense, but try moving backward within the vision as though stepping away.
The screams grew louder.
I can’t. I feel as though I’ve reached the limit of my ability, that I can’t do more than this.
She let go of the vision and opened her eyes. Even the aura around Willem had disappeared. “I wasn’t fae enough to do more than just see what was happening. Willem, it was horrible.”
She threw her arms around his neck and held fast. In return, he clasped her hard to his chest.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Why couldn’t I see more than I did?”
Willem stroked a hand up and down her back. “I’m so sorry you had to see that, but Charlotte this is important. Can you describe the location?”
Charlotte released him, striving to think, to recall details of the room, anything that might help. “Just where the boy was being held. Nothing more than that. Absolutely nothing that could identify the place.”
She looked into Willem’s haunted hazel eyes and because of the bond, she once more felt his familiar shame and guilt.
She released his neck. “I get it now. You’re distressed because you survived when all these others didn’t.”
He nodded. “At the very least.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “I know survivor’s guilt is in play, but it’s more than that. I have all this ability, yet I’m powerless to find this monster. Sometimes the rage I feel completely overwhelms me.”
Understanding came to Charlotte as though whispered through her mind from another plane. “But you know exactly what needs to be done, what would change your ability to find this killer, but you’re not willing to do it, even though I would agree in a heartbeat.”
His eyes widened, his jaw tightening. “Because it’s not right, dammit.”
“What do you mean, it’s not right?”
“I’m talking about you and me. You shouldn’t have to see these things or be connected to my work or to me, not like this. No woman should have to live with these kinds of horrors or with the truth of my past.”
“Willem, maybe you’re not seeing the whole picture. What if I’m built for this? Made to look at these kinds of things and not lose myself in them.”
He shook his head, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze.
She approached the difficult subject from another tack. “Answer me this: if we completed the blood rose bond right now, I’d be able to see more, to expand my fae vision, wouldn’t I?”
He shifted away from her a little more, then finally crossed to the empty fireplace, his back to her.
The boy’s fate hung in the balance, yet the wall behind which Willem had just moved might as well have been made of concrete, a foot thick.
Charlotte took a series of very long deep breaths, not to relax, but to try with all her might to just be in the moment. Something needed to happen right now, but she had no idea what. She was too young, too inexperienced in the world and in life to figure this out.
Except that she did understand Willem’s impossible situation. He’d been traumatized as a child in a way she would never fully comprehend, not in a dozen lifetimes. And he couldn’t seem to move beyond his deeply embedded shame, not even for the sake of this boy or a hundred that would follow if the killer wasn’t stopped.
So where did she fit into this equation, other than feeding Willem and relieving him of his blood-starvation?
She thought about Vojalie and Davido, two of the most famous people in the entire Nine Realms world, and that they’d dropped everything to come and help, wanting more for Willem.
Davido had said that Willem needed to release what had happened to him if Willem was to have a chance at a normal life.
Her faeness began humming once more as she watched him. Again, she let the new realm vibration flow as she set her mind on helping Willem to release the past.
Slowly she moved in his direction, still uncertain what needed to happen. When she drew close, she gave him a shove against his shoulder and it wasn’t a pleasant shove at all because her faeness added a vibration.
He turned on her, his eyes flaring. “What the hell was that?”
“Because I’m mad right now. At you.”
“What right do you have to be mad?” He got in her face, showing that temper of his, the real Willem.
His physical size should have cowed her. Instead, she had a mission right now and that mission didn’t involve coddling the man. “You need to get over yourself, Willem. You carry this guilt of yours around like a badge of honor. And aren’t you special for hurting like this, for feeling destroyed inside because a monster once tortured you.”
His eyes widened in horror at her words, but his rage returned just as quickly. He shouted, “And what the fuck do you know about any of it. You lived your suburban American life, all safe and full of schoolgirl dreams.”
“Oh, you mean like when my father, in a drunken stupor, would beat the shit out of me and my brother? You mean that delightful childhood? Well, let me tell you something, I may not be as old as you, or as experienced, but I know one thing: I wouldn’t let what happened to me interfere with saving this boy and that’s exactly what you’re doing.”
His hands balled into fists. “You’re twisting this damn situation around.”
“We need to bond to fix this thing and you know it. I’m willing because I know who you are, because I trust all that you are.” She slapped a hand against his chest, then did the same to herself. “The partial bond has told me everything, Willem, the depth of your shame and the height of your nobility and worth whether you see it or not. All that this night has done for me is to prove that what I read in the articles and blogs about you and the information that my gossipy troll friend gathered at the RIU, is all true.
“And I’ll go a step further. I fell in love with you, my stupid man, the moment you entered my classroom and nothing, nothing, that I’ve learned or experienced since has changed that. If anything, making love with you, being with you, enjoying the partial bond with you has strengthened what I feel, how much I believe in you.”
She’d never been so bold in her life and maybe this was her lesson, that she would leave everything on the table right now even if it meant complete and utter rejection.
Willem was worth fighting for and though the boy’s fate had become the current topic, she knew it was Willem’s sense of worth that had to be altered right now.
* * * * * * * * *
Willem stared at Charlotte. He felt the same way about her, but his thoughts had frozen in place. He wanted to bond with her, but he couldn’t say the words. He loved her, he knew that now, but the words wouldn’t rise in his throat. He was as paralyzed as he had been on that monster’s table, unable to move, to help himself, to escape.
Didn’t Charlotte see how much he was broken, that he could never be fixed? He wanted to believe her, that all he had to do was bond with her and everything would be okay, but she just didn’t seem to understand how badly wrecked he really was.
“Take a step toward me, Willem, just one. Do you love me?”
“I hardly know you.”
“That’s not an answer. Besides, I think you know me inside and out.”
S
he was right. The blood rose bond had shown her character to him, everything that she was, and he’d been cruel to accuse her of having lived a simple life in Tennessee, when he’d known about the struggles of her childhood.
She was a woman of great courage, who loved his world, who had been able to look through one of the worst case files ever without flinching, and she’d just confessed that she loved him.
“Do you love me, Willem? I want an answer.”
She wasn’t even afraid of him, or put off by his temper, or his size, or even that he was broken.
Drawing close, she put a hand on his chest once more, but gentler this time. “What do you feel for me, right now? Say the words out loud, all of them, even the ugly ones.”
For a long moment, he couldn’t speak, but he needed to tell her something. “I feel affection for you.” His voice sounded so small.
“What else?” She leaned up and kissed him on the chin.
“I’m angry that you’re pushing me.”
“I know. What else?”
“I’m not worthy of you.”
“That’s a lie and you know it. Now, what else? What was it like earlier making love to me in your garden?”
Something inside his chest began to give away. “Like I’d touched heaven.”
She lifted up on her tip-toes and kissed him on the lips. “What else? How much do you hate yourself?”
“I loathe who I am. That’s what you don’t understand. I let that monster hurt me. Don’t you see?”
“You were a child and he’d tied you down. How was that you, letting him, do anything to you?”
“That doesn’t matter. I allowed it.”
She held his gaze. “That’s also a lie. He was twice your size. He overpowered you, just like he’s doing right now within your mind. You need to release him, Willem, send him out of your head once and for all.”
Davido had said the same thing to him, that if he was to have a chance at normalcy, he had to release the monster who beat and tortured him. With so much at stake, a woman’s love and a boy’s life, he had so many reasons to do exactly that, but he was locked into a pattern he couldn’t escape.
“I can’t do this.” He pulled away from her. “I’m ruined.”
Suddenly, he felt Charlotte’s mating vibration hum to life, something she was doing all by herself. Her powers were growing with every moment that passed.
He gasped, glancing down at his stomach. “What are you doing?”
“Agreeing with you that you are ruined, but loving you anyway.”
Connected on such a deep level, and experiencing Charlotte’s frequency so full of her love, made his skin crawl. “Stop it.”
“No, not gonna happen. You’ll have to throw me off the bluff for me to stop.”
Rage erupted within him and he caught her up in his arms, carried her outside, then levitated. He flew swiftly to the bluff’s edge then straight out over the ocean.
He held her away from him, but she maintained eye contact and used her emerging fae power to keep pummeling his mating frequency with her own.
He shouted, “Get your hooks out of me, Charlotte. Stop doing this or by all the elf-lords, I’ll drop you in the ocean and I won’t feel guilty because it will be your choice.”
Now he’d become the monster.
I’m going to break through your wall, Willem, if it’s the last thing I do.
He scowled at her and released one of her arms so that she had to grab hold of the other to keep from falling.
Yet at the same time, he felt her mating frequency rising in strength. He didn’t know how she was doing it, how she could stay so focused while he held her suspended an entire killing distance above the ocean.
Accept my love, Willem. You’ve become the man your childhood promised before the abduction, now embrace the rest, that you deserve love and connection.
On and on her frequency swelled, beating at his, surrounding his mating vibration until he felt suffocated. He extended her farther away from his body. Stop, he shouted within her mind. You’re killing me.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Davido was next to Charlotte, hovering in the air. “I’m taking her away from you, Willem. You can’t have her. I’m going to give her to one of the lesser mastyrs of Grochaire Realm because you’re right; you don’t deserve her.”
Charlotte’s eyes were wide with horror as she turned toward Davido. But the troll took her and they vanished.
Willem shouted his rage, turning in a circle midair, as though somehow Davido might have just slipped behind him.
But the air was empty.
And Charlotte was gone and something more. The bond between them had been severed. He was free, just as he needed to be free.
Yet as he hung in the air, he’d never felt more bound up in his entire life.
He shouted again and began to fly out over Maris Sol, away from land, bellowing his rage, moving faster and faster. He kept flying. Minutes passed, then an hour.
He began to grow weary, his recently acquired power fading fast because Charlotte was gone. His blood rose belonged to him no more.
When he began making his way back to land, his stomach started cramping like before.
His blood starvation had returned.
By the time he had a sense of just how many miles he’d covered and that he now struggled to make it back to land, he thought it possible he might not make it.
But as he moved slower and slower, his mind grew calm and he could finally think. Having Charlotte wrested from his arms had broken his fury wide open. He’d screamed his rage at what had happened to him and that for reasons he would never understand, he couldn’t have let it go any other way.
In turn, something old and worn out had left him, the shriveled part full of rage, shame, and guilt.
He would never know why he’d been abducted or suffered as he had, or even allowed to live. These were the questions he’d never been able to answer because, as Davido had told him, there was no answer. Life unfolded as it did, without rhyme or reason. It just happened.
His path had included the Infinity Killer, just as it had for at least a dozen boys since. And now the latest.
But tonight, his life had also been invaded by a human-fae hybrid, and she loved him.
And he loved her, that much he would fully admit to himself, but now Charlotte was gone.
Davido had taken her and intended to give her to another mastyr vampire. He might never see her again. How could he ever bear that?
He bellowed once more, shouting his rage at all he’d lost, and now Charlotte as well.
His heart felt ready to disintegrate within his chest and he lost feeling in his legs.
His mind became speckled with black spots and he lost altitude. The water grew closer and closer.
“Willem? What the fuck are you doing out here?”
He recognized Quinlan’s voice, the Mastyr of Grochaire Realm. He felt a big hand grab his arm, then he knew nothing but blackness.
***
Chapter Nine
“Were you watching us the whole time?” Charlotte stared at Davido, horrified.
He glanced at the ceiling and whistled. “I absented myself at certain moments, but yes, I’ve stuck close. I felt I had to, for your sake.”
Charlotte sat on Willem’s couch again, her latest beer half empty. Davido had stayed with her to let events play out as they needed to.
“So you really think that telling Willem he’d lost me forever will bring him around?”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out his phone. He spoke quietly for a moment, then hung up. “You can relax now, Charlotte. Quinlan has him.”
“Oh, thank God.” She put a hand to her chest and tears burned her eyes. She knew that Davido had severed the bond, but she could still feel Willem, somehow, a result of her faeness, perhaps.
“They should be arriving in just a minute or so, but Willem’s unconscious.”
&nbs
p; Charlotte rose to her feet, then settled her beer on the end table. “Did I do wrong with Willem? The thing is, I really felt as though I was getting through to him.”
“My dear, you did extremely well and eventually your strategy would have worked.”
“So you didn’t intervene because you thought Willem would drop me?”
“No, he would never have done so. You know that. Time had grown critical on several fronts. You see, I was able to track your visions and I know we don’t have much longer to save this child.”
Charlotte felt the same thing, so she wasn’t surprised.
“But Willem is all right?”
“Yes, he’s fine.”
Charlotte moved to the large window that overlooked the ocean. She could just hear the surf hitting the shore below. “We need to save that boy.”
“I know. I was never more proud of you than when you stomached looking at Willem’s case file on the Infinity Killer.”
Suddenly, the reality crashed down on her that Davido had severed the blood rose bond. “It’s over. I can never be with him again.”
“I’m sorry, Charlotte, but I had to do this, for the boy’s sake.”
Though tears bit her eyes, she nodded. “You did the right thing.”
* * * * * * * * *
Willem woke up to water on his face, small flicks that he slapped at.
When he opened his eyes, he stared into the face of the ruler of Grochaire Realm. Willem glanced around and saw that he was reclining on his own bed.
“Quinlan, how did you get here? I mean, why are you all the way out here?” Maris Sol was at the far western edge of Grochaire Realm and a long distance from where Quinlan would be battling the Invictus wraith-pairs.
“I got an anonymous tip that you were about to drop dead in the ocean. Looks like the caller was right. And why all the shouting? I could hear you from miles away.”
Quinlan didn’t know about Willem’s history with the Infinity Killer. “I have issues.”
“Well, who the fuck doesn’t when you’ve seen what we’ve seen?”
Willem stared at him hard for a long time. He’d needed to hear those exact words. They’d all been through hell, those mastyr vampires who served their Realms whether as rulers like Quinlan or others in law enforcement of one kind or another, like Willem.