He was removing Mary from the ceiling. Just as I had feared, the hooks were in her back and not her shirt.
"No," he whispered sadly as he removed her limp body from the hooks. Dracula wrapped Mary in his arms and sat on the floor. The red wig had fallen off and he ran his fingers through her long blond hair. "She was innocent," he said softly, still stroking her hair.
Bade and Mason walked over and he confirmed my fears. "Now she is dead," he whispered, "and it is my fault."
"No," I said as I started crying over Mary along with Dracula. "Oh, God. Elijah thought she was safe." I wept harder, leaning over her.
We sat there for several moments before I wiped my eyes and said, "I don't know how to tell him."
"I'll tell him," Marco's voice answered from the stairs.
"Marco," I said, running to him.
He wrapped me tightly in his arms. It was so good to see him.
"Where were you?" I asked as I surveyed the large bump and cut on his forehead.
"Luther and I were in an accident trying to get here," he said. "Is anyone else hurt?"
"No," Bade answered.
When I glanced back I was surprised to find him wiping tears also.
"How's Luther?" I asked.
"He's outside in the taxi. He broke his arm, but he'll be fine in a few days."
"You took a taxi?"
"The driver's one of us," he explained.
I was still numb with shock. None of us seemed able to believe what had just happened. While Bade told Marco the story I went back over to Dracula. He had removed his coat and covered Mary's face.
"I've got a blanket in my car," Mason offered solemnly.
Dracula only nodded. When he had removed his coat I got a good look at how bad his injury was. It was the only wound Khan had been able to inflict, but it looked serious. His white shirt was soaked with blood, but he didn't seem to notice.
As I touched his shoulder just above the exit wound in his back he said softly, "I will heal." The pain in his voice tugged at my heart and he didn't need to say more for me to understand that she would not, and it was killing him.
"I'll be back," I whispered. "We should get you home."
"I'll take her body to the clinic," Bade said. "There's a morgue downstairs for werewolves."
Marco wrapped his arm around my shoulders and kissed the top of my head.
"See to his injuries," he said, nodding toward Dracula. "I'll tell Elijah tonight. We'll give them a chance to … clean her up."
"What about you?" I asked, turning so that I could touch the cut on his forehead.
"I'll be healed by tomorrow afternoon," he assured me.
Marco led me back up the stairs and into the night. We stopped beside Mason's car and he embraced me so tightly I thought something might break.
"I'm sorry Mary's dead," he cried. "But I was expecting to find you."
He pulled back and kissed me. His warm tears wet my face as he growled against my lips, "I don't know what I would have done if it was you, Red."
I pressed my face against his chest and breathed in his familiar scent. It felt so good to be in his arms again.
"I've missed you," I said. "I've missed you so much."
I started kissing him through his t-shirt. I kissed over his chest and up to the side of his throat. It wasn't sexual, it was more of a desire to just touch him. He didn't ask if I had been sleeping with Dracula and I loved him for it. Of course, the fact that he still wore a mask probably gave that away. But still I took it as a sign of his love for me that he didn't push the issue. We stood there holding each other for several minutes before he said, "You should get Dracula home. He'll bleed out if he doesn't feed and get some rest." He sighed heavily before adding, "I'll call you before I talk to Elijah if you want to be there."
"Yeah, I do."
About that time I looked around Marco to see Mason removing a dark-colored blanket from the trunk of his car.
"Luther and I will follow you to the clinic if you'll give us a ride to The Dread Moon. I've got another car there," Marco said to him.
"Of course." Mason nodded.
When I went back inside I found Bade standing near the door with Dracula drinking from his wrist. I hadn't expected Bade to open a vein. My surprise must have shown.
"You shouldn't have to do everything," he said to me.
I appreciated the gesture. By now Mason had moved Mary to the backseat of his car. He was standing slightly to our left and spraying the bodies down with holy water. He seemed to enjoy the way they sizzled.
When I stared at him he looked up and said, "You think they deserve to burn, right?"
"Absolutely."
He continued his work with my blessing. By the time I turned back around Dracula was finished. I could tell by the color of his shirt that he had already stopped bleeding. His shirt was beginning to darken as the blood dried.
"How did you get here?" I asked.
I expected he had flown, but Dracula informed me his car was parked behind the barn. While everyone else headed toward the clinic, we returned to his castle. He and Marco both insisted it wasn't safe for me to show my face. As horrible as the events of the past hour were, they proved that Marco had been right to hide me with the vampire.
In the past week, I had discovered Dracula had two bathrooms which were attached to his bedroom. On one end was the one with the massive tub and across the room was a door which led to a smaller bathroom with a shower. He went toward the one with the shower, while I went to the other.
I didn't really take time to assess my own injuries, but they were not serious. I'd been knocked around, but poor Mary. I thought I would be sick, but I never was. I just sat on the floor with my head resting against the toilet seat and cried until I had no more tears. When I finally picked myself up off the floor and went into the other room I found Dracula sitting in front of the fire. He almost always had a fire because of the constant draft in the castle. The cold didn't affect him, so I knew he had made the fire for my benefit.
He had taken off his bloody shirt and cleaned up a bit. He was sitting on the large round cushion and staring into the flames. As I approached I watched the way the firelight cast shadows across the whip scars on his back. Years ago a pack of werewolves had nearly whipped him to death but they hadn't succeeded. Now a vampire had stabbed him, but Khan hadn't succeeded either. I looked at the wound he had acquired tonight. The skin was still red, but the wound was already closed and healing fast. By morning there wouldn't even be a trace.
The only reason the whip had scarred him was because it was tipped with bits of silver. After carrying silver around for so many years in order to hunt werewolves he had developed an allergy to it as well. There was something about the silver which caused it to scar a vampire's skin like a holy object would. I didn't fully understand it. I just put silver into the same category as holy objects.
When I touched his back, Dracula put his head in his hands and started to cry. There is nothing more disconcerting to me than to hear a man cry. We're always taught that men aren't supposed to cry and when they do you know something has to be terribly wrong. As I touched his bare skin I knew why he was so upset. It wasn't just the loss of Mary. Dracula had barely known her. He grieved for another innocent life lost, and he blamed himself.
"You did what you could," I said softly as I knelt down in front of him and put my head in his lap. "You were stabbed trying to save her. No one could ask more than that."
"It is not only her loss," he said hoarsely. As he lowered his hands I could see Dracula had removed the mask, but his hair prevented me from seeing his face. "I thought they had you," he said, echoing Marco's response. "Oh, Lilith," he moaned as he took my face in his hands. "I was desperate. It took me so long to find you. I did something I never thought I would do again, something I have not done in thousands of years."
"What?" I whispered.
"I spoke to God," he said. "I did not expect him to listen after all this time, but I
begged him for your life. I begged him," he cried as he slid to the floor and held me against him. "I am so sorry that someone had to die, but I feel more relief than anything else and it sickens me. I was so relieved to see your face. If someone had to die … anyone but you." He sighed as he brushed back my hair and began to kiss me.
I closed my eyes as Dracula's lips roamed over my face. He kissed my lips, my eyelids, my cheeks. God help me, I loved this man. He had done terrible things in his lifetime. But how long could someone be punished?
"He is always listening," I said softly.
"So it would seem," he said as he pulled me onto his lap.
Dracula sat with me on the floor for the longest time. He held me as if I were the most precious thing in the world. And I knew as he touched me that to him I was.
When Marco called an hour later, Dracula went with me to tell Elijah the tragic news. Actually, he drove because I was shaking so badly I wasn't capable. When Elijah arrived at the clinic, Kat had driven him for the same reason.
She went into the waiting room while we took Elijah into Dr. Sinclair's office. The doctor was downstairs with Mary.
"What is it?" Elijah said, taking in all of our expressions. "No," he whispered, his blue eyes filling with tears. "It isn't … not Mary?" he moaned.
I walked over and hugged him. I didn't know what to say.
"No," he wailed. "Not Mary."
Marco stepped closer and put his arms around us both while he started telling Elijah as delicately as possible what had happened to his sister. When it became apparent that it had all been a scheme to get their hands on Dracula, Elijah pulled away. He walked over to where Dracula stood and hit him with all the force of an angry werewolf.
"Son of a bitch," he growled. "If it wasn't for you this would never have happened."
I had never seen Elijah so angry and it was almost more unsettling than what had happened to his sister. But he had every right to be angry.
Dracula's head jerked with the impact, but otherwise he didn't move. The vampire wiped a trace of blood from his lip before literally turning the other cheek. Elijah stood staring at his mask while Vlad said quietly, "You have every right to hate me."
"No," Marco said. "He was stabbed trying to save her life."
Elijah fell to his knees and Dracula knelt with him.
"I don't hate you," Elijah cried. "It's my fault. She was supposed to be safe. If I hadn't tried to send her away …" He sobbed as the vampire embraced him.
It was bad enough seeing Elijah cry, but seeing Dracula hold him and cry with him was more than I could take. I turned my back on the scene in order to pull myself together and Marco put his arms around me.
After a few minutes Elijah pulled himself together and said, "I want to see her."
Kat was gone when we came back out of the office and headed for the elevator. The werewolf clinic is a mostly underground facility, and we took Elijah to the third floor. Dr. Sinclair was waiting for us, his tall slender frame propped beside the elevator. Without a word he took us to the morgue. Elijah remained composed while he identified his sister's body.
"Can we have a few minutes alone?" he asked.
I was standing closest to the door and I could hear him talking to her. I doubled over suddenly, clutching my heart. Dracula was instantly at one side and Marco was at the other.
"What's wrong?" they asked.
But I couldn't speak. I could only shake my head and cry silently. It was then, in the silence, that they heard him talking too. They both hugged me and we all cried as we listened to Elijah tell his sister goodnight for the last time.
We all waited out in the hall for what felt like hours, but it was probably closer to thirty minutes. When Elijah reemerged the sparkle was gone from his eyes, and it broke my heart. No matter what Dracula said, I blamed myself. It wasn't his or Elijah's fault, it was mine. Elijah was cursed with lycanthropy, and now his sister was dead, all because he was my friend. If he never knew me, none of this would ever have happened. His twenty four year old face seemed to have aged ten years. Not in his features, but his eyes.
"The people who did this will suffer," Marco promised.
"We've already killed two of them," I added.
"Painfully?" Elijah asked. The coldness in his voice made me cringe.
"Very," Dracula assured him.
Everyone was quiet as we rode the elevator back up. When we stepped out Kat looked awful. She obviously knew something was wrong.
"What's happened?" she asked.
"Mary's been murdered," Elijah blurted out.
Kat screamed. It wasn't the sort of scream you hear if someone's frightened, but the mournful, heartbreaking sound of someone who's just experienced something horrible.
Elijah repeated what had happened as if he were talking about someone else and I realized he was going into shock.
"Oh, my God," Kat gasped. "The wig was my idea."
For a split second I saw such severe hatred pass over Elijah's features that it frightened me. Then he seemed to remember he was looking at Kat and his expression softened.
"It's not your fault, Kat," he soothed.
But it was clear to see Elijah was unstable. Even if he was grieving, I didn't like the way he'd looked at Kat one bit. He was looking for someone to blame.
?
Chapter Thirteen
"Blame me," I said, stepping from behind Dracula. "She was killed because they thought she was me. You were attacked before because I cared about you, and it was my wig. If you want to hurt someone, hurt me, I can take it. But don't ever let me see you look at Kat like that again."
Elijah stared me down for so long I began to wonder what he would do. Then his eyes filled with tears again and he hugged me.
"Lilith, I'm sorry. I just can't believe she's gone. I think I'd feel better if I had someone to blame. I know that's childish, but it's true," he cried.
"It is not childish," Dracula said. "Trust me, I understand the need for revenge. In fact, it has shaped my life."
"It has shaped all our lives," Marco agreed.
Dracula had volunteered for the experiment that turned him into a vampire in order to seek revenge for the murder of his family. And Marco shared with me a few months ago that he had challenged the former wolf king in order to avenge the attack he had ordered on me.
"What do we do now?" Elijah asked.
"We must act quickly," Dracula said. "Khan was nearly decapitated tonight, but he will live. It will take him a few nights to recover enough to warn the others."
"Then we must act now," Marco said.
"You must rest now," Dr. Sinclair said from behind me. "Or you won't be able to avenge anything."
He was obviously not your average doctor. Burt Sinclair had been running what was just known as the clinic for about five years. He and his brother, who was a nurse practitioner, had been turned into werewolves back in college. Only lycans ran the facility, so no one else knew what he was. Last I'd heard he had a successful practice near one of the local hospitals and he and his brother took turns running the clinic, though I'd never met the younger Sinclair.
No matter how much werewolves and vampires tried to operate within the boundaries of human law, some things were still handled without the police. And in this case, Elijah didn't count. Sinclair's comments came as no real surprise. After all, it was human laws that would find a way to ruin his practice if anyone knew he was a werewolf. That's a shame, because from what I had observed he was a good doctor. Compassion is harder to come by than a degree, and they don't teach it in college.
"Make some plans now, and then you rest tonight," he repeated, "or I'm afraid I'll be seeing more of you downstairs."
We sat at a conference table with Mason on speaker phone while Dr. Sinclair handed Elijah, Marco, and myself a bottle of sleeping pills. He also gave Marco a prescription to take back to Luther and asked about his arm. I got the impression that he had seen Luther before he drove back home. The cut on Marco's forehead was
also patched up and in spite of the bandage he was still handsome. I sat between Marco and Elijah while Mason shared the plan he had been forming over the past weeks.
As his deep sultry voice laid out in gruesome detail what would be done to the vampires, I reached over and took Elijah's hand. There was something I needed to know if Kat was driving him home.
I dropped my shields and opened myself up to what he was feeling. Elijah only squeezed my fingers, accepting the comfort I offered, oblivious to my intentions. The instant I touched him I knew he would never really hurt Kat. He wasn't even really mad at her. It was just as I suspected, he needed someone to blame. He already felt guilty about hitting Dracula, but he felt even worse for the look he had given Kat. In his mind it was borderline unforgivable. He thought of Kat as his sister too and now she was the only one he had left.
I was wrong to have assumed he was unstable. I just wasn't used to seeing Elijah angry. He was one of the kindest, gentlest people I knew. But someone had fucked up and killed his sister and now there would be hell to pay. But I also felt uncertainty in him. Not only would he not hurt any of us, but he was going to have a hard time even hurting the vampires. Elijah was a cop, but this wasn't the kind of justice he was used to. "Could I actually kill someone?" he was wondering. "Even if they did kill Mary, that doesn't make me right. But what if I don't and they kill Lilith, or Kat? Could I live with that?"
The answer was no, he couldn't.
Elijah looked at me and smiled weakly as he took my hand in both of his. The sparkle was still gone from his eyes, but so was the beast. He was in so much pain that it was nearly more than he could take. But if I took some of his pain he wouldn't be able to go through with his part in the plan. And if he didn't, he would always regret it.
So, very reluctantly I left my friend in pain, kissed Marco goodnight and went back home with Dracula. My mind was racing in every direction possible. As we crossed the lake I took a moment to enjoy the moon flowers, then I wondered if it would be the last time I ever saw them. What if we all died tomorrow night? Or what if I just lost Dracula, or Marco?
A Dream Forbidden (Lillith Mercury ) Page 10