When she noticed the severity in my gaze, she backed off and left me to wallow in my shortcomings. As much as I wanted to believe Chef’s penguin analogy, I heard too many other voices in my head reminding me of those failures.
Shane’s voice always resonated the loudest, recounting how he broke me down. Allison’s words, sad and pathetic, were on a constant loop, and the clincher was Helen’s subtle reminders that I wasn’t performing well enough.
There was a time in my life when I may have saved a few lives, but I was a different person now. I wasn’t sure if I had a soul or not. If by some miracle I did, it was a broken soul at best.
It would seem my animosity toward vampires has been replaced with fear. The stubborn confidence I once had was constantly bombarded by self-doubt. The fire that once fueled my fight was now flickering in and out. The only thing keeping me going these days was urgency. That, and a little bit of secondhand faith.
To save the world or to let it burn. How do I keep it spinning on its axis without causing a cataclysmic disaster? That was the question plaguing my every decision. There were some who believed, without a doubt, that I could accomplish such a feat, and there were others who didn’t necessarily believe I could do it but needed me to.
The tangled mess of thoughts and concerns bounced around in my head like Sonic the Hedgehog, and I began hammering away at the vault, merely inflicting the same amount of damage as a five-minute hailstorm. It lasted for hours. Each time I thought I had control over my thoughts, I’d throw a fist only to have it met with an equal amount of resistance as the punch before it.
Well into the early morning hours, long after the party died down, mediocrity wore me down, and I ceased my miniscule progress in favor of exploring the hidden parts of the mansion. Slipping through the secret passageway in my bedroom, I wound down the spiral stairwell and through the painted hallways of the basement until I came to the older part of the lower level.
The weapons room distracted me for an hour, or three. Impossible to resist, I played with each familiar weapon and a few unfamiliar ones, recalling my lessons with Wade. The techniques came easily to me, like walking and tying my shoes, but the power behind the moves still waned. Abandoning my dreams of being a wicked awesome Spartan warrior, I closed the heavy door behind me and crept further into the dark hallway.
Cracked and warped wood paneling covered half the walls. The thick moisture became more evident as I neared the end of the hall. The dank smell settled around me, offensive and pungent. From that point on, I held my breath.
At the t-intersection, I turned left. A small alcove at the end of the corridor grabbed my attention, and I discovered another room, equally as large as the previous, but this one turned out to be another office. A large ornate desk sat in the center of the room, flanked by several bookshelves much like the office upstairs.
To the left of the desk, a wood-burning stove sat along the wall next to a sizeable stack of firewood. Most of it appeared damp and rotted, which made me wonder when the last time he was down here might have been.
I gazed around the room as my fingertips collected dust, gliding over the smooth mahogany surface of the desk, but something in my peripheral vision stopped me in my tracks. In the middle of the desk was a picture, not framed, but lying flat on top of an old newspaper.
The girl in the photograph must have been only fifteen, but she wore the most desolate and wary expression on her face I had ever seen. She looked like someone who just realized her life and her future were no longer hers. At such a young age, everything had been ripped away from her. Little did she know, she had so much more to lose.
I remembered that night. It wasn’t my first kill, but it was the first time I really saw my life for what it was, or what it would become. I witnessed the divide between the human world and myself.
At first, I killed vampires because I could, and my anger had found direction, but I never considered what that really meant for me. Until that night.
The memory cycled through my mind. It was late, and I had only made one kill. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what he looked like or what he wore, but I remembered his rough voice. His threat. His words almost broke me.
He said, “Do you think your actions won’t bare consequences? Do you think you’re the hunter? The more you fight, the more you will lose. You can’t hide from this. We see you. You belong to the shadows now, sister.”
He delivered the foreboding words so low they seized me. I never could outrun the ominous anguish they rendered deep inside my soul. It still resonated to this day.
After staking him, I watched from afar as humans engaged in normal activities and instantly became aware that my life had just been flipped inside out.
The girl in the picture stood in the middle of an alley, held up by the brick wall behind her, realizing her world was crumbling around her. She appeared stricken, a bit ashen, but underneath it all, she was angry. For everything she sacrificed. For the cursed life she knew she had no choice but to accept.
Those words should have broken her. They fueled her instead.
I wondered what my picture would look like in this very moment. What if the fire really had flickered out? What if I have reached my breaking point? He was right. The more I fought, the more I lost.
God. I was getting really good at depressing myself lately. I had to get out of here. Thinking about the hows and whys of Gavin having this image definitely did not help matters either. That was a stone better left unturned. For now.
It was kind of sweet though. In a creepy sort of way. Always the stalker. My lips curved up.
No! Bad Lucy.
I left the room in a rush, so quickly I wound up passing my right turn and found myself in a part of the hall covered completely in rough cut stone. Old and disintegrating mortar held the stone together, and I tracked it straight until it forked. I followed the right fork as it twisted and turned for miles.
How had I not discovered an underground tunnel system right underneath me until now? Did anyone else in the house know about it? The original lock on the door to these hallways made me think Gavin kept this whole area a secret. From Helen too?
The walls grew colder under my fingertips and water leaked through pores in the stone as the tunnel descended farther. When I came to another fork, my instincts guided me toward a path that eventually produced a rung ladder.
I eyed the metal grate above and didn’t hesitate before busting through the chain lock. Crouching low, I stood in a darker, cramped tunnel that made me thankful I had the ability to hold my breath indefinitely.
I ascended to a ledge above the snowmelt drainage part of the town’s sewer system. The water ran below the ledge, and I slouched down close to the curved wall to keep my balance. I spied light about fifty feet down the pipe and headed toward it. I popped out on the outskirts of town, and a slow smile split my face.
Okay, that was made of awesome. I lived in a house with secret doorways and underground tunnels.
The sunlight was too nice to waste, and I decided to stop at my new reclusive hideout before returning to the mansion. This time, I didn’t wind up on my ass covered in snow, but I did clear a small path across the frozen lake for a little sliding. I added finding some ice skates to my to do list. Surely Gavin had at least one pair in that giant home of his. The sun sank lower, and I made a mental note to search the house.
The peaceful bubble I managed to create this afternoon immediately burst on my jaunt back to the mansion. Darkness snuffed out the remaining daylight, and all those troubles I avoided for the past few hours trickled slowly back into my mind in the form of paranoia.
The crunching of snow sounded about twenty yards to my right, and I jerked my head in the direction of the noise. Those tormenting words reverberated ferociously through my mind to haunt me all these years later. Was I the hunter?
Rabidly scanning the area, I waited for any other indication of an ambush. It was quiet and still. Too quiet. Something was out ther
e. I spun in wild, frantic circles, playing the role of a frenetic mental patient off her meds brilliantly. Every flap of a leaf or sway of a branch spooked me. My muscles seized in preparation for an attack. The tiniest breeze became the cold breath of death on the back of my neck. I backed cautiously toward the path to the house before turning and making an all-out sprint for it.
I sensed, rather than heard, another presence gaining on me. Was it my own fears catching up to me or was it real? At this point, it really didn’t matter. My heart beat madly against my ribcage. I reached my top speeds before the weight of my watch triggered my survival response.
The panic button!
I reached for it and looked up to see the mansion looming ahead. I pressed it and drew out a long, relieved breath when the response was immediate. At least twenty UV spotlights illuminated the forest, casting long shadows across the snow. When I made it to the edge of the woods, I turned and expected the bogeyman to be right behind me, seething behind a tree from his failed attempt.
Nothing. Not even a twitch.
Get a grip, Luce.
Before approaching the back door that led to the dining room, I mentally shook myself to loosen the nerves. When I walked in, all eyes were on me. People froze with their forks halfway to their mouths.
“Lucy, what is it? Is something wrong?” Sophie approached carefully.
“It’s fine,” I called to the room. I looked to Sophie, who still had fear in her eyes. “Everything is fine. It was nothing. I thought I heard something.” When she still looked unconvinced, I continued to reassure her, and myself. “Really. It was nothing.”
When the tension in her stance eased and my embarrassment faded, I detected the excited buzz in the room. People huddled together at their tables speaking animatedly to one another.
“What’s going on?” I asked Sophie as I examined the room. My eyes landed on the bubbly blond and her evil lackeys walking toward the tables with their plates.
“Oh, apparently we have company. Some new guy, I think,” Sophie explained.
As Allison passed, I waited for the scathing remark about my most recent blunder, but she was so engrossed in conversation with herself, I mean the other girls, that she merely gave me a pitying look.
“Did you see the hotness? Oh my gawd! So hot! He’s mine ladies. Sorry, I call dibs.” When they parked at their typical table, she continued to threaten the other girls with public shaming if they so much as went near the new guy.
“Okaaayyy. That was different. Who is this new guy that has the power to distract the Bitch Queen long enough to make her forget how much she truly hates me?”
“No idea. I haven’t seen him yet. I think he might be talking to Helen now, so the Bitch Queen hasn’t really had time to sink her claws in.”
I laughed out loud. It wasn’t often that Sophie made jokes at someone’s expense, or any jokes really, so they packed a much bigger punch. I may have been rubbing off on her just a little. “Good luck to him then. He has no idea what’s in store.”
If this new guy could keep Allison off my back for a while, he already had my stamp of approval, not that I had any say on who joined the super exclusive club they had here.
A wadded napkin sailed across one table to another before Brody shouted. “Give it up, Al. He practically owns this place. He’s way out of your league.”
“Give me a week,” Allison responded, but the rest of her words were drowned out by the rushing sound in my ears.
My heart stopped. My blood froze in my veins, and I stopped breathing. Not on purpose this time. Brody’s words rang loud in my head and kept repeating over and over.
He practically owns this place.
Sophie noticed my sudden stiffness. “Lucy, is everything okay?”
This drew people’s attention to me again, but I didn’t care. They could stare all they wanted. I had one mission on my mind.
“Where is Helen now?” I asked anyone within hearing distance.
“I think she’s talking to someone in her office,” Nick provided.
“Yeah, I saw her head that way with the new guy,” Carly added as Brody put his arm over her shoulder. She smiled playfully and threw a fry at him.
He spoke to her, but everyone heard him. “He’s not really the new guy, technically.”
Allison chimed in then, her eyes bore into mine as the hatred returned with a newfound purpose. “Stay away, freak. You don’t have a shot anyway.”
My own cattiness reared its ugly head. “He’s not really your type, but you better say what you need to say to him now, because he’s not going to be alive much longer,” I warned as I spun toward the door.
Their stunned eyes stayed on my back as I retreated. The only one who spoke was Allison. “What is she talking about?”
Her voice faded as I stomped down the hallway. She was the least of my worries. Boiling rage melted the ice in my veins. He was just going to pop by for a visit after being absent for over a month?
I thought my abandonment issues with him were finally lessening, but his reappearance brought back the painful reminders of all that transpired between us. He had been my protector for so long, and I didn’t realize how much I counted on him to always be there for me, whether I needed him or not.
Until he left me.
I hated how much influence he had over my moods. Over my life. He made all the rules. I wanted to murder him.
12
I rounded the corner and marched toward the office. I made it ten feet from the closed door before stopping cold.
His voice drifted through the barrier, temporarily stunning my heart. The contradictory soft roughness of it trapped me in place. I was hypnotized.
I hadn’t heard that smooth, low voice in over a month and my memory of it didn’t do it justice. How would I fare from seeing him?
Their words registered as they broke through my internal conundrum. It was Helen speaking. “She’s not ready. Especially after the other night. I don’t understand why her training isn’t showing signs of improvement.”
“How can you not understand?” Gavin argued. “She’s lost everything she’s ever cared about. Her best friend was killed and she blames herself. I’m pretty sure that, alone, is enough misery to hinder her improvement, but it gets worse. She’s lost the only home she’s ever known, practically kicked out of it. As if she hasn’t blamed herself enough, she has the encouragement of the Chief of police to blame herself as well. And to top it off, she thinks she’s lost her soul.”
“Which we both know isn’t true,” Helen said conspiratorially.
What the hell did that mean? I knew what they believed to be true, but how could they be that certain?
The reminder of Holly’s dad hating me stung a little, too. I thought I might have been past that, but nope. Guess not.
Helen continued. “And we also know she hasn’t lost everything she cares for.” I pictured her hard glare boring into Gavin as she directed that comment toward him.
There was a long pause before he spoke again. “That’s exactly why she hasn’t given up completely. She just needs to be reminded she has something to fight for. She lacks the motivation and the confidence in herself. She’s scared right now because she’s worried about hurting more people, and that mental block is holding her back from all the potential. She needs a little confidence boost,” he suggested.
“Are you saying I should put one of my own in danger so she can be the hero?”
He sighed. “No. Just keep sending her out. She needs to get back to her routine. The rest will come.”
“Do you think that’s wise with everything that’s been happening?” she asked. I assumed she meant the vampire who was making new vampires to send after me, but I wouldn’t rule out another threat they’re keeping from me.
“She’ll be fine. She’s strong. Once she realizes it, she’ll be unstoppable.”
“You know… she would probably get back in the action a lot faster if it were your life on the line,” she hin
ted. This was met with firm silence.
It was bad enough they discussed my weaknesses behind my back, but I drew the line when it came to my feelings. They sure as hell weren’t her business to discuss.
Reclaiming the fire, I charged ahead, barging into the office. The solid oak door banged against the wall with a loud, satisfying thud. Helen stood against the side wall, startled at the sight of me.
He leaned against the middle of the desk casually with his arms folded over his chest. The typical fitted black suit draped over his six-three frame with annoying perfection. It was accentuated with a white collared shirt he wore untucked and loosened at the top by a button or two. Lazy arrogance completed the whole package.
It was when I met his eyes that my steps faltered. My memory of his face definitely did it no justice. And those eyes held so many things unsaid in their depths.
He didn’t school his features fast enough. I glimpsed relief along with a bit of excitement and something indecipherable that made my heart beat faster. When his eyes shifted to take in my black workout pants and thermal, I remembered I was still wearing the same clothes I worked out in last night and crawled through a sewer in earlier today.
Shit. Why did he always have to look flawless, and why couldn’t I have at least showered within the past 24 hours?
“Lucille!” Helen scolded. “You shouldn’t barge into someone’s office like that.”
I turned my scowl on her. “I’m fine. Thanks for asking,” I sneered.
“I’m sorry.” She finally acknowledged the red indicator light that notified her when the spotlights were triggered. “Is everything okay? Did something happen?”
“Like I said, I’m fine.” I twisted my head back to Gavin. “Besides a few self-confidence issues apparently.”
His lips curved up and he drew his hand to his mouth to try and cover his amusement, but it lit his eyes.
Blinding Light (The Bloodmarked Trilogy Book 2) Page 17