She’d been the first since Lucy to see something else. Jasmina didn’t count; her pity was personal and distant, and just like everyone else, she thought he was a monster. Jasmina had made it very clear that she believed there was nothing inside of him but darkness.
It wasn’t like it was hard to assume that. Yes, he hunted and killed just like most of the vampires in Violet Memory, but the other things he had been accused of? It was easier to be hated and to let others think he had done the unspeakable things he would never willingly inflict on others the way he’d been forced to in Grace’s coven.
Better to confess guilty to lies and rumors so he could keep everyone away. If he was hated, if he cared for no one, he couldn’t be hurt. There was only so much pain someone could handle; that was another reason why he tried to not have much contact with Olivia.
No. He couldn’t think about Olivia. Olivia did not belong in his life. She did not belong in his world.
It was revenge he focused on. Revenge was the only thing worth living for.
So why the hesitation?
Disgusted with himself, he put Kara aside and waited for her to die.
Minutes ticked by, her heart beating fainter and slower. She barely breathed. He could hear how hard her heart was trying to keep her alive.
He studied her. He had thought he would feel . . . happier? More relieved?
“Lucy would hate you if she saw you now!”
The words resonated throughout his mind, tearing at him. He knew that. He had known that for centuries. But what did it matter as long as Gabriel finally understood?
“Elias . . . don’t do this! It won’t bring her back!”
Bring her back. . . . Why even consider it? How long had he waited for this?
But was Kara right?
Was there something of Lucy left inside of him, a part of her soul that had latched to his before she’d died? Some of her light? Lucy’s soul had been a mirror image of his own. That didn't mean they’d been the same person, but it did mean they’d belonged together.
So was it Kara of all people who could help him find that small piece of Lucy hidden deep in the darkness? Was there really something more than this never-ending hatred?
If Kara stayed alive, he could find out. If there was truly nothing left or if he changed his mind, he could always kill her later. . . .
Hardly even aware of his actions, Elias cursed before kneeling over Kara. He propped her up against him before tearing deeply into his wrist with his fangs, deep enough to see bone, and he forced the blood into her mouth, rubbing her throat to make the liquid go down. He also dripped it over the open wound on her shoulder. With heightened eyes, he watched his blood trickle into her body. The shoulder wouldn’t heal, but everything else, including her dehydrated state, would.
He listened to her heart as it forced his blood to spread throughout her body. He had given her a copious amount of blood, enough that he actually felt dizzy. His throat burned in protest.
He had given her enough blood to form a blood connection.
What had he done?
Shocked by his actions, he barely heard the door open. Scarcely saw the flash of green and black that came toward him. Only faintly felt the sting of the stake inside his chest, an inch away from his heart.
But he did hear the sharp intake of breath that came from the red-haired human on the floor.
Kara was still alive.
***
Just like that night under a sea of stars when Gabriel had forced his blood into me, I felt life pulse through me. But there was no time to be grateful. There was no time to think.
I turned my head toward the fighting. Two shadows were a blur of black and blood, throwing one another against the walls and the floor. Pinpoints of bright silver and green swirled within the depths of the fight.
My eyes could not truly follow the movements, but I focused on the green as best as I could.
“Gabriel!” I screamed.
Gabriel stopped, his face a mixture of agony and hatred. Elias, bloody and disheveled, took his chance and went toward me.
My memories of the past days were muddy and strange, but there was a deep instinct inside of me that wasn’t wrong; I could feel a different blood coursing through me, an alien blood.
Gabriel had not been the one to save me. I didn’t understand why Elias had done it, but he had actually saved me from the brink of the death.
Very briefly, I felt Elias’s intent. He was so angry and confused, but he was about to end it all.
I was his target. Even he didn’t know what he was going to do. He was going to either kill me or take me away.
Gabriel had stabbed him numerous times with the stake, all around his chest, stomach, and shoulders—everywhere except for the heart he’d aimed at.
Blood poured from Elias. He stumbled and fell toward me, but Gabriel was right behind him. The stake went into Elias's chest again just as his fingertips brushed my arm. His blood splattered onto my face.
Elias's eyes flashed at me once. They were full of a jagged pain that . . . begged. Then he blurred and was gone.
Gabriel stared threateningly at the open doorway as he loomed over me. He looked down at me, the anger in his eyes dying into horror as he stared at my shoulder.
“Kara,” Gabriel whispered brokenly.
“It was a sliver knife.”
He tore my manacles free, his bloody hands shaking. The cuts and bruises that marked his skin were healing before my eyes.
He gathered me into his arms, and we clung to one another desperately. I was going to shatter.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. . . .” He kept repeating those words, his voice filled with worry, anger, guilt, love. He trembled against me.
“Are they alive? Thomas and Inola, are they alive?” I nearly screamed.
“They are alive. I should have waited for them, but I figured out where he was keeping you, and I panicked and left them behind.” He rose up off the floor and cradled me gently in his arms. “I’ve got to get you to a hospital.”
I should have been ecstatic. Relived. Instead, a dead, numbing calm filled me the moment I knew I was safe.
I couldn’t feel anything. I could hardly register what was in front of my eyes. The world moved, and I did not.
There was darkness and night air. I thought Gabriel was talking to me, but I couldn’t be sure. Cold flitted over my face and down my arms.
Time no longer existed. Warped voices floated around me. White walls soothed my eyes, and different pressures prodded my body.
Dreams and sounds melded together and made no sense. My senses had become a jumbled mess, disconnected and distorted. Very rarely could I make out anything, and when I did, I was unable to care what was happening. The words the voices said didn’t faze me.
“I’ve Controlled the doctors and nurses to not log her information. It will be as if we were never here. Her shoulder has been cared for, and she has antibiotics and pain medication.”
“They didn’t seem too concerned with her tachycardia, but what about her catatonia?”
“There’s nothing more they can do for her besides putting her in the psychiatric ward, and I’m not going to do that to her. She needs to be surrounded by people who care about her, not by strangers who will see her as nothing more than a means to a paycheck. I’m going to take her someplace safe, and try to reach her.”
“She has PTSD, Gabriel. There’s no telling what all he did to her. There’s no telling how many times he may have harmed her and then healed her to begin anew. The doctors said there was no evidence of rape, and I hope more than anything that they are correct, but like I just said, if Elias used his blood to heal her after hurting her, we have no way of knowing what all she went through. And do not get angry, but you may have contributed to what she’s going through. Seeing you may only make matters worse.”
“She will never leave my sight again, Thomas.”
“No offense, my friend, but she was in your s
ight when all of this started.”
Green, black, and blue lights were nearly always there. The lights were so bright and pretty, and I tried my hardest to focus on them. They were the only objects linking me to the world, and it felt like those lights cared about me.
I wanted to reach out to the lights, but I didn’t know how.
There was no way of knowing how long I stared at the lights, or how long it was before the black and blue lights disappeared and only the green lights remained.
And inside of me, deeply buried and possibly imagined, I thought I felt a presence. It held an unsettling mixture of hesitation, detachment, and anger. As I vaguely understood there were things trying to reach me from the outside, it was like there was something inside of me also trying to wake me.
Before I could fully understand, the presence vanished.
Timeless ages later, I became aware of a change in the strange atmosphere I was trapped in. Everything suddenly became tinged with desperation. There was a snapping sound and pain-free pressure at my neck.
Light started to fill me, a blissful warmth that overtook my being and consumed my very soul.
“Kara, can you hear me? Can you feel me? Please come back to me. . . . I love you, dearest heart. Follow my voice. I am here with you. You are safe. Come back to me, Kara. Come back to me. . . .”
The thick wall I had been trying so hard to keep up and tear down at the exact same time broke into a million pieces.
I knew I was able to move again.
I could feel the blood coursing through me, hot and alive. My eyes clearly saw the room I was in. I could feel that I was sitting up in bed against a headboard, my body being held by someone gently. The smell of pine needles was overwhelming.
“Gabriel,” I gasped.
The blissful light left my neck.
Gabriel lifted his head, his fangs retracting before I could see them. He licked the evidence away before I could see even a trace of blood.
His gaze froze me. There were so many emotions in his eyes, but the relief I saw was the most prominent.
But the relief quickly turned to fear again. His hand cradled my face. “Are you still with me?” he whispered carefully.
I nodded. “I’m here.”
His head dropped to my uninjured shoulder. His body quivered violently as he held me against him.
“I was beginning to think I had lost you forever. It has been three days since I brought you back from the hospital. Nothing could make you move or speak. I tried everything. I talked to you. I played music for you. I even tried to Control you. I didn’t want to drink your blood without your permission, but I started to panic, and I thought I might be able to reach you that way. . . .”
I ran my fingers through his midnight hair. An IV was taped to my hand, and my eyes followed the tube to the bag of clear liquid hanging beside the bed.
My heart hurt at the thought of Gabriel trying to reach me while I was inside that strange, distorted place where time didn’t exist.
“It’s ok,” I told him honestly. “I’m glad you did what you did. I’m sorry it took so long for me to come back.”
His body stiffened. “Kara,” he said, his voice coarse and filled with agony. “I beg of you, do not apologize to me about any—”
“You’re not going to start that,” I interrupted.
He looked up at me with piercing eyes. I fought against their hypnotic gaze and stood my ground.
“I don’t want to hear about whose fault this is. Your fault, my fault, none of it. Because no matter the argument, you will always make it out to be your fault. And I don’t care anymore if it is, ok? I don’t want you blaming yourself.” I softened my voice. “Haven’t you suffered enough? Gabriel, I know how much you love me. I never would have believed it had the blood connection not existed, but it did exist between us, so I know. I cannot imagine what you have suffered while I was missing. I try to think about our places being reversed, and it hurts so badly that I cannot even comprehend it. So just please, for once in your life, forgive yourself.”
The emeralds darkened. “How can I forgive myself when you have not even forgiven me completely?”
“Who says I haven’t? Being tortured puts certain things into perspective.”
His head tilted to the side, his gaze haunted.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I say stupid things.”
He smiled slightly. “Say all the stupid things you want. At least that means you’re talking again.”
I touched his mouth. “That’s what I want to see. Your smile.”
He shivered at my touch, and his eyes dropped to my lips. I knew he wanted to kiss me as bad as I wanted to kiss him. I also knew we would not be able to stop once we started and that we needed to get all of the questions out of the way.
“Where are we?” I wondered.
His eyes never left my lips. “A safe place no one knows about. My home away from home, I suppose you could call it. This is where I usually came all of the times I was away from Violet Memory’s mansion. We are in Canada.”
“I’ve never been out of the United States before.”
He leaned closer to me. His scent made my heart flutter, and his eyes went to my chest, registering that he had heard. He was dangerously close to my mouth now.
I said the word I didn’t want to say. “Emma?” I questioned quietly.
The mood took on a darker edge. He moved away from me, the malice in his eyes pure poison.
“I killed both her and Felicity.”
I looked down, trying to keep my face blank. A part of me had already known the answer.
Gabriel was a vampire; I could not keep expecting human actions from him. I knew how much of a temper he had. I had felt how much hatred he was capable of. I wasn’t sure what to say, and I wondered if it was wrong of me to be happy that she was gone.
“I don’t know what to say,” I confessed. “I know you and Emma had history. I know you cared about her well-being. I’m—”
“Don’t you apologize,” he nearly hissed. “If I cannot apologize for what is rightfully my fault, then don’t you dare apologize for that woman’s demise. She deserved worse than what she got.”
I nodded, running my fingers along my bandaged shoulder. The pain was mild, and I recognized the familiar warmth of the pain medication inside my body. When I’d had my tonsils taken out as a child, they had prescribed me something that had felt similar to this.
“Are you in pain?” Gabriel asked so gently it was hard to hear him. “I’ve been administering pain medicine to you daily.”
“I’m fine,” I told him. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
His eyes took on that haunted look again. “Can I get you anything? You should probably eat something. I am sorry I didn’t ask sooner. You finally being aware is overwhelming to me, and I am not thinking clearly.”
“I think I can manage to eat something.”
He looked relived. “I’ll let Thomas know.”
“Thomas and Inola are here?” I asked quickly.
“Of course.”
The door on the far side of the room opened. “Yes, we’re here. Sorry for eavesdropping, but we heard Red talking and couldn’t help ourselves,” Thomas said.
I was hardly aware of unhooking myself from the IV and even getting up, but I knew the exact moment Gabriel’s arms slipped away from around me. I ran to Thomas and collided into him.
“Hey, Red. I missed you, too,” Thomas said, his voice serious for once as he patted my back.
I heard a familiar chuckle from behind him, and I reached for Inola’s cold body, grabbing her arm and pulling her to me. I hugged them both as tightly as I could, my shoulder screaming in protest.
“He wouldn’t tell me if you two were alive. I had no way of knowing. . . .” My voice was low and strange, and my eyes were very dry. Since my parents’ death and Gabriel’s appearance in my life, I’d cried a ridiculous amount of times, enough to be embarrassed and maybe even ashamed.
Actually, I felt only halfway here. Not quite numb, but not quite me.
I pulled away from them, but Inola hugged me again. Her scent of damp, soft earth was just as comforting as my mother’s vanilla perfume.
“Kara, I am so happy you are ok. And I’m so sorry Elias did this to you,” she said.
I nodded, looking away from their worried expressions. His name was razors on my skin, and the blackness of that wooden room suddenly loomed before me, and I shivered.
Someone said my name, but the sound was watery and distant. Once again I felt the chains around my wrists and the dryness of my throat and mouth.
The headache, the numbness of my fingers, the knife in my shoulder.
My blood running down the wall.
My hands went to my temples, clenching. I backed away and touched something cold. I screamed bloody murder.
“Kara, it’s ok! It’s me!”
Arms closed around my chest. It made me scream louder.
Elias. Elias was here to kill me. He was here to finish me. I wasn’t safe.
When had I ever been safe?
The arms spun me around and hands gripped both sides of my face.
“It’s Gabriel! Look at me, Kara. Look into my eyes. You are here with me.”
It was hard to focus, but I managed to find myself as I stared into the shimmering emeralds.
“Gabriel?” I whispered, my lips trembling.
“I’m here, heart. I will always be here,” he said as he caressed my face.
I was shaking so hard my teeth were chattering. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Post-traumatic stress disorder,” Thomas said grimly. “Not very surprising, given the circumstances.”
Inola clasped her hands together. “I am so sorry. I should not have mentioned . . . Please forgive me, child.”
“And I am also surprised that Gabriel didn’t contribute to your PTSD. Instead, it seems like he is your painkiller,” Thomas said.
Gabriel’s eyes darkened when he looked at Thomas, but Thomas shrugged.
“Just saying the truth. You lucked out on this one, buddy.”
Forever Stained Red (Violet Memory Book 2) Page 3