“I heard something outside,” he said as he unzipped the bag.
All of his movements were a blur. A stake gun was strapped onto my wrist before I could count to two. He closed my fingers around a stake.
I stared at the sharp piece of wood. “Maybe you heard an animal?” I was trying to stay calm.
He grabbed his cell phone off the coffee table and pressed a button. “Animals don’t laugh, Kara.”
Ice froze my veins. Without thinking, I brought my free hand to my neck where Gabriel had bitten me. I raised it in front of my face. Red stained my palm, giving me tunnel vision.
Gabriel spoke quickly into the phone. “Inola, I need both of you to get here now. He found us, and I have no idea how.” He looked at me desperately before turning away, his voice small and half-crazed as he spoke into the phone. “Mom, I shouldn’t have asked you to leave. I cannot kill him. I cannot protect her. I thought we were safe. I wanted to give Kara . . .”
He nodded at whatever she said and hung up the phone. He grabbed me, running me into his bedroom so fast bile rose in my throat. He shoved me into the walk-in closet and closed the door.
“Gabriel?” I managed to say.
Something thumped against the door, making me scream. Darkness swallowed the light at the edges of the door, and I realized the thump had come from Gabriel moving furniture in front of it.
“I can’t risk taking you to the car. I do not know if he’s alone.” Another thump vibrated the wood. “Kara, I’m sorry. I’m such an idiot. Thomas and Inola never should have left.”
“I don’t blame you for anything. I understand what you were trying to do for me.”
Another thump. The sound went into my bones, and a deep calm filled me.
Something was different this time. A gut feeling inside of me, something telling me that this was finally it—the last moments of my life were here.
And Gabriel was with me this time. Gabriel was with me. . . .
The calm shattered. Elias would kill him to get to me.
I tried to open the door, but it felt like it was cemented shut.
“Gabriel!” I pounded the wood.
Another thump went against the door. “If I can hold him off for twenty minutes, Inola and Thomas will be here.”
Every breath was metal shards to my lungs. “He’ll kill you before then!”
Gabriel’s silence was enough of an answer. We had lost, and he knew it.
“Don’t you dare die for me! Get out of here!” I screamed.
He didn’t answer me. The silence fueled my panic.
“There’s no reason for both of us to die! Gabriel, if you love me, you’ll live for me. Please . . .” My head dropped against the cold door. “Please live for me.”
I heard the faintest sound of him taking a ragged breath. “There is nothing without you, Kara. I will never leave you.”
I threw myself against the door, pain lancing its way through my injured shoulder. My stiches ripped. Warm blood dripped down my arm and chest.
My dogs growled and barked angrily, and I thought I heard voices, but there was no way to tell with my dogs.
I pressed my ear to the wood as hard as I could. The barks and growls were cut off abruptly. My stomach lurched, and a flash of Gabriel’s anger and sadness cut into me.
Before I could analyze his feelings, I heard the one I feared more than anything speak.
“That’s better. Always hated dogs.”
The implication of his words made my knees quiver. Slowly, I found myself on the ground.
“Elias, you have done enough to her. You have hurt her, both physically and emotionally, more than you know. She will know a lifetime of pain and fear because of you. Let that be enough. Kill me, and spare her, and your revenge will be fulfilled.”
“My revenge should have already been fulfilled,” Elias hissed. “In all honesty, I can see now why you care for her so. She has a talent for snaking her way into your mind, of making you think there is something inside of you that was never even there.”
“Yes, she can see the light inside of others. One would think you would be grateful she showed you not all was lost. Take her gift, and go start over.”
“It was lies,” Elias snapped. “You honestly think there’s more to you than a predator that enjoys taking the lives of others? You seriously believe you are not just a weak boy? Because of your weakness, you allowed your sister to burn alive! Your sister—the only family who ever loved you! You no longer think Lucy’s blood is on your hands? Kara has you cocooned in a web of illusion. I lost my purpose because of her silver tongue, but now I’m glad my offer of peace was refused. The opportunity for a sweeter revenge is here!”
My heart hurt. My head hurt. My shoulder hurt.
Blackness, blood, pain.
“How did you find us?” Gabriel asked coldly.
“You can thank your beautiful lover. She revealed the location.”
“Emma is dead; I killed her myself. I never brought her here. Not even Thomas or Inola knew of this place.”
Elias laughed. “Hear that, Kara? I’m doing you a favor. Gabriel might just snap your neck the next time you two have a fight.”
I shook at the mental picture of his lie, nearly vomited from hearing him say my name.
Blackness, blood, pain.
“I would never—”
“Don’t worry about it, Gabriel. Kara and I already had a talk about that. Did you know that despite her so-called compassionate character, despite that she’s convinced you to defy your instincts, she actually gets off on your murderous nature? But of course, you probably already knew that, what with blood sharing and all.”
Blackness, blood, pain.
“But back to your original question—Emma’s obsession with you has proven to be more than useful, even beyond her grave of ashes. You may not have brought her here, but do you honestly think she never followed you? Oh, don’t look so surprised, Gabriel. Emma was pathetic when it came to you, and her jealousy and hatred for Kara made her believe everything I said. So when she told me this place was a potential haven for you, I told her to hide cameras. She did. I have seen everything. Timing was essential, and with modern technology, it really made it all too easy.
“I’ve been near the house since Inola and Thomas left. I could see what was happening. As I said, modern technology is amazing. And I saw you, Gabriel. I saw you drink her blood. But she didn’t drink yours; I didn’t give her the chance. I know you drank a little of her blood to wake her, but I needed to be sure there was enough in your system. So I waited for you to drink her blood again. Have you followed along so far, or do I need to spell the last part out for you?”
There was a rush inside my head, and a sound I couldn’t place. Then I realized it was my breathing. I was hyperventilating.
“She will hate you forever, you know. All three of us know what you will choose. So live with her hatred, Gabriel. Force her to live in darkness. For all of eternity, the one you love the most will loathe the very idea of you. That’s better than a revenge of ending her life permanently; you wouldn’t have the balls to stay alive if she was dead. You would have changed her eventually on your own—she even admitted that to me. But it’s so much better that you will turn her because of me.”
The noises that followed were the most terrifying of my life because I could not see what was happening.
It sounded like they were tearing the house apart. I could hear Elias’s grunts of pain, but I had no idea how badly he was wounding Gabriel because Gabriel never allowed himself to make a sound when he was harmed. I knew by the vibrations against the door that Elias was making his way toward me.
The darkness at the edges of the door blazed with light. I jumped up and opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
The doorknob twisted. The door opened. The monster loomed above me.
There was not a part of him that wasn’t covered in blood. His silver eyes were crazed, his fangs bared. Holes were in his clothes,
and his wounds were healing miraculously before my eyes.
I shot the stake gun. In my fear, I missed my target. Instead of his heart, the stakes embedded themselves into his left shoulder.
He tore them out of his shoulder and grabbed my raised arm, squeezing hard enough that the bone snapped. The stake Gabriel had given me dropped from my hand.
Now I screamed.
Elias gripped me against him, forcing me out of the closet and making me see the damage he had done.
The room was unrecognizable. Everything was broken and covered in blood.
Gabriel was against the far wall, a bedpost stabbed into his stomach, pinning him there. There were also five stakes in his chest; they were dangerously close to his heart. He was covered in blood, and there were holes in his clothes. Cuts and oozing wounds healed before my eyes.
My dogs were dead. Each one had small stakes jammed into their necks.
I screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
Elias seemed calm as I vented my pain, and only the agony on Gabriel’s face made me stop. Gabriel had gotten the stakes near his heart out, and he was trying to pull the bedpost out of his stomach.
“Let her go,” Gabriel managed to say.
I threw up.
When I finished, Elias pulled me tighter against his stomach, and then cold metal was at my throat.
“Recognize it from my memories, Gabriel? Its edge has already wounded your beloved once.”
Gabriel finally managed to tear the bedpost out, and he dropped to the ground onto his hands and knees. Bright vampire blood pulsed in torrents from his stomach.
“The silver knife that killed Lucy. . . . I kept it with me all these years to remind myself just how deep your failure went,” Elias said.
A red haze swept over me. “It wasn’t his failure, it was yours!” I bit out. “You know the fault lies with you, but you can’t handle the truth, so you use Gabriel as an outlet. You’re the one who went back to her. None of your enemies would have ever found Lucy had you left her alone, and you’re the one who turned her against her will!”
The knife kissed my throat, and liquid warmth dripped from my skin.
Finally, Gabriel made a sound, like a caged, starving animal.
I could see it in Gabriel’s eyes, but I didn’t want to believe it. It reminded me of how he had looked at me the first time I’d woken up inside his room, but even that had been nothing compared to the dark gaze holding me now. The hunger in his eyes was not one of love, passion, or the longing to be one with me.
Gabriel was looking at me with the eyes of a vampire who only knew that I was bleeding, and he was thirsty.
Elias chuckled. “Well, well . . . Looks like someone has lost too much blood. I actually didn’t anticipate this. It will be much better this way, even if you do kill yourself when you come to your senses. Go ahead, Gabriel. Give in to the blood frenzy. Drain your beloved dry.”
In a single fluid motion, Elias sliced me deeply across the stomach.
White-hot pain, worse than anything I’d ever felt, flew into every speck of my being.
I fell to the floor, my weight pinning my broken arm beneath me.
Through a haze of pain, I saw Elias’s body blur. He stopped at the doorway, smiled at me, and then he was gone.
Gabriel walked to me, his eyes glowing black, the irises swallowed entirely by his pupils. His fangs snapped from his gums.
“Gabriel,” I choked out in disbelief. “Don’t . . .”
He bent down, took me into his arms, and sank his fangs into my neck.
The worst part of it was that it felt good. The light, the bliss.
Gabriel loved me, but he wasn’t Gabriel right now. I could feel that it wasn’t him. In this moment, he was an animal driven by his most basic instincts. There was no willpower. There was no logical thinking. There was scarcely even an acknowledgement of who I was.
My Gabriel was gone, and in his place was the vampire I had always feared.
The light he was giving me was stronger than any pain-relieving drug, and my death ceased to matter anymore. I closed my eyes and allowed him to drink the life from me, neither one of us able to care what was happening.
“It doesn’t matter if Gabriel loves me. It doesn’t matter that we are Eternals. I know now that whenever a human crosses paths with a vampire, it ends in blood.”
I winced as I recalled the words I wasn’t even sure I had said, as they sounded so distorted.
Had I truly believed it, even in our first moments? Had I always truly known Gabriel would kill me, or had I always, even the first time I’d seen him, thought desperately that he wouldn’t?
With calm clarity, the buried truth resonated within me, pouring into him as well.
I had always known, and yet still I loved him.
Chapter 7 Kiss Of Blood
Kara’s revelation tore through Gabriel. Her fading thoughts, combined with enough blood to sate him, ceased the monster inside.
He blinked his eyes, felt the sweetness of her life inside his mouth and veins.
Cold awareness shook him as he lifted his head away from the puncture wounds.
“No,” Gabriel whispered.
What he saw in front of him was not real. It could not be real.
Kara was deathly still, her eyes closed. Her face was the color of bone. Black blood ran from the gaping cut in her abdomen.
Gabriel reached blindly behind him and grabbed a torn sheet, pressing the cloth as hard as he could against her wound.
Silver knife. Elias had cut her with a silver knife. The memory of it clashed inside his mind.
And the power of the blood frenzy he had been unable to fight . . . He saw himself standing over her. He had ignored her plea for him to stop. Instead of helping her, he had drained her life even more.
She was hardly breathing, and the nearest hospital was an hour away. An ambulance would never make it. He wouldn’t be able to drive or run her there fast enough before she bled to death.
“No . . . No . . . No. No. NO!”
He pressed harder against the cut. The sheet was nearly soaked through.
“Kara, please,” he begged uselessly.
Because he knew what he had to do. There were only two options.
Vampire blood could not heal the wound, and in this situation, could not replenish her blood loss in time. It was too late, and Gabriel knew it; she had lost too much blood. He could give her his blood, and she would die, but she would wake up as a vampire.
Kara’s blood already coursed through his veins. All she needed was his. She would hate him forever, but she would be alive.
Or Gabriel could not give her his blood, and her death would be permanent.
There really was only one choice, and he knew it.
He would betray her one last time. He would take away the choice that had been stolen from so many vampires, including himself.
He loved her too much to let her go.
Gabriel brought his wrist to his mouth and tore it open with his fangs, taking as much of his blood as he could into his mouth. He cradled Kara in his arms, allowing her head to fall back. He brought his mouth to her lips, parting them and forcing the blood from his mouth into hers in a kiss, rubbing her throat to help the blood go down.
When he broke the bloody kiss, Kara inhaled shallowly.
He waited for the next breath, but there wasn’t one. Her heart thumped once, twice. Three times.
Kara died in his arms. He felt her die.
A force welled up inside of Gabriel, something beyond pain. It sliced through him until nothing remained, until he was consumed with an agony that had no name. A raw scream poured from deep within him, and eternities passed as he held his heart in his arms.
He didn’t even hear them come into the house.
Thomas and Inola stood inside the doorway, stakes dropping from their hands. They looked around in horror, their gazes finding Kara’s lifeless body.
“No,” Thomas whispered. His steps faltere
d, and he fell back against the wall and slid to the ground.
Tears poured from Inola’s eyes. She came to Gabriel, staring at the scene in disbelief. As if she needed to reassure her perfect hearing, she lightly placed two fingers on Kara’s cut neck, searching for the pulse that was not there.
Gabriel tried to speak. He tried to tell them she would wake up.
It was ok. Everything was going to be ok. She was ok. . . .
“Dearest little girl,” Inola sobbed as she moved Kara’s curls away from her face. “I’m so sorry. . . . I should have taken you from Gabriel long ago. I should have concealed you from the world. I should have been here. . . .”
Thomas did not move. His eyes were fixed to the ceiling, tears wetting his cheeks.
“Ok,” Gabriel muttered, his voice cracking. “Ok.”
Inola looked at him worriedly, and Thomas’s eyes snapped to him. “In what part of your twisted world is this ok, Gabriel?” Thomas hissed.
Gabriel tried again. “She’s ok.” A ragged breath shook him, and he clutched her closer. “She’s ok.”
Inola touched his shoulder lightly. “Sweet boy, she’s gone. I am so, so sorry.”
Gabriel shook his head. “No. No, she’s not. She has my blood. I have hers in me. I gave her my blood.”
Inola smiled in relief, tears falling freely as she stroked Kara’s hair. Thomas looked torn, half-relief, half-anger.
“She won’t want this,” Thomas said.
Gabriel’s eyes flew to Thomas’s. “I know.”
“This is the same exact thing that happened to your sister.”
Hot anger bled into Gabriel. “Is there anything else obvious about this that you want to point out?”
“How could you do this to her?” Thomas asked.
The rage seared, encasing his mind. If Gabriel had not been holding Kara, he would have killed Thomas for saying that.
“She was dying. I could feel her dying. I cannot live without her. I won’t live without her.” He turned away from Thomas and gazed into Kara’s beautiful face. Even in death, she was perfect. “She is stronger than Lucy. She will be all right.”
“She’s not stable. She was already very emotional as a human. She also has PTSD. All of that will be amplified,” Thomas argued.
Forever Stained Red (Violet Memory Book 2) Page 8