Forever Stained Red (Violet Memory Book 2)

by Odette Michael

  “He’s not in there, Red,” Thomas said from beside me.

  Gabriel’s hand tensed against my back. “She has every right to be afraid of going inside his room,” Gabriel said.

  I listened as hard as I could, tuning out the million sounds around me so I could better concentrate on what was inside the room.

  I picked out a slight draft making the edges of the drapes move, the dripping of the bathroom faucet, and a spider crawling over its web underneath the nightstand.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I said, tightening my other hand on the stake I carried. I opened the door, and we went inside.

  Thomas went straight for the desk. “Good thing no one has bothered to clear this place out yet,” he remarked casually.

  Gabriel grabbed Elias’s laptop and turned the power on. “Just do not get your hopes up about finding anything. It is unlikely he was careless enough to leave behind information about her.”

  I tried to move to go help them, but I found myself rooted in place.

  I had almost expected the room to be without personal touches, but that was not the case. Bookshelves covered almost every inch of the walls. There was a typewriter on the table. Notebooks and leather-bound journals were scattered across the bed. There were ink stains and wadded balls of paper on the floor.

  “He’s a writer,” I said, surprise in my voice.

  In the murkiest parts of my memory, I remembered the desperate flashes of Elias’s humanity in the wooden room. I once again felt the fragile hope he had extended to me; a part of him had truly wanted more than anything to be free of pain and hatred.

  It was difficult to picture Elias as anything but a monster, but I had felt otherwise, and his room was even more proof that shreds of humanity remained buried in darkness within him.

  But Elias was dangerous and unstable, and he deserved to die. He had killed my dogs, and my heart was still broken because of it. Even Gabriel’s strength could not hold back the tears that would randomly form and fall from my eyes.

  And Gabriel and I would never know peace as long as Elias was still alive.

  Gabriel looked up at me, his face taking on a strange tint because of the light of the laptop. “Yes, he is a writer. A very successful one, actually. He’s had various pen names over the years, but his most popular works were under the name Lias Lucy,” Gabriel said.

  “Lias Lucy? He’s like the king of the horror genre,” I said.

  Thomas shuffled through some papers on the desk. “I thought you hated to read,” he said.

  “I do, but I had to read one of his books my sophomore year in literature class when we were covering the horror classics. I specifically remember reading In Blood And Wings because the book was long and . . . disturbing. It was about vampires.”

  “Imagine that,” Thomas said, grinning.

  I finally could move my limbs. I went to the desk to help Thomas look.

  “A book about vampires that was written by a vampire,” I said. “What a liar he is. We can’t turn into bats, and you made garlic bread yesterday.”

  “Elias likes bats,” Thomas said. “He used to leave fruit out for them near the greenhouse. And you could tell that writing was a form of therapy for him; it was why his works were so dark and groundbreaking. The guy is messed up for sure, but he can write well.”

  I stared at Thomas. “You like his books?”

  “Hey, I can’t stand the guy. If I could get my hands on him, I’d happily set him on fire for what he did to you, Red. But that does not mean I can’t appreciate his work.”

  Gabriel’s frustration leaked into me, making me turn toward him. I could feel his fingertips pressing the keyboard as if I were the one doing it.

  Gabriel indicated the laptop. “It is password protected. I doubt there is anything on here, but it could take me weeks to figure it out,” he said.

  I held my hands out. “It’ll probably take weeks just to go through all this stuff anyway.”

  “Most of it is probably useless, or he wouldn’t have bothered leaving it behind,” Thomas said, feeling underneath the desk. “Drafts and notes for his books. Stuff like that.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Feeling for this.” Thomas grabbed my hand and held it to a button. “Press it,” he commanded.

  “Is it going to shock me or something?”

  “Always so paranoid. Is that because you were kidnapped and followed by vampires, or have you always been this way?” Thomas teased, applying just enough pressure to make me press the button.

  A click resounded throughout the room, making all three pairs of our eyes go to the middle left drawer.

  Gabriel rushed to my side and opened the drawer.

  “I don’t see . . . ,” I began, but then I saw what he saw. The false bottom was now accessible. The smallest crack was visible at the edges.

  Gabriel removed the wood.

  A crinkled picture stared up at us. It was of the girl I had seen in the dream, only she was much older in the picture.

  Olivia. Her resemblance to Gabriel and Lucy was eerie.

  Pain cracked through Gabriel like a whip, and he took a shuddering breath. I rubbed his arm, trying to comfort him as his agony shredded my heart.

  “I do not want to involve her. I do not want you in danger,” Gabriel said, the pain making his thoughts cloudy.

  I picked up the picture. “I will not live out my life afraid of him any longer. I will end what he started. With your strength, Gabriel, I can do this.”

  “Even if it means she dies in the process?” Thomas asked gently.

  I clutched the photograph harder.

  “Kara?” Thomas pressed.

  “Why hasn’t he changed her into a vampire?” I asked, ignoring Thomas.

  Gabriel took the picture from me. His eyes froze as he stared at the photograph.

  “He doesn’t want the bloody fate he forced on Lucy to be her burden. He wants her to have a normal life. . . . He wants her to have a life as a human,” Gabriel said quietly.

  “She is not Lucy,” I told Gabriel inside my head before turning to Thomas. “Gabriel is right. Elias would have changed her had he wanted to be with her. He made it clear that she was to stay out of his life. Instead, he keeps his distance and watches her from afar. So that means yes, Thomas. She is going to die.”

  Both of them looked at me hesitantly, but Gabriel’s uncertainty was washed away by my determination.

  “She is going to die because I’m going to turn her into a vampire,” I said.

  Chapter 13 Irony

  The world we lived in was truly a frightening place. Everyone’s information was for the taking. Names, addresses, occupations . . . You could find anyone just by using a computer, and when you did find out where someone lived, who was to stop you from going to them and doing whatever you wanted? Their fate was in your hands.

  It had only taken thirty minutes. Snooping through Elias’s room probably had not even been necessary, but at least we knew exactly what she looked like because of the photograph.

  Her name was Olivia Bishop. She was twenty-seven years old, and she lived near the coast in North Carolina. She was a registered nurse, and she was engaged to a phlebotomist named Harry Neal.

  Her life was about to be completely changed, and it was going to be because of me.

  Later, Gabriel and I lounged under the stars. The dew seeped through our clothes, and the sounds of crickets and owls echoed around us. The stars twinkled overhead, innumerable and mesmerizing, the immortal friends who watched vampires live out their endless lives.

  “Such beauty I missed because I was scared of the night,” I whispered.

  Gabriel squeezed my hand. “Their beauty pales in comparison to the light of your eyes.”

  I smiled. “Charmer. You should write poetry.”

  “You would laugh at anything I wrote.”

  “Probably,” I agreed.

  It was nearly impossible to differentiate his breathing from my o
wn.

  “You don’t want to do this,” I said after a few minutes of silence.

  “It is not that I don’t want Elias dead. I do, more than anything. But . . . I do not want you to do this because I do not want you in danger.”

  “I’m much stronger now. And calmer, thanks to being connected to you.”

  “None of that will be enough,” he said. “If Elias finds us near Olivia, you will be his target. Even if we have others with us, it will not guarantee your safety. He is stronger and faster than you. All it would take is for you to move the wrong way by an inch, and your heart would be vulnerable.”

  I sighed. Images of Lucy and Olivia flitted across our minds.

  “If I go through with this and hurt him this way, does that make me . . . evil?” I asked hesitantly.

  Gabriel traced my wrist where my fang scars used to be. “I could never think that you are evil, Kara. You are, without a doubt, the most compassionate person to ever walk this planet. But you are impulsive, and you often lack common sense. You have a temper, and you are horrendously impatient—”

  “I wanted assurance I wasn’t evil, not an exhaustive list of my flaws!”

  He grinned. “You are many things, dearest heart. But you are not evil. I know my view of you is just a little biased, but I do find it strange you would involve an innocent person. Your choice was taken from you by me. Are you willing to take that same choice from someone else the way it was stolen from you?”

  I cracked my knuckles. “We have no idea where Elias is. But if we take Olivia and bring her here, he will eventually notice. He will come to us. We have the coven. They will kill him on sight.”

  “So why change her into a vampire?” Gabriel asked.

  I drummed my fingers against his chest. “Because it will hurt him to see her that way,” I said honestly.

  Gabriel said nothing, allowing me to process the words I had just spoken.

  I sighed. “What have I become? How could I even think to . . . Ok, I’ll only change her if he doesn’t care enough to come and get her. After she is changed, I’ll let her go. He will see her eventually, and that anger will make him seek us out. Either way, he will come to us and die.”

  Gabriel kissed my temple. “She will be scared, heart. Scared the way you were scared.”

  “No, she won’t. I will Control her to not feel fear during this. I know you hate Control, but I won’t have her sick with fear the way I was. I don’t want to do this, Gabriel. I don’t want to involve her, but Elias has to die. You know he does.”

  He brushed his lips against mine. “Your guilt over this will never go away. You know that, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “I have accepted that. I guess I really am different now because I feel almost no hesitation about doing this.”

  “You are in predator mode right now,” Gabriel said. “I don’t have to tell you that things can change once the hunting haze fades. You know from experience.”

  I put my head against his heart. My heart.

  He knew what I was going to ask, but he also knew I needed the answer. I knew his answer, but I wanted to hear it.

  “Will you love me no matter what I do? Will you love me no matter how I handle this?”

  He moved quickly. He got on top of me, pressing my body against the wet, cool earth. His fingers interlocked with mine.

  “I will love you no matter what. Forever, Kara. There is nothing you could do that would change that. There is no part of you I do not love.”

  Gabriel kissed me, sealing his oath with fierce gentleness.

  ***

  Gabriel, Inola, Thomas, and I all piled into Inola’s car and headed to North Carolina.

  Inola was not happy about involving Olivia because she knew Olivia’s resemblance to Lucy would cause Gabriel pain, but she wanted Elias dead as much as everyone else, so she didn’t protest.

  Thomas didn’t care one way or another, or at least, that was what he’d said. You could never really tell with Thomas—only Inola knew what he truly thought about the situation.

  Gabriel, of course, was going along with whatever I wanted.

  It made me equally uneasy and euphoric to know I could choose to paint the countryside in blood, and he would stand by me no matter my reasons. His loyalty ran deeper than words could express. He had stopped me from feeding on Jeffery because he’d known it hadn’t been something I’d truly wanted. It had been the blood frenzy.

  Had I truly desired to kill Jeffery, Gabriel would have let me.

  Gabriel squeezed my hand, confirming my thoughts. He wanted to give me whatever I wanted, as long as I was safe. And what we were doing was the safest method possible when it came to ending Elias’s life; even Elias couldn’t stand up against the entire coven and live.

  The trip was long, but it was not boring. There was plenty of adrenaline, chatter, and anticipation.

  But sitting so close to Gabriel was hard. I wanted to drink his blood even though I was not thirsty, and I longed to kiss him endlessly.

  His half-smile drove me mad. He loved that I wanted him. He had always been able to tell, even when I’d been human.

  He made it difficult to keep a civil conversation going with Inola and Thomas. He purposely kept thinking about our intimate moments.

  I gritted my teeth and clutched the seat hard enough to leave fingernail imprints. Gabriel merely winked at me. He was thinking about biting my inner thighs and drinking from me until I screamed from the incredible sensation. . . .

  “Are we there yet?” I asked, my voice strained.

  Gabriel grinned at my distress. His arms crossed over his chest as he relaxed into the seat.

  “Ants in your pants?” Thomas asked nonchalantly.

  “More like in my head,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Ah, the honeymoon stage. Don’t look so surprised, Red. It is all over your face that you’re trying not to rip into Gabriel’s neck. Remember those days, Inola?”

  I saw Inola roll her eyes in the rearview mirror. “I wasn’t aware we had left those days behind yet.”

  Thomas gave her a wicked smile. “Indeed we have not.”

  Inola looked at me in the mirror. I could tell she was ecstatic that Gabriel and I weren’t fighting anymore.

  “You learn to block out the images somewhat, at least enough to concentrate,” she said.

  Gabriel switched tactics and used words instead of pictures.

  I swallowed hard. “Somehow I doubt that.”

  I knew Gabriel was trying to keep my mind off of what was about to happen, but it really wasn’t necessary. My determination far outweighed any doubts.

  A few hours later, Inola parked the car on a dirt road a few miles away from Olivia’s house. According to the information we’d procured about her, she shared the place with her roommate from college.

  “We have an hour of night left, people. Let’s not waste it,” Thomas said, handing me a pair of sunglasses.

  I slipped the sunglasses on. Gabriel put his on as well, and he nodded at me.

  Thomas kissed Inola on the cheek. “Want me to stay with the getaway car instead?” Thomas teased.

  “I am fine where I am, thank you,” Inola said out loud for our benefit. Then she and Thomas stared at one another, and I knew words were being passed between them inside their minds. Thomas kissed her again and got out of the car. Gabriel and I followed.

  We ran through the woods like wraiths, coming out of the trees and into the backyard of Olivia’s property.

  Thomas ran ahead of us and disappeared. He emerged silently on top of the roof and took in the surroundings. After a minute, he signaled that no one was lurking around.

  Gabriel and I went to the one of the windows. He pried it open easily, but noisily. I cringed at the grating sounds echoing throughout the air.

  “I am sorry. I did it as quietly as possible,” he said.

  We listened for noise coming from the house. There were two things breathing inside, one too small to be human. The h
uman stirred, shifting in bed, possibly waking.

  “It’s now or never. Get in there and get out,” Thomas commanded quietly from the rooftop.

  I slipped inside the house, Gabriel right behind me.

  “Let’s hope she’s not on the night shift. There was only one car in the driveway,” I said inside our minds as I looked around.

  I was wary of the animal being a dog, but instead, gleaming cat eyes stared at us from on top of a coffee table. It hissed. I hissed back, baring my fangs. It ran behind the couch, its hair standing on end.

  Gabriel peered through a cracked door leading to one of the bedrooms. Through his eyes, I saw that no one was in there. I went to the room next to it and tried the doorknob. It was locked.

  “It will wake her, so you’ll have to be quick,” Gabriel said. “Do you want me to do it?”

  He already knew my answer. I took off my sunglasses and handed them to him before I kicked the door open.

  The woman sat up in the bed and opened her mouth to scream, but barely a sound came out as I ran to her and covered her mouth with my hand. Everything had happened so fast, but my perfect senses didn’t lie. It was Olivia in the bed, not the roommate.

  “Be quiet,” I Controlled. “Do not speak, and follow me.”

  I took my hand away from her mouth. Hesitation washed through me as I watched her eyes glaze over, completely compliant.

  “If you have changed your mind, heart, you’ll need to decide now,” Gabriel said.

  Olivia got off the bed and stood before me. For a brief moment, I saw myself in her place. Gabriel swallowed hard, and I felt the sensation in my own throat as he recalled me waking up in his room that first time, all the fear in the world inside my eyes.

  His guilt and shame encased my heart, and in return, my forgiveness flowed into him, warm and comforting.

  Although Olivia appeared calm, it was a lie from my Control. Her heart pounded quickly, and her fingers twitched; she was desperately trying to fight back against the Control, but she was helpless against it.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I shouldn’t involve you, but I have no choice. There is someone who needs to die so I can protect the people I love, and so I can protect myself. You are the key to his destruction.”