God, even the rumors would do exactly what Mack warned. Attract, not detract. Put even more people in danger.
How the world was changing.
It used to be so much easier to hide or distort the truth. It wasn’t that non-supernaturals were naïve, weak-minded, or blindly ignorant. But the human mind thrived on proof.
“Yay… even more things to worry about,” mumbled Michael, exhausted sarcasm rattling his tone. He’d come back, leaning against the doorframe, close to quick escape in case it was needed again. “The modern age catching up on The Demon Isle.” He frowned at Courtney. “You are responsible for some of that. Possibly set off a chain reaction we can’t stop now.”
“Sorry?” she responded uncertainly.
“Hell, it was bound to happen,” argued Charlie. “We’ll add it to our never ending list of things to deal with. Modern tech and how to keep people from getting proof…”
In the past, they’d often relied on William’s assistance in this matter. He could use his persuasion to make sure the memories were changed. Or evidence, destroyed. Now they were possibly looking to rid the proof it was William on a murderous rampage. There was no using William against himself.
Mack went to leave, her decision made for the moment. “Keep her locked up,” she aimed a nod at Courtney. “If there’s another attack…” Then we will know it’s William… her sentence finished in painful silence.
“And then what?” whispered Melinda. “Arrest him? Kill him?”
Mack grunted, her jaw grinding together. “You know I don’t want that. Any more than any of you. But I… God damn it.” She left in a flurry of vexation, a slew of obscenities spewing out of her mouth.
Charlie sighed, face stoic. He pulled a chair over in front of Courtney and took a seat to explain that the vampire she’d sought out for help was the one who had taken her life. He took a minute to gather his thoughts, rubbing his hands together hesitantly. To her credit, she didn’t push, although obviously confused as hell.
“Um. The um…” Charlie took an even breath. He sat up a little, catching Courtney’s puzzled profile. He had to get through this before he could figure out what to do about it. “The woman you were trying to save, her name is… her name was, Eva Jordan. And the vampire was trying to kill her because she needed to die. Because we asked him to kill her. Eva murdered our friend’s father, kidnaped my sister,” and killed Nina, he kept to himself. He looked straight into the reporter’s focused gaze. “And Eva tortured our vampire. Viciously. William, the one you came seeking out for help… he is the one who…”
“Oh…” Courtney’s eyes popped wide, the truth an unexpected bombshell. “Oh. Wow. I um. He looked nothing like… oh…” She swallowed hard. Wondering if she hadn’t just thrown herself in the lion’s den. She had threatened to kill the vampire who turned her. Their vampire…
Charlie had an urge to explain further. To make Courtney understand what exactly had happened. Why her life had ended. To show her that William wasn’t really a monster.
“William is a good person. A good friend. More than a friend. He’s protected and guided our family for many generations. Like your coven, he’s family to some of us, and,” he glanced at Melinda, unable to reach her eyes, and decided not to finish. “This Eva Jordan, and the Feyk, Stricker, tortured William in a way I can’t even describe with any justice, and they tied my sister to a stake in front of him. They threatened to burn her alive if he asked for death… he did not. To keep her alive.” Charlie’s voice was giving out. “What happened to him doesn’t make up for… you fought to save a life for a woman who didn’t deserve…” there were no more words. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say right now.” He got up and left.
This couldn’t be happening. Not after everything they’d already gone through. What William had gone through; the hell he’d let himself go through to save Melinda. He was crazed out of sheer need to live, so he could end Eva Jordan. For them…
Melinda gave a start, a delicate touch on her arm. She looked up to see Lizzy. They needed to leave the room. It took every bit of strength she had to get to her feet and stay on her feet. The room swayed but she batted away Lizzy’s attempt to help her and fled out of the room.
Lizzy stayed behind for a minute.
“They love him very much. This is difficult to accept and I think they’re all in shock. We all are,” she clamored.
Even with her new vampire brain working full speed, this was a lot for Courtney to take in. She was a mix of denial and acceptance, loathing and sympathy, but most of all, self-perseverance.
“I was only half-serious when I claimed I would kill the one who turned me.”
“No. You meant it,” Lizzy stated, though not unkindly. “It’s understandable. I can sympathize with a life suddenly stripped away from you.” She did not expand on the subject. She pointed with her head to another door in the far corner of the room. “There’s a shower so you can get cleaned up. I’ll make sure you get some clean clothes. And more blood.”
“Thank you,” Courtney replied, voice reserved.
Lizzy made to leave but stopped. “The Howard’s are good people. They always do what’s right, even if it’s the hard thing.”
Courtney nodded, gloomily. “I know they do. I’ve heard the stories. I really made a mess coming here. This whole thing could have been avoided if I’d just…”
Lizzy stopped her.
“It’s too late for what’s if’s. What’s done is done. There is only moving forward.” She left and locked the cell. Courtney’s vampire heart cringed at that sound. Uncertain whether this was her salvation or her doom.
She’d come seeking help.
Instead, she’d unknowingly revealed that their lifelong friend had killed her and turned her into a vampire. And was potentially on some bloodlust rampage killing innocent people.
“Smart move, Jackass.” She crossed her arms and sighed. She’d been stupid to think she could track and take out Stricker on her own. Her one-track revenge kick had gotten in the way of her common sense. She reached up to her eyes expecting wet tears. But laughed darkly, having forgot. “I can’t even cry anymore.” Vampires couldn’t make tears. Her body could still act out the motions of crying. But it felt empty and wrong minus the tears.
Her coven was gone.
Her powers were gone. She was no longer a witch.
She was a vampire.
Currently imprisoned, by her own design in seeking out help, in the cell of the vampire who killed her.
And Stricker was still alive.
The bastard seriously needed to get dead.
CHAPTER 12
Lizzy made her way up from the basement, each step harder to climb, her limbs lumbering like weights had been tied around her ankles. She found Charlie leaning against the hallway wall, staring at a closed door.
“I’ve been trying to open this door and go inside for days.”
Lizzy recalled it was the Howard’s parent’s bedroom. “I’m thinking tonight is not the right time.”
She was right.
Her fingers found his jaw and turned his head so they were face to face. A storm raged in his eyes, the bright blue darkened. Saddened. Angry.
“I can’t do it. I can’t kill William. I don’t care what he’s done. It’s asking too much.”
“We don’t have definitive proof it’s him killing yet.”
“Even if it is, doesn’t he deserve another chance? After so many years… this is how it ends for him?”
Lizzy had no response. She wanted to say yes. Desperately. Yes, give William another chance. But Courtney didn’t deserve what happened to her. And those tourists that had been killed… they were walking a dangerous precipice of right and wrong. Fair and unfair. Carving out a canyon of no return.
Charlie shifted, facing the bedroom door again.
“I was standing here, wishing I could knock and my dad would answer and tell me what to do.”
“If he did, what would he tell
you?”
“To do the right thing. Even if it killed me to do it.” He stormed into William’s study.
Lizzy made it only a few feet into the room when there was a growl that lit into an enraged wail, followed by a thunderous crash. She gasped, wood and oak splintering across the other side of the study, thrown by a mass of furiously wild and beastlike muscle in the form of Charlie Howard.
He’d hurled William’s sturdy oak desk across the backside of the study as if the thing was weightless. It smashed against a wall of books, breaking apart. The aftermath, a tangle of paper and wood. The wolf had a pent up temper he kept buried too deep. He should have gotten angry a lot sooner. Instead, it was coming out in one violent burst.
A thought which should have frightened Lizzy as he was clearly capable of breaking her in two when the wolf surfaced. However, rather than fear, the act struck at her heart like a thousand needles piercing her all at once.
Charlie was drowning in a level of pain no lifejacket could save him from.
No words could mend it. No actions could take it away.
A rush of footsteps pounded down the stairs and around the corner to the hallway leading into the study. It was Michael. Lizzy motioned to him that it was okay, and just let it go. He nodded weakly and returned to Emily.
“It can’t be like this all the time,” Charlie rambled, the edge of his rage dulled. “What is the point? Protecting a power source I know nothing about and yet I’m supposed to protect with my life. Losing friends. And family. So much sacrifice, and for what?” He was sounding more like Michael. Ready to leave the Isle. Let it be someone else’s problem.
Lizzy approached him cautiously.
“Do you remember what your father told you?” she asked him, continuing without waiting for him to answer. “Things will catch you off guard. The key is how you react and handle these unpleasant surprises.”
“Our entire lives are one big surprise after another. I think he meant special circumstances. Rare times. It’s not supposed to be like this every single day. I can’t constantly be reacting. And handling. I need to… I need to…” he threw his hands up in the air.
“There will be a calm again, Charlie. You’re in a time of upheaval. They happen. But it doesn’t mean your father’s words mean any less. If anything, they’re exactly what you need to hear right now.”
Jack Howard had said those words to him after they’d watched Eva’s sadistic video of William and Melinda, and he’d flown off the handle and threatened to rush in and kill them all right that minute.
Lizzy’s words drew a soothing tranquility over him. Leveled him. The reminder of that moment making the ache of what he might have to do, reduce to a manageable thought. He was so bottled up, from trying to keep everything together. Keep his family from falling to pieces. Keep the island safe. So quickly, and easily, becoming far too reliant on the strong-willed woman standing in front of him wearing a look of adoration, and sympathy.
“You know, Charlie, in the future,” she spoke with a soft tease of lightheartedness, “there are other more gratifying ways to vent that frustration than tossing furniture across a room.”
He let out a flood of breath edged with an exhausted sneer, peering at the mess he’d made. “This probably isn’t the response my dad meant,” Charlie reproached himself flatly.
“No. But I have a suspicious intuition that even minus the crazy pent up werewolf, he probably would have had the same instinct. Doing the right thing does not mean you have to enjoy it. Or even agree with it in your heart. You love William. And the truth sucks beyond measure. But I think even incriminating as the evidence is, we need to remember there’s still no absolute proof he killed these tourists. I know it feels inevitable. But let’s not damn him yet.” Lizzy refused to give up.
Charlie didn’t want to either, but it did ring out as postponing the inevitable.
“Don’t think about the outcome yet,” she challenged his already reeling downward mind. “Focus on finding the truth. And I hate to ask it, but if William were here, what would he tell you to do? Would he be able to live with himself if he hurt someone? Or killed someone? Or turned someone?”
Charlie closed his eyes. The truth of that answer burning the tip of his tongue.
“William would order me to stake him on sight,” he pushed out. “In his right mind, he’d be devastated. He wouldn’t want to live.”
“Then don’t think of it as killing him, Charlie. Think of it as saving him. Saving your friend from a fate he cannot live with.”
“If it is William, I will do the right thing because I have to. But even if he begged me to end him, carrying out that sentence will haunt me for the rest of my life.” Charlie already considered it his personal duty to carry out this task if it proved necessary. He would not allow his siblings, Mack, or anyone else shoulder the burden.
Lizzy stared back at him with such tenderness he thought his heart might explode from the overload of love fighting for space inside the loathing over this impending task. It was a strange sensation to be so full and empty all at the same time. It made his heart strum, his ability to be so easily open with Lizzy, and get only honesty in return.
So why was he struggling with it? And fighting it? Making it harder than it needed to be?
When they were not in a moment of chaos, his brain refused to cooperate and he clammed up and turned into a bumbling idiot. His mind overthinking. Over-processing. Doing and saying the wrong things.
Lizzy was sympathetic. Patient at the right times. Pushy when she needed to be. Adoring. Stirring. Beautiful. Held nothing back. Could be downright infuriating at times. Usually because he’d been an ass. But not always, she had a temper. And yet it didn’t anger him, instead bringing a smile to his lips. Ghostly reflex had his body close the space between them.
She cast her gaze down, an unusual timid blush in her cheeks. Lizzy nodded toward the hallway outside the study, deciding they needed a change of topic.
“Why do you keep staring at your parent’s bedroom door? Why can’t you go inside?”
He took his eyes off her and aimed them in the direction of the door.
“If I open that door, I’m accepting they are really gone. And I think it’s a possibility, my father may have left something in there for me. I may be wrong. It’s just a feeling.”
“Are you afraid he did leave you something?”
“Yes. But I’m also afraid he did not. I’m just not ready to open the door yet.”
“I stand by my earlier statement, Charlie. Tonight would be a bad night to do that.”
Their eyes linked again.
Where earlier there had been so much rage and sadness, she only saw thirst.
Charlie longed to put his arm around Lizzy and pull her into him. Taste those pouty lips that called out to him to steal me, and make me your own. But acting on that urge also held a desperation behind it. A need to fill the void this William mess was leaving inside him.
“I want to kiss you so badly it’s killing me,” he admitted breathlessly. At the same time he spoke, he took a step back.
“But you can’t. Not tonight.”
“I’m starting to wonder what I ever did without you.”
“Me too,” she returned in smug softness. Lizzy had a way of understanding him, and leveling him, that no one else had ever been able to do before.
“I’m going to bring Courtney some blood, and clean clothes. And then I’m going home.” She went to leave him. “Good night, Charlie.”
“Night, Lizzy.”
He turned, determined to clean up the mess he’d made. To see if there was any chance of fixing William’s desk. It didn’t look promising. What a stupid mistake. A shameful act to destroy something so old and beautiful in a moment of defeat and anger.
“Oh, and Charlie…” Lizzy’s voice trailed back to him from the study doorway. He could tell by her tone she was over the sympathetic portion of the evening. “Don’t even think about using all of this as an excuse to ca
ncel our lunch date tomorrow.” She eyed him sternly. Agreeing to cancel dinner plans, and make it lunch. But no way in hell was he getting out of their date altogether.
“Right. Lunch. Romance. I’m all over it,” he vowed tiredly.
He watched her walk away, wondering why he didn’t go find someone to marry them right that very minute. Sure, they barely knew each other in the scheme of things, and hadn’t even gone on a date yet. But Lizzy was it for him. He was so certain he’d agree to marry her on the spot. And date after…
How crazy was he? To want to marry a woman who was practically a stranger, but who leveled both him and his wolf, while scaring the ever living hell out of him at the same time; yet he was so positive of their outcome he’d say yes in a heartbeat. Like life had handed him this one sure thing, and he wanted to happily accept and get on with their lives already.
But it didn’t work like that.
His heart rolled around in his chest, drumming hard. He still had many unanswered questions. Too many to take any chances, or potentially endanger her life, or safety, because he had no idea how his wolf would react the closer or more intimate he got with her. Or how they’d be able to have a family. Safely. Even if he caved right this minute and bit her, how would it all work?
Would she be a wolf out of control with the rising of each full moon?
Did it automatically make carrying his young safe for her?
Would their children be wolves too?
And how the hell would that work, to have little werewolves running amuck on the Isle? And a wife he might have to subdue or lock up if she could not control the change.
So many deadly and dangerous possibilities…
He wanted Lizzy and he wanted to make her happy. Give her everything she wanted. The very idea of forcing her submission made him ill from the inside out. Willing submission was one thing…
It brought back scenes that had seeped back into memory. The way he’d treated Eva Jordan on their unconscious nighttime trysts. She was already a wolf though. And submitted… her wolf did anyway. Not her human half. He might despise the evil bitch for all she’d done, but the very idea that he forced her in any way made him violently nauseated.
Vampire Interrupted (Wicked Good Witches Book 8) Page 16