by Unknown
“Damn she’s strong!” Hendrick grunted as my fist connected with his jaw. Just then, the third grabbed hold of my wrists. All three of them pinned me down in the mud.
“Let me go!” the words ripped out of my mouth in a snarl. The voice was that of a demon. My head was the only thing not pinned down. Uselessly I fought, trying to bite anything near my exposed fangs.
“We’ve gotta get her back to the house, Damien. We’re not the only ones out here.” Hendrick grunted again, trying to move and find a way to wrap around me more securely.
“Let go of her, Damien. Let Hendrick and me take care of this,” as Phoenix spoke they all moved quickly, repositioning. They lifted me up. Hendrick took hold of my arms, locking them down close by my shoulders to incapacitate me. Phoenix had a firm hold on my legs, holding them twisted in an impossible angle for them to have ever bent naturally. I couldn’t have run on them anyway now.
While kicking and lashing out, Phoenix twisted my shin, separating my knee from the joint and the bone. My shin fractured from kneecap down to the ankle. Screaming again in both pain and panic, I lashed out. My body arched back from the searing pain. “Phoenix, if you hurt her again I will snap every bone in your body!” Damien bellowed as we ran.
“If she doesn’t shut up we’re going to draw attention to anyone nearby. Shut her up before I do!” Phoenix snapped back.
Throughout all of this, I had not put the pieces together yet. I had no memory of these three what so ever.
In a pure blood given rage, I was no more than an animal fighting for survival. Fighting and losing.
Hendrick held me so tightly I thought he would crush me to death as they ran with me. “If you would not have broken her legs maybe she would not be screaming,” Damien seethed just as I broke one leg free and kicked violently back over my head at Hendrick’s arm.
With spaztic kicks, I managed to twist my way from their hold, twisting my spine in seizing fits. They lost their grip and I fell to the ground only to jump up and grab the closest branch, scurrying through the trees by my hands. I’d never imagined it possible for me to get free while enduring so much physical pain.
“Damn it!” Hendrick snarled about his broken arm. “Oh give me some credit, she’s stronger than she looks!”
You always hear people in movies yell the words ‘don’t look back’ as advice to someone running. It’s very good advice.
I looked over my shoulder back at Hendrick and Damien. As I realized one was missing I fell flat on my back. “You’re fast, cupcake, but I’m faster.” Phoenix sat on top of me, straddling me with my hands pinned above my head in a single grip. All I could do was glare at him. Before the others reached us he smiled down at me and raised a brow before asking quietly, “I bet it was worth all this trouble. Wasn’t it? There’s nothing quite like fresh human blood. You wanna know something Damien won’t ever tell you?” He whispered quickly, “It’s even better when they run.”
In a blinding fast move, Phoenix had me folded into a tight ball and held against his chest with his arms so hard around me I could barely even squirm. “Let’s get you home, cupcake.” He proved struggling was useless painfully and quickly. For each time I squirmed, he’d dig his thumb into my side between my ribs separating the muscle. A nasty technique. I don’t care what you are. It hurts.
It was only a few minutes before we arrived at a massive house. Once inside Phoenix dropped me on to the hard marble floor without so much as a concerning glance.
Immediately I flew up to the top of the staircase, practically crawling, balanced on the railing on the balls of my feet for the advantaged position. My body was too broken to hold me. Slipping from the rail, I fell onto the hard marble floor below. The crash and burn was enough to make a crash test dummy proud. Shuddering, my entire body cringed. I fought to find an escape with no avail. Protectively, my arms covered my head as I curled into a small ball. Let it end fast.
But it would not end. In moments, my mind felt clouded. Invaded by something. A thick, black fog rolled through my head suffocating my senses, blinding my eyes. Burning away at my very veins.
A broken, horrible, agonized sob broke from my lips as my nails dug into my temples to stop the searing pain. Everything was turning black, incapacitating me when two arms scooped me up and ran with me. It was then I lost consciousness.
As if falling asleep, I slipped into my dream world. Dark and magnificent. Nightmares and magic blending together. Worlds I did not know but felt familiar with. The whispers. The voices. So powerful. I knew these voices but not well. These voices brought me here in the beginning. When my body was taken from mortality and brought to my immortal world, hundreds of voices had accompanied me then as they did now.
The Pixie Pire. Like an Irish sprite, venomous and yet so playfully sweet. Hundreds of years of illuminating power wrapped into a beautiful, young, merciless vixen. She gives a peak into a world filled with dark magic unlike what dreams are made of. You may be blessed by the calming euphoric ecstasy to inspire your very spirit. Or you may suffer a consequence. Making your mind plead for an escape as your body shrivels in agony, unable to recoil from the suffocating burn. She will never let you forget the price of your defiance.
Without their knowing, I began to stir. Too hazy to even remember my own name, I lay wondering why I felt so lethargic as well as why my body was so painfully stiff. My mind was too tired to do anything more than listen to them. Even fear seemed to be too much work to muster.
Lara and Damien were by the door. She sat folded butterfly style on the floor while Damien leaned against it heavily. “You have to drink, Damien. You’re useless to her like this,” Lara spoke in a mere whisper.
“I drank on the mountain.” His face was a placid color of blue white. “I drank from her before, and felt great afterwards. She healed me. I’m fine.”
“But the exertion has made you weak again.” His lips curled back in a sneer to her words. “She has-”
“If you finish that sentence you will regret it, Lara. I won’t let Jezabell or anyone else hurt her again,” he snapped at Lara in an angry whisper.
“You can’t do this by yourself. Where would you take her that could possibly be safe and yet completely isolated from humans the way we are? There is nowhere else to go, Damien,” Lara sounded as if she were going to cry.
“She’s not safe here. Between Phoenix and Jezabell she won’t last a year.” He paced back and forth in front of the door.
“She’s a New Blood. She is as dangerous as she is powerful. If they find you then you’re both dead.” Damien stopped pacing and started to argue when Lara cut him off, “She’s also awake.” I felt their eyes on me then. But my body was too stiff to even move. I hurt everywhere.
Damien slowly came over to me while Lara slipped out the door quietly. “Lianna,” his voice flooded with relief. His eyes stared into mine for a long quiet moment. I could almost see the precise moment he realized that I didn’t recognize him at all. “Anna, look at me. You know me. It’s all right. How do you feel? Do you remember anything?” The question was not for me though. I could hear it in his tone. He just didn’t understand.
It seemed like a thick invisible blanket were weighing down on me so heavily that it kept me from being able to even try to think let alone move. My only response was to stare back at him as I tried to find the memories.
“Well maybe I can remind you.” Damien slid onto the bed beside me. His hands gently holding my cheeks pulled me up even closer to him, forcing his lips hard onto mine. Reacting instinctively my fingers latched around his wrists, struggling to pull free from his firm grasp and the pressure on my mouth.
The more I struggled, the tighter he held me. His lips refused to pull from mine. The longer this went on, the more I clung tighter to his wrists. My mind didn’t know him in the slightest but my heart knew well the cold fire that burned through me from his touch.
Before long, my hands were holding around his neck, kissing him as deeply as if he were
my entire reason for living. My heart and body knew him so my mind conceded that nothing else mattered.
A second before our door opened, Damien tore me away from him and positioned me behind him on the bed. His body went rigid in the defensive stance. “Stay away from her, Jez. You’ve done enough damage here.”
Instinctively, I knew Jezabell, much like I had recognized Damien. But now my body recoiled in fear and pain. Damien held my hand, keeping me pulled closely to him. He knew I was going to try and run.
Just from her presence, my body grew weaker. A tightening in my chest grew painful as it spread through my veins. I tried to hold it in but the moan escaped my lips anyway as I slumped down onto the bed.
My hand on Damien’s suddenly became bone crushingly tight. I heard a bone in his hand fracture. He wasn’t angry with that of course. His rage was only for Jezabell now. His lips pulled back tightly in a low snarl. “Release her, Jezabell.”
Lara came in just behind her with a gasp of shock. Swiftly circling the room, she crawled onto the bed, pulling me from Damien who moved to the center of the room between us and Jezabell. The painful fog began to lift as Lara held me protectively to her. Her face scrunched up as if she were focusing on a horribly difficult physical task.
This woman I didn’t know in the slightest and in fact she didn’t seem like a woman at all. She was impossibly beautiful but she looked like just a child. Her beauty was so angelic it brought instant trust to me. “Sleep.” Lara whispered to me as she lay me down. My eyes were forced close as if weighted.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Damien’s voice was a deep snarl. His body tense with rage.
“She needs to know the consequences,” Jezabell shot back.
Lara remained hovering over Lianna protectively. “Jezabell, you know that he’s right this time,” her voice was stern, angry, even sad but most of all undeniably vehement.
“She didn’t even know who she was when I got her to wake up. There’s blood in her eyes Jezabell. You can’t pull this shit anymore. You could have killed her!” Damien was seething.
“Lara, how could you turn on me like this?” Her hand extended in Lara’s direction held her fingers out waiting as if Lara was expected to come defend her.
“Not this time, Jezabell.” Lara shook her head, refusing to look up at Jezabell. Blood stained Lara’s dress and arms as it drizzled steadily from Lianna’s eyes, one thick stream trailing from her nose to her chin. “You went too far this time, Jezabell, my love… Too far.”
“She has put us all in danger by her very existence. She knows nothing of our world and she betrays her word, killing two humans right over our property line! You know the rules of this House. We do not hunt human anywhere in the vicinity of our House. It may have broken our wards!”
“She’s a New Blood! She’s innocent until she can be taught. If you want someone to blame for that then blame me. But trust me on this, Jezabell, no matter the outcome of this you will not touch her again. I promise you that.” Jezabell’s hand dropped to her side in defeat. “Don’t make me leave, Jez. You know that I will.”
“You can’t leave me, Damien.” She must have intended to sound pleading, but the threat was obvious.
Lara brushed her fingers over Lianna’s blood stained cheeks before moving suddenly to stand between the two. “Both of you just stop it. Damien, you’re not leaving. Jezabell, you were wrong. She will be amazing. This is all of our faults. We swore to her we would teach her, and yet we have done nothing. We owe that to her now more than ever.”
“Lara, what do you see?” Damien whispered as if afraid to speak any louder.
“I don’t think this has harmed her. She’s very difficult to see, Damien, you have to understand that.” Jezabell’s mouth dropped to protest but Lara’s hand came up to silence her. “Which is why… we must tread carefully and teach her everything. Omit nothing from her. I fear that none of us will survive what is coming if we are not all equally prepared. She has my protection, Damien. No one in this House will bring her harm intentionally again. You have my word. I’ll speak to the others myself on it.”
“I want it in blood.” Damien stared solely at Lara, whose brows arched with surprise.
Jezabell gawked at him. “What?”
“I want it in blood that she has your protection.”
“No!” Jezabell screamed, all but lunging at him before Laura stepped in between the two of them.
“It’s all right, Jezabell. He has my word. He can have it in blood if it is his will.” She stepped to him, and lifted her arm, wrist up.
As the fog slid away from my head pounded. At least everything seemed back to normal. I knew exactly who I was, where I was and that also included the man I was laying upon as if he were a great granite pillow.
He smelled so good. I took in a deep breath reveling in his delicious scent. It was like natural cologne specifically designed to tease me. “Nice to see you’re awake.” His fingers drug through my hair again and again so soothingly.
“I thought Vampires didn’t sleep? I was looking forward to an eternity without dreams.” His fingers twisted around my hair, the slight tug and intake of breath sent a tickle down my spine as he breathed me in.
“We usually don’t. But you’re not like any Vampire I have ever known.” His mood was unable to be determined through his tone of voice. So I was left not knowing how to take that. “How do you feel?”
“Just a headache.” Paranoia wracked my brain, deciphering what he had meant. But I had incidentally forgotten he could hear my thoughts. Not like you could really control what you’re thinking forever anyway.
“I’m sorry for how that sounded. But it is true. I have not, nor has anyone else here known another like you, Lianna. However I’ve never once considered that to be a bad thing as far as I’m concerned,” his tone lightened just slightly.
“I don’t want to make your life any harder.”
“The original offer still stands. I will take you anywhere in the world that your heart desires.”
“No, I can’t. If nothing else I couldn’t do that to Lara. She nearly cried about your threatening to leave earlier. I don’t want to cause more problems with your family. Jezabell hates me as it is.”
“Just how much do you remember?”
“Everything from when you three showed up going forward. Before that, I remember some things but it’s very hazy...” I didn’t know how to feel about killing those two now. My only guilt was that I couldn’t recall what they looked like. They could have been white. Or black. Had blonde hair or red. They could have been purple with green spots. I would never remember. That I cared at all about this took more effort for me than I thought it should.
As I had slept I dreamt a dream I had forgotten entirely. A dream from my time as a human. A dream just days before I had died. The spell that bound the woman from my dreams to Damien and in that, Damien to her. He wasn’t mine anyway. I was making his life miserable without any reason at all.
“How’s your hand?” I whispered as my thoughts swirled in on each other again.
His body seemed tense. He didn’t answer me right away. My lips parted to ask but before the first word came out he interrupted me. I may never get used to the mind reading stuff. “What was that?”
“Um, I asked how your hand was?” Shit. I flinched. Stupidstupidstupid. We both knew what he meant. All I could do was look away.
“Why are you hiding things from me? Why would you think I could ever love anyone else? Let alone that I was bound to anyone else.” My mind went blank. What could I say? It was then Hendrick knocked on the door. Bless him.
Damien’s eyes narrowed in frustration. He sat up, moving to sit in front of me protectively. “What?” he sounded as irritable as he looked.
Hendrick opened the door but hung back in the hall. “Time to take little chickadee hunting.” He winked at me playfully. His massive arms folded over his even bigger chest. Damien grunted and stood, pulling me along with him. He
wasn’t going to let it drop.
“You’re not mad about your arm?” I questioned nervously though Hendrick just laughed.
“You think you could actually hurt me? That’s funny.” He laughed as he stepped aside so that we would join him. That’s not what you said in the woods. Damien smirked, though it was still bitter.
“How are you feeling?” Damien questioned as we reached the woods. My stability was a touch off. Both Damien and Hendrick had noticed. My legs had mostly healed but it was still quite uncomfortable. I tried not to focus on it so Damien wouldn’t have to hear the thoughts.
Shrugging, I gave him an amused sardonic look. “Just peachy.”
Hendrick and Damien both chuckled simultaneously. Hendrick was watching me still, looking nervous and rather guilty. Damien took my hand.
The land was ours. It held no dangers to us. Not here. Hendrick stayed nearby but was sure to give Damien and me some space as well. We hunted until dawn, feeding on a whole herd. Between the three of us they never had a chance. Hendrick was the most amusing to watch. The giant ape of a man being so graceful was just comical.
Dawn came too quickly. Damien and Hendrick were about a hundred yards from me standing together, speaking quietly to one another. It would have been easy to focus on the words, but I chose to ignore them. It didn’t really matter in my opinion. Hendrick took off seconds later brushing past me. I felt him jab playfully at my ribs, but he never stopped for my reaction.
Damien remained leaning with his back against a tree watching me. After a moment, I jumped up to the branch above me. Climbing quickly to the highest limb I could find that could still hold me, I settled in to relax and enjoy the view of the dawn.
Yes, sun hurts my eyes horribly. It makes me lethargic and weak. My body becomes languid and stiff. But I love the dawn. He promised that would ease in time.
Before long, Damien came up to join me and slid in behind me. With a little adjustment I lay back against his rock hard chest as we sat watching the sunrise.