Kallias rubbed each side of his head with his thumbs. “Who was he?”
“Honestly, I have no clue,” Rose admitted. “He never even told me his name. He just pulled me aside and gave me this really old, stone box. He told me that the contents belonged to me, whatever that meant. He also told me not to tell anyone about it. He said that people would die if it fell into the wrong hands.”
“What was in the box?” Kallias asked impatiently.
“I was just getting to that,” she grumbled, shooting a peeved look at the sleepy vampire. “There were these ancient scrolls inside, written in a really ancient dialect of Greek. I started trying to translate it that same night at the hotel, but it wasn’t an easy task. I can translate Modern Greek easily, but Ancient Greek is a whole different ballgame. And these scrolls were really ancient. I consulted every book and database available to me, and there were still words that I couldn’t find. And then, there were words that I did find, but they didn’t make sense in the context of the sentence. It was like they were the wrong words, but they weren’t.”
He nodded, his face slumped against one of his hands. “Ancient Greek is complicated. If one letter is written wrong, it can change the entire word. You were probably looking at misspelled words. You should’ve just brought it to me.”
“Yeah,” Rose agreed. “I should have done a lot of things that I didn’t do.”
Kallias straightened. “What is it, Rose? What is wrong with you?”
“I know why Theron is after me,” she admitted.
His eyes narrowed dangerously. “You told me that you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t!” she exclaimed. Then, she cringed. “Not for sure, anyway.”
Kallias growled, “Rose…”
“Just let me explain,” she interrupted. “I didn’t intentionally lie to you.”
“I’m listening,” he said, his voice dangerously low.
Rose gulped. “The scrolls were written by a woman. I think they were like a diary or journal. But, you see, Theron was pretty much all she talked about.”
He leaned forward, toward her. “How long have you known this?”
“The Theron part?” she squeaked. She winced. “Um…a while?”
A low, frightening, animalistic growl sounded from his throat. His hands suddenly gripped each arm of the office chair, and his face was so close to hers that she could feel his breath. His brown eyes were dark with a feral kind of rage, a rage that raised every hair on her body. A red flush colored his skin, as if he’d had a sudden rush of adrenaline, and judging by how much more awake he seemed now, she figured that he probably had. His razor-sharp fangs gleamed dangerously in the lamplight. “Why did you not tell me this before?” he snarled.
Rose leaned against the back of the chair, her eyes wide. Everything about his stance reminded her of a dangerous, feral animal. A sudden, loud crack drew her attention to the arms of the chair. She frowned as she realized that they were cracking under his white-knuckled grip. “I didn’t know it was important,” she said, careful to keep her tone even. “The scrolls are about her sex life, for goodness sakes. She goes on and on about her sexual encounters with Theron. Why she felt the need to describe her sex life in descriptive detail, I have no idea. I mean, seriously, why would anyone want to write about Theron…”
“Get to the point,” he snapped, interrupting her rambling.
Ignoring the fact that he had her trapped in the chair and was obviously not himself at the moment, she narrowed her eyes at him. “What is your freaking problem?” she snapped. “Did you catch rabies or something?”
His expression remained cold and steely, his eyes dark. “I am not a dog. I am a vampire,” he snarled. He tilted his head, eyeing her with a predatory gaze. “Or have you forgotten that fact? That I can kill you anytime I choose?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Are you trying to intimidate me right now?” She crossed her arms, but as she did, her forearms brushed his bare chest because of their closeness, which, unfortunately, caused her to blush, taking a little bit of the edge off of her attempt to appear as tough as possible. “I didn’t know that there was anything important in those scrolls until about a minute before you showed up in my doorway. That was when I finished translating the last half of the last scroll. That’s when she finally mentioned it, the thing that Theron wants.”
He pulled back, his hands still braced on each side of her. “What is it?”
Rose chewed on her bottom lip nervously. “The other thing in the box.”
His gaze hardened again. “There was something else?” he growled.
“Uh…yeah…” she stammered, wringing her hands. “A stone. Have you ever heard of something called…well, in English, I suppose it would be called the Stone of the…Chosen…or Destined…or Exquisite…or…? Ugh, never mind. Let’s just stick with the Greek word: Eklektos. The Stone of the Eklektos.”
His face suddenly became ghostly pale, all of the anger fading from his face. The chair let out a squeak of protest as he released it and stepped back.
She frowned. “I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that’s a yes?”
“What did the scrolls say about it?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at her.
“Not much,” she sighed. “The woman just mentioned that after she told Theron about the Stone of the Eklektos, he became obsessed with it.”
He seemed to stop breathing, all of the sudden. “What?”
Her brows furrowed at his strange reaction. “Uh…I said that the…”
“I know what you said,” he muttered. “The woman told him about it?”
“Yes,” she answered slowly, confused by his behavior. “Why?”
“Give me the scrolls,” he said suddenly, holding out his hand.
Nodding, Rose spun around in the office chair and gathered the ancient documents in her hands. She held them out to him, watching him with a puzzled frown. He took them from her and sat down on the edge of the bed, scowling at the Ancient Greek words on the parchment. He seemed cold and distant.
“Do you want my notebook?” she offered. “It’s where I translated it.”
He didn’t even look at her. He just held out his hand. “I need a pen, too.”
Rose scowled at the desk, looking for the pen she’d just been using.
“Behind your ear,” Kallias said without looking at her.
Rose grabbed the pen that she’d wedged between her ear and her messy ponytail and handed it to him. He took it without looking and began writing in her notebook. She watched him curiously. “Let me just warn you,” she said, even though he was already reading it. “It’s graphic. The woman goes into descriptive detail about her romance with Theron. She must have really liked being with him to talk about it that much, which is kind of revolting when you think about the fact that it was Theron. I mean, why would anyone feel so strongly about him? She knew he killed people, and she still loved him. He treated her like a slave, and she…” She stopped as she realized that he was still reading the scrolls and writing in her notebook, not paying attention to her. “Sorry. I guess I’m rambling again.”
He stood up suddenly and walked over to her. He dropped the notebook in her hands. Between her notes, he’d scribbled in his own notes and corrections. “Some of the words that you couldn’t find were idioms and slang words that became obsolete a few years after this was written. I could have saved you a lot of time and stress if you had just given me those scrolls a long time ago.”
Rose glanced down at the notebook, stunned that he’d translated the first scroll so quickly. It had taken her several sleepless nights to translate what he’d translated within seconds. She pointed at one word that he’d corrected. “How did you get this word? I admit that it makes more sense this way…because it made absolutely no sense the way I translated it, but that word clearly means sun.”
“Technically,” he agreed. “But it’s not what she meant. She misspelled it.”
Rose looked at him, frowning in confusio
n. His expression was callous and cold, as if he had no feelings whatsoever. “But how can you know that?”
“Because she always spelled it that way,” he answered.
She stared blankly at him. “Wait. What?” she sputtered.
He shrugged. “I taught her to read and write. I know how she wrote.”
She glanced down at the scrolls, her brows furrowing, as she tried to process what he was saying. “You know who wrote this? But how? How could you know who wrote it? She never said her name. She just talks about Theron.”
“I know my own wife’s handwriting,” he stated.
Rose froze, her fingers still clutching one of the scrolls. She looked up at him, her blue eyes widening in shock. He stood there, watching her with his steely, emotionless gaze. It bothered her to see him that way. She would have preferred his rage over this. “Your wife?” she repeated dumbly, at a complete loss for words. She looked at the scrolls, staring at them in horror. “But… Oh my word.”
“I tried to teach her the correct spelling, but she never listened,” he said.
“Your wife wrote this,” Rose said again, her voice pained and hollow.
“Her father never thought she needed literacy skills. He didn’t think women needed to know how to read and write,” he continued, as if they were discussing something mundane, like the weather. “But hey, if I had not gone against his wishes and taught her to read and write, she could have never written all of those scrolls about how amazing of a time she had screwing around on me.” His tone had turned bitter now. “That would have been such a tragedy.”
Rose stared at him, her heart tight with sympathy. “If I had known, I…”
“What?” he interrupted. “You would have kept lying to me?”
Her eyes narrowed at his cruel guess. “I never meant to lie to you.”
He leveled her with a cool, unfeeling glare. “Fuck you, Rose.”
Kallias turned and left the room without another word or glance toward her. She sat there for a moment in stunned shock before she jumped up and went after him. She heard a crash before she reached the doorway to his bedroom.
He’d left the door open, and she came to a stop in his doorway, taking in the appearance of his room in a quick glance. It looked similar to the guest room, except it was darker and a tad messier. Only one lamp lit the room, a small, dim lamp on his nightstand. In the center of the room was an oversized four-poster wrought iron bed that looked like a piece of furniture taken directly out of the Gothic period. Black satin linens covered the mattress. The dressers and nightstands were built of a combination of wrought iron and black-stained wood. There was a weapon cabinet on the wall and daggers scattered across the dressers.
She noticed Kallias leaning against the wall that was opposite the doorway, his back turned to her, his hands braced on the wall on each side of him. One of the stones in the wall looked cracked and stained with blood. Her eyes widened as she realized that must have been the loud noise that she’d heard.
She glared at the back of his head, not caring whether or not he could see her. “You know what? You are the one who told me not to trust you!” she snarled. “And that man warned me not to tell anyone about that stupid box. He said people could die if I breathed a word about it to anyone, that people would die if it fell into the wrong hands. I’d just met you. I didn’t know if I could…”
“Rose,” he interrupted. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
She ignored his interruption. “I should have told you about the scrolls and Stone. Yes, I’ll admit that,” she continued, “but you don’t get to treat me like this just because I screwed up. I know that you’re hurting, but you are…”
“Rose,” he growled again. He turned to face her. “Why are you in here?”
She stopped talking because, at that moment, her gaze was drawn to his hand, which was dripping blood onto the hardwood floor. His knuckles were cracked open from the stone, and his hand didn’t appear to be healing. His hands clenched and unclenched repeatedly, as if he were trying to control the animalistic rage coursing through him. He stared her down, his gaze dark with fury, and even in the low lighting of the room, she could see the dangerous gleam of fangs.
Rose shrugged. “You told me to come to your room if I needed you,” she reminded him. She spread out her arms and smiled. “Well, here I am.”
“Let me rephrase this,” he growled, his eyes narrowing. “Get. Out.”
“But I’m not finished talking,” she complained.
“Get. Out,” he repeated, enunciating each word harshly.
“See, this is your problem,” she said, pointing at him. “You don’t deal with your problems. You just sweep them under the rug. You can’t solve a problem by running away from it. You have to face it and fix it. Everyone knows that sweeping things under the rug just causes bugs or rodents or…something…” she trailed off, frowning. “I think I messed that analogy up somewhere.”
She never saw him move. One moment, he’d been standing near the bloodstained stone wall across the room from her, and the next, her back hit the wall behind her as he shoved her back and pinned her there, his hands clasped around her wrists and his body against hers. He leaned down so that his face was nearly touching hers, his razor sharp fangs nearly brushing against her lips.
“I don’t think you understand,” he said, his breath coming in harsh pants, all of the sudden. “I am not telling you to get out of my room because I want to run away from a problem. I am telling you to get out so that I won’t kill you.”
Rose swallowed uneasily. She could feel his hands trembling around her wrists, just as they had done when he was fighting his hunger in the library, just hours before. “No offense, but I think murder would be an overreaction.”
“You really don’t get it, do you?” he asked. His voice sounded strangled, as if he were choking. “I’m a vampire. An animal. I feel emotions on a level that humans cannot possibly even understand. I feel rage like an animal.” He moved his face to hers and hissed, “When you piss off an animal, the animal bites.”
She bit her lip. “Well, actually, some animals scratch…”
“Damn it, Rose. Listen to me,” he gasped. His voice suddenly sounded broken and desperate. His hands tightened around her wrist. “The sun is weakening me. I can’t control myself right now. Please. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Her gaze softened. “And that’s why I know that you won’t.”
Rage, fear, and pain warred inside of him, threatening to take control, and he was too tired, too weak, and too hungry to fight it. “How do you know?” he asked. He put his hand on her neck. “It would be so easy to kill you. I could snap your neck just by closing my hand.” He leaned in close to her, so close that the scent of her blood overwhelmed his senses. His lips brushed hers as he whispered, “Or better yet, I could sink my fangs into your neck and devour you…finally sate this damn hunger for you that I’ve been fighting since we met.”
She swallowed. His fingers drummed against her neck while his thumb traced her artery, sending jolts of desire coursing through her body like electricity. She didn’t know how she was able to feel so angry with him and yet still feel desire for him at the same time, but she couldn’t help it. Being near him set her body on fire. And despite his words and the anger that was so intense that it caused his entire body to shake, his touch on her neck remained gentle somehow.
She looked boldly into his dark eyes and stated, “I’m not afraid of you.”
His brows furrowed. “You should be,” he said, his voice quiet and sad.
“I’m not. Do you know why?” she asked. When he gave her a puzzled look, she continued, “Because I see through this. Kallias, you are the bravest person I’ve ever met, but you are terrified of letting someone hurt you. And you’re even more terrified of hurting someone else. So, you push people away. You’re rude, intimidating, cruel, whatever you have to be, in order to keep people from getting too close to you. You think as long as they hate
you, they’re safe, and you’re safe. It’s a defense mechanism, a misguided attempt to protect yourself and others. I may not be an empath or telepath, but I can still see through you.”
He suddenly let go of her and stepped back, as if he’d been burned. “Just leave, Rose,” he sighed in defeat, his eyes on the floor. “Go back to your room.”
Rose watched as he turned to walk toward the bed in the center of the room. He suddenly staggered and reached out to grasp the bed-frame for support. His skin looked ashen. She crossed the room and reached out to take his arm so that she could help him to bed, but he snatched his arm away from her.
“I don’t need your help,” he snarled at her as he staggered again.
Rose rolled her eyes. “Oh, stop being so stubborn, and let me help you.”
He braced his hand on the footboard. “I’m fine. Just leave.”
She pursed her lips. “We need to talk about this, Kallias.”
Kallias walked around the bed, a little more steadily now, and slumped down onto the mattress. He looked at her. “Why? What is the point?”
She shrugged. “There is a process. You fight. You talk. And then, you make up,” she explained, listing the steps on her fingers. “Problems don’t just go away on their own. You have to deal with them. That’s how relationships work.”
“Relationship?” he repeated, his voice sharp. He arched an eyebrow and laughed bitterly, “Is that what you think this is? You think that we are together?”
Rose scowled at his sneering tone. “You’re doing it again.”
His eyes hard and cruel, not betraying any of his emotions, he continued, “Did you actually think you were my lover or something? My girlfriend? Did you think that I would fall in love with you? That I would fall in love with a human?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I never assumed anything would happen.”
“Of course it won’t,” he spat. “Because I am a vampire, and you are a human. Our lives don’t fit. Even if I were interested in you, it would never work.”
“You kiss me a lot for someone not interested,” she countered.
The Stone of the Eklektos Page 55