“Get out of my way. I’m going to find her. She’s to marry me tomorrow evening. I have the other vampires in our order coming to witness the marriage of a human to a vampire.”
I did not move.” He watched at me with a defeated glare because he didn’t have the strength to command me to do anything.
Not unless he had an abundance of silver to use on me that I couldn’t find, or Terry couldn’t locate. Then his feeble attempt at trying to kill me had been useless. By the expression on his face, a tight jaw and narrow eyes it wasn’t likely that he had other tricks he could play on me.
“She’s gone. Terry and Zoey are gone where you can’t get to them.”
My time with Aare proved to be useless. He no longer had anything that could hurt me and killing him for the sake of killing wasn’t something I was prepared to do at this time. He was beaten and it would take time for him to gain strength.
I needed to strengthen myself to find Zoey and change Terry, so she could be my watchman and protector for Zoey.
“Do you think it’s that simple? You take Zoey and Terry too and leave, especially since you have taken my throne from me? I needed Zoey at my side to convince the humans and vampires that we could live together,” Aare said in an unpersuasive tone.
“You and I know it’s an evasion. You would pretend to want peace with the kings and vampires of Europe, but that’s so you could conquer the world and sit on the throne of my father,” I said to him as he shook violently when he couldn’t get his way. It started when he became a teenager. Then he would go and kill anything that came across his path.
“What were you going to do with all that power? Let me answer that, you would have wasted it on those humans and Zoey,” Aare said. “Do you think she would ever have children for you?” He glanced at me as he walked around me. “Yes, that’s what you’re hoping for.”
I tried not to give myself away. I knew that would be my only chance to create a family of my own, and break the bonds of this murderous house known as Vesper.
“Do you know what you have hidden away in those towers? If even the vampires knew, they would put a stake in your heart,” I said with a hardening of my voice, “and I would help them.”
“And you’re not going to tell them,” Aare said. “But I have a surprise for you. Samantha is waiting and she will not be happy with what you’ve said to me. Last time I remembered you promised to marry her.”
“That was a hundred years ago. I think she knows better now,” I said carelessly.
“It wasn’t that long ago. Just a blink of your eye and a wave of my hand and you will never see Zoey again,” Aare said.
“And who’s going to stop me now? Remember I fed on that beautiful young girl and her blood is potent. I have gained my strength back and you can’t stop me,” I said with a smile.
“But on the contrary, I can.” I turned at the sound of a cool sexy voice. It was that of Samantha.
“Leave us, Aare.”
“Are you taking orders from a witch, Aare? What spell did she put on you that she could order you around?” He glared at me with hooded eyes. His grey eyes had sadness to them. He looked like that little boy who had killed a small animal when he was young, and mother wanted to punish him by taking away his dog. But eventually he killed the dog he claimed he loved.
She must have done something sinister to control the likes of Aare—a cold demonic creature without a soul. That would make her more dangerous than he, I thought.
“It was the same spell I put you under when I first met you. Remember?” she said walking to me and dragging her long painted black nails down the side of my face. I stood glaring into her black eyes. Then she sauntered around me touching me with her finger tips burning my skin, and Aare watching with satisfaction left the room. Maybe he left because he saw what was in his future for making a pact with this she devil.
“Do you remember when we first met? You couldn’t get enough of my body. It was in Spain, remember, when you returned with all that delicious gold from the Incas. You met me at a party with Don Pedro. I was his mistress then, but the minute you saw me you couldn’t resist me.”
I glared at her as if I had eaten tainted blood. The thought of having had sex with her left a bad taste in my mouth that lasted hundreds of years.
“That was before I learned what you were,” I said moving away from her.
“You didn’t care. Your youth, your hard cold manhood and your lust for blood had you bedding every willing young woman from one continent to another.
“You enticed me into your bed and if I had known...”
“But I knew what you were and I didn’t mind. You bed me that night and tried to turn me. I should have let you.”
“You couldn’t stop me. Your blood was contaminated by your evil deeds remember, and that’s how I discovered what you were. You were trying to pass yourself off as a virgin and I was too young to know better.”
“Yet you continued to visit me and fuck me.” I frowned. “What you don’t like that word. It is what you did. Do you want to say you made love to me, well you didn’t. You fucked me that night and the next and the next. You couldn’t get enough of me. Your cold manhood fell into me and I satisfied you. But I made the mistake of falling in love with you,” she said.
“You can’t love me. You can’t love anyone.” I heard her hard breathing and I knew she was upset.
In that second she closed her eyes and a large iron candle stick came rising and falling in my direction. I caught it in midair.
“I can love, but you won’t let me.” I heard the desperation and weakness of her voice. What do you want? To see Zoey. Well I can be her,” she said. Her voice soft and low. I followed the contours of her youthful created body. The gown she wore, red and sheer. She stood looking in my eyes and then she closed her eyes chanting.
“Stop it. You can’t be her,” I shouted. Samantha didn’t listen to me she said over and over words that confound me, but words I had heard the Inca’s chant. Then before my eyes she stood before me as Zoey.
In Zoey’s voice she said, “Why do you want anyone but me. You can have whatever your heart desires. I’m yours and I will never leave you. I can be whomever you want and whomever you’ve ever wanted. Sleep with me and you will never have to worry about Zoey again.”
Smiling, she took my hand, and led me to the bed as she continued chanting. She stood before me naked and I shouted to her, “Stop it. You aren’t Zoey. You will never be her and I will never love you. There will be only one woman for me.”
“I know and that will be me. I will find her, and I will kill her, and you won’t be able to stop me. And I will kill all her babies. You will never have the half human half vampire you seek from her. They will never live long enough to have a soul.”
Rushing to her, I held her face. “What are you saying?”
“She will have your babies, but they will never be born, and if she has another for any human I will kill them also.”
“What other human is there? Zoey loves me and she will never have a baby from anyone but me.” Samantha had gotten to me. She had ignited that lifeless, cold part of me. “What if I kill you now?” I said with her smiling back at me as I held her face in my hands. I could put an end to her now and crush her head, but I stared at her. A face like Zoey. I became lost for a moment, and I didn’t want to hurt her because her eyes were Zoey, her mouth was Zoey. However, my senses took hold of me and I broke from her spell.
“I can crush you with my two hands and you will never worry Zoey again.”
“Go ahead. Try.” And Samantha laughed, a sinister high pitched one, and she disappeared through my hands, beneath her sheer red gown, and all I saw was the fabric of the gown pooling on the floor at my feet, and the only thing remaining were the ashes and smoke she left behind.
Did Samantha know where to find Zoey? She said that she will kill my offspring?” But then she said something about someone else. Who is it person Zoey will love after me. I had to
find Zoey and him because my future and my destiny depended on her.
Chapter Nine-Zoey
I stepped off the elevator near our suite, but Terry stayed on, I held my hand on the door, “Where are you going?” She smiled.
“Up two floors.” And she pointed her long elegant finger upward. “Get some sleep. You look tired. Don’t wait up for me.” She had this look on her face. Her eyes no longer brown but somewhere between black and brown. She had fed but she wasn’t completely satisfied. I had seen that with Sebastian. This empty hungry look which made him stir and pace anxiously as if he had forgotten to do something.
“I really didn’t want to be alone tonight? My father,” I said to her.
“I know but this won’t take long,” Terry said with a sly grin and the door closed in my face. I continued walking and opened the door to the room. I needed some sleep because I didn’t want to think about my father. It was like that when I was young. Whenever I felt lonely or I couldn’t handle the day and Sebastian had gone off and left me alone in that large castle with Elizabeth, I just remembered his mother’s name.
Elizabeth asked me to call her mother. And because I was so young and needed someone to make me feel secure, I looked to her for comfort. But she had a coldness I didn’t know about until now. They were all vampires and cold and unfeeling.
Even Sebastian must have been cold, but he never showed that side to me until recently.
It was the first time I dared questioned Sebastian’s feelings for me. Maybe I didn’t want to know the truth. How could he feel anything the way he is? It was a lie he had been telling me all along. It was a lie when he said he loved me.
Taking off my clothing and walking into the shower, I let the shower jets rain down cold water to balance that relentless heat of my body. I stayed there a long time before I felt better and my skin had finally cooled.
I walked to the dresser where I had put the new clothes I had bought and put a tee shirt and panties on to go to sleep. Before climbing into my bed, I opened the curtains. I could look out over Seattle at night and wonder if Sebastian would find me.
Trotting to the bed, climbing inside and pulling the covers up, I looked around. At that moment I wished for a book. I could read it and maybe fall asleep. I opened the drawer to the night stand. Any book would do.
My eyes became heavy but before I could fall asleep, a loud knock came to the door.
Looking over at Terry’s bed she had left her key. “What the fuck now.” I tried to hold my cursing to a minimum, but I thought I would be asleep now and some place in my dreams where Sebastian and I would be together. It appeared that that would be the only place he and I could exist—in my dreams. And now that was being interrupted.
Jumping to the floor, I rushed to the door and opened it. Standing in front of me with blood dripping from her mouth and her eyes red, Terry rushed passed me. “What have you done now, Terry?” Trailing behind her and reaching for a towel to clean up the blood at the door, I turned with a wet towel in my hand and looked passed to see if anyone was outside. When I didn’t see anyone, I got on my knees and wiped up the trail of blood from the elevator.
There wasn’t much because most of it was on Terry’s clothes. Sitting on my bed I dropped the towel on the floor. I looked at Terry when she finally came from the restroom. “I’ll ask you again, what did you do?”
She stood looking at her hands as if she was a little child who had killed her favorite cat. “I didn’t do anything. I went to Blake’s room because I wanted an apology from him for what he had done to me, and how he had ruined my life, and he laughed at me. He even tried to rape me again, but I told him that wasn’t necessary because I wasn’t a girl any longer, and I enjoyed being fucked by men. Lots of men.
This time I actually enjoyed him sodomizing me. I felt nothing. My only desire was to have an organism. For some reason I had an insatiable need to have sex. I was the aggressor this time. I was using his body and it didn’t please me and I needed more, but after an hour of heavy sex he couldn’t perform.
I laughed at him and he tried to hit me, but I slapped him and he fell across the room. I didn’t realize I was that strong,” she said twisting her hands one on top of the other. “He called me a bitch, Zoey, can you imagine that? He made me a bitch early and now he said that he was going to do to me what his friends had done.
When he reached for me, I broke his arm, and then I hit him again across the face with my fist. When he fell backwards on the floor he hit his head on a table. There was a large wound on his head,” she gestured to her forehead, her hands trembling, “with blood oozing from the cut. The blood drove me crazy and I can’t remember much after that.” She wrapped both arms around her waist.
“I must have blacked out because when I woke, I was kneeling near him and my mouth was full with blood. I knew I shouldn’t have been happy but I was. I enjoyed empting him of all that made him a horrible human being. I guess that makes me horrible too?”
Terry was asking for words to make her feel better and to validate that she wasn’t this cold bloodied creature who prey on mortals, but I couldn’t find the words to disagree with her. She had been a horrific dreadful person with her actions.
“Go take a shower. We need to get out of here and now. I don’t know where we’re going, but we have to get away from here. You are nothing but trouble, Terry.”
Closing my eyes and placing my hand to my mouth I looked at her. She had too much feelings to be a cold bloodied killer. Why doesn’t Sebastian come and take that burden from her and change her. I didn’t want to make her feel bad, but she had been warned, just like I tried to warn her about Aare at the bar.
Terry lowered her head and wandered to the shower.
I took that time to pack. Then I remembered Ann and Robbie. I had Ann’s number. Maybe she could give us shelter wherever she had gone. I found her number in my wallet in my purse, the one Aare didn’t take from me when he had me abducted. He placed all my belongings together. He thought I would never get out of that castle.
“Ann.”
“Who is this?” Her voice sound as if she was far away or she was whispering.
“This is Zoey.”
“Zoey? Are you alright? I thought you were dead or something. Robby said that he knew those two werewolves and they work for a bounty. There was a bounty on your head. And he said they work for vampires.”
“I know that now, but no, I’m still alive. It would take more than a kidnapping to kill me.” I tried to sound up beat. “I got away from those werewolves and a vampire, but I need a favor.”
“Anything. Sebastian gave Robbie enough money for us to live on for the rest of our lives. And for that I’m thankful. Where is he?”
“I don’t know where Sebastian is, but he’s planning on joining me.” Not the whole truth. I didn’t like lying to Ann but this was an emergency. “I have to leave this room and I need a place to stay until Sebastian finds me.”
“We would be happy to take you. We live in Seattle.” She sound a bit embarrassed about it. And she should be. Sebastian told her to leave town and not stay around for that detective to find her and ask her questions.
“Give me the directions to your place.” I wrote the directions down and handed them to Terry who was standing in front of me waiting. I said goodbye to Ann and that I would see her in an hour.
“Terry, keep this for me. Don’t give this to anyone but Sebastian. It’s where I’m going and I suggest you find a place to hide.”
“Where the fuck can I go without you?” Terry questioned. Her eyes wide and her voice hoarse and shrill.
“That life we had before is gone. I can’t very well go to a boyfriend and tell him that I’ll be hanging out with him and by the way I’m waiting to become an immortal. Like a vampire. It might go over with one of my hookups, but sooner or later he will sober up and realize that it’s true. Do you see what I mean?” she said to me.
“Pick up your bag and come with me.” I inhaled. What s
he said made sense and I didn’t want to bring her with me, but I had little choice in the matter because Terry was right.
Chapter Ten-Zoey
Terry and I drove up to an entrance in a very elegant wooded gated neighborhood on the outskirts of Seattle. I rang the buzzer and heard Ann’s voice.
“It’s me, Zoey.” And the gate opened. It was almost a mile to the house, with trees and paved driveway that led to a stately style manor.
“How much money did Sebastian give them?” Terry asked. “I hope once he changes me I can get something equal to that. Just think, servants and strapping young men to satisfy my every whim.”
“I don’t think he does that for everyone. They helped me out of a jam.”
“What do you think I’m doing, and besides I’m your friend, and Sebastian owes me and I aim to collect.” I shot her a quick glance. It looks like I was taking care of her instead of the opposite way around.
Terry glanced my way as I turned the corner and the house came into view. She said, “I guess this is what you call hiding in plain sight.” I knew what she meant. Instead of them going to a small town and out in the woods somewhere, they found an estate in the richest neighborhood of Seattle.
We parked the car under the entryway to the front door and Terry and I jumped out. She stood waiting until I walked around to her side, “Did you tell her you were bringing a friend?”
“No, and let me do the talking,” I said.
“I hope you don’t try to disguise what I am.”
“Heaven forbid if I ever told them you were almost an undead.” I rolled my eyes at her. “I don’t have to tell her because the minute her boyfriend sees you he will know.”
The door opened and Ann stood smiling and looking like the servant and not the owner of this mansion. She wore a pair of jeans and a red and black flannel shirt. “Zoey, it’s good to see you.” She grabbed me and hugged me. “Who is your beautiful friend?”
The Soul of a Vampire Book 2 Page 5