by Devon Ashley
A sharp pain pierced Noel’s heart. He groaned uncontrollably and reached for it, drawing the attention of everyone in the room, causing panic. He applied pressure to it, as if it would somehow ease the pain. He had never felt such agonizing pressure before. His body slowly stumbled to the floor.
Some people could feel it when their loved ones died. Was this that moment? Had Abby been given that fatal blow? Had Morphus been able to weaken her enough to get a read on her? If he had, he would have learned how to kill her and created something with the necessary components to destroy her blood.
He felt a soft touch on the back of his shoulder. He could hear Emily call to him but her voice was distorted, like he was hearing her from under water. He couldn’t answer. The pain expanded and traveled down through his limbs and up through his throat, paralyzing him.
He heard muffled gasps, followed by complete silence. Noel forced his eyes open. A warm glow streamed down from the ceiling and a lifeless lump materialized on the floor. A swarm of hunters ran to it and swallowed it up. Noel felt rough tugging on his arm. His hearing was returning to normal as he heard Emily more clearly.
“Noel, come on,” she pleaded. “I can’t carry you both.”
The pain in his chest seceded. He clumsily returned to his feet and headed towards the mass. Most of the advisors were still in the background, hesitant or unwilling to approach. Noel and Emily weaved through the bodies. The sight horrified him. Abby was completely drenched in blood.
“Don’t touch her!” he yelled violently. No one had at that point, but he couldn’t risk them coming into contact with Abby’s blood.
A large gash in her side was the most obvious point of loss. He felt her heart and neck and smeared blood all over himself in the process. He wasn’t sure if there was a pulse. Please be unconscious. He swept his arms underneath her and picked her up. She hung heavy in his arms.
He checked the floor for any remaining blood. Only a small fraction had leaked out. Or else there wasn’t much left to lose.
Quietly, he whispered to Emily, “Wipe up all the blood before you leave.”
She was curious but she didn’t question him. The crowd silently parted.
“Hey!” Emily yelled, stopping everyone dead in their tracks. She had seized Roger’s right wrist and pulled him towards her. Valerie’s amulet was grasped tightly in his hand. Noel looked to Abby’s neck. Sure enough, the amulet was gone. Roger must have grabbed for it in the one instant he turned away to push through the crowd.
Emily ripped the amulet from his hand. “She’s not dead yet,” she spat, throwing his hand away. Roger backed out of the crowd. Emily turned to Christoph and held out her hand. “Give me your shirt.”
“What? Why?”
She forcefully grabbed his collar and yanked him towards her. “Give me your shirt!” she yelled. Others in the crowd backed away, including Darby and Mira. Fearful of the thoughts behind her eyes, he gave her the shirt. She quickly soaked up the blood and hustled to catch up to Noel, who had already made it to the exit.
He eyed Lincoln and the Chancellor as they whispered in the background. Disappointment, not elation, covered their faces.
Emily rushed the halls ahead of him and prepped the transfusion equipment.
“Lock the door,” he demanded.
“Jesus Christ,” she said, once she returned and saw Abby collapsed on the bed. “Noel…”
He knew what she was thinking. Ever since Abby’s last transfusion, Noel had Emily give blood on a recurring basis to stock up for this very moment. He too, realized it may not be enough.
“She’s lost so much blood.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he urged. “We’ve just got to keep her from losing it all. The quicker we turn her around, the less damaging it’ll be for her in the end.”
Noel inserted a needle into Abby’s arm and started transferring the blood. “Don’t forget your gloves.”
Emily snapped them on and began sopping up the blood from Abby’s wounds. “Noel, pull it back out,” she said looking up towards him.
“What? Why?”
“Because it’s not gonna stay in.”
Emily was working on the huge gash in Abby’s side. She couldn’t get the blood to stop seeping from the wound.
“Crap,” he moaned in frustration. “Does it go all the way through?”
“I don’t know. Can you pull her towards you?”
Noel gently pulled Abby’s opposite side toward him. Her upper arm fell lifelessly to the bed. The distressed expression on Emily’s face as she examined her backside said it all.
“There’s surgical needles and thread in the first aid box.” He motioned with his head toward the box.
“You know how to do stitches?”
“And quick.”
“What about her insides?” she asked worriedly.
He had originally thought the wound was superficial. Even though Emily discovered she was pierced through, the two holes were only inches apart. He hoped the hit came at an angle, which would minimize an injury to anything important.
“Did anything get pierced?”
“You’re asking me? I don’t have a flippin’ clue where organs go.”
“Trade places with me.”
Half an hour later, both her front and back gashes were laced. Luckily, her insides had no severe damage – at least nothing he wasn’t able to fix momentarily. Emily went behind him and wiped the blood away. She applied the homemade remedy to Abby’s wounds (to her disgust) and covered them with dressings. Noel started the transfusion again.
“Well?” asked Emily when they were done.
“We’ve done all we can. Now we wait and see.”
Emily nodded in agreement. This was the first time he looked at her since he began working on Abby’s stitches. She was clearly aching. He just realized Emily held her up in the air with a freshly broken arm and never once moaned about it.
He also noticed the bandages on her good arm were bright red on the underside. Concerned, he motioned to her arm, “You’re bleeding. Did you break a stitch?”
Emily examined her dressings. “I don’t think so. I must have leaned into Abby’s wounds.”
“Let’s change the dressings. I can’t have you both out of commission.”
Noel unwound the cotton. Layer after layer had absorbed the blood. Oh, crap. He unwrapped the final layer, exposing the skin. The blood had soaked all the way through. He pulled a bottle of antiseptic from the kit and quickly cleaned the blood away, pressing deep into the wounds. She flinched in pain. Once clean, he realized her cuts hadn’t completely closed yet. He spread the remedy across her arm, paying particular attention to the open areas. She winced as it burned the more sensitive tissues underneath the skin.
“So how long will it take her to recover?”
Noel’s face softened. He wasn’t quite sure himself.
“She will recover, right?” Emily asked, frightful.
He shrugged. “Only time will tell.” He began winding a roll of fresh dressing around her arm. “Do you feel up to watching her for a few hours? There’s something I need to do and I’m on a bit of a time constraint.”
“Will it help Abby?”
“Not today,” he said honestly. “But it’ll help her heal.”
She nodded in agreement. “Do you mind if I invite Darby and Mira to stay with me?”
“Afraid to be alone?” he asked playfully.
“No. It’s just Darby is also O-negative,” she said solemnly.
Noel stopped wrapping the gauze and stared at her.
“It couldn’t hurt to have a little more blood ready to go, right?”
He continued wrapping. “And Mira? Is she O-negative too?”
“No. But there’s no way I can get one here without getting the other.”
Noel cut and secured Emily’s bandage. “Sure. Just keep everyone else out.” He grabbed Valerie’s amulet from the nightstand, picked up Abby’s wicca bag and left without saying anything further.<
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Chapter Forty-One
Emily went around the room and collected miscellaneous items that needed to be thrown away: Christoph’s shirt, worn gauze soaked with blood, needles, plastic tubing, gloves, etc. She knew the needles should have been disposed of properly, but the plastic bag was all she had. Once compiled, she told Darby and Mira she would return in a few, that she needed to take the bag down to the incinerator.
“I’ll do that for you,” Mira offered, jumping to her feet.
Darby slowly looked her way, still dazed from the blood loss.
“No, I got it.” She needed to be certain the items were burned beyond recognition to destroy all traces of Abby’s blood. “Just don’t touch anything, okay?” she added, leaving the room.
The incinerator was on the outskirts of the property. At some point in the past, the Order felt compelled to study their enemy by dissecting umpteen subjects. They needed a place to destroy what was left of the bodies, so the incinerator was built. This week, it had been lit to destroy the demonic bodies Morphus had been so kind to invite to the training session. The fire was still going strong, though the bones were probably long gone. Emily tossed the bag into the fire and slammed the heavy metal door shut.
As she made her way back, she detoured to the kitchen for snacks, particularly for Darby’s sake, who was weak from donating blood. The most common watering hole in the manor, she was not surprised to find it occupied. Though he wasn’t a member of the Order, Daniel was next on the list of people Emily least wanted to talk to.
He seemed depressed, sitting there with his coffee, his damaged leg atop a second chair. She kindly said hello but didn’t really mean it. She rummaged the pantry and ignored several heavy sighs coming from the table. Finally, on the fourth, she gave in.
“Where’s Christoph?” she asked.
“Packing. He has an early flight out tomorrow,” he answered dully.
“That didn’t take long.” Abby hadn’t been back but for a few hours. She placed a bag of chips, a few granola bars and a jar of nuts into a bag.
“I’d be gone too if I could,” he said with a hint of depression.
“Uh, Daniel, you can.” Emily headed for the refrigerator to look for water and some fruit.
“Phillip wants me to stay here until I’m healed. In case I need physical therapy.”
That was total crap. Hunters never needed physical therapy. They healed fast and never lost their flexibility or muscle strength. Daniel chose to stay on his own. Perhaps the battle had gotten to him. That was something Emily understood first hand, and she hated to feel pity for her nemesis.
Emily sighed and sat down across from him. She passed him one of the candy bars she found hidden in the freezer, which he gladly accepted.
“I take it you’re not interested in sleeping.”
Daniel looked at her suspiciously.
“Daniel, it’s five A.M. It’s time to go to bed and the pot of coffee you made has about two cups left in it.”
He still didn’t answer. He shrugged and rubbed the foil wrapper in circles on the table.
“You know, after I got my ass handed to me by Eraticus, I had nightmares for months. Still do occasionally. Just when I’ve moved on and life’s going great, I dream it all over again. I can still feel the ground shaking as he charged and the hot, rank air that he blew in my face when he had me pinned. And it irritates the hell outta me that I replay that nightmare in my mind. It’s like I’m reviewing the tapes over and over again to see if there’s something I could have done to change the outcome.”
“And was there?” he asked solemnly.
“Do you want my list or the list I have for the Order cause they’re both pretty freakin’ long.” Emily sighed. “First and foremost, I was stupid. I followed the vampire into that cavern like a lamb to slaughter. He could’ve been ambushing me with a hundred vampires. My instincts told me to turn away, to try another day and I didn’t do it. Look what it got me.”
She paused and dazed into nothingness, recalling that night all over again. “What I don’t get, is why we’re all scattered across the globe. Why can’t we be in groups of two or three? Why was I expected to fight Eraticus all by myself?”
“Why couldn’t all nine of us follow a few minutes behind you that night?” he added.
“Exactly!” Emily exclaimed, happy someone else was finally saying it. “Why did the Order do nothing all these years? Maybe we couldn’t kill him. Hell, we didn’t know there was a sword out there created for that purpose. But are ya telling me we couldn’t have protected each other long enough to keep him away? Ten of us and one of him. Maybe we would’ve lost the occasional hunter but we sure as hell wouldn’t have lost ‘em all.”
Emily grabbed her bag and prepared to leave. On her way out she added, “Hey.”
Woefully, he turned to face her.
“So you got your ass handed to you. Learn from it and move on. It may have been the first enemy to get the better of you, but it won’t be the last.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Coming out of a long stupor, Abby’s first instinct was to call for Noel, but it came out as more of a whimper. Luckily he was already there, laying behind her with his chest flush against her back and arm draped over her.
“I’m right here,” he whispered in her ear, gently kissing her neck.
She felt his warmness seep in and spread through her body, which felt completely drained of energy. The burning sensation in her chest she had become accustomed to these past two months was gone. There was no way it was gone forever. It was just weakened, as she was.
“I thought I lost you.”
The sadness in his voice disheartened her. He pulled her in tighter and nuzzled the back of her neck. Exhausted, it was difficult to find the strength to move her hand towards his. Once discovered, he applied a bear hold to it.
She licked her lips and swallowed to wet her throat. “This time you almost did.”
He moaned his disapproval. She felt his head hit the pillow behind her. “Do you remember what happened?”
Unfortunately, she remembered everything, right down to the slightest detail. “Let’s just say I had to dig deeper into my powers than I wanted to.” Her voice failed towards the end of that sentence. Not from defeat or having to give into her darker side when the moment called for it, but from utter exhaustion. She could feel herself slipping back into the coma.
“Noel,” she yawned, slowly, weakly. “Don’t let go.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered. Was he getting quieter? Was she falling deeper into unconsciousness? She could barely make out the words, “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
He was there as promised. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been out, but he hadn’t moved an inch. With great difficulty, she nudged herself sideways to face him, waking him up in the process. She looked deeply into his chocolate eyes and smiled, and gently ran the back of her fingers across his cheek. He relaxed his eyes to a close and let out a deep sigh of relief.
Noel pulled her in closer and pressed his face into hers. The gentle strokes to the back of her neck made her melt, made her moan. He lifted her chin towards him and she felt his warm lips press into hers ever so softly. A shiver traveled the length of her spine and the fire in her chest went into overdrive as his hand moved from her head down the curves of her body. She dug her fingers deep into his hair and pulled him closer, yearning for more.
She could feel the haze return once more and her grip loosened accordingly. As her body weakened, he released her. She groaned in disappointment, trying to maintain her sight on his warm eyes.
As she succumbed to the sleepiness, she smiled and whispered, “Hold that thought.”
He chortled softly. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
One week later, Abby was in the fetal position resting in Valerie’s bed. Her recovery had been annoyingly slow. Her wounds still hadn’t healed and her powers were missing in action. She was about ten percent healed and figured she had a
good three month rehabilitation before her.
Noel had promised they could leave the following week, if she could access her powers even the slightest bit. Though it wasn’t the ideal place to recover, the manor was safe and demon free. And even in her weakened state, she could push around the cowards here. She knew they had overstayed their ‘welcome’. Sadly, she wasn’t surprised by the lack of ‘thank you’s’ and ‘glad you’re doing well’. They were ready to move on and Abby’s presence was a daily reminder of one of the Order’s most horrific tribulations.
The sandwich Noel brought her was sitting next to her on the bed, untouched. She couldn’t take any more food. He had been stuffing so much down her, determined to keep her energy levels up, that she felt like a stuffed turkey. She did drink the tea he brought her – something from Madam Melina. She said it would help ease her through the process of healing. It certainly helped with the nausea.
Noel had curled in on the other side of her and fallen asleep. Thankfully, she hadn’t been interested in solitude since her return, for he was not allowing her to have it anyway. Determined to keep her in sight, he was almost always in the same room, if not making direct physical contact. He only left her to go to that stupid kitchen to get her more food. She had seriously contemplated shoving it into different hiding spots when he wasn’t looking.
Abby snapped the old hardback book in her hands shut. The quiet thud was enough to wake him.
“Anything good?” he asked.
She handed the book his way. It was the Frankenstein book from the basement bookcase. Earlier she had wobbled down to the basement bedroom and packed her old trinkets. She snapped off the latch and closed the basement forever.
His eyes widened as he examined the book. “Is this a first edition? Where’s it from?”
“You don’t wanna know,” she scowled. He didn’t question it further.
He flipped through the delicate pages.
“Did you know this story was first released in 1818? Just four years after the monster the Order created went violent and killed five of their advisors. I didn’t have a prayer of fitting in with the world, did I? No wonder they thought I was Frankenstein’s monster,” she glowered.