Cole’s grip on Sam’s hand tightened. His expression was neutral and an almost-smile curved his lips. Only their connection let Sam know how desperately afraid he was. He managed to keep that slightest of smiles as he met Wynn’s gaze levelly. “Nothing that mattered,” he said calmly.
“Really?” Wynn’s blue eyes were as cold as Falcon’s and as sharp and searching as the raptor his daughter was named after. “I read this book last night. Aside from the abysmal writing, I found it extremely interesting and filled with a great deal that matters.” He glanced at Sam, and Cole shifted forward slightly, shielding her. The move was so subtle even Sam had a hard time telling if it was deliberate or not. It was only her connection to him that confirmed Cole’s fears Wynn had decided Sam was the source of Cole’s defection from the ranks and meant to punish her for it.
Wynn frowned. Sam wasn’t sure if he’d noticed Cole’s protective stance, or if his frown was the result of his general dissatisfaction with the entire situation. His voice was as chill as his expression when he addressed Cole again. “Falcon had the chance to tell her own version of recent events. It was a very absorbing discussion.”
I’ll bet, Sam thought. She could just imagine the sort of lies Falcon had been telling her father. Anger tinged the fear in her heart and she glared at the other woman.
It exploded when Wynn turned icy eyes on Cole. “You realize I’m going to kill you slowly for raping Falcon.”
“That lying little slut,” Sam growled. “He never assaulted her. Cole’s never touched her in anger! He for damned sure never hurt her!”
Wynn transferred his attention from Cole to Sam. “According to this....” He held up Sam’s book. “And according to my daughter’s own testimony, Cole did a great deal more than hurt her. If I don’t change the future that you yourself have told me will happen, he’ll end up murdering her.”
“Cole didn’t murder her! He stopped her from murdering innocent people!” Sam said hotly. The anger now far outweighed the fear in her heart.
“Samantha,” Cole said carefully. His mental voice begged her not to anger Wynn further.
“No! I’m not going to stand here and let him say those things about you,” she said. “I know you never did anything that Falcon didn’t order you to do. You followed her every wish right up until the day you finally had enough of her lies and violence. You only stopped believing in her when you finally couldn’t take it any more.”
“I see you’ve been taken in by his pretty face and prettier words,” Falcon said. “So was I, for a long time. I believed he loved me right up until the moment he….” She left the sentence hanging as if it were too painful for her to continue. Her voice was soft and her eyes radiant. If Sam hadn’t known how perfidious the other woman was, she would have believed Falcon was concerned that Cole had somehow misled Sam and that Sam was in real danger from him. As it was, Sam knew the radiance was sheer joy that Falcon was in control of her father. Once more Falcon was the dominant force in a situation and everyone danced according to the strings she pulled. She’d sit back and smile and appear utterly innocent while she consigned Cole to death again.
“You live in the right town,” Sam spat. “You can act with the best of them. You beat Meryl Streep all hollow!”
Falcon smiled sweetly. “Poor thing. He really has you wrapped about his finger, doesn’t he? We should try to help her, Father.”
The look of pride and tenderness on Wynn’s face was enough to gag Sam.
Before she could say what sprang into her mind, Cole interrupted. “Falcon’s right. Samantha’s not a part of this.” His grip on her hand was painfully tight. “She should leave. This is something for the family to settle without any outsiders involved.”
“Shut up, Cole,” Sam ordered softly. The warmth she felt at his efforts to protect her colored her voice but didn’t mean she’d let him have his way in this. “Falcon isn’t about to let me walk out of here. She may not have actually wanted you because she loved you but she wanted to own you. I took you away from her and she isn’t going to let that slide.”
Falcon made a noise of anger, and Cole settled himself more firmly between Sam and danger. His mental voice was screaming caution and care.
Sam was not immune to his pleading and subsided, settling for glaring at Falcon.
Murmurs ran through the assembled vampires and Wynn held up his hand, regally gesturing for silence. “Cole’s decision to take a human lover is not the issue here. I must decide if he is guilty of raping my daughter,” he said sadly.
“Never!” Sam declared hotly. “If Falcon said so, she’s lying.”
Cole’s fingers tightened warningly around hers, but she could feel his gratitude as well as his concern. This time was so very different from that earlier day he’d faced his brother’s justice. This time he had a champion ready to speak up for him against whatever accusations were hurled against him. This time he didn’t stand alone.
“Never,” Sam whispered both aloud and in his mind. “You’ll never be alone as long as I’m alive.”
Cole turned slightly, a smile of such pure joy lighting his face and mind Sam had to smile in response.
“I love you,” he said clearly, the words ringing through the large room. “Whatever comes, that won’t change,” he said with equal force. His mind declared the truth of what his lips spoke. I’ll see you are sent away where you’ll be safe. Go to Mexico. Go anywhere you want as long as it’s far from Wynn and Falcon, he ordered.
“I won’t leave,” Sam answered aloud. “And you know damned good and well that you can’t make me.”
Cole chuckled. “So I’ve learned.” His voice was gentle and his eyes glowed faintly with love and demon fire.
“It damned well took you long enough,” Sam retorted with the same emotions coloring her words.
Wynn frowned and held his hand up again, imperiously, warningly. The gesture was a touch too dramatic, and the fear Sam had felt of him faded further as her feeling of being in a movie increased. “The mortal doesn’t matter,” Wynn stated, agreeing to Cole’s request, and her irritation grew.
Sam curled her lip and transferred her death glare from Falcon to Wynn. The mortal? Had he actually called her ‘the mortal’? She half-expected some old Sci-Fi hero to appear and rescue them. “Good God! So do you see yourself as Ming the Merciless or Darth Vader?” And as for the mortal not mattering, well, given half a chance, she’d show him just how much she did matter.
He ignored her and addressed Cole. “Based on Falcon’s testimony and your own assurance that the events in this book actually happened or could happen in the future, I have no choice but to declare you no longer a part of my family.”
Overly theatrical to the point of affectation, his words still brought cramping fear to Sam’s gut. Excommunication from his family had injured Cole far more than his actual execution. She waited for the return of the heartbreak Cole felt the first time he was rejected by his family.
It didn’t come. Sadness radiated from her lover, but it was sorrow for Wynn’s delusions. Cole now knew his brother wouldn’t see his daughter was a monster until it was too late. One day Falcon would kill Wynn, Cole didn’t doubt that for an instant. And that thought brought a measure of sadness to his soul.
Cole’s emotions triggered Sam’s barely quiescent anger. “Cole hasn’t done anything wrong! He slept with Falcon because she wanted him to. Falcon’s the one who seduced him,” Sam declared with calm she didn’t feel. “If you can’t see that she’s lying, then you’re even more stupid than that book makes you look.”
Wynn snarled and motioned toward his guards. Cole took his brother’s action as a lethal threat to his lover and set his himself more firmly before her. But the guards obviously had prior orders and grabbed the Irishman.
“My decision is plain. Cole is guilty of serious crimes against my daughter and our family structure. I condemn him to death, the sentence to be carried out immediately.” Wynn’s statement was followed immediately by
Sam’s shout of denial.
Wynn’s guards clamped hard fingers on her arms. She fought against the bruising pressure but even though they were human, not vampire, they were big, strong men and her struggles were useless.
Their actions did, however, fuel Cole’s already energized protective urges. “Don’t hurt her,” he ordered, his eyes glowing and fangs extended. He shook off one of his captors, sending the man tumbling into a cache of observers. Sam was jerked back by one of her guards, pain shooting through her shoulder. Cole felt it and rage joined his compulsion to shield her from harm.
“I said, leave her alone!”
Sam had never really believed that time could slow down when something awful happened but time did stretch and nearly stop as she caught movement to her left and a thug stepped fully into her view, his gun straight-armed at her lover.
Simultaneous with the roar of the pistol, Cole’s head snapped back and then forward before he dropped to his knees and fell to his side. Sam couldn’t scream, not even as a tiny thread of blood leaked from the perfectly round hole in his forehead. She could only pull against her captor’s hold and stare into Cole’s open eyes as his consciousness slipped from her mind. She held as tightly to his thoughts as she could, refusing to let him go. She couldn’t face living without him. Her mind empty of his presence and love, she didn’t flinch when the brute who murdered Cole turned his gun on her and fired. She didn’t care.
Chapter Fourteen
“Sam? Can you hear me? Come on, Sam. Wake up.”
Sam’s head felt heavy and filled with strands of lead floss. She tried to concentrate on the voice calling to her. It didn’t sound familiar. Still… “Cole?”
“That’s it, honey. Wake up. You can do it.”
It was so hard to think. Sam forced her eyes open but everything was fuzzy. She tried to call for her lover again but her mouth didn’t want to work.
“Good. Ms. Bailey? Can you understand me?”
As her eyes finally focused, Sam stared at the stranger leaning over her. She didn’t recognize the dark-haired, dark-eyed man. “Who’re you?” she managed to croak.
“I’m Dr. Rodriquez. It’s alright. You’re in a hospital but you’re going to be fine.”
She blinked. A hospital? Had she actually been shot then? But surely a gunman who could put a bullet firmly in Cole’s brain wouldn’t miss her. She was sure of that. Cole was dying and she was dying with him.
She managed to turn her head slightly and stared in horrified fascination at the monitor recording her strong, unvarying heartbeat. She twitched her lips and felt the slight pressure of an oxygen tube resting beneath her nose. It didn’t completely block the medicinal smell of the room. She tried holding her breath and almost immediately felt the compulsion to breathe. “I’m alive,” she rasped. Why? Why was she still alive when Cole was gone?
The doctor grinned. “Yes, you are. Though I have to say it could have been a near-run thing. That was a big explosion and you took quite a blow to the head.”
“Blow?” Her tongue didn’t want to work. Her limbs felt too heavy to lift and her head refused to clear. She felt like she had when she broke her leg and the ER gave her pain drugs.
The doctor smiled. “Yes, you fell and took a pretty good whack to the back of your head. The good news is there’s no fracture, and the concussion isn’t as bad as it might have been.”
Fell? Concussion? But she’d been shot.
Dazed and confused, she answered his questions about her hearing and sight, about how much sensation and movement she had in her limbs. “Do you remember anything about how you were injured?”
She shook her head. She wasn’t going to say what she remembered. It obviously didn’t match the injuries she had. She fully remembered seeing Cole collapse while fighting Wynn’s men. It terrified her to see him lying still on the floor and feel his mind retreating into nothing.
Where was Cole? She couldn’t feel him. Her mind was heartbreakingly empty of his presence and she knew he was dead. What had Wynn done with Cole’s body? It shouldn’t make a difference, of course; Cole wouldn’t know or feel whatever happened to his corpse but it mattered to Sam. She didn’t want to think of the body she loved so much tossed into a ravine or landfill. Nausea filled her.
The doctor was smiling in sympathy, unaware of the path her thoughts were following. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember what happened. It’s very common to not remember an accident or even a good bit of time leading up to it.” He made a note in the chart in his hand. “There was an explosion where you work.”
All she could do was stare blankly at him. His words registered but they made no sense. Then it all fell horribly in place. His statement froze her soul. The squiggles on the heart monitor increased their rate. Sam nodded. She remembered. But that explosion had been weeks ago.
The hum and rush of blood through her veins and the bellows sound of her lungs couldn’t destroy the silence inside her mind. She closed her eyes. She didn’t need to worry about Cole’s body or his murder any more. Cole wasn’t dead, because he’d never been alive. Cole wasn’t in her head anymore because he’d never really been there. It had been an illusion after all. The gentle thoughts and flaming desires she’d become so used to sharing were gone forever.
The doctor couldn’t feel her anguish. His voice was hearty and pleased as he acknowledged how gratified he was she remembered that much. “That’s excellent. You seem to be coming out of this quite well.” He cleared his throat. “As I said, there was an explosion. You suffered a head injury. You’ve been unconscious for some time.”
“How long?” she asked.
“At least an hour,” the doctor answered.
She nodded and turned her head away, wondering how it was possible to live an entirely new life in an hour.
* * * *
“Don’t worry,” the nurse said misinterpreting Sam’s reaction to the news that she’d be fine. “We haven’t found any neurological damage. You’ll be back on your feet in no time.” Her accent was as heavy as Lurleen’s.
Sam simply nodded. No damage. Nope. Not a bit. The body would be just fine. She wasn’t worried about whether or not she had brain trauma or would have problems later. Right now, she didn’t particularly care.
No, there was no neurological damage, just the emotional damage caused by the destruction of a life and a love she’d mourn forever. It didn’t matter if that life was a complete fantasy or that the person she loved most was no more than a phantom created by her own imagination.
She swallowed back a mouthful of bitterness. She couldn’t, didn’t dare tell anyone. How could she explain to them that she cried for a man that had never lived? Her heart ached for the sight of soft light dancing in violet eyes, the seductive sound of a cultured Irish accent, the too-talented touch of a lover’s gentle hand, and the taste of sweet blood from his veins. She burned with a grief that she couldn’t share with anyone, because she mourned what had never existed.
She barely noted the nurse leaving, absently answering the young woman’s questions. No, she didn’t want the TV on. No, she didn’t need anything.
She only needed Cole.
She likewise barely noted the entrance of the doctor again. She didn’t care about his opinion. She didn’t want to know whether she’d be admitted to the hospital or not. She wanted to curl into a ball and stay there. She wanted to fall back into an endless sleep where she had a life that was as perfect as it was possible for a life to be. Here, there was nothing but mediocre emptiness.
“I think I can let your family back in now,” the doctor was saying. “Now, I’ve instructed them that you tire easily and when I say the visit is over, it’s over.” He seemed to be trying to reassure her, for some reason. “Just let the nurse know if you start to feel too tired.”
She was tired already. She was tired of this empty life. She just wanted them to all go away and leave her alone. There wasn’t anyone here she wanted to be with. Alone: wasn’t that all she had t
o look forward to anyway?
Sam turned her head toward the door. “Hello, Frank.”
It had been a long time since Sam had seen such concern on Frank’s tanned face. Years of west Texas sun, hard living, and harder partying had aged Frank Bailey far beyond the years his older sister wore more gracefully. The lines at the corners of his eyes and lips only increased his resemblance to their father. For once, that similarity didn’t awaken grief in Sam’s heart. It was already too full of new pain for an old one to intrude.
Lurleen, her pink and spangled party clothes still in place, trailed Sam’s disheveled brother.
Sam accepted Lurleen’s kiss and hug while Frank settled for squeezing his sister’s hand. Sam wasn’t surprised. If he wasn’t fighting with her, he never quite knew what to say. Lurleen made up for Frank’s taciturn nature, rattling off a series of questions for which she required no answer and explanations for which she required no comment. She reported all she knew about the explosion at work and who had been hurt and who had walked away unscathed. She insisted on knowing what Sam remembered about the explosion. Sam could tell it had already assumed capitalization status in Lurleen’s mind. If her friend was disappointed by Sam’s lack of interest or her apathetic answers, she didn’t show it.
Sam wouldn’t have been able to answer Lurleen even if she felt more like talking. Her memory was more than a little hazy and whatever medicine the doctor had given her dampened her senses. Work and that life seemed a very long time ago, over a month as far as Sam was concerned. It felt even longer than that.
Lurleen cooed over Sam’s injury and murmured understanding of some mental vagueness. Sam doubted that Lurleen would believe her real reason for tentative answers. She was pretty sure that living a completely different life in your head didn’t count as an acceptable reason for much of anything. Lurleen would just pat her hand and tell her it was a dream and Sam didn’t want to hear that. She wanted to mourn Cole in peace.
Vampire Encounters - Second Chances Page 16