by Fall, Carly
He hoped that his recurring dream of Natalie stayed away today. He would hate to wake up Holly with the freak-out that always came when he had the dream. Not only that, but it seemed so wrong to dream of Natalie while lying in bed with Holly. He rubbed her shoulder again, smelled her hair one more time. He did an internal check on what he was feeling. He didn't feel any guilt, but he did feel peace. His raging soul was quiet.
He closed his eyes and sleep soon came.
Chapter 18
Natalie found herself humming as she was seated in the Crystal Door, the best restaurant in Heaven. If she wasn't already dead, the food would be to die for. Although she didn't need to eat, she never turned down an invitation.
As with everything in Heaven, the decor was all white, yet they had thrown in a couple of splashes of beige and forest green in the chairs coverings. Everyone there was dressed in their white robes. The chatter was quiet, but happy. Natalie looked around at all the smiles, and felt for the first time that she may be able to smile without it feeling forced.
Earlier, Kay had come by to check on her. Natalie had the TV on, checking up on Aiden. The picture was somewhat grainy and dark, and she had a difficult time making out what was going on with him. Both her and Kay agreed that it looked like he was sleeping.
"How do you feel?" Kay asked, studying the unclear picture.
"Almost peaceful," Natalie had answered.
Kay nodded. "Good. Let's go to the Crystal Door to celebrate."
Natalie had an emotional war of her own raging inside of her. Yes, she was relieved that the pain was almost gone, and that she was actually getting some peace. However, she knew Aiden was letting go of her, and it made her sad. She carried such love for him in her heart, but she also knew that it was in both of their best interests that he move on with his life.
As her and Kay chatted, they dined on steak and lobster and shared a bottle of Merlot. The food was, as always, fabulous. Natalie loved the fact that she could eat whatever she wanted and not gain an ounce.
Honestly, heaven was a pretty great place.
Chapter 19
Holly woke with only a light headache –nothing that a couple ibuprofen wouldn't kill. She rolled over and stretched on the big bed, actually feeling pretty good considering she consumed an entire bottle of wine. Must have been the good stuff.
Her stress level was hovering in the normal range, and she didn’t feel scared. She felt rested, calm, and safe. She looked over to find Aiden, but he wasn’t there.
She got up, used the bathroom and then decided to snuggle up in that big bed again just for a little while. As she nestled in, the door opened slowly. Aiden appeared, dressed in black fatigues, boots, and a black long-sleeved shirt. If it weren’t for the tray of food he was carrying, he might have looked deadly.
“Hey,” he said as he closed the door.
“Hey yourself.”
He walked to the bed and stood over her. “Sit up. It isn’t everyday I play waiter, and I don’t want to spill anything.”
She sat up against the pillows and he placed the tray over her lap.
She looked at the spread. Bacon and eggs with toast and fruit. And coffee. She sipped her coffee and looked up at him.
“Thank you,” she said. “This is really sweet of you.” She motioned to the side of the bed. “Sit.”
He smiled and did as he was told.
Holly wolfed down her food in record time.
When she became a member of the clean plate club, she wiped her mouth with the napkin, and took another swig of coffee. She leaned back in the pillows. “Ugh. That was delicious. I may never eat again.”
He smiled, took the tray over to the bureau, and then sat down on the bed. “I have to go out tonight,” he said.
“I figured that,” she answered, indicating his clothing. “Are you sure you’re strong enough? It seemed as though you healed up pretty fast within just a few short hours.”
Aiden shrugged his shoulders. “So Emily will be in tonight. You can hang with her. Or the boys always like a new challenger on the Wii, but that has to be after they do their schoolwork. If you decide to stay in your room, you may hear some hammering, which is the contractor doing renovations in the Great Room—we walked through it to get to Central Control where we met with Thaddeus. Cy will most likely be stuck on the computers doing whatever he does. Oh, and you may see a redheaded male around, but he’s nothing to worry about. Just a pain in my ass.”
Holly nodded. She had seen him when he first arrived. “Who is he?”
“His name's Mark,” Aiden hedged.
Holly nodded again and looked at him expectantly. “And? I know he isn’t human. I know he isn’t one of our kind. I can smell it.”
Aiden cleared his throat and looked at the floor.
“He's an angel,” he said quietly, his eyes meeting hers.
Well, how interesting—vampires, humans and angels under one roof. “An angel?”
Aiden sighed. “Long story, Holly. And I promise I’ll give you the details sometime, but my point is that there are people here who want to keep you safe. You don’t have any worries. This place is like Fort Knox in the security department, okay?”
She nodded and put a sticky note on the forefront of her brain to remind herself to get the whole "Mark is an angel" story from Aiden.
He rubbed his face. “Anyway, let’s go over everything that has happened the past few days, Holly. We need to know how they found you. Once we know that, hopefully we can trace who is behind it. Think of anything that you would have done to contact the outside world beyond the people you know. Letters? Phone calls? Emails?”
As she shook her head he said, “Think, Holly. It's important.”
Her mind was a blank. She hadn’t talked to anyone besides Sara the whole time Aiden stayed with her. No one. Well, she had called into work, and she told him about that. And then there was the . . . no.
Her breath hitched as her gaze met Aiden’s. “You told me I was safe. That Thaddeus was in charge now,” her voice was raspy. She told him about going online and looking for the secret code her and her friends had agreed upon before going into hiding, how she had found it in a Yahoo! chat room, and how she had responded to it.
“That has to be it,” Aiden said quietly. He looked over at her laptop bag. “Have you been online since you got here?”
“No,” she said. The implications of what they had put together swam through her mind. Whoever had put up that posting knew her secret code. The only way that could be possible was if that person had one of her friends. For breeding, if what the vampire who attacked her said was true, and she didn't seen any reason he would lie about his plans for her. Holly felt breakfast about to make another appearance all over the sheets as she relayed everything to Aiden.
“Okay,” he said, nothing but cold business. Gone was any warmth from his face. He was in stone-cold killer mode, ready to deal out some damage. He went and grabbled the computer bag. “I need to take this to Cy. He'll be able to pull up the chat room from your history on the browser. Perhaps he can do some fancy computer trace shit on where the message was posted from.”
She nodded, not knowing what to say. One of her dear friends was in big time trouble.
He came back over to the bed. “Holly?” She brought her gaze from the ceiling to meet his. “I swear to you, I'm going to get to the bottom of this. I'm going to find your friend.”
As she looked into his cold eyes, she felt no fear. In fact, she felt blessed to have such a force on her side, and pitied the man or vampire behind this whole scheme. Aiden would bring the wrath of hell on whoever was responsible.
Holly felt an overwhelming wave of worry come over her. Worry for her friend, whoever it was, and terrible worry for Aiden. She grabbed the sides of Aiden’s face and pulled him close within an inch of hers.
“You go out there, and you find out whoever is responsible, but you listen to me vampire. If you come back with even so much as a scratch on you, you'll
be dealing directly with me. And it won’t be a nice experience for you. Understand?”
Then she kissed him. It was a tender kiss, a direct contradiction to her statement. He moaned as her tongue played along his lips, and he pushed her back into the pillows and she laced her arms around his neck.
She broke the kiss. “Aiden, you need to leave right now,” she breathed.
"Agreed," he said, and stood. Without another word, he walked out the door.
Chapter 20
Aiden dropped off the computer to Cy, told him everything Holly had told him, and then caught up with Thaddeus in front of the TV. The newscaster with the spray tan, silicone lips, and shellacked blonde hair told of what police believed was either a really sick serial killer they had nicknamed "The Vampire" or perhaps a pack of wild dogs in downtown Reno. Aiden recognized it as a continuation from the new story he had watched at Holly's.
"The nickname isn't very creative," Thaddeus mused. Obviously, Thaddeus had come to the same conclusion as Aiden. Some vampires who weren't following the rules were responsible, and needed to be dealt with.
Two more bodies had been found, bringing the total up to five within the past two weeks.
“Fuck,” Aiden said under his breath.
“Pretty much,” Thaddeus murmured.
They listened to the rest of the newscaster's spiel, the interview with the detective in charge of the case, and the ever-entertaining interviews with the people who pretended to know the deceased to get on TV, or those who just lived in the neighborhood.
Thaddeus hit the off button as the weatherman came on.
“I’m glad you’re back, Aiden,” Thaddeus said. “I can’t do this alone. Cy is handling the technical shit, and also trying to track down some of our other brothers to get more boots in the dirt. He found Rohan in Greenland, of all places, and supposedly he is on his way to the cave. The others are taking a little more time to get a bead on. So for now, it's you and me.”
Rohan was on his way to seal the cave where The Council rested in stasis. They had decided that it was best for all the members of The Council to be sealed up tight so they couldn't interfere with the Vampire Nation and its new leadership.
Aiden nodded, surprised that Rohan had been traceable. The guy had little to do with anyone, and he didn't really blend in anywhere. As their mother had put it, Rohan had been her failure. He looked more vampire than human, but acted more human that vampire. He had disappeared two hundred years ago, and none of them had heard from him since. Cy was really good at his job to be able to track him down.
Aiden offered his fist. “Well, then let's do it, asshole.”
Thaddeus bumped the knuckles with his own and then said, “Let’s get some toys and go out and play.”
“I get a Glock,” Aiden said as they walked down the hall.
“Deal,” said Thaddeus, “I got myself a sweet new Magnum I want to fool around with.”
Chapter 21
After a shower, Holly emerged from her room and followed the noise to the Great Room. The area was a flurry of activity. Emily was bent over a table with a human man going over some drawings, while other workers pounded nails, threw tape measurers around, and slapped paint on the new walls. A radio played in the background—Pink Floyd if she wasn't mistaken. Emily saw her and waved her over.
“Holly! I’m so glad to see you! Come help me. I’m being overwhelmed with testosterone and I need a female perspective on this.”
They discussed the plans, paint colors, and when the remodel would be fully completed. As Holly walked through the spaces with Emily, she listened to her talk about what she wanted to do with each area, and felt herself relax. Holly appreciated the diversion, and it was going to be really nice when completed. She did have a question burning in her mind. She wanted to know what happened to Robert's mother, Aiden's lover. He had said he didn't want to talk about it, but she needed to know. She decided she would ask Emily when the time was right.
The opportunity presented itself at the end of the renovation tour. They were alone just outside the kitchen.
"Emily, what happened to Robert's mother?"
Emily flinched. She looked down at the floor as if trying to decide what to tell and how much to say. "She was murdered," Emily said softly looking directly at Holly.
Holly gasped. She had no idea it had been such a tragic loss.
"She was human. She went out to take a walk just before dusk. Aiden couldn't go with her. She was attacked, dragged into an alley and stabbed. Someone found her and called an ambulance. Somehow Robert, their son, lived, but Natalie didn't."
Some pieces of the Aiden puzzle fell into place. She had thought he seemed like he was in agony, but she hadn't been sure. Losing someone like that would surely cause awful pain.
"Aiden has never recovered from it. It's like the hurt of the loss and the anger over the situation just churn inside him over and over. My guess is that he looks at what happened as his own personal failure because he wasn't there for her. He can't find any peace."
Holly nodded, unsure of what to say. But Aiden's make-up was making more sense to her. She had wondered where he got his hard edge, and what Emily told her could definitely contribute to it. She remembered the hard face that stared back at her while he told her he would get whoever was responsible for taking her friend. Then she remembered the warm, amber eyes when he talked to his son, Robert, and how they glowed when he spoke to her as well. There were definitely two very separate beings within one body that made up Aiden. The hardcore killer was front and center, yet the warm male lingered somewhere below the surface.
Just then, a big man with kind blue eyes and black hair came out of the kitchen, a male Holly had not met. She felt the fear roll in her gut again. She had been recoiling in panic every time she met a male—human or vampire—for so many years, wondering if this time would be the time she got caught. It was second nature. She took a step back.
“Holly, I'm sorry. This is Hugo. He just arrived a couple of hours ago with a boatload of groceries. He's going to be helping us out in the kitchen and taking care of the house,” Emily said, grabbing Holly’s arm so Holly wouldn’t retreat any further behind her.
Hugo stepped forward and offered his hand to Holly. She shook it. “It's nice to meet you, Hugo,” she said quietly.
“Likewise,” he said. His gray eyes squinting at her, as though he knew her and was trying to place exactly from where.
Just then, Cy came in, wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt. Holly guessed he was the source of the music she'd heard earlier. “Better watch your step there, Hugo. Aiden has claimed that female as his,” he said only half-jokingly.
Holly flushed. “Cy, you’re being ridiculous. Aiden has done no such thing.”
Cy rolled his eyes and shook his head, smiling. “Oh, he doesn’t know it yet, Holly, but he has that territorial thing going whenever he's around you. He has it in big time for you, love.”
Holly wondered if her blush could go any deeper.
Hugo still had her hand in his. “Well then, I better watch my step.” And he let go. He turned to Emily and Cy. “I threw together some food if anyone is hungry.”
Emily said she was famished, and Cy seconded the feeling. Despite the fact that Holly had eaten just a couple of hours ago, she decided to join them.
Emily left to go round up the boys, and Cy and Holly made their way to the new dining room. The large hand-crafted oak table that seated sixteen stood proudly in the center of what was now the dining room. Emily had insisted that the contractors get this room done first so they could all enjoy meals together. She had stuck with the southwestern decorating theme that was throughout the house. The walls were a warm brown with pictures of the desert hanging on them. She had even moved a live cactus into the corner.
Hugo had laid dinner out on the buffet with some plates and forks. Emily came in with the boys, and they all went through the small buffet to get the food. It was fabulous.
Hugo had cooked a whole ch
icken and laced it with a combination of wonderful spices and herbs. There were also green beans, a beautiful green salad, mashed potatoes that melted in the mouth, and a cheesecake for desert. He had also brought in a wonderful Pinot Grigio to compliment the dinner.
Despite her best intentions of not eating a lot, Holly found herself wolfing down the food. It was superb.
Conversation flowed naturally. The boys told her about their tree house they were building in the forest, and invited Holly to take a look at it sometime. They discussed Hugo’s trip in from the East Coast, and Cy had them laughing with stories of his cyber breaking and entering. Holly noticed Mark the Angel was nowhere to be found.
After her second helping, and just a little more wine, Holly sat back in her chair and looked at the people around the table. Family. The word slammed into her brain, and surprised her to say the least. She had only been in the house for a short period of time, and she felt like these people were a family. She had never had a family, just a group of friends, all female vampires, that she deemed her family. It had been so long since she could relax with those of her kind. She felt herself longing to become a member of this household, to belong here. Her eyes misted over, and she looked down at the table hoping that no one had noticed.
“Holly, are you okay?” Emily’s soft voice broke into her thoughts.
She looked at the female sitting next to her. “I am, Emily. I really am.”
Emily took her hand and squeezed.
Hugo began clearing the dishes, talking to Emily about the wine rack he wanted installed in the kitchen. Not only was he a fabulous cook, but he was a wine connoisseur. Emily and Cy laughed about trying to upgrade Thaddeus and Aiden’s scotch to a nice Bordeaux. Holly stood and began helping Hugo clear the dishes and take them to the kitchen.