The Power

by Cynthia Roberts

  “Jesus.” He breathed out against her ear, when he at last lifted his head. Lillian laid her cheek to the strength of his shoulder. She had never felt like this before. With Jackson there hadn’t been sufficient enough time for all of these feelings to fully develop, but she had felt it. At the core of her she had felt it there beneath the surface, brewing hotter and hotter. With Jack, the heat was like an inferno, and she’d be damned if she didn’t want to burn, burn with him.

  “How can it be possible to feel so strongly after only this short of time?” his hands eased down over her exposed shoulders to slip tenderly down her arms and grasp her hands.

  Lillian stared at her white hands nestled within the strength of Jack’s warm, bronzed ones. How alien she appeared next to him, she mused. Lifting her head, she met his heated amber gaze. “Perhaps that is what frightens me.” she confessed, and he kissed her once more, a preciously tender kiss that she swore she would never forget. He was her first, she thought suddenly full of anger and pain. Ewan Derringer had never meant a thing, she swore almost violently. She had not gone willingly to Ewan. What she had felt for the vampire had been fabricated by his powers of persuasion. What she felt for Jack was real, and very much frightening, for where could they possibly go from here? A relationship was impossible! Wasn’t it?

  “What are you thinking? You got all stiff on me.” Jack nudged her chin up once more.

  “I’ve allowed you to get closer to me than any man ever has.” she confessed, looking past his eyes, and into the dark, depths of the night.

  “That’s a good thing, right?” Jack pulled her close. His hands swept up and down her back in a slow rhythm as if he knew that she needed comforting just then. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked in concern, and she dropped her forehead to his shoulder, and stared down at his Italian loafers.

  “Who was he?” the words said out loud were what did her in. Tears gathered in her eyes, surprising her because she had not felt the wetness of tears in nearly a hundred years. It was Jack, she thought suddenly. He was bringing emotions she had thought to be long dead and buried back to the surface! She looked up into his beautiful eyes, and he gently stroked her cheek. “It’s all right, Lilly.” He swore lowly, and he dropped his forehead to rest against her own. She smiled weakly, realizing that in the moment she hadn’t tuned in to his thoughts. She hadn’t felt the need to. Jack said it all with the way that he held her close with the depth of the emotion in his amber gaze.

  “I should go inside. Thank you for dinner, Jack. Your brother was lovely.” she tried to move back out of his arms, but Jack smiled patiently, and he pulled her back. He kissed her, and then he encouraged again, “Tell me.”

  “It was a very long time ago.” Lilly ducked her head to whisper.

  “Someone hurt you?” Jack guessed, and she nodded slowly.

  “How?” he kissed her temple, and she smiled through her tears.

  “I was very young.” she said by way of excuse. “Naïve.”

  “As most young people are.” Jack replied generously. He stroked her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear, and then he kissed the tip of her nose. Lillian smiled awkwardly, and backed away, but Jack held onto her hands. “What is it?” he implored her to go on. Lillian shook her head. It was too difficult.

  “It was a long time ago. None of that matters now, Jack. Just you and now.” she came back to him, and pulled him down to her, kissing him with emotion that had lain dormant inside of her for over a hundred years!

  “Lilly.” Jack called her name softly, and then he tucked her cheek to his shoulder, and held her close. “Whatever it is, please don’t hold back from me. I want to know everything about you.” he was saying, when she jerked back at his words. That wasn’t possible! He could never know everything! Could he? She met his gaze, and became lost within the heat, the emotion that she saw there.

  “Some other time.” She replied, and she backed to her door. Jack followed. He leaned over her, kissing her lingeringly. Her arms wrapped tightly around his broad shoulders, bringing him down to her level, kissing him, wanting him, but afraid to have him all the same.

  “You’re afraid.” he acknowledged, and she nodded. “Why?”

  “Another time, Jack.” She repeated, and she turned the knob, and backed into the house, watching Jack’s smoldering eyes the whole while. “Goodnight.” she whispered, and did not wait for Jack to return the sentiment before she closed the door. “Too deep, much too deep, Lillian.” she scolded herself as she turned, and walked toward her room in the basement.

  Jack walked in stunned silence to his car. What was she hiding from him, he wondered for not the first time tonight? She had told him once that something had happened to her a long time ago. What? Had someone broken her heart? Who alive today didn’t have a broken heart once upon a time! No, Jack thought as he climbed behind the wheel of his car. It was something more, something bigger. He just couldn’t put his finger on what. Damn her! Why wouldn’t she just confide in him? What was going on with her? Didn’t she feel how he felt? Was this a one-sided relationship, and he was just too in awe with her to see it clearly? Jack drove toward his apartment in a fog of unanswered questions. He had just made it to his street when his cell rang. It was Bordello.

  “Stone. You’re never going to guess who turned up?” Bordello’s excited voice came over the line. “Rita Gallenger.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, Shit!” Bordello agreed.

  The two detectives met Dr. Harold at the morgue where the ballsy woman threw Jack a smug smile, and promptly threw back the white sheet that had been covering the very much decomposed body of the same woman they had found dead nearly two weeks ago. There was one significant difference however. Rita Gallenger’s head was not attached. No, the head sat covered on a silver, rolling tray until Dr. Harold had ripped that sheet away from it as well. Jack covered his mouth and nose with his hand and Bordello mimicked his response. The smell of decay caused bile to rise in Jack’s throat. The body was bloated, looking like some movie-prop someone had gone overboard on, the face distorted and grotesque.

  “Where was she found?” Jack asked behind his hand, and it was Bordello who answered.

  “On the rooftop of an abandoned building over on Seventy-third.”

  “The rooftop?” Jack echoed, and Bordello nodded even as he gagged. “Like this?”

  “The head was found some twenty feet away, but yeah.”

  “Don’t forget the stake.” Dr. Harold spoke up enthusiastically.

  “The stake?”

  “There was a wooden stake embedded in her heart, Jack.” Dr. Harold leaned closer to say. Jack’s gaze narrowed.

  “I know. Freaked me out too.” Bordello spoke up loudly. “This case just keeps getting weirder and weirder. Makes me want to go home, get on the Internet, and research everything I can find on vampires and the undead.” He was joking. Jack could hear the laughter in his voice, but Dr. Harold obviously couldn’t because she said, quite seriously, “Been there, done that. Did you know that some people believe the only way to kill a vampire is by decapitation?”

  “You don’t say?” Bordello was egging her on.

  “Yes. Of course, there is another theory.” she went on.

  “And that would be?”

  “Dead blood.” Dr. Harold stated firmly.

  “Dead what?” Jack scoffed angrily. This was getting them nowhere fast. Of course nothing else they did was either, he reasoned.

  “Dead blood, Jack. Vampires feed upon the living, but they can not drink blood from a heart that no longer beats. Dead blood is like poison to them.” Dr. Harold was exuberant in her little speech.

  “So we got crazy people running around, stabbing and decapitating two week old corpses because they believed Miss Gallenger here was a vampire?” He asked to get it right.

  “That’s what I think, yeah.” Dr. Harold nodded her head firmly.

  “There are some weird freaks in this city, man.” Bord
ello grinned, and he shook his dark head.

  “Oh! And what is your theory, Mr. Travolta?” Dr. Harold shot right back, and Jack couldn’t help it, he grinned. Bordello did resemble Travolta quite a lot actually. Bordello glared at Dr. Harold for a split second, and then he elaborated.

  “I think kids are doing this.” he said, and Dr. Harold rolled her eyes heavenward.

  “Kids?” she scoffed.

  “Yeah kids these days are into all that Twilight bullshit! It’s vampires this and vampires that! The kids are obsessed with it.” he explained.

  “Oh? So obsessed that they go on a killing spree that eludes not only the NYPD but also the Feds? Those are some pretty intelligent kids if you ask me!” Dr. Harold spit out harshly. Bordello glared longer this time. “Besides Twilight is a romance novel, Detective, not a psychopathic thriller. If you would pick up a book now and again, you might know that.”

  “All right, children, settle down.” Jack ordered sharply with a laugh in his voice, but he sobered when his eyes rested once again upon the decapitated body of Rita Gallenger. “Could you cover that up please?” Jack asked on a shiver.

  “Weak stomach, Jack?” Dr. Harold taunted, but she covered the body and the head all the same, and they exited the freezing room. “Where have you been all dressed up anyway?”

  “I had a date, not that it is any of your business.” Jack muttered, thinking of Lillian. It wasn’t safe for her to be out alone so late at night, he worried. Why did she do that anyway, roam around at odd hours of the night? He was going to have to talk to her about what was really going on out there at night. He would have to explain to her that it would be safer for her to remain indoors. Damn! This city had never been safe for a woman out there alone, but lately, it was becoming down right catastrophic!

  Chapter twenty-one

  “What the hell are you?” The woman who had dashed up the black, iron staircase to the rooftop of the decrepit apartment building to escape her, shouted at Lillian as Lillian stood there now, blocking her only way back down. “How did you get up here so fast?” The woman was panting from her excursion, but Lillian hadn’t lost a breath. She turned, looking down the ten stories to the dark alley floor below to make sure that no one was the wiser.

  “What do you want from me?” The woman screamed at her now. Lillian turned back to the woman. She had read of her mind earlier this night on the street, and what she had read had intrigued her. She had not meant to listen in, but it was as if the woman’s evil thoughts had beckoned her. Lillian knew the woman had killed not one husband, but two, and was even then planning on marrying the next poor bastard. They called women like her black widows, Lillian recalled reading somewhere. Lillian had followed the woman up there to do what she had been reborn to do, but now standing there she thought of Jack, and suddenly, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It would cause more trouble for him, and hadn’t she just gone to Boston to avoid making more trouble for Jack?

  “I know who you are, Susan.” she said instead, and the woman stared at her in wonder.

  “Why were you chasing me? And how do you know my name?” Susan demanded as her stunned gaze swept over Lillian where Lillian stood, still blocking her only escape.

  “Why did you run?” Lillian stepped in closer to ask.

  “Because you chased me!” The woman screeched, and Lillian longed to cover her ears against the offending noise, and just walk away. But she had to do something, didn’t she? The woman was a murderer. It wasn’t as if Lillian could turn her over to the police. What would she tell them? “I read her mind. She’s guilty of two counts of murder and is planning her third?” They would laugh in her face!

  An idea suddenly came to mind, and Lillian took another seemingly cautious step forward.

  “We know who you are. We know what you did, Susan. How you poisoned Thomas.” the name had just popped into her head, but it caused a sudden reaction in Susan. Lillian watched as a shudder rocked through the woman’s slightly paunchy body. The woman wanted to make a run for it. She would plow through Lillian without a backwards glance, Lillian read of her.

  “Stop!” Lillian shouted to get her attention. It worked. The jumpy woman came to an abrupt halt. Susan’s chest was heaving with each ragged breath that she took as her big dark eyes widened on Lillian. She was weighing her options, Lillian realized, but at least the woman was standing still and listening again.

  “But Thomas wasn’t your first, was he?” Lillian inquired as she gently stole the memories from Susan‘s troubled mind, and stepped in even closer. Suddenly, Lillian could see a menacing white pillow as it had slowly been lowered down upon an elderly gentleman’s unsuspecting face. “You killed your first husband in his sleep, smothered him.” she acknowledged in a memory that was not her own.

  “No!” Susan screamed, but it was too late for pleas of innocence. Lillian already knew the truth!

  “Yes.” Lillian nodded confirmation. “We know all about you, Susan. We’re watching you.” she warned, hoping that her ploy would work. “Your plan for Gary. It won’t work.” she voiced strongly. “One more slip up, and we’ll take you down.” she promised. Susan’s heart beat swiftly in her chest as if racing for escape from the predicament it found its self in.

  “You’re a cop?” Her dark eyes looked Lillian up and down questionably in disbelief. Her fear held her captive, frozen to the spot she stood in, but still she was out of breath, and huffing from an adrenaline rush.

  “Let’s just say I know how to punish people like you.” Lillian stepped closer. She was thinking of Jack. She had gone to Boston to hunt so that she wouldn’t cause Jack anymore trouble. She couldn’t blow it now by finishing what she had come up there to do. What had she been thinking following this woman anyway? She had just happened by the woman and had read of her misdeeds in her scattered thoughts. It was only natural to pursue the prey. It was what she did. Damn it! She had to hunt! It was who she was, what she was! Everything was so messed up now! It was so complex when everything used to be so simple, so easy.

  Lillian was so lost in thoughts of Jack that she didn’t see the woman pull a gun from her jacket and take aim. The shot rang out, and Lillian’s gaze jerked up just as the nine millimeter bullet slammed into her right side, and knocked her flat on her back. It felt as if someone had slugged her to the ground, and then white-hot pain seared into her side. “Well hell!” She covered the gaping wound with her hand as the pain assaulted her body in heated waves of agony. What little blood she had in her system was pouring rapidly from her body as she listened to the running footsteps of her would-be prey fleeing the scene.

  In excruciating pain, Lillian fought for the strength to sit up. She knew if she was unable to get up then she would perish here on this rooftop when the sun rose. She couldn’t allow that to happen, not now, not after she had found Jackson again! Her hand held tightly to the seeping wound, she cried out as the pain seized her gut when she again tried to sit up and failed. What blood she had in her system she was quickly losing, and she was becoming weakened fast.

  “Get up.” she scolded herself harshly through gritted teeth, and she pressed her hand into the wound, putting as much pressure on it when the strength that she had left. She had made it halfway into a sitting position when she heard movement ahead of her and froze.

  “Will you ever learn not to trust them?” The voice that came to her was familiar, and Lillian nearly cried in sheer relief. She gritted her teeth against the pain, and turned her head slightly to the right. Her eyes were glazed over when they lit upon the tall, regal creature crouching on the ledge not twenty feet away from her. She watched in a dream-like state as long, silky black hair blew beautifully with the wind.

  “Gina.” she whispered, reaching desperately for her dark mother just as the weakness and blood-loss prevailed, and she fell back unconscious.

  Lillian awoke with a start, and immediately her hands wrapped around her gut in remembrance. Her stomach was bandaged with what once had probably been clea
n, white strips of cloth, but were now soaked with blood. There was no pain, not even a tightness in her belly. Sitting up, she tore at the bandages, peeling them away from her body to see that the wound had healed itself while she had slumbered. She had been hurt before, but she had never been shot. She never wished to be again! The pain had been difficult to bear. What had she been thinking! She had been a fool to follow that crazed woman. It wasn’t her responsibility to punish them all!

  Standing, she headed for the shower, stripping off her soiled clothes as she went. The hot water sprayed down over her body, and she closed her eyes savoring the moment. What a great idea indoor plumbing had been! They should give that guy a medal, she thought as she washed her body, and then her hair.

  She was dressed in a pair of dark slacks and a soft blue, cashmere sweater when she entered her parlor that night to find Gina standing there. So, she hadn’t dreamt that part, she mused? Gina, her dark mother, was seated on the sofa, conversing with Reginald, but when Lillian entered, the two stopped speaking and glanced up.

  “Thank God!” Troy exclaimed from the fireplace as he and Josh turned to face her as well.

  “No. Thank Gina.” Lillian corrected graciously. Gina leaned back into the sofa, crossing one leg over the other as she met Lillian’s gaze. “Thank you. If you hadn’t of been there…”

  “So, who is this Jack?” Gina interrupted to ask point blank, and Lillian scowled at her meddling butler. “Don’t look at Reggie like that, Lillian. We both know that I am capable of reading anything I desire of you.”

  “Perhaps once upon a time you could.” Lillian replied coolly, and she came further into the room. Gina’s sapphire eyes burned into her then, and Lillian stared straight back, unbending. Concentrating, she blocked all thoughts of Jack Stone from her mind, and tried to think of nothing at all.

  “Stone.” Gina said, reading only Jack’s last name of Lillian, and then in frustration she leaned forward, staring harder. A moment later, she leaned back, giving up. “You’re getting good at this.” she commented and Lillian smiled proudly.