The SUV disappeared down the road as Avery hiked the last tenth of a mile. It was sheer determination alone that kept her going even though she was exhausted. Just minutes later, she shuffled up the dirt driveway toward the little A-frame house.
She separated her boots from her sore feet and called into the dark house. There was no answer. She turned on the stairway light and slowly ascended the stairs, calling out again, “Talon?” He wasn’t in his room either. The sheets were still as they were when she had slept there last. Avery wasted no time taking a hot shower and popping a couple pain pills from her bag before curling up on the cold leather couch with a blanket, waiting for Talon to come home. Before she knew it, she had slipped into a heavy sleep.
CHAPTER 19
The vervain-soaked metal around his wrists and bare torso burned through his skin and weren’t allowing him to heal. Talon hadn’t felt this powerless since he was human. When he had come to, he found himself chained to a stone wall in a dank, dark cellar. He tried to pull at his restraints, but he was hardly at a tenth of his normal strength. He could smell fresh blood from somewhere, and it was making him salivate. He could feel his fangs protruding between his lips. His body burned for it, knowing it was the only way to return him to homeostasis.
Talon hung his head, groaning in fatigue. A familiar voice hummed near him. He lifted his head and narrowed his eyes in disgust.
“How are we feeling?” Gunner inquired.
Talon laughed in his throat, “I’m feeling honored. You knew you couldn’t take me after the last fight we had, so you had to use a cheap move like vervain.”
“I did what I had to,” his abductor cut him off. “But don’t despair, you’ll have company soon enough.”
Talon tensed, “Leave her out of this.”
“Sorry old friend. Cain has plans that both you and her are tampering with by existing.”
“Oh? Taking orders like a good little bitch, are we?” Talon scoffed.
“Well, one tends to owe another his loyalty after being brought back from the brink of death. But you wouldn’t know anything about loyalty, would you?” Gunner edged closer. “I was told to take care of you two, and instead of killing you, well, I thought I’d teach you both a lesson first. I figure I’d starve you out for a couple days, and then give you something… sweet to eat.”
“Don’t you dare,” Talon growled.
Gunner tsked, “You remember your first thirst, don’t you? That uncontrollable need to rip your teeth into whatever you could get your hands on and drink until you are drunk off of it? Women, children, the old, the weak. It didn’t matter who it was because everything was in red, heartbeats were the only sound, and all you could focus on was putting out the fire in your throat, like an addict. Enough vervain also has a way of doing that to you, and I’ll bet you’ve had plenty enough in your system as it is.”
Talon resolved, “I would never hurt her.”
“Not many more doses before you won’t even recognize who it is you’re feeding on until it’s too late.”
Talon bared his fangs and bellowed, trying with everything he had to reach the vampire in front of him, to no avail. Gunner just smiled at him and disappeared from sight. The straining against his chains burned further into his skin. You need to save your strength, idiot. Talon slumped back against the wall. In a plea of desperation, he prayed. A heaviness fell over him, and he couldn’t fight closing his eyes. His last thoughts were of a fair-skinned, green-eyed beauty, whose smile drove him mad.
Darkness. Avery couldn’t see a thing. The air was musky and cold. Her head snapped in the direction of a heavy, metal sound. Chains? Slowly, she could make out a voice that mumbled, as if speaking to another, but she could not see anyone. Avery reached her hand into the darkness toward the voice, but when her fingers connected with something solid, a searing pain caused her to jolt backward.
Avery startled herself awake. The clock on the wall read 11:37. It was almost midday, and Talon hadn’t returned.
Using his home phone, she took a taxi to the last place she knew Talon had been; The Odyssey. They drove by slowly before she instructed the driver to take off. The parking lot was full of cop cars and other government vehicles, including a good handful of coroner vans. There was no way she’d get in there to investigate, even with The Order on her side. Talon wasn’t at his house and assuming he wasn’t still hiding from sunlight at the club, where else would he go?
She grit her teeth in frustration. She needed help, and she knew at least one woman who could help her. Since she was now without a phone, she had the driver drop her off in the parking lot of the apartment complex. She was relieved to see Rose’s silver convertible in its usual spot.
Avery opened the front door to find Rose and her girlfriend Nadine cuddling on the couch.
“Sorry to barge in on you two, but I think I’ve got a problem.”
Rose jumped up from the couch, “What happened last night? I tried to call you back like ten times.”
“A crazy huge demon totaled the car. I lost my phone in the process.”
“Are you okay?”
Avery nodded her head, “I’m fine but… Talon and I were checking out some leads last night, and we split up. We were supposed to back at his house, and that’s when the demon attacked me. Not to kill, but to capture. I made it there, but he never showed up. I’m worried he was a target as well.”
“Who is trying to capture you?” Nadine butted in.
“I don’t know for sure. It could be a number of enemies or the guy we’ve been searching for trying to get to us first,” Avery responded.
A jingle on Rose’s cell phone interrupted them. “Hold that thought,” Rose looked to her caller-ID and raised a finger in Avery’s direction before answering, “Hello? Hi Mrs. Edgington.”
Avery’s eyes widened, and her face flushed red with nervousness.
Rose continued, “Really? I haven’t either. I will check into it for you, don’t worry. Yes, buh-bye.” Rose shifted her focus to Nadine. “That was Caleb’s mom. She said he hasn’t come home or gotten in touch with them in a couple of days.”
Nadine looked puzzled, “Do you think they got him too?”
Avery said nothing but remained stiff. How would she tell Rose?
“Avery? What’s wrong? You’re pale as a ghost,” her friend commented.
She stuttered a response, “He was…”
Rose came toward her, “He was what? What do you know?” Nadine stood up to grab Rose’s hand to calm her.
Avery hesitantly reached out to Rose, “I… killed him. I killed Caleb.”
Rose stopped in her tracks before Avery could touch her, “WHAT.”
“He was changed. A vampire. He was angry with me, and at one point I was tied to a chair. We fought and…”
Rose stumbled back into her girlfriend’s body as if she had been shot.
Avery continued to explain, “I tried to reason with him. I tried to tell him he could be good, but he sided with the…”
“Shut up,” Rose whispered.
“I got him to talk before…”
“I said shut up!” Rose shrieked and slapped Avery across her face.
Nadine held Rose’s arms back from attempting another blow. Avery held her cheek, astonished, “Rosie… I’m sorry, I…”
“Go… just go!” Rose broke free of Nadine’s hold and shoved Avery by her shoulders toward the door.
Avery backed up as Rose started to cry and turned into Nadine’s chest for an embrace. She shut the door quietly behind her. She could hear Rose’s sobs and Nadine’s soothing thrum of a voice from the other side.
Avery lost everyone she ever cared about, and it was her fault. Forgive me. Hot tears fell onto the hall carpet. Suck it up. Focus on what you need to do right now and have the pity party later.
Determined, Avery wiped her eyes and stalked out of the building. Rose very well wasn’t going to help her now, so she needed to figure out her next step. The longer she waited to
do something, the less time she could have to track down Talon. Where could he be? He wouldn’t abandon her. If he was taken, where would they have taken him to? First things first, she needed a ride. She couldn’t take a taxi everywhere. She imagined it now: Keep the meter running, I gotta kill a few people. Won’t take long. And she draws her sword to the complete horror of the driver. It would be like a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Avery eyeballed Rose’s convertible. Forgive me, again. As Avery approached her intended target, another vehicle pulled up next to her. She jumped back, surprised. She groaned in frustration recognizing the familiar black sedan with tinted windows.
Detective Jace Ashford exited the vehicle and advanced toward her, “Avery, I need to talk to you.”
Avery sighed heavily, “I’m busy Jace. And I don’t know how much more badgering I can take.”
“You can either find the time to talk to me now, or I can arrest you, and we can talk while you’re cuffed to a table in a dimly lit room downtown.”
“Arrested for what?”
“Being a suspect in a bar disturbance involving a sword.”
Oh. That. “I guess I have time then,” she agreed.
The humidity was heavy this night. Candles were lit in the windows of the manor, so someone had to be awake. He’d get an earful from his mother about being out all evening, even though he was a full-grown man. The Lady Campbell was famous for her temper and inability to be calm, especially when it came to the safety of her boys.
Maybe they waited up for me, Talon thought as he dismounted his fidgety horse. “Whoa girl, what’s the matter?”
The creature whinnied as Talon pet her muzzle to try and calm her. He took his mare around the back to the stable, putting her in her stall. Coming through the back-patio doors, Talon announced his homecoming, but to no one, “Mother? Father?” Had they gone to bed after all? But it was not characteristic of his home to not see at least one of the servants around. All was eerily quiet. “Gregory? Crispin?” he called out his younger brother’s names. The teenagers were usually up causing mischief at all hours of the night, so he wondered if they had anything to do with this.
Talon followed the dark staircase up to the second floor, pausing when his hand slid across something sticky on the railing. It took him aback. It was not usual for there to be blatant filth anywhere in this house. He lifted his hand to his face and froze. The dark, cold, sticky substance let off a foul odor. Blood. Talon rushed up the remainder of the stairs.
At the top of the staircase, a young woman’s body lay sprawled across the wood floor. It was one of the servants. Talon bent down to check her neck for a pulse and instead found his finger went into a gaping wound on her neck. He panicked and stepped around the dead woman, running to the closest door and flinging it open.
“Is anyone…” his breath caught in his throat as if he were being choked. The parlor walls and floor were covered in blood. In the center of the floor was his mother, her once blonde hair now curls of red from the pool she lay in. Her throat had been ripped open as well. He hurried closer to her and found his lifeless father and the old butler near her body as if they had tried to protect her.
Crispin and Gregory. Talon’s eyes darted around the room. Where are they? He ran to each room, flinging open the doors, to no avail. Please be okay. He practically broke the door frame opening the door to Crispin’s room. He found his brothers lying side by side on the wooden floor. He ran to them but knew he was too late. Their throats too were torn. Talon bit back a cry as he saw their hands reaching toward each other.
He fell to his knees between them. Their icy blue eyes appeared dull in color and glossed over in the lantern-lit room. Their look of terror seemed to change into glaring at him as if he could have stopped this. As if he could have helped, and didn’t. He held tight to his brothers and screamed his rage.
Between body-wrenching sobs, Talon noticed the candlelight glinting off of an object poking out from under his brother’s bed. He grasped at the foreign item to behold a blood-stained jagged dagger with an emblem of a stag on the hilt. “Montgomery house,” he seethed. They had wanted to buy some of his father’s land to expand their vineyards for months now, but his father had continued to refuse. They’re responsible for this. He would have his revenge. Caked in the blood of his household, he ran out into the night and breathed in that deep humidity. He ran to the small shack on the next property over; to his best friend’s house.
A familiar smell awoke him, “Eric.”
“I told you, it’s Gunner now.”
Talon slowly opened his eyes. He had no strength to muster any anger. He grumbled, “Leave me the hell alone.”
“Can’t sleep. Thought I’d torture you a little.”
“Sounds like a personal problem.”
Gunner smiled, “Actually, I thought we’d talk about the past a bit.”
Talon tensed up, “Fuck off.”
“In that case…”
“Just kill me and get it over with.”
Gunner ignored him and continued, “The last time I saw you, before this year, was…”
“1694,” Talon groaned.
“Ah, yes. The falling out of 1694. Isabel had died, and you disappeared without a trace,” his old friend recalled. “Was living with yourself really that hard that you had to skip the country on me? Didn’t our friendship mean more to you than that?”
Talon’s eyes rolled back into his head for a moment, as he was temporarily losing consciousness. His memory flashed to his dream, and he came back to. “Why did you do it?” he hoarsely asked.
Gunner clicked his tongue, “Nah-ah. My question first.”
“I realized you were trying to drag me down to your sadistic, emotionless level. Now answer me, Eric. Why did you do it?”
“I assume you are referring to me killing your family, right?” Gunner teased and thought about it for only a moment, “Because they deserved it.”
Talon used all his might to lunge at the vampire. Gunner’s dark eyes seemed to grow darker as he recalled the past. “We’ve been playmates since before I can remember. I would jump the property line fence to come see you almost every day. We were practically inseparable. Age did not change that. As we progressed more into our late teens, your parents became more aware of my lack of social status and advised I stay away from you as to not tarnish your good name. They threatened my mother would pay for it if I did not. That’s when I stopped coming to look for you, and you started to come look for me, always in secret. As you may recall, my mother soon married a wealthier man than my father had been and left me behind in that hovel. As we got into our twenties, I knew I had to make something of myself, not only to live better but so I could once again be welcomed into my best friend’s home.”
“I started a trade business, though illegal as you may remember, and after accumulating a certain amount of wealth and status, I thought it was finally time to pay you a visit. I wanted desperately to get your family’s approval that my social standing was acceptable enough to be in your presence in the public view. I arrived to find you not home. I went in anyway. Your mother and father were irate to see me; called me a crook and that I’d never be good enough to be in the same circle as their magnificent son. I was trash, and would always be trash, no matter how much money I swindled out of people. Infuriated, I left the house to take my frustrations out at the pub in town. I drank until my anger became verbal to all in the bar. I started a fight and got kicked out, literally onto my ass, in the alley. Laying in a half-drunken stupor, a lovely young woman approached me and asked if I was okay. She had been listening to me in the bar and gave me the solution of never having to say goodbye to you.”
“Your maker,” Talon interrupted.
“Yes. She changed me that night. She hid me well in her underground home the next day, feeding me prostitutes and teaching me of the things I’d need to know: how to feed, how to change, what our weaknesses were…but come night, she was gone. I went searching for you. My legs
had led me to your house again. Something in me, some kind of new pride and rage, sent me in. I encountered your parents in the parlor upstairs. Your mother’s tongue was particularly sharp at me, and that was when I snapped. It was…fun.”
Talon grit his teeth at Gunner’s words, “But the dagger…”
“False evidence I had planted after I regained my wits.”
Talon tried to calm the anger swelling within him, “My mother wasn’t by any means likable. But my little brothers? Why did they have to suffer you too?”
Gunner’s tone of voice changed, “You were my best friend. No one was going to take that from me, not even death.”
Talon breathed in the musky cellar air, finally coming to a realization. His friend had become even more obsessed with him after being turned. Mental illness must be intensified when one changes. It explained a lot. Talon seethed in desperation, as there was nothing he could do at this moment. He winced as light enveloped the cellar door.
“Master Gunner,” a man called from the doorway.
“Looks like I have to go,” Gunner commented.
“Eric,” Talon growled.
His old friend smiled, “Talon…”
Talon looked up into the face of the mad murderer, “If you come down here again, I will kill you.”
“Oh yes, I almost forgot your medicine,” Gunner happily added before burying a syringe of vervain into Talon’s neck.
The light and sound disappeared, leaving the dirty blonde vampire in the void with his tormenting thoughts again. His hands twitched, feeling sticky as they did when he held his brother’s bloody bodies in them. He howled fiercely.
CHAPTER 20
The awkward silence lingered between them until Avery piped up.
“Where are we going?”
“My safe house,” the detective nonchalantly replied.
“Um…Why a safe-house?”
“Privacy. Unless you want to end up in jail,” he crooked an eyebrow at her.
Love and Bloodlust: The Sacred Objects Page 17