“I was going to find him before the meeting last night. I was a little early so I thought I’d knock and maybe talk to him a little, see how he’s feeling about this whole thing.”
“He knows something is up.” Antoni seemed deep in thought.
“You didn’t tell him, did you?” Elise was invaded by a sinking feeling. She had never kept anything from Marcel. In fact, until Octavia and Lena told her to, she didn’t think she was capable of it. Part of her was still convinced that what she was doing to him was unforgivable, and that one day, she would pay for it. Just as so many other vampires had paid for betraying their elders. Surely, this was a matter that went beyond their clan and what they believed to be right or wrong.
“I didn’t.” Antoni stood again, moving towards the window, pulling the curtains open. “I want to, though.”
“I know,” Elise sighed. “I do too.”
“So you think he’s losing it?”
“I don’t know about losing it,” Elise said, biting down on her lip, “but I heard him talking to Ben. I heard him say his name, and I don’t know if it’s one of those things people do when they lose someone. So what if they are right? What if there is a part of Ben that is alive and well in his head, or worse, what if he did lose his mind?”
“He didn’t lose his mind.” Antoni was adamant.
Elise took his hand, looking at him intently.
Antoni continued. “Listen, I know that you think this is personal because you’ve been getting more attention since Nora left, but that isn’t it. I was jealous too sometimes. I admit it. But that’s always been how we work when it comes to Marcel. We always envy the one that’s getting the most attention. You know that better than anyone.”
Antoni resented the observation, but he couldn’t argue against it. With Nora gone, Marcel had been looking to him for advice, solace and company. He had discovered that he’d been fonder of Nora than he could have imagined, but that hadn’t stop him from feeling jealousy whenever he saw the way Marcel looked at her. There had been that mix of trust and desire that made him ache for a time when Marcel had found him irresistible, and no one else. At least as far as he’d been concerned.
“He’s in trouble, Antoni. I don’t want you to believe me because of what Octavia and Lena want us to do. This is not about ‘The Greater Good’. He, Marcel, is in trouble. He is our maker and he has this horrible person stuck in his head. A horrible person that, I might add, he shares some impossible cosmic connection with that we can’t even begin to comprehend. Stronger than anything you may feel for him.”
She knew she had gone too far with that right away. She could see how Antoni’s jaw tensed at the thought of anyone understanding something about Marcel that he just couldn’t grasp.
“I’m sorry,” Elise said, crossing her legs and leaning back with both hands propping her up on the bed, “I know you don’t want to hear it but that’s exactly what this problem is. It’s about how strong what they had was and the ways in which it linked them. I think that Lena and Octavia are right, and if they are, then Marcel is suffering and we need to help him. Even if we’re don’t care about saving the clan.”
“Of course I care about saving the clan.”
“I know you do, but you care more about Marcel’s well-being. Would you stop being difficult? You are afraid of betraying Marcel but you won’t try to save his mind? How do you think he feels? I can only image that what that presence in his head is saying to him, the things he’s letting it blame him for. Would you really rather just ignore it?”
“Fine,” Antoni turned around, leaning back on the windowsill. The starry night framed him and Elise could see that strong-featured vision Marcel must have seen when he decided Antoni should be embraced. Not by just anyone, but by one of the founding members of the clan.
“If he is genuinely in that much trouble, Elise, if he needs help, then maybe we should get Nora after all. If this is as serious as you seem to think it is, then we need to stop fucking around and get the person that knows him best. The one person who can truly understand what that connection is like. How it works.”
“We need to try Lena and Octavia’s way first and you know it. It’s what Marcel would want us to do, even if we are talking about him.”
“I won’t do it, Elise. I won’t arrest Marcel.”
“Would you rather have someone else do it? Humiliate him under a momentary power trip? This way at least we get to decide how it happens and when it happens. We can make it discreet and talk to him, and we can make sure he has everything he needs before that door is locked with us on the outside.”
Antoni stared down at his shoes wordlessly.
“It’s done Antoni, it’s going to happen. This way we at least get to negotiate access to him. We get to see him and make sure he is safe and I promise, the second we see it getting out of hand I will personally call Nora and tell her to get her ass back here.”
Chapter 30
Nights by the beach were quiet. Nora had always imagined that all of California was loud and plastic. How could I be so obtuse? After all her years alive she could still make stupid assumptions. Moonlight shone across the water as Nora sat on the sand, wiggling her toes in it and listening to the waves rush upon the shore. A slight breeze brushed her shoulders, and she shivered.
She’d always known that it would be difficult to leave her life behind, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more than that to it. That her unrest had something to do with things going wrong instead of just a terribly bad case of the homesick blues.
The biggest problem was that while Fletcher could feel that unrest, there was no real way of explaining to him what it was that was causing it. They’d begun training longer hours and going out more, just to distract themselves from the feeling she was invaded with. A feeling she then passed on to him. She felt that there was something about to go terribly wrong and they would be too far away to do anything about it.
Fletcher was patient.
He was surprised to find that he was capable of being so. He didn’t know if it was because he was trying to hold things together with Nora that inspired it, or if he simply knew there was nothing he could do. But he could feel the anxiety building every day. Was there something to it? Did they need to go back? After all, Fletcher was now a part of the clan and the urge to protect it and its members was not unlike the protective streak he’d felt for his family for as long as he could remember.
That had been the toughest part of becoming a vampire – abandoning his family. Letting them think he was gone when he never would be. Not really. Not completely.
“So are you going to talk to me about it?” he asked, lowering his body down onto the sand next to her.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.” Nora shrugged, playing with the hem of the sundress she wore that night. Her back was exposed, the dress loose enough to droop and bare the side of her breast and nipple to him.
“Is it Marcel?”
Nora nodded quietly.
“What about him?” Fletcher pressed on, tired of knowing only bits and pieces of what was going on in her mind. Of only understanding slowly, as some kind of echo of her voice began forming at the back of his head.
“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.”
“Describe the feeling.” He was not having it today.
“I don’t think I can. It just feels like there’s something wrong. Like he’s in danger somehow. I can’t even tell what kind of danger it is. I just know there is something there. Like there’s a shadow lingering over the thought of him—” She trailed off, her hand drawing circles on the sand. You must think I’m crazy to act like I can protect him; that I am indispensable to him somehow…”
“I don’t,” Fletcher smiled, leaning back down and propping himself up on his elbows.
The sand was still warm with the day’s heat a few hours after sundown.
“The truth is I wouldn’t be surprised if he is struggling without you. I can
see how letting go of you would be difficult, even without the link the two of us share.”
She hadn’t been alone for a very long time and it was fair to say that there were people in her life that simply understood her. The way Fletcher just understood, how he always seemed to have the right rebuttal ready at times like this. It was something that filled her with a mix of love and want that she was convinced one day would overwhelm her senses and make her combust. A pile of ashes and clothes left as proof of how just how bad this kind of desire could be. Like fast cars and how only people with special licenses are meant to drive them.
In a fluid motion, Nora had him straddled to the sand and was suddenly kissing him hard. Not because she needed to distract him from a conversation she wasn’t ready to have, but because there was something about escaping everything else and being here with him that was undeniably seductive and impossible to ignore. Her hips weren’t grinding into him to distract him, she just wanted him. Wanted the way his hands moved to squeeze her breasts, her nipples hard through the flowing fabric of her dress. Her cool skin covered only by a pair red lace panties that matched the red in the pattern on the dress, which Fletcher couldn’t give a fuck about as his hands slid beneath the lace to cup her ass and push her hard onto his growing erection.
He tore the dress up like it was made of paper, the fabric falling and leaving her exposed as she kept him down against the sand with both hands on his chest, leaning up to grind hard and slow, her hair wild in the moonlight. His hands were on her hips, fingers digging into her flesh as he kept her in place. As if he thought she would suddenly get up and run off, leaving him rock hard and panting.
She didn’t, though.
Instead, she tugged his waistband down to his thighs, sand burning into her knees as he took him into her mouth and began sucking the head of his cock. There was no interest in teasing him this time around. She began to swallow him whole as he tried to watch, his chest moving so fast she thought it might explode.
“Fuck…” He groaned, trying to grab at the sand and pace himself. To concentrate on anything other than the way her head bobbed up and down, her mouth eagerly taking more of him. Hard and fast enough to gag with the force and the friction. It was enough to drive a man crazy and, as much as Fletcher wanted to pin her down and fuck her shape onto the sand, he couldn’t hold back. His throat almost closed completely in a gasp as she began to suck and swallow.
Chapter 31
“What are you doing?” Elise screamed.
“It’s for our own security.” Octavia said through gritted teeth.
“You said it was going to be a friendly arrest.” Antoni lunged forward, his face red, fists clenched.
“Antoni…” Marcel’s voice brought Antoni back from his rage. “They’re right, the restrictions are just a precaution.”
“Marcel, I didn’t know they would…” He broke down, sobbing.
The ropes used on Marcel weren’t superhuman, but the meticulous way in which they were wrapped and knotted made it hard for him to move, and impossible to escape. It was merely meant to slow him down, just in case, as they locked Marcel up in a prison built especially for him. A prison that had a very heavy silver door and several locks only a handful of people could open.
“Both of you promised,” Elise whimpered as she watched Gemma and Emile, the two clan members assigned to restrain Marcel, escort him towards the basement accommodations and prepare the ten wooden stakes they would use on Marcel to make sure he didn’t leave. Each of them was placed close enough to his heart to be driven through it if any violent movements were made. “You promised, Lena.”
“You two need to understand,” Octavia said, somehow retaining that cold, dead tone, “Marcel is no ordinary vampire and it would be stupid of us to believe that we could simply trust he won’t escape.”
“You tricked us. You knew we would have protected him unless you gave us a reason not to and we believed it.” Antoni’s hands were closed in tight fists.
“That’s enough, you two.” Marcel’s deep voice was calm and authoritative.
Elise couldn’t even look at Marcel. She closed her eyes, her nails cutting into her palms as she heard him take a seat, accepting his fate. A fate that she could have helped him out of if she had just listened to Antoni and put their maker first.
“You were right. I taught you both to always do what’s best for the clan and I am proud of the choices you have made.”
Antoni’s eyes were burning with enough intensity for Octavia to motion for two of her personal guards to step forward, making sure they’d be ready to grab him should he choose to attack.
“Are you ready?” Gemma asked, her hands holding the first stake expertly.
“Not with them here,” Marcel said, looking over at Elise and Antoni like they were scared little children instead of immortal beings.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Antoni snapped instantly.
“You are.”
“Marcel…” Elise’s voice was a whisper.
“You both are going to get out of here, and you will return in a couple of nights, when you’ve calmed down and I’ve had some time to adjust. You were right to do this, and I am not angry. But I can’t have you seeing this. I will be fine. Gemma and Emile know what they are doing.”
Lena gave a nod, her expression impatient. Her personal guards moved to grab Elise and Antoni and lead them out forcefully.
They could still hear Marcel’s cries when they were left out in the main hall, the door that lead back down bolted before them. Two nights.
“Antoni…”
“I told you. I told you we should talk to him first. I told you that we couldn’t trust Lena and Octavia. I knew there was a reason he hadn’t talked to them about his troubles, and now we know that reason was because he knew this was what followed. He could die, you know? The slightest fuck up and he could be dead before morning. Gone. And then what?”
“He’s not going to die,” Elise whimpered, moving to sit on the stairs and looking like she just might not make it. “We are not going to let him die, Antoni.”
“Do you know how to remove those things once they are inside? Because I sure as fuck don’t and once they are inside, I am not going to risk being the one who kills him.”
“There has to be another way.”
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe Lena and Octavia are doing this after everything Marcel has done to make sure this whole place stays standing. Do you think Lena or Octavia would have killed Ben? No. You need to be the kind of selfless being that they can’t even grasp and if Marcel dies, this place, everything he has worked for and fought for, will die with him.”
“We can’t let that happen.”
Marcel’s cries tore through the hallways, echoing, bouncing off the walls, interrupting their conversation and getting louder every time. Each of those cries was mirrored in the tears that streamed own Elise’s cheeks. Antoni’s eyes were on fire. His jaw tensed and the bone nearly tore at the flesh of his knuckles as he rolled his hands into fists. Then, silence. The sudden stillness that filled the hall was sinister. Like the quiet after the screeches and screams of a fatal car accident have died down.
“We are not going to,” said Antoni after taking a deep breath. “I’m going to make arrangements for tomorrow and we are going to take care of this. We are not going to let them lock our maker up when they don’t even have a plan.”
“Okay,” Elise nodded, wiping her tears with palms beneath the sleeves of her light blue sweater. “What do you have in mind?”
“We’re doing what Marcel asked,” Antoni replied, turning to lock eyes with her. With Marcel’s request to stay away, Lena and Octavia would probably even agree it was best for them to be as far away from their maker as possible.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re going to stay away.”
“We are?”
“For just as long as it takes to get Nora.”
Chapter 32
No
ra’s face registered shock. “You should have sent some sort of warning.”
“There was no time, I felt like you had to hear about this as soon as possible.” Elise stood her ground in the door-way.
“Would you at least let me get dressed?”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” Elise said, winking. .
Nora threw a pillow at her. “Get out.”
Elise smiled, taking a good look at Nora and Fletcher as they stared at her, tangled in their sheets, caught in the middle of fucking. She had pointed out that Nora was growing soft in her retirement. There was no way anyone would have been able to sneak up on the Nora that Elise knew –the Nora she had grown up competing with. The Nora that had been so proficient at staying alive that she had been assigned to teach an entire clan how to do it.
Kindred Souls: Entire Series Books 1 - 5 Page 13
