The EMT immediately began checking my vitals while the firemen led Quinten away. He didn’t look happy to go, but he didn’t put up a fight anymore. The firefighters questioned him, and he kept shooting me nervous glances. From my position in the back of the ambulance, I could hear Quinten telling them about a “mad man” that set the building on fire, and then tried to kill us.
I really hoped the firefighters bought that, because if not, we’d be likely suspects. Aside from the firefighters inside, we were the last three out, and Quinten had blood down his pants from where he was cut. I wasn’t sure if that would work in his favor, or if it would work against him.
The EMT hopped out of the ambulance and looked at me. “Just take slow, deep breaths, and try to calm down,” he said. I’d been breathing a little faster than normal, on account of the fact I’d almost just been burned alive and murdered by what were probably vampire assassins. “I’m going to check on some other people, but I’ll be right back. Ok?”
I gave him a thumb’s up, and he left me alone in the back of the truck. I did what he told me to, and I took deep, even breaths. All around me, people were panicking, crying, or were passed out from smoke inhalation. I was just glad that for the moment both Quinten and I were still together and relatively unharmed.
This could have gone so much worse for us.
I immediately felt guilty at the thought of those wailing parents and their lost children, and I sighed. It seemed like everywhere I went I caused death and destruction. If I hadn’t been staying with Violet, these families would be broken and irreparable right now. These mothers would still have their children, and Violet would still have a home filled with her late mate’s things.
Suddenly, my eyes started to burn, and I hastily wiped away tears before they could finish forming. I did not need to cry right now. Crying was a sign of weakness, and I needed to stay strong for both Quinten and our baby.
“I thought you weren’t the crying type,” a voice purred from behind me.
Before I could even react, am arm wrapped around my throat, and Eli hauled me out of the back of the ambulance. I kicked and flailed uselessly. He had a tight hold on me, and I couldn’t even scream for help. There were dozens of people standing around, but they were too busy watching the building burn to the ground to notice me being dragged away down the street.
It helped that Eli could move faster than the human eye could follow, and before I knew it, I was being pinned up against the wall of an alley. He put his face inches from mine, and his smile grew, exposing his fangs. He leaned over and pressed his warm lips to my throat, and he chuckled. “I thought I might have imagined it earlier, but I didn’t. You’ve got a little monster growing inside of you…”
“He’s…not…a monster,” I managed to choke out.
Eli laughed, sending chills up my spine. It’d been a while since I’d been this close to him, and I’d almost forgotten how crazy he could be without even trying. This close up, I could see the derangement in his icy blue eyes, along with the hardness of his face. He wanted me dead, and it was only a matter of time before it happened.
His gaze traveled down to my stomach. “I should kill you now and just get it over with,” he murmured. “I have the feeling it’ll save me quite a bit of trouble down the road, but I must confess, I’m a little curious as to how this…baby…will turn out. I’m sorely tempted to wait until it’s born. Then I can just kill it, causing you pain, and you’ll be too weak from labor to fight back. I could easily kill you after.
“Hmm…decisions, decisions. I could always just rip it out of you now, and see what it looks like. Yes, I think that’s what I’ll do.” His fangs glistened, and his fingers curled into dangerous weapons. He was serious!
“No, please don’t,” I cried. “Don’t hurt him.”
His hand inched closer, and I struggled harder than ever before. The hand around my throat tightened, and black spots started to dance around my vision. I felt myself begin to fade away, and I knew this was it. I’d never see Quinten or my family again, and I’d never be able to see my baby. He and I were both going to die in this moment, and there was nothing I could do.
His hand pressed against my stomach, and I flinched. His nails dug into the flesh of my stomach, trying to burrow their way to my womb, where he could try to rip out my unborn child. I wasn’t sure there was anything to grab but, if there was, Eli was determined to find it.
Suddenly, a massive dull brown wolf slammed into Eli’s side, tearing him away from me. His fingers, embedded in my stomach up to the nail bed, ripped away, tearing a bit of flesh with them. I fell to the ground and twisted, careful to land on my side instead of my stomach. Eli’s screams caught my attention, and I looked up just in time to see the large brown wolf bite off Eli’s hand at the wrist.
With the hand in its mouth, the wolf turned around and darted out of the open alleyway, leaving a bleeding and shocked Eli behind. I was too weak to move, let alone get up and run, but I didn’t have to. Right now there was something Eli wanted more than his revenge on me…revenge on the creature that took his hand.
He got up shakily, and I noticed that his hand was bleeding sluggishly. Occasionally a spurt of blood would fly through the air, and I winced. Instead of attacking me again, he sprinted toward the opening of the alley and peered out. “This isn’t over between us, Alanna. I’m going to have my revenge if it’s the last thing I do,” he called over his shoulder.
When I looked up again, he was gone, and I was alone on the dirty floor of the alley. With Eli gone, I curled up in a ball and burst into tears. I was so confused! I didn’t know how to even begin explaining what happened; I just couldn’t believe it, even though I’d seen it with my own two eyes.
Scurried footsteps brought my attention back to the alley, and I looked up into Quinten’s terrified eyes. “Alanna! What happened? I looked over at the ambulance and you weren’t there!”
His gaze traveled to my stomach, where my shirt was torn and bloody. I could feel the wounds in my stomach, and I cringed. The shock was wearing off, and I could finally feel the pain that flared up when Quinten touched it.
“Oh, god, what happened?” he asked again.
Violet looked over his shoulder with a worried expression. “Alanna, what happened?” she asked.
“Roger Mason just saved my life…”
Chapter Sixteen
After that declaration, I lapsed into thoughtful silence. Quinten lifted me up and carried me from the alley. He and Violet ran through the streets, carrying me away from harm. We weren’t sure if Eli or Roger would be coming back, and we didn’t plan to stick around and find out. As we ran, Quinten tried to get more details out of me, but I couldn’t find a way to speak.
I couldn’t believe it. Roger Mason had tried to blackmail me into being his mate, he’d tried to kill me, he might have had me and Quinten both abducted and shipped off to compete in the Arena Wars, and he called the Council on us for being in love. He wanted me dead, and he wanted me to suffer.
Why did he intervene? He could have let Eli finish what he was planning, and it would have saved him quite a bit of trouble. Is there something that I’m missing? Or was Roger just planning to rid the world of one more vampire so he could kill me himself later?
The more I thought about everything, the more it confused me. I’d been sure for a while that Roger and Eli was somehow working together, but it looked like I’d been wrong. Instead of letting Eli kill me, Roger had bitten off one of his hands, and that seriously weakened Eli.
Before, I wouldn’t have stood a chance in a fight. But now, with just one hand, he was must less dangerous than before. If Quinten and I stuck together, we might be able to actually kill him. If that happened, half of our problems would be gone.
When we finally got far enough from Violet’s apartment to feel safe, Quinten slowed to a stop, and leaned me against the back wall of a restaurant. He lifted up the hem of my shirt, and I looked down at my stomach. It was still smeared with
blood, but the holes had started to heal, and were beginning to close. It looked like they’d stopped bleeding, but it would probably be at least another twenty-four hours before they healed up completely.
Quinten stripped off my shirt, handed me a sweater, and used my dirty shirt to clean off as much of the blood as possible. While he did that, Violet broke into a closed pharmacy, and came back with an armful of antibiotic cream and a handful of bandages.
She tossed them to Quinten, and he quickly wrapped my stomach up. When he looked back up at me, I noticed how worried and scared he was. The second his hands were free, he pulled me close and kissed me, harder than he had in a while. When he pulled away, I was startled to see reddish tinged tears forming. “I thought for sure you’d be dead when I found you,” he said, his voice breaking at the end.
“I’m fine,” I said, speaking for the first time since they found me. “Thanks to Roger.”
That sounded so strange to say. Not to mention so wrong, considering some of the terrible things he’d done. “Alanna, are you sure it was Roger that saved you?” Quinten asked, trying to discreetly wipe his eyes. “I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he has tried to kill us in the past,” he said dryly.
“I know he’s a monster, and I’m sure that saving me benefits him somehow, but yes, I’m sure. It was Roger, as sure as I’m standing here right now. He tackled Eli to the ground, and then bit off one of his hands.”
“Huh,” Quinten said, frowning. “I thought that Roger would be no match for Eli, considering he’s half Eli’s age. Plus, I think vampires are stronger and faster than werewolves, so he’s at a disadvantage there as well.”
I snorted. “Vampires are not stronger than werewolves. But I agree with the rest of what you said. I was kind of hoping that Eli might take out Roger for us, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. If anything, Roger will take care of Eli, and we’ll be left with a crazy, powerful, vengeful killing machine capable of killing the oldest vampire on the planet.”
“Eli’s not the oldest,” Violet said, surprising me.
“What? He’s like close to nine hundred years old,” I said. “Who could possibly be older than that?”
“Maria, the girl that turned me many, many years ago. She’s much older, in a sense, than Eli is.”
“What do you mean, in a sense?” Quinten asked.
“I mean that she’s almost fourteen hundred years old, even though she’s only got the body of a twelve year old. Even though she appears to be a child, she is one of the deadliest, most ruthless hunters that I’ve ever met.”
“She’s just a child? Why would someone do that to a little girl?”
“Maria was dying of measles in France in 641, and her mother became desperate to find a cure for her. As her daughter’s condition worsened, her mother sought the help of a “medicine woman” from their town. That woman was a vampire, and she turned Maria so she could become her companion.
“When Maria woke up three days later, she was miraculously healed, and her mother rejoiced, until her daughter ripped out her throat and bled her dry. The townsfolk chased the two vampires from town with torches and pitchforks, but only after several other people had been killed. The two traveled together as mother and daughter for over eight hundred years, until her “mother” was killed by a hunter.”
“Then what happened?”
“For many years, Maria wandered alone, using her young, innocent appearance to ensnare her victims. But, she tired of living life from one place to the next, and she eventually required another mother figure. So, she turned to me. I was living in Ireland at the time, and one night I followed her cries into a dark alley, and she forcibly turned me. When I woke up three days later, she told me I was to be her mother in public.
“We traveled around the world, and I doted on her like any mother would. I eventually came to see her as the child I never had, nor ever would, and she over time taught me everything she knew about being a vampire. However, she and I eventually went our separate ways.”
“Why did the two of you split up if you saw her as a daughter?”
“You see, Maria is a vicious killer when she wants to be, and she has the mind of a grown woman, but the body of a child. That leads to quite a bit of frustration. She admired the forms of the beautiful women, and she wanted to be them. She wanted a man that would love her for all of eternity, like the rest of us can have. So she was always very unhappy with her life.
“While staying in England, she met a vampire named Bartholomew. He’d been a vampire for only a few decades, but he was incredibly wealthy and privileged. He took us in, believing us to be a widow and her daughter, and it only took me a few days to realize what he was.”
“A vampire?”
“No, a pedophile. He was instantly attracted to Maria and her young form, and he wooed her. It was amazing to see a creature that was almost a thousand years old fall hook line and sinker for this man, but fall she did. Bartholomew was able to create a rift between the two of us and, when it was time for me to move on, she refused to come with me. When I think of how he used her, the girl I saw as my daughter, it made me sick.
“But I couldn’t persuade her to leave him. I tried for years, but she was in love with him. It took her almost twenty years to realize that what they had wasn’t love on his end. By then, she’d given every bit of love she still possessed, and she got her heart broken. I tried to convince her to come stay with me, but she told me she needed time to heal. It’s been many years since I’ve seen her, but I’ve heard rumors from others that she’s been living in Atlanta.”
“And she hasn’t visited you once since you two went your separate ways?”
Violet shook her head sadly. “No, she hasn’t, and I do miss her dearly. She’s an animal, and sometimes a monster, but I spent many years loving her like a daughter. I should hate that she stole my humanity, and that she left me for Bartholomew, but in my heart, she’s still my little girl.”
“Do you think Maria could help us?” I asked. “If she’s older than Eli that makes her more powerful, right? Even if you couldn’t convince her to fight with us, she might know something about Eli that we could use to our advantage.”
“She may know Eli; I can ask around. If anyone can help us, it’ll probably be her. I’ll have to leave for a few days though,” Violet said, looking at the two of us. “And you two aren’t safe alone, especially with Eli and Roger hanging around. I think it’s time you two head back to your father’s house. When we get there, I’ll start looking for Maria, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Alright,” Quinten said after a moment of silence. “I think that sounds like a good plan. We’ll head home, where Ray and the others can help protect her, and you can search for your maker. I just hope she can help.”
“Me, too,” Violet said.
The three of us left the back of the restaurant, and we started the journey back home.
*****
Violet hailed a cab, and it only took us a few hours to make it all the way home. Violet had the driver drop us off at the edge of town, and then we crept through the forest, careful to skirt well around Roger’s property. It was almost dinnertime when our cabin in the middle of nowhere came into view, and I sobbed.
I’d missed this place so much, and it had only been about two weeks since I’d last seen it and the people inside. Before I could stop myself, I ran up to the front door, threw it open, and raced into the living room. Ray was chopping vegetables at the counter, and he stopped when he saw me. A brief second of total silence spread between us, before he dropped the knife, and I rushed into his open arms.
I buried my tear-streaked face in his shoulder, and he wrapped his arms tightly around me, lifting me off the ground with the intensity of his hug. Jax, Jenna, and Darren came into the kitchen to see what was going on, and the second they recognized me, Jax’s arms joined Ray’s, and we all silently hugged. In that moment, I felt more loved than ever before. I was finally home with
my family, and I didn’t have to worry about them anymore.
When I finally pulled away, Ray used his thumb to wipe away a trail of tears, and he smiled shakily. He was breathing deeply, trying to keep from crying, and I smiled. “Hey, Dad.”
“Oh, Kiddo, I’ve missed you so much!”
He stepped away, and Jenna and Darren both gave me a brief hug. Quinten walked into the kitchen, and Ray clapped him on the back, and then pulled him closer for a hug. “Thank you for keeping my daughter safe.”
Quinten and I looked at each other, and Ray zeroed in on it instantly. “What’s happened now? Is it the baby?”
“No, it’s not the baby. It’s Roger Mason.”
“What happened?” Ray asked, immediately going into protective father mode. “Did he hurt you?”
I took a deep breath. “Eli tried to rip my baby from my womb, and Roger saved my life. He tackled Eli off of me, bit off one of his hands, and then took off, leaving me in the alley.”
Everybody was deathly silent, and I waited for some opinions.
“Well, obviously Roger just wants to kill you himself,” Jax said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m sure he didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart, if he even has one, which I highly doubt,” he muttered.
Ray frowned, more worried about me than what I saw. “Are you alright?” he asked, his eyes drifting to my stomach.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Quinten cleaned me off and then bandaged me up. I should be fine by tomorrow night or sooner, I think. I’m more worried about what this means. Has Roger given up on punishing us for the time being? Or has he simply found someone he hates more than me and saw his opportunity to strike?”
“Hmm,” Ray said, deep in thought. “It is possible that Roger hates Eli more than he hates you. Though he’s old and powerful, Eli has had numerous attempts on his life over the years. He’s probably the most hated vampire out there. Unfortunately, I believe he’s the oldest, which makes him hard to kill.”
Arena Wars Trilogy Page 35
