Passion By Control (Passion Series Book 2)

by Melville, J. A

  He pulled me into his arms, tucking my face against his chest as I sobbed noisily, knowing I was wetting his clothing but unable to stop. “Have you seen him?” I asked, my voice slightly muffled against his chest.

  “No cara, but we will go to him now ok? Please be aware that he was burned, he was in a car that rolled multiple times and as a human, his body doesn’t have the strength that it has as vampire. I...just be aware that he...I’m sorry Sirene, but you have to be aware that Fabian might not make it.” He said softly, trying to soften the blow behind his words, but I still flinched and sobbed harder listening to him. Everyone was warning me to prepare for seeing him. It had to be bad; he had to be seriously injured.

  “Sirene?” I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Come girl, we’ll take you to your man, ok?” I turned my head to see Allegra who was giving me a sympathetic look, as she patted my back.

  I let them lead me into the elevator which took us up to intensive care and Dominick asked one of the nurses where we could find Fabian. She was reluctant to tell us since we weren’t immediate family but Dominick spoke quietly to her and I saw her eyes turn to me occasionally so he must have been telling her that I needed to be allowed to see him. Either that or he was altering her mind subtly. One of the perks of being vampire was bending the minds of people to suit their own needs.

  Finally he came back over to me. “Ok, you can go in and see him now cara. We have to go one at a time though. Just be prepared for what you will see. He’s hooked up to machines helping him the nurse said, so try not to let it alarm you too much.”

  I nodded to Dominick, giving his hand a squeeze of gratitude for how helpful he was being to me. He had to be secretly hoping Fabian would die surely, but he was being kind and supportive and that meant something.

  When I pushed the door open and stepped in to see Fabian, I gasped. The steady hiss of the life support system keeping him alive hit me first and as I stepped closer to the bed, my hands flew to my face as another flood of tears struck me.

  Oh my god, my poor ex vampire. He had tubes coming out of him everywhere. The tube down his throat that was part of the life support that was doing the breathing for him, other tubes snaking into him providing fluids, one feeding him blood. The irony of seeing blood running into him was not lost on me. He was getting his wish, he was on blood again, but not quite the way he’d expected. There were wires disappearing under his hospital gown, obviously monitoring his heartbeat, plus he was heavily bandaged, just wisps of his dirty blonde hair showing beneath one bandage around his head. There were bandages on one cheek and his arms were heavily bandaged from what I could see of them.

  He lay amongst all the paraphernalia keeping him alive and looked so pale, so still. I hated to admit it, but he looked close to death. I glanced up at the heart monitor, listening to the beep…beep of his heart but it terrified me because it wasn’t steady or smooth, it would give a few erratic beats and then seem to stop for a fraction of a second, then beep…beep again. It was awful to watch and listen to because I was so scared with every beep, that it would be the last.

  On shaking legs I walked over and sat down by Fabian’s bed, gently picking up his hand which wasn’t bandaged. It was cold, ice cold so I held it up to my cheek in an attempt to give some of my warmth to him.

  “Oh Fabian, my beautiful Fabian what have you done? Please fight, I can’t lose you. I love you, I love you so fucking much and I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I got pregnant and I should never have told you like that. It was too much of a shock for you and you shouldn’t have driven when you were that upset. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” I whispered, my voice breaking as the next flood of tears began to stream down my face.

  Fabian

  Fabian ached, fuck he ached. His body was just one screaming mass of pain. He didn’t know why it hurt so badly. Vague flashes were going through his head, just mere seconds at a time, like a flash of video footage and then it was gone again. Something to do with a car, it was rolling, then it was gone and he saw a woman’s face, beautiful, looking so sad and a baby? Why was he thinking about a baby? It was too much for him and he let the darkness pull him under again and as it did, he could have sworn he heard a woman crying.

  He stirred again. Well his body didn’t move. He couldn’t seem to get it to move, not at all. It hurt too much anyway and if he tried to move, he couldn’t concentrate on the sounds of voices nearby. He could hear men's’ voices, a few men? Then there was a woman’s voice again and that other woman, the one he thought he’d heard earlier, the one who was crying. What was happening? What did they want? Why wouldn’t they tell him what was going on?

  Suddenly, something happened, pain shot through him, followed by a flash of bright light and his chest seemed to tighten. He could hear a machine nearby making some screaming noise and his eyes shot open, his lips parted and in a hoarse whisper he spoke. “Sirene.”

  Sirene

  My eyes flew to Fabian as he lay in the hospital bed, buried under a sea of wires, tubes and bandages while Dominick, Allegra, Francesca, Lucian and Damien looked on. They weren’t supposed to be in the room too but I’d agreed to smuggle them in and so far the nurses hadn’t noticed. They deserved to be here, more than I did really.

  They had to be with their sire for his final moments on this earth. I wasn’t fooling myself that he could survive this. He looked so battered and bruised, his body burned from when the car had ignited. The doctor’s report was not good, hell, it couldn’t have been much worse. Basically we were all in the room waiting for Fabian to die.

  I couldn’t believe I was here again, about to watch the man I loved die and this time, I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t turn back time and it was too late to ring my Gran for help. That was the price for witchcraft. There were limits, boundaries that couldn’t be crossed, and using witchcraft twice to bring a person back from the dead, wasn’t allowed, it wasn’t possible. I was watching the life draining out of Fabian and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  My poor ex vampire was nearly gone to me. His heart rate was slowing, we all could hear that. The monitor was the only sound in the room other than the sniffles from me, Chloe and Cassie.

  “Sirene.” I heard the gasped whisper from Fabian and suddenly the heart monitor began to go crazy.

  “No, no, NO!” I screamed. “He’s dying, no, Fabian, please NO, NO, NO!” I turned on the others. “For fuck sakes, do something. Save him, FUCKING WELL SAVE HIM!” I spun from one to the other as the noise of the heart monitor nearly drowned me out.

  We all heard voices as nurses and the doctors came running. Fuck they were coming; we were running out of time.

  “Lock the fucking door. Fran, Dominick, one of you, for fuck sakes, turn him; please turn him, now, before it’s too late. Please, please.” I grabbed Dominick turning desperate eyes up to him. “Please, I love him, he’s going to be a father, please, I love him, I love him. I’m carrying his baby; he’s going to be a father. Even if he never accepts it, I want him to have that chance, please.” The words poured from me in an endless tirade, desperate for him to listen to me. Needing him to forgive his sire and save him now, for me, for our unborn child.

  Dominick looked at me, his eyes searching mine for a moment before he turned to Lucian. “Lock the door; be ready to stop anyone who tries to get in this room. If you have to, use mind control, but don’t let them in ok?”

  I stood by Fabian’s bed, watching him in a panic as the machines clearly indicated he was about to go into cardiac arrest. The beep of his heart was becoming wildly erratic. It was obvious that it was going to stop at any moment. Just thinking about him gone forever had me shaking violently with fear. He had to survive; he had to be turned in time.

  Dominick started barking out orders to the others although I couldn’t work out what he was saying; I was too shocked with what was happening around me.

  I watched him go to Fabian, his fangs descended before he bit into his sire’s wrist and began to suck on
him, drinking from him, draining him.

  As he fed, I watched the heart monitor, seeing it slowing as Dominick gradually drained the blood from him. When finally his heart rate began to flutter and skip, missing and jumping erratically, Dominick pulled away, and instructed Francesca to remove the blood bag hanging by the bed that was feeding blood into Fabian.

  Hastily she did as he asked, while Dominick bit down on his own wrist, tearing a chunk of flesh from it. With the blood flowing freely, he hooked the tube from the bag up to his damaged wrist, forcing it in until the blood began to run down the tube towards where it disappeared into Fabian’s arm.

  He quietly instructed Francesca to do something else but I wasn’t sure what until I saw her tear a chunk out of her arm too and with one hand prising Fabian’s lips apart, she pulled the tube from his throat that was helping him to breathe and shoved her wrist against his mouth, watching as her blood began to flow into him, some coating his lips bright red where it missed and ran over him.

  With my body screaming from the tension that held me rigid, unable to do anything but watch what was going on before me, I was vaguely aware of loud thumping as the medical staff fought to gain access to the room.

  “Please work, please work, please work.” I whispered my chanting becoming my mantra as I waited to see what would happen. Would it work, would Dominick and Francesca be able to save Fabian?

  “He’s swallowing it.” I heard Fran’s slightly excited but relieved voice and when I looked over, sure enough, I could just see faint movement from his throat. He was swallowing the blood for himself, not to mention what he was getting intravenously from Dominick.

  Finally after what felt like an eternity, both of them pulled away and covered Fabian back up, leaving us with nothing more to do but wait. It didn’t take long, with a few feeble, skipping beats, his heart gave out and the room was silent except for the frantic breathing from me. I glanced over at Cassie and Chloe and saw immediately that they had been put into a trance. Obviously it was easier to do that to them than try and wipe everything from their minds.

  “Get ready to open the door.” Dominick ordered. “We’re going to mind control everyone as they come in ok? We want them to think he’s dead. They’ll take him down to the morgue and we can get him from there. Is that clear?”

  Francesca hastily hooked the blood bag back up to Fabian and she cleaned the blood off his lips. Both her and Dominick had already healed I noticed.

  “Let me help here.” I touched his arm. “I can use witchcraft.”

  His vibrant blue eyes searched my face for a moment before he nodded and stepped back to give me room. Quickly I chanted. “Keep Fabian the same, let the blood of the vampires flow in his veins but make those trying to gain access to the room go back in time to when the machine first told them something was wrong. “

  I saw Dominick’s eyebrows shoot up and I shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t make fun of the spells. They might seem silly, but they will do the job and I’m under too much pressure to come up with something that rhymes.”

  “There’s no one at the door anymore.” Lucian said but just as the words left his mouth the heart monitor began to scream loudly in the room. Within seconds of the machine going off, we all heard the footsteps running towards Fabian’s room.

  Several doctors and nurses rushed inside, one barking orders at us to leave the room and despite me wanting to protest, I reluctantly left, helping to steer Chloe and Cassie from the room.

  “Can’t someone take them home? They need to be made to forget the entire night. If Fabian survives this, they’ll see him again and if they think he’s dead, well that’s just going to get spooky.”

  “Lucian, Damien, take the women home please and be sure to alter their minds so they have no memory of this evening. Once you’re done, come back here.”

  Once they’d left, all of us could do nothing more than wait for the pointless attempt to revive Fabian to be over, and it didn’t take long. Finally a doctor emerged his expression resigned, defeated. “I’m very sorry, we tried to revive him but we were unsuccessful. I regret to inform you that Mr Sorensen has passed away. I’m very sorry for your loss but unfortunately his injuries were too severe for us to be able to save him.”

  He touched my shoulder briefly and shuffled out of the room. I walked over to Fabian and stared down at him. His hospital robe had been removed and he was naked. I studied his features, the damage done to him from the car accident, the fire and suddenly I was fearful it had been too late, and the change wouldn’t take place, that he would be gone to me forever.

  “Has it worked? Can you tell?” I asked Dominick.

  He nodded. “Watch him. See his skin? The burns aren’t as bad. We need to get him out of here before anyone notices he’s healing.” He turned to me. “I hope you know what you’re doing wanting him back and having him return to vampire. He might not be any more accepting of your condition cara. You have to be prepared for that.”

  “I know, I know he might go from a pissed human to a really pissed off vampire, but I couldn’t watch him die. Arse or not, I love him and I know he’s far from perfect, but I can’t help how I feel about him. I just hope he learns to accept my condition. Especially now; this baby is a gift and his one and only chance to be a father. Hopefully in time he will come to realise that.” I said as I turned to watch the man I loved slowly making the change from human back to vampire.

  Chapter Twenty

  Fabian

  Fabian woke to pitch black, total and utter darkness. There wasn’t even a hint of light in whatever the hell he was in. He put his arms out and hit metal, metal on both sides, at his feet, above his head.

  Fuck, the memory of the car accident came back to him. Well, he’d done it. He’d killed himself. He was in his coffin. He lay there, his mind filled with those last moments in the car, then a woman’s voice, crying, what the fuck? What were the flashes of images that were coming to him?

  Finally a sliver of common sense struck. If he was dead, why was he waking up in his coffin?

  Suddenly there was a loud noise near his head and a door opened, bright light flooding in where he lay and he blinked against the dazzling light, shielding his eyes.

  He was pulled out of his dark metal box which was obviously not a coffin, sliding from it on what appeared to be a table or stretcher, looking up from his reclining position into the faces of Dominick and Lucian.

  “Hurry sire, we don’t have much time.” Dominick’s voice was urgent, and still unsure what was going on, Fabian responded by sitting up, swinging his long legs to the floor. He stood, his eyes moving around the room before he looked down at himself and found he was naked. Frowning at his lack of clothing, he tried to remember the last thing he’d been doing and why he’d be naked.

  Reality hit him when he saw the room, the rows of small steel doors. Fuck he was in the morgue. So he was dead? No, he couldn’t be dead, he was standing, everyone was looking at him, so they could see him. That meant he wasn’t a ghost, so what the fuck?

  “Fabian, do you remember what happened to you?” Dominick asked.

  “I…there was an accident, wasn’t there? I had a car accident but I don’t remember what happened after that. I thought I was dead. I’m not dead am I?”

  “Well you are sort of.” Dominick said. “You were dying; you had been badly injured from the car accident. It rolled several times and caught fire so you were burned too. The doctors didn’t hold out much hope of you making it. Sirene begged me to save you. You do remember who she is, I presume? We turned you. You’re vampire again sire. Both Francesca and I gave you our blood to change you. I was the one who initiated the change by draining you.”

  “Of course I remember Sirene. What sort of a stupid question is that? So I’m vampire? How ironic? She didn’t want me to be vampire again, she made me wait a few weeks and now I find out she’s the one begging for you all to turn me?” He smirked at Nick. “I’m sure that was the last thing you wanted to do, he
y Nick? Turn me vampire again? I bet you just wanted to let me die.”

  “Put these on.” Lucian passed a bag to Fabian and when he looked inside, there were jeans, a t-shirt and shoes for him.

  He started pulling the clothes on but he had to speak to Dominick first. Despite everything that had happened, what he’d tried to do to him and Allegra, despite all that, his son had saved his life. Whether he’d only done it for Sirene’s sake didn’t matter. The bottom line was, he’d done it and that must have been hard for him.

  “I want to thank you son for saving my life when I know inside you would have wanted to let me die. I hope we can live amicably despite what I tried to do to you and Allegra? I have my own witch now determined to drive me out of my mind. It would seem I cannot run from these witches. I am destined to have them in my life. I bet she wasn’t happy about asking you to turn me?”

  “Oh Sirene wanted us to change you Fabian. She was most insistent. It would seem the prospect of losing you forever, distressed her more than seeing you vampire and knowing that you may very well reject her.”

  Fabian frowned. “Why would I reject her? I love her, despite what she is and what she has done to me in the past when she worked for you. She has shown an ability to love me although even I concede I’m not worthy of her love. I’ve never cared about anyone and then this tiny scrap of a woman enters my life, turns it upside down, announces she’s a witch, drives me crazy, saves my life, makes me so hungry for her and now I hear she’s insisted on you helping to save my life again?”

  “Yes sire. You are most fortunate to have found a woman able to ignore all your faults.” A hint of a smile curved Dominick’s lips. “Perhaps then you should think long and hard about treating her so poorly simply because she has conceived your child, although after what happened to you, she was so upset, it would not surprise me if she lost the child anyway.”