“I promised I would protect you from him. If you would like to move to Oregon to be closer to Ash, we can move there.” Samuel pulled her back into his embrace. He liked having her there perhaps too much. He could feel her smile against his chest as she laid her head to rest and some tension left her body. Rubbing her back, he continued, “Why don’t we watch a movie? It’s been a long day, and we can lie down on the couch with the dog and relax.”
Sara nodded, and he could tell she was half asleep already. Gathering the pillows from the different sections on the couch, he propped them up on the longer side and grabbed a blanket and the remote. Samuel laid down and patted the couch in front of him.
Laughing, Sara picked up the dog, placing him on the sofa before laying in front of Samuel and making herself comfortable. He turned on her favorite movie and wrapped his arms around her, kissing the top of her head while the dog created a blanket nest on his hip and settled down.
Samuel watched her long dark lashes flutter down as her eyes struggled to stay open, but it didn’t take long before she was asleep. Running his lips through her hair, he watched her with a softened gaze.
Holding a woman like this was a new experience for him. He’d had many lovers in his long life, several at the same time, but never this. The women took their pleasure as he found his, but they never stayed long. At least, not long enough for them to be comfortable with someone like him holding them. Samuel thought about how lonely he had been over the past centuries, moving from place to place and avoiding attachments. Before the witches trapped him here, he moved often.
Sara didn’t know what he was, and maybe that was why she let him be near her, or maybe times had changed. He wasn’t sure what the cause was, but he enjoyed holding her as she slept peacefully in the safety of his arms. She smelled of clean shampoo and the eucalyptus mint spray she loved. Samuel reveled in having her so close.
Tightening his arms a little more, he smiled as Sara snuggled further into his embrace, and let out a contented sigh. There was something about this woman that drew him like a moth to a flame. She was brilliant and witty, caring and compassionate, and she made him want to be more. More what, he didn’t know, but he wanted to find out.
Samuel let his eyes drift shut, and enjoyed her softness. He watched her sleep so many times when he couldn’t touch her. Now that he could, he recognized that he didn’t want to let go.
A low growl from the end of the couch startled Samuel to wakefulness. He didn’t know when he’d fallen asleep, but the clock on the cable box told him it was just after one in the morning. Chico stood on his legs with his front paws planted on the back of the couch. He was looking towards the front door while growling deep in his throat. All the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end, and he was shaking.
Samuel frowned and sat up with care, pulling his arm from under Sara while trying not to wake her. When he placed his hand on Chico’s back, the dog flinched and looked at him, whining in a low pitch.
“Hush, I’ll go look,” Samuel told him in a low voice, careful not to alert Sara to the dog’s behavior. Lifting Chico off his hip, he placed the small creature on the chaise next to their head and stood up from the couch.
Samuel crept towards the front door, peeking out the windows next to it, and saw a shadow moving just outside the property. No wonder he hadn’t sensed anyone, they hadn’t stepped onto the lawn and into his domain yet. Samuel had to hand it to the dog, he had fantastic senses to have picked up on the intruder before he did.
After removing his new black leather jacket from the coat tree, he swung it on as he walked to the patio doors. Samuel glanced out to make sure the intruder wasn’t coming around the back before unlocking the doors and opening them.
He looked back at Chico and gave him a command to stay and be quiet, putting force and a little of his power behind his words. The last thing he needed was for the dog to wake Sara.
Slipping out the French doors, he shut them behind him without making a sound and crept down the stairs. There, on the edge of his awareness in the front of the house, was the intruder stepping onto the lawn. Now he knew the location of the stranger, it was easy to sneak around the house for a look.
Samuel, standing behind the bushes to the side of the house, watched a man dressed in a dark hooded sweatshirt and jeans, peeking into the windows of Sara’s bedroom. His eyes narrowed as the man stretched, craning his neck at different angles to see into the room. The man frowned when he found no one in the room. While crunching leaves and a snapping stick or two, the man walked to the next set of windows, trying to peek into the room Sara set up as a library. He would have to talk to her about getting better blinds.
As the man moved around a tree to get a better view, the hood of his sweatshirt snagged on a branch and fell off, revealing a balding head with blonde hair. Samuel grunted and moved around the house with cat-like stealth. As soon as he was behind the man, he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, using his power to silence the man’s startled scream.
“Good evening. And who might you be?” Samuel came around the man, not letting go as he needed to maintain skin contact to keep full control in his lessened state. He absolutely needed to get his full powers back from the witches’ descendants.
“Jeremy.” The man replied in a monotone voice. He wouldn’t be able to lie or resist while under Samuel’s influence, but he made sure the man knew he was being controlled.
“Ah, Jeremy. I’ve heard a lot about you. I’ve wanted to meet you so badly. Why don’t we go for a walk?” Samuel remembered seeing a large wildlife preserve to the North-East of their house on a map. It wouldn’t be too far away. At least, not to someone fit and used to walking.
A broad smile split across his face, moving from ear to ear and revealing a row of rapidly growing shark-like teeth. His eyes changed as well, becoming the split pupils of a predator, as his irises turned a deep red and the surrounding white turned black.
Samuel made sure Jeremy could see the transformation in the moonlight. The man whimpered, still unable to control his own voice or movement, and his eyes glazed over with terror. Hearing what sounded like a hose, Samuel looked down to see a dark wet spot blossom across the front of the other man’s pants.
Samuel’s lips turned down into a sad moue, and he tilted his head. “Aw, did little Jeremy have an accident?” His smile came back, larger than before, as he turned the man away from the house and towards the preserve. “Don’t worry, it won’t be the only one you have tonight.”
Tears ran down Jeremy’s face as Samuel forced him to walk into the darkness.
25. SARA
Sara rolled out of bed in the morning. The last thing she remembered was falling asleep with Samuel on the couch. Since she was still wearing the lounge pants and the tee shirt she changed into before the movie, she assumed he carried her to bed. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him sleeping soundly. He seemed dead to the world and didn’t even flinch when she got up.
Sometimes she wondered if she would give him so much leeway if he weren’t so good looking. No, she wasn’t that shallow. That’s what she kept telling herself at least. There was something off about him, and she needed to get his story. It wasn’t beyond her that she still didn’t know anything about him other than he wouldn’t hurt her.
Sara watched Samuel for several more minutes before picking up Chico to take him out. She closed the bedroom door softly behind her so as not to wake him and placed the dog on the floor. After letting him out the back door to do his business, Sara went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. She doubted Samuel knew how to use the timer function and she’d fallen asleep before setting it.
Looking towards the bedroom while the coffee brewed, she contemplated the best way to get him to open up to her. Maybe she could tempt it out of him though seduction had never been in her repertoire. One way or another, she wanted to know more.
Samuel was an odd creature. Sometimes he looked at her with great affection and sometimes he
looked at her like he was calculating his next move. Perhaps that was also merely in her imagination. She admitted to herself that he was easier to deal with when Ash was in the house with them. There was something comforting in knowing she wasn’t alone.
Sara grabbed a cup of coffee, adding milk and sugar as was her habit, and let the dog in. She should sit down and sort through the messages from her clients. Since she had just finished with the last client, she still had a few more days before she needed to start her next project. It wouldn’t hurt to see if she had received any new inquiries.
With coffee in hand, Sara was ready to face the day, or so she had believed. When she sat at her computer, she noticed an alert from the outdoor security cameras and frowned. Setting the coffee on the desk, she opened the file folder that contained all the motion activated recordings.
The cameras themselves were small and well hidden in the corners of the house. If someone didn’t know they were there, they would never see them. It was precisely why Sara purchased this brand after the roses were left scattered around the porch. She didn’t want anyone to know she was filming them.
Opening the earliest one, activated a few minutes after one in the morning, she watched as a hooded figure crept up to the house. Her heart stopped as she recognized the gait of the stranger almost immediately. Sara covered her face with her hands, trying not to cry as she watched the hooded figure walk towards the bedroom windows and look in. The high definition night vision setting on the cameras left nothing to the imagination as the moonlight helped illuminate the video.
Memories flooded her mind as she watched him. The most recent, seeing his mugshots, and feeling a sense of vindication did nothing to overwrite the horror she felt at remembering the abuse she suffered under him. She knew it was only a matter of time before he found her again, she just thought it would take him longer. He must have hired a private investigator once more. Jeremy wouldn’t have any issues procuring one with his father’s connections.
With shaking hands, she picked up the coffee and took a bracing sip as she watched the rest of the video play out. The video came from the camera installed in the corner of the house on the side closest to the bedroom and angled towards the front door. Apparently, Jeremy didn’t see what he was looking for in the first set of windows and walked to the next, snagging his hood on a tree.
Sara put the cup of coffee down, her hands shaking too fiercely to keep holding the hot liquid, and covered her mouth with numb fingers. As he tried to get a better look in the second set of windows, a large dark shadow came into view from the camera’s corner of the house. Gasping and leaning closer to the monitor, she saw Samuel grab Jeremy by the back of the neck. Jeremy froze, not even flinching as Samuel moved around him.
He said something to her ex, she could see his lips moving, but there was no sound with the video. Sara frowned, and her eyebrows snapped together as she watched a smile spread across his face. It didn’t stop at the usual edges of a smile but instead continued back towards his ears revealing long sharp teeth. Lots of long, sharp teeth. It reminded her of the sand snakes in the old Tim Burton movie, Beetlejuice.
Sara wanted to look away but, like watching a horrible accident, she couldn’t pull her eyes from the screen. Next, she saw his eyes change. Gone were the warm human eyes she looked into so many times. Replacing them were something out of a nightmare, reflecting the light of the camera the same way a predator’s eyes would, causing them to glow brightly on the recording.
She continued to watch with dumb fascination as Samuel turned and dragged Jeremy away from the house. For several minutes, as the last of the video wound down, and the cameras shut off due to no motion, she sat in shocked disbelief. Finally, when she could move again, she rested her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes with her fingers.
The smart thing for her to do would be to grab Chico and run. But wasn’t it odd, the dog had no issues with Samuel, as a ghost or in person? Sara was one of those people who trusted an animal's natural instinct and judgment.
She groaned, sitting back in the chair, and swiveling it around to look towards the bedroom where Samuel was still sleeping. It was time for her to get answers. If he tried to hurt her, well Samuel promised he wouldn’t. Maybe she shouldn’t take his word for it but, though he hadn’t told her the full truth, she didn’t feel like he was lying. She would have to be delicate while questioning him, and that wasn’t one of her fortes.
26. SAMUEL
Yawning, Samuel reached to Sara’s side of the bed, seeking her warmth. When he didn’t find it, he opened his eyes and discovered the other side of the bed was empty. Samuel looked at the clock and found it was much later than he had anticipated. She must’ve woken up and started her daily routine.
It was late when he arrived home the night before, stripping off his muddy clothes and throwing them in the washer, before taking a shower, throwing on a pair of lounge pants, and crawling into bed. The hike took longer than expected as he’d had to haul Jeremy most of the way through the swampy nature preserve.
Samuel rolled out of bed and stretched, elongating his spine and yawning again, before leaving the room in search of Sara. He found her in her computer room, typing away at the keyboard, and smiled while watching her. “Good morning.”
She paused her typing and turned her head towards him. Although she smiled, he could tell she forced it as she replied. “Morning, I have to finish this email, but I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
“Alright.” Samuel frowned, concerned, but shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know what he expected, but a hug would have been welcome. Leaving the doorway, he scooped up the dog and went to make himself a cup of coffee from the pot. He had never enjoyed the bitter brew before but adding copious amounts of sugar and milk went a long way in improving the flavor.
“Do you know what’s wrong?” He asked the dog, scratching him under the chin, while Chico grunted in pleasure. Surely, she didn’t know what he’d been up to the night before. He’d found Sara still in the same position on the couch when he’d finished his shower as she had been when he’d left. He picked her up and carried her to bed without so much as a peep from her.
He’d just sat down on the couch when she came out of the office with hard eyes and a clenched jaw. “We need to talk.”
Samuel froze as Sara spoke. Never in the history of mankind did a woman coming up to a man and saying ‘we need to talk’ ever end well for the man. He gave a forced laugh as he tried to turn on the charm, his smile displaying the full force of his dimples. “I swear, I will try harder to put the toilet seat down,” he joked.
He knew he was in trouble when she didn’t even crack a smile. Putting his coffee on the table and trying to keep a relaxed pose even as his heart thudded away in his chest, Samuel sat back and watched her as she took a seat on the other end of the couch and faced him.
“So, funny story,” but her face said it would be anything but. “Remember when those roses appeared on the doorstep?”
He nodded. “Those were from me, I didn’t know about your aversion to them.”
Sara closed her eyes for a moment but opened them again and gave him a forced smile. “It’s the thought that counts. Anyhow, the next day I had cameras installed. Ones that are motion activated and have an excellent night vision setting. They capture anything and everything that happens around the perimeter of the house.”
His heart fell out of his chest. Samuel tried to give no reaction as he pressed his shaking hands to his knees. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered people buzzing around the outside of the house after that event but this kind of technology was new to him, and he’d forgotten.
“Imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning to find several videos waiting on the drive for me,” she continued, watching him with sharp eyes and her head tilted to the side. If he weren’t in so much trouble, he’d think she looked adorable.
“What did you see?” Samuel asked with all the casualness he could muster.
“First, my ex-boyfriend coming to spy on the house in the dead of night. Then you, coming around the corner and having a chat with him, before leading him away.”
“I told you I would protect you from him.” He bunched his hands into fists. He wouldn’t apologize for what he had done to the sniveling little rat.
Sara grunted, her face impassive, as she watched him. “Is he still alive?”
“Probably. Maybe. I didn’t kill the little cockroach if that’s what you’re asking.”
“So, what did you do to him?”
Samuel’s mind flashed back to the night before as if he were watching the events unfold in a movie.
He dragged the little worm through knee-high grass and swamp for almost two hours before he was confident they were far enough away from residences for anyone to hear his screams. Jeremy kept falling, scraping his arms and legs and was altogether a pathetic specimen. Then, he let him go, talking his power off the other man.
He screamed at an octave Samuel didn’t think possible as he turned to run. He didn’t take into account the high grass or uneven terrain and ended up flat on his face. Samuel swooped down on him and picked him up by the back of the neck, turning him and landing a sound punch to his gut. Jeremy doubled over and threw up the contents of his stomach into the weeds.
Rolling his eyes, Samuel waited for him to finish. Once the scumbag was no longer heaving, he grabbed Jeremy by his arm and started in on him. He could feel the little psychopath’s mind every time he touched him. He had every intention of killing Sara and trying to hide her body in a place no one would find her. The anger Samuel felt towards the little cockroach fueled his own rage until he hardly recognized himself.
By the time he could rein in his own anger, Jeremy had blood gushing down his face from several cuts and a broken nose, had a broken arm and several broken fingers, and a sprained ankle from trying to run again. Once Samuel calmed, he started on Jeremy’s mind. He didn’t want the other man anywhere near his Sara.
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