The New Queen Rises

by Dawn Gray

  "Yes, we were," the man said and stepped away from Quinn. He was going to attack him, but two of the other men in black grabbed Quinn and held him, and then others grabbed Michael, Julian, and Cleo. "I was sent to escort you to see Jack Wolf."

  "I was told two weeks," I replied.

  "That was from Victor La Rouge, not Mr. Wolf," he replied. I smiled at him then shook my head.

  "My husband was not part of this deal and I refuse to see him. If you wish, you may give him this message from me," I said and crossed my arms.

  "Oh, and what would that message be?" He asked.

  "You can tell my husband to go to hell," I replied and stepped back out of the room, slowly, still looking at this man. "And, also give my regards to his friend David; tell the bastard that he hasn't seen the last of this little mortal."

  With that, I backed out of the room totally and waited until I heard him ask where I had gone. Then he told some people to go after me, before I ran up the stairs. Three of them followed as I made my way through each floor of the house, it had four. I finally reached the attic and had to break open the door to get through. Locks on the attic door, who ever heard of such a thing?

  I was standing in the attic looking around when I heard their voices at the bottom of the stairway. I glanced down the stairs and watched them as they started to climb. I walked over to the window and climbed out onto the balcony that was there and looked down over the side of the house, it rested on the edge of a stone cliff.

  Great, I thought to myself, look what you got yourself into this time.

  Up! I heard the low voice in my mind tell me. I smiled at Quinn's suggestion and looked over to the sidewall next to me to my left. There was a trellis there, covered in green vines, but with enough space for my small feet and hands to use as a ladder. I climbed up, as Quinn had suggested, and stood on top of the roof.

  The part I stood on was a small two-foot wide stretch of roofing that was flat, to let the chimney sweeps up there safely to clean the chimneys, but the rest of the roof seemed to be an eighty-degree angle on either side of me. I stepped away from where I had climbed on, moving further from the approaching men and I stood almost a quarter of the way across the roof.

  I turned and looked at the three men as they all finally came up onto the roof. I stood there facing them, imagining what I must look like to them, a small mortal girl, pale, dressed all in black, her dark hair and black coat blowing in the breeze, standing, like an idiot, on the roof of a four-story mansion.

  They smiled at me as they stepped closer. "Come on, little girl," one of them said to me, his voice raspy and deep. "We won't hurt you."

  "Yeah, I've heard that one before," I replied, but what was I going to do, I was stuck on a roof with a four-story drop on one end and three goons on the other. If I only had wings, I thought to myself, and then it hit me. I didn't have wings, however, I had gotten good at that levitation thing. Yeah, right, jump off a building and become fertilizer for the plants in the forest below when I land flat on my head, good idea.

  Nevertheless, it had to be, it was my only way out of this. I closed my eyes and asked whichever God or Goddess was listening to give me the strength to make it through this little adventure. I turned so that my back was to the men in black, then I looked back at them quick and began to run. The roof seemed to take forever to end, and when it did, it seemed almost like the bottom of the world dropped out on me.

  My arms waved as if I had no control over them, and my legs moved about in all different directions. I was falling too fast to land without breaking anything, like my neck, and I had to slow down. I closed my eyes, as the ground continued to fly up at me, and concentrated on braking, or at least landing softly. My body slowed, the air seemed to become thick around my skin, still thin enough to breathe, but like a thick Jell-O, slowing me down to the point that I could almost control where I landed, but the general direction I was going was down.

  The ground finally met me and I landed softly enough that I didn't fall over. My feet hit the ground, my knees bent and my fingertips touched the ground so that I didn't fall flat on my face. I looked a little like a track runner moments before the beginning the race, before he took off. I crouched down and looked over at the house; I was a ways from it. I had landed in the woods on a soft piece of ground that seemed to have been put there just for me.

  I could have hid there all day, but I spotted one of the bad guys up on the roof, looking over for me. I decided that if I could see him, eventually, he would spot me, and so I took off into the woods. I ducked behind a large tree and noticed the small hole that its roots had made in the ground. It came up on both side, and then a little around the front and was just deep enough so that I could hide my body in it.

  I curled up, threw my coat over my legs, and then brushed some of the loose leaves over me as I lay down and covered the rest of me with the black coat. I closed my eyes and shielded myself from them, but I also keep my mind opened to spot them ahead of time.

  The day slowly faded away as I lay there, but I had made no attempt to contact the others, which means that Lauren could be still under the stairs, but I doubted that because the others could read her mind.

  The night rolled in silently and I finally opened my mind to the others. I could hear Julian's mumbled thoughts about where I could possibly be and Michael's quiet plea for me to come home. Cleo's thoughts on Julian's true well being, and how I must be such a burden on them, seemed to anger me. Lauren's quiet mind told me that she was sleeping, probably right beside Julian, on Cleo's perfect navy colored imported leather sofa. It was Quinn's mind that seemed to hurt when I touched it.

  The feeling jolted me like an electric shock. He was calm and cool, but the feeling seemed to pulsate in him quite violently. I touched his thoughts, which were about the night of passion that we had shared before this thing had gone this far and felt exactly how he felt about me. I connected with his mind and brought him to me, letting him know that I was fine and that I hadn't wandered far. His thoughts smiled, but gave no indication that he even wanted to tell the others.

  I stood up, after letting him go, brushed off the leaves and dirt and made my way up towards the house. I was tired, probably from lack of blood, and as I got closer, I saw a shape appear in front of me. I stepped back, ready to run as it came closer. I blocked my presence, no need to let it know that I was dangerous, but as he stepped into moonlight, not more than two feet from me, I looked in to Quinn's dark eyes and smiled. His face remained the same, unchanging, unwavering as he looked at me, straight in the eyes.

  Suddenly, as if he was a puppet and had no real control over his movements, he took me by the upper arms and pulled me to him, kissing me hard on the lips. Fire raged as the pulsating got harder, faster, and almost unbearable. I pushed him away and looked at his stunned face, then I touched his cheek with the palm of my hand and brought him to me, kissing him softly and slowly, harder with each kiss until I had worked back up to where he had started. He put his hands on my hips as we broke away and looked at my lips then looked me over.

  "I thought I had lost you," he whispered to me. I smiled at him and leaned against his body.

  "It will take more than that to get rid of me," I smiled and replied, stepping away from him. "Can we go back now? I feel dirty and I want you to hold me."

  He nodded then took my hand and we walked back to the house. Quinn tucked me behind him as we walked in through the hall and passed the sitting room. Julian and Michael stood up, and then the others stood.

  “Did you find her?" Julian asked. Quinn nodded, reaching behind him and putting both hands on me.

  "Is she all right?" Michael questioned. Again, he nodded but didn't move. "Is she behind you?" For the third time, Quinn nodded in response. "Are you taking her upstairs?"

  "Yes, she needs her rest," he replied. Michael nodded and Julian sat down. Quinn looked at his brother. "She's fine," he said and brought me upstairs. It never occurred to me to ask him exactly why he had
done that until we were up in his room with the door shut and locked.

  He had two rooms and a bathroom in his ‘suite’. He ducked into the bathroom and started to fill the tub with water, and then he looked at me as I sat down on the edge of the bed. I watched him move around quickly; gathering clothes, and then he stopped and looked at me directly.

  "Get undressed," he said to me, almost as an order. I stood up and put my hands on my hips. I had already taken off my coat and unbuttoned three of my shirt buttons when he looked at me again. "Well?" He said in a tone that sounded like he was asking me ‘why haven't you started’.

  "Well what?" I asked him.

  "I asked you to get undressed," he replied.

  "No, you tried to order me to get undressed and I want to know what that was all about," I replied.

  "What was what about?"

  "The fact that you hid me behind your back and rushed me up here to the room," I replied. He stopped and put his hands on his hips.

  "Ash, please," he begged me, telling me to drop it. "Just get undressed."

  "I'm not a peasant girl, Quinn; I won't do what you say when you order me," I replied to him. He rushed at me and grabbed me by the open part of my shirt. He snarled at me and ripped my shirt open the rest of the way, then brought it down to just above my elbows and pulled it tightly closed so that I couldn't get away. He lowered his mouth to my neck and growled in my ear. It was then that I noticed the violence in him, the anger in his mind. "There was nothing that you could do."

  "What?" He asked me, with a violent voice.

  "The men in black that were here earlier. You couldn't have stopped them, there were too many," I told him, thinking that this might be the left over violence from then.

  "They might have hurt you," he growled against my skin, but he didn't move his head. I felt his lips touch me, closed my eyes and let the feeling flow through me. "Why do you always put yourself in that sort of position?"

  "I'm here, though. They didn't get me," I replied to him and let my head fall back, exposing more of my neck. "Do it, Quinn."

  "Do what?"

  “I want you too," I whispered softly. He stood up and looked into my red eyes. "My veins are burning again and the blood haze is so hard to get rid of sometimes. The anger isn't as bad, but the need and the want are still there, and it's for you."

  "You need to feed," he told me and pulled the shirt off the rest of the way, then, without me moving, he reached behind me and unsnapped the black bra that I was wearing and let it fall to the ground. I watched him reach over and touch the blue button on the wall, then use the same hand to cup under my left breast. He brought his lips down to my chest then came back up and bit into my neck. I pushed at him with all my strength, but it wasn't that it hurt, because it didn't anymore, it was the fact that he was doing it at all.

  I watched the door open, through the haze in my eyes, as a maid walked in, leading a man that looked as though he was under some sort of spell. She nodded at me then turned and left the room. Quinn withdrew, and then looked at me, his lips and fangs dripping with blood, then he waved to the man to come over and the man obeyed.

  Quinn stepped away from me and pulled the man to me. I wrapped my arms around him, still looking at Quinn, and bit into his neck. I watched as Quinn backed over to the wall and stood there, one arm across his chest, the other bent so that he was biting his own finger. He was watching me and I could feel the arousal flowing off him.

  The blood flowed quickly, too fast for me to swallow, and it dribbled down my chin and over my skin. The man grew weak and when his heart stopped, I dropped him on the floor. Quinn reached over and pushed the button again, and then he walked over to me and kissed me on the lips.

  He reached down and unbuttoned my jeans, then started to pull them off. His hands ran over my body, tracing the curves with his hands as he pushed my jeans to the floor. When they were totally off, Quinn laid me down on the bed and proceeded to clean the blood off from my skin with his tongue. I heard the door open and people rustling about the room to remove the dead man, but Quinn didn't stop until there was no blood left.

  Quinn scooped me up and brought me into the bathroom. He set me down in the bathtub and then reached over and shut the water off. I sank down into the hot water and closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth. Later on, after I had slipped into bed and covered myself up, Quinn lay down beside me and touched my hair.

  "What are you thinking about?" He asked me. I looked at him, as he towered above me.

  "Jack," I whispered. I looked away briefly then looked back at him. "Victor."

  "Are you afraid?" He questioned me. I nodded slightly, and then touched his cheek. "Why? You grow more powerful every day."

  "But, what if it's not enough and what if my son dies? What if I die?" I said softly. Quinn shook his head and laughed.

  "You're not going to die," he said to me. "You can't."

  "I'm just like you," I told him and shook my head. "No one person is totally immortal."

  "You'll be fine," he murmured as his lips touched mine. "Trust me." His mouth closed over mine and his body caressed mine. I was his, surrendering to the powerful surge that flowed through our bodies, for the rest of the night.

  14

  Two weeks had passed, slowly. My powers grew but nothing new came about. We spent most of our days at Cleo's mansion, just hanging around, trying to keep a low profile. The day of, ten hours before Victor's masquerade, I cornered Julian, who had avoided me for quite a while.

  "Julian?" I said softly to his back as he looked out at the mountains. He wasn't wearing any shirt, so I could see the muscles tighten up at the sound of my voice. He didn't answer and he didn't turn around, but he straightened up as soon as my hands touched his skin. "Julian?"

  "Yes?" He said in a quiet voice, but he still didn't face me.

  "What's the matter?" I asked him. He shook his head. "It's not that simple Jules, to shrug it off. I can read your mind, remember?"

  "Then, why ask me, if you can just find out yourself," he snapped. I stepped away and then turned to leave, but I heard him turn to look at me and I stopped, looked back, and shook my head.

  "I don't do that," I replied to him. He crossed his arms over his bare chest and sighed, the anger on his face confused me, because I wasn't sure if it was aimed at me or someone else. I walked over and put my hands on his skin. "Will you talk to me? We haven't been alone in so long."

  "That's just it, Ash. That's my problem," he said softly, and then bit on his lower lip. "It's been too long."

  "For what?" I inquired.

  "You and I," he replied.

  "Oh no," I said and shook my head, stepping back away from him. "Oh, Julian. I don't need this right now."

  "But I do," he replied and walked over to me quickly. I stepped back, just as he got close enough for me to feel the body heat from him. "I was wrong, very wrong."

  "About what?"

  "The way I feel about you," he replied. I closed my eyes, as a way to tell him that this was not what I wanted to hear, but he used it as an opportunity to touch me. His hand touched my shoulder, and then one touched my cheek. I looked at him, feeling his flesh so close to mine and I remembered how we used to be, then I backed away. "Ashley."

  "No, Julian," I whispered. "What about Quinn?"

  "What about him? He doesn't know what he needs, what you need. I do," Julian said.

  "And what, pray tell, do I need? And if you say protecting I’m going to kick you in the face," I told him. He smiled at me and then shook his head.

  "You need love, you need security," he said to me. I nodded.

  "Yeah, yeah. Peace on Earth, good will towards men, and a large bank account," I said and smiled at him. "You know what I really need Julian? It's Jack. It's my son that matters right now."

  "Can I be honest with you?" He asked.

  "You always are."

  "I love you, almost more than my heart can take," he whispered to me.

  "Jules, I never sa
id I stopped loving you," I told him, but he shook his head.

  "That's not it," he replied. "If after this is over, after you have your son back. If you can't choose between Quinn and me, I'm going to leave."

  "I cannot believe that you are doing this to me. Of all the rotten things in the world to say to me at this moment Julian! Oh, I wish I had a hammer," I replied, starting to get upset. He looked at me confused as to why I might need a hammer. "I'd use it to knock some sense into your brain."

  "What did you come here for, Ash? What did you want to say to me?"

  "All I wanted to know was what you're connection to Cleo is and how come she now looks at me in total disgust," I replied and stepped back to the door. "But, none of that matters now. Just to make it clear, when I get my son back you won't have to leave, because I will."

  I started to walk away, but he grabbed my arm, pulled me to him and then kissed me hard on the lips. He had the back of my upper arms and I couldn't get away. He backed away and I looked up at him, with a blank look.

  "She doesn't look at you in disgust; she's just trying to figure out what your connection is with me. She's concerned about my health and she thinks that you are a threat," he whispered to me.

  "A threat," I smiled at him. "To who?"

  "To her. She thinks that you're out to have all three of us." He smiled bravely.

  "I'm not out to have all three of you," I told him then backed away from him. "I already do."

  I turned and left him standing there, totally confused by what just went on too. I was unable to think of anything else but simply walking. I walked right to my room and slammed the door shut. This was not good, not what I needed.