Tangled Web (Ravana Moon #2.5)

by S. L. Perrine

  Anna took a fighting stance, without a weapon, and almost ready to give birth but she was prepared to go after him if he tried to touch a single person in there.

  “I’ve fed. I’m not going to injure anyone. My brother has lived like this for a thousand years, he only feeds on blood storage.”

  “Liam, you’re an only child.”

  “No, Liam was. My spirit is from another. One who died too young. My brother was going to change me, but I was killed. Mistaken for a vampire. I died a human death and was reborn. I am Massimo Bellator.”

  “Bella…” Anna became weak-kneed, but Massimo was there in an instant. “That’s my husband's name.” She pulled away and turned heading for the door. She needed to find Emerick.

  “Your husband?”

  Annabelle shook her head at his question.

  “Who is the father of your child?”

  “My husband.” She turned to shout at him in the face.

  His eyes hardened, and he bared his fangs. Emerick and Clive stood from a booth in the back of the pub. Before she could blink, Massimo had Anna by the shoulders and flung her across the room.

  “Massimo, what are you doing? You're going to kill her. Do you know who that is?”

  “Your wife?” Anna heard Massimo’s feral tone. She turned her head, as much as it hurt to see Massimo move closer to Emerick and her father. “My fiancé. The woman I love. The mother of your child. Have I hit a nail yet…brother? Is that why you kept me locked up? So you could win my betrothed. So, you could plant a monster in her womb? You let me join you after how many years, to betray me in the first instant?”

  “It wasn’t like that. I had no idea who Anna was to you. Besides, when I found you, you were in bed with another.”

  “Annabelle. That is her name. And that is no excuse.”

  “How was I to know you had a fiancé, the way you were rolling around with that woman?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Then what is? I should have known Anna was your fiancé without asking, or being told you were lying and cheating on her. You must not have cared in the first place.”

  “I said…her name… is Annabelle.”

  “I know what her name is.”

  “Then, say it.”

  “Annabelle Bellator. Regardless of what you call her, she is my wife.”

  “She was meant to be mine.”

  “She’s going to be for neither of you. She’s dying.” Clive had snuck over to his daughter’s side to check on her.

  Massimo stomped over to Anna and bent down to grab Clive by the head. Once the man was up to eye level, he kept lifting until his arms were straightened out.

  “Liam, what are you doing?” Clive yelled, his feet kicking out underneath him.

  “I’m getting rid of anyone who will stand in my way. She will be turned, and I will take care of her, and get rid of whatever monster lives inside.”

  With a flinch, he snapped the older man’s neck and let his body fall to the floor. With a flick of his nail against his skin, he moved to place his bleeding wrist to Anna’s mouth.

  “Massimo, no. You can’t change her. If you do, she will die.”

  “What, why?” His hand stopped, and he looked at his brother with anger and fear mixed in his features.

  “Because I don’t know what went wrong with your transformation. I may have had blood that was infected or something. I should be the one to do it.”

  Massimo looked from Emerick to Anna laying in a pile of rubble. Her body had collided with the pub wall and broke. The rubble was in the alley outside. The cold air moved around but the only one who felt it was Anna. She wished that Liam would leave her alone. As her heart beat slower and slower, she could feel her child moving around inside her. He could be saved, Anna thought for a split second before unbearable pain spread through her body. She screamed out.

  “Massimo! Let me!”

  “Do it…now!” Massimo yelled louder over her screams. The villagers moving around them where yelling and gawking but didn’t stop their legs from running away from the horrific scene.

  Emerick broke the skin on his finger and leaned closer to her for a kiss. Her lips parted to say goodbye, but instead, she whispered something else to him.

  “Yes, I forgive…” Before her breath left her body, Emerick slipped his finger inside her mouth, depositing his blood on her tongue and kissed her again to make her swallow.

  “Shh. Sleep now. It’ll all be ok. I’ll be here, waiting for you to come home.” He kissed her temple, and Massimo pulled him back.

  “You may think she loves you, but you’ll see. If you didn’t lock me up, we would have been together. We could have had human children before turning. There’s no saying what that thing inside her is.”

  “He needs to be born. Annabelle cannot come back with the child in her womb. We must take him out.” Emerick begged.

  “No.”

  “What do you mean no. If the child stays in there, Annabelle will never come back to either of us. You just let me do that to change her. Why would you risk…?”

  “You’re not doing it.”

  “Fine. You might want to let this transpire here, but I don’t.” Emerick picked up his wife’s lifeless body and ran using his vampiric speed with her cradled in his harms to the nearest physician’s door. He pounded against the wood without putting her down.

  When the physician answered, he saw the blood on the woman cradled in Emerick’s arms.

  “Annabelle?”

  “She’s dying. The baby needs to come out.”

  “Alright, bring her in.” Massimo didn’t follow behind. He got what he wanted. Anna was going to turn, the child had died inside of her, and he would win her back.

  The elderly man ushered him into the kitchen. His wife must have heard them because she was boiling water and draping their kitchen table with a white sheet and added pillows. Emerick was instructed to lay her down. The woman used another layer to cover Annabel’s lower body making sure to keep Anna’s full belly in view.

  The man checked Anna for a pulse, and Emerick knew it was faint and unsteady. He watched as the old man gave her a shot in her thigh, and then lifted her to a sitting position so he could inject another clear substance in her spine at her waist.

  “What is it your giving her?” Emerick asked.

  The woman leaned over and whispered to him. “For difficult births, doc puts mothers into a twilight sleep. Since she’s unconscious, we don’t want her to feel the pain. So, he’s giving her the medications to induce twilight sleep just in case.”

  “In case what? What is it?”

  “In case she wakes in the middle of the cesarean. She’s not awake to push, so we have to take it out…manually. So, a little morphine and scopolamine should do the trick.” The doctor said as he washed his hands in the large basin behind him.

  Chapter Eight

  Emerick watched as the greying man sliced into the abdomen of his wife. He grimaced as the old man’s hands reached inside her flesh and pulled from Annabelle, a small child covered in blood.

  Emerick held his breath while the doctor’s wife began to wipe the child down with a white cloth. Blood soaked the sheets on the table. The fabric the woman used quickly began to change color as she worked on the infant. When no cries erupted, Emerick thought for sure his son hadn’t made it.

  Then a small cry sounded from the baby’s lungs. It was no more than a whisper and made Emerick wince and look at the doctor.

  “He’ll be fine. Some babes don’t wale until they get a firm smack on the bum.” The old man demonstrated.

  Emerick had to hold his temper at the doctor and quickly forgot his anger when his child began to scream unharmoniously.

  “Harold, you didn’ have to do that.” The woman protested.

  “Needs his lungs clear or he’ll develop an infection. Don’t tell me what I don’t have to do, woman.” The doctor yelled at his wife who still held the infant. While she wrapped the boy in t
he sheet and handed him to a shell-shocked Emerick, the doctor asked. “Have a name for him?

  “We discussed many. I think I know which she would want to use, however.”

  “Maybe you should wait for her to wake.” Harold began moving his hands inside Anna’s midsection again, while his wife began threading a needle. “It might take some time, but as I see it, you may have some time with her yet. Heart sounds stronger.”

  “It does?” Emerick moved closer to Anna’s head, pushing the boy close to her so she might feel his presence.

  “Yup, she’ll come back to you. She just needs a few days to heal up.” A giant ball of tissue oozing blood was thrown into the large bowl of water, then the doctor took the needle from his wife and began stitching Anna’s stomach closed.

  After five days in their new mansion, Anna didn’t wake. Emerick tended to the child while she was unconscious. The doctor visited twice a day to look in on his patients, but there was no change. Finally, the old man told Emerick that she may never recover. That she might very well stay in a suspended state forever.

  “Also, a boy cannot become a man without a name. Choose for her.” He said on his last visit.

  “I will name him, but I wonder…will you find a home for him? Nobody can know he lives. There are some who would wish him harm.” Emerick tried to convey the depths of which he meant to protect his son.

  “No worries, lad. I know what you are, heir of Dracul. I am certain this child shares your…special traits. I will find him a home and give you a way to find him when she comes looking.”

  “Very well. I believe my son should be called,” he thought long and hard as he stared into the green of his son’s eyes. The little boy’s fingers wrapped tightly around his own digit as he bounced him in his arms. “Hunter.”

  “Yes, that suits him just fine. Do you want me to take him now?”

  “I think that would be best.”

  Emerick cradled his son against him one last time and kissed his crimson hair. “Your mother would have been so happy to meet you, but I suppose the day might yet come.” He pulled his finger from within his son's grip and handed him over to Harold.

  “If you need my services further, I am at your disposal.” The old man swaddled the baby up in the light blue blanket and headed for the front staircase. The front door was thrown open and slammed shut, startling the baby, but he did not cry.

  “Emerick! Where are you, brother? I need to know if she has come back.” Massimo shouted. His voice boomed throughout the lower level of the house.

  “Sir, please be quick. He must not see you with the child.”

  “Very well, I will contact you about the boy’s whereabouts.”

  “Thank you.”

  Emerick hastened his steps to reach the front landing before the doctor. He rushed through the house, finding his brother in the rear looking over the horizon, through pitch blackness.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to check on Annabelle. How is she?” Massimo did not turn to look at Emerick but continued to look out past the trees and hills behind the property.

  “She still sleeps.”

  “As herself, or as one of your kind?”

  “My kind? Do you not see us as the same beings?”

  “No, you know I do not. You are something much different than I. Will she be like you?”

  “Possibly, if she wakes.”

  Massimo turned. His hands shook at his sides, anger rolling from him in waves. “What do you mean if she wakes? Did the transformation not take?”

  “At this point I am unsure. The doctor who has been examining her seems to believe she will remain in that state forever.”

  Massimo ran his hands through his hair and looked up at Emerick. His eyes once rimmed red had turned dark brown. Not a hint of red remained.

  “So, you have fed properly. Perhaps that was the missing ingredient. Fresh blood.” Emerick stole a look back toward the front of the house, forgetting about the doctor’s secret getaway.

  “As far as what? I’m still destined to spend an eternity hiding from the sun and sleeping harder than the dead. I still must feed on blood and keep myself well hidden from those who would seek to destroy me. No, it didn’t work at all.”

  “You have what you wanted. You didn’t know of my special traits when I changed you. You only knew you would be able to live forever. You now have your eternity.”

  “What’s an eternity without my love?”

  Small steps sounded behind them, and both men turned to find a thinner Annabelle standing in the doorway. Her frame had dwindled, the color in her face and hair had gone. She was a whisper of her old self. When she spoke, it was raspy, and even with their abilities, the males had to strain to hear her.

  “What is eternity without your love? What about mine? Do you know what it’s like to look forward to something every day for nine months, only to have it ripped away? No, I don’t think so.”

  Masimo moved to go to her, but she held up her hand to keep him back.

  “I do. You were ripped away from me. I was meant to come back to you in a few weeks. Those weeks turned out to be more than a year. And for what? Had he turned me with his own blood I would have been different. I would have been like you are now.”

  “I don’t care. I got over you in a few weeks. I moved on. I fell in love, had a life. A child. What do I have now? My life? No, I don’t even have that. You have ruined any chance I ever had at happiness. I never want to see you again. For as long as we both shall roam this earth.”

  “Annabelle…”

  “No, Liam. Go. Just go.”

  Annabelle turned, hot tears fell down her face as she hugged her midsection. Her legs shook, and Emerick was there in an instant to hold her up and walk her back to her room. Sobs echoed throughout the house.