Alistair woke suddenly, his body and face drenched with beads of cold sweat. If his heart still beat it would no doubt sound like a dozen horses trapping through a cobbled street. Something had dragged him from his death like slumber. He looked around the room in a frantic panic. It was still day, his internal clock alerting him to the sun's height outside the stone walls.
His first reaction was to check his person, his hands skimming down a toned chest, no signs of injury. Everything in the room around him was deadly silent. The thought occurred to him in an instant, if not himself then someone he was tied too. He closed his eyes and let an overwhelming sense of detachment overtake him as he tired to pin point each of his protégées.
Diana was muddled and scared, which was the usual, Claudia was closed off to him emotionally. This should have puzzled him, however, over the years his attachment to his child has been growing more and more distant. The fact that he could still feel her as a physical being eased him. Paul was panicked and full of fear, he frowned and reached for Alexis.
'Alexis' he spoke her name in a whisper drawing upon her face and trying to locate her again. As the newest number of his collection, Alexis was only tied faintly by the first exchange of blood and their blood pact. She would be the hardest to locate. Alistair drew upon his own ball of magic, its dark black essence building inside him, the metaphysical portrayal of his power drew claws and roamed its confides with an endless hunger. The sweet memory of drawing from Alexis made it grumble with want, another taste, a lick.
Alistair pushed the urge aside and focused on her location. There was nothing. Nothing....a space as dark and black as the thoughts in his mind and filled with a cold nothing and no one. This was where she should have been through their blood connection. Just a hollow Alexis shaped hole was left.
He drew himself from the bed slowly, groggy from his early rising and the battle of wills against himself. He started to slow draw on a tee shirt over PJ bottoms. If something had happened to her, his future plans were as good as dead. He flung open his bedroom door onto a lamp lit landing. He scanned the hall, drew a breath and gave a shout. 'Taran!'
**
George was numb, Karl was talking to him, his mouth moving slowly, his brow furrowed with worry but to George it was simply white noise and slowed movement as pain overwhelmed him. He had felt the same pain and hollowness when Marianne had died and now, his daughter was gone. The tearing from his heart felt the same. That was all it could be.
He tried to take in his surroundings but nothing seemed to fill the clawing dread and guilt that claimed him like shadows sweeping across the night. He looked to Karl, his friends eyes red with emotion, he looked to Paul next, his son was crumbled in a heap sobbing while Diana caressed his shoulder. The vampire was watching everyone with wide eyes. George strode to her with purpose. He bent to her level, Claudia shrunk back as he leaned in closer, inches from her face.
'I know not how in depth your dealings or depravity with Alistair, but as a vampire, I would think that you are either is partner or his sired child.' At the last comment Claudia gave a subtle nod, George then continued to speak.
'YOU are going to assist us with our enquiries and help us get into Alistair's castle. If not, I will personally keep you captive until your body and mind is weak and on the edge of insanity. Only then will I release you. Set you out into the woods on a wolves full moon and watch with glee as they chase, catch and rip you limb from limb, unleashing pain and suffering upon you. As your master has taken my child, I will take his. This I promise you as a solemn vow.'
**
Claudia's mind was whirling with emotion, the wizard's cold eyes and colder words had her mind buzzing with thoughts and questions. As he had promised, something shifted across the lands, the trees began a wild breeze as if in agreement and acknowledgement of some agreement.
The gag in her mouth was wet and soggy. If she had to breathe, she'd be suffocating. She was grateful at least for that small mercy, the fear she now felt made he so uneasy. She eyed her captives with a fearful sense of unfamiliar and detached familiarity.
Firstly, the younger Martinez was being comforted by her Sire's pet. The changer Diana. She had seen the recognition in her eyes when the wolf hoisted her from the ground over his shoulder. They knew who and what each other where. What she was doing here?....then she saw, Diana was comforting Paul, offering gentle comfort and support.
She had followed him for months on her Sire's orders and now she saw something differently. Diana cared and something inside Claudia rebelled against it. She had felt that way once...needed one person like the air around them. Instead he'd sent himself mad trying to change her into something she couldn't be. Lewis.
His name echoed in her head and with it, something in her gut tightened in loss. She missed him, even after all this time. She wanted to see him for one minute, to tell him how much he'd meant to her. A point she had discussed with Alistair on numerous occasions. Alistair had been the loving, and understanding friend he had always been and told her of Lewis' increasing madness and at the mere mentioned of her name, how it would sent him into crazed episodes.
She remembered her own episodes, times when she had absorbed texts and magic like a sponge, tested and tired all kind of depravity to fill her own emptiness. She had been evil, the things she had done...what both of then had done...what she had wanted to do. It made her shiver with shame and sickness.
She realized then in that second why she rebelled against what she was seeing. Why she shunned attention and interaction with anyone and everyone. She hated herself and she was jealous of what Diana was doing. Showing her emotions, because somewhere deep inside Claudia she'd shut those feeling off for a while, they made her weak. Only one person saw her...metaphorically speaking, the sad truth was that she had accepted in reality she would probably never see Lewis Jensen Crane again.
**
Jensen sat by her side and stroked her hair, watching in the cave light as the marks on her face and arms faded slowly. She was healing, slowly. He told her tales of his exploits in the ring, of waking up with limbs so sore, he was exhausted and had slept for days. Trying everything to lighten the situation, get a response from her and convince himself that she was ok. That he was ok. In that moment, it was crystal clear. He watched the slow steady rise of her chest, drank in the smooth skin on her cheek, the soft skin in between her eyebrows he'd kissed. He knew without her his new beginning, the fire in his belly would diminish, he loved her.
Jensen would drive a stake into Alistair heart himself before he'd let someone else he love be corrupted by the poison in that man's body and mind. Alexis would not become what Claudia had, their story had only just begun, he'd be damned if he didn't see it out to the end.
**
Alistair stood in the sun room, the thick UV protected glass of the windows let in light but without any of the harm. He had yet to modernize the bedroom, he smirked at the errant thought that he'd fuck Alexis in that room and watch the sun light up their skin. His fangs dropped and nicked his bottom lip as he fantasized about her in graphic details. Uneasy that he'd been unable to feel her for a few hours.
As he imagined, playing out a scene, he'd tongue and skim the warm skin of her inner thigh, slowly, he hear her groan until he reach the apex of her thighs, could hear clearly the pounding of the blood in that beautiful purple blue vein. He tensed imagining himself biting through her flesh at that moment, hearing her groan and then shake in orgasmic bliss.
The door to his study banged opened and Taran interrupted the sweetest moment of the daydream with his heavy breathing. Alistair eyed him with a wild anger.
'WHAT!' He boomed.
Taran pointed to the window with a shaky hand and pointed a a ragged scar trailing his arm. Alistair knew the wound. Diana had told him in confidence after their first sexual encounter. Taran had been attacked by a shifter and feared them greatly. As he rose with a slow grace and moved to the window, he looked down at the face of the man who knew him best. George Martinez.
'My My' Alistair murmured to himself, 'Today just got interesting.'
**
Alex didn't know where she was, she rose from inside the cave careful expecting to feel pain and soreness from her flying act in the air. Instead, she felt free and light. She noticed then, the torches lining the walls and the clean clothes on her person. She was in a cave but which cave?
'Hello?' Her voice echoed off the walls and bounced back to greet her.
'Jensen?' Again repeated, this time almost a mocking tone.
The goosebumps on her arm elevated her anxiety. She walked hesitantly further into the mild darkness of the dimly lit cave. Her feet made no sound on the dirt in the floor below her. The key hanging just above her breasts hummed and sang as if excited. Its song a sweet aria of longing making Alexis' feet move subtly faster and faster, until the tunnel of torches blurred by her vision. Her feet numbly running on the dirt gliding without a sound unto a place of the unknown. As this thought occurred the torches rapidly increased in number and then the cave split into a grander room, a room of such splendour that Alex halted in her movement, her rapid breath the filling in the great empty space with its only sounds.
The room was decorated with elaborate drawing and depictions of something and everything in paints and colours so vibrant, they looked like photographs or exquisite oil paintings come to life. People, places, animals and symbols adhered the stone of every wall, as if telling a story. The ceiling was decorated in in gilded gold and stones, figures, craved with such reality and care, showing angels and demons sparring in graphic illustrations of war. Her brain was overloaded with beauty and sadness. Brutality and joy. Alex stood immobilized by it all.
'It is beautiful little one'
A soft male voice spoke from her right causing Alex to turn suddenly. To a voice she had not heard in years. As she drank in the kind and loving features of a man she had never dreamed she would see again.
'Papa?' Her voice shook with emotion, her lip trembled as she watched the warmth and love flow from his eyes. Her Grandpa, Grandpa Martinez, how she had missed him, to be suddenly here before her, it was too much and whatever magic or evil it was, at that moment she didn't care.
'Come and give this old man a hug' Grandpa Martinez, opened his arms wide and embraced his granddaughter as she flew into his arms. Hushing her sobs and cries with encouraging words, stroking her hair and rocking her slightly. Telling her how beautiful she had grown. He held her until her sobs quieten and he rocked her gently.
'How are you here?' Alexis asked quietly into his shirt, breathing in the smell of mint and cigars. Sometimes late at night, she'd sworn she had smelt it in several places at home, sometimes finding herself sitting in his old room and wondering if she was going mad.
'Your mother sent me.' she looked up at him with wide eyes.
'Really?' Alex wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
'Yes little one, she is unhappy with things.' Grandpa offered her a handkerchief and a sad smile.
'What things?' Alex dabbed her eyes.
