Then in that wicked little way of hers she said, “I wanted to grow old and have the white picket fence with grandbabies and liver spots.” And with that she pounced on me.
I reached for whatever I could grab to defend myself and jammed it into her on our way down. She let out a scream and then sank her fangs into my shoulder as we hit the floor. I’m sure I must’ve made some sort of sound, but all I could focus on was the pain in my shoulder. That, and Hayden standing there screaming bloody murder. The dog barking her head off brought me back to my senses and I was using every curse word I’d ever heard as I tried to shove that psychotic purple-haired demon off of me. She had my left arm pinned but my right was free and my legs were only slightly restricted as I tried to get away from her. Lola took hold of Julz’s pant leg at the same time I broke free. I scrambled back but not far enough. Her wicked eyes bore down on me. Blood, my blood, was dripping from her lips and a tiny smear was streaked up her cheek like blush. She yanked out the letter opener I’d stabbed into her arm and was coming at me with it.
Oh crap! Now she has a weapon.
Or another one anyways–pretty sure those sharp ass teeth counted as a weapon.
I hit the desk with my back just as she reached out with her other hand and jerked me back to her by my ankle. “No you don’t you stupid bitch!” I screamed. And with that lovely, lady-like sentence, I kicked her in the side of the head with my other foot. It did me no good, just pissed her off even more. Pretty sure I was screaming, but I don’t remember any of it. She’d pulled me back to her, jumped on top of me and was straddling my chest, pinning my arms down with her knees. She was sitting over me, crazy and smiling menacingly, fangs flashing with that very sharp looking letter opener in one hand raised up ready to strike and a handful of my hair in her other hand. I was able to knee her in the back hard enough that she dropped her new found weapon. It landed way too close to my head and she lost her grasp on me long enough that I was able to snatch it up and immediately plunge it into her side. She let out a terrible scream and the next thing I knew Carter was over me with his pale face and he was jabbing Julz in the back with something. She dropped on top of me, heavy for how little she was, and limp. He helped as best he could to get her off of me. Hayden was back–she had run out the door at some point, I assumed after the guys, and they were all rushing into the kitchen behind her, including Isaac.
Julz was out cold with the letter opener sticking out of her side and a syringe in her back. Carter had tranquilized her. I pushed myself away from her towards the computer desk again. My shoulder wasn’t bleeding but it hurt slightly and there were two puncture wounds where she’d bitten me. I also had two holes and blood on my shirt. Which only pissed me off more. Carter squatted down beside me and wrapped his arms around me protectively. I held on to him for dear life and watched the blood seeping out of Julz’s side where I had stabbed her. Thick dark red blood, darker and thicker than normal, was pooling beside her and into the grout of the tile floor. I suddenly became aware of how cold the tile was and I started shaking, immediately realizing it wasn’t the floor making me shiver, it was the adrenaline and possibly a little shock.
“She bit me! She freakin’ bit me!” I screamed in my head and then it flew out of my mouth.
“It’s okay Laney,” Felix said from several feet away. It was like they were purposely keeping their distance from me. “Female vampires don’t have venom.”
I stared at him with relief as that sank in. Imagine being tied to that sorry sack of crazy.
“You’re bleeding Laney. Stay still and let me see where it’s coming from.” Felix continued as he took a hesitant step closer.
“It’s not her blood,” Oliver finally chimed in. I glared at him for not being there for me. For letting his little…well, I couldn’t think of any way to classify her. For letting his little freak attack me.
Felix’s head slowly turned to look at Oliver. “How do you know that?” He spoke slowly, his voice was harder and harsher than usual. I cringed back into Carter.
In the blink of an eye Felix had Oliver pinned against the wall across from the bathroom, his massive forearm across Oliver’s chest. The usually very calm and level headed Felix was anything but at that moment. “I knew it! I knew you couldn’t handle this! I should’ve never let you near her! I’ve let a lot of things go with you. But this…I can’t! You didn’t report it. How did you get around it in questioning? Tell me now! That’s an order!”
Oliver answered in a low and harsh tone of his own, “With respect,
Sir
. I didn’t bite her, I know what Julz’s blood smells like.” Felix straightened and released Oliver whose hard stare never left Felix’s, “I respect you authority but you do not out rank me,” he said smugly. ”And by the way, thanks for your confidence in me. I am not my brother and it would be best for you to remember that.” Felix held his head high but I saw his shoulders drop and as Oliver stepped away I saw the damage that had been done to the wall. It was caved in where Felix had slammed Oliver against it.
I was about to explode and ask them how whatever the hell they were auguring about was more important than what had just happened to me but I didn’t get a chance. Just then Crazy began to stir. Oliver reached down for my hand a moment later. He pulled me from the floor and looked me over meeting my eyes with a significant look for a brief moment knowing we held a secret together and knowing I now realized how important it was to keep it a secret. No one could know that he’d fed from me.
Carter picked himself up from beside me and crossed the room to sit beside Hayden at the table where she was hugging her knees again and rocking herself gently back and forth. Isaac was standing beside Felix, near the opening of the hallway, when Julz let out a painful moan. I pressed myself against Oliver wanting to get the hell out of there and fighting an overwhelming urge to kick her in the head while she was still down. He held me tight as she rolled up onto her knees and pulled the letter opener and syringed from her body. She let them both drop to the floor in front of herself. She didn’t look up at anyone.
“Get me the hell out of here,” I said.
“Go wait for me in my room while I deal with this,” and when he said “this” it was thick with hatred.
“No,” I began and his eyes met mine in surprise. “Take me home until you figure out what to do with her. I told you before that I was out of here if she did anything again.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. His head drooped a little and when he raised his eyes back to mine he said, “I understand. I’ll take you to your aunts.”
“No, I want to go home to my apartment.”
“You can’t do that yet, it’s not safe.”
“And this place is?” You couldn’t argue with that.
“There is no happy ending.” Julz whispered wickedly with her head still down. Her crazy ass hair was sticking out in every direction.
“Shut up you demonic freak!” I yelled at her. Then I told Oliver, more forcefully this time, “Get me out of here!”
Suddenly Lola was barking and growling towards the front door. She shot past all of us and out the door that had been left open. Felix screamed after her and headed for the door. Then we heard the sound of a motorcycle speeding away.
Lola was barking and carrying on in the street. Felix yelled, “Lola, get back here!” and she did.
Julz’s head snapped up then and she rushed off past everyone down the hall to her room, slamming the door behind her.
Oliver called after her, “You go into your cave and plot revenge!”
I pushed away from him, “She just tried to kill me and that’s all you have to say to her?” I was furious.
But just as he opened his mouth to respond Felix called out to him, “Oliver, I need you to come see this.”
He took my hand and I followed with the rest of the house in tow, minus Julz, to the front door.
Lola was sitting beside Felix as he held out a small box with a lid and a note written on the top.
“What is it?” I asked.
Felix just stared blankly at me.
We huddled around Oliver as he took the box from Felix’s hand and read the lid out loud, “I will continue taking something from you the longer you make we wait for what is mine.”
“What does that mean?” Hayden said.
He took the lid off the box and I gasped. Covering my mouth with my hand I began trembling. I got a sudden sick black feeling in my stomach. I reached into the box and pulled out Lilly’s watch. The little gold watch she never took off her wrist. “No,” I whispered. My hands were shaking as I examined it. There was blood, specks of blood all over it and smeared across the face. I squeezed it tight in my hand. With tears in my eyes I looked at Oliver and said, “Take me there now.” Then I bolted out the door, forgetting that my own life had just been in jeopardy and forgetting how mad I was at Oliver. I was consumed now by a new feeling. Dread…pure and utter dread.
Please let her be okay
, I thought to myself over and over…
Chapter 23 - Gone
The first half of the ride had been a blur. I’d tried calling Lilly repeatedly with no answer. Oliver took over the dialing. Between my shaking and the tears in my eyes I couldn’t see the screen anymore.
We’d all ended up in Felix’s SUV with him driving. There was some magical third row that came out of nowhere which held Isaac and Carter. Hayden was in the front passenger seat and Oliver and I were in the middle row with Lola. Only Julz had been left behind. There was no doubt that was for the best.
My heart was beating so hard that I thought it might come through my chest. I had never felt fear and dread like it before in my life. I was terrified that something had happened to Lilly. There was a nagging at the back of my mind that I was ignoring. I knew it was trying to tell me all the horrible scenarios but I was refusing to listen to it. Lola leaned against me from one side and Oliver had an arm around me from the other. The inside of the car was silent except for the light panting coming from Lola. It was the longest ride in the history of the world and I was surprised I hadn’t vomited on myself.
As we hit the gravel driveway of my childhood home I unhooked my seatbelt and waited for the car to come to a stop, and as it did, I busted out of the door with Lola by my side. As my feet were pounding on the gravel I heard Oliver screaming for me to stop but I’d seen movement in the house and I needed to know she was alright. Next thing I new Lola was barking madly and I was face down in the yard with a mouth full of dirt and grass.
Oliver flipped me over as I spit the nasty out of my mouth. “What the hell?” I yelled once I could. He’d tackled me to the ground. I wiped at my dirt and tear streaked face. I hadn’t even known I was crying.
“There’s someone else in there. I can’t let you go inside before we do.”
Just then Lola bolted past the house and out into the back orchard with Felix right behind her. She was still barking viciously.
Oliver pulled me to my feet as he stood. He looked around at our little crowd that now contained me, one half vampire, a human, a werewolf-bitten-vamp-line-havin’ human and himself. He was at a loss.
“I can’t leave all of you out here without protection.” Bet he was wishing his protégé wasn’t such a damn psychopath right then.
While he was distracted by what to do and trying to figure a strategy for checking the house, I bolted for the steps and the front door. Somehow I’d made it inside before he could get to me and I regretted it immediately.
There in the entryway of the house I’d grown up in was the only family I had left. The woman that had given up everything to make sure I had a good life. The woman who, the last time I’d seen her, needed me and I was rude to her and had walked away from her to be with him…
I dropped to my knees in the pool of blood that surrounded my aunt. She was gone. Her eyes had a milky white tint to them, her skin was cool and bluish. This would me my last memory of her and I would never forget it. Oliver sank to his knees beside me. He closed her eyelids and I began to cry.
I sobbed and screamed and shoved him away. I was filled with sadness, anger and regret. I became desperate and grabbed her lifeless body into my arms. I cried into her hair. She was cold and her body was starting to stiffen. “Change her,” I shoved her at Oliver.
“I can’t, Laney. It’s too late,” he responded softly.
I stared down at my aunt’s lifeless body and I sobbed more. She’d died alone. She’d taken her last breath alone.
“Who did this? Was it your brother?” He didn’t respond. “Answer me! Was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it his writing on that box?” I screamed.
He shook his head. “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved.”