Dominion (8 page)

Chapter Eight

It wasn’t worth going back
to bed. Serenity knew Elizabeth would be up soon and to fall back into a deep sleep, only to be woken up again within the hour, would merely extend her exhaustion. Though, in fact, she didn’t feel too bad at all. Many of her stresses seemed to have ebbed away in Sebastian’s arms.

She took a quick shower in the family bathroom and washed her hair. The drive the day before, and then their activities on the couch, had left her in need of a blast of hot water and some bubbles. She needed to be refreshed if she had to deal with Bridget. It was an understatement to say she struggled to maintain a friendship or relationship of any sorts with the woman who had put Elizabeth’s life in danger. Sebastian found the strange setup even harder. He’d spent a couple of years trusting and relying on Bridget completely, so to have that trust broken when he found out about Bridget spying for Demitri—a New York based vampire who’d been interested in Elizabeth’s precognitive abilities—had hit him hard. His first instinct had been to kill her. If not for Elizabeth’s attachment to the woman, Serenity suspected he would have done exactly that. However, Bridget had practically been a mother to Elizabeth while Serenity was in Jackson’s clutches. Bridget had tried to make things better again and help them against
Demitri,
otherwise Serenity wouldn’t have allowed her around either. Sending the woman away and removing all contact only hurt Elizabeth, so they tried to stay on good terms and allowed visits as long as they were overseen by either
herself
or Sebastian.

Serenity towel-dried her hair and dressed in her customary outfit of jeans and a t-shirt. Elizabeth would be up any minute, so she headed back down to the kitchen to start breakfast.

Pancakes
, she decided. Elizabeth loved pancakes for breakfast, especially with chopped banana and maple syrup all over the top. The thought of her daughter’s excitement at coming down to her favorite food made Serenity push aside the numerous other concerns that had suddenly arrived on her doorstep, worries for Sebastian in particular. She decided to forget the paranormal for the moment and focus on one of the simple things in life—making breakfast for her daughter.

Serenity took eggs and flour down from a cupboard, and then butter and milk from the refrigerator.

She fished a kn
ife from the cutlery drawer, but the
item slipped from her fingers. The metal hit the tiles with a re
sounding clang, the sound echoing
in the big house.

Serenity winced and bent to retrieve the knife. As she straightened, she gasped in shock.

Each of the cupboard doors stood open, both fridge doors sprung wide.

Her grip on the blunt knife
tightene
d,
the metal cold against her hot skin.

Someone was behind her!
She felt their presence burning in her back.

Serenity spun around, jabbing
the weapon at
the empty air, to find Elizabeth standing in the doorway. Her nightgown hanging down past her knees, in one hand she clutched her comfort blanket, the tip trailing on the floor.

Serenity fell back, her hand clutched to her chest. “Jesus, Elizabeth. You scared the hell out of me. How the hell did you do this?”

Elizabeth’s eyes went wide. “Do what, Mommy?”

She waved the knife around at the open cupboards. “This! How did you open all the doors without me seeing?”

Elizabeth shook her head in tiny, frantic movements. “I didn’t! It wasn’t me, honest!”

“Don’t lie to me, Elizabeth. Who else would have done this? No one else is here.” Something dawned on her. “Was it you, too, last night? Did you leave the faucet on in your bedroom and come down here and turn this one on as well?”

“I’m not doing any of those things, Mommy. Why won’t you believe me?”

Fear and anger made her react before she’d even thought things through. She crossed the room in only a few long strides and grabbed
Elizabeth by the upper arm. “I need you to tell me the t
ruth, Elizabeth.
I won’t have you lying to me!”

Elizab
eth pulled her arm away. She turned from her mother and ran back up the stairs,
crying. “I didn’t do anything! I didn’t!
”

Her bedroom door slammed shut.

Serenity stood in the middle of the kitchen, shaking. Immediately, she regretted shouting at Elizabeth.

Did she really think her daughter to be responsible? They were alone in the house, who else could it have been?
She didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t as though she’d opened all the
cupboard
doors
herself.
A flicker of uncertainty rippled throug
h her. No, that was nuts. All
she did was bend down
to pick up the knife. N
ot enough time had passed for her to do such a thing and then not remember.
But yet she couldn’t discount the notion that she may have done it herself.
The house was empty, the doors and windows all locked.

It wasn’t Elizabeth
,
she decided. The little girl been sleeping last night when the commotions had been going on, Serenity was sure of that. And when the cup had flown off the counter the day before, Elizabeth had been a hundred miles away. Serenity had just reacted—she’d been frightened—and Elizabeth had been the closest person to lash out at.

She glanced at the clock. It was just after eight. Could she get away with calling Bridget yet?
Yes,
she thought so. After everything Bridget had put them through, an early morning phone call should be the least she should expect.

But first, Serenity needed to go and apologize to Elizabeth. She should never have taken her fears out on her daughter and she felt awful for upsetting her unnecessarily. Her stomach churned in the same way as when she fought with Sebastian, like the axis of her world had skewed.

The
cupboar
d doors remained wide open, taunting her somehow
. She’d not even thought to
slam the refrigerator doors closed
.

Serenity ran to the cupboards. Using her palm, she slammed each door shut, one after the other, the bangs echoing through the house. She kicked the fridge doors shut with her bare sole, the metal cool and smooth against her skin.

She took another deep breath to settle her nerves. Someone was screwing with them, someone who didn’t even have the balls to reveal their identity.

With a knot in her stomach, she climbed the stairs to Elizabeth’s room. Serenity cracked
open
the door and stepped inside. Elizabeth sat on her bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, her face pressed against her legs. Serenity crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed Elizabeth’s back.

“Hey, honey. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Elizabeth said.

“I know. I should have believed you the first time. I just got a fright and I’m sorry.”

Elizabeth looked up, sniffed, and wiped her face. “You shouldn’t accuse people of things, Mommy. That’s not nice.”

“You’re right and I won’t do it again.” Serenity repressed a smile. How strange to feel as though the roles had reversed.

“I think Sebastian opened the cupboards,” Elizabeth blurted.

A frown replaced Serenity’s smile. “Elizabeth,” she
said,
a warning in her voice. “What did you just say about not accusing people? And anyway, you know that would be impossible. It’s daytime.”

She
pursed
her small lips together. “Okay … Not Sebastian, but something else that’s making him do things.”

Alarm raced through her. “Do you understand what you’re saying?”

She nodded. “I think so. I told you I dreamed Daddy was lost. I think those times of him being lost are getting longer and longer now.
Stronger even.
That’s why he can move around in the daytime.”

“Don’t be silly, Elizabeth. Your father can’t move around in the daytime, the sun would hurt him!”

She focused on her mother with those huge dark eyes. “It is.”

Immediately, Serenity remembered the patch of flaking skin on Sebastian’s neck.
“Oh, no.”

She jumped off Elizabeth’s bed and ran to the bedroom she and Sebastian shared. She burst into the room with no concerns about disturbing him.

Sebastian lay on the bed, in his customary position. He’d dressed before taking his daytime rest, not needing to concern himself with the same comforts a human needed.

Serenity ran to the bed and stood over him, her hand clutched to her mouth in shock.

The exposed skin on the back of his hands, face and neck was mottled pink and white—healing burn tissue. The scars rippled and moved under Serenity’s gaze, healing as she watched. But one patch hadn’t healed. The dry skin on Sebastian’s neck, between his collarbone and his jaw, had spread. Where the patch had previously been about an inch in diameter, it was now at least twice that size.

Burns from the sun.

So Sebastian was responsible for all the strange things happening around the house. In a way it made sense—the feeling of someone near, his speed making it too fast for her to see him, the coolness in the air a result of his cold skin brushing past her. But in so many other ways, what was happening made no sense at all. What reason would he have to play tricks on her?

He’d told her he killed someone without remembering doing so. Perhaps he was also doing these things without his knowledge?

Someone else was behind this, but
who
?
This felt more like dark magic than the result of an angry vampire.
The only witch she’d ever met was Bridget
.
And
while things hadn’t gone quite to plan with Bridget working to look after Elizabeth, she didn’t think the
older woman was the type to try to exert some kind of revenge
.

But what about her betraying Elizabeth and Sebastian to Demitri?
She’d been playing Sebastian the whole time then.

Perhaps that was true, but Bridget had made her peace with them.
In fact, she was the only person Serenity had left to turn to.

She reached out and placed her hand against his cool cheek, worry spiking through her heart. “Be okay,” she whispered.
She put her arms around his broad frame and lowered her head to his shoulder, pressing her face against his chest.

“I wish you were awake,” she told him. “I really need you right now.” Her voice broke as she spoke.
She didn’t want to deal with something similar to what they’d been through over the past few years. She only wanted for them to be safe, to be happy and living in peace together.

Serenity forced herself from his side and made her way back to her daughter’s room.
Sebastian’s condition had only confirmed the plan to call the one person they knew who might be able to help them.

“You fancy g
iving Bridget a call?”

Elizabeth’s face lit up and she bounced off the bed, her upset forgotten.
“Yeah, yeah!
Let’s call Bridget!”

Sebastian opened his eyes to
find himself standing, once again, on a deserted street in downtown Los Angeles. The silence pressed against his eardrums, an unnerving sensation when he’d spent the last two hundred years being able to hear things from miles away. Office buildings rose up on either side of the street, fluorescent lights blazing in each of the uniform windows.

He frowned. Was he back here again?
The same place as in his dream?

To confirm his suspicion, he glanced up. Above his head, the same portentous sky shifted and roiled. Thick clouds of gray, with dark purple fringing the edges,
rippled at speed. The effect was of a building storm being filmed and watched in fast-forward.
A boiling sky.

Sebastian shivered. This place held more menace than anywhere he’d ever been before. Each pool of shadows, formed in areas the light from the office buildings and the street lamps couldn’t reach, seemed to hold a secret, as though something hid, crouched in their dark depths, to reach out and grab him as he walked by.

Had someone left all these lights on for a reason
,
h
e
wondered?
Protection against something, perhaps?

One particularly dark spot of shadows directly below a ground floor window, in the spot between the wall and ground, caught his attention. He frowned again. Something wasn’t right. It looked too …
black.
Puzzled, he took cautious steps toward it.

He put out a foot and stepped into the spot, but his foot met resistance. An ear-splitting shriek filled the air, making Sebastian clutch his ears with both hands, the sound painful against the imposing silence. The thing his foot touched uncurled and bright red eyes glared out at him from the darkness. It opened a mouth of needle-like teeth and hissed at him before unfurling, revealing almost primate-like arms and legs. The thing skittered away, down the street, leaping from one spot of shadows to the next.