Alone (16 page)

“
You have no idea what you’ve got
yourself into.”

Guilt rose inside her like a
tidal wave, heat coloring her skin further. The strange woman’s
words rang in her head, ‘
got yourself into...’

Anyone
might have read the guilt on her
face, but this woman’s perception was uncanny.

“
Oh, don’t worry,” she said.
“I know what you did to your husband but that’s not what I’m
talking about.” She leaned in closer. “Are you so stupid you
haven’t even noticed the things that are different about
him?”

She reached out and grabbed Serenity’s
hand.

Cold! So cold!

Serenity tried to pull away but
the woman
was
freakishly strong.

“
Recognize how cold I am? Just
like Sebastian,” she said. “What about how he never sleeps? That he
never eats or drinks?”

A flicker from her nightmare rose in her
mind, but she shook her head, tossing the thought away. She didn’t
want to know. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to know.

“
Shut up,” she shouted, and the
woman dropped her hand. “Just go away. Leave me alone!”

Serenity put her hands over her ears.
Tears filled her eyes and streamed down her face.

“
Little baby,” the woman spat.
“What he does he see in you?”

F
orcing herself to stand straight, Serenity
wiped the tears away. “Get out of here,” she demanded, her voice
hard.

The woman looked surprised, but it didn’t
last for long. The smirk returned and she looked like Jackson had
in the kitchen. Rage boiled through Serenity; a fissure of an
underwater volcano.

Surprising herself, she lashed out, her
palm flattened, fully intending to slap the obnoxious woman in the
face, but her hand never made it that far. The woman caught
Serenity’s wrist in a cold, hard, grip. It came out of nowhere; she
hadn’t even seen the woman’s arm move. Her strength was unworldly
and Serenity stared at her hand in a mixture of shock, amazement
and horror.

She tried to pull away, but the woman held
strong and her hand didn’t even budge. Her arm might have been
bound in concrete.

“
Tell Sebastian he’s playing with
fire,” the woman said, her eyes narrowed. “Tell him I’ve met his
little pet bitch now and if he doesn’t start behaving himself, I’ll
make sure I undo all his good work.”

She hissed—actually hissed like a
snake—and Serenity was sure she’d seen too much white between her
perfect red lips.

The woman sprang away, leaping from
Serenity with such speed she appeared as no more than a blur.
Serenity caught sight of her again for the briefest of moments in
the middle of the staircase and once again in the window, and then
she was gone. Serenity felt the difference in the atmosphere, a
palpable change in the way the air was charged.

She knew one thing for sure; whatever the
woman was, human didn’t figure among her qualities.

Chapter Thirteen

Standing at the bottom
of
the
staircase, Serenity trembled. Her heart raced and nausea swept over
her. She bent over, certain she was about to lose her earlier binge
all over the marble floor. Disorientated, her head swam and the
room spun around her, as though she suffered from altitude
sickness.

Her brain fought to process what
she’d seen. The woman couldn’t have moved the way she had. It was
impossible to move like that.

To move like Sebastian
did.

Whatever Sebastian was—and she
now thought ‘what’ as opposed to ‘whom’—he was the same as that
horrible, terrifying red-head. They had the same porcelain
complexion, strange eyes and uncanny strength. Of course, she
couldn’t forget the coldness of their skin and the impossible way
they moved.

Serenity’s stomach plummeted.
She didn’t want it to be true. She wanted to push away the thoughts
pressing down upon her, hide her head from the knowledge fighting
to be heard. She didn’t know exactly what this meant but some part
of her reality had shifted.

She hated the idea of the woman
and Sebastian once being together. The thought filled her with a
gut-wrenching, painful jealousy. She couldn’t get away from the
fact the woman was stunning; a more than perfect match for
Sebastian’s beauty. But Sebastian having lovers before wasn’t the
only thing tormenting her. If he could be with someone so cruel and
spiteful, what did that say about him?

It made her wonder; did she
really know him at all?

Of course you don’t know
him,
the
voice screamed in her head.
How can you even worry about his old girlfriends
when you don’t even know what he is?

Was he even real? Right now,
Sebastian being a figment of her imagination was
sane
r than
the other possibilities currently nibbling at her mind like hungry
fish.

She couldn’t even contemplate the
other options.

Her legs gave way beneath her
and she dropped to her knees on the hard marble floor. She covered
her face with her hands. For the first time, the thought she might
be in danger came to her. Danger from Sebastian? The thought didn’t
sit right. He’d taken care of her. She’d not misread his kind
treatment. The tenderness she saw in his eyes was real; the
gentleness of his touch had not been a lie.

His cold touch.

She
shivered again and this time she
couldn’t stop. The shiver turned into a continuous shudder and her
muscles tightened to the point of pain.

This whole time she’d managed to
lie to herself about Sebastian, ignore and justify the strange
things he did. She hadn’t wanted to see what he was, but couldn’t
ignore the statuesque redhead.

If she could
n’t ignore the woman and she
wasn’t crazy, then she had to believe what she’d seen. The woman’s
movements, her strength and the things she had said.... Was she
even human or was she something unreal? Something
supernatural?

If she could believe the woman
wasn’t human, then the same applied to Sebastian.

Fear and panic gripped her and
Serenity clambered to her feet, desperate to get away. Tears
blurred her vision. She wore no shoes but she ran for the front
door, her only thoughts to get away from this madhouse as quickly
as possible.

She wanted nothing to do with
this madness.

Inside, her heart broke. She
didn’t want to believe her thoughts—wasn’t even sure what she did
think—but even as she ran, she desperately hoped Sebastian would
find her again.

Serenity wrenched the front door
open and stumbled down the steps onto the gravel drive. The cool
air of the night hit her hot skin, making her terrible shaking
worse.

Her bare feet crunched down the
gravel driveway, the sharp stones cutting into the tender skin on
the balls of her feet. Pain stabbed up through her legs as she ran
toward the front gates.

She slammed into them, her hands
pressed against the metal bars. Huge and imposing, the gates
towered above her, impeding her escape. She wrapped her fingers
around the bars and yanked at them, desperately trying to pull the
gates open, but they didn’t budge. Then she remembered how, on the
way in, Sebastian had opened them by using a button on his key
fob.

Frantically, she scanned the
stone walls on either side of the gates, looking for a panel
containing a button to open the gates, but bare stone met her gaze.
The only way to open the gates must be from inside the
house.

E
xhausted and scared, she pressed her
forehead against the cold metal. Tears flowed down her
face.

“
Serenity?”

She froze at his voice, breath
catching in her chest. In a moment, he stood behind her, his hand
on her shoulder. His touch burned like liquid nitrogen, every
synapse firing in alarm.

“
Serenity?” he said again.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

Filled with anger that now
always seemed to bubble so close to the surface, rage she’d kept
buried year after year, she spun around, dislodging his hand from
her shoulder.

Everything about him was as she
remembered, his broad shoulders, the faint lines between his eyes,
his full lips. He hadn’t morphed into the fearful monster she had
conjured in her head.

“
You had a visitor,” she managed
through her tears. “A woman—if you could call her a
woman!”

The concern on his face turned
to surprise, his eyes widening before narrowing in hate.

“
Madeline!” he spat. His
green eyes flashed a brilliant yellow, as though a firework had
gone off somewhere in the distance and reflected in his eyes. “What
the hell did she say to you?”

His anger frightened her, but
she didn’t intend to back down. “Why?” she challenged. “What are
you hiding?”

He glanced away. That was all
the answer she needed.

“
Just let me go,” she said, the
anger fading, replaced by a thick tiredness. “Let me go and I won’t
say a word to anyone.”

Again his eyes widened in surprise.
“Let you go? Do you think I’m holding you against your
will?”

She sniffed, suddenly feeling small
and stupid. “Well, I can’t get out.”

He reached into his pocket and
pulled out his keys. He depressed the button on the fob and, slowly
and silently, the gates slid open.

“
Well,” he said, his eyes
shining. “I guess now you’re free.”

Serenity hesitated.

Her panic dissipated
and as he stood
before her, all six foot two of him with his startling eyes and
generous mouth, she almost wondered why she’d been frightened of
him at all.

“
I don’t know what I’m supposed
to think,” she said, the tears threatening once again. “That
woman—Madeline—she called me your ‘pet human’ and she moved so fast
I couldn’t keep track of her. She was like you,
Sebastian!”

He shook his head and she saw
the pain in his eyes. “She’s nothing like me.”

“
No? So where did you come
from just then? Why didn’t I hear your footsteps on the
gravel?”

Absurdly, he looked like he was
going to cry. The expression looked strange on such a big man and
it unnerved her.

“
If I tell you the truth,” he
whispered, “everything you think you know will change.”

Her
stomach sank. Suddenly, she didn’t
want to hear what he had to say.

Sebastian
took her by the shoulders and
dropped down so they were eye level.

“
I’m not like you, Serenity.
My life ended a long time ago.”

Tears filled her eyes. “What do you
mean?”

“
That woman, Madeline, she
took me from my life. She used me, fed on me, and then when I was
so close to death I begged for it, she turned me into what I am
now.”

“
What are you saying?” she
managed, fear making her voice tremble. “What are you?”

“
Vampire, Serenity. I am a
vampire.”

“
No! You’re
crazy!”

His eyes locked on hers and they
filled with sadness. “You know that’s not true.”

Overwhelmed, she fell against
him and he wrapped his arms around her. Then she remembered what
he’d said and fought, pushing against his chest.

“
I don’t believe you,” she
sobbed, terrified, horrified.

He held her up as she sagged at the
knees, a puppet in his arms. “You have to believe me, Serenity. I
don’t want to lose you.”

Pain and fear radiated from him.
She wanted to use his pain, wanted to make him hurt, to prod at it
like a hole in a molar. Suddenly, she wanted him to
suffer.

“
Lose me?” she barked at him and
laughed; crazy, wild. Her fingers knotted in her hair and she
stepped away. “You shouldn’t even exist! You’re not human! How the
hell do you think you can lose something you never had?”

“
I was once,” he said
quietly.

That stopped her. “Was
what?”

“
Human.”

“
But you’re not anymore.” She
couldn’t hide the pleading tone to her voice, desperately hoping
for him to laugh and say ‘gotcha’.

“
Part of me still is. But other
things are different now; how long I live for, my strength, what I
eat to survive.”

“
You kill people,” she
whispered.

“
So have you.”

Her breath caught in her chest.
He was right, of course, but it was different with her, wasn’t
it?

“
Don’t use that one against me!”
she said.

“
Serenity,” he reached out,
closing the distance between them, space that seemed wider by the
minute. “Please, Serenity...”

“
Don’t touch me!” She shook
off his hand and stepped back. “I can’t do this. I just
can’t.”