The Blood Talisman (13 page)

“
I need you to bring a
bottle of fine wine and two of the best meals you can come up with
to the basement, room four. John will be up in a few minutes to put
some additives in their meal. I want them to have a good restful
night. Do you understand?”

“
Yes sir, Mr. Ram, sir.
Right away, sir,” a nervous voice answered.

Ram clicked his phone off and
retreated back down the hallway towards his office where he had
left Amalia. He needed to keep them apart for now. His plan would
fall apart if they had time to talk. There wasn’t much time before
morning and Sol would be here then. He would finally have all three
of the people he needed in one place. Everything was finally coming
together and he could not wait till noon tomorrow.

Chapter 15

A short black woman was pushing a cart
along the dark corridors of the basement. She hurried down each
hallway, looking urgently for basement room four. It made her
nervous to do the devil’s work, but she needed a job, and, more
importantly, her life. Most kitchen help would not have come down
to the basement. In fact, a fight had been going on between a cook
and one of the cashiers as to who would have to bring the meals
down. She’d been forced to end the argument by volunteering. They
had all looked at her like she’d lost her mind, but the day had
been long and the night even longer. She was ready to go home, and
hearing them argue about bringing a damned tray of food down to the
basement had given her a headache.

She finally reached the right door. A
husky black man guarded the door. He was dressed in army fatigues
and held a gun that was longer than his arms against his chest. He
was leaning against the wall beside the double doors. As she
approached, he straightened himself up and attempted to look
proper.

“
I’m here to deliver the
food to room four,” she announced meekly.

“
Yes ma’am,” the guard
said.

He turned and unlocked the door which
led into a grand room with a huge bed in it. She had no idea that
something this beautiful was in this dead hole of a hospital. She
was in awe.

There were two people in the room: a
woman standing by a dresser, who looked worn down and tired, and a
man, who looked like he had just stepped out of the shower. He sat
on the burgundy and gold bed and appeared rugged yet guilty. She
began to wonder why they were being locked in but, it wasn’t her
place to wonder.

“
Thank God, I’m starving,”
the woman by the dresser said as she scurried over to the silver
platters. She immediately grabbed a roll and started eating. She
opened the bottle of wine and poured the thin red substance into a
tall slender glass.

The man stayed sitting down on the
bed. His face was weary. He rubbed one hand over his eyes, down to
his nose, and finally over his mouth. He took a long breath as his
hand reached his chin and slammed down to the bed. He seemed
frustrated and drained of all emotion.

She ignored them both, figuring it
wasn’t any of her business as to why they were prisoners here. She
had learned to not ask questions in this hospital. People would
disappear for no apparent reason and those that asked questions
always ended up as a patient or worse.

She quietly left, without speaking one
word to either of them. The guard closed and locked the door behind
her. She hurried out of the basement and safely back up to the
kitchen, leaving the prisoners and all the basement’s dark secrets
behind her.

Alex and Selene were stuck as
prisoners in the vampire-ruled basement. Selene paused from
stuffing her face for a few moments to look back at Alex. He was
staring at the floor and looking unusually distraught. She hadn’t
seen this before. He seemed depressed.

“
They included some raw
meat over here. You should keep your strength up,” she said, trying
to cheer him up.

“
I’m not remotely hungry…
Do you think she loves him?”

Selene giggled a little at the
thought. “You mean, does Amalia love Ram? That’s ridiculously
hysterical. Nobody could possibly love a monster like that. I don’t
believe he is even human anymore. He’s a bit of a psychopath, if
you haven’t noticed.”

“
She stood beside him like
they were a couple.” He searched the Beechwood carpet for answers
but found none. He closed his eyes, which were beginning to sting
from the lack of rest, and waited silently for Selene to give some
sort of answer or support.

She carried her glass of wine over to
the bed and plopped down beside him.

“
Here.” She handed him the
glass of wine that she was drinking from. “This won’t hurt your,
um, diet.”

He took the glass and drank one sip.
The cool liquid ran smoothly down the back of his throat,
immediately relaxing his mind. He handed the glass back to her. The
one small sip gurgled in his stomach and made him feel sicker
inside.

“
I can’t live like this!”
he screamed out, and jumped off from the bed.

“
What do you mean?” she
asked.

“
I can’t be this anymore,
and if she isn’t going to love me, then why even live
anymore?”

He searched her shocked face for a
response. She reached over to the nightstand beside the bed and
placed her wine gently on the cherry wood surface. She gracefully
walked over to where he stood, broken and confused. She ran her
hands down both sides of his weary face. He seemed comforted by
this so she continued down to his arms and pulled him closer to
her. They were face to face. Their lips were inches
apart.

His breath began to increase with
every inch closer to his face. Her eyes were like glass as they
glared into his very soul.

“
Because you have me,” she
finally said as she lovingly stroked his hair.

They kissed and he grabbed her by the
hips, pulling her body closer to his. He tasted the comfort in her
lips. Her touch seemed to be the only thing that could bring him
down from his anger and up from his sadness.

He slowly pushed her back onto the bed
and she happily complied. He never gave lying on top of her another
thought. They kissed and rolled around on the large bed together.
She jerked her top off and threw it across the room onto the floor.
Her bright, white bra made her seem all the more innocent, but
irritated him so he ripped it off in one rough movement. She
screamed out in part pleasure and part pain. They stripped each
other’s remaining clothes off.

Their eyes comforted each other as
they made love. She studied every contour of his face and upper
body. She held on to him until they both found their sweet release.
He collapsed on top of her and kissed her shoulder
gently.

They heaved their breaths out together
in unison. She chuckled and he rose up from her. He stared at her
face, looking for answers once more.

“
Oh my God!” she
exclaimed.

“
Are you okay?”

“
I’m fantastic. I think
that we both needed this,” she answered more seriously.

He kissed her passionately and rolled
off her. She snuggled up to his chest and they both closed their
eyes. She felt safe in his arms and he felt soothed in hers. They
drifted off to sleep in each other’s embrace.

Chapter 16

The room that Amalia was ushered into
had a long table in it surrounded by puffy leatherback chairs. She
waited on a red suede couch for Ram to return. She flipped through
channels on the oversized TV that overwhelmed the lounge area. She
no longer felt like a prisoner, but more like a part of the group
that brought her to this place. She questioned Alex’s love for her.
She didn’t know if it was just Ram’s way of manipulating the
situation or if Alex really was with that other woman.

She clicked the TV off and slammed the
remote control onto the glass coffee table in front of
her.

“
Easy. That will break you
know,” Ram’s seedy voice announced from the doorway into the
conference room.

“
What am I waiting here
for? I should be with my husband.”

“
I’m not sure you will want
to be with him when I show you what he’s doing right
now.”

“
I am so sick of this back
and forth shit. This isn’t a game, Ram. I don’t know what you are
planning but it’s not going to work. I love Alex. He’s my husband.
We have overcome being months apart from each other and countries
apart just to be forced apart by a bunch of vampires. You think
anything can stand in the way of how I feel about him then you
couldn’t be more wrong.”

“
Come with me,” he said and
held out his perfect, manicured hand. She slammed her hand into his
and reluctantly obliged by following him. He snuck an evil smile in
beneath his lips at her feisty behavior. A security guard buzzed
them into a large room lined with tiny monitors. Two security
guards were constantly monitoring them. They pressed buttons and
moved back forth across the octagonal shaped room.

Ram stopped in front of one bigger
monitor that was blank. He stood behind Amalia and put one hand
softly on her shoulder and turned the screen on with the other. It
turned to snow at first then a picture came to. Alex lay in the bed
shirtless and Selene lay beside him with one hand on his
chest.

Amalia gasped at the sight and pulled
both hands to her face in shock momentarily before looking up at
Ram. He had a serious ‘I told you so’ smirk on his face.

“
This is fake. This doesn’t
mean anything. They’re asleep anyway,” she murmured, more to
herself than to him.

“
Guys, can you rewind this
to, say, thirty minutes earlier?” he calmly said to the two
security guards.

“
Yes sir,” one of them
answered.

The screen went to snow again and a
few minutes passed before a picture came back up. Alex was kissing
Selene and rolling around with her on the bed. They were naked and
her nails were digging into his flesh out of pleasure. Tears fell
from Amalia’s eyes as she watched furiously. She wiped them away,
embarrassed.

Ram glared at Ram in anger.

“
Why would you show me
this?” she yelled at him.

The two security guards looked at her,
shocked that she spoke to Ram in such a way.

“
Can we have a moment,
boys?” he asked them quietly.

They scurried out like punished
animals. They didn’t want to be present for the war that would
surely ensue between them.

When the door shut Ram took her by the
arm. He was much gentler than before Ember’s passing. It was a
comforting touch. He didn’t seem angry in the least bit from her
yelling at him.

“
You should know the truth
– that’s why I showed you this. I would have asked for the same had
my wife… well, that’s over now.”

The sorrow in his eyes struck deep to
her heart. She couldn’t have imagined how it felt to lose a spouse.
Although, of course, right now she wished death for Alex for
betraying their love.

“
I would never do that to
him. I don’t understand what has changed so much in him that he
thinks it’s okay to betray me like this.”

Ram’s grip pulled her into his arms.
He hugged her for comfort. She cried brief tears and the room
started to spin. She felt incredibly dizzy. She hadn’t eaten since
she had been here and her gurgling stomach was in
defiance.

“
He’s a wolf, Amalia. The
instincts and emotions that he now feels are sometimes not his own.
He must learn to contain his urges. Only the strongest-willed men
can survive the animalistic instincts that the wolf places on its
host,” Ram said as he led her to a chair. He squatted down in front
of her and placed his hands gently on her thighs. “We need to talk.
There’s more you need to know.”

She wiped the tears from her face and
looked into his dark, piercing eyes. She wondered how her life
could possibly get any worse.

“
Please don’t give me any
bad news,” she pleaded. “I can’t take much more.”

“
It’s not… completely… bad,
but you are going to need my guidance a lot more with your
condition,” he replied carefully.

“
I’m only a little dizzy.
I’ll be fine if I have something to eat.”

“
It’s not as simple as that
anymore. You need to feed to keep your strength up. You’re one of
us now, Amalia.”

“
I don’t understand. What
do you mean ‘one of us’?”

“
I mean you have my
condition, my curse, and my blessing. You are what America calls a
vampire, but you are not immortal. There is only one that is
immortal and he refuses to share with the rest of us.”

Amalia sat there in silence. She
couldn’t understand how one person could run through so many
emotions all at once. She felt angry at Alex for betraying her,
scared of hurting other people to stay alive, and relieved that she
finally knew the truth about everything.

“
I don’t have to kill
anyone, do I?” she asked.

“
No, I can do it for you
until you learn how to cope with it emotionally. It will take a
while for all of this to set in. I will bring you something to get
you started. Let’s get you somewhere more comfortable.”