B007XKEWAE EBOK (39 page)

She couldn't do it. She couldn't face life without Fulton. She needed Francesca but she
needed
him that much more. Her heart felt an emptiness she had never been able to recognise before she met him. He completed her.

Gabriella stood in the shower and let the hot water caress her skin, wishing he was here with her now so that she could tell him about her change of heart.

She couldn't wait for him to come home. Even though she had finally made the decision to spend the rest of eternity with him, every second they spent apart until then was agony.

Gabriella had been smiling when he entered the room, obviously expecting him to be all torn up with grief over his family's death and needing her to console him. He had to give the duplicitous little bitch credit for keeping the smile plastered there even when she saw the mood he was in, but in the end she had had to let it drop.

Fulton didn't intend to give her the opportunity to try and talk herself out of this. She had deluded him with imaginings of a future he could never have. Of a life of love not hate. But then
she had snatched it away from him. Well so be it. Hate was easier anyway. His heart was frozen metal in his chest.

Gabriella got to her feet as though to welcome him. He responded by slamming his fist into her stomach. She started to wretch and doubled over. He punched her in the gut a second time sending her reeling several steps backwards. She supported herself by reaching out instinctively for the back of a chair. Doubled over and spluttering she just managed to raise her head as Fulton closed in on her again. This time he buried his right knee into her stomach. Once. Twice. A third time. She coughed and choked out a cry. Strings of saliva dangled from her mouth.

Her eyes were wide with fear when she managed to look up at him. There
were tears there and something else as well. It looked like betrayal, or maybe disappointment. That was it, she was disappointed that he had reacted like this, that he knew it was her.

Fulton grabbed the back of her head with his right hand, pulling her hair. His left hand grabbed the top of her trousers and he launched her headfirst across to the other side of the room. She slid the last two metres on her front tearing her clothes and grazing her pale skin. She struggled to roll over onto her back and Fulton let her do so. Before she could try to push herself up he stamped with the flat of his still booted foot on her chest and stomach. Grabbing twin handfuls of her dark hair he lifted her up and then off the floor swinging her to slam sideways into the wall.

She dropped flat on her front unable to bring her arms up to break her fall. Fulton kicked her in the kidneys and this time when she coughed flecks of blood came up with her spittle. She was still conscious and struggling to get up so Fulton delivered a swift kick to her head that knocked her out.

But that wasn't enough for him. He left her lying there and went and sat himself down on the settee waiting for her to recover a little. He was unaware how much time had passed before she was capable enough to push herself into a seated position with the aid of the wall. But when she had done so he waded in again.

He took hold of the hair on the back of her head again and scraped her face roughly across the wall, stopping every
few paces to kick her in her midsection. Pulling her erect he lifted her over his head and then brought her back to the ground in a slam. Fulton stood over her and dropped delivering an elbow with all his weight to the centre of her sternum. Getting back to his feet he grabbed Gabriella around the throat and stood her up against the wall beside the door having to kick a large bag out of the way in the process.

She looked like she might have been trying to say something. With the damage he had done to her she was unable to offer anything more than a pained whimper. That was fine as far as he was concerned; he wasn't interested in anything she had to say.

He delivered blows rapidly to her stomach and kidneys with both his fists
and his knees. He brought his right elbow up into her face twice, the second shot shattering the cartilage in her nose and ruining her pretty face. Her eyes glazed over with a faraway look and he knew she was about to drop into unconsciousness for the second time so he drew back again to let her recover.

More time passed and he remained oblivious to how long, but this time he gave her a longer respite and he could even see her nose starting to fix back into its original shape before he started again.

During her recovery times she gazed up at him with bloody eyes and tried to speak but was unable to get any coherent sounds to emerge out of her mouth. When the noises started to
become almost intelligible was when Fulton waded back in.

He lifted her body up over his head and threw her down into the back of the settee. She tipped the furniture over and it rolled on top of her. Fulton shoved it aside one handed and picked Gabriella up again into a standing position. Her legs could barely support her anymore and Fulton had to drag her back up by her hair twice more before she could support herself enough to suit his purpose. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her across the room towards the television set on its small stand, he pushed her in the back as he launched her to provide extra momentum.

She slammed into the television set and stand and they collapsed together in a ruined heap. The shattered glass and
plastic lacerated Gabriella's already torn clothes and skin. Fulton kicked her where she lay attempting to recover. He reached down and took hold of her by an ankle and proceeded to drag her out of the ruin. Further cutting her body in the process. She was now completely naked on most of her upper body except for a few strips of material and a growing covering of blood and bruising. For every laceration that managed to heal two more fresh wounds were opened. Her trousers were starting to come away and blood ran freely over the exposed parts of her legs.

Fulton dragged her, leaving a bloody trail in their wake, into the dining room which had been emptied to turn it into a training room for the pair of them. The memories of the time they had spent
together here spurred Fulton on. He swung Gabriella up, holding her just by her ankle, and cast her again into one of the walls.

It was time to end this. He knelt down beside her semiconscious form and took her head in his hands, one on either side of her face. With a simple twist he could pop her skull free from her spine severing the spinal column and killing her instantly.

He held her there, staring into the face he thought he could have loved, and she blinked her eyes open. When their eyes met he knew she saw her death in his.

But now that it came down to it he couldn't do it. Even in this rage he couldn't kill her like this. He couldn't do it with his bare hands having to be so close
to her. Where the scent of her, even distorted by fear and pain, could fill his head.

He released his hold with one hand and with the other he slammed her head into the wall so hard it left a depression in the bricks and Gabriella unconscious yet again.

There was a way he could pay her back for her betraying him without having to be close to her when she died. Crossing to the side of the room that didn't have a wall, only windows that served as a doorway onto the garden and had been covered with closed blinds ever since they took the house over, Fulton reached up and opened those blinds. It was still dark outside but that wouldn't last forever. Fulton stretched up and tore the rail holding the blinds in
place out of the ceiling. He let the entire assembly fall to the floor. When the sun rose this room would be flooded with light and Gabriella would have nowhere to hide from it.

Delivering another kick to her head, just to ensure that she remained out cold, Fulton left the dining room and went upstairs. He returned moments later with three   pairs of handcuffs he had
borrowed
out of Francesca's set of toys. He and Persephone had once used them during the early part of their time together.

He dragged Gabriella to the middle of the room and she had recovered sufficiently to whimper at the pain such movement brought but not enough to complain any more than that. He fixed one pair of the cuffs to bind her ankles
together. Then he twisted her arms behind her back and attached a second pair to her wrists. The third set he used to bind the previous two sets of cuffs together bending her backwards. Even as supple as Gabriella was the contortion had to be painful for her.

The bindings weren't strong enough to hold a vampire indefinitely, Fulton knew. But they would hold a fully fit vampire for a while and Gabriella was far from fully fit at the moment. Fulton looked at the expansive window. She didn't have long in any case.

Paying her no further attention Fulton left the room and went back to his bedroom.

His mind was still unable to measure the passage of time. So he was unaware how long he had been sitting there on the end of his bed before Persephone joined him. All he knew was that the cuts and bruises on his knuckles from his punishment of Gabriella had long since healed, and the thick layer of her blood that had covered his hands had dried to an equally thick crust that cracked and flaked off with his every movement.

Persephone didn't notice, or paid no heed to, his body language as she stretched herself out next to him. She
kicked her boots off her feet and curled up next to him.

Fulton remained where he was looking down at his blood encrusted hands where he held them between his knees. "I've killed Gabriella," he said in a simple monotone.

He felt Persephone sit up next to him but he remained statuesque.

"She murdered my family," he continued before she could ask for an explanation.

Persephone reached up and began kneading his shoulders. He didn't really want her to be doing it but he couldn't be bothered to tell her to stop.

They stayed in silence for a few more moments before Persephone spoke up for the first time. "Then it is just you, me and Francesca from now on."

Fulton got to his feet but didn't turn to regard her. "I don't think so," he said.

How could he go back now? He had already decided to leave Francesca and Persephone and he saw no reason to change that decision. There was nothing to be gained by encumbering himself with those two, especially not needy little Persephone.

"I'll be leaving on my own."

Persephone left the bed and walked around him so that he was looking at her. "You can't just abandon me."

"Watch me." His voice dropped the temperature of the room by several degrees.

Persephone's whole face slipped before she recovered and tried her best to smile. "All right, we don't have to be
with Francesca. It can be just you and me together, forever."

"You think I would want to spend any longer with you than I have to."

Her face slipped again beyond any hopes of recovery. Her lower lip trembled and her eyes welled up.

"No, this isn't right. It wasn't supposed to affect you like this. It wasn't supposed to stop you being able to love me, only her."

"I never loved you," Fulton said automatically and then the actual meaning of her words got through to him.

"What does that mean?" He caught her by the throat and forced her back against the bedroom wall. He held her there with her feet dangling above the floor and her nails raking at the skin of his arm.

"It was Francesca's plan. She knew you and Gabriella were getting close and she wanted to split you apart. It wasn't Gabriella who killed your family it was Francesca. She had me dress up as Gabriella and run around your neighbourhood covered in blood to make you believe it was her but
she
killed them. When I arrived at the address she had given me I saw them all dead, even the little girls. And then Francesca she . . . she kissed me and I could taste the blood on my lips. She smeared it all over me and then she started screaming and smashing stuff, to attract attention. Then she had me run like I was fleeing the scene but she told me to make sure there were witnesses."

It was like she was pouring out her soul to him. Fulton cocked his free arm back ready to punch her in the face.

"Stop."

Two voices spoke to him. One was Persephone in front of him struggling to speak through the strangle hold he had on her. The other voice came from behind him and was identical to his own.

"What now?" he said turning his head to look at himself.

Persephone tried to speak again but he glared at her. "Not you. Not yet."

She squeezed her lips together and resumed her fight for air. Fulton relaxed his grip slightly, just enough to leave her sufficient breath to remain conscious.

"You can't punish her for what she did," Pseudo-Fulton said his voice maddeningly reasonable.

"After what she did I have every right to hurt her."

"But she isn't the one you are really mad at. It's yourself you want to hurt for what you did to Gabriella. For being so eager to believe that she didn't really love you, and for being so eager to punish her for it."