Indulgence (243 page)

I stood and backed away a few steps, not really believing
what I had just done. It was not disbelief for having killed Lucious; I had to
do that to ensure my existence. It was incredulity that I was actually able to
overpower Lucious so easily; as if my agility and skill advanced the longer I
fought him.

I walked over to Lucious’s lifeless body and kicked his leg.
There was no reaction. I tilted my head and stared at his face. His eyes, an
abyss of black and red earlier, were now dull and lifeless.

I felt the heat of the fire behind me and turned towards it.
The flames would take over our battle ground in a bit. The smoldering leaves on
the other side of Lucious would also ignite shortly. The smoke would eventually
send a signal to someone to call the fire department. I figured it would be
best to leave. With the condition my house was in, someone would assume there
was a break in and then would find Lucious’s body in the woods. He would be
blamed for the whole thing.

I leapt over the flames to head back to Castle Adena.

It felt like an eternity, but I managed my way back to the
castle. The fight with Lucious had drained me and I didn’t think I’d have the
strength to keep my senses in check to prevent me from going on a wild hunt.
Any unfortunate rabbit, pheasant, turkey or fox that came within one hundred
feet of me became a meal. It was a good thing that this land was owned by the
Drake’s, otherwise my trail of carcasses would have sent off bells and whistles
with the mortals. The food was good but not enough to satiate me.

Castle Adena’s security cameras must have picked me up
because Lorenzo and Max rushed to the edge of the woods to help. My appearance
must have been alarming considering all of the healing scrapes on my body and
all of the tears in my clothing. Lorenzo grabbed one arm and Max grabbed the
other to support me.

“My God, Allison! What happened?” Lorenzo asked.

“What did Vincent do to you?” Max questioned.

I was too exhausted and too famished to speak. “It wasn’t
Vincent,” I muttered.

Lorenzo and Max looked inquisitively at each other and then
back at me.

“Then what happened? Who was it?” Lorenzo asked.

“Lucious,” I choked out.

“Lucious!” They shouted in unison. We approached a door at
the rear of the castle that had been left ajar. Max opened it with his foot and
my brothers escorted me inside. Lorenzo and Max peppered me with question after
question.

“What was Lucious doing there?”

“How did he find you?”

“What happened?”

“Where is he now?”

We walked down a long hallway and into the dining room. I
waved my hand trying to call off their verbal assault.

“Allison?” an angelic voice rang out. “Oh my, what
happened?”

It was Marlo, my ever thoughtful sister, with a goblet in
hand just for me.

I grabbed the cup and chugged the sweet liquid. The
concoction was enough to relinquish the burning in my throat, but the relief
would only be temporary. Hunger, it seemed, was a vicious cycle. I circled my
tongue around the inside of the cup desperate for every last drop then feebly
pushed the cup away once it was licked clean.

“It was Lucious,” one of my brothers stated.

“Lucious?” Felix questioned as he entered the room.

Another barrage of questions was tossed at me but I didn’t
have the energy to deal with them at the moment. I threw my hands on the table
and rolled my head back.

“He’s gone,” I muttered.

A hush fell over the room as four sets of stunned eyes
looked at me.

“Gone?” Lorenzo questioned.

“Dead,” I responded.

“You killed Lucious?” Felix asked.

I nodded my head in affirmation which sent off another round
of questions.

“But how? You are just an infant!”

“Did he put up a good fight?”

“Did you rip his throat out?”

“How did you finish him? What did you use?”

“Guys,” Marlo interrupted. “Not now. Can’t you see Allison
is exhausted? Here, drink this,” Marlo instructed as she pushed another cup in
front of me. “Let her rest,” she pointed a finger at our brothers. “Allison can
fill us in on all of the details later.”

I was thankful for Marlo’s interjection. All I wanted was to
sit in my room, meditate and be alone for awhile. And I did just that.

As I pulled out of my meditative trance, I heard my siblings
talking somewhere on the first level of the castle but I ignored their chatter.
I was pretty sure they were still talking about the day’s events, something I
would much rather forget. I examined myself in the mirror. My scars were all
healed, as if I had never been in a fight hours earlier. I changed into a pair
of black tights, a long burgundy sweater which coordinated nicely with my oval
ring and black boots. I walked to the window and sat and stared at the late
afternoon sun. For starting out like Hell, a truly beautiful autumn day had
unfolded. For the first time in many weeks the sun was out in full view, no
rain or gray or clouds in sight. The leaves were losing their vibrant colors,
turning brown and falling from the trees. I was entranced with them as they
blew over the vast yard behind the castle. The air smelled clean and felt crisp
against my warm skin. After taking in the scenery for some time, I decided to
eavesdrop on my siblings.

“Are you sure he’s dead?” I heard Lorenzo ask.

“Lorenzo, the forest was completely charred,” Marlo replied.
“There’s no way anyone survived that.”

“But what if he wasn’t dead before the fire consumed the
area?” Felix questioned.

“I’m sure he’s dead,” Marlo reassured her brothers. “I told
Allison everything she needed to know about how to kill a vampire.”

“And you’re sure she understood?” Max asked.

“Yes!” Marlo exclaimed. “Allison is quite smart. I’m sure
she remembered.”

“I just don’t get it,” Lorenzo announced. “She’s only an
infant! How could she have destroyed someone of his age and skill? How could
she be that strong?”

“Maybe that was her trait from her mortal life that was
enhanced through her transformation,” Felix offered up.

“Yeah, you know how it goes,” Max chimed in, “no one ever
knows what mortal strength will be augmented when someone is transformed, if
they get a special gift at all.”

“I guess that’s a possibility,” Lorenzo resigned.

I crept down the spiral staircase and moved into the dining
room. I wasn’t fooling anyone; I couldn’t sneak up on a group of vampires who
were keenly aware that I was on the premises and who desperately wanted to hear
my tale.

“Allison!” Lorenzo exclaimed. “Tell us what happened.”

“Come on Lorenzo,” Marlo pleaded. “Allison has been through
a great ordeal today; she’ll tell us in time.”

“No, Marlo,” I stated. “It’s okay. What do you want to
know?” I really didn’t feel like talking about this but figured I needed to get
it out of the way sooner rather than later.

“Where did he come from? How did he sneak up on you?” Max
inquired.

I sighed as I felt the heat climbing its way up my throat.
“Can someone please get me another cocktail? I’m thirsty.”

“Sure, no problem,” Marlo responded and disappeared from the
room.

“I don’t know where he came from,” I started. “I’m sure by
now Marlo filled you in on why I was at my house -- to confront Vincent.”

“Actually, I think we forgot about Vincent after you
mentioned Lucious,” Felix stated. All three of my brothers nodded their heads
in unison. A snarl crossed over Lorenzo’s lips at the mention of Vincent’s
name. “Marlo mentioned that you were going to meet Vincent. What happened?”
Felix asked. “Did you get the answers you were looking for?”

“No,” I curtly replied. “You all were right and I didn’t see
it. Vincent is completely and totally selfish. He wouldn’t tell me where Matt
is or why he went to such lengths to kidnap him and hide him. In fact, he
thought I should have been thanking him.”

“Thanking him?” Lorenzo questioned. “For what?”

“For removing Matt from our home before my symptoms advanced
to the point where I possibly would have attacked or killed Matt.”

“You have to be kidding me!” Max exclaimed. “He knows we
wouldn’t have let it get to that point.”

“Yeah, well, apparently Vincent couldn’t wait. He wanted me
and was going to do whatever he had to in order to get me to run away with him.
I told him that would never happen after what Marlo told me she discovered the
night Vincent transformed me. It’s unfathomable what he did to me and Matt and
my friends and he still expected me to run off with him! I told him to leave
and never return or I’d kill him myself.”

Silence fell over the room as my last words settled on my
brother’s ears. I continued after a brief pause.

“Vincent actually listened to me and left. I figure his
bruised ego wouldn’t allow him to beg for my forgiveness. After he left I was
exhausted and hunger was starting to set in. I knew I didn’t have enough energy
to make the trek back to the castle so I decided to meditate. And I remembered
the first rule of mediation – make sure to pick a safe spot. So I picked a safe
spot, or so I thought.”

“Your house,” Max quipped. “That normally would have been a
good choice.”

“Right,” I concurred. “So I perched myself in the loft and
went to sleep and the next thing I knew I was being attacked. Lucious somehow
knew I was there; I’m not really sure how he knew.”

“He probably kept tabs on you after Jordana’s party and
tracked you,” Felix suggested.

“And then what?” Lorenzo eagerly asked.

“Then there was a fight. It felt like it lasted forever. I
doubted my skills initially but the longer we fought, the stronger I seemed to
become.”

“Interesting,” Felix mused.

“Yeah well, thankfully I was able to overpower Lucious and I
finished him off. He’ll never be able to torment me or any of my kin ever
again.”

“How did you ‘finish him off’?” Max asked.

Marlo entered the room with a goblet and pitcher and poured
me a drink. “Max,” Marlo snapped. “Not now. Why do you need all of the details?
Can’t you see Allison is tired and doesn’t want to talk about this?” She cast a
glance in my direction and I returned it with an appreciative smile before
sipping my drink. “Lucious is dead and that’s all that matters.”

My brothers stood in silence, obviously disappointed with my
abbreviated, detail-lacking rendition. But Marlo was right; I didn’t want to
rehash what I had just lived through.

“Do you want to go back to your room?” Marlo gently asked
me.

“Actually, I want to see the sunset.”

Marlo gave me directions to one of the highest peaks in
Ridge Hollow. She offered to accompany me but I declined. I wanted to be alone
with my thoughts and figure out what I was going to do next.

I sat high above the valley, the sun a bright orange ball
against the purple sky. An oak tree served as a chair and an umbrella,
shielding me from the sun’s rays. Enormous buzzards filled the hollowed ridge,
their silver trimmed wings spanning the emptiness. I chuckled at the irony of
it; buzzards circle over dead carcasses – their next meal. Maybe they were
circling me for a better view.

My thoughts drifted back over the past several weeks. I
couldn’t believe how much my life had changed. I went from being just any other
mortal to…well, to this, whatever you want to call it. The accident changed my
life forever, for eternity. In a blink of an eye, life as I had known it was
gone.

It still angered me that I hadn’t seen what was going on
around me, especially that Vincent had caused my car accident. After all, it
was his crystalline eyes I had seen in the blackness of the windshield as his
truck plowed into my vehicle. I had seen those shimmery eyes so many times
before. When he followed me to Whipps Ledges, it was his eyes that emerged
first from the darkness. Then there was the time in my backyard, before the
accident, when I fell asleep on the hammock after another sleepless night. I
thought I saw lightening bugs disappearing into the woods, but now I knew
otherwise. That was Vincent keeping a close eye on me, watching my symptoms. He
was waiting for the slightest sign that my symptoms were accelerating so that
he could intervene for his own selfish purposes; so he could have me, a mortal
descendant of Cain and part vampire, something that had never existed before,
for himself.

Vincent got what he wanted. Something in me had changed and
he noticed it. Had it been my cyclical body temperature – cold during the day
and hot at night – or my infertility, or my change in diet, or my insomnia, or
a combination of everything? Whatever it was, Vincent took it upon himself to
steal my husband and his memories and hid him somewhere; where, I didn’t know.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, Vincent had altered my friends’ and coworkers’
memories, making them believe his fictional tale that Matt had died and I had struggled
over the past three years to come to terms with it. He had essentially cut
everyone out of my life so he could act on his plan. Only a cold and vile
person could do something like that.

Anger bubbled in my stomach and I let out a long yell. It
felt good to release the anger. I listened to my voice echo through the empty
abyss as venom began to pour over my cheeks. I wiped my face so my tears
wouldn’t stain my skin but instead began sobbing uncontrollably. I had no idea
what I was going to do with my life and bit my lip when I thought about the
word
life
. Life? What life? I had no life. That was taken from me and I
was left with this existence I had no idea what to do with.

I heard a twig snap but didn’t move. I could have cared less
about who or what was approaching.

“Allison,” a soft voice called. “It’s Marlo.”