Passion By Control (Passion Series Book 2) (34 page)

Fabian jumped on the brake pedal, yanking the steering wheel hard to turn the car around, hell bent on getting back to her, but it didn’t co-operate with him. It must have hit a patch of oil or something on the road and it began to spin. Frantically he pulled on the steering wheel again, trying to get the car back under control but it didn’t respond. It spun once more, hit the kerb and the whole vehicle became airborne, falling onto its side, before beginning to tumble over and over again.

Dimly Fabian struggled to do something, but it was far too late. As it began to roll over and over, his body was tossed around like a rag doll, pain exploding through him. With every roll, all he could do through the haze of agony was wonder when it would stop. When finally the car came to a rest, on its roof he was only vaguely aware. His head pounded, his body ached badly and he could feel something wet dribbling down his neck but he couldn’t raise his arm to find out what it was.

The interior of the car was smoky, making him cough, which hurt like hell and he tried to call out but he couldn’t manage anything more than a raspy whisper. It was beginning to look like this was it. He was about to die and all he could think of before the darkness rushed up to claim him, was he’d never get the chance to tell Sirene he loved her and that he was sorry for the way he behaved. “Sirene.” Her name was little more than a hoarse whisper, and then everything went black.

Sirene

I woke abruptly to the sound of loud pounding on my bedroom door and sat up, slightly disorientated at first.

“Sirene, wake up.” I heard Cassandra’s voice calling to me, and I could tell she sounded upset.

“Come in.” I answered, rubbing my eyes and pushing my heavy mane of hair back off my face. I noticed it was 3.15am by my bedside clock when my door opened and not just Cassie, but Chloe and Francesca walked into my bedroom.

What the fuck? They all looked so serious. I could see Cassie and Chloe had been crying and as I stared up at them, instinctively I knew something was wrong, seriously wrong. Even Francesca looked upset and I felt a wave of nausea roll over me, my stomach tightening with dread as I stared into the faces of the distraught women by my bed.

“What is it?” I asked, my eyes moving from one to the next. “Please, someone answer me.”

Chloe started crying again and Cassie’s eyes filled with tears. My heart began an erratic beat as I waited for someone to answer me. My worried eyes shifted to Francesca. “Please Fran, what is it?”

“It’s Fabian.” She said quietly and I felt my heart free fall into my stomach. God, no, please no, don’t let this be bad, don’t let him have turned himself to vampire yet.

“Has he done it?” I asked her. I was aware that my question had Cassie and Chloe staring at each other in confusion before looking back at me. They might not know what I was referring to but Francesca certainly did.

“No he hasn’t. He never got that far. He’s…he’s in hospital Sirene. It’s not good. I suggest you come now if you want to see him.” Her voice was quite matter of fact the way she dropped her bomb on me, but I could see the fear in her eyes, the tears that threatened to fall. No matter how big an arse he could be and had probably been to them all over the years, his children, for the most part, respected him.

“What happened?” I asked as I leapt out of bed and hastily dressed, not caring that I was still very wet and sticky between my legs from being fucked by him earlier. God, why wouldn’t someone tell me what was going on?

“Fabian’s had a car accident. It looks like he was speeding. He must have lost control and rolled the car. It…it had started to burn when he was found.” Francesca’s tear filled eyes met mine. He’s in a bad way. If he’d been vampire….” Her voice trailed off and I knew what she was trying to say. This wouldn’t have happened if he’d been vampire. He’d have been able to get out of the car, he’d have been ok.

“Oh my god.” I sobbed. “He can’t die. He can’t. We had a fight and he left here so angry. God this is my fault, it’s my fault.” I gasped, tears streaming down my face.

“No Sirene, please, don’t think that.” Chloe rushed to my side and put her arms around me. “Come on; let's get to the hospital so you can see him. He’s going to be alright, you’ll see. Once he knows you’re there, he’ll be ok.” She said reassuringly.

I knew she was trying to help but seriously, she wasn’t. Fabian had been furious with me when he’d left. He had no interest in being a father. Hell, he couldn’t get out of the damn room fast enough. Now it seemed like he was never going to find out whether fatherhood was something he could have come to accept. Francesca’s face said it all. It was bad; he probably wasn’t going to make it.

Once I’d dressed and grabbed my bag we all hurried downstairs and out to the car. Fran hadn’t driven herself obviously as Lucian was sitting in the driver’s seat. I could see his expression was very serious, incredibly sombre, so I knew Fabian had to be in a really bad way.

He drove as quickly as possible to the hospital. No one spoke; the car was silent other than the odd sniffle from Chloe. My mind was racing, running away with me as I worried about getting to there on time. What would we find? Would Fabian still be alive when we got there? I couldn’t stand the thought of him dying. Why had he crashed? Was something wrong with the car? It wasn’t the weather since it was fine and calm. I truly believed it was my fault. He’d been upset, more than upset, he’d been furious and he’d climbed in his car and driven like that after I’d dropped the bomb on him about being pregnant.

“He has to make it.” I whispered, not really speaking to anyone in particular, simply thinking aloud.

“He will Sirene. You have to believe.” Chloe took my hand in hers, trying to give me a smile of encouragement.

“He has to make it.” I whispered again. “He…I…I’m pregnant.” I stumbled over the words before bursting into tears.

Since my head was buried in my hands I missed the shocked faces in the car at my surprise announcement, until I raised my head and looked into the stunned eyes of Chloe and then Francesca.

“You’re pregnant? It’s Fabian’s? Does he know? Of course he knows, that’s what you fought about isn’t it? Oh Sirene, you can’t blame yourself. We don’t know why he crashed. Maybe something ran out on the road, who knows?”

I gave Chloe a weak smile. She was trying so hard to make me feel better but she was wasting her time. I had to see Fabian; I had to see how bad he was. I still couldn’t shake the belief that if we hadn’t fought, he wouldn’t have crashed.

When we finally pulled up at the hospital, we all rushed inside and found Dominick, Allegra and Damien waiting for us. Dominick had already found out where we had to go in the hospital to get to Fabian, and for some reason when I looked up into his intense blue eyes, I burst into a fresh round of tears.

He pulled me into his arms, tucking my face against his chest as I sobbed noisily, knowing I was wetting his clothing but unable to stop. “Have you seen him?” I asked, my voice slightly muffled against his chest.

“No cara, but we will go to him now ok? Please be aware that he was burned, he was in a car that rolled multiple times and as a human, his body doesn’t have the strength that it has as vampire. I...just be aware that he...I’m sorry Sirene, but you have to be aware that Fabian might not make it.” He said softly, trying to soften the blow behind his words, but I still flinched and sobbed harder listening to him. Everyone was warning me to prepare for seeing him. It had to be bad; he had to be seriously injured.

“Sirene?” I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Come girl, we’ll take you to your man, ok?” I turned my head to see Allegra who was giving me a sympathetic look, as she patted my back.

I let them lead me into the elevator which took us up to intensive care and Dominick asked one of the nurses where we could find Fabian. She was reluctant to tell us since we weren’t immediate family but Dominick spoke quietly to her and I saw her eyes turn to me occasionally so he must have been telling her that I needed to be allowed to see him. Either that or he was altering her mind subtly. One of the perks of being vampire was bending the minds of people to suit their own needs.

Finally he came back over to me. “Ok, you can go in and see him now cara. We have to go one at a time though. Just be prepared for what you will see. He’s hooked up to machines helping him the nurse said, so try not to let it alarm you too much.”

I nodded to Dominick, giving his hand a squeeze of gratitude for how helpful he was being to me. He had to be secretly hoping Fabian would die surely, but he was being kind and supportive and that meant something.

When I pushed the door open and stepped in to see Fabian, I gasped. The steady hiss of the life support system keeping him alive hit me first and as I stepped closer to the bed, my hands flew to my face as another flood of tears struck me.

Oh my god, my poor ex vampire. He had tubes coming out of him everywhere. The tube down his throat that was part of the life support that was doing the breathing for him, other tubes snaking into him providing fluids, one feeding him blood. The irony of seeing blood running into him was not lost on me. He was getting his wish, he was on blood again, but not quite the way he’d expected. There were wires disappearing under his hospital gown, obviously monitoring his heartbeat, plus he was heavily bandaged, just wisps of his dirty blonde hair showing beneath one bandage around his head. There were bandages on one cheek and his arms were heavily bandaged from what I could see of them.

He lay amongst all the paraphernalia keeping him alive and looked so pale, so still. I hated to admit it, but he looked close to death. I glanced up at the heart monitor, listening to the beep…beep of his heart but it terrified me because it wasn’t steady or smooth, it would give a few erratic beats and then seem to stop for a fraction of a second, then beep…beep again. It was awful to watch and listen to because I was so scared with every beep, that it would be the last.

On shaking legs I walked over and sat down by Fabian’s bed, gently picking up his hand which wasn’t bandaged. It was cold, ice cold so I held it up to my cheek in an attempt to give some of my warmth to him.

“Oh Fabian, my beautiful Fabian what have you done? Please fight, I can’t lose you. I love you, I love you so fucking much and I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I got pregnant and I should never have told you like that. It was too much of a shock for you and you shouldn’t have driven when you were that upset. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” I whispered, my voice breaking as the next flood of tears began to stream down my face.

Fabian

Fabian ached, fuck he ached. His body was just one screaming mass of pain. He didn’t know why it hurt so badly. Vague flashes were going through his head, just mere seconds at a time, like a flash of video footage and then it was gone again. Something to do with a car, it was rolling, then it was gone and he saw a woman’s face, beautiful, looking so sad and a baby? Why was he thinking about a baby? It was too much for him and he let the darkness pull him under again and as it did, he could have sworn he heard a woman crying.

He stirred again. Well his body didn’t move. He couldn’t seem to get it to move, not at all. It hurt too much anyway and if he tried to move, he couldn’t concentrate on the sounds of voices nearby. He could hear men's’ voices, a few men? Then there was a woman’s voice again and that other woman, the one he thought he’d heard earlier, the one who was crying. What was happening? What did they want? Why wouldn’t they tell him what was going on?

Suddenly, something happened, pain shot through him, followed by a flash of bright light and his chest seemed to tighten. He could hear a machine nearby making some screaming noise and his eyes shot open, his lips parted and in a hoarse whisper he spoke. “Sirene.”

Sirene

My eyes flew to Fabian as he lay in the hospital bed, buried under a sea of wires, tubes and bandages while Dominick, Allegra, Francesca, Lucian and Damien looked on. They weren’t supposed to be in the room too but I’d agreed to smuggle them in and so far the nurses hadn’t noticed. They deserved to be here, more than I did really.

They had to be with their sire for his final moments on this earth. I wasn’t fooling myself that he could survive this. He looked so battered and bruised, his body burned from when the car had ignited. The doctor’s report was not good, hell, it couldn’t have been much worse. Basically we were all in the room waiting for Fabian to die.

I couldn’t believe I was here again, about to watch the man I loved die and this time, I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t turn back time and it was too late to ring my Gran for help. That was the price for witchcraft. There were limits, boundaries that couldn’t be crossed, and using witchcraft twice to bring a person back from the dead, wasn’t allowed, it wasn’t possible. I was watching the life draining out of Fabian and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

My poor ex vampire was nearly gone to me. His heart rate was slowing, we all could hear that. The monitor was the only sound in the room other than the sniffles from me, Chloe and Cassie.

“Sirene.” I heard the gasped whisper from Fabian and suddenly the heart monitor began to go crazy.

“No, no, NO!” I screamed. “He’s dying, no, Fabian, please NO, NO, NO!” I turned on the others. “For fuck sakes, do something. Save him, FUCKING WELL SAVE HIM!” I spun from one to the other as the noise of the heart monitor nearly drowned me out.