Passion Follows Pain (Passion Series Book 3) (37 page)

“She’s not mine sire. She doesn’t want me anymore, remember?” He said his voice harsh with pain. God, would it never get any easier? He wanted her back so badly. He wanted to see her but she must leave the home during those few minutes he actually slept these days, because he hadn’t seen her getting around at all. The house always looked the same, the curtains and blinds always drawn.

Suddenly Damien walked in, dressed in jeans, t-shirt and jacket. He was obviously ready to go hunting and Lucian silently groaned. He’d better not be expecting him to go with him. He was tired of being dragged out to nightclubs and bringing home women he had no intention of doing anything with. The most he did was feed from them but he couldn’t fuck them. He had no desire to fuck anyone but Arissa. Hell, he couldn’t even get it up anymore. Not that he was going to tell Damien that. His brother would give him nothing but shit for eternity over it, if he knew.

He’d reluctantly gone out with Damien more times than he’d wanted to. He’d nearly been kicking and screaming with his level of reluctance. They’d brought home a never ending selection of semi drunken women more than happy to provide a nice warm cunt for the evening, but Lucian wasn’t interested. There was only one woman for him but she didn’t want him and if she never did again then the future sure looked bleak and endless.

“My son you have to snap out of this, move past the loss of Arissa. You’re barely feeding; you’d never leave this house if it wasn’t for Damien. I will not sit by and watch you go the same way as Dominick did when he lost Allegra during a troubled time in their relationship. He nearly died. You either make an effort to pull yourself together or go and see her, otherwise I will go and see her myself. I want that motherfucker out of the dungeon but your girl seems to have forgotten about him, or assumed that we have done something with him, but he’s her father, she must choose his fate.”

Lucian silently groaned. The thought of going over the road to see Arissa hurt him. He felt like someone was slashing at him with a knife and every thought of her was like an open wound, bleeding, raw, and exposed. He didn’t want to go there; he didn’t want to see her. With everything in him the thought of seeing her again filled him with dread; and with everything in him, the thought of seeing her again filled him with such intense longing, he ached with the need.

He couldn’t go to see her though, he just couldn’t. If she rejected him, he’d have to concede all hope of them ever being together again. He couldn’t face that thought at all. In his tortured mind, if he stayed away, he could hold onto that small thread of hope that all was not lost for them. If his sire forced him to go there then he would know, he’d have his answer and just thinking about it and what her answer might be terrified him, it filled him with dread. He didn’t want to think about what he would do if she rejected him again.

“I can’t go to her sire, not yet and I can’t let go of her. She’s here.” He put a hand over his heart. “I still love her, I still want her.” He said, tears suddenly burning at the back of his eyes.

“Oh grow some balls little brother.” Damien slapped him on the back but Lucian shrugged off his hand and climbed to his feet before storming out of the room. He couldn’t deal with them and Damien was a jerk at times. He’d never loved or lost so he had no idea what it felt like, and it was worse knowing that the woman he’d lost, was only across the road. Why she was still there and hadn’t moved on yet, he had no idea. Maybe if she moved he wouldn’t have the added torture of knowing she was so physically close to him but miles away emotionally.

He’d just made it to his room and was about to close his door when Sirene turned up, her face filled with sympathy and concern for him.

“Please Sirene, I’m fine, you don’t need to worry about me and if Fabian’s sent you, you can tell him I’m ok.”

“Oh Lucian, you’re not ok, not even close dear boy. I can see it; I feel your pain and your eyes just scream of your pain. I wish I could help you. I wish I could do a spell to make everything good again for you, but I know how you feel about all this. If she can’t love you of her own free will then you don’t want her do you?”

“No, god no; I want her to love me and want me because she really feels that way for me. I know something has to be done about her father but then she knows he’s here and she’s made no attempt to come.”

“I’m so sorry Lucian, that the woman who managed to steal your heart after all these years, has turned her back on you, but you must understand, she’s been through a lot, and sometimes she may not always make the most rational of decisions. You have to believe she will come around, that she will come back to you.” She reached out as if aware of his fragile emotions, pulling him into her arms, holding him, while he struggled not to let the tears fall.

He was a vampire for fuck sakes; he was supposed to be tough, impenetrable, and immune to the normal weaknesses of the human form. Yet here he was, becoming less than a man and far less than a vampire because of his feelings for her. He should be tougher than this but when it came to that fragile little woman over the road, she robbed him of his strength and left him exposed, raw, consumed by a world of pain which seemed to have no ending. Arissa had effectively turned his world on its head and he wasn’t sure it could ever be righted again.

So for now he let Sirene comfort him, her arms around him and just for a moment he let himself pretend, to imagine it was Arissa’s arms that held him.

Chapter Twenty Four

Arissa

I stared into the mirror over my en-suite vanity basin and almost recoiled from my own image. I looked like hell, no, I looked like death. I had lost so much weight I was thin, actually I was beyond thin, I was gaunt. My eyes had sunken into my head, my hair looked lank and lifeless, my complexion sallow. It had been three months, four days, eight hours and forty-nine minutes since I had ordered Lucian, Fabian and Sirene from Daisy’s home after we’d found her dead.

I knew I had to do something, I had to get out, do something, eat maybe, do something, but I just didn’t want to. Why eat? Food only preserved this agony of pain that I now lived in, and even if I walked outside, where would I go?

I’d lost everyone who had meant anything to me and that list was only a very short one due to my father. I’d had a man who cared about me, who had persisted with me, with such incredible patience when patience wasn’t exactly something that vampires were famous for. He’d supported me, loved me, wanted to take care of me, and his family had welcomed me into their lives and what had I done? I’d turned my back on all of them, I’d turned my back on the only man who had ever made me feel anything, the only man who had taught me that I could feel, love, laugh, that I could live. I couldn’t even fix it because it was too late. My eyes had seen him with Damien and those two women that night. He was back to his old ways as if I no longer existed to him.

I stumbled through the house and into Daisy’s room. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Did I move into it now the house was mine? It was a nice room but it was hard for me to move past the thought that it was her room; it would always be her room. I’d cleaned a lot of it out, removed her clothes and given them to charity, but I still had her bathroom to go through, and I was dreading it because it held all those little personal touches. Her hairbrush which still had some of her hair in it; her lipstick she liked to wear in that pale shade of pink. She’d always said she felt naked until she had her lippy on. Her toothbrush still sat in the holder and when I opened up drawers I came across bottles and bottles of various medications she took.

I pulled them all out, studying the labels and started sweeping them into the bin since there was no point having them sitting around. Daisy wasn’t going to need them and when I thought of her being gone again, the tears began to flow, rolling down my cheeks and dripping off onto the white top of the vanity unit as I leaned on it, suddenly feeling weak and drained.

I stared at the various bottles and how many of them there were; all designed to keep Daisy alive, to improve her health, to give her quality of life. Ironically, in the end, a time bomb ticking away in her brain, that none of us knew about was the thing that took her so quickly, not even rapid medical intervention could have saved her.

I found a bottle of sleeping pills amongst the vast array of bottles and clutched them to me. I was having a hard time sleeping lately as was evident by the dark circles under my eyes. Maybe Daisy’s pills would help me. I wanted to sleep, I wanted to sleep the sleep of the dead, because then I wouldn’t have this excruciating pain to deal with every moment I was awake.

I put the pills in my room and went back to clean up the mess of bottles from Daisy’s bathroom. While I worked around the house, trying to keep my mind occupied, I noticed the sun had set and I suddenly felt incredibly exhausted.

Just as I was considering what to do next, I heard a noise of doors banging and then voices over the road. Like a moth to the flame I snuck closer to the window to look outside and saw Damien, Francesca and Lucian all heading for one of the cars.

I didn’t know what was being said but Damien was slapping Lucian over the shoulder and laughing loudly in that manner he had. I wasn’t sure what Lucian was saying in response, but he didn’t seem happy and pushed his brother away. Francesca stepped in and leaned into him, rising up to whisper something in his ear, and whatever it was, he smiled down at her and lowered his head to kiss her on the lips. I watched her hand rise and fingers curl around the back of his head, pulling him closer to her. I stood there from my position by the curtain and I watched them kiss, the kiss seeming to go on and on, and with every second that passed, my heart fractured that little bit more until it felt like it was little more in my chest than shards of broken glass.

I stumbled away from the window and into my room to pour myself a glass of water, my mouth suddenly so dry I could barely swallow. As I took a couple of mouthfuls feeling the cool liquid flow down my throat, my eyes fell on the bottle of sleeping pills I’d rescued from Daisy’s room.

An idea popped into my head, just a fleeting thought, gone before I could fully digest it, but as my mind began to replay that kiss between Lucian and Francesca, the idea came back with a vengeance, and as it took seed, I suddenly realised, it was the only thing I could do.

I sat down on my bed and began to replay my life inside my head. My mother’s death, but being too young to understand she was dead, then the abuse at the hands of my father, the pain, rape, torture, the cruelty, the control, the agony of having crude abortions performed on me and only just surviving sometimes.

Then my mind turned to my escape with Debbie’s help, Daisy, her kindness, meeting Lucian, starting to feel safe, then my father’s attack when he found me, the rapes and beatings before I was rescued. Me finally but stupidly thinking it was my time, time for me to have some happiness, to feel safe, secure. My time to have found love, to have a woman who treated me like a mother, and then just when I became complacent, too comfortable, suddenly it was all gone. Daisy was dead, my poor friend Debbie dead, and Lucian driven away by my own stupidity.

Maybe there might have been hope, that tiny sliver of hope of getting him back if I hadn’t witnessed Lucian quite clearly getting on with his life, moving on, obviously not needing me, not caring about me.

Feeling like I was on autopilot, or at least switched off, shut down from further thoughts, I uncapped the sleeping tablets and tipped a pile of pills into my hand. I tossed them into my mouth with a mouthful of water and swallowed, coughing and choking a little as some pills got stuck, and I had to wash them down with more water.

Deciding that might not be enough, I tipped out more pills and threw them down with the last of the water. Satisfied with my efforts I dumped the glass and pill bottle back on the table by my bed and lay back, propped up by my pillows and closed my eyes. I didn’t think about what I’d just done, what it meant, what it would do to me. I just didn’t want to think about anything anymore. I didn’t want to feel anything anymore. I just wanted the pain, the never ending, agonising, unrelenting pain to be gone. I wanted to be free. For the first time in my life, I was going to finally be free, free from everything that had ever hurt me. Very soon it would all be over.

I sighed, relaxing more deeply into the pillows as I felt the fatigue settling over me. I sighed, smiling for the first time in months at the sensation flowing through me, trickling down my arms and legs. I liked this feeling. It was more than just fatigue, it was a calmness, a complete relaxation of my mind and body. It began to change, becoming more a feeling of floating, of weightlessness. I could feel myself drifting and my mind was clear, an empty vessel. Nothing was troubling me, there was no more pain. I was just floating on a cloud of fuzziness, enjoying the feeling until gradually, slower than I imagined it would happen, things started to get darker. The room although lit by the bedside lamp, was still turning black and as it got darker and darker, I smiled again, letting myself go, letting myself drift slowly away until I fell down, down into total darkness where nothing hurt any more.

Lucian

“I’ve had enough of this shit, I’m going home. You two can stay though. I’ll just grab a feed off one of these ladies, so come out with me Damien so you can take her back. Knowing you, you’ll want to fuck them both won’t you?” Lucian shot his brother a questioning look.