The Power (45 page)

“
I tried to rise to fight, thinking that if I just fought hard enough, I would be able to save him still, but there were three of them, and every one was stronger than I. I was carted away kicking and screaming, and no one was about to notice, or perhaps no one cared. I knew that once we got above deck there would be others about, others to help me, but we didn’t go above deck. We went further below into what appeared to be the cargo area. Afraid for Jax, afraid for myself, I fought and screamed until I was thrown down into a long, hard box. I saw the white of Ewan’s demon eyes then, and I tried to beg of him as he approached me, to have the ship stopped. I told him that I would not turn him in. I would say that Jax had fallen overboard, if he would just please, please go back for him, but Ewan was not in the listening mood. It was he that placed the lid to my box over me, shoving my thrashing arms within. I screamed in denial as the blackness surrounded me. I heard loud banging noises as my hands clawed at the top of what I knew now to be a coffin. The sticks and the mushy debris that I felt beneath me where not sticks and debris at all, I realized in horror. It was a body, and the banging noises were the nails that would seal me in with it. I was trapped there, trapped within a nightmare of the worst caliber. I clawed at the top of my coffin for hours it seemed, all the while thinking of Jax. He was out there in those dark waters. He was dying, and there was nothing I could do to stop it! When the sleep came for me, I slept restlessly. I dreamt of Jax. I dreamt of his legs kicking in exhaustion as he fought the choppy waters to stay afloat. I dreamt of his dark head going beneath those waters in surrender to his fate at last. I dreamt that he called my name, and I knew that I had failed him, had lost him forever!”

Jack lifted his gaze from the journal. It was the last entry, he realized, and he closed the book slowly. The tale was one of disbelief that he would not have begun to believe if not for the fact that he had seen this Ewan Derringer with his own eyes, had also seen Lilly conduct impossible feats, had also seen another with white, glowing eyes. Jack lifted the journal to his bent head. His heart beat slowly in his chest in acceptance of what he now knew. She had lost so much, he thought of young Lilly aboard the Elisabeth II, of all that had happened to her. She had loved Jax, and Jax had loved her, though neither had known each other that long, and the words had never been spoken out loud. She had loved him, and Jax had loved Lilly even though he had known the truth about her.

“I need to tell you something, Jack.” Lilly had said to him upon more than one occasion. How hard it must have been for her to come to him, thinking that she had cost him his life once before! She truly believed that he was this Sloan Jackson. Jax, Jack thought. He remembered her face when she had looked at him that night in the museum. “And what will you do with me now that you know I am not your long lost Jax?” he had asked of her on a teasing note, and she had stepped in closer to him, her eyes and voice very serious.

“Perhaps you are my Jax, and perhaps, just perhaps, I am my great, great, great grandmother.” she had tried to tell him truth, even then, in the beginning of their relationship, but he hadn’t listened!

“
This isn’t the movies, Honey. Things like that don’t happen in real life.” he recalled his amused laughter from that night. Damn. What now? They had her! They had her, and who knew what they were doing to her!

“We beat the shit out of her.” The vampire earlier had told him, and Jack’s gut clenched at the thought now as he recalled how horribly they had beaten her so very long ago. She was somewhere, locked away, hurting. She wouldn’t want him to come for her. He knew that, but how could he not? He had to go! He wanted to go, but he knew nothing concerning vampires, their strengths, their weaknesses. He had to gain some kind of leverage here if he was going to help her, he reasoned.

His cell phone rang, playing Shook Me All Night Long by ACDC. Jack looked down at the number. It wasn’t familiar. Scooping it up, he muttered, “Yeah?”

“Detective Stone? It’s Josh Meisner.” Josh’s frantic voice came over the phone. “It’s nearing on sunrise. I haven’t found her yet. She hasn’t gone home either. Please, tell me Lillian is there with you?” he pleaded. It was that one word in Josh’s plea that caught and held Jack’s attention though.

“Sunrise?”

He could hear Josh swallow uncomfortably. The man started to mutter something than stopped.  “It’s just so late.” he said at last, with the underlying worry still evident in his voice.

“Uh huh.” Jack countered, and then he said, “I have something here that belongs to Lilly. It was delivered to me by a man with glowing white eyes.”

“Shit!”

“Yeah, Shit.” Jack returned with a tightening in his chest. “We need to talk.”

“We’ll be there within half an hour.” Josh promised, and then the call was disconnected.

Jack sat there in stunned silence. This was for real! Lilly wasn’t simply the woman he had fallen in love with, she was a killer, he thought as his heart plummeted. She had drunk human blood upon more than one occasion. He knew that now, and yet, there he sat, still worried out of his goddamned mind about her!

Jack stood in such a rage that the journal he held flopped open. He was about to throw it across the room when he noticed a slip of paper come loose from between the loosened pages. He watched until the old, yellowed slip of paper that was folded neatly in half landed like a feather onto the dark carpeting.

Bending at the waist, Jack scooped up the paper, and unfolded it. It was in Lilly’s handwriting, he realized. It was a letter, a letter addressed to one Lord Ewan Derringer.

Jack sat on the end of his bed this time, bending over the letter as he read.

“Lord Ewan Derringer,

              By the time that you discover this journal, Gina and I will be long gone from you, but I wanted you to have this, my journal, so you would know exactly what it is that you have done to me, and also so you will know how much I despise and loathe you. You have taken from me all that I held dear. So read, Lord Derringer, read of how everything your power made me believe in the beginning concerning you was ripped to shreds the night you showed me the evil demon you truly are. You longed to possess me, to have me love you like that always, but the truth is, you fool, that I never loved you! I never even desired you! It was your lure that worked upon me, like some magic spell cast by a witch. Perhaps, you are a witch, as well as a spineless coward, and a bully. Your evil holds no boundaries, and I will never love you, never desire anything of you accept for your tortured, painful death.

“
I leave you this journal so that you may see the truth, so that you may know that the only love I ever felt for any man immortal or mortal, was the love that had been in bloom for the man that you so callously murdered! You took Jax from me in the most savage way! You made him suffer, and now I will suffer into eternity because of your evil deeds, but know this, you murdering bastard, I will use these coming years to learn the ways of the immortal. I will learn from the mortals as well, all the skills of weapons of war, of hand to hand combat, of everything I can possibly absorb, and some night when you least expect me you will find me standing there at your door. I will be able to read your cowardly thoughts in that night for I will have grown strong as the immortal that I am. You see, your murdering ways have caused me to cradle this gift I have been given like a babe to my bosom. I will accept it now. I will grow cold, and I will grow stronger than you can imagine. When I come for you, and I will, you will not be able to stop me from returning to you what you dealt to me, to Jax.

“
Until then, yours in hatred,

“
Lillian Saint Rose.”

              “And you did learn.” Jack breathed out. He was thinking of Arthur Miller, of the others. How had she known of the evil that had lurked inside of them? She had read it of them, Jack realized then. She had read them like a book, and she had read him as well, Jack thought, and his heart jumped in sudden excitement. She had said in the letter to Ewan that she would grow cold. What did that mean exactly? That she would learn to be a killer? Jack had to shake the thoughts from his head because just then a knock was sounding on the door. It would be Josh, he knew. Refolding the ancient letter, he placed it back into Lilly’s journal and went to answer the door.

Chapter thirty-four

“Where is she?”
Troy demanded in extreme fear and fury as soon as his eyes found Detective Stone. The man stood there, looking worse for wear in the doorway of his home, though it didn’t appear as if he had been hurt physically.

“I don’t know.” Detective Stone admitted with a slouch to his broad shoulders. “They have her. They instructed me to meet them tomorrow night, to come alone.” he related as he stepped back to allow them into his, if anything, tidy home.

“You can’t possibly go!” Josh blurted out as Troy shut the door behind them. The Detective’s haunted eyes came back to them then.

“I don’t have any other choice, now do I?” he stated frankly. “I’ve read this.” he announced, waving a leather-bound book before their faces. “I know everything now, and I know that the two of you do as well. You’re her bodyguards, right? The ones who watch over her during the day?” he put to them, and
Troy exchanged glances with Josh before relenting a nod.

“It is truly her journal?” he asked, holding out his hand for the journal. The detective pulled the journal back to his side in a protective manner.

“Yes.”

“From what time era?” Troy asked curiously. He knew so little concerning the vampire that he guarded, only that he would guard her with his very life. He would protect her.

“1842. November through January.” Jack related, and he fetched them each a beer from the refrigerator in his compact kitchen. Troy took his, and popped the top, taking a long swallow hoping that it would calm his nerves. He watched as the detective did the same,

But Josh just set the bottle aside, not opening it.

“And you think this journal is real?” Josh tried. Troy rolled his eyes heavenward.

“I’ve seen her in action.” Jack said, nursing his beer.  “She saved my life tonight.” he nodded confirmation when Josh’s blue gaze showed surprise.

“How?” Troy stepped further into the room. He watched as Jack seated himself on the dark, leather sofa, and stretched his long legs out before him.

“I didn’t know it was her at the time. I watched in amazement as she jumped from one building top to the next as if it were nothing. I thought that I could do the same. Turns out I couldn’t.” He took another long swallow of his beer.

“You fell?” Josh asked in astonishment.

“No. She turned, and jumping, she propelled her body into mine with such force that we both ended back up on the rooftop we had started out on.”

“And you saw her face then?” Josh asked carefully.

“No.” Jack set his beer aside on a tattered, dark wooden, end table. “She got away. I hit my shoulder when I went down. It gave her time to run.” he shrugged that shoulder with a wince now.

“Then how do you?”

“Because one of them came here tonight with this!” Jack shook the journal at Josh. “He told me that they had her, that they had beaten the shit out of her. His eyes were white, not human, but glowing, fucking white! Do you get me?” Jack slammed to hi
s feet, and in a moment of rage he threw the half empty beer bottle across the room. It came colliding into the far wall and shattered loudly. Troy watched as the brown glass and amber liquid fell to the floor causing a huge stain to occur.

“If it m
atters, she wanted to tell you everything.” he felt compelled to tell the distraught detective. Detective Stone smirked.

“She’s a cold-blooded killer.” Detective Stone growled out coldly, and Troy felt his chest tighten.

“No.” he shook his dark head. “She isn’t. She never takes from the innocent.”

“The innocent?” Jack laughed out sarcastically. “Let me count the bodies that have turned up as of late!” he bit out.

“Not all of those bodies were her doing, and you know it!” Troy shot back in Lillian’s defense.

“No, but even one would make her a killer.” Jack turned to face him, his dark eyes burned into Troy’s with heated intensity. He hated her, Troy thought
. The man hated Lillian with a passion. Exhaling, Troy dropped his gaze to the carpet.

“Arthur Miller was a child molester. He went in
that alley that night to rape and kill the child Kylie Rogers. The one who now stays with my wife and I as her mother recuperates.” Troy could hear the anger in Josh’s tone, and he knew that Josh was just as upset as he himself was over the way Detective Jack Stone was now speaking so ill of Lillian in her absence.

“Kylie Rogers?” Jack’s interest was peaked. He turned back to face them. “Then it’s connected, the killing of Arthur Miller, and of the two men in Miss Rogers’ apartment that night?”