The Soul's Mark: FOUND (19 page)

With Eric taken care of, Amelia made a cup
of instant coffee and plopped down at the island.
 
Too much was happening.
 
Too many feelings.
 
Too many changes.
 
She couldn’t help but feel like she was
getting the short end of the stick again.
 
Someone else was choosing her path and she was powerless to change it.

Tears dripped down her cheeks.
 
She knew something had to be done, but
what?
 
Where should she start?
 
Should she deal with the fact that vampires
are real?
 
Or that
soulmates
exist?
 
Or that her
soulmate
is a vampire?
 
Or what about the fact
that it is all real and for some reason he bit her and now, because of that
bite, they are linked together and she will never be able to do anything again
without him knowing?
 
There was no
logical way to look at it.
 
No
mathematical equation to solve the problems.
 
It was magic.
 
She struggled with
that hard, solitary rationalization.

“
Wanna
talk about
it?” Angelle asked.
 
She was rinsing the
blood splatters from the sink that Eric had left behind.

“Yes,” Amelia smiled weakly.
 
“But I think I need to talk to him.”
 
Mitchell.
 
He was the only one that could help her now.
 
She knew that.
 
Maybe they could come to some kind of
arrangement.
 
She doubted it but she knew
she had to try because she couldn’t live like this.

“I’ll go with you,” she said, and Amelia
was grateful to have the support.

As they walked in silence to Amelia’s room,
Amelia tried to figure out what to say to him.
 
Yes, I love you but I hate you for
making me feel this way
just didn’t sound right, because, well, she really
didn’t want to love him and from tip to toe she loathed herself—not him—for
doing it.
 
She wished there was some kind
of switch she could just turn off.

Amelia braced herself when they got to her
bedroom door.
 
Coaching herself, giving a
mental pep talk, not to act like a fool, not to run to him.
 
He didn’t deserve it.
 
He wasn’t worthy of her love.
 
That was the brain wave that messed up
everything.
 
She hadn’t noticed, but
Mitchell had been eavesdropping, and he was ready for her the second she walked
into the room.

Angelle went first, taking a seat on
Amelia’s bed beside Luke, and Amelia trailed along.
 
The talking quickly exploded into a
full-blown fight that dragged on for hours.
 
They clashed on everything.
 
It
started out about important things, like why he took so long to find her, and
why he had bitten her.
 
As their anger
increased, it fueled the burning hatred Amelia felt.
 
They argued about what he had done to Eric,
about how he had no right to make decisions for her and the hostility continued
to build.
 
He told her that she hadn’t
actually won a scholarship.
  
He was
paying for her education, and the fake scholarship was just part of his master
plan to get her to Willowberg.
 

When they dealt with the important things,
they kept right on fighting.
 
He picked
on what she was wearing; telling her jogging suits didn’t look good on
anyone.
 
She told him his hair looked
stupid (it didn’t—Amelia loved his silky, light brown hair.)
 
They even battled about the color of the
sky—which now that she thought about it—they both had agreed it was blue but
disputed it anyways.

Angelle intervened when Mitchell had
revealed, in a very heated way, why there was a curfew.
 
As it turned out, the curfew was only for
humans because the vampires, who filled the entire street, used the gated
complex as a hunting ground.
 
They brought
in humans at night, set them loose, and hunted.
 
Not all of them did, Luke had said, not the ones she lived with, but
some still enjoyed the hunt.

“I’ve heard enough,” Amelia said, cutting
off Luke’s attempt to justify the animalistic behavior.
 
Her head felt like it would explode from
information overload.
 
She needed to be alone.
 
She felt rotten and needed to think.
 
The dried sweat from her run and the
morning’s madness had really taken its toll; she craved solitude, and a nice
hot bath.
 
“Please,” Amelia started, and
when tears stung her eyes, she stopped and scrubbed at them.
 
“I need to be alone.
 
Please… all of you just go away.”

Amelia had expected Mitchell to fight her
on it, refuse to leave but when he didn’t, she supposed that he must have been
just as beat from all the fighting.
 
The
three of them left her without another word.

When the door shut, she flopped down onto
her bed, buried her face into her pillow and screamed out all her
frustration.
 
It felt unexpectedly good,
and Amelia did it again and again and again until her throat was raw.
 
Talking to Mitchell really hadn’t gone how
she had hoped and now, she was left with even more questions…she was even more
afraid.

Amelia rolled onto her back and stared
vacantly at the ceiling.
 
Her brain was
fried.
 
Since nothing was making any
sense, she decided that soaking in the tub was the best thing.
 
Clear her mind and start again fresh.

She slugged her way across the room and
caught sight of her phone blinking on the table.
 
She detoured to see what she had missed.

There was a text message from Erin.
 
It had just come in and she realized she must
have missed the tone while screaming into the pillow.
 

Talked to Ty.
 
U OK?

Amelia wanted to say that no, she really
wasn’t okay but she didn’t want to explain that so she answered:
Yup.
 
Fine.

Before she could set the phone down it
chirped again:
 
Need to C U alone.
 
Can we meet?

Yeah
right
, Amelia thought.
 
Like she would be able to
leave the house.
She replied:
 
Not a good time.
 
Family issues.

Amelia waited to see if Erin would respond
and a moment later, another message flashed up:
 
Tomoro
?
 
Pick u up at 9 for class.

Amelia quickly replied:
 
Ok.
 
C U in am.

Mitchell couldn’t object to that,
right?
 
She had to go to school so what
did it matter if one of her friends picked her up?
 
She called Joe at the gate and let him know,
then she poured a scorching hot bath, letting the heat and
steam
soothe
away her worries, if only for a moment…

The peace didn’t last long enough.
 
By 4:00, Amelia was starving.
 
She thought about ignoring it but her stomach
felt like it was eating itself so she headed for the kitchen.
 
She regretted it as soon as she got
there.
 
Mitchell was standing on the
terrace with his arms around another girl, kissing her—on the cheek—but that
didn’t matter, he was still kissing her.

White-hot fury overtook Amelia, every
muscle in her body went rigid and she gritted her teeth.
 
Her fists were clasped so tightly that her
fingernails cut into her palms but she couldn’t seem to loosen them.
 
What
the hell did he think he was doing?
A voice in her head hollered.
 
And who
the hell was the tramp he was all over?
 
Mitchell knew she was there.
 
He
knew she was fuming and he was enjoying it.
 
Amelia could hear the silent rumblings of his chuckle vibrating through
her mind and it was infuriating.

The girl, whoever she was, noticed Amelia
glaring and pushed him away.
 
She came
over to Amelia.
 
“I’m Lola.”
 
What a
tramp,
Amelia huffed silently.
 
She
was shorter than Amelia was, maybe by an inch, and she had the same perfect
figure and flawless skin that all the vampires seemed to have.
 
Her pixie cut blonde hair had a little fringe
at the front and it looked great with her cute oval face.
 
She was dressed stylishly—not like Angelle,
more toned down—in a basic black knee length, pencil skirt, a black fitted long
sleeved t-shirt and a colorful rainbow-striped scarf arranged around her neck.

Lola must have spotted Amelia’s fury—she
was sure it was impossible to miss—she tilted her neck to give Amelia a full
view of her mark.
 
It was the same
marking she had, the alchemy symbol for soul, but the name Luke Price was
scrawled along the bottom.
 
“You don’t
need to be threatened,” she said, letting Amelia take a good long look before
smiling back at her.
 
“I belong to Luke.”

Surprisingly, that didn’t help and Amelia
was disgusted with the jealousy—green-eyed and nasty—that was pulsing through
her.
 
She didn’t want Mitch.
 
She didn’t want anything to do with him but
she also knew she didn’t want anyone else to have him.

Luke chuckled.
 
“Maybe she’ll come around sooner than we
thought.”
 
He gave Mitchell a
congratulatory whack on the back.

Amelia bristled, ashamed and cheesed off
with her reaction.
 
“Don’t hold your
breath,” she nearly yelled.
 
Luke and
Mitchell doubled up.
 
She gave Lola
another glare and said, “Welcome home,” then went to the fridge, swung it open
and gaped.
 
It had been emptied of food
except for a single shelf; the rest was heaped up with bags of blood labeled
with the Willowberg Blood Bank logo.

“Get used to it,” Mitchell said
coolly.
 
“We drink blood and I don’t see
the point in hiding it from you anymore.”

“Whatever.
 
Doesn’t bother me.”
 
Amelia knew that was a worthless
statement.
 
He knew it was bothering
her.
 
It was revolting.
 
Blood in the fridge?
 
Did they have to flaunt it around her?
 
Amelia took out a box of strawberries and
went to the sink to rinse them.

“Why don’t you guys take my things
upstairs,” Lola said.
 
“I’d like to get
to know her.”

Wow.
 
That was the last thing
Amelia wanted.
 
To get to know the tramp
that was all over Mitchell.
 
Damn this crazy jealousy
, she
thought.
 
She didn’t like it, not one
bit.
 
“Maybe some other time,” Amelia
said, dumping the clean berries into a bowl.
 
“Kinda busy right now.”
 

Amelia knew Mitchell was pissed off at her
before he snapped.
 
Maybe there is something good about the bond
, she thought, laughing
silently to herself.

“Amelia,” Mitchell growled.

Amelia put on her best innocent little girl
smile, glad she had put on clean jeans and a low cut white tank.
 
She glanced demurely at him, batting her
eyes.
 
“What?
 
I have a paper to write.”

“That’s okay,” Lola said, cutting off
Mitchell before he could get a word in.
 
“I’m sure we’ll have tons of time later.
 
Come on, Luke.”
 
She smiled
sweetly at Amelia, which Amelia thought looked unnatural and fake.
 
Then Lola turned.
 
Her knee high leather boots clicking as she
floated across the marbled floor.

Luke looked torn.
 
He cleared his throat, obviously
uncomfortable, and said, “Sorry but someone needs to stay with them.”

Lola stopped, and spun around.
 
Her brown eyes flared.
 
“You’ve got to be kidding me.
 
I’m sure he can handle her.”

“That’s the problem.”
 
Luke shuffled from one foot to the other,
looking anywhere but at Lola.
 
“He’s not
handling her very nicely right now and she’s…” he glanced at Amelia apologetically,
“not making it easy.”