A Dream Forbidden (Lillith Mercury ) (13 page)

"How did you get here?" I asked.

I expected he had flown, but Dracula informed me his car was parked behind the barn. While everyone else headed toward the clinic, we returned to his castle. He and Marco both insisted it wasn't safe for me to show my face. As horrible as the events of the past hour were, they proved that Marco had been right to hide me with the vampire.

In the past week, I had discovered Dracula had two bathrooms which were attached to his bedroom. On one end was the one with the massive tub and across the room was a door which led to a smaller bathroom with a shower. He went toward the one with the shower, while I went to the other.

I didn't really take time to assess my own injuries, but they were not serious. I'd been knocked around, but poor Mary. I thought I would be sick, but I never was. I just sat on the floor with my head resting against the toilet seat and cried until I had no more tears. When I finally picked myself up off the floor and went into the other room I found Dracula sitting in front of the fire. He almost always had a fire because of the constant draft in the castle. The cold didn't affect him, so I knew he had made the fire for my benefit.

He had taken off his bloody shirt and cleaned up a bit. He was sitting on the large round cushion and staring into the flames. As I approached I watched the way the firelight cast shadows across the whip scars on his back. Years ago a pack of werewolves had nearly whipped him to death but they hadn't succeeded. Now a vampire had stabbed him, but Khan hadn't succeeded either. I looked at the wound he had acquired tonight. The skin was still red, but the wound was already closed and healing fast. By morning there wouldn't even be a trace.

The only reason the whip had scarred him was because it was tipped with bits of silver. After carrying silver around for so many years in order to hunt werewolves he had developed an allergy to it as well. There was something about the silver which caused it to scar a vampire's skin like a holy object would. I didn't fully understand it. I just put silver into the same category as holy objects.

When I touched his back, Dracula put his head in his hands and started to cry. There is nothing more disconcerting to me than to hear a man cry. We're always taught that men aren't supposed to cry and when they do you know something has to be terribly wrong. As I touched his bare skin I knew why he was so upset. It wasn't just the loss of Mary. Dracula had barely known her. He grieved for another innocent life lost, and he blamed himself.

"You did what you could," I said softly as I knelt down in front of him and put my head in his lap. "You were stabbed trying to save her. No one could ask more than that."

"It is not only her loss," he said hoarsely. As he lowered his hands I could see Dracula had removed the mask, but his hair prevented me from seeing his face. "I thought they had you," he said, echoing Marco's response. "Oh, Lilith," he moaned as he took my face in his hands. "I was desperate. It took me so long to find you. I did something I never thought I would do again, something I have not done in thousands of years."

"What?" I whispered.

"I spoke to God," he said. "I did not expect him to listen after all this time, but I begged him for your life. I begged him," he cried as he slid to the floor and held me against him. "I am so sorry that someone had to die, but I feel more relief than anything else and it sickens me. I was so relieved to see your face. If someone had to die … anyone but you." He sighed as he brushed back my hair and began to kiss me.

I closed my eyes as Dracula's lips roamed over my face. He kissed my lips, my eyelids, my cheeks. God help me, I loved this man. He had done terrible things in his lifetime. But how long could someone be punished?

"He is always listening," I said softly.

"So it would seem," he said as he pulled me onto his lap.

Dracula sat with me on the floor for the longest time. He held me as if I were the most precious thing in the world. And I knew as he touched me that to him I was.

When Marco called an hour later, Dracula went with me to tell Elijah the tragic news. Actually, he drove because I was shaking so badly I wasn't capable. When Elijah arrived at the clinic, Kat had driven him for the same reason.

She went into the waiting room while we took Elijah into Dr. Sinclair's office. The doctor was downstairs with Mary.

"What is it?" Elijah said, taking in all of our expressions. "No," he whispered, his blue eyes filling with tears. "It isn't … not Mary?" he moaned.

I walked over and hugged him. I didn't know what to say.

"No," he wailed. "Not Mary."

Marco stepped closer and put his arms around us both while he started telling Elijah as delicately as possible what had happened to his sister. When it became apparent that it had all been a scheme to get their hands on Dracula, Elijah pulled away. He walked over to where Dracula stood and hit him with all the force of an angry werewolf.

"Son of a bitch," he growled. "If it wasn't for you this would never have happened."

I had never seen Elijah so angry and it was almost more unsettling than what had happened to his sister. But he had every right to be angry.

Dracula's head jerked with the impact, but otherwise he didn't move. The vampire wiped a trace of blood from his lip before literally turning the other cheek. Elijah stood staring at his mask while Vlad said quietly, "You have every right to hate me."

"No," Marco said. "He was stabbed trying to save her life."

Elijah fell to his knees and Dracula knelt with him.

"I don't hate you," Elijah cried. "It's my fault. She was supposed to be safe. If I hadn't tried to send her away …" He sobbed as the vampire embraced him.

It was bad enough seeing Elijah cry, but seeing Dracula hold him and cry with him was more than I could take. I turned my back on the scene in order to pull myself together and Marco put his arms around me.

After a few minutes Elijah pulled himself together and said, "I want to see her."

Kat was gone when we came back out of the office and headed for the elevator. The werewolf clinic is a mostly underground facility, and we took Elijah to the third floor. Dr. Sinclair was waiting for us, his tall slender frame propped beside the elevator. Without a word he took us to the morgue. Elijah remained composed while he identified his sister's body.

"Can we have a few minutes alone?" he asked.

I was standing closest to the door and I could hear him talking to her. I doubled over suddenly, clutching my heart. Dracula was instantly at one side and Marco was at the other.

"What's wrong?" they asked.

But I couldn't speak. I could only shake my head and cry silently. It was then, in the silence, that they heard him talking too. They both hugged me and we all cried as we listened to Elijah tell his sister goodnight for the last time.

We all waited out in the hall for what felt like hours, but it was probably closer to thirty minutes. When Elijah reemerged the sparkle was gone from his eyes, and it broke my heart. No matter what Dracula said, I blamed myself. It wasn't his or Elijah's fault, it was mine. Elijah was cursed with lycanthropy, and now his sister was dead, all because he was my friend. If he never knew me, none of this would ever have happened. His twenty four year old face seemed to have aged ten years. Not in his features, but his eyes.

"The people who did this will suffer," Marco promised.

"We've already killed two of them," I added.

"Painfully?" Elijah asked. The coldness in his voice made me cringe.

"Very," Dracula assured him.

Everyone was quiet as we rode the elevator back up. When we stepped out Kat looked awful. She obviously knew something was wrong.

"What's happened?" she asked.

"Mary's been murdered," Elijah blurted out.

Kat screamed. It wasn't the sort of scream you hear if someone's frightened, but the mournful, heartbreaking sound of someone who's just experienced something horrible.

Elijah repeated what had happened as if he were talking about someone else and I realized he was going into shock.

"Oh, my God," Kat gasped. "The wig was my idea."

For a split second I saw such severe hatred pass over Elijah's features that it frightened me. Then he seemed to remember he was looking at Kat and his expression softened.

"It's not your fault, Kat," he soothed.

But it was clear to see Elijah was unstable. Even if he was grieving, I didn't like the way he'd looked at Kat one bit. He was looking for someone to blame.

?

Chapter Thirteen

"Blame me," I said, stepping from behind Dracula. "She was killed because they thought she was me. You were attacked before because I cared about you, and it was my wig. If you want to hurt someone, hurt me, I can take it. But don't ever let me see you look at Kat like that again."

Elijah stared me down for so long I began to wonder what he would do. Then his eyes filled with tears again and he hugged me.

"Lilith, I'm sorry. I just can't believe she's gone. I think I'd feel better if I had someone to blame. I know that's childish, but it's true," he cried.

"It is not childish," Dracula said. "Trust me, I understand the need for revenge. In fact, it has shaped my life."

"It has shaped all our lives," Marco agreed.

Dracula had volunteered for the experiment that turned him into a vampire in order to seek revenge for the murder of his family. And Marco shared with me a few months ago that he had challenged the former wolf king in order to avenge the attack he had ordered on me.

"What do we do now?" Elijah asked.

"We must act quickly," Dracula said. "Khan was nearly decapitated tonight, but he will live. It will take him a few nights to recover enough to warn the others."

"Then we must act now," Marco said.

"You must rest now," Dr. Sinclair said from behind me. "Or you won't be able to avenge anything."

He was obviously not your average doctor. Burt Sinclair had been running what was just known as the clinic for about five years. He and his brother, who was a nurse practitioner, had been turned into werewolves back in college. Only lycans ran the facility, so no one else knew what he was. Last I'd heard he had a successful practice near one of the local hospitals and he and his brother took turns running the clinic, though I'd never met the younger Sinclair.

No matter how much werewolves and vampires tried to operate within the boundaries of human law, some things were still handled without the police. And in this case, Elijah didn't count. Sinclair's comments came as no real surprise. After all, it was human laws that would find a way to ruin his practice if anyone knew he was a werewolf. That's a shame, because from what I had observed he was a good doctor. Compassion is harder to come by than a degree, and they don't teach it in college.

"Make some plans now, and then you rest tonight," he repeated, "or I'm afraid I'll be seeing more of you downstairs."

We sat at a conference table with Mason on speaker phone while Dr. Sinclair handed Elijah, Marco, and myself a bottle of sleeping pills. He also gave Marco a prescription to take back to Luther and asked about his arm. I got the impression that he had seen Luther before he drove back home. The cut on Marco's forehead was also patched up and in spite of the bandage he was still handsome. I sat between Marco and Elijah while Mason shared the plan he had been forming over the past weeks.

As his deep sultry voice laid out in gruesome detail what would be done to the vampires, I reached over and took Elijah's hand. There was something I needed to know if Kat was driving him home.

I dropped my shields and opened myself up to what he was feeling. Elijah only squeezed my fingers, accepting the comfort I offered, oblivious to my intentions. The instant I touched him I knew he would never really hurt Kat. He wasn't even really mad at her. It was just as I suspected, he needed someone to blame. He already felt guilty about hitting Dracula, but he felt even worse for the look he had given Kat. In his mind it was borderline unforgivable. He thought of Kat as his sister too and now she was the only one he had left.

I was wrong to have assumed he was unstable. I just wasn't used to seeing Elijah angry. He was one of the kindest, gentlest people I knew. But someone had fucked up and killed his sister and now there would be hell to pay. But I also felt uncertainty in him. Not only would he not hurt any of us, but he was going to have a hard time even hurting the vampires. Elijah was a cop, but this wasn't the kind of justice he was used to. "Could I actually kill someone?" he was wondering. "Even if they did kill Mary, that doesn't make me right. But what if I don't and they kill Lilith, or Kat? Could I live with that?"

The answer was no, he couldn't.

Elijah looked at me and smiled weakly as he took my hand in both of his. The sparkle was still gone from his eyes, but so was the beast. He was in so much pain that it was nearly more than he could take. But if I took some of his pain he wouldn't be able to go through with his part in the plan. And if he didn't, he would always regret it.

So, very reluctantly I left my friend in pain, kissed Marco goodnight and went back home with Dracula. My mind was racing in every direction possible. As we crossed the lake I took a moment to enjoy the moon flowers, then I wondered if it would be the last time I ever saw them. What if we all died tomorrow night? Or what if I just lost Dracula, or Marco?

What if Mason's plan didn't work? What if Elijah died and never got his revenge? What if I couldn't convincingly pull off my part in the plan? And why the hell had Mason wanted to use me?

We really didn't have time to plan anything else. We had to act before Khan could warn them. There were eighteen vampires which had been sent. All except the three we had just encountered would be staying below ground at The Dungeon. We would be facing some of the oldest and most powerful assassins of the vampire council, and I was afraid.

My vampire hunting experiences were limited to what had happened earlier tonight. This was the reason behind my call to Johnny as we had driven back to the castle. He would be informing Mr. Matthew of our plans. Even if he was strictly human, I'd feel better with James on our side. His reputation had preceded him into most of the southern states. Even though I wasn't entirely familiar with him, that didn't count for much. I had done some checking on James Matthew. As a matter of fact, I called the only other person I knew in Texas, Samuel James.