Alone (19 page)

Although sh
e’d probably be locked up for
murder.

He
should stand up and walk out of town but
he couldn’t bring himself to do it. With Madeline in the city,
Serenity was no longer safe. To walk away would certainly guarantee
Serenity’s death.

Sebastian was angry at himself for not
having the strength to leave sooner. Now, if he left, Madeline
would kill Serenity just to spite him.

Only by doing what Madeline wanted and
forcing himself to go back to her, would he keep Serenity
safe.

The thought created a black callus
around his heart.

Returning to Madeline would
be
a double
blow. He’d lose the woman who meant something to him and be forcing
himself to live with the creature who stole his life.

The only other option was to fight and, of
course, fighting contained risks for Serenity.

The darker side of him wanted to fight. He
wanted to destroy Madeline, but it wasn’t so easy. One vampire
could not kill another.

However, there were other ways to make
them stop.

Someone passed in front of Sebastian,
making him glance up. A small, wiry man in his late thirties caught
the vampire’s attention. Acne scars pitted and marked his thin
face, his narrow shoulders stooped. As he walked, he spoke into a
headset linked, Sebastian assumed, to a cell phone in his
pocket.

Sebastian couldn’t read minds but he knew
when someone was no good. People had an aura he could sense and,
should were it visible, this man’s aura would have been a thick
black smog surrounding him.

Silently, Sebastian rose to his feet. To
kill was wrong, no matter who the victim, and he tried to only take
the ones who didn’t deserve to be alive. He didn’t want to choose
who lived and died, but had no choice. Though he would never make
peace with it, he had come to accept his role.

The man slipped down an alley, between the
shops, disappearing from view for a few moments. Sebastian
followed, rounding the corner. A couple of external security lights
on the adjacent buildings offered scant amounts of
light.

Sebastian pulled up short.
T
hey were not
alone in the alley; someone else had tracked down his next
meal.

Madeline stood in the middle of the alley
with the man slumped in her arms. She had broken his neck, but he
was still alive and his panic-stricken eyes searched
Sebastian’s.

“
Hello, Sebastian,” she
said.

He glared at her. “What do you
want?”

She held up the dying man, “I’ve got you a
present.”

Sebastian looked at the man, his eyes
glowing. Hunger ran in a fierce current through his whole body. His
jaw worked, his fists clenched and unclenched. Every part of him
screamed out for blood.

He
didn’t want anything she offered. Madeline
tainted everything she came into contact with.

“
I don’t want anything from
you.”

She shrugged and let the man drop to the
ground. He lay there, still conscious, but unable to move, watching
the horror play out above him.

“
I thought you’d want to know
that the police have been sniffing around your little girlfriend,”
she said. “Apparently they had a report of her husband raping a
woman last night.” She paused. “Strange, considering he’s
dead.”

Sebastian stared at her. “What the
hell have you done?”

“
Just giving you a little
warning.” She stepped over the man, closing the distance between
them. “It’s going to be best for her if you hurry up and make your
decision. Remember, I know things. I know how we hide the bodies,
because I’m the one who taught you. You wouldn’t want the police to
get wind of things—especially if something of hers,” she produced
Serenity’s ‘S’ necklace, dangling the thin silver chain from her
gloved fingertips, “ended up covered in his blood beside the
body.”

Sebastian wanted to wrap his hands around
her throat and squeeze the life from her, and it wasn’t just the
piece of silver keeping him away. “Don’t you fucking dare!” he
snarled. “I could kill you for this.”

Madeline laughed. “You know you can’t hurt
me, Sebastian.”

He roared, spinning away from
her.

“
But humor me,” she said from
behind him. “What do you find so attractive about your little
human? She’s pathetic.”

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed and he spun back
around. Madeline possessed a genuine disdain for all humans. She
found it impossible to take anything positive from their
emotions.

“
She is stronger than you
give her credit for.”

“
Strong? I’ve crushed people
stronger than her.”

“
She understands
pain.”

Madeline snorted.

“
And she knows how to
love.”

“
I
can
love!” she said, an irritating whine affecting her
voice.

“
If that were true, you wouldn’t
be here right now.” Sebastian shook his head and stared at her in
pity. “When you love someone, you’ll do whatever it takes to make
sure they’re safe, even if doing so causes you pain.”

“
You’ve never felt real pain!”
she spat.

The pity turned to contempt. “Why
would you want to be with someone who hates you?”

“
I don’t care how you feel about
me. It’s irrelevant. We’re the same, Sebastian, can’t you
understand? We’re family; I created you. If you were my son or my
lover, we couldn’t be closer.”

“
You’re crazy. Even families
who hate each other have some love beneath the surface. I feel
nothing for you. Nothing!”

“
Give it time,” she said. “After
all, the one thing we have is time.”

He pressed his lips together. Madeline
left him with no choice. He wouldn’t let her cause Serenity any
harm.

“
I need to see her,” he said. “I
need to make sure she is all right and then,” he hesitated before
forcing himself to say the words. “You and I can leave the city
together.”

Madeline smiled triumphantly, baring
her white teeth.

“
I knew you’d come to your
senses,” she said.

S
he turned and walked away from him like a
regular woman, her slim hips swaying from side to side, her long
red hair brushing down her back. The short black dress she wore
clung to her curves and her high heeled boots clipped on the
ground.

The minute she was out of his sight, he
dropped to the man lying on the ground. Barely conscious, but still
alive enough to give Sebastian what he needed for another
month.

With palpable pleasure and relief akin to
orgasm, he sank his teeth into the man’s throat, piercing the
artery. Warm blood gushed into his mouth, his lips sealing around
the puncture. The iron taste rushed over his tongue and down his
throat, revitalizing him. Its warmth spread throughout his body,
racing through his arteries, veins and capillaries. The blood was
his sustenance, what he needed to survive, and gave him strength
and power.

Sebastian sat up on his haunches, the dead
man at his feet, relishing in the power pulsating through
him.

He couldn’t stay that way for
long.

Streams of people walked past
the entrance of the alley, but none turned to look down. On a
subconscious level, humans picked up on the scent of blood in the
air, a primeval part of them knowing
not
to look; this part of life was supposed to stay in
the dark.

He didn’t
normally kill out in the open,
but he’d been unable to control his need with the broken man at his
feet. The darkness offered some cover but he was taking too much of
a risk. Someone with little or no perceptive abilities could
stumble upon him and he didn’t want to kill again.

Sebastian forced himself to focus.
Madeline was out there somewhere. She could easily go to Serenity
and kill her. He didn’t think she would; after all, Serenity was
her bargaining tool. With her dead, Madeline knew Sebastian
wouldn’t spend another minute with her. But that wouldn’t stop
Madeline from causing trouble. Madeline’s threats to plant evidence
linking Serenity to the murder of her husband scared him. Serenity
wouldn’t survive in prison.

He’d get Serenity’s necklace back if it
killed him.

Sebastian would go to Serenity
one last time—
not to speak to her—just to catch one last glimpse and say
his own private goodbye.

Serenity seeing him again would
only terrify her.
He didn’t want to put her through any more fear, nor
experience her dread and loathing all over again.

He
bent down and scooped up the body. Void of
life, it was heavier than normal, but the weight meant nothing to
the vampire. He couldn’t leave the corpse lying around. The ones
vampires fed from, unless properly treated, had the potential to
turn into something diabolical. The movie world of Los Angeles knew
the result as a zombie. In truth, the creatures didn’t understand
if they were alive or dead. They didn’t munch on human flesh or
attack people, merely wandered through the human world with no idea
who or what they were. If the medical profession got hold of one,
they would struggle to find a heartbeat or brain function. To
become a vampire, life had to be given back to the un-dead, blood
needed to be fed and then they would turn.

So the bodies required dealing with;
leaving them exposed would create chaos and expose his kind. In a
growing city, locating the perfect thing to contain them was easy.
Hundreds of years ago, things hadn’t been so simple, hence the
prevalence of superstition and belief and rumors of vampires. Now
he struggled to cross the city without finding a suitable dumping
ground.

W
et concrete.

By the time the victims came around, the
concrete had hardened around them. Deprived of any sustenance and
oxygen, the bodies quickly passed into a normal afterlife. Even
true vampires were susceptible. Though they had the potential to
live for centuries with no air or blood, their existence would be
agony. Even with a vampire’s strength, they couldn’t fight their
way through tons of hardened concrete.

With the body in his arms, Sebastian
leaped to the top of the building beside him. With silent speed, he
moved across the rooftops, heading toward a new construction site
located above Del Ray Marina.

At this time of night, the site
was deserted. New foundations for an apartment block, laid that
afternoon, stretched out in front of him. The top of the concrete
had begun to set, but beneath the crust, the material was still
loose.
With
all his strength, he plunged the body deep into the wet
concrete.

This was one body that wouldn’t be
coming back. Just like Serenity’s husband.

Sebastian shook off what he’d done. He
hated this part of himself. Hated it! He wished he could exist
without having to take life.

For almost
a year, Sebastian had tried to
live on animal blood, scavenging the numerous stray dogs and cats
haunting Southern Spain, but it wasn’t possible.

After only a few months, he found himself
changing. Though physically he had remained the same—inhumanly fast
and strong—he found his mind altered. Where before, his thoughts
had been clear and coherent, they lost focus. He lost periods of
time and his aggression took control until he reacted purely on
instinct. All rationality and reasoning evaded him.

To keep even a fraction of his humanity,
he needed human blood. If he became an animal, he would lose all
concepts of right and wrong, and he feared his capacity to kill
would be untamed. Then the loss of human life would be uncountable.
He would kill ruthlessly—women, children, all the
innocents.

Though un
proven, Sebastian believed this
change formed the basis of the werewolf myth. Vampires, trying to
survive on the blood of animals—stray cats and dogs—ended up
becoming like one of them; killing only for sport and aggression.
What those vampires had wanted to achieve, by not taking human
life, actually made them monsters.

Maybe he was a monster, regardless. But he
also hurt and only one thing could ease the pain; seeing the woman
he loved.

Chapter Sixteen

Serenity sat on her
front
doorstep with a bag at her feet and her head in her hands.
Her house lay in darkness behind her. Unsure of when she’d be back,
if ever, she had turned off all the lights and turned off the
power.

She had been desperate to get out of the
house, yet found herself unable to make it past her own front step.
The sadness Serenity held inside weighed her down, so much so she
couldn’t persuade her feet to move. Too weary to fight the
lethargy, she sat down where she was, relieved to be out of the
house, but too scared and sad to venture out into the
world.