Craved (30 page)

I awoke on the ground in front of
Liam’s house, the spot where I fell when his magic hit me. Aiden
cradled my body in his arms and screamed for me to wake up. The
atmosphere had changed though, to a colorless, gray. I knelt down
beside Aiden and my body and stared in confusion. All I could do
was stare stoically at my limp body in his arms, a large burn right
between my breasts.

“Aiden?” I said, unsure if he could
hear me. I had to be dreaming, passed out from the hit. I couldn’t
be dead; my mind wouldn’t accept that.

Aiden’s head snapped up and
he stared right at me, but his eyes didn’t see me.
That’s weird
, I
thought.
Can he hear me?

“Aiden, I’m here,” I said again and
his eyes widened as they searched the surrounding area and then
down at my lifeless body in his arms.

“Gwen?” He shook my body and pressed
two fingers to check the pulse of my carotid. He was still for a
few moments while he listened to the thump of my heart, only to
drop my hand in defeat when he didn’t feel a pulse. Bloody tears
trailed down his flawless skin as he cried. My heart swelled with
his pain. It was the first time I’d ever seen a vampire cry. It was
eerily beautiful.

“I’m here, Aiden,” I said again and
set my hand over his. He jerked and his eyes roamed the area in
front of him.

Micah came bustling out the front door
with Liam and Ian, both in special handcuffs. He pushed them down
on the lawn and told them to “stay put” after seeing my body
cradled in Aiden’s arms. He rushed over to where Aiden was and
knelt down beside him, his eyes wide with fear.

“What happened?” he asked softly.
Aiden’s energy was swirling around him like a storm. I’d never been
able to actually see his energy but now that I was “passed out” I
could see the vibrant brick red energy he held.

“Who cast the magic?” Aiden asked, his
voice deathly calm. He looked up at Micah with an expression that
would have frozen me with fear, had it been directed at me. Micah’s
eyebrows arched and he looked back at where Ian and Liam sat and
then back at Aiden, like he was wondering if he should say. Aiden
looked like he was ready to tear someone’s head off.

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll kill them
both,” Aiden said, just as calmly as before.

“Liam cast…” Micah barely got out
before Aiden was up and holding Liam by the throat, three feet off
the ground. Liam’s body flailed and fought against Aiden’s
hold.

Micah approached cautiously, knowing
that a pissed off vampire wasn’t an easy thing to calm down and
Aiden was beyond pissed. While Micah tried to talk Aiden out of
committing murder, I noticed Ian watching me. I looked down at my
body and back at Ian. He wasn’t watching my body, he was watching
me, my spirit self. I walked over to where he sat and noticed his
eyes followed me the whole way.

“You can see me?” I asked, completely
flabbergasted. Out of all the people I would want to see me, Ian
was the last. He nodded his head instead of speaking and drawing
attention to himself. Anger surged within me and I motioned toward
where the other three men stood.

“Tell them! Tell them you can see me,
that I’m not dead!” I said. In all honesty, I didn’t feel dead. I
may have been in spirit form but I was still very much attached to
my body. Ian’s lips curved at the edges as he tried to conceal his
smile. I cursed loudly when I realized that Liam hadn’t been the
one to cast the magic. I saw it as clearly as if I had been inside
that house. I didn’t know how but it all played through my
mind.

Ian was inside Liam’s house, taunting
him about the witches’ murders. “You’ve been sticking your nose
where it doesn’t belong and now I have to teach you and the NAWC a
lesson,” Ian said to Liam. Liam wasn’t someone to mess with. He was
a very powerful warlock. They were standing in Liam’s office. The
walls were covered with dark red wallpaper, a dark wood desk sat
against the far wall, while a sitting area occupied the other side
of the room. Desk lamps and a glow from the fireplace illuminated
the English style office causing dark shadows to play off Liam’s
and Ian’s angry features.

“Who are you to teach me a lesson?”
Liam asked with authority. Ian walked over to the fireplace and
propped an elbow on the mantle, acting as if he weren’t in the
presence of a powerful warlock who could turn him to ash in a
matter of minutes.

“The man you’ve been looking for. I
don’t appreciate being hunted so I’ve decided to kill the hunter,”
Ian said with a grin. Liam’s magic revved up and soon he held a
bright green orb within his palms. His light brown hair stirred
within the air that swirled around him; His brown eyes pinned on
the vampire threatening his life.

“So, you’re the vampire responsible
for killing my kind and you come to my home and think you’ll do the
same to me?” Liam said the words and instantly cast the magic at
Ian. Ian had anticipated the move though, and got behind Liam
before the magic crashed into the fireplace. Without hesitation,
Ian sank his fangs into Liam’s neck and greedily drank as Liam
tried to fight him off. When it seemed Ian had had his fill, he
released his hold on Liam’s neck, turned him around quickly and
punched him squarely in the jaw.

Ian closed his eyes in concentration
and soon held Liam’s same bright green magic. It seemed Ian was a
sponge, absorbing the powers of those he drank. He shot a blast of
magic through the window, strong enough that it would hit me, and
jumped backwards through the broken pane. To Micah, Aiden and me,
it looked like Liam had cast his magic at Ian and we were none the
wiser to Ian’s game.

When the vision faded, I focused my
eyes on Ian, who watched me with amusement. I quickly looked over
to where Aiden had Liam by the throat and realized that Micah had
called for backup. Wyatt and Micah sprayed Aiden with a liquid
silver that burned through his clothes, searing his flesh. I
screamed for them to stop but my pleas went unanswered. Aiden
dropped Liam and fell to the ground, screaming in pain. Wyatt
quickly cuffed his burnt wrists with silver handcuffs and carried
him to the back of his police SUV.

“Ian, you son of a bitch!” I screamed
as I watched the chaotic scene play out. The smile on Ian’s lips
said that everything was going according to his plan. Micah cuffed
Liam and escorted him to his SUV, then retrieved Ian from the
ground and put him in Wyatt’s SUV. Once all three men were
contained, Micah and Wyatt walked over to where my lifeless body
lay.

I tried to run over to tell them I was
still alive but in my haste, I actually floated towards them, my
feet four inches off the ground.

“MICAH!” I screamed. Micah flinched
like he was dodging an annoying bug that buzzed his head and looked
around.

“Did you hear that?” he asked his
brother.

Wyatt looked at him and then listened
for a moment, shaking his head. “I didn’t hear anything.” Micah
pursed his lips and looked behind him and then down at my body. I
floated towards him and put my hand on his shoulder. He shivered
like a chill had just crept up his spine and stepped back, looking
around again.

“What’s wrong with you?” Wyatt asked.
Micah was momentarily dumbstruck. He stared at Wyatt and then down
at my body again.

“I’m here Micah, I’m alive. It’s Ian,
Ian’s the bad guy,” I spoke loudly into his ear, praying that at
least my last words got through to him.

“Gwen?” Micah said to the area where
my voice had come from. Wyatt looked at the empty space and then at
his brother, arching his eyebrows.

“Who are you talking to?” Wyatt
asked.

“I just heard Gwen’s voice, twice. You
didn’t hear it?”

“No, I think you might be losing it. I
know how much she meant to you and it’s horrible what happened, but
she’s dead, Micah,” Wyatt said slowly. Micah growled deeply in his
chest and Wyatt growled back. Wyatt was in a higher position, next
in line to become the alpha of the Flora weres. No one challenged
him, not even his brother. I knew they wouldn’t start fighting;
Wyatt was just putting Micah in his place.

“She’s a spirit walker; you don’t
think that her spirit might still be here? How do we know this
isn’t another one of Ian’s spells? He made us believe that Fiona
was dead too,” Micah said, his voice strained with
anger.

“You said that Liam attacked Ian and
that his magic hit Gwen, how would Ian have had time to bewitch
her?” Wyatt watched his brother with remorse, knowing that Micah
was taking my death hard.

“I’M HERE!” I screamed as loudly as I
could, so loudly that my throat burned with the strain. Panic was
slowly consuming me at the thought of watching my body go through
the process of embalming and then being buried. Even though I was
in spirit form, I felt my emotions as if I were still solid. My
heart still beat strongly and at the moment, it was like a
battering ram against my chest. My lungs constricted with my panic
and my hands shook with bewilderment. I had no clue what I was
supposed to do to save myself. The one person who knew I wasn’t
dead was the bad guy, who had no plans of letting it be known. I
knew, deep in my heart, that I wasn’t, even if I were a ghost,
trapped within the spirit realm. It was like I was Alice trapped
behind the looking glass. I saw everything that was happening in
real life but I couldn’t interact with it. The few times Aiden and
Micah heard me was the closest I’d come to being
noticed.

Both Micah and Wyatt reacted to my
bloodcurdling scream and looked at each other with perplexed
stares.

“You heard her, didn’t you?” Micah
asked Wyatt. Wyatt nodded his head, too confused to speak. They
both looked down at my body and then at the space where I
hovered.

“Maybe the vampire can give his blood
and heal her, maybe she’s not all the way dead. I’ve heard of
people having out of body experiences when close to death,” Wyatt
said with a shrug of his shoulders. I knew that they were both at a
loss of what was happening and I loved them for not giving up so
easily on me. Vampire blood could heal a human but I wasn’t so sure
it would do anything for me or the fact that I was just having an
out of body experience.

“Gwen?” A female voice said from
behind me. I turned; stunned that someone was talking directly to
me. Standing only a couple feet away was Bridget.

“Bridget, what are you doing here?” I
asked. I only saw her when I was sleeping and I knew I wasn’t
currently asleep.

“You’re in my world now,” she said,
her voice somber as she watched me. I knew I was within the ghostly
realm, the world seemed gray from this point of view and the air
blew an icy chill along my skin.

“I’m not dead,” I said
matter-of-factly.

“You don’t have to be dead, spirit
walker, to be in my world. I was drawn here, I don’t know why,” she
said.

That was the first time I’d had a
lucid conversation with the ghost who haunted my dreams. She was
clear in her spirit form. I could make out her features and her
clothes just as clearly as I could my own. Confusion no longer
colored her eyes and her image didn’t flicker in and out like
before. She had either come to grips that she was dead, or my
acceptance of what I really was helped me to see her more
clearly.

While I was talking with Bridget, I
noticed that Wyatt retrieved Ian from the back of the SUV and
brought him over to my body. My eyes shot wide at what was about to
happen. When Wyatt mentioned the vampire giving me blood, I thought
of Aiden, not Ian. I did not want Ian Despereaux’s blood in my
system. Obviously, Aiden didn’t either; he slammed his body against
the door of the SUV and soon the door popped off the hinges as
easily as a dandelion head. Aiden fell out of the SUV and I gasped
at his appearance. Where he’d been sprayed with the liquid silver,
his body was burned so severely that it looked like his skin had
melted. Tears flowed down my cheeks at the mess of what was once
his perfect, creamy skin and I wanted nothing more than to bash
Micah’s and Wyatt’s skulls in.

Aiden stumbled over to where the men
were gathered around my body, his hands bound with silver
handcuffs.

“Get..away..from..HER!” He spat out,
as if it caused him pain to speak.

“Aiden, I know you’re upset about
this, but I’m trying to save her. We think Gwen might be alive but
very close to death’s edge. Ian’s blood holds magic, something that
could save her life,” Micah replied. Aiden was so weak, they didn’t
even try to put him back in the SUV. My tears fell harder as I took
in Aiden’s state. I didn’t understand how Micah and Wyatt could be
so cruel as to watch him like he was beneath them.

Aiden fell over onto his side right in
front of my body and stared at me with unblinking eyes. Eyes that
held so much emotion, my heart literally skipped a beat. Warmth
filled me as I watched Aiden’s love for me. Even weakened and beat,
Aiden would not give up on me. I floated over to him and placed a
hand on his shoulder. He shuddered but remained still. I leaned
down so that my lips were close to his ear and whispered the words
I had feared saying since Micah. “I love you.” Aiden closed his
eyes as my words floated on the air and into his ears. Bloody tears
fell from his blue eyes and he screamed a bloodcurdling scream
filled with despair.