The Blood Talisman (17 page)

Sol raised his hands in preparation for
battle but was quickly quelled by his father. With the snap of
Hyperion’s fingers, Sol was gone. Ram stood in silence and Alex
simply stared. John stood in the darkest corner of the boardroom,
trying to be invisible.

“Where did you send him?” Selene
asked.

“Back to the Sudan. He will have a much
more difficult time of returning. I have a multitude of wolves
there that wait for him.”

Selene hugged her father. Hyperion
kissed both her cheeks to wish her farewell. He backed away from
her and began to fade.

“I will not speak to you again. I will
go into hiding and the blood talisman will be safe. Keep these
abominations at bay, my only daughter. You have the power within
you. You always have had.” Just as he had come, he faded away until
all the grey energy was gone.

Selene stood there without her father,
sister, and brother. She stood in silence and in quiet tears. Alex
walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her. She hugged him
back and for a moment they felt alone in the room.

“Well, that was a complete waste of
FUCKING TIME!” Ram yelled as he picked up a chair and threw it
across the room. Alex and Selene both jumped as it hit the wall
behind them.

John ran over to stand the chair up.
Ram looked at him with a frustrated scowl.

“What are you still here for? You’ve
been worthless to me! Do I not have anyone I can trust?”

“What are you still here for? You’ve
been worthless to me! Do I not have anyone I can trust?”

Ram stomped over to John and picked him
up by his shirt and flung him across the room, like he’d done with
the chair. He landed just shy of the table, knocking over a few of
the chairs. Ram then turned his anger to Alex and Selene. He
stomped towards them and got within a few feet when Selene pushed
her hand out in front of her. Ram stopped in his tracks, unsure of
what she might do. John picked himself up off the floor and
scurried away.

They gazed intensely at each other. It
reminded Alex of a tennis match as he flicked his eyes back and
forth between them. Ram grabbed Selene by the neck and tightened
his fist. She grabbed his hand and small boils started to form on
his skin. He pulled it back from her quickly and held his infected
hand close to his chest.

“You should have killed him while you
had the chance. You will tell me where he is and you will kill him,
or your brother will find you and kill you and your father. I will
have immortality, even if it means I have to kill someone every
thirty minutes, starting with Alex,” Ram said to her.

“You can’t kill him. He is important to
this entire situation. There are things you don’t know. It has to
be handled correctly or all of humanity will suffer for it,” Selene
explained.

“That’s exactly what I want to know.
Why is he so important?”

Alex looked at them both, waiting for
an answer. Selene knew she had said too much but Ram had to be
stopped. If he knew the truth, maybe he would quit his threats
against Alex.

“He is the fourth wheel, so to speak.
When the blood talisman was forged it was meant to be a truce
between all supernatural creatures and humanity. Vampires and
werewolves threatened to end humans and create a world of
supernatural creatures. Their blood thirst was greater than ever,
and since nobody knew how to end an immortal creature then every
human would suffer until the entire population of the world was
either a vampire or a werewolf. A king in ancient Greece made a
pact with my father that could only be forged in innocent blood. My
siblings and I were children at the time, so it was our blood and
that of the king’s son that forged the blood talisman. Alex is a
descendant of that king and only the blood within him and my
family’s blood can destroy the talisman. If you kill him then you
kill your chances of ever becoming immortal. My father sent me to
protect him. To protect our legacy.”

“Well, now that Sol is missing, you
will kill Hyperion,” Ram demanded.

“I’m not killing my father.” She
laughed sarcastically.

“Then Amalia will die,” Ram said, as he
looked back at Alex. “I should go and check on her
status,”

Alex watched as Ram left the room. Ram
looked like a defeated animal, running away to lick his wounds. As
much as he hated to admit it, Ram was right. Alex had just sworn to
Amalia’s nearly lifeless body that he would do everything that he
could to keep her on this earth, and that was a promise that he had
to keep at all costs.

Selene reached for his hand but he
resisted. He walked a few steps forward then stopped. He turned
back to look at her and filled his lungs to speak but released the
air with no words. She began to walk to him but he put his hand up
to stop her.

“Stop right there, Selene. We can’t
touch anymore. Amalia is my wife and hers is the hand that I should
be holding right now.”

“But I need you too. Do I not mean
anything to you at all?”

“Of course you do, but you can’t, not
right now. I have to get you out of my head. Amalia’s dying and, as
much as I hate saying this, Ram is right. You are the key to all of
this death to end and I don’t know which path you will take. I
can’t ask you to help us find your father and kill him. That’s just
not who I am. I refuse to be a monster like Ram. I’m not going to
ask you to kill your father so that Amalia can live. One life for
another is unethical by any means, but you father has lived for
centuries. He has seen things in this world change, and Amalia was
only thrust into all of this either because I got bitten or because
I am a descendant of the bloodline that keeps all creatures from
being immortal. She doesn’t deserve to be dying right now but I
can’t be selfish. This is a decision you have to make. Your brother
wants the talisman but he isn’t the most upstanding person. I would
rather you have it as opposed to him but, like I said. I’m not
asking you to kill your father.”

“This isn’t a race to the finish line.
It doesn’t have to be this way. You can be with me. We could be
happy.”

“But it is, isn’t it? Sol will never
stop. He feels it’s his birthright to possess the talisman. And Ram
will never stop because he wants immortality. Your father will die
and one side has to lose. It’s up to you to choose who the losing
side is. I do care for you, but I also love my wife. I took vows
and while that might not mean much to some, it means everything to
me. If I can save her then I will do what it takes to do so, but
eventually you will have to choose. Choose now, while I can still
save her.”

Alex left the room and disappeared down
the hallway. Selene folded herself down into a ball and wept into
her knees. She wept for the loss of her sister, for the banishment
and betrayal of her brother, and for the decision she must make.
Alex wasn’t leaving her much of a choice. Either kill Hyperion and
claim the talisman and its power as her own, or watch Sol do it and
destroy the world around her.

The tears poured into her lap like rain
and nobody was there to stop them. Her father knew that this was
coming but he could not see the choice that she made. Even Selene
herself could not see the choice that she would make. She felt sick
to her stomach, afraid of what might happen with either choice.
Would Alex resent her for the rest of his life for not choosing to
kill her father? Could she actually take her father’s life and
become the new Immortal? Where would Sol be in all of this? He
wanted the power of immortality so badly that he would kill anyone
standing in his way. Would she need to murder her own brother as
well?

The questions kept flooding her mind
but there were no answers. She wiped her face and looked up into
the boardroom where her brother had killed her sister. Rose had
protected Selene most of her life. Neither she nor her father had
ever wanted Selene to see this side of the world. It was ugly and
cruel, exactly as they had warned her. It was time to grow up and
make a decision. She needed to be alone and think.

She noticed a small ring laying on the
floor in the area where Rose’s body had fallen. She leaned over and
picked it up. She held it up into the light. It was tiny and
silver. It had little blue and rust colored markings. Selene
recognized it immediately: it was the ring that Ben had given Rose
as a token of the love they shared. She remembered that it was the
first piece of jewelry Rose had received from him. Selene cupped it
into her hand and held it to her chest.

She could see visions of Ben opening a
tiny black box and the ring lying snug inside. Rose’s mouth gaped
open in surprise and he lovingly placed the ring on her finger.
They hugged and the vision ended. Selene smiled and placed the ring
onto her own finger. This sudden vision of Rose comforted her. She
knew Rose could be happy and at peace. Ben had died too and maybe
she could be with him now. “Wherever they are, they are together
now,” she thought.

With this new-found reassurance, she
stood up and cautiously went out into the hallway. It was empty.
Not a guard was to be seen. She crept through many corridors until
she found a door that led outside. She opened it only slightly and
saw that it led into a peaceful-looking garden that had no exit,
apart from several doors, like this one, that led back into the
hospital. However, it looked to be a wonderful spot to stop and
think. She made her way to the tall fountain that stood solemnly in
the middle of the bright green shrubs and freshly mowed grass.
Exotic flowers shone a light of hope between the stone benches that
encircled the fountain.

She sat on the stone and rubbed her
hands together between her knees. Rose’s silver ring felt warm to
the palm of her hand. She twisted it round and round her finger in
contemplation. She pondered the fact that if Sol had chosen Rose to
keep alive, she surely would have even been tempted to kill their
father. Sol had picked cleverly, although possibly
unintentionally.

She looked up at the windows
surrounding the garden. Most of them had blinds or curtains
covering them. Only a few stood open and empty. She would see a
person pass by every so often. A door behind her opened and a
maintenance man came out and lit up a cigarette. He looked nervous
at first but the cigarette seemed to calm his nerves.

Instead of focusing on her
surroundings, she knew she had a decision to make. The metaphorical
little devil on her shoulder thought the decision was easy. Let
Amalia die and claim Alex as her own forever. But she knew she
couldn’t live with herself knowing that she could have prevented
his eventual sorrow from the loss of his wife. She would happily
sacrifice her own happiness for the ones she loved but not at the
expense of ending her own loved one’s – her father’s –
life.

Being at an impasse did not suit her
well so she stood and filled one hand full of water from the tall
flowing fountain. It bubbled in her hand and drained out through
her fingers. She shook her hand off and wiped the residual water
onto her pants. The water was almost hypnotizing as it bubbled and
splashed before her.

She came to the realization that this
was a decision she could not make alone. She needed to talk to Alex
again. Maybe she could convince him to give up on Amalia and be
completely hers, but she knew this was unlikely to
happen.

“Who am I kidding?” she said aloud to
the fountain.

“Yourself.” A familiar voice spoke from
behind her.

She turned, hoping to look into Alex’s
beautiful eyes, but she saw Ram instead. Her smile quickly faded to
a grimace.

“I wasn’t asking you.”

Selene began to push past him but he
caught hold of her arm. She frowned at him.

“Easy. I’m here with an update.
Amalia’s better. Well, she’s actually the same, which is good news.
She must not have drunk all that much of your blood or she would be
dead by now. The doctors are going to attempt to bring her out of
the coma to see if she can survive on her own. This wasn’t possible
with Ember. It’s a good sign.”

Selene’s eyes feverishly searched back
and forth in his to find some lie that he might be telling, but she
found none. He released her arm and she jumped happily into his
arms. She never thought she would hug any vampire, much less this
one. She leaned back from him and held his shoulders. Her grin
faded into a worried half-smile.

“Why didn’t Alex come to tell
me?”

“He wanted to make sure that he would
be in the room when the doctors brought her out of the coma. They
are about to do so now,” Ram said.

“Okay. Let’s go see,” Selene
smiled.

They both left the garden and hurried
to Amalia’s bedroom.

Chapter 20

Selene was inside the basement of the
hospital once more. She was tired of being in this depressing
place. Ram was directing her with his fingertips on the small of
her back, turn for turn. She had never been down this way and it
didn’t seem that they were going to see Amalia. Just when she
started to feel betrayed, she recognized the door to the room where
she and Alex had made love. Her face turned red at the
memory.