The Blood Talisman (7 page)

She slammed the book shut and placed
it angrily back up onto the shelf. She’d hated who she was then.
She’d longed to live a life with Alex at one time, but she could
not be happier for him and Amalia now.

Her cell phone in her back jean pocket
began to ring and she answered it quickly.

“
Dad?” she
answered.

“
Did you find him?” a male
voice asked.

“
Yes, his wife’s been
kidnapped. I’ve enlisted myself into helping him. Do you want me to
tell him that he is the descendant?”

“
Not yet. The timing must
be right. I’ll be in touch.”

“
Yes sir,” Selene said as
she clicked the phone off.

The water in the shower had stopped
running and a door opened from the bathroom. A heap of steam
billowed out followed by Alex, wrapped only in a towel. He trotted
into the adjacent bedroom, completely ignoring Selene in the living
room.

Selene sighed and inched a few curious
steps closer to the hall. She peeked around a corner so she could
see him as he dressed in the next room. She had missed the good
bits; his pants were already on. They were tight fitting, dark blue
jeans. He pulled a white tee over his bare chest and then another
dark green tee over that. He turned to notice Selene staring at him
from the doorway. He began to lace up the dark brown boots that
he’d grabbed from his closet.

“
See anything you like,
Selene?” Alex asked, flirtatiously. He smiled a smile that she
couldn’t see.

“
Oh! I’m so sorry,” she
retreated from the doorway. Her back was against the hallway wall
and her face was once again beet red. “I didn’t realize you saw me
peeking.”

Alex came out of the room and grabbed
her by the shoulders and said, “I was only kidding. If you’re going
to help me, then you have to get my humor. I need some laughter in
my life right now. I have to not think about everything and keep
the wolf at bay. I think my anger feeds it.”

“
Eventually you will learn
to control it and turn when you want to, but you’re right, any
negative emotion that you feel will make you turn for the time
being.”

“
How do you know so much
about this? Is this a secret life we never knew about?” Alex pushed
her on the shoulder and she smiled at him.

“
More like a life I am
ashamed to be a part of. Never let you guys know about all this
crazy stuff because I have tried to keep it out of my life. You
will find how much fighting to be normal will consume your daily
thoughts.”

“
You’re a woman of many
surprises Selene,” he said as he walked away.

Alex walked back into the bathroom and
picked up Amalia’s hairbrush from the sink countertop and smelled
the bristles. The memory of her flooded like a white light into his
mind. She was brushing her hair in front of the mirror. A phone
began to ring in the background and she went to answer
it.

The memory ended and Alex turned to
smell the air. Selene was watching him, again from the doorway.
Alex pushed her gently to the side and followed Amalia’s smell into
the kitchen, where her blood lay still pooled in the center of the
floor. He stared at it for a few seconds and the painful thoughts
of what happened there to her fed anger into his mind but he pushed
it back to focus on finding her.

He noticed there were drops leading
towards the door to the garage. He opened the door and looked down
to find small droplets of her blood on the cemented floor in the
garage. There was also a mustard yellow shirt, with some of her
blood on it, lying next to where his truck would have been. He
walked over and picked it up and lifted it to his nose.

The brightly lit vision invaded his
mind again. This time the strange man who had bitten her was now
holding her in his arms and wiping the blood up off of her
neck.

“
You fucking dumbass! Ram’s
gonna kill you,” John Fortner said from behind him.

“
Shut up, I know what I’m
doing, you idiot,” the man replied.

“
Just get her in the truck
and wrap that wound up. We have to get her back to the
Administration in Blearney.”

The vision ended. Alex dropped the
shirt and stared at Amalia’s car. He glanced back at Selene, who
was now looking at him in wonder.

“
Are you okay, Alex?” she
asked.

“
Yeah, I know where they
have taken her. I should have just stayed there. This is all my
fault.”

“
You can’t possibly mean
that.” Selene rubbed his shoulder, comforting him.

“
Yeah, actually I can. I
escaped from some people in Blearney, Texas, and they came for her
here to get me to go back there. They knew I would come here to see
her. I put her in danger.”

“
Well, let’s give them what
they want,” she said. Alex looked at her quizzically. “I have some
friends with the same, uh… problem that you have.”

He grabbed her by the arm and pulled
her to the wall in the garage. He was inches from her face and all
she was wishing for was a kiss.

“
You know other wolves?” he
asked.

She was staring into his beautiful
green eyes for hope but found only questions that would lead him to
his wife.

“
Yes. Quite a few
actually.”

“
You have to take me there.
These people won’t give her back willingly and they sure won’t let
me leave again.”

“
I will do anything you
want,” she said.

She was raping his face with her eyes
and it began to make him nervous.

He stepped back from her and looked
away uneasily. “I’m sorry Selene, but I didn’t mean to send the
wrong message. You know how much Amalia means to me.”

There was a long silence as she
watched him squirm. She admired his gentleness with the rejection
and it only made her want him more.

“
It’s okay, Alex. I’ve
wanted you for a long while. You’re a good looking guy and I
understand what it’s like to be in love. Love is all that
encompasses your thoughts, but it still…” She shook her head,
looking for the right words. Finally she said, “You got a key to
that car over there? Let’s hit the road.”

“
Sure.” He grabbed a key
hanging off the wall just inside the garage door. He glanced at the
pool of blood once more and thought, “I’m coming for you
baby.”

Chapter 9

Commander John Fortner had been
driving the unmarked eighteen-wheeler all day. His eyes were weary
and his patience low. Ember Strix had been sunbathing in the
passenger seat and running her obnoxious mouth non-stop. The assets
that were sent to help were tied up in the back of the tractor
trailer. Ram was paranoid that they would escape but John thought
this was a little extreme, considering that he had their
metaphorical hearts in a jar. Threatening to drain someone they
loved of every drop of blood within them tended to make even the
strongest of souls submit.

John slowed the big rig and pulled
into a gas station next to a diesel pump. The truck was running out
of gas and John needed a break from Ember, even if only for a few
moments.

An obnoxious pop tune began to stream
out of Ember’s shirt. She pulled the little pink flip phone from
her cleavage and answered excitedly, “Hey, babe!”

“
Let me speak to John,” the
cavernous voice of Ram answered.

Ember rolled her pretentious eyes at
the phone and handed it over to John. He took a deep breath and put
the pretty, pink phone up to his ear.

“
This is John.”

“
We’ve gotten word that he
is on the move to come back here. I need you to stage a situation
that will set him up to feed. I want to test his humanity. That
will tell me a lot about him before he gets here.”

“
Yes, sir. Anything you
say, sir.”

Ember stared at John in anticipation
as he listened and gave the occasional “uh-huh” and “yes sir” to
Ram. He finally clicked the phone shut and handed it back over to
Ember. Her French manicured fingernails scraped John’s hand and it
was all he could take to not pummel her.

Ember smiled her ‘I have more power
than you’ smile. She looked outside towards the gas station that
they had pulled up at and noticed a black and red striped Dodge
Charger idling by the gas pumps. There was a redheaded woman
pumping gas into the revving hot rod. Her long hair whipped around
her face in sync with the wind. Ember’s disease began to growl
within her. She glanced over to see a dark-haired man in the
driver’s seat. He had one hand on the steering wheel and the other
on the gear shifter. He was watching the woman with as much hunger
for her as Ember had. He wanted her, but in a different way. Ember
could smell the pheromones from where she was.

John had filled the tank and paid. He
plopped back into the truck. He began to put it into gear but
Ember’s hand gripped his tightly, stopping it from moving. He
attempted to move her hand off of his but she beat him to the
punch. She looked at him. The bloodlust filled her eyes with
desire.

“
We are not moving yet. I
need… well, you can guess,” she said with a smile.

“
Ember, we have to stay on
track. You can’t go on a feeding spree and leave tracks. Ram
said…”

“
I can always just feed on
you,” she interrupted.

“
I… uh…”

“
That’s what I thought.
I’ll be back.”

She exited the truck and John watched
her as she walked over to the redhead and pushed her nose into a
flurry of the girl’s hair. The woman paused from pumping gas and
the man in the driver’s seat became alarmed. He stepped out of the
car and hurried over to Ember and the redhead.

“
Who the fuck are you? Get
away from my girlfriend!” the man yelled.

Ember pushed the redhead’s hair back
off of her neck and began to drink from her. The man rushed her but
Ember threw him back onto the hood of the car. The redhead’s body
dropped to the ground and her blood was dripping from Ember’s chin.
She smiled at the man but he ran from her to get back into his car.
He put it into drive but Ember was standing in front of it. He
revved the engine and its tires began to squeal on the pavement.
Ember punched the hood, putting her hand straight into the engine.
She pulled up what looked like the carburetor and it went dead. She
walked around to the driver and pulled him out through the open
window.

He screamed like a girl as he
attempted to wriggle out of her hands, but she quickly laid him
onto the hood of the car and began to feed on him. His screams
became distant as his life slowly drifted away. She pulled away
from his body and he slid off of the car onto the ground
below.

She walked back, smiling at John. She
waved at him and he nervously smiled. She stepped back into the
truck and slammed the door, not realizing that she was still in
strong mode. The window cracked with the force and John immediately
became frustrated with her again.

“
That was badass how I
stopped the car, huh?” she asked John.

“
There are some towels and
things in the back cab. You can clean up back there,” he
replied.

She glanced at the blood that ran down
over her shirt and down to her pants. Then she noticed her hand.
Her knuckles were scraped up and her own blood dripped from the
deep gashes on her hand.

“
Fuck! I broke a damned
nail.”

John rolled his eyes and put the truck
into gear. They headed towards Blearney, leaving their mess behind
for someone else to deal with. John was tired of her and definitely
didn’t want to clean up after her anymore. She wasn’t pushing him
to so he wasn’t offering.

She was back up into the front seat
quicker than John would have liked her to be. She began running
that obnoxious little mouth again. This time bragging about the
mess she made at the gas station.

“
You know you’re in
trouble, right?” she pointed out.

“
Ram’s gonna be more pissed
that you did it in broad daylight. He won’t even think about me not
cleaning up your mess.”

“
You keep thinking that,
sweetie.” She patted him on the shoulder. “How do you think those
sweaty dogs in the trailer back there are doing?”

“
I don’t get paid to
think.”

“
True, but you are getting
paid to amuse me, so you’d better do so or at the next truck stop
you will be the one left dying on the ground.”

“
They’re fine,” he
answered, through gritted teeth.

She yawned and said, “I always get
sleepy after a big meal. Wake me up when we reach our
destination.”

“
Yes ma’am,” he said, once
again through gritted teeth.

Chapter 10

Alex looked over at the beautiful
woman accompanying him on his journey to find Amalia. Her long hair
was flowing in the wind as she gazed out of the passenger side
window. She watched as every tree and area of flat land passed her
by. Taking moments to sigh in contentment, she constantly glanced
over at Alex as he drove with haste back to Texas. His weary face
told his story. Everything he had been through recently wore on him
like a cheap hat. He was too handsome to be this gruff looking. She
reached over and rubbed the stubble on his face.