The Soul's Mark: FOUND (15 page)

She didn’t think anyone would answer
her.
 
They were all tense, watching
Mitchell like a hawk.
 
Luke must have
been satisfied that he was under control because he let go of Mitchell and sat
back in his chair.
 
He never dropped his
eyes from him though, watching closely for any sign he wasn’t completely in
control of himself.

Mitchell didn’t look at her and,
surprisingly, that hurt more than all his anger.
 
How could he not look at her?
 
Amelia just didn’t understand because she
couldn’t seem to look away.
 
Like a moth
to a flame, she was hopelessly drawn to him.
 
After a few tense moments, he let out a deep sigh and sat down,
purposely on the other side of the room from her.

Eric must have taken it as a sign.
 
He sat down beside Amelia on the floor and
started rambling.
 
“Okay, here’s the
Cole’s Notes version.
 
You’re Mitch’s
soulmate.
 
When he became a vampire, he
lost his soul and it attached to you which created a bond between you
guys.
 
Sort of linking
you together so he would be able to find you.
 
That’s why he could enter your dreams.
 
When he bit you, it strengthened that
link.
 
Now he can feel everything you
feel, hear all your thoughts, talk to you through his mind.
 
But it’s not just him; you can do all this,
too.
 
It has something to do with our
sick mind control powers.
 
It’s pretty
cool.”

“I
kinda
already
figured all that out, Eric.
 
Why do I
feel like you’re holding something back?”

“Because he is,” Mitchell said in a small,
unsure voice.
 
“But it doesn’t
matter.
 
The rest is not important.
 
I’ll be careful.”
 
He ran his fingers through his hair and still
avoided looking at her.
 
“It’s safer for
you this way.”

“As Eric said, it enhances his mind control
powers over you,” Luke continued, clearly ignoring Mitchell.

“Luke, stop it,” Mitchell pleaded.
 
“She doesn’t need to hear all this.”

Amelia studied him more closely and noticed
his aura had changed again.
 
Was that normal?
she
wondered.
 
It seemed to change with his
feelings.
 
It was now a muddy forest
green, and he was radiating jealously mixed with guilt.
 
“Actually, I think I do need to hear
this.”
 
The clarity of her voice
surprised her.

“No you don’t, Amelia.”
 
He looked up at her, finally, with pleading,
sad eyes.
 
“Just leave it.
 
Why don’t you go and rest.
 
I think you’ve heard enough for now.”

“Just like I predicted,” Eric said, and
promptly stood up and crossed the room.
 
“The kaboom is coming.
 
Just wait
for it.
 
She’s about to blow.”

“Shut up, Eric,” Amelia snapped.
 
Her face was hot, her neck was boiling and
her head was throbbing from her tightly clenched teeth.
 
“I don’t need to rest.
 
What I need is the truth.”
 
She jumped up, too quickly, and a hot flash of
pain ran through her head.
 
Through all
the commotion, she had forgotten about the lump and it took her a moment to
catch her breath.

“Come on, love, just sit down.”
 
Mitchell leaned back in his chair, letting
his arms dangle off the side.
 
“You don’t
need to get all worked up over this.”

“I don’t want to sit down.
 
What I want is for someone to tell me what’s
going on.”
 
Amelia winced at a sharp,
stabbing pain in her stomach.
 
The pain
moved from her stomach to her chest, then to her thighs and she doubled over,
gasping for breath.
 
“What’s happening to
me?” she screamed.
 
All of a sudden, the
pain was everywhere, like hundreds of knives jabbing deeply into her
flesh.
 
Her lungs felt as if they were
collapsing, falling in and she couldn’t catch her breath.
 
She dropped to her knees and screamed.
 
She was burning from the inside out.
 
It was like hot lava boiling within her,
burning through her flesh, and she kept screaming in agony.

“Amelia,” Angelle cried, her voice sounded
panicked but oddly far away.
 
Within
seconds, she was hovering over Amelia, stroking her hair.
 
Amelia screamed again.
 
And again.
 
Even to
her own
ears,
it sounded horrible.
 
Like a wounded
dog.
 
“Mitch, stop it.
 
Just stop it.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“She didn’t want to sit.
 
She didn’t want to rest.
 
Dammit!”
 
Angelle looked outright horror-struck and started rubbing Amelia’s back.

The pain started to slowly fade and Amelia
stayed curled in a fetal position on the floor, panting and gulping in
mouthfuls of air.
 
After what felt like
hours, she managed to sit up on her own and gently pushed Angelle away.
 
She didn’t want to be touched, not now, not
by anyone.
 
“What have you done to me?”
Amelia gasped, hugging her knees into her chest.

Mitchell cast his eyes down and rubbed his
face roughly.
 
“I’m so sorry, love.”

“Tell me what you’ve done,” Amelia said
through clenched teeth, keeping herself in a tight little ball, gently rocking
back and forth.

“It’s all part of the bite,” Mitchell said
so softly she barely heard it.
 
“Like
Eric said, it strengthens the link between us because we are already
connected.
 
It also gives me an edge of
control.
 
It’s a way for me to keep you
safe.”
 
Amelia looked up at him with wide
eyes.
 
He thought he was keeping her
safe?
 
“The pain you’re feeling is my
fault.
 
With the stronger link, anytime
you try to do something that I don’t agree with you will feel it.”

“You knew this would happen and you still
did this to me.”
 
Amelia didn’t say it as
a question.
 
He met her straight on,
squarely in the eyes, but didn’t say anything and she laughed.
 
It was a harsh, broken sound, like plates
crashing to the floor, shattering into little shards.
 
“You know I think I could’ve handled the
vampire thing, and I can deal with you being able to read my thoughts and never
having secrets from you because frankly, I’ve never hidden anything from you
anyways.
 
What I can’t accept is that you
knew that biting me could hurt me and yet you did it anyways.”
 
She paused and looked at him fiercely.
 
“You know what, never mind.”
 
She threw her hands up in the air.
 
“I’m done.
 
I’m leaving.”
 
She turned on her
heels, straightened her shoulders, jutted her chin up and with purpose walked
away.
 
Amelia had just reached the
doorway when she felt the stabbing pain return in the pit of her stomach.

“Amelia, wait,” Mitchell called.
 
It was not a request, his voice simmered with
authority and there was no mistaking it: he was demanding that she stop.
 
She turned back to him with a defiant
stare.
 
He was standing now, looking like
he didn’t know whether to go to her or not.
 
He looked uncomfortable and to her disbelief, that gave her a touch of satisfaction.
 
It was petty and shallow but she was glad he
was feeling something.

“Don’t,” she said, keeping her voice in
control.
 
“You can feel it, right?
 
You can feel what you’re doing to me right
now.”

“Yes, sort of.”
 
Mitchell’s whisper sounded
hollow and raw, and somehow full of guilt and pain.
 
He shifted his gaze to the floor, shifting
slightly, back and forth, from right to left.
 
“I don’t actually feel the pain.
 
Vampires don’t feel pain the same as humans, it’s just sort of
uncomfortable.
 
But I can feel how much
you’re hurting through the bond.
 
I know
you’re in pain, I just don’t feel it the same way.”

Amelia felt cold.
 
Cold and numb and
disgusted.
 
An
uneasiness
twisted her stomach into a knot, inching tighter and tighter
every second.
 
Not knowing what was
coming, or if she would be able to make it out of the room, she swallowed hard,
straightened her shoulders again and took a deep breath.
 
“And yet you still keep doing it.”
 
She smiled a humorless and distant
smile.
 
“I always thought you were just a
figment of my imagination.
 
I can’t even
begin to count how many times I wished you were real.
 
I take all those wishes back.
 
You’re not a dream.
 
You’re real and nothing but a nightmare.
 
I can’t believe I ever thought I loved
you.”
 
Without giving herself a chance to
chicken out, she left as quickly as her legs would move.

Eric’s whispered voice reached her just
before she left the room.
 
“Kaboom.”

Amelia made it to her room.
 
She didn't know how, she really hadn't
thought she would get there.
 
Every step
she had taken was like fighting against a raging current: drowning, and then
coming back up for air, only to be pulled under again.
 
The chain at her heart constantly pulled her
back staggeringly hard, and a few times she just wanted to give up, run back to
Mitchell, throw her arms around him, and tell him, tell him she was sorry and
she loved him.
 
But she couldn't.
 
Amelia knew that wasn't an option.
 
She didn't want to love him, she wouldn’t,
she was sure of it.

She closed her bedroom door and sunk to the
floor in a soggy mess.
 
Tears poured down
her cheeks.
 
"This can't be
happening," she whispered to the empty room.
 
Mitchell couldn't be here.
 
Vampires don’t exist.
 
Her head was spinning, thoughts rushing in
too quickly to understand and she felt cold, chilled to the bone.
 
So cold that she thought she just might never
be warm again.

How could he do this to her?
 
There was just so much she didn't know and
didn't understand.
 
He had bitten
her.
 
Did that mean she would become a
vampire?
 
She didn’t think so.
 
Amelia thought about every story she had ever
read or movie she had ever seen.
 
What
was real?
 
She knew they couldn't all be
real.
 
She remembered her first night;
they had eaten garlic bread and they all went out in the sun.
 
So was anything real?
 
What could hurt them?
 
What could she use against them?
 
And did she want to hurt them?

Amelia leaned her head against the door and
drew in a few shaky breaths.
 
Soulmates.
 
She didn't
want to believe it.
 
Soulmates weren't
real.
 
There was no such thing as the
perfect person.
 
One
person for everyone and only one.
 
It was a fairy tale.
 
A romantic
notion created only to help people get through the cold, hard reality of
life.
 
But she could feel it.
 
They were connected and no matter how much
she told herself that she didn't love him, it was inevitable.
 
She did and she would even if it killed her.

Amelia wasn't going to let that
happen.
 
She had fought too hard for too
long.
 
As if she had hit a brick wall at
one hundred miles an hour, she knew what she had to do.
 
She had to get out of there, away from
Mitchell, away from all of them.
 
She had
known from the beginning they were all just too good to be true.
 
They had been nice to her and she had been so
desperate for friends that she had let her guard down, let them in, and they
all had betrayed her.
 
How could they
keep this from her?

Amelia pulled herself off the floor, went
to her closet and grabbed her bag, stuffing clothes in frantically, not caring
what, just whatever would fit.

Once it was jam-packed, she rushed to the
bathroom to grab some toiletries.
 
She
grabbed a scrunchy, pulling her hair up into a messy bun and winced at the pain
in her head.
 
Then she caught a glimpse
of herself in the mirror and gasped.
 
Her mark.
 
It had
changed.
 
How had she missed that when
she first woke up?
 
Amelia ran a shaky
finger along her mark and she suddenly knew what Angelle had been looking for,
what the cop had been looking for.
 
“Who
do you belong to?” he had asked her that first morning and he had stared so
hard at her neck she had felt sick.
 
But
it all made sense now.
 
Mitchell Lang,
in script, had appeared,
branded right below the soul mark.

The pieces were coming together; suddenly,
the picture was crystal clear.
 
This was
what that horrid little kid, Kandi, had been talking about.
 
“He hasn’t claimed her,” she had said last
night.
 
A wave of nausea overcame
her.
 
What did this mean?
 
How did it happen?
 
Flashes of last night came back to her.
 
The burning.
 
She had thought her neck was on fire and it
dawned on her that must have been when his name had appeared.

Amelia scanned her neck thoroughly in
search of any sign of a bite mark.
 
Maybe this was just a vast, horrible
nightmare
, she thought in desperate hope.
 
She located the small pinprick mark where Mitchell had bitten her on the
other side of her neck, almost completely healed.

The sound of her phone chirping the arrival
of an incoming message brought her back from the painful memories.
 
In haste, Amelia forced her eyes away from
the mirror and searched for her phone.
 
Forty-one missed messages, a mixture of voicemails and texts.
 
Eleven of the texts were from Erin and she
read through them quickly.
 
They were all
the same, just wanting to make sure she was okay.
 
Some were from random people she didn’t even
know, or maybe she did know but she couldn’t place them, and the last one
caught her eye.
 
It was from Tyler.

Worried about u.
 
Can’t get u out of my mind.
 
Plz call me back.
 
Need 2 know u r
ok.
Ty.

Amelia read it over and over, debating on
what to do.
 
Should she call him?
 
Would Mitchell know if she did?
 
Could he always read her mind?
 
She needed to get away from the house; would
Tyler pick her up?
 
Before she knew it,
her fingers were flying across the keypad, replying to his message.

Need
to get out of here.
 
Pick me up?
 
I’ll explain later.

Amelia waited for what seemed like an
interminable period before her phone chirped again.
 

Be
there in 5.

Amelia dropped the phone on her bed and
rushed around in a flurry of motion, grabbing the last of the things she would
need.
 
She didn’t give herself time to
think of what she was doing, because she knew, just knew, if she stopped to
think, she would realize how stupid this was, bringing Tyler here, to a house
full of vampires.
 
She wasn’t even sure
she would be able to leave but she knew she had to try.

Amelia knew the exact moment Tyler arrived
and she also knew who answered the door.

Mitchell.

A surge of ugly, green jealously ran
through her, so hard and so vivid, it was almost as if it was her own
feelings.
 
The jealously quickly turned
to white-hot rage and Amelia snagged her bag and ran out of her room.

It wasn’t hard to figure out they were in
the foyer; all she had to do was follow the pull.
 
She wondered if it would always be like this.
 
Would she always be able to find him?

Amelia bolted into the foyer as if she had
been shot
from a
cannon.
 
When she let her eyes focus on the room, she
froze just as fast.
 
Tyler was up against
the wall, Mitchell standing over him.
 
Tyler was a big guy, and strong, but this close to Mitchell he looked
small and he almost looked scared.

She rushed over, dropping her bag.
 
She needed to get in between them.
 
Mitchell wasn’t touching Tyler but his aura
was black as pitch and the muscles in his neck were bulging with tension.

Amelia had only made it a few steps before
someone grabbed her around the waist and she shrieked.
 
Forcefully, a hand was placed over her mouth
to silence her and then she heard Luke’s voice whispering frantically in her
ear.
 
“Amelia, stop.
 
You can’t get in between them.
 
You shouldn’t have called him.”

Amelia struggled against him, kicking,
biting, but nothing worked.
 
Luke didn’t
move, didn’t even stagger while she thrashed about.
 
Sweat dripped down her neck, soaking into the
collar of her sweater and tears streamed down her cheeks but she still
fought.
 
It was a mistake.
 
She shouldn’t have called Tyler.
 
She needed to stop Mitchell before something
happened.
 
He hadn’t moved, hadn’t said
anything but his pale white skin was now flushed pink and he was furiously
glaring at his adversary.

“Let her go, Luke,” Mitchell said, so low
that Amelia barely heard him.
 
Instantly
she was free.
 
She tried to move but her
knees gave way and she tripped.
 
Luke
caught her and steadied her and held onto her shoulders until he was sure she
wouldn’t fall again.
 
“Amelia, this boy
said you asked him to pick you up,” Mitchell said, still not taking his eyes
from Tyler, who was looking paler by the minute.

Amelia couldn’t speak.
 
Her mouth was dry, her throat prickled.
 
A secure arm wrapped around her and she
shifted her gaze to see Angelle, big brown eyes looking sad but somehow
comforting.
 
“It’s okay, sweetie.
 
You don’t need to be scared.”

Amelia cleared her throat, and with
Angelle’s support, she walked over to Mitchell and squeezed in between him and
Tyler.
 
Angelle stood close by, not
interfering, but her closeness was comforting, nonetheless.

Tyler had been holding his breath, she
realized, when a gust of wind hit the back of her neck and he sucked in
air.
 
Amelia tried to ignore him and
focus on Mitchell.
 
“Yes, I did,” she
said, looking him squarely in the eyes and was glad how strong her voice
sounded.
 
“I want to leave.
 
I don’t want this.”

Mitchell reacted as if he had been punched
in the gut.
 
The hurt on his face was
almost too painful to look at and Amelia couldn’t stop the tears from pouring,
like shiny little streams down her face.

“Millie, what’s going on?” Tyler asked from
behind her and she ignored him, not wanting to make the situation worse.
 
She could feel Mitchell’s thoughts and knew
the littlest thing could push him over the edge.
 
He was struggling, fighting the overwhelming
urge to lash out and hurt Tyler, maybe even kill him.
 
The terrifying, nightmarish image of snapping
his neck and ripping out his throat kept flashing into his mind.
 
She felt Tyler’s hand on her shoulder and she
stiffened.
 
“Millie, seriously, let’s
get
out of here.”

“Keep your hand off her,” Mitchell
growled.
 
He took a step forward, in a
blur and before Amelia could stop him, she was behind him.
 
“She’s not leaving and you are not welcome
here.
 
There’s the door.” He pointed to
the open door.
 
“You better go before I
do something she’ll regret.”

“Millie?” Tyler asked hesitantly, she could
hear the tone of determination and she knew she would have to say something to
get him to leave.
 
The flashes of what
Mitchell wanted to do to him were coming faster and faster and she knew he
wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if she tried to leave.
 
It wasn’t just her anymore.
 
Now Tyler was in danger and it was her fault
and she had to do something.

Amelia put a light hand on Mitchell’s arm
and wiggled her way around him.
 
He
didn’t try to stop her, but she knew he would if she got too close to
Tyler.
 
His aura was flecked with red and
green, coloring the black fog and the spots were jumping around, agitated.
 
She let her hand drop from his arm and with a
glance over her
shoulder,
she took another shaky step
towards Tyler, trying not to move too quickly.
 
“That’s far enough,” Mitchell snarled.

Amelia closed her eyes tightly trying to
stop the tears and then focused on Tyler.
 
“I’m sorry, Ty.
 
I shouldn’t have
asked you to come.
 
You need to go.”