The Soul's Mark: FOUND (28 page)

“Dammit,” Amelia yelled.
 
“We’re supposed to be a team,” she
raged.
 
“Stop trying to make all the damn
decisions.
 
Did you ever think, just for
a second, if you had asked me what I wanted it may have been different?
 
You took the choice away from me.
 
You forced all this on me.
 
I’m sorry if I’m not handling it well, but
what the hell did you expect?”

Mitchell softened, and his eyes slowly
changed back to blue, fangs disappearing.
 
“I expected you to love me as much as I love you.”
 
Then, before she could say anything else, he
was gone.

Amelia ran after him, bouncing off the
wall, which shuddered on impact.
 
She
banged her fist against it until bruises started to show and her arms were too
weak to keep going.
 
Amelia racked her
brain trying to figure out why she couldn’t leave, to locate the missing
pieces.
 
She had forgiven him, forgiven
all of them.
 
She had accepted him.
 
She had chanted, lit candles, tried
everything, but nothing worked.
 
What
good was it to be a witch if she couldn’t even get out of her own room?

Her head hurt.
 
Her whole body hurt, and exhaustion weighted
her down.
 
Mentally,
emotionally and physically.
 
Amelia leaned against the stupid invisible wall, cursing under her
breath.
 
She sunk down to the floor and
rested her chin on her knees, staring blankly out the glass doors into the
night.

She was missing something, but what was
it?
 
What was stopping her from getting
out?
 
Madame Crystal had said that when
the time came she would know what to do.
 
If this wasn’t the time, then when?
 
How much longer would she have to be stuck in
here and away from him?

Amelia closed her eyes and the tears slid
down her face, soaking into her already sweat dampened t-shirt and she let her
mind drift to Mitchell.
 
He was in the
library with her family—they really were her family—and she smiled at the
thought.
 
Even Tyler was there.
 
They were all working together, peacefully,
trying to find an answer to the question that none of them knew.
 
“Mitchell, you need to think this out,” Tyler
was saying.
 
They were looking at each
other as if they had been friends for years.
 
When had that happened?
 
“I don’t think Millie wants you to die.
 
Didn’t you see the way she lit up when you
were at the door?
 
If that’s not love
man, I don’t know what is.”

“I just don’t know if there are any other
options,” Mitchell said.
 
He sounded
tired as if he had already tried everything else.
 
“If we keep this up we’ll end up killing each
other.”

Amelia heard something, a banging, or
knocking, and she was jerked out of Mitchell’s thoughts, back to the lonely
room.
 
Her prison.
 
She glanced around, thinking Mabel had come
in, but there was no one.
 
She was still
alone.

She was just about to let herself drift
back to Mitchell when a motion light flicked on just outside her door.
 
The banging came again; a soft thud, thud,
thud and Amelia darted up from the floor.
 
There was something, a ball of some sort, bouncing off the French doors.
 
She couldn’t make it out and she ventured
over, swinging them open.

It took Amelia a lengthy minute to figure
out what she was seeing.
 
The thing
hanging from the balcony above was so beaten up it was almost
unrecognizable.
 
It was the blonde
pigtails that finally made Amelia’s brain register that it was—Erin, dangling
from a rope.
 
She was gagged, hog tied,
and bleeding from so many different places there was barely any trace of skin
through the red smears.

“Erin!” Amelia cried and rushed forward,
despite her horror at the sight before her.

A surge of hot power sparked into her veins
and Amelia hit the barrier at a sprint.
 
She didn’t know if she could get out but she had to try.
 
When she hit the wall, it was as if she was
wrapped in plastic wrap and she couldn’t breathe.
 
It closed in around her, sagging and
straining against her and like elastic, it tried to shoot her back in.

Erin was trying to tell her something, but
Amelia couldn’t hear it through the gag.
 
Her voice was coming out in spurts of mumbled, distorted sounds.

Suddenly, like a bubble bursting, Amelia
crashed onto the terrace in a crumpled heap.
 
She scurried around, pulling herself up and lunged for Erin.

Erin’s muffled and choked voice was barely
audible and Amelia fought with the gag that had been tied and duct taped in
place.
 
It seemed to take forever before
she was able to get it off and when she did, Erin shrieked, “Run, Millie!
 
It’s a trap.”

Amelia was struggling with the ropes that
bound Erin’s legs and arms and was about to tell her to stop moving, when,
right at that moment, something solid pounded her on the head.
 
She staggered, then collapsed to the ground.

Erin screamed.
 
Amelia tried to get up.
 
Erin needed her.
 
Erin was in trouble.

Amelia scrambled to her feet and then
everything around her went dark.
 
A rough
canvas bag was wrapped around her head.
 
Erin was still screaming but Amelia couldn’t understand what she was
saying.
 
Someone grabbed her, tossing her
over a shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
 
She kicked and pounded her fists against her attacker.

A burst of wind whipped around her as her
captor picked up his pace, running, and then suddenly, Amelia was tossed onto
hard-ridged plastic and the sound of metal grinding on a track slammed through
her ears.
 
Tires squealed and she rolled,
crashing into the wall of the vehicle as the driver took a turn at a speed that
made it wobble, teetering on two tires before straightening back out.

Strong, cold hands grabbed her arms, and
the burning pinch of a needle stabbed into her vein.
 
Amelia tried to kick and rip her arm away but
it was no use.
 
At that moment, she knew
it was a vampire holding her down.
 
Fiona?
 
No, not Fiona, it was a
man, she was sure of it.
 
The hand
holding onto her was too big.

A warm burst coursed into her, as whoever
was holding her pushed down on the plunger injecting (God only knew what) into
her. The drug took hold over her quickly and within seconds Amelia felt as if
she was covered in wet, heavy tar.
 
The
hand let go of her and she tried to move her right arm but its sudden heaviness
weighted it down.
 

The next thing Amelia knew, she was opening
her eyes.
 
A thick, moldy garbage smell,
like rotten meat, drifted up her nose, and she gagged.
 
She tried to cover her mouth but her hands
wouldn’t move.
 
Rope rubbed tightly
against her wrists.
 
She lifted her head
up.
 
She wasn’t alone.

Amelia blinked a few times.
 
Her eyes couldn’t seem to focus.
 
One second she saw ten people, the next
fifteen, and then five.
 
No, three.
 
There were three people. Adam, she recognized
him instantly, and a flash of the party came back to her.
 
That rancid smell, she should have known that
was him.

“If you’re thinking of using magic it won’t
work.
 
The drugs will keep you too
disoriented for you to gather enough power,” a man said.
 
He was tall and lanky, wearing black on black.
 
Black jeans, black shirt, black leather
jacket.
 
Even his eyes and hair were
midnight black.

“Who are you?” Amelia screamed, fighting
against the rope that tied her legs and arms to a wooden chair.
 
She lost her balance and the chair flipped
backwards, and she smacked her already bleeding head onto the hard concrete
floor.
 
I’m going to have major brain damage if I don’t stop hitting my
head,
she thought and then fought against a building
giggle.
 
She silently scolded herself for
the stupid thought and blamed it on the drugs.

Kandi
stood over her, cackling, eyes blazing and fangs down.
 
She grabbed Amelia by the hair lifting her
and the chair back up.
 
“Don’t you
remember him, Amelia?” she asked.
 
“It
hasn’t been that long since you saw him last.”

“What are you talking about?” Amelia
cried.
 
Kandi yanked at her hair again
and then crouched in front of her, licking the blood off her fingers.
 
Amelia’s blood.
 
All of a sudden, Amelia thought she was going
to be sick and she sucked in a few breaths, trying to keep the raising bile
down.

“
Kandi
,” the man
snapped, pulling Amelia’s eyes away from the girl sucking and licking her
fingers.
 
“Step away.
 
You’ll have plenty of time to enjoy her
later.”
 
Then he grabbed a chair, placing
it in front of Amelia.
 
“I’m a bit hurt
that you don’t remember me.
 
Especially
after all the trouble I went through to make this a spitting image of the night
we met.”
 
He smiled a toothy smile and
Adam and Kandi laughed.
 
“I really
thought Erin had ruined my plans when she took you to that psychic.”
 
He shrugged.
  
“I guess she turned out to be useful after all.”
 
His eyes flashed red and his smile
widened.
 
“All your bodyguards thought
you were so safe.”

Amelia forced herself to look around the
room.
 
What was he talking about?
 
Who was he?
 
What did he want with her?

The concrete floor, cold against her feet, and
the concrete walls with no windows felt suffocating.
 
She was in an unfinished basement.
 
To her right were scattered paintings leaning
haphazardly against the walls.
 
Bright, water-colored landscapes and oil portraits.
 
Amelia blinked, trying to clear her blurry
eyes.
 
She felt as if she was looking
through a dirty, finger-smudged glass.

Slowly the paintings came into focus.
 
“Where did you get those?” she gasped.
 
They were her paintings, all of them.
 
She snapped her head around to the left and a
bolt of dizziness threatened to pull her into the dark.
 
Her easel was set up and an unfinished
painting of Mitchell rested against it.
 
It was the painting she had been working on the night her parents had died.
 
Across his face was a deep brownish dirt
line.
 
Blood.
 
Her father’s blood.
 
This basement was set up exactly as her
basement had been the night they died, right up to the way she was tied to the
chair.
 
The painful memories came rushing
in and Amelia looked at him, really
looked
at him, and she recognized him.
 
The man who had killed her parents.

“I think she’s starting to remember,” Kandi
giggled, clearly enjoying Amelia’s confusion and panic.

“Where’s Erin?” Amelia asked.
 
“What did you do to her?
 
If you hurt her I’ll kill you.”
 
She felt completely discombobulated, dizzy,
weak, and heavy. The man laughed and it sounded loud and drawn out.
 
What had he given her? She felt as if she was
drifting in and out.
 
A moment of focus
and then it was gone.

“Now this brings me back,” he said and
leaned in towards her.
 
Close enough that
Amelia could smell his sour breath.
 
“You
were more worried about your parents than yourself five years ago and now here
you’re tied up again and worrying about Erin.”

“Leave her alone,” Amelia said, trying to
wiggle out of the ropes again.
 
A pair of
firm hands squeezed her shoulders, holding her in place.
 
“Why are you doing this to me?
 
Why now?
 
Why didn’t you just kill me then?” Amelia screamed.
 
She felt hot and cold all at once.
 
Nothing made sense and the damn drugs were
playing with her mind.
 
She felt a burst
of power, some focus, and then dizzy.
 
No
matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get it together.
 
She tried to reach out to Mitchell, but even
the link was foggy and she couldn’t see what he was doing.
 
Did he even know she was gone?
 
She yelled out to him, trying to let him back
in, but nothing.
 
It was like listening
to a static-filled radio station.
 
She
was really starting to hate herself for ever listening to that stupid
psychic.
 
Madame Crystal, Amelia was
certain, had caused more harm than good.

“Did you really think I did this all just
for you?”
 
He leaned back in his chair,
putting his hands behind his back, and grinned at her.
 
“You are just a means to an end.”
 
He sat there staring at her, black eyes
burning a hole in her and then, out of the blue, he shot up cursing, at least
she thought it was cursing, in a language Amelia did not understand.
 
His white complexion turned ghostly, and
then, he crumpled back onto the chair, leaning over and gasping for breath.

“You okay, Tristan?” Adam asked, patting
him on the back.

Tristan?
 
Where had she heard that name before?
 
Come on,
Amelia
, her inner voice urged.
 
Put it together.
 
You know this.
 
Tristan.
 
Tristan.
Oh my God.
 
“Erin belongs to you,” she said in a small,
shaky voice, not really to him, more to herself.
 
If Erin was his, then that meant Erin had set
this up.
 
She had helped him.
 
Erin had known all along about her parents,
about Mitchell, about everything.
 
She
hadn’t really been hurt and she had lured Amelia out to her death.

He laughed, not a nice laugh.
 
“Yes, Erin’s mine.
 
Or was.”
 
Tristan stood up slowly and ran his hands
through his greasy black hair, and then he shrugged and glanced at Adam and
Kandi who were standing by him, waiting anxiously.
 
“Erin’s no longer with us.
 
At least I won’t have to lie to her
anymore.
 
Mitchell just killed her.”

“Oh well,”
Kandi
said with a malicious smile.
 
“I wasn’t a
fan of Erin 2.0.
 
But third time’s a
charm, right?
 
Maybe you’ll get lucky
next time.”

Dead.
 
Did he really just say Erin
was dead?
 
And
Mitchell…
Mitchell killed her?
 
No.
 
He wouldn’t,
Amelia tried to convince herself.
 
But she knew, deep down, that if Mitchell thought Erin had hurt her he
wouldn’t think twice about killing her.
 
“Why are you doing this?” Amelia asked and realized she was crying when
she heard the tears in her voice.

“Don’t cry, Amelia,” Tristan said.
 
He reached out to brush her tears away and
before she thought about it, she bit him.
 
She bit hard, almost hard enough to draw blood—but not quite.
 
His eyes flashed and the florescent lighting
glistened off his fangs.
 
In a quick,
fluid motion, he slapped her.
 
Amelia
screamed out in pain.
 
She was sure her cheekbone
had cracked from the impact.

Adam and
Kandi
lunged for him, tackling him down to the ground.
 
Amelia tried to follow them but it was a
useless effort.
 
She couldn’t keep up
with their speed.
 
They were on the
ground, and then they weren’t.
 
They were
behind her.
 
The three of them were
moving so quickly that when she looked to the sounds of the scuffle they were
already across the room.
  
“Tristan,
stop,” Adam grunted.
  
Somehow, he had
managed to get Tristan into a headlock.
 
“You’ve waited too long for revenge.
 
What’s the point if you kill her before Mitchell gets here?”