Cursed (Book 1, The Watchers; Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (32 page)

“Did you hear
anything this morning, Tara?  Anything out of the ordinary?” I asked.

“Well, I did hear
her laugh once.  I went to her room to see what was so funny and she was gone,
like she just disappeared into thin air.”

That laugh was the
last thing I’d heard from Lilly before leaving her that morning.  Whoever took
her must have grabbed her almost immediately after I left.

Why didn’t I go
back to her and steal that one last kiss?  If I had…

No, I couldn’t
think like that or it would surely drive me mad.  We had to think of a way to
find her.

“Well, I can’t
just sit here and do nothin’.” Tara grabbed her car keys and purse heading out
the door.  “Y’all look everywhere you can.  I’m gonna go on campus and see if I
can find out anything.  Maybe someone’s seen her there.”

She was out the
door before any of us could talk her out of it.  It was just as well.  She’d
need something to keep her busy while we thought about our next step.

Once Tara was gone, I told Malcolm and Will that Lilly had spent the night with me and I had
brought her home only moments before her apparent abduction.

“Whoever took her,
grabbed her just after I left.”  The words were hard to say.  Regret was too
shallow of a word to describe the pain I felt.  I should have stayed with her. 
I should have been here to protect her.

“Well, we know it
had to be one of our kind,” Will said.

I had seen the way
Will looked when I told them Lilly had spent the night with me.  He knew in
that instant she had chosen me above him.  I actually felt sorry for him in his
moment of realization.  If it had been him she had chosen instead of me, I know
I would have felt shattered on the inside from the loss.

“Let’s all try to
contact as many of our own as we can,” I told them.  “Someone has to know
something.  There’s no way one person could have made all those false trails.”

It took the rest
of the day for me to track down as many of my fellow Watchers as I could.  We
didn’t speak with each other on a regular basis, but we did keep track of each
other’s whereabouts.  None of them knew where she was.  I would have known if
they were lying.

When I told Lilly
that first lunch we spent together that I had a lie detector in my head, it was
the truth.  I could tell when any creature, human or otherwise, wasn’t being
honest with me.  I wished Malcolm and Will had the same ability but knew they
had lost it long ago.  Malcolm would have lost it the moment he drank the blood
of his first victim.  Will lost it as a consequence of following Lucifer, the
great deceiver.  None of their kind would talk with me though.  They’d see me
as an enemy, someone who was still holding onto the hope of returning to God’s
favor.

When I ran out of
places to go, I returned to the apartment.  I phased right outside the door. 
Just as I lifted my hand to knock on the door, I heard a wail so loud and
filled with such torment I thought someone was dieing inside.  I opened the
door forgetting about the formality of knocking.  There on the floor was Tara.  She was lying on her side with her arms under her knees and her knees tucked up to
her head.  She rocked back and forth wailing the most heart wrenching, soul
shattering cry I’ve ever heard.

I went to her and
knelt by her side.  “Tara, what’s wrong?”  My blood ran cold.  “Did something
happen?  Did you find Lilly?”

“No,” she wailed,
rocking herself as if trying to find some comfort in the movement.  “I can’t
find her.  I can’t find her…” she kept repeating to herself.

I tried to make
her get up off the floor but every time I did, she hit out at me with her arms
or her legs.  “Leave me alone!  Get away!  Get away!”

I felt helpless. 
As I stood over Tara, I saw myself in her torment.  If I let my feelings go
unchecked, I would surely be on the floor with Tara screaming over my loss. 
But, I couldn’t give up hope.  Not yet.

There was a knock
on the door.  I answered it to see Malcolm and Will had returned.

“Anything?” I
asked them, but already knew the answer from the tortured looks on their faces.

They shook their
heads anyway.

When Will saw Tara, he went to her and knelt down beside her, whispering in her ear.  I’m not sure what
he said but it seemed to break through her grief.  She looked up at him and
grabbed his hand with hers, still weeping but quietly now.  He lifted her off
the floor into his arms and carried her to her bedroom.

“What do we do
now?” Malcolm said after they left.  “None of my people say they know
anything.  Not even Justin.”

“I don’t know,” I
replied, feeling my despair climb closer to the surface threatening to breach
my fragile mask of control.

“Well, I can’t
just stand around here and do nothing,” Malcolm said.

I looked at him,
surprised by his sincerity for Lilly’s welfare.  I’d known Malcolm a long time
and had never seen this side of him before, caring for someone else instead of
worrying about his own needs.

“Why do you care
so much about her?” I asked him, curious about his motives toward the love of
my life.

“You know why,” he
answered.  “She’s not like anyone either of us has ever met.  She makes me feel
like a real person, not the monster I’ve become living on this God forsaken
planet.  I don’t want to lose that feeling.  I can’t.”

“You’re not in
love with her are you?”

“Would it matter? 
She’s chosen you.  But,” a sly grin crossed his face.  “You better know right
now that if you slip up I’ll be there for her if she wants me.  I have no
qualms about being her second choice.”

“You won’t get
that chance,” I assured him.  “I’m not letting her go again.”

“Well, I’ll be
watching.  If I see an opportunity I’m taking it.  You just got lucky I wasn’t
around when you two met.  It has to be her love for you that makes her immune
to my charms.  Just watch yourself, Brand.”

I think it was the
first time in a long time Malcolm and I understood one another.

“I need to leave,”
he said.  “I can’t stand sitting around twiddling my thumbs when she’s out
there somewhere.  I’m going to go look for her on my own.  Maybe I’ll get
lucky.”  And he was gone.

I stood alone in
the living room.  I could still hear Tara’s tortured cries and Will’s murmured
reassurances that everything was going to be alright.

I had to get out.

I went to Abby’s
house.  It was night by now but I needed to see her anyway.  She never wanted
me to come this late because she knew how seeing her after the moon rose
affected me.  The song Abby had written for herself played throughout her home. 
She said it had a calming affect on her alter ego.  I went down the stairwell
from the kitchen to the basement.  The wall which usually concealed Abby’s cell
was open and Rose Marie sat across from it reading
Wuthering
Heights
through the bars to her. 

Rose Marie looked
up at me as I approached.  “Mr. Cole,” she said, closing the book and placing
it on her lap.  “Is something wrong?”

I looked at my
child in her prison.  My Abby. 

“Lilly’s missing. 
We can’t find her.”  I looked at Abby, transformed into the monster I had
cursed her to live with.  “I just needed to see Abby.”

Rose Marie stood
from her chair and laid the book down on its seat.  “I’ll leave you two alone.”

I thanked her and
went to stand by the bars meant to keep my daughter from harming anyone,
including herself.  She walked over to me on her awkwardly bent legs staring at
me in pity.  If anyone understood how much I loved Lilly, it was Abby.  She
knew the loneliness of my life and was ecstatically happy when I told her I had
found someone I wanted to share it with.  When I broke off my relationship with
Lilly, thinking I was doing the noble thing and protecting her from what I am,
Abby was the one who called me a coward.  She told me to fight for my chance at
happiness.

“This is the only
time you’ve ever felt this way about anyone, even my mother,” she had said. 
“How can you not fight for her?”

Her words had made
me feel even worse than I already had at the time.  And when I asked Izzi to
pretend we were a couple thinking it would make it easier for Lilly to hate me,
I thought Abby would disown me on the spot.  I’d never seen her so mad.

Now, as I looked
at my daughter, the guilt of what I had cursed her with threatened to consume
me.  It had been a long time since I saw her in her transformed state.  The
legends of werewolves had come from the children of the Watchers.   If humans
knew the truth of the world they lived in, they would probably run and hide in
caves, too afraid to step out again.

“I’ve lost her,
Abby.”

Abby whined
sticking her nose outside the bars.  I ran my hand along her snout and tried to
find comfort in her closeness.

“I don’t know what
to do.”

I wished Abby
could talk to me.  Her council had become very important to me over the years. 
She always had a wise and compassionate response to situations in life, both
hers and my own.  How I wished she could talk to me now.  I needed her comfort
and advice.

“I’m going to go
out and search for her,” I told Abby.  “I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone.  I
guess until I find her or lose all hope, which ever comes first.”

She let out a
pitiful yelp but I knew she would understand when she transformed back into her
human form.

I phased and kept
phasing from one place to the next.  Every once in a while I would call Will to
see if they had heard anything but there was never any new news.  I ended up
going all over the world, to every out of the way place and distant land I
could possibly think of but found nothing.  It was like Lilly had been whisked
off the planet.  I spent days searching, refusing to lose hope that the next
place I phased to would bring me closer to her.  By the end of the sixth day, I
returned home, drained of hope, drained of life.

I stood in the
dining room, unable to move, constantly having to remind myself to breathe.  I
knew if I moved the world as I knew it would shatter around me leaving me
behind in a void of despair so deep there would be no escape.  So I stood
there, begging God to end my torment.  Perhaps He hadn’t forgiven me after
all.  Maybe losing Lilly was my true punishment.

My eyes drifted to
the tray I had prepared for her the morning after her declaration of love to
me.  The single red rose still lay across the plate, waiting for her to claim
it like she had my heart, my soul, my very will to exist.  I finally made my
legs move and picked the rose up, a mirror of my own state.  It had lost all of
its earlier color and fragrance now.  The petals were dry, fragile to the
touch. I held the flower in the palm of my hand.  I only had to close my
fingers around its delicate structure to destroy it and with it the symbol of
my new beginning with Lilly.

I felt the last
vestiges of hope slip through my fingers.  Like a drowning man in a sea of
hopelessness losing his grip on the one person who could save him.  I struggled
to hold onto her, but the waves of despair crashing over my body tugged me even
deeper, further away from her, further away from my last chance at happiness
until I couldn’t feel her anymore.  I couldn’t feel anything.  My fingers
closed around the rose in my hand, no longer able to pretend she was coming
back to me.  I fell to my knees finally releasing the grief I had been holding
in.  I would never again feel her warmth against my body or her lips touching
mine.  I would never get the chance to hear her laughter or see her smiling up
at me allowing me to bask in the warmth of her tender love. I let the tears
spill freely.  What was the point of keeping them in anymore?  She was gone. 
Gone… 

“Brand!”

My head snapped up
at the sound of her voice.  Was I losing the last traces of my sanity?  Did I
care?

“Brand!” Her
scream was louder, more urgent.

I stood up and
walked to the foot of the staircase because I was sure her phantom voice was
coming from the second floor.

“Brand!” she
screamed, desperately wanting me to go to her, to save her.  Was this the hell
I would have to endure now?  Hearing her frightened screams over and over in my
mind?

She kept screaming
my name.  I walked up the stairs slowly.  Even if I were going insane, maybe
this was all I would ever have of her again.  It was better than not having her
at all.  If insanity meant I would be able to at least hear her voice, I didn’t
want to be sane.

When I reached the
door to my bedroom, I was afraid to open it.  Would it end my pleasurable
torment?  Would I stop hearing her call my name?

I opened the door.

My heart started
to beat again.

Chapter 17

Time passed but I
had no way to measure it.  Every once in a while, Justin would come and bring
me something to eat.  He didn’t stay long.  From the way he looked at me, I got
the feeling he felt a little sorry for what he was putting me through. Sorry
for prolonging my torture.

At one of my meal
times, someone else unexpectedly appeared in my prison.

“Hello,” he said
holding a plate of food in his hands.  He was tall with a muscular build and
wavy brown hair.

I immediately
didn’t like him.  There was something in the way he looked at me with his dark
green eyes which reminded me of one of those sleazy guys you see in movies. 
The one that always thinks he’s God’s gift to women.  He was of course
beautiful to look at on the outside, like most of the fallen angels I’d met,
but his inner ugliness couldn’t be concealed by his handsome exterior.  I
instinctively stepped back from him.

“Did I scare you?”
he asked trying to sound concerned, even though I could tell he secretly hoped
he
had
scared me with his sudden appearance.