Fated Absolution (14 page)

“Of course we’ll call him. I don’t know anything other than she’s lost a lot of blood and that she’s cut her wrist. It’s my fault entirely, I didn’t…I yelled at her through our link and she must have startled or something. She told me she’d cut herself, that I’d scared her, but I didn’t listen. All I was concerned about was that she had disobeyed me, again. Damn it, I don’t deserve her.” He had given up the keys to Aaron when he’d asked for them. He didn’t think he could have driven anyway.

“I think we’ve all been a little hard on her. I know that I myself have been making demands on her as well. Bradley called me tonight. Did you know that we aren’t paying her?

That all this work she’s been doing, she’s been doing on her own time? This morning when David went to arrest her she—”

“Arrest her!! For what? Christ that girl gets into more trouble than I’ve ever seen. She needs a fucking keeper.” Kyle cut himself off when he heard Sara clear her throat. He was doing it again, being bossy and making demands.

“Does she remind you of anyone Aaron,” Sara asked softly from the back seat. “I think you two need to back off of her. She’s done just fine on her own for some time now and has only had issues since the three of you walked into her life. She’ll be laid up for a few days now, and I for one think she could do with a little rest, from everything.”

Sara had been just as independent and just as stubborn as his Maddy when Aaron had pushed his way into her life. Not that she regretted it Kyle thought, but it had been a little overwhelming, and she knew about vampires and werewolves. Kyle couldn’t imagine what Maddy was going through at the moment.

They arrived at the hospital just as they were wheeling Maddy down to surgery. Kyle was asked to fill out paperwork for Maddy. He decided to claim her as his wife so that there would be no problems about him getting information he needed about her health. She was his damn it. Sara and Aaron went on up to the second floor surgery floor.

By the time he finished and was getting off the elevator, Maddy had been under for nearly an hour. He’d had to guess at most of the personal stuff, date of birth, mothers name and other things. He made a mental note to get this information from her as soon as possible. The nurse had not been amused until he told her they’d only been married a short while and that he was tremendously worried about his new bride. That had changed her tune right now. It was another hour before they had taken her down to recovery and the surgeon had come out to see them.

“Mr. Dixon, your wife is very lucky,” she’s said as she shook his hand. “If that officer hadn’t of came when he did, then we’d be having an entirely different conversation. She had a six inch laceration to her right wrist that severed her artery. She was bleeding fast I would imagine and had she of not stuck her arm into that bucket of ice she would have bled out even sooner. As is was, the cold slowed down the stem of blood. Smart woman, your wife.”

David had told the dispatcher, then Kyle so he’d know the story when asked. David had been driving by the bar on his way home and thought he saw someone walking around inside.

That explained how they knew she was there and the broken door they had to break to get in.

“When can I see her? Is she awake?” He had been so relieved that she was going to be fine that his next priority had to be seeing her.

“Oh, she’s awake all right. Weak, but that hasn’t stopped her from being pissed off at you. Says you’re not married and that…well, I’ll let her explain what her plans for your anatomy is. And just so you know, I can’t fix what she has planned for you.” With a promise that she would see them all in the morning, she went down the hall laughing.

“Maybe you two should go first, soften her up some.” Kyle wasn’t afraid of her, but he wasn’t stupid either. He knew that if she could, she would try and hurt him and in return hurt herself worse.

“Coward. I’ll go in, Aaron you keep eunuch boy here company.” Sara walked down the hall and laughed when she heard Aaron laugh and Kyle explain to him how unfunny he thought it was.

“She’s not going to be any more happy with you if you put it off you know.” Aaron, being a straight forward kind of man thought just getting things over with no matter how unpleasant was better than worry about it.

“Yeah, I know. What am I gonna do with her? She drives me crazy.” Before Aaron could comment on that statement the elevator doors opened and poured out the motliest group of people they’d ever seen.

“I swear if’n he hurt her, I’ll cut his balls off and feed them to him, that slimy worthless piece of bat shit.”

It seemed that Paul had closed the bar. The police were still milling around anyway and had called his bowling buddy Frank to tell him that Maddy had been hurt. It wasn’t long before the entire building where she lived, or had lived had found out. Then as word got out that she’d been taken to the hospital, patrons from the bar decided to show their support to the young woman and brave the hospital to go see one of their own. Marie had been the one making the threat not at Kyle, like he’d thought but the slumlord, Bob Turner. Kyle was still trying to figure out the dynamics of the group and what their relationship to Maddy was.

“He had her stuff tossed right outta the winder, the slimy prick. Frank and me, we gots it all for her. Busted up all her purty pictures they did. Girl ain’t got but two pairs of them pants she wears and some nice shirts. Under wares a hanging from the fire escape…Just plain ain’t right the way he done her, nope ain’t right.” Marie had a captive audience in Kyle and was giving him all he wanted, and a lot of what he didn’t.

“You say this happened tonight?” If that was true and he had no doubt that it did, it seemed Maddy had had a busy day.

“Yeah, right ‘afore she comed to work I’d say. Frank’ll know, Frank,” she shouted.

“What time you thinkin Mad Hatter was by the building??” Kyle had already discovered that the poor Frank was asked a lot of questions but seldom if ever was given a chance to answer any of them. “Oh, yeah, it was right ‘afore. I remember her saying she’d had to go to work. Poor little bit.”

After making arrangements to have Duncan come by and get her things from Marie and Frank, Kyle slipped down to her room.

“I don’t think you should be trying to leave just yet Maddy, you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

He could hear the anger and pleading tone in Sara’s voice and feel her helplessness too.

He stepped into the room to see Sara trying to get a very weak looking Maddy to lie back down. Sara was trying her best not to hurt her and Kyle could see the strain of pain on Maddy’s face.

“Madison, I want you to get your little butt back in that bed before I have David come in here and handcuff you to the bed.” He’d tried to make it light hearted and in a joking manner, but her pain and weakness hit him like a wall as soon as he came into the room.

“You,” she snarled at him. “I want you to get away from here. I never want to see you again. You scared me. I could have died, you stupid pig.” Her voice was getting weaker, the fight going out of her and she was waning. He stepped closer to her, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to sit upright much longer. “I don’t want to…I’m so tired. You need to leave. I have to get to work.”

“Paul closed the bar. You’re friends are here to see you too. They want to come in and see you to assure themselves that you weren’t murdered by your ex-landlord.” She was messing around with her gown instead of listening to him. “Here, let me help you with that.”

She’d been struggling and had it all tangled up in the IV. His mouth watered at the sight of her exposed breast that she had inadvertently showed him trying to get herself untangled. Now was not the time he had to keep telling himself. Later, there would be plenty of time for that later. He had just gotten her snapped back together when she collapsed into him.

“I don’t feel so good. My head is all fuzzy and I feel like I’ve been drained dry. Did you do that?” She looked fuzzy too he thought, and cute. He wanted to lean down and kiss her until they were both fuzzy.

“No, I didn’t drain you, you cut yourself. Contrary to popular myth, a single vampire cannot drain a human in one sitting. There are two and a half gallons of blood, and the average stomach can only hold about half a gallon of liquid at one time. It would take three or four of us about two days to do that.” He’d babbled off facts to keep himself from picking her up and crushing her to him. Or better yet, him taking her home with him to heal her and care for himself.

He did pick her up though and put her back into the bed.

“That was way too much information, thank you very much. I’m only going to rest here for a minute,” she told him tiredly and laid back down. “I have things to do today, and I don’t want to slack off, I worked too hard to…”

Her voice had gotten weaker as she spoke until she just drifted off to sleep. He reached up to her forehead and touched her gently and put her into a much deeper, restful sleep. She could cuss him all she wanted later. In fact he’d love it if she did but right now he was in charge.

~~~

“I’ve been waiting for you my lovely. Yesss. You’ve been hiding from me, your true love.

I am angry with you. Yesss, angry indeed.”
The voice was back so was the room, only this time there was an odor, a smell of burnt something.

“Go away. I don’t know who you are, but I want you to go away.” Maddy had had enough of men making claims and demands on her.

“
I will come for you in two daysss, you will be ready then, your body to receive my
seedsss. A child, we will have many, but this one will be my ssson. I will wait no longer. You
were promised to me.”
He had said that before, she remembered that now.

“Your nuts, I wasn’t promised to anyone. And I won’t go with you in two days or two years. You’re just shit out of luck hiss boy, now scram.” Something to remember, she needed to remember something else.

The pain ripped through her like a thousand knives tearing at her skin and muscle. She felt her shoulder burn like a hot poker had been laid across it, so hot it seared into her skin and felt as if it would burn right through her. She screamed, and screamed, waking everyone in the bed one floor up and the other below her and all the patients on the same floor. The nurses came rushing into the room to see Kyle leaning over her with her hands above her head and his large body across her small petit one.

“Hurry, help me before she hurts herself,” she heard him shout. “Someone get that stupid thing off her before I yank it from the wall.”

Maddy had no idea what it was but she hoped it was the poker. Before she could ask, before she could gather enough strength to scream again she heard him say sleep and the darkness rushed up to claim her once again.

Maddy woke and looked around the room, trying to decide where she was and how she had gotten there. There were also strange people in the room with her. She tried to make out who they were when one of them spoke.

“We aren’t strange really as much as we are strangers. I’ve always hated that way of saying you don’t know someone when in fact you’re just saying they’re strange. I’m Elizabeth and this is my daughter Savannah. Melody, her daughter and my granddaughter will be along shortly. She had some last minute royal duties to perform and couldn’t get away.”

“Of course she did. And I only thought you were strange because you were sitting there looking at me like I’ve got six heads, when in fact I don’t.” Maddy felt as if she were Alice and had fallen down the rabbit hole.

“Oh that’s a good one considering. I so love Alice in Wonderland. I met the author, a Charles Lutwidge Dodgson some years ago, very strange man that one. He changed his name to write you know. How are you feeling otherwise?” The other woman, Savannah had asked, but Maddy felt that she already knew that.

“I would very much like it if you’d stop reading my mind, if that is what you’re doing.

That jackass Kyle doing that is what got me in here in the first place. Yelling at me, then saying as if it were nothing in the world, ‘I’m speaking to you telepathically’ like I’m fucking supposed to know that,” she flushed when she realized she was ranting at the strangers. But she couldn’t seem to stop. “Well it made me jump. Of course I should have been paying better attention, but I had had a pretty shitty day up until then and…who did you say was running behind again?”

She’d been on a tangent and the fact that someone had royal duties just registered with her.

“My granddaughter, Melody, she’s the Queen of magic. We thought you’d take our news better if the men were gone. She said she’s on her way; we just have to make sure you’re prepared for her coming in the room. Are you, prepared I mean?” Maddy could only nod. Either she was off her rocker, or these women were. She had a feeling they were as sane as they came.

“Thank you dear.” Savannah patted her on the head and covered Maddy’s eyes. “It can be a bit disconcerting the first time you see it, so I’ll help you out.”

When she was able to see again, there stood a beautiful woman dressed in a robe and crown. The robe was long and made to look like the earth, the colors fading from the ground up to the sky. The crown was very bejeweled with rubies, emeralds and diamonds all centered on a very ornate tree with apples and other fruits.

“Is that for my benefit, or do you have to where that all the time?” Maddy knew it was rude, the lady was some sort of queen or something, but she thought maybe if she played along for a while, they’d give her more of the drugs she was obviously taking.

“Yours,” she told her with a smile. “Too much?” Maddy nodded. She wasn’t sure what else to do. “Yeah, I thought so too. But Sara, she’s my cousin said you’d had a hard time of it and didn’t really believe in any of this, so I thought, what the hell.” And suddenly she was in jeans and a tee shirt. “Ah, much better. I’m Melody, Mistress of Light, Keeper of all Magic, yada, yada. I’m here to keep you company for awhile and to see if you’re human.”

“Okay, but just so you know I…hummm, I kinda already know what I am. Human. A nutty as a fruitcake human, but human all the same. And I need to get out of here. I have to meet with the bankers at eight in the morning with Mr. MacManus.” She started to rise, but was stopped by the handcuff at her unwrapped wrist and her ankle.