The Blood Talisman (18 page)

Ram stopped a little further along and
unlocked a different door. Selene stared at him in confusion as he
waved his hand for her to enter.

“Come in… please,” Ram said.

“This isn’t the right room. It’s over
there.” Selene pointed across the way.

“I must show you something
first.”

Selene rolled her eyes at him but
walked in, to appease him. It was a room with wall to wall monitors
but nobody sat in front of them. Ram’s guards seem to be dwindling
away as her stay became longer. She guessed it was difficult for
him to keep them, knowing how many evil games he had played up to
this point with her and Alex.

Ram locked the door behind them. This
made Selene even more nervous. She now knew he couldn’t kill her,
but there was no telling what kind of emotional torture she might
have to endure.

He pointed for her to look at a small
screen towards the middle of the array. It was Alex leaning over
Amalia as she lay unmoving in bed. He was caressing her hand
lovingly and occasionally stroking her face.

“Why are you showing me this?” Selene
asked.

“Because you need to see what she means
to him. If you truly care about him, this big decision that you
have to make doesn’t seem so large. Do you really want to hurt him
that way?”

“I already know how much he loves her.
It doesn’t make my decision easier because this just proves that he
doesn’t love me with his whole heart. I’m not even sure if I should
be here anymore.”

Ram clicked the screen off and leaned
against the monitors.

“Do you think that this is easy for me?
I care for her too. She watched Ember die. Ember was my wife and…”
He trailed off. He paced across the small room a few times and
stopped suddenly to finish saying, “I have grown fond of Amalia. I
want her to live and be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for all
vampires.”

Selene looked down at her hands as she
picked at a torn cuticle on her index finger. She hadn’t thought of
it like that. She had no idea that loving someone could be so
complicated.

“I didn’t know you felt that way,” she
said.

Ram crossed his arms. His navy blue
dress shirt pulled tight against the muscular outline of his
biceps.

“I don’t express my emotions to
everyone. I have a reputation to keep.”

He smiled coyly and Selene returned the
favor with her own uncomfortable smile.

“I still can’t kill my father. He is
really all the family that I have left,” she said. “Sol doesn’t
count.”

“You have a new family. It may be a bit
dysfunctional but it is a family nonetheless. A family is not
necessarily blood. It’s the people you love and who love you in
return. Alex loves you. He just can’t show you right
now.”

“Let’s get one thing straight,” frowned
Selene. “A few flirtatious smiles and some heartfelt banter don’t
make you my family. You and your minions helped my brother destroy
my sister. That doesn’t go away. I will never forgive you for that.
I will never forgive for destroying my family and setting in motion
something that has been prevented for centuries.”

Selene stood up to exit the room. She
jiggled the locked handle but Ram stopped her short. His face sat
within inches of hers and it intimidated her. She could feel his
vampiric breath on her neck. It made her nauseous.

“How about this then. You either help
us find and kill Hyperion or I will kill everyone on the first
floor of this hospital while I make you watch. I will kill as many
humans as I need to until I get you to do what I need you to do,”
he threatened.

“I knew the evil bastard within lurked
somewhere,” she sighed. “I’ll do it. I’ll help you find
him.”

“And when we do?”

“I’ll do it. I will kill my father to
spare lives but when I do… expect no mercy from me.”

She looked straight ahead at the door.
Tears of anger welled within her eyes. He smelled along her
neckline and pushed her hair back with his nose. She could feel his
lips on her neck and she wanted to vomit.

“Let me go to him,” she
said.

Ram released his hand from the door,
unlocked it and she jerked it open and left. He crossed his arms
again and smiled, satisfied with her response.

Chapter 21

Selene silently slipped into Amalia’s
room. Alex glanced over to her and then focused his attention back
onto Amalia. She watched him as he continuously stroked her
forehead and her arm. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek
then stood up from the bed. He rubbed his weary face and motioned
for Selene to step outside of the room with him.

Once outside, he reached out and pulled
her into a tight embrace. She felt shocked and didn’t hug back
immediately, but then she sank her face into his shoulder and
stroked his back with her fingertips. He pulled away from her and
looked deep into her eyes.

“I am so sorry about before. I don’t
agree with Ram. I just need to deal with what fate has given me. I
am losing my wife and my heart is breaking but at least I have
you,” he said.

“I love you. I only want to make you
happy,” she said.

He kissed her passionately. She felt
the blood rushing to her cheeks. She felt aroused. He stroked her
face in the same manner that he’d stroked Amalia’s face only a few
moments before. Again he pulled away and stared into her eyes. It
felt like he was reaching into her soul and dancing with it. He
kicked his nose to hers and she giggled.

“I love you too,” he whispered into her
ear.

“That wolf is really messing with your
emotions. First it’s her, then it’s me, and then it’s her again and
now me again. Alex, your indecisiveness is making my head
spin.”

“It’s inexplicable. One minute I want
to kill and the next minute the thought of doing makes me nauseous.
All this stress. Everything here. I can’t focus on what is good and
what is not.”

She took his face into her hands and
said, “You have the strength to not let this change you. You just
need to find it.”

He pulled her hands from him and said,
“It’s easier said than done. Pain changes people.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

He kissed her cheek softly and looked
into her eyes. With each glance she fell deeper and deeper in love
with him. She rubbed the stubble on his face softly. It prickled
her fingers and she smiled.

“You need to feed and keep your
strength up. Would you like for me to help you like I did before?”
she asked.

“It’s okay. Ram had some food sent in
for me while you were gone.”

“I don’t trust him. You know there’s a
camera in that room?”

“In there, where Amalia is?”

“Yes, in there where we…” Her words
trailed off.

“Oh my God. That’s how she knew. She
watched us.”

“No wonder she was so upset. It’s one
thing to know we did it but it’s another completely different thing
to watch it live on camera.”

“That sick fucker,” Alex grunted
angrily.

Alex felt his temper rising within. He
had learned to control it rather well but this new tidbit of
information proved to be quite difficult in containing the wolf
within. His eyes turned a golden yellow and pulsated
black.

Selene grabbed his face with both of
her hands. The tenderness in her touch calmed him. He removed her
hands from his face and held them tightly in his own.

“Where is he?” he asked.

“He’s across the hall over there.
There’s a monitoring room,” she answered.

He strode across the hall and twisted
the doorknob to the monitoring room. It was locked and Alex pounded
on the door.

“Open this door or I will tear it
down.”

Ram opened the door and leaned casually
against the doorjamb.

“We don’t want that to happen. You’ve
already caused enough damage to this place,” Ram said.

Alex grabbed him up by his
shirt.

“Why did you have to show Amalia our
night together?”

“Take your hands off of me and I will
explain.”

Alex obliged reluctantly and placed Ram
back to the ground, shirt intact. Ram unwrinkled it with his hands
and stepped back away from him.

“She needed to know the truth. You
wanted to be with another woman. You would have never admitted that
to her and you know it.” He continued to straighten his clothes
with his manicured hands.

“You don’t know me. Don’t presume that
I would not have been honest with my wife.”

“I may not know
you
but I know your type.
All you wolves are the same. Quick to react and slow to take blame
for their mistakes. You all let your emotions run amuck. No control
at all.”

“You don’t know anything about me!!”
Alex yelled.

He picked Ram up and threw him against
one row of monitors, cracking their screens like eggs. Ram quickly
stood up and punched Alex in the face and slammed him against
another set of monitors. One monitor came out of its shell and hit
the ground. Alex fell to the floor. Ram had proved to be stronger
than Alex thought. Ram kicked him in the side.

“Stop it!” Selene yelled out to them
both as she stood and watched from the doorway.

Ram ignored her cries of despair and
kicked Alex again and again. He leaned down to Alex, looking over
him like a predator his prey.

“If I could, I would eat you for
dinner, wolf,” he said to Alex, taunting him.

Alex lay there defenseless. He had been
attacked so quickly and so fiercely that he had no time to change
into anything remotely close to matching the power that Ram
portrayed. Ram stood up and exited the room, hitting Selene’s
shoulder as he passed by her. Selene rushed into the room and
rubbed Alex’s back. She tried to help him stand but he pulled his
arm out of her grip and remained on the floor.

“Why didn’t you change?” Selene asked
him.

“I don’t know. I tried but, I
couldn’t,” Alex gasped.

“You’re not strong. It’s like he has
intentionally been feeding you stuff that will make you
weak.”

Selene pushed his hair behind his ears
and wiped a small patch of blood from the side of his
face.

“I think… he broke… a rib… or two,”
Alex panted.

“C’mon, let me take you somewhere to
let you get something to eat.”

She reached for his arm again and he
resisted her help once more.

“I can’t… I have to… stay
here.”

“Why? I thought you had let go of
her.”

“She’s still… wife… I have
to.”

Selene rolled her eyes unbeknownst to
Alex.

The thought of a good fresh kill was
very appetizing and difficult for Alex to resist but he had his
priorities. He felt like he needed to be there to at least say
goodbye to Amalia. He had already broken so many of their vows that
being there while she was sick was an easy one for him to keep, and
at least he could keep that one.

“Well, I’m not going to sit here and
watch you kill yourself. You have to feed or you will become too
weak. Ram’s an ass and he’s going to do whatever it takes to get
what he wants from all of us. He knows that he has us all by the
metaphorical balls, but I won’t let him get away with
it.”

Selene headed for the door.

“Wait!” Alex said, stopping her in her
tracks.

She turned back to look at him. He lay
propped against the cabinet that barely contained the monitors
above his head. He held one arm over his ribs and the other against
the floor, seemingly holding his whole body up. Glass surrounded
his fingertips, and cords and black pieces of plastic were
scattered across the floor. His face was bloody and his hair was a
mess. His eyes still seemed puppy-doggish, wanting love, and the
man he once was seemed to be fading before her.

“I’m going to confront him. I’m a big
girl,” she said.

“I know… just… be careful.”

She walked over to him and leaned down
to his face. She gave him a long kiss on the lips and left the
room.

Alex pulled himself up off the floor
and turned a knocked-over chair back upright. He sat in it softly
and breathed in pain with every breath. He thought about his life
and how far he had come to this point. He never knew what it was
like to love two women at the same time, and he wouldn’t wish the
feeling on anyone. It felt like his heart was completely two
separate halves.

Every time he was with Amalia it felt
like home. He felt normal and he felt safe. Even though she
couldn’t talk to him now, it still felt like that. Her beautiful
brown hair always fluffy and her tan skin always smooth.

Selene, on the other hand, was smart
and playful. She fulfilled his life in a way that Amalia never
could. She felt like love and someone that he could protect and
care for. Her kind words and her nurturing spirit made him feel
alive and in control. Her loving touch sent chills down his spine
with every fingertip. He longed for her touch every time they were
close to each other.