The Blood Talisman (22 page)

Selene cradled Alex’s head for the
whole car ride back to the plane. Their prospective night of fun
had ended as quickly as it had begun. Her goal had been
accomplished, but not in the manner that she had wanted it to be.
Once he awakened, she knew the guilt would set in and his
estrangement from her would prohibit the progress she felt she’d
made with him. He would have nobody to blame but her.

She cleaned him up as best she could,
and pulled a t-shirt out of his book bag to dress him with. He
started to come to as they pulled into the airport. He squirmed a
bit and moaned out Selene’s name. She felt this was a good sign.
Maybe he wouldn’t blame her after all.

“I’m right here. We are back at the
airport. You can rest on the plane,” she whispered to him
tenderly.

He moaned and shook his head yes. He
blinked his eyes and attempted to sit up in his seat. She helped
him up but he immediately pulled away from her. He rubbed his face
with both hands. He felt powerful again. He felt like he had been
through a night of partying but had woke up ready to face the world
instead of being in a hung-over stupor. He had been in a cloud for
the past few days and it felt nice to see things more
clearly.

He could hear things better again. His
smell perception was wonderful, yet unpleasant. Selene smelled
heavenly but John smelled like he hadn’t bathed in days. Everything
was bright again. Even the stars in the night sky glowed so
brightly they made him flinch. Selene stared at him with a worried
gleam in her eye. He took her hand and kissed it, banishing her
wary look.

Her doubts of him blaming her were
immediately flushed away. She smiled a crooked smile at him and he
squeezed his grip tighter then released it. She dropped her hands
back in her lap. He stared out at the night’s sky through the
window of the car door until it opened. John stood on the other
side, holding the door for him.

He climbed out of the car, quickly
followed by Selene. They held hands as they walked into the airport
terminal. Ram and his crew were waiting patiently inside next to
the loading ramp. They all boarded the plane with not so much as a
word to each other.

Alex buckled himself in right next to
Selene. She smiled at him. He had finally come back to her. She
wondered why his feelings of guilt weren’t displaying on his
handsome face.

“Are you okay?” she asked
him.

“Of course, never better,” he
responded.

“Do you remember what
happened?”

“Yes, we made out on the beach and
rekindled some feelings. Undoubtedly they are the right feelings,
because I couldn’t be better.”

He turned and looked back at Ram who
was cautiously watching Alex’s every move. He quickly turned his
gaze elsewhere when Alex looked at him.

“You got a problem?” Alex asked to
him.

Ram looked back at him and pointed at
himself. “Me?” he questioned.

“Yea. You’ve been watching me like a
hawk since I’ve been back on this plane,” Alex said.

Ram shook his head no but stood up from
his seat and walked towards them both. He placed his hand on the
back of Alex’s seat and leaned in to talk to them.

“So where are we going to Selene?” he
asked.

“Greece. I told you already,” she
answered.

“No, you said Rome.”

“No I didn’t,” she argued.

“Selene, you’re a horrible liar. Come
with me.” He held out a hand for her to take. Alex grabbed Ram’s
wrist tightly as his eyes turned yellow with rage. Ram’s face
darkened. “Don’t go there, wolf.”

John stood up from his seat and placed
the tranquilizer gun to Alex’s neck. Alex reluctantly released his
grip and Ram grabbed Selene up by the arm, pulling her to the back
of the plane. Alex turned to watch, ignoring the gun at his
neck.

She repeatedly attempted to release his
grip from her but she would need to use magic to do so. He was just
too strong physically. His blood buffet had made him extremely
strong. She boiled the skin on his hand but it didn’t faze him. He
thrust her down onto the floor of the plane and rubbed his hand
gently. She landed with a thump on the hardened floor.

“Did you know that vampire blood can do
strange things to witches?” he asked, as he pulled one sleeve
midway up his arm. “It does things to your memories and your
abilities. Your brother Sol taught me that. You see, the love of
his life was a member of my little community so we got very well
acquainted over the years they shared the happiness that you took
from them.”

He took a silver blade from his pocket
and cut his wrist open to let a little blood trickle out. One of
the other vampires held her head back against the floor of the
plane and forced her mouth open. The warm, red substance dripped
slowly into her mouth. She carried on attempting to boil his hands
off of her.

He released his grip over her and she
turned away from the dripping arm. He covered it up and helped her
up from the floor.

“Now tell me. Where is your father?” He
stared deep into her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she hissed at
him.

“Yes, you do. Show me through your
eyes,” he said.

Suddenly her eyes rolled into the back
of her head until nothing but the whites showed and a map appeared
on them. It quickly narrowed down to a graveyard with monumental
tombstones. Angels and gargoyles filled the landscape. Her vision
stopped at a gothic mausoleum with the word ‘Neighbor’ at the
top.

“I’ve seen this before. It looks like
it’s in the U.S. Why would he be there? It’s too easy,” Ram
frowned.

Selene’s eyes rolled back down and the
graveyard was gone. Ram’s face was one of confusion.

“What? What did you see?” she asked him
frantically.

“Either he’s dead already or he is in a
graveyard,” he said.

Ram stood up from in front of her and
pulled his gun. He aimed quickly and pulled the trigger at one of
his vampire cronies, hitting him between the eyes. He fell to the
floor, dead as a doornail.

“Well, he’s definitely not dead. That’s
for sure, or that vampire would still be alive.” He placed his gun
back into its holster. “John, clean that up,” he
ordered.

John complied and hoisted the dead
vampire up on his shoulders and toted him to the back of the
plane.

Ram leaned back down to Selene and
said, “So where are we going then? Where’s that
graveyard?”

“He has to be where Mom is buried.
That’s the only graveyard where he would be.”

“And where is it?”

“Mississippi. My home.”

“Then that’s where we will go. That
wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

Ram took his place at the back of the
plane and Alex ran over to help Selene up off of the floor of the
plane. She wiped the blood from her lips and Alex gave Ram the evil
eye. They took their spots near the front. After being buckled in,
their plane was off into the air.

“Are you okay?” Alex asked.

“I will be,” she responded.

Tears welled in her eyes and Alex
caressed her cheek with his thumb. Her face fell into his hand and
then onto his shoulder. He placed his arm around her and stared
forward.

He could hear rustling behind him and
whispering. He focused harder to attempt to hear what they were
saying.

“Do you think he knows it was you that
sent that man out for him to feed on?” John whispered into Ram’s
ear.

“I don’t think he remembers anything.
Let’s keep it that way. It’s more interesting,” Ram whispered in
return.

Alex became furious at this. The wolf
within was difficult to keep under control but he held Selene
tighter and attempted to focus on her. His anger would get the
better of him if he didn’t.

He closed his eyes to rest. He thought
about Selene and Amalia. They were who he needed to focus on to get
the anger out of his thoughts. It wouldn’t be very difficult at all
for him to rip Ram’s throat right off his shoulders but that would
not solve anything. Just more death and more murder and more guilt
for him to feel. It didn’t keep him from feeling that Ram deserved
it.

His angry thoughts soon drifted away
and his memory of feeding on the man at the beach filled his
dreams. He sensed that Selene had watched it all. Every bone
cracking and every blood splatter, she had watched it all in
horror. His breathing got heavy and his moans became worrisome.
They awoke Selene and she roused him from his realistic
nightmare.

The sun was rising as the plane landed
back in the States.

“I remember,” he said.

“The beach?” she asked
cautiously.

He shook his head yes. She grabbed his
chin and turned his face to hers. “It’s okay. You needed it and you
couldn’t help it.”

“It was Ram. He made this all happen,”
he whispered.

“What do you mean? The guy we thought
committed suicide on the beach?”

“I heard them talking about it earlier.
He and John planned this. They set me up to kill that
guy.”

“After John told us everything he had
been put through at the hands of Ram? I think you need someone to
blame, but there is nobody to blame here. It’s part of the wolf’s
nature to want to feed.”

“So you don’t believe me?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” She
defended her response.

He got up and walked to the back of the
plane and sat across from Ram. Selene sighed in frustration and
yelled out, “Alex!” at him. It did no good. He ignored her like a
child and crossed his arms in defiance.

Ram watched them as they avoided
interaction. He smiled and sat, his head back against his seat. He
had accomplished what he intended.

Chapter 26

Sol’s shoes glided across the hospital
floor with pep in each step. He hummed a 1950s’ tune underneath his
breath as he looked throughout the hospital basement for Ram. He
stopped short of a few doctors standing outside of a room where a
sick woman lay. They were discussing how difficult her situation
was before they scurried away to other business. Ram took the
opportunity to look in on the sick woman.

A nurse sitting near her sick bed stood
up and said, “Sir, you can’t be...”

Sol raised his hand to her and she
stopped speaking and sat back down. He had quelled her urgency with
the motion of his hand. He stood over the sick woman and stared
down at her as she clung to life.

“
Who is this woman?” he
asked.

The nurse stared at him, unable to
answer.

“
You may speak now. Just
don’t tell me to go.”

“Her name is Amalia Jacobs and she is
here because Ram has made her a part of his vampire clan. She bit
one of the immortal witches and it seems their blood is poison to
vampires. She’s clinging to life. Ram is present out somewhere with
the witch she bit to find some sort of spell or necklace or
something of the sort to bring her back to life.”

“Yes, our immortal blood is sacred,”
nodded Sol. “I don’t understand this Amalia’s importance, though.
There must be more to this story. My sister cannot have the
talisman. I must speak with Administration. Do you know where I can
find their office?”

“They usually meet in the conference
room at the end of the hall, but beyond that I don’t have a clue
where you’d find them.”

“You mustn’t tell anyone I’ve been
here. More particularly…” He raised his hand and turned it
sideways. Her neck snapped and her body fell from the chair onto
the floor.

He left the room and searched through
the basement for offices, but found the place in disarray. He
wondered if Administration had abandoned Ram and his idea of a
hospital for blood purposes. Sol found it to be a brilliant
resource for the vampire community, but Administration had never
liked the idea of that much responsibility. Most of them were young
and wanted to live vicariously with their powers. Ram had chosen
the high road, and most of the other vampire bloodlines refused to
follow rules, much less drain people for a little blood rather than
for every drop.

“Are you lost Sol?” a female voice said
from behind him.

He smiled before turning around to see
one of the female members of Administration standing before him.
She looked like a little girl in a business suit. She couldn’t have
been older than twenty yet she carried herself confidently as
though she was thirty. Her long brown hair cascaded to below her
shoulders and her breasts were perky enough to make a priest look
twice. She smiled with pearly white teeth that hinted at evil with
her youthful-looking fangs.

“I was looking for a member of
Administration. You’ll do. What’s Ram doing with a sick vampire,
and why is it so important for him to join forces with my sister to
help him find the talisman? I thought we had a truce.”