Alone (32 page)

She looked at the ground, somehow
ashamed. “You don’t want to know.”

“
But do you think she’s gone? Did
you kill her?”

Serenity shook her head. “I doubt it, but
she might be contained for a while. There’s nowhere to hide at the
bottom of the pipe and once the sun comes up, she’ll never be able
to harm anyone again.”

With her words, they both glanced at the
sky. The storm clouds continued to gather and many hours would pass
before daylight came again. From behind them, James groaned and
stirred to a semi-conscious state.

Serenity swallowed, a sudden lump in her
throat. She knew what they had agreed; once she was safe Sebastian
would leave.

“
It’s time for you to go, isn’t
it?”

He nodded and reached over, pulling her
into his arms. She clung to him as though her life depended on it,
her face buried against his neck, trying to hold back the tears.
Serenity couldn’t say goodbye to him, she just couldn’t. Her heart
would surely break.

“
Please...” she managed. Her
tears were wet against his skin and she tasted salt, but Serenity
couldn’t finish her sentence.

Please don’t leave
me
.

Carefully, Sebastian untangled himself
from her arms, pulling her in front of him. He stared at her for
what felt like a lifetime and then lowered his face to hers,
kissing her with intensity like she’d never experienced before.
Tears poured down her cheeks and he kissed them away.

“
You’re safe now,” he said,
kissing her face. “No one can hurt you.”

“
You can,” she said. “You
can still hurt me.”

He shook his head. “Only if I
stay.”

“
No! You’re hurting me by
leaving!”

“
I have no choice, Serenity.
Remember what we agreed? I will be out there, loving you, and that
will never change. You can go through your life knowing you have
what most people never find—love for the rest of time.”

“
That’s not enough,” she
sobbed.

James moved again, quickly regaining
consciousness.

“
It’ll be easier for you if you
don’t have to explain me to him,” said Sebastian. “I think you’ve
got enough to explain already.”

“
I don’t think anyone is going to
believe what I say.”

“
You’ll make them,” he said. He
reached out and touched her cheek. “I have to go.”

This time she couldn’t argue. She weakened
in his arms, but he held her up and kissed her one last time.
Serenity closed her eyes, trying to commit the sensation to memory.
Her heart breaking, she suddenly realized only air met her
embrace.

Sebastian
was gone.

A wail of anguish escaped her throat
and she fell to the ground, sobbing into her hands.

Her only love was gone.

“
Serenity?” a tentative voice
called
to
her, and she looked up, heart filled with the hope that Sebastian
had come back. Instead, James Bently stood before her,
shell-shocked, but very much alive. In her pain, she’d forgotten
him.

“
Are you okay?” he
asked.

She wanted to say no, she would rather be
dead than forced to live without the one person who had ever loved
her, but he wouldn’t understand. No one would ever
understand.

“
My leg,” she managed. “I’ve
hurt my leg and I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“
Don’t move,” he instructed
her. “I’ll help you up.”

James crouched to help Serenity to her
feet, but before he did, she saw a flash of memory cross his
features.

“
What about that woman? Is she
gone?”

Serenity nodded. “Yes, I think
so.”

H
is shoulders sagged in relief. James
gathered his arms around her and lifted Serenity to her feet.
Shards of pain speared up through her leg, into her hip and she
winced. The events of the last twenty-four hours had left her weak
and exhausted and Serenity allowed James to support her.

“
Are you sure you’re okay?” he
asked again.

She nodded and saw the dark bruise
spreading across one side of his face and the slick of blood
wetting his hair.

“
You’re hurt,” she said, reaching
out to touch his face, but he jolted away.

“
I’ll live, but I think
you’ve got some explaining to do.”

“
I thought so.”

“
What the hell was that thing?”
he said. “I shot her three times and it didn’t even slow her down.
What the hell was she?”

“
You don’t want to
know.”

“
I do, Serenity, and you’re going
to tell me.”

Serenity
sighed. She didn’t want to get into a
debate about what was or wasn’t real.

“
She was a vampire. That’s
why the bullets didn’t hurt her.”

He blinked once. “That’s crazy. How am I
supposed to believe such a thing?”

“
Believe it,” she said, suddenly
discovering she
wanted him to believe. “What other choice do you
have?”

As they stood, huddled together,
trying to regain their strength and figure out what to do next,
Serenity was sure they were alone.

Then she felt his breath against the back
of her neck and his words were so soft they could have been the
wind whispering to her. But she knew it was Sebastian, telling her
goodbye.

“
I love you,” he whispered.
“I will always love you.”

Then he was gone.

Serenity clutched his words to her
heart.

“
Come on,” James said,
unaware of what had just happened. “We need to get you to a
hospital.”

Serenity shook her head. “Not yet. If you
want to be able to sleep without seeing the vampire in your dreams,
we have to wait.”

James frowned, “What for?”

“
Daylight.”

He paused, his natural instinct to argue
with her, but then he must have remembered what he’d seen, and
nodded.

“
Okay,” he said. “We
wait.”

The two of them sat down on the deck
of the pier and huddled together, trying to keep warm, waiting for
the sky to fade from the deep black of night to a dark indigo
blue.

As the hours passed, Serenity dozed. A
thousand times she jerked awake, certain she heard the sound of
nails scratching up the inside of the steel pipe, or a distant and
hollow scream of fury, but each time she was wrong.

When eventually the night began to turn to
day, James carried Serenity to his patrol car, taking her to
safety.

As they reached the vehicle and the sun
mounted the horizon, Serenity knew the scream of agony and rage
drifting up from the bottom of the pipe was no longer her
imagination.

Chapter Twenty-four

The following weeks and
months
were
hard; sometimes impossibly so.

Unable to stand the thought of staying in
the duplex, Serenity used what little money she had to rent a small
apartment on the other side of the city. She had been lucky and
found tenants for her place, so she didn’t need to worry about
money for the moment.

Her heart, however, was
broken.

For many weeks, she spent most of her time
lying on the strange bed in the unfamiliar apartment, crying until
her chest and head hurt—until every part of her hurt—and dulled the
pain in her heart. She tortured herself by reliving every moment
spent with Sebastian, of how his skin tasted, how she felt when he
held her in his arms, the touch of his skin against her lips. Even
worse, she imagined him with someone else. She convinced herself
Sebastian hadn’t meant the things he’d said, that everything had
been a lie.

On a particularly bad day, she caught a
cab to Sebastian’s house in the hills, hoping to catch a sight of
him, but the big wrought iron gates she’d once fought to get out of
were closed with a thick chain and bolted shut.

He wasn’t there and she doubted he
would ever return.

As the weeks passed, the pain
dulled.

She would never have a normal life; it was
impossible with the knowledge she now lived with. Serenity had been
exposed to a part of life meant to be hidden from humanity. She
doubted she would ever see life in a normal way again.

Serenity missed him every single day. To
know he was out there somewhere, doing whatever he needed to
survive, or even worse, having met someone else, tore her apart. On
good days, she liked to think of him thinking of her, that they
were still connected; her guardian angel in demon form.

Numerous times, Serenity thought
she spotted him;
the back of his head in a crowd, or his face from a car
window. Each time her heart raced, but the person was never
him.

He’d promised her he wouldn’t be around,
he didn’t want to haunt her as he had his wife and family, and
Sebastian wanted Serenity to get on with her life. His words
couldn’t stop her from hoping she would see him again.

James Bently had been a constant figure in
her life since Sebastian’s departure. He dropped in on her almost
every day, bringing her grocery bags of fresh bread and milk, and
takeout cups of hot soup. His visits finally made her aware of her
unwashed state and embarrassed her enough to force her into the
shower, to wash her hair and brush her teeth.

Though they hadn’t spoken about what
happened that day, like Sebastian, James helped make things
disappear.

He talked the owner of the BMW into
dropping the charges of theft and claimed the ‘woman’ who accused
Jackson of rape had retracted her statement. Apparently, victims of
assault often withdrew charges; something Serenity knew all about.
On this occasion though, things worked in her favor and she was
finally free to live her life without repercussions.

Of course, in her heart things weren’t
wiped clean so easily.

At night, alone, her memories haunted her
and she dreamed.

Serenity
dreamed of being a child, of her
mother stroking her hair and putting her to bed. She imagined
waking up alone, searching the house to discover it empty, her
mother abandoning her in favor of yet another party.

An overwhelming loneliness pervaded
Serenity’s subconscious.

She dreamed of Jackson hitting her, of
her hitting him back. She dreamed of violence and anger and
rage.

And she dreamed of Sebastian; raw, sexual
dreams, where he penetrated her with his fingers, his penis, his
tongue. Serenity came in her sleep, crying out in pain and
pleasure. She dreamed of him leaving and she cried, waking to find
the pillow saturated beneath her face.

The dreams were so vivid she struggled to
separate them from reality.

When she woke, shaking and sweating in the
morning light, Serenity had to piece her life back together again,
to pick apart which of her memories were dreams and which were
real. If she dreamed of Sebastian, she closed her eyes again,
desperately trying to get back to the place where he was real to
her.

Gradually, the dreams began to fade and
with them her memories of Sebastian.

Serenity
was finally accepting her identity.
She would have the life Sebastian wanted for her. But she was still
heartbroken and couldn’t imagine having a normal life; meeting
someone, getting married, having a family of her own, but she dealt
with it. Serenity was her own person now. She’d stood up for
herself. Sebastian had been right; no one else could save her, she
needed to do that for herself.

When James Bently finally asked her out
for dinner, she accepted.

Serenity struggled
to think of him as
anything more than a friend. James was a good man, and she was an
idiot for overlooking him. He could have been the happy ending
Sebastian wanted for her, but it was impossible for her to imagine
him as anything else. She knew he wanted more—saw it in the awkward
way he held a door open for her or accidently brushed her hand—yet
with him she felt guilty. Guilty for tricking him and what she’d
put him through. The emotion also came from her being with another
man when there was only one person she wanted.

She told James exactly how she felt and he
accepted it with a grace and humility that made her heart
melt.

Perhaps
he would be her happy ending, but in
her heart she knew it would always be Sebastian. Time would never
change that. Maybe she would see Sebastian again, maybe not, but
she would always hold his love in her heart.

Things were different now. Serenity was
different. She had finally learned how to be alone, to take care of
herself and stand on her own two feet.

In the end, Sebastian had taught her
independence. Madeline had taught her courage. Somehow, even
Jackson had taught her how strong she could be.