Blood, Body and Mind (6 page)

“
Hurt how, Sara? Let me in, I need to see you.”

He heard a pleading tone in his voice because he realized he really did need to see her. He wasn’t sure if it was because he wanted to strangle her or kiss her senseless. Either way, he needed the door open. He was getting the barest whiff of her now, the calla lilies and honey that seemed to be her smell to him. He drew in a deeper breath, opening his mouth so as to get the taste of her on his tongue. And despite his not wanting a mate, all he could think was,
mine.

Aaron was nearly at the door-breaking point when he felt a presence behind him. He turned and saw April, and she had Duncan with her. Neither looked very happy.

“
My lord, what’s the matter?” April asked him. There was a tone there. He could hear it, but could not for the life of him understand it.

“
Sara said she hurts. She won’t open the door. Damn stubborn girl. She’d rather stay in there and hurt instead of letting someone help her. Are all women like this?” He turned toward the door again and hit it hard with his fist. “I won’t have it, you hear me, Sara? I won’t have it!”

“
The whole house can hear you, you arrogant ass. I swear to...” She sobbed and he felt it all the way into his soul. “Will you fucking go away? I just wanna sit here. Why are you doing this to me?”

Maybe
, he thought,
if I piss her off enough, she will come out to me.

“
Me? I’m not doing anything. Yet, anyway. But as soon as I can, I’m gonna paddle your ass but good. Now, open this door.”

He stepped back slightly and started to press his strength against the frame when April pecked him on the shoulder. He moved over to allow her to try. But paddling Sara’s butt was sounding better and better all the time.

“
Sara, honey, it’s April. Will you open the door, please? You’ve worried us all quite enough.”

“
What’s going on?” Demetrius asked as he, too, made his way in the room.

Just great,
he thought,
Now all they needed was—

“
Hello, everyone. Are we having a party up here then?” Colin Larimore, Aaron’s best friend since the late nineteen hundreds, crowded into the room.

Aaron, still standing close to the door, heard her say, “For the love of St. Peter, is there, oh, I don’t know, maybe a gardener or two who isn’t in here we can bring in? I’m pretty sure that there are quite a few more people you can cram in this room to witness my ongoing humiliation. Why did I even get out of the stupid plane?”

Aaron laughed. He had not laughed this much in years. “No, everyone is here, love. Now, will you please open the door for us?”

Aaron could hear her moving around. Hopefully, she was coming to the door, because he was not going to be able to stay still for much longer. He stepped back just as he heard the lock disengage.

“
I didn’t bring my clothes in, so all I have is a towel. I don’t want any comments from you,” he felt her whisper through his mind.

Every time she did that, he was surprised. The only time two people of his kind could communicate through mental communication was when they had exchanged blood or had sex. They had done neither, yet.

“
I’ll keep quiet, I promise. Now, open the door and come out here before I come in there and get you.”

He hoped that it was a very large towel. He wasn’t sure he could handle anything less than a thick comforter. The thought of what she may or may not have under the towel was making him hard. He did not want her to see him like this, especially with a room full of people. No, a small towel, or better yet, no towel, was better left to when they were alone.

When the door pulled open, there she stood. His breath caught and he stilled. The towel was not big enough, he decided as soon as he saw all that creamy skin. She was beautiful, simply...
What the fuck?
he thought as he looked at her reflection in the mirror behind her, and stepped closer to her. It was not the sight of her wrapped in one of his towels, God knew that alone was enough, but she had been beaten, and badly. Her back was covered in bruises from neck to what he could see of her legs. When she turned and looked over her shoulder, their eyes caught in the mirror. He knew in that moment she realized he could see what she had been trying to hide. When she took one, then a second step back, he snapped.

“
No. Don’t move back. Turn around, Sara. Turn around and let me see.” Anger made his voice hard, and he knew he was frightening her, but right now he could not help it.

“
It’s all right, really. That isn’t what hurts. Not now, anyway. I’m fine, Aaron. I’ll...I need to get dressed. If you would all just step...” She tried to step back and close the door in his face.

“
Turn around, Sara. Now.” He took another step toward her and felt his fangs drop in anger. His anger was turning him, his dark side was showing, and his beast was rising.

Aaron needed to make her understand it was not her he was angry at, but at the person who had done this to her.
Mine,
his mind screamed at him, and he wanted to hurt whoever was responsible.

Aaron growled to Duncan to get them out, all of them out. He too had caught the horrific details in the mirror, Aaron saw. As Duncan turned to usher the group away, he noticed April pale and Demetrius’ own anger pulse through the room. It seemed everyone now knew the extent of her injuries.

“
I’ll not leave just yet, Duncan, old man. Something is going on and I want to hang out for a bit. You understand?” Aaron heard Colin say to Duncan.

“
Colin, go with Duncan please. I’ll deal with this. I’ll explain when I come down shortly.” Aaron did not take his eyes off Sara. She had backed all the way into the bathroom. Now she was standing against the far wall.

Aaron knew that Colin would not go far. The two had become fast friends during the seventeenth century when a still human Colin had taken a beating for a young woman who had stolen bread for her small child. It had touched something human in the vampire’s soul. Colin near death, Aaron had offered him eternal life in exchange for him helping to serve and protect the then Master of the Realm, a respectable vampire by the name of Vald deMorass.

Aaron was beyond caring what anyone said or did now; all he could think about was this badly beaten person in front of him. And how much he needed to heal her, to touch her, and Christ, he needed to taste her.

“
Duncan, I want you to call Thomas Reilly, and have him get over here right now.”

“
Yes, my lord. I’ll call him immediately. Sire? Is there...I mean...”
Poor Duncan,
he thought. He was as lost as Aaron was.

“
No, Duncan, I’ll take care of her. Just call Thomas for me please. Tell him to hurry.” The door clicking closed resounded through the room.

“
No, please, don’t do this. I’m used to this. It’s fine, really. I’m okay, much better in fact. It’s not what you think, honestly. I want to go. You can’t make me stay. I need to go. I can’t let him find me here. There’s too much at stake. Just, I’m begging you to give me my clothes and I’ll go away. He’ll kill you. Please?”

Aaron watched as tears streamed down her face. His first instinct was to let her go, anything to stop her crying. But he could not.

“
I think someone has beaten you, love, that’s what I think.” He moved closer as he spoke until she cringed against the wall. “Sara, honey, turn around and let me see the extent of your injuries. I won’t touch you, but I need to look at them.”

She started shaking her head at him. “Okay, so it is what you think. Why? What can you do? Can you make the hurt go away? I want to go now. You have no rights over me, do you hear me? I want to go away from here.”

She stiffened suddenly and he jerked around to defend her. Anger boiled into the room from the man he’d forgotten about. Colin.

“
Who will kill him? Aaron, what’s going on?”

He hid the grin that fought hard to turn into a laugh at the sight of Colin standing there. Colin was holding his broadsword in his hands, at the ready, in a pair of khaki shorts and an Ohio State Football t-shirt.

“
Colin, please go with the others. I will explain in a moment. I can take care of this.” At least Aaron hoped he could.

With a cool look toward the girl through the bathroom door, Colin left.

“
And you aren’t going anywhere. Not now. The doctor will be here soon, and then we are going to talk about this. Sara, I really need—”

“
He will find out where I am again. I won’t be able to protect her this time either if he does, don’t you see? I can’t let him hurt her again. I couldn’t protect her before. It is imperative that I protect her at all costs. I cannot fail her again. Then there’s the baby. Babies are all we have in the world, you know?”

While her babbling was disjointed, it wasn’t very helpful either. He? He who? Baby? Christ, she was pregnant too?

“
You’re pregnant? Who is he? Your husband, is he the one who beat you? I’ll kill the bastard.” Some people, he decided, should not be allow to live.

“
What? No, I’ve never even had sex. No, April’s baby. I want you to let me go.” She was crying harder now.

Aaron would think about all she said later. For now, all he could think about was that she was hurting. He finally got her to come out of the bathroom with the promise that he would not make her bare herself to him. He went to his room to get her the softest shirt he owned for her to put on. She had explained to him how she had trouble pulling a shirt over her head and that was when she realized just how much pain she was in. He helped her into the shirt, not looking at anything but her eyes. She managed to drop the towel only twice, leaving him with the briefest idea that the beatings had not been done only to her back and legs.

By the time Thomas got there, she was lying in the now clean bed, and crying softly. Aaron stood at the door to the bedroom and waited, clenching and unclenching his fists. He could not remember being so angry in all of his considerable years. Nor had he ever felt so useless.

“
Sara’s hurting. I demand that you make it stop,” he said in way of a greeting.

“
Can I see her first? It might make things easier that way.”

Aaron could only glare at him. He had been Thomas’s friend for two hundred years and at that moment, he thought he might gladly stake him.

Aaron took a deep breath before he spoke again. “I would very much appreciate it if you could please examine her. Then I’d like for you to see if you can take away her pain. Please, Thomas. She’s hurting.”

Aaron felt Thomas’s stare. Aaron could not imagine what he was thinking.

“
All right,” Thomas finally said, “go downstairs and I’ll see what I can do.”

“
I’ll be right out here. Yell if you need me, or if she doesn’t cooperate. She’s...she can be stubborn at times,” Aaron told him.

Aaron thought that was a bit of an understatement. She was frustratingly stubborn and infuriatingly obstinate.

As Aaron shut the door behind him, he heard Thomas say to Sara, “Come now, child, let’s see what all the fuss is about.”

~
CHAPTER FIVE~

Aaron nervously paced the hallway just outside Sara’s room waiting for Doctor Thomas Reilly to bring him word of her condition. Aaron and Thomas had fought in the first Great War together and had become fast friends.

Nearly an hour had passed when the doctor stepped out of the room. He seemed upset and pale, even for a vampire.

“
I have never seen anyone beaten that badly and remain conscious at the same time. That poor girl, that poor, poor girl.”

They silently headed down the wide staircase toward the living room, where the others were awaiting word.

As Aaron entered the room, everyone rose as one, concern in their eyes and on their faces. Aaron turned to Thomas and nodded, giving permission to explain the situation.

“
I know, without a doubt,” Thomas said bluntly, “that Aaron did not cause this woman’s pain. But someone has. This is not the first time this has happened, nor, according to the young lady, will it be the last. I’ve given her something for the pain, so she’s resting now. She has been beaten at least four times over the past two weeks, I would say. By the bruising, I can assume he’s a large man, strong, and a mean son-of-a-bitch. This monster isn’t only using his fists, although that’s bad enough, but I believe he’s using a bat as well. She said she has been thrown against a couple of walls too. She told me not to fuss overly much. I found this very curious, but she said that she heals initially very quickly. The bruising then takes the normal amount of healing time. This probably explains why there are only cracked ribs, rather than broken ones.”

“
Christ.”

Aaron turned to look at Colin. He couldn’t agree more, he thought.

“
The young lady wouldn’t tell me who it was, but I get the feeling she is terrified of him coming to the estate. Not for herself, but more so for you, Mrs. Carlovetti, and the other woman she needs to protect.” Thomas paused slightly. “She seems to think you’re pregnant.”

Aaron looked at the new vamp and suddenly wondered if this was the babe Sara had been speaking of.