I Am Lightning (Laurel Defense Series) (13 page)

“About what?” I asked a little short with my temper.  We hadn’t spoken up until that moment.

“I’m sorry for scaring you and Rhiannon, and for not helping you with Mark and Briony.”  He paused and I turned to look at him.  His face had lost all signs of the rage he’d felt earlier and was now back to normal, if worried.  “I could smell my maker all over that house.  She did this; she was the one who abducted Mark and Briony.”

Understanding began to dawn on me.  “Since her original plan to turn an angel into a vampire didn’t work, she decided to use sprites instead,” I concluded and Robert nodded.  I ignored the nausea I felt when I remembered Mark’s many injuries, and the most atrocious of all: the loss of his wings.  He was still a sprite, so his wings would grow back, but it would take a long time and he would be in constant pain until the process was finished.  For sprites our wings are our most precious asset and our most costly liability.

“Do you forgive me?” Robert pressed again.

I thought about it for only a moment.  He’d been injured far worse than Mark or Briony.  Robert’s whole being had been stolen from him, with not a glimmer of hope that he could become what he once was.  He was forever a vampire now, and that would never change.  Being an angel again was never, ever, going to happen, and that was an injustice that he could barely stand.  His claim that revenge wasn’t the answer was a moot point when his whole being wanted to mete out punishment against the one that had damaged him so irrevocably.  When he thought he could find his vampire maker, he went after her scent to see if he could find her.  In my mind that was a perfectly acceptable excuse to leave us, and besides we hadn’t really needed his help after all.  As for scaring me and Rhiannon, that was all he did.  He didn’t lash out against us or threaten us in any way.

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about,” I said finally and put my hand on his arm to make sure he knew that I understood.

He turned to look at me and smiled ruefully, taking his hand off the shifter and caressing my cheek.  “Thank you.”

We spent the rest of the ride in comfortable silence, lost in our respective thoughts.  I was worried about Mark, and no one had bothered to call me to
give me an update on his situation.  Either he was dead and they were just waiting for me to get back to tell me in person, or his health was so grave that they didn’t have time to call and update me.  Both scenarios sounded ghastly, and I kept turning each one in my mind.

The parking lot in front of headquarters was eerily devoid of people.  Actually, it was probably that way all the time except during shift changes, but I was seeing omens wherever I looked, and took everything as a sign that something was wrong.

Robert took my hand and we both walked to the infirmary.  The hall in front of Isabelle’s office was full of guards milling around, probably waiting for word about their fellow comrade.  Tandy was there, and so was Brenton, both covered in the blood of the sprites that they had brought here.  Rhiannon was leaning against the wall biting her nails and moving her foot impatiently.

“Anything?”
I asked the question for whoever wanted to answer.

“Ifan is in with them.  He has everybody but me in there,” Tandy answered.  She meant that Ifan had all witches and wizards that worked for the Laurel Defense trying to save Mark and Briony’s life, but Tandy had been relegated to the sidelines.  Since she was a witch too, she was a little irked by the fact that she’d been dismissed.

“You already did a lot, Tandy.  You need to rest for now,” Brenton tried to reason with his partner.

“I need to go in there,” I said to no one in particular, moving to the door of the infirmary, when I heard a loud wail coming from inside, and it had sounded male.  That made up my mind.  If somebody
was going to stop me they would get shocked.  I HAD to see Mark.

Without really remembering how, I found myself next to Mark who was alive but crying in pain. 
He writhed and seemed to convulse when two male wizards picked him up to move him onto his stomach.  They started working trying to heal the wounds on his back and cleaning the area of blood so they could see where he had been hurt.  Blood started oozing from the vessels I had cauterized and tears streamed down Mark’s eyes.  I cried with him, over and over telling him that everything would be all right, not that I knew what that meant exactly.   

“Make it stop!” he yelled into the room with his eyes closed, and when he opened them he lo
oked at me pleadingly.  “Make it stop, Abby,” he said, his voice broken from screaming.

I didn’t know what to say.  What COULD I say?  I just nodded
and wiped his face with my fingers, letting my own tears flow freely before taking his one hand in both of mine.  I’d never seen Mark so vulnerable, nor did I ever imagine him in such pain.  This was a nightmare.  Mark had always been the strong one, the one with the short temper, the one who took care of me because he loved me.  He was looking to me for comfort and I didn’t know what to do for him.

“I’ll make it better, I swear,” I heard myself say, without a clue as to how I would keep my promise.

Someone tried to move me away from Mark’s side.  I felt two strong hands on my shoulders, but the minute they touched me I let go of Mark and discharged.  It was painful enough on the other person that I was left to tend to Mark and wasn’t bothered again.  Nobody would dare remove me from his side.

The wizards and witches’ chant over both sprites became another living being inside the infirmary.  It dictated the rhythm of my heart as I watched them try to repair the damage that had been done by using magic.  I didn’t let go of Mark again, not for a second, and I promised him over and over that I would do everything in my power to make him better.

CHAPTER 12

“What happened between you and Robert?” Mark asked one morning.  He’d been living in my house for the better part of a month while he convalesced.  His physical wounds had been very bad and he didn’t have the advantage of having a vampire lover
to give him some blood to heal him.  Not that I had a vampire lover either.  Talk of Robert made me sigh audibly.  “Was it love?” Mark asked in a gentler tone, taking in the change in my mood.

I nodded once over my cup of coffee.  I was sitting next to Mark while he had breakfast.  “You could say that.”

“Forget what I would say.  Would you say that?” he asked.

“I would, but I don’t know if Robert would
say it too,” I said talking into my cup. 

I had taken a leave of absence from the force so I could nurse Mark back to health.  The witches and wizards that cared for him the night we brought him back made the pain of losing his wings go away, but the fact of the matter was that he was still missing his
wings, and growing wings was a long and arduous process at the best of times.  Mark had been injured in other ways as well and needed lots of care.  Let’s just say that seeing him naked had become second nature to me, because he showering alone was out of the question.  He was too weak for such a task.

In the meantime, during the nights when I felt particularly lonely,
my mind would replay the moments I had spent with Robert.  I was heartbroken.  Not once had Robert called or stopped by the house to see how I was doing.  To be fair, I hadn’t called him either, but my time was limited and, besides, the guy always calls the girl.

“I’m sorry, Abby.  Why don’t you call him and ask him to dinner?  I’m sure I can spare you for a couple of hours.  You guys need to sort things out,” Mark suggested.  Hadn’t he read my thoughts that the guy is supposed to call the girl, not the other way around?

“I don’t know, Mark.  He’s obviously not interested.”

“I doubt that, sweetheart.”

“I’m not a sweetheart,” I said pouting.

Mark put his hand on my knee.  “Look at me,” he commanded in a soft voice.  I did as he said and he smiled.  “Yes, you are.  Robert is no fool.  He chose well.”

I shrugged.  Robert had chosen me because I looked pretty and smelled good.  Anybody could fit that bill.  The worst part was that I’d opened my heart to him when he said he was in love with me, and it hurt that he had rejected me in the end.  I’d never fallen in love before meeting him, and I felt like I was still very much in love with him.  The moments I missed the most were the times we had spent talking and laughing.  Not that I didn’t miss all my moments with Robert, just some more than others.

After the conversation I had with Mark about Robert, I started thinking about my vampire more often than not.  Well, not MY vampire, but the vampire that had been my lover.  The thought of going out with someone else didn’t hold any appeal to me.  It would feel like cheating.  All I wanted was Robert back in my life again.  I just didn’t know how to go about it without getting hurt again.

“We need you tonight for training.  Can you join us for a couple of hours?” Ifan asked over the phone.  He had already spoken to Mark to see if my absence would put undue burden on his recovery, and Mark had already said I was free to go.  Many times he’d said I should get out of the house and do something other than visit the grocery store, but I’d never taken him up on it.

“I’ll be there,” I said with as much enthusiasm as a sad panda.  Then my heart gave a wild leap thinking that Robert would be at the training session.  My night was starting to look up for a split second, but then my brain checked me and told me that maybe Robert didn’t want to see me.  Whatever, I was an adult and my other colleagues needed help training.  I needed the exercise too.

The Laurel Defense parking lot was only half full when I arrived in Mark’s Jeep.  I’d left my car at home because it still needed a new starter, and I hadn’t gotten around to taking it to a mechanic.  For now I’d been using Mark’s Jeep, and stalling it less and less every day.  I’d only managed to stall it once on my way from Laurel to West Laurel, and only as I was about to pull into a parking spot.

“Is the manual transmission beating you up?” Rhiannon asked.  I’d parked next to her car and she was getting her gear.

“It’s not a very fair fight,” I said, turning the Jeep on again because it was only halfway into the parking spot.  “I’m letting it win.”

“What’s wrong with your car?” Rhiannon asked, coming over to grab my things too while I zipped up the Wrangler’s cover back onto the door frame.

“It needs a new starter.  Someone was supposed to fix it for me, but I guess… It doesn’t matter now,” I finished, not wanting to bring up Robert and sound bitter.  He’d probably been busy trying to find his maker.

We knew that the female vampire that had turned Robert, and tried to turn Mark and Briony, was still around but lying low.  We knew that her name was Diana Haussier, and she had sired many vampires from humans, and liked to dabble in all forms of magic.  She was the one that had been able to see Robert and cut his wings in order to make him visible and vulnerable.  Only demons could see angels, and Diana had worked a spell using demon magic so she could find an angel to add to her vampire menagerie.  It had backfired.  She had chosen a super race to make into a relatively weak one.  Robert was more human than vampire, meaning that the change had not taken full hold.  He could still tap into his power, which required energy that only food could provide.  All this I’d learned when Rhiannon had come to visit Mark and give us the latest news.  She was just as amazed as I’d been to learn that Robert had been turned from an angel and not a human.  There had even been a meeting at work about the subject, the whole subject, not just Robert.

The gym
that night was full of supernaturals, all of them my colleagues, the ones that usually worked with me during the night shift.  All but two: Mark who was at home, and Robert.  I held a sigh and continued forward into the building.  I needed to keep my wits about me to help with training and to do some training myself.  My defensive skills needed a little honing.  If only one could use defensive skills to keep the heart safe.

After half-heartedly zapping my colleagues – so they knew how to defend themselves while incapacitated in some way – I drove home with my head full of questions and a heavy heart.  Was Robert avoiding me?  The answer seemed obvious to me, since he hadn’t visited me or called me, and had missed the training session on purpose.  Why was he avoiding me?  Obviously, once he’d gotten what he wanted from me, I was not girlfriend material and he didn’t want to deal with having to tell it to my face.  I was mad about that, but mostly I was sad that I wasn’t who he wanted.  I loved him.  His rejection hit me hard, and I would have sulked more if I didn’t have Mark to look after.  I always kept that in mind: I couldn’t just wallow in my misery while my cousin, my only family, needed so much from me.  He was my priority.  I wouldn’t be where I was or who I was if it hadn’t been for him.  My life was a happy one, and I had my freedom, thanks to Mark.  I couldn’t fall apart just because a male didn’t want me.  There were plenty of fish in the sea, right?

Except… I only wanted the one fish.  Tuna wouldn’t do when all I wanted was salmon.

Laughing at my own fish metaphor like the idiot that I was, I pulled the Jeep into my driveway behind my own car.  The car’s white hood was up, and all I could think about was that Mark had gotten out of bed to fix my car.

“What the hell?!” I bellowed as soon as I hopped off Mark’s car.  If I caught Mark out of bed I would…well, I couldn’t shock him because he was too weak, but I could yell at him a lot.

My heart stopped and started in double time when Robert’s face peeked from behind the hood.  I lost my breath and felt like my knees would give out any moment.  I certainly wasn’t expecting him to be at my house after avoiding me during training. 

Robert bit his lip and looked apologetic.

“I owed you a starter,” he said, holding up some part of my car, most probably said starter.  When I didn’t say anything he continued, “I saw you stall the Jeep when you were parking and I thought you’d be more comfortable driving your own car.”

I blinked.  “So you skipped training to fix the starter in my car?”

Robert shrugged.  “I’ve had plenty of training, but you needed a hand.”

I needed more than a hand.

“Are you mad?” he asked coming around and wiping his hands on a rag.  He looked so good, and even though his scent was mixed with the smell of
motor oil, it was still intoxicating and getting stronger the closer he moved to where I was standing.  “Are you mad, Abby?” he asked again.

“No, I’m not mad.  I thought you were Mark
out of bed,” I explained.  “I’m just sad,” I added, telling him the gods’ honest truth.  I wasn’t going to mind telling him he’d broken my heart.  He probably didn’t even know what he’d done.  “Where have you been?  Why didn’t you call?” I asked, and immediately felt tears smart my eyes.  I opened my eyes wide so the tears wouldn’t fall down my cheeks and give me away just yet.

Robert looked down at his hands and frowned before looking back up. 
“I’ve been looking for Diana Haussier, my maker and the one who hurt Briony and Mark.  I’ve been doing research and trying to figure out her next move and where she will turn up,” he took a deep breath, never once letting his gaze stray from mine.  “It seemed like you didn’t want me around.”

I shook my head and put my hands on my waist.  “What made you think that?”

“You nearly electrocuted me when I tried to comfort you…”

“What?!
  When did I do that?”

“In the infirmary, when you first saw Mark,” he tried to explain.  I shook my head in confusion and the motion made the tears fall, the ones I’d been holding back so adamantly.  “My darling, don’t cry,” he said in a whisper reaching for my hands and kissing them both.  “You were so upset when you saw Mark’s injuries that I wanted to comfort you, but when I touched you I got shocked.”

Suddenly I remembered.  I thought somebody was trying to take me away from Mark and I had shocked that person.  But Robert had just wanted to tell me, or show me, that he was there for me.  It had been his hands that I’d felt on my shoulders.  I was such an idiot!

“Blessed be!” I gasped.  “I’m so sorry, Robert.  I didn’t mean to do that, I never meant to hurt you.”  I put my forehead on his chest asking for his
forgiveness with my whole being.  “I’ve hurt you so much, how can you ever forgive me?”

“I love you,” he blurted out.  My head snapped up.  I wanted to look at him to see if I’d heard him right.
  His sapphire blue eyes were full of the emotion he was confessing.  “I love you, Abby.  I can forgive you almost anything, just don’t shock me like that again,” he chuckled deep in his chest.

I sniffled away the next set of tears and smiled back at him, getting an even wider smile from
him in return.  “I love you too.”

Robert kissed my wet cheeks then delivered a searing kiss to my lips, letting go of my hands to grab my waist and pull me closer.  I threw my arms around his neck and pulled him to me, knowing full well that I was never going to let him go.  My angel-turned-vampire would have his revenge against his maker.  We would stop her. 
Together.

THE END