Scorned (27 page)

“Yeah. Why?” Then I remembered my car
accident three weeks ago. Somehow we were connected. “What did you
see?” I whispered.

“You...you were dead,” he said. “I felt
you...saw you die.” There was such grief in his voice, masked with
suspicion and relief. It broke my heart.

“We’ll talk about this later,” I promised,
“but I’m fine. Really.”

“I...Staci...” There was something in his
voice, defeat, loss, pain, and I didn’t like it. I knew all too
well how it felt to be where he was.

“I know,” I said, then added, “I love you,”
just in case he thought I didn’t.

That must have been what he needed to hear,
because he sighed with relief. “I love you too.”

“I’ll wake you when I get back,” I said.

“Promise?”

I thought about saying something smart but
thought better of it. There would be plenty of time for that later.
“Yeah, I promise.”

We hung up. Roman, Calliope and Adelina had
watched with rapt interest, and now were looking away. No, the
girls were looking away, Roman wasn’t.

“You were dead, my sweet.” Adelina and
Calliope tensed. “Your heart stopped beating. I saw the life go out
of you.”

I nodded. “I agree. I was very dead. Not
just mostly dead, all dead.” My hands were cold. Was I going into
shock?

“What happened?”

I didn’t know what to tell him without
sounding cheesy, but...

My eyes went out of focus and I
shivered.

“LeKrista?” Roman’s voice was soft as he
said my name. “LeKrista, what’s wrong?”

“I’m so cold.” My teeth were chattering.

What the heck?

“She’s in shock,” Calliope said. “I don’t
think she quite understands what just happened to her. It hasn’t
sunk in yet.”

“Run a hot bath,” he told Calliope and she
ran off to do as she was told. Adelina stayed close by and Roman
picked me up from the floor.

“LeKrista, do you understand that you just
died?” Roman asked. I nodded. “Adelina had to give you CPR. She had
to make your heart start beating again.”

I shook my head. “No, not Adelina.”

Roman frowned at me, and I guess he thought
I’d gone insane. “Who then?”

“Dunno. A boy.” Roman and Adelina looked at
each other as if they thought I’d finally lost it completely.

Roman carried me into the bathroom. My teeth
chattered together as Roman set me on the floor next to the tub and
instructed Adelina and Calliope to get me warm. They undressed me
without hesitation and helped me climb into the bathtub - an
oversized, black claw foot tub that I would have loved if I was in
my right mind. I sank into steaming water that smelled like
lavender.

I’d just died and come back because I still
had things to do. I gasped and sat up, sloshing water all over the
bathroom floor.

“Oh my god,” I said softly.

“What?” Calliope asked. “What’s wrong? Is it
too hot?”

I looked at her, my eyes wide and popping.
“I died.”

The girls looked at each other, then back at
me.

“LeKrista,” Adelina began, but I shook my
head.

“No, I...I died. I was dead. No heartbeat,
no breath.” Tears slipped down my cheeks, but I didn’t think I was
crying. Well, I hadn’t known I was crying.

“LeKrista.” Calliope wanted to console me,
but I didn’t need consoling. I needed Pierce and he wasn’t
there.

“I need to get dressed,” I said. “I need a
towel. Where are my clothes.”

“LeKrista, you’re in shock. I don’t
think-”

“No,” I said. “I’m not in shock anymore.”
Truthfully, I wasn’t sure if I was or not, but I didn’t want to
hang around in the bathtub. I wanted to get to Pierce. “Give me a
towel!” I was yelling now, clearly still not in my right mind, but
I was going to have my way whether I knew what I was doing or
not.

“Get Roman,” Adelina said quietly to
Calliope. “I’ll get her dressed, or at least covered up.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Get me covered up.”

I dried off and had the towel wrapped around
my body by the time Roman came in. “I want to go to Pierce,” I told
him without looking up. Roman didn’t answer out loud.

“
LeKrista, I can not take you back
yet.”

“Why not?” I asked aloud.

“
Please, LeKrista,”
Roman thought,
and he sounded tired and annoyed.

I humored him.
“Why not? I just
died.”

“
There are only a few hours of dark left,
and I have to be somewhere very important. Your presence has been
requested as well. They would like to meet Lucretious’
murderer.”

“
Excuse me, murderer? He was trying to
kill me. It was self-defense.”

“
Be that as it may, they would like to
meet you.”

“
Who is ‘they’?”

“
Vampire Council.”

I rolled my eyes.
“I have to be
there?”

“Yes. Get dressed.” Roman turned on his heel
and left. End of conversation.

I dressed and met Roman in the hall where he
paced, impatient, but when he saw me he stopped and looked me over.
“Are you alright?”

I nodded and looked up. I didn’t know this
house. Oak beams crisscrossed the ceiling and a beautiful crystal
chandelier lit the front hall with a soft, yellow glow. Roman held
a door open and motioned for me to precede him.

“We must hurry, LeKrista. We are already
very late.”

I humored him and stepped through the door
and ran my fingers through my hair to try and tame it. My bare feet
touched rough stone and I pulled up so suddenly that Roman nearly
bumped into me. We were in another cave, and it was so very dark
that, once Roman closed the door I couldn’t see a damn thing.

“What’s wrong?” Roman asked.

“I was under the impression that we were
going to fly somewhere,” I said.

“Well, that would be a disaster, wouldn’t
it?” he asked. “What else is bothering you?”

I shrugged in the dark. “I can’t see
anything.”

“Oh.” A moment later, the world opened up to
me and I saw through Roman’s eyes. “Is that better?”

“Yes." Roman took the lead and I followed
closely, unsure of what awaited me in the dark. If vampires
existed, so could the boogeyman, right? So, I stuck close to him.
The cloth of his shirt brushed against me as we hurried deep down
into the earth.

“Where are we going?” I asked finally. “Why
does the vampire council want to see me? What’s so amazing about me
killing Lucretious?”

Roman took a moment to answer and I wasn’t
sure I he would. “He was a vampire. You are a human. It’s not often
that we find such courageous...vampire hunters.” He said “vampire
hunters” like it amused him.

“I’m not a vampire hunter,” I said.

“No, but they don’t know that,” was his
reply.

“Well, didn’t you tell them?”

He shrugged. It was strange, looking at him
through my eyes which were seeing through his. It was like his
vision was super imposed over my own. I was seeing in a sort of
double vision and, now that I thought about it I was getting
dizzy.

“Don’t think about it,” Roman said. “Vivian
had trouble with it too. Think about something else.”

“Alright. Didn’t you tell them what
happened? That I’m not a vampire hunter, I’m...vampire hunted?”

Roman chuckled. “Is that what you are?”

“Isn’t Perdita hunting me? Isn’t she going
to ‘play with me before she kills me’?”

“Yes, I suppose she is.”

“Well?” I asked again. “Didn’t you tell
them?”

“I would have, LeKrista,” he sounded
frustrated, “but you rushed me off the phone too quickly.”

“Oh no,” I said. “You’re not going to put
that on me. You were on my cell phone, which you stole. You read my
text messages. I had a right to be angry. I still do.”

“Fine,” he said. “I was wrong. Does that
make you happy?”

“No,” I said grumpy. “Pierce does that. I
hate that.”

He shrugged.

“How much farther is it?” I asked. “Are we
there yet?” I was starting to feel very, very tired.

“You’re tired,” Roman said unnecessarily.
“I’m sorry,” and it sounded like he meant it. But he wasn’t going
to do anything about it.

“You’re thousands of years old,” I said.

“Yes.” He kept his voice careful, not sure
where I was going with my questioning.

“Are the vampires on this council older than
you?”

“Not all of them.”

“Are they more powerful than you?”

“Not all of them.”

“How powerful are you?” I asked.

He hesitated. “Very.”

“So...should I be afraid?”

“No.” There was no hesitation then. “I won’t
let anyone hurt you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said
what I was taught to say. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

“Why do they call you The Centurion?” I
asked. That gave Roman enough pause to stop walking and turn to
look at me. “You say you don’t remember your name, so you call
yourself Roman. Were you a Roman Centurion?”

My abilities of deduction are
astounding.

Roman regarded me with eyes I couldn’t read.
He searched mine for something, I wasn’t sure what, and I’m not
sure he found what he was looking for.

“Yes,” he finally said. “I was a Roman
Centurion. I survived the fall of the Roman Empire.”

I frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me that
before? It’s not so terrible a thing, is it?”

Roman’s eyes went dark and I was so reminded
of Pierce in that moment that I felt a pang of hurt. “It is the
things I did during that time that are so terrible, LeKrista.”

I tried to make a joke to lighten the
intense mood. “It’s not like you crucified Jesus or anything,” I
laughed.

Roman’s face looked stricken and utterly
shocked as if I’d found out his deepest, darkest secret. I started,
and took a step back. “Whoa,” I said. “Whoa.”

Please, God. Don’t strike me down.

Roman sighed a long, heavy sigh that said so
much more than words ever could. “Yes, LeKrista, I did.”

I closed my eyes, trying to wrap my head
around the fact that the man standing before me, the vampire, had
crucified Jesus.

“Is that how you became a vampire?” I
whispered.

Roman tilted his head to the side. “It’s a
bit more complicated than that, but yes is the easy answer for
now.”

For now. That meant he would tell me more in
the future.

“Can I see?” I asked.

“LeKrista, please. Please do not ask me to
show you this. Not even Vivian...” He let the words trail off and I
knew if he hadn’t shown Vivian he wasn’t going to show me.

I shrugged and let it go. “That’s fine,” I
said. “We’re late.”

Roman regarded me for a moment. “You astound
me sometimes, LeKrista.” He turned and we continued down the stone
corridor.

When we finally stepped into real light, not
just vampire eyesight, I was momentarily blinded. The room was so
bright I had to shield my face from it.

I jumped when Roman touched my back. “I’m
sorry,” he said. “That was my fault. You can open your eyes
now.”

I knew this place. I’d been here once in
Lucretious’ head. Torches lined the stone walls of the round room
and my eyes were drawn to bright pink calla lily arrangements
sitting in the center of the long, stone table that ran the length
of the room.

“
Eddy did these."

“
Yes, he did. How did you know?”

“
I watched him put some of them
together.”

Roman chuckled in my head and it was a weird
feeling to see him standing so stoic beside me but know he was
laughing on the inside.

“You are late.” A strongly accented voice
spoke from the other side of the room, sitting at the head of a
large stone table.

“
Laied,”
Roman told me.
“He is
known as The Lariat.”

“
Like The Phantom of the Opera with his
Lasso?”

“
You are good at this, LeKrista,”
Roman chuckled.

“
Like I said earlier, my powers of
deduction, my dear Watson. And I’ve always been a good
guesser.”

“I died,” I said out loud. There were three
other vampires besides Laied and every head turned in my direction.
I fought a giggle. Roman was a bit humored too.

“You died?” Laied asked, incredulous.

“Yes. And then I came back.”

“You came back? You are not a vampire.”

Is there an echo in here? Geez.

“No, thank God,” I chuckled. There was a
sharp intake of breath from them and that did make me laugh. “No,
I’m not a vampire, but I died and came back.”

“Is this the girl?” Laied turned cold, empty
eyes to Roman who nodded.

“Yes, this is LeKrista, the young woman who
killed Lucretious.”

Laied nodded and looked me over like he just
couldn’t quite believe it. “Tell me, Centurion. How is it that
this...this
girl
could kill such a strong vampire when you
could not?”

“
Is he implying that I can’t do it
because I’m a girl? Or because I’m a human? Or both?”

“
Both,”
Roman sent back before he
answered. “Lucretious was the most powerful of my creations, yes.
He was also a great friend at one point in time. My hesitation to
kill him did not stem from inability, I can assure you. Had I the
choice or the foreknowledge of what LeKrista would do, I wouldn’t
have let her kill him either. He supplied me with too much
power.”

“
Well, that’s dumb. That’s like
saying-”

“
Be quiet, LeKrista. Please.”
He
added the please like an afterthought. As if it was supposed to
make the rude tone of his voice more polite. I crossed my arms and
scowled.

“Are you saying that you had no warning that
this girl would commit such an act?”

I expected Laied to say “heinous crime” and
then insist that I be put to death for murder. He didn’t and I
relaxed a little, though I wasn’t quite sure that I wasn’t on
trial.