Ambrosia (Nectar 2)

~ Prologue ~TristanI can’t feel her.

Part of me knows she was right to run, and if she hadn’t, I’d have to wonder if she was still the girl I’d fallen for or if maybe I’d ruined her. Who, in their right mind, wouldn’t have run?

But the other part of me, that part that knows she’s mine and that believes that because she’s mine and because we feel one another so deep… that part wants her to refuse to exist without me.

That part of me is so filled with black boiling rage that I could rip myself to shreds because she left me and because I don’t have a fuckin’ clue whether she’s still in one piece or not. I’m still groggy but I ache. I ache because I can’t feel her. She’s been sunshine in the dark for me and I can’t go back to the black, can’t go back to the emptiness I felt; not after feeling her.

No.

I don’t know if I can’t feel her because she’s sleeping or unconscious, if the tranquilizers aren’t completely out of my system yet or are blocking her, or if maybe our connection is broken because she’s dead.

I can only speculate on what happened after I cold-clocked and shot Sam. I only know I’m on the floor in this cage and the cage door and panic room doors are open. Sam is face first on the carpet by the bed and I’m lying beside a big crescent-shaped blood stain.

It’s slick around my mouth from the blood --- her blood. Before dipping my tongue to the corner of my mouth I already know what it will taste like and I want more.SoMuchMore.Despite being groggy and feeling as if there’s a black abyss where my heart is supposed to be, something else is brewing in me. I can’t put a name to it yet because I can’t figure out whether it’s evil or not and other than blood, I don’t know what it wants.

That small part of me that knows she was right to run is relieved I can’t feel her because I’m not ready to find her. I’m not ready because I’m afraid of what I could be capable of when I do. Afraid of what I might be capable of if someone has her or if she’s dead. I need to make myself wait…wait until she’s stopped bleeding and then find her and fix this.

I just need to fucking find her before The Mangler, does. If he hasn’t, already. He knows all about Kyla’s blood, he knows she’s mine, and he wants everything that is mine.-1-Victoria, British ColumbiaKyla woke up to birds singing and, after her morning rituals, was relieved to finally have stopped bleeding.

Finally!

That period, the period that would change the way she’d view her period for the rest of her days? It went on and on (and on!) at a very heavy flow for almost 12 full days and she’d started to wonder if it would ever stop.

Now that she’d had no bleeding for 12 hours her stress levels were down to DEFCON 3 from DEFCON 1.

She stepped outside and looked out at the water. It sure was beautiful here, just like she knew it would be. Layers of scent filled her nose. Flowers, the water, and coffee. She was staying in a rented waterfront RV in a park on the outskirts of the city of Victoria, on Vancouver Island. It was about 4,400 km or nearly 3000 miles away from Tristan.

It felt today, so far, like the withdrawals had subsided a little, too.

When she’d left him she’d planned to drive to the airport but made a snap decision to take a scenic route that would be a little less obvious. She found herself at the city’s small island airport instead of the international airport. She’d parked his SUV (with the keys in the glovebox) at the train station near the ferry, carrying the bag. She had walked to the docks and then taken a ferry the short ride to the small island airport and a flight, in a small plane, to Ottawa. It was weird being there, so close to her past, but she’d never ventured outside of the airport.

She took an empty leg seat on a small charter to Calgary. She stayed in a crappy motel overnight there, not sleeping, and then took a dawn-departing Greyhound bus to Vancouver.

She may have slept on the bus a little, she wasn’t even sure. If so, it was a succession of nods rather than a deep sleep. She’d been on high alert the whole time, watching to see if anyone was following her and watching to see if anyone around her suddenly had the colour drain from their face. She was also in and out of the tiny bus bathroom repeatedly, bleeding so heavily she wondered how her body held so much blood.