“Elaine,” Jim warns her quietly. “This won’t help.”
She ignores him, keeps her fervent eyes on me. “You’re a liar. You always were. She was in love with you, so in love with you, and all I could do was watch. Watch as she gave herself to you, while you possessed her, used her. I thought you loved her!”
“I do!” I roar. “I love her with all my fucking heart, every last shriveled bit of it!”
“Then your love is poison,” she snaps. “Your love is tainted and corrosive and eats away at everything that made her wonderful and good. Your love will be her ruin.”
And I’ve told Lenore as much.
“We don’t know Lenore is dead,” Jim says patiently. “Elaine, please. Step away.”
“Why aren’t you angry?” she screams at him.
“I am angry,” Jim says sharply. He gestures to me. “But he wouldn’t be here right now if he didn’t love Lenore. And killing him isn’t going to help anything. We need to figure out where she is and if she’s alive. And I know you’re as connected to her as I am, but there’s nothing telling me that she’s dead. I would feel it. Something would be severed.”
I close my eyes, trying to concentrate on Lenore. I know she’s not dead either, that she’s out there. I just don’t know where, if she’s still in pain, if she’s going to be okay. If she was taken against her will.
Eventually I feel the pressure and pain lift from my chest and Elaine removes the blade. I open my eyes to see her walk across the kitchen, shaking her head as she looks out the window. Perhaps also putting her feelers out for Lenore.
“So what happened?” Jim asks me.
“I woke up on the bedroom floor. Maybe twenty minutes ago. The bed was broken. There was blood all over the mattress, the rug, the floor. So much blood. Her blood. I have no memory, except for that I knew that the transformation was coming, that I was going to turn into the beast. I told her to run and…she didn’t run. She stayed.”
“Why would she stay?” Elaine wonders out loud, her voice tired.
“Because she doesn’t fear it,” I tell her. “Or at least, she didn’t before.”
“This has happened before?” Jim asks in shock.
“Yes. I’ve turned into the beast with her.”
Elaine whips around to glare at me. “And you hurt her before?”
I shake my head. “No. I never did.”
“Were you in control then?” Jim asks.
I shake my head again. “No. Not really. Maybe it was luck. Either way, I never hurt her until now. She…she always thought she could tame the beast.”
“None of this explains where she is now,” Jim says. “Do you think she went off on her own?”
“She didn’t go through the house, we would know. She went through the window. Five stories up.”
“What?” Elaine exclaims. “Lenore can’t fly.”
“I know. But maybe she could under extreme duress. You saw what happened with the earthquake,” I point out. “That said, it doesn’t explain the sulfur.”
Elaine swallows audibly and looks to Jim. “Do you think it could be the guild? That they kidnapped her?”
“Right after he attacked her?” Jim asks. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would they be there at that time?” He looks to me, puzzled. “And you would still be the beast, wouldn’t you?”
I nod. “I think so. I don’t have memory of transforming back into a vampire. I assume I was still the beast when she left but…” I trail off, feeling so fucking useless.
“If it were someone from the guild, Absolon would be dead then,” Jim surmises. “They would have killed the beast, I’m sure of it. And you don’t think it was a vampire? Perhaps your father?”
My stomach twists violently at the thought. “I would know if it were a vampire. I—”
Suddenly there’s a faint thump from downstairs in Lenore’s apartment. I stand up straighter.
“What is it?” Elaine asks, their human ears unable to pick up on the sound.
I don’t answer, I just run through their ward and down the stairs and they follow after me.
9
Lenore
I’m in my old apartment.
In the bedroom.
My parents have left it the same, like I never left, hoping I guess that I might one day come back. At the very least, it’s a place for me to escape when I need it.
I have only been back once since I returned from Shelter Cove, to check on my father, still healing from the damage that Yanik caused him.
And now I’m here again.
One moment I was in the forest with Jeremias, the next everything moved and the world shifted and now I’m here, crouched beside the bed, feeling like I’m going to throw up.
Slowly I rise, gathering my robe around me, not wanting to look at the wound, even though it’s healing, and then I stop.
I’m not alone.
Outside the door there are voices and there are smells.