Bossy vampire.
***
Andre flicked on the lights to his bathroom. Along the room’s walls, mosaic saints gazed at me. For a guy with a supposedly damned soul, Andre seemed to be fairly religious.
He sauntered across the room and turned on the shower. Water fell from the ceiling, and it took me a moment to realize the showerhead was built into the very walls of the place.
I glanced down at my ripped and soiled dress, which had been so beautiful earlier. The bodice was no longer blue but instead the color of a dark bruise. At the sight, the entire hellish evening came back to me and I began to shake uncontrollably.
Andre scooped me up and set me on the bathroom counter. “Here,” he said gently, “I’ll help you.”
He slid his hands to my shoes and removed them one by one. Once he finished, he straightened back up, took my hand, and tugged me to my feet. “Turn around.”
I did as he said. Behind me Andre pulled at the laces of the corset I wore, and gradually the bodice of my dress loosened.
I held it to me and turned to him. “Please don’t leave me right now,” I whispered. I didn’t care that he’d see me naked. I wasn’t even thinking along those terms at the moment. I just wanted someone to help me stay in the present. Otherwise, my mind would relive my night with the devil over and over again.
He watched me for a beat, then nodded.
I let the dress drop, barely noticing how Andre’s guarded gaze fluttered and then moved over me.
I removed the rest of my clothing and then entered the shower, not sure whether Andre would follow me or simply stay in the same room. Considering the clear glass walls of the shower, I’d rather have him in here with me than feel like I was a specimen to study across the room.
A noise escaped my lips at the sight of the water that puddled at my feet. Blood and bones discolored the liquid that swirled down the drain.
Behind me the shower door opened, and Andre came in. He wrapped his arms around my shaking torso, his bare chest pressing into my back as he enveloped me in a hug. I could honestly say this was the first naked hug I’d ever received, and it was way more wonderful than I would’ve imagined.
Andre turned me in his arms and lifted my chin until our eyes met. In his own eyes I saw something that surprised me—pain. “I’m not going to ask you about this evening until you want to talk about it, okay?” he said.
I nodded to him. The Politia required that official statements be made either alone or in the presence of a lawyer, so Andre hadn’t heard me recount the events I’d been through.
“Are you comfortable washing off the . . . grime, or would you prefer I do it?”
I remembered the last awful shower I had to take. I had stood under a weak facet in the girl’s dormitory bathrooms and whimpered as I rinsed off my blood, Theodore’s, and a bit of Caleb’s.
The thought of someone else helping me . . . The offer had never been extended to me until now, and at the moment I wasn’t proud enough to turn it down.
“Can you?” The words came out soft.
He caressed the side of my face. “Of course.” He dropped his hand to reach around me and grab a bar of soap and a washcloth.
He hesitated. “This moment,” he said, “I want you to know it doesn’t count. Tonight I’m not the guy that wants you physically, I’m just the guy who cares about you.”
It struck me again that this was love. Me allowing someone to take care of me for once, and Andre doing something for me solely because he was concerned for my well-being. It had nothing to do with how we looked and everything to do with who we were.
I took a deep breath and studied the way water beaded along Andre’s torso. “I’ll tell you what happened tonight, that way I won’t have to relive it at another time.”
Before he could question whether I was ready to talk, I jumped into the story. “As soon as I disappeared, the devil took me to a cathedral made of bones . . .”
As I recounted the events, he moved the sudsy cloth around my hairline, over my neck, and down my back. I pinched my eyes shut as flakes of blood swirled into the drain at my feet. He moved the cloth along my quivering arms and across my chest.
His brows pinched together and his lips had thinned at each new piece of information.
After I finished Andre silently ran the washcloth over me a few more times. My skin had a pleasant pink hue to it where the heat and the washcloth had buffed it, but I still felt dirty. I’d need several more showers to psychologically wipe away the events.
Andre took his time setting the soap and washcloth aside before facing me. “Before you become a vampire, your human body has to die,” he said. I blinked at what seemed like a random topic. “Considering how fast you’re already changing, I give you a little over a year before that happens. Which means that we’ve got a lot to do in a short amount of time.”
“What are you talking about?”
Andre worked his jaw, indicating that he wasn’t happy about what he was about to say. “We’re going to have to equip you to face him.”
Chapter 27
The next morning Leanne and I huddled together under Andre’s blanket and watched the choppy surf. The sun had thankfully disappeared behind the thick coastal fog. My skin appreciated it.
“I did die,” Leanne said, digging her feet into the cold sand.
I turned my head to face her. She had kept quiet on the subject all the way over to Peel’s beach.
“That’s what you want to know, right?” she asked me.
I nodded, only partly seeing her. My mind replayed that awful scene from last night.
“Well, let me clarify—a part of me died.” She glanced at her hands before meeting my gaze again. “Four days ago I created a doppelganger.”
***
Doppelganger. I jogged my mind for the word. And then it clicked. One of my attackers a few months ago had been a doppelganger. “That’s why you smelled like smoke!” I furrowed my brows. “How do you even make one?”
Her lips quirked. “It involved a voodoo priestess, some rum, and a piece of me—pettiness more precisely.” Her expression sobered. “Cecilia put me in touch with the woman, who happened to be visiting the Isle of Man at the time.”
Happened to be visiting. Somehow I didn’t think anything was a coincidence when it came to Cecilia. She, however, had disappeared shortly after Leanne had activated the circle, so I wouldn’t be able to question her in person over this.
“What exactly is a doppelganger?” I asked. All I knew about them was that they were dark, dangerous creatures.
“It’s a shadow person, a portion of a real person that has been fractured off to take on a life of its own. I created it to prevent myself and others from being wholly and completely destroyed.”
Now she wasn’t making any sense. “What do you mean to prevent yourself and others from being completely destroyed?”
“I had foreseen that the devil would use me or someone else you loved to get to you. I realized that if they didn’t take me, they’d take someone else. And in my visions the captive always died. Out of desperation I got in touch with Cecilia and she gave me the idea.”
There her name was again. Cecilia. She’d somehow orchestrated this.
“But aren’t doppelganger’s . . . evil?” Leanne didn’t practice black magic as far as I knew.
She winced. “Sometimes—usually it has to do with the person creating them. Separating yourself into pieces is not good. Although, all I gave up was pettiness to make my doppelganger. Sorry about that by the way; I was probably a headache.”
I smiled, remembering Leanne—or her doppelganger—over the last couple days.
Something about what Leanne said nagged at me. “But why did you have to get kidnapped—why did anyone have to? Couldn’t yo
u have hidden and told others to hide?”
“Gabrielle, I promise you it was the only way. I foresaw dozens upon dozens of possible futures. Every instance where something went differently ended up fatal. In most you outright agreed to the devil’s demands, usually before but sometimes after someone was killed. Agreeing to the devil’s terms didn’t matter, by the way. The captive was always going to die.
“In some of my premonitions Oliver died in my place. In some we both died. In others, the entire Politia died. And in one, Andre and the rest of your coven died. That one was the worst.
“I looked at every possibility—ones where I told you what was to happen, others where I told friends what was to happen, others where I did nothing, and still others where I hid you—there was always someone or something that brought you to the Braaid. That was unavoidable.”
I was blown away by Leanne’s thoroughness. Never had I imagined that all those times she’d ignored me and Oliver, or worked while we talked, she was actually trying to find ways to save us.
Her words also made me think over last night’s gruesome events. “You mean that what we all went through last night—that was the best possible outcome?”
She smiled sadly. “I told you already Gabrielle: you’ve pissed off the fates. Cecilia may be on your side, but there are three of them. The other two weren’t making it easy for you to survive this evening.
“And that’s not even including how cunning the devil already is. Had I told you about what was to happen, or had you done anything out of the ordinary, you would’ve been kidnapped the same way I was. You were being watched that entire time. Had you not shown up at the Braaid of your own accord, someone would’ve forced you there.”
“Who kidnapped your doppelganger?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. They wore masks just like everyone else on Samhain. But they were humans, not demons.”
I hugged the blanket closer to my body. Humans had taken her, people that probably lived on this very island—possibly even people we knew or passed along the hallway.
“Where were you while your doppelganger was with me?” I asked.
Leanne stayed quiet for a moment, staring out at the ocean. I’d never felt as close to my friend as I did now . . . but she’d also never seemed quite as distant. Perhaps it was that she killed off the petty part of her in creating a doppelganger, but it seemed like more than just that. Like she’d seen too much and carried too many secrets to ever be the same.
“I was with Cecilia. She, you can trust, though even she might not be enough to save you.”
My gaze shot to her. She met my eyes, a frown tugging at the corner of her lips.
“I’m sorry Gabrielle, but it’s not over,” she said. “The devil hasn’t given up—if anything he’s more dangerous. This isn’t the end of your troubles, it’s only the beginning.”
Keep a lookout for the sequel:
The Cursed
Coming Spring 2014
Laura Thalassa lives in Santa Barbara, California with her fiancé, Dan Rix. The Coveted is her second novel. When not writing, you can find her at www.laurathalassa.blogspot.com
Laura Thalassa, The Coveted (The Unearthly #2)
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