Meanwhile Draven looked as though he was fighting with himself on what to do next and like me, the rest of the room was frozen with fear on what that would be.
“Circum Vertere!” (Means ‘Turn around’ in Latin) Draven spoke commanding the room with an echoing boom added to his voice. I didn’t know what he had said exactly but it must have been something along the lines of telling the room to give us privacy, as everybody in the room turned around all at the same time. The action made me jump as that too echoed off the wall and hit me from all angles.
Even Zagan at my back let me go and turned around, to face the other way. Which left only Draven and I facing each other with nowhere to go. Because after what I had just seen, then where would we find ourselves now?
“You woke up,” he stated the obvious and I frowned up at him and answered,
“Unfortunately for you, yes I did.” I was breathing heavy and he looked over me as if trying to assess if I had attained any injury in getting here. Then he asked me a question that confused me.
“Who was it, Keira?” His tone was calm but I knew it wouldn’t last long, not if that bulging vein in his neck was anything to go by.
“I don’t…” I was about to tell him that I didn’t understand but he cut me down. He took a step closer to me and I swallowed hard.
“You will tell me who and you will do it now!” he said in a tone that was dangerously close to the edge. I was getting so angry I could feel my own rage also getting dangerously close to the edge and the two of us like this was only heading down one road, the destination…temper town.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Draven!” I snapped back at him and he looked ready to erupt as he must have thought I was lying.
“Keira, this is your last chance,” he warned and surprisingly I was the one who lost it first.
“My last chance at what! To tell you that I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” I shouted back at him and he growled low before trying to grab me but I moved my arm from out of his reach and gave him my own warning,
“Don’t touch me!” He looked taken aback by this as if it was his right to and someone was stopping him, something he didn’t like. I saw the flash of hurt burn in his eyes before he quickly hid it behind a feigned look of indifference.
“Fine, have it your way Keira,” he told me and before I could utter a word of protest he grabbed me too quickly to do anything about it. I was over his shoulder slung there like a fighting piece of meat.
“Let me go! Put me down!” I demanded but he said nothing. He simply walked out of the Temple with purpose. I looked up to see that not a single person looked back at me. They all had a master to obey and I was nothing but a complication for their king. I felt small and unimportant in his world for the first time since being together. And I quickly lost the fight as he walked us into a circular room that was like a smaller temple, one more suited this time for worship than sacrifice.
This one was all white marble with a black and white diamond tiled floor. The walls were covered in black granite statues who each sat on thrones of gold in their own little alcoves. Each one was different and they all represented different forces. Wind and the Oceans both had great sapphires and pearls encrusted on their feet, while Fire and the Sun had rubies and amber, held in their hands. There were others like Earth, Night and the Moon all with various gems embedded amongst their figures.
The parts of the walls that weren’t paying testament to these Godlike effigies were masterpieces in their own right. Covered with so many patterns and carvings you didn’t know where to look. It was as though your eyes couldn’t take in all the splendour they created. You just wanted to touch them. To run your fingers along the channels that formed integral art. The room was bright, as if the day’s sun was getting at it somehow, but with no windows and the night not yet over, I couldn’t understand where it came from.
Once he deemed it far enough from our compliant audience to be out of sight and for now, out of mind, he let me down. He gripped my waist and I slid the length of him until my feet touched the floor. He made sure I was steady before he let me go. I huffed and tried to move further away from him but with a taxing sigh coming from him first, he started to back me into one of the statues.
“Now you have two minutes to tell me what happened and how you gained access to my Temple before I start a manhunt.” I frowned up at him and shook my head a little as if this would help me to make sense of what the hell he was talking about.
“A manhunt for who?” I asked and again this was the wrong thing to say as he growled…something that just pissed me off even more.
“Stop that!” I snapped shaking my hands in the air as my frustration mounted.
“Believe it or not, Draven I am not asking these questions out of stupidity, but because I literally have no idea what you are talking about?! No one brought me down here, I came because I heard a girl crying for help and you were nowhere to be found!” I told him despite the look of disbelief he was giving me throughout.
“You expect me to believe that you entered this place without help from another?” he asked, folding his arms and looking even larger than usual thanks to his robe.
“Well, unless I have finally found a language you don’t understand and I am unknowingly speaking it, then yes, that is what I am telling you!” I threw at him putting a hand to my hip and matching him in the attitude he was giving me. It seemed like he was trying to stare me out and when I didn’t budge, he tore his angry gaze from me as if he couldn’t stand to look at me any longer.
I had to admit, it hurt.
“Why is that so hard to believe?” I asked at the sight of his actions. He whipped his head back round to face me and almost snarled his words at me,
“Because it is impossible!”
“So, you’re calling me a liar, is that it?” I asked never expecting his answer to cut me deep the way it did.
“Yes, I am,” he told me and that was it…I lost it. What came next was the result of a lethal cocktail of madness, fury and agony. I felt my hand fly out at him before I could stop it. I slapped him across the face so hard I felt my palm burn seconds later. His head whipped to the side and he stayed looking that way for long moments after as if in shock. Both my hands flew to cover my mouth in horror as realisation sunk in at what I had done.
Someone behind Draven cleared their throat and I felt my shame double.
“Dom, you are losing time.” Vincent’s voice slowly seeped into to our situation and no matter how softly those words were said, it felt like someone cutting into our time with a hot blade. Draven didn’t look at me again but instead turned his back on me altogether. I wanted to cry, to shout, to say anything but just let him do what he did next. But nothing came as he walked towards his brother and voiced one last command with what sounded like icy indifference,
“Get her out of here.”
Vincent simply nodded and then looked to me, being the only one to witness my tears fall. Then as Draven walked past his brother, about to go back into the Temple I tried one last time,
“Dra…Draven I…” the words came out thick and forced from my emotions, which Draven knew just hearing the tears being shed behind them. He stopped dead in the archway, put a hand to the wall as if to steady himself and lowered his head. I thought I’d reached him. I thought I’d managed to make a difference…to stop him leaving me. But then I knew all was lost when I watched his other hand turn to a fist at his side. He battled his own emotions for only a second longer but he didn’t look at me.
No, instead he simply…simply… walked away from me.
I burst into tears and my legs crumbled but the floor never caught me, Vincent did.
“Easy now, I’ve got you…I’ve got you,” he told me as he pulled me close. He heaved me up into his arms and I found myself sobbing into his shoulder as I held on to his neck.
“He…he…didn’t believe me Vincent…why didn’t he believe me?” I managed to ask pulling
back from him and crying out my question. He gave me a pitying look and shook his head in a small way that told me his answer, even if he soon voiced it himself,
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said wiping away my tears with a thumb to my cheek and the sweet, tender gesture had me in tears once again.
“Come on, let’s get you out of here,” he said after looking back towards where his brother had left as if he could hear something I couldn’t. I nodded and said in small voice,
“I’m all right now, you can put me down.” He looked as though he was going to deny my request but I guess after what I had just experienced thanks to domineering men, then well, he must have thought better of it.
“Very well,” he said and let my legs down first. Like his brother had done, he made sure I was steady until he stepped back and held his hand out for me to take. I was just about to put my hand in his when a blood curdling sound stopped me. The sound of a girl’s scream seemed to vibrate along the walls and there was only one place it had come from…The Temple.
I made it about five steps towards the opening before Vincent grabbed me.
“No! We have to do something! We have to help her!” I shouted, pleaded and begged trying to get from him but he grabbed my wrists and crossed them over my breasts, holding me locked and immobile.
“He’s going to kill her! We can’t let that…” I started again, struggling in his hold…little good it did me.
“Keira listen to me. The girl is not who you think she is...”
“But, but…”
“She is a killer, Keira! She is the worst of our kind and she needs to be punished.” Hearing this I suddenly stopped struggling against him. Could it be true?
“She’s…she’s really a killer?” I asked quietly and he spun me round to face him, lifted my face to his and said,
“Tell me now, did you come down here alone?” he asked me, surprising me with his question and I nodded before confirming what happened with words.
“I swear to you Vincent, I swear it. I came down here alone!” I told him, looking into his eyes so that he could read the truth in them easily.
“I believe you and in turn I ask for your trust in me when I tell you that the girl in there deserves to meet the Underworld, her body in flames for her crimes against not only my kind but also yours, Keira.” Vincent said with an arm pointed towards the door, indicating the one currently screaming for her life. But now the only difference was that she did so alone. Because no longer did she have an ally in me. Because I knew without a doubt that Vincent spoke the truth… a truth I needed to hear in order to let go.
I nodded my understanding at him and this time took his offered hand without hesitation. And together we walked from this place and left Draven to his unfortunate work. But with each step further from him we took I couldn’t help but wonder how our joint discovery should have gone. I looked at Vincent and couldn’t help comparing the two.
How his brother had handled finding me there and instead of realising it for what it was, a massive misunderstanding on both parts, he simply refused to do what his brother had done…believe in me.
He had basically called me a liar and that was when something had broken me inside. I had never lied to him, where he had done so to me…on numerous occasions in fact. So, what right did he have to judge me under the same light that had first been cast on his own actions?
I looked to Vincent again, both now and in a dream world looking down at who held my hand and I knew it should have been Draven…it should have been us. Me and my boyfriend walking away from the experience together and overcoming the differences his world and mine threw at us. But it wasn’t. It was someone else and my dark knight had just cast me aside, deeming me unworthy of a truth told and a truth believed.
So, I let Vincent lead me through the maze of tunnels and stone hallways like some lost lifeless doll. The only thing that felt real anymore were the tears that rolled down my cold cheeks and fell to the floor from my chin.
Was this the end? He demanded for me to leave…no, not just leave but to be taken away. Did it then mean what I thought it meant? Had Draven ended things with me without actually saying the words? I swallowed down a sob and just as Vincent reached a door I dropped his hand to cover my mouth.
He looked back at me and that’s when he saw it…My heart breaking.
“Oh Keira.” He uttered my name and then I was lost. I looked down and let my tears fall, this time without restraint. I don’t know what happened after this, but at a guess I was being carried. And I did so all the time feeling like my world was coming to an end, even in the arms of an Angel.
I had no knowledge of how, but soon I found myself being taken back through a pair of familiar doors.
“Afterlife.” I muttered and Vincent chuckled.
“I thought I had lost you for a moment then,” he told me thinking I had fallen asleep.
“It’s okay, you can just put me down now and I can find my own way home,” I told him wondering where my truck was, here or at home. He raised a blonde eyebrow in question and like that, he painfully reminded me of his brother.
“Why would you need to make your way home? I brought you in here because I thought you could do with a drink,” he said pulling Draven’s chair out and setting me down on it. Then he left me and I watched him walk to the bar. I left him to it and turned my gaze back on the world I knew and loved. Afterlife… in truth it was the real start of my new life. A place that quickly became home and all it held inside this unlikely place of dreams was what would consume my heart.
I often wondered what would have happened had Frank never got me a job here. Would I be here now? Or would Draven have kept me at arm’s length forever, for fear of what his world could do to me? Would I have just been like the rest of them, down there trying to get a glimpse of the shadowed world above, fantasising about the club’s owner just like RJ had?
But I soon realised that I was asking myself the wrong questions, as what I should have been asking was…what happens next?
“You join me for a drink,” Vincent said as I must have asked this last question aloud. He placed a bottle of tequila and two glasses down on the table as he took his usual seat next to Draven’s. I took one look at the bottle and thought why the Hell not, after all, I might as well drink to my time here and bury my sorrows the only real way one can…by drowning themselves in a 38% proof bottle.
Vincent filled up his shot glass and tipped it to mine and I said a toast,
“Here’s to disbelieving boyfriends and slap happy girlfriends…it was good whilst it lasted.” I said miserably before shooting the clear liquid back and feeling it’s burn, like a welcome friend. I looked to Vincent who just shook his head once, as ifa he didn’t believe me but he drank anyway.
“Answer me something Keira, did you really think my brother is destructive and cruel enough to be the hand behind killing an innocent girl?” I placed my glass down slowly at his question and said honestly,
“No, I thought it was Lucius.” He frowned on hearing my answer and then asked,
“Why would you think that?”
“Because just before I made my way down there I woke up to a dream…well a nightmare really, but it was one that had me convinced that he had somehow made it into Afterlife.” I told him and he chewed on this new piece of information for a moment before asking me his next question, filling my glass again.
“And once you found out it was Dom…what then?” I shrugged my shoulders and said,
“I knew there would be a reason but one he didn’t think important enough to give me…you did that, remember,” I told him, giving him a look and once I received one back that told me I was right, I swigged my second shot back.
“My brother is many things, hothead being one of them but being used to handling a human heart is not something that comes naturally to him.”