The Children of Arnborg: The Prophecy

Chapter Eighteen

Stuart's eyes opened. Emma sat next to him playing with Raines' hair.

"Did you enjoy him?" she asked dryly. "He didn't seem much to me. I'm sure I've had better. I hope you understand why he had to be eliminated?"

Stuart's inside coiled and recoiled on itself. His chest swelled. His lips trembled. His tears teetered on his eyelids, his voice hoarse and wheezing with words that would not come. Every nerve in his body shook. Finally, something came. "Oh God... oh God... Oh God!"

"Ah, the melodrama. Thomas is dead, and now you..." Emma lamented.

Stuart stood up. He could feel the change in his body. He noticed that Emma had already cleaned away the pentagram, Grant was gone, and nothing remained to betray what had taken place just moments ago. His jaw tightened, and his chest tightened with an unimaginable sorrow, such as he had never felt before. Moments passed. He sat down on the cold floor. Moments passed. Then he spoke. "Fire, is it?"

"What?" Emma asked.

"Fire?" he murmured quietly. "That's how it ends. That's how you make it end? Fire?" Emma drew close to him, but Stuart drew away. "You made me kill him," he whispered. He looked dazed. "You made me kill him... You killed Tom. God knows what you did to Woolsey." He looked around him. The jar was gone. "You made me kill him. You made me kill him!" he screamed. He knelt down at the side of Matthew's body, sobbing. "Oh God!" he whimpered. Matthew looked back at him, cold, listless... dead.

"I love you, Stuart," Emma whispered. "Don't you understand? That's where you came in. I loved Arnborg. I loved Frouuina. I'm not the monster you may think I am. All these years, these centuries, that's the one thing that's been missing from my life, both mine and Joshua's. A companion; someone to love... forever. And now the deed is done. Arnborg is back... in Woolsey, yes. The threat has been eliminated, and now you and I can be together... to love each other..." She reached out for him. "Stuart?"

He flew on her, his hands around her neck, strangling her with preternatural strength almost on instinct, but he had no time to stop and wonder over it. "Love!" he screamed. "Love! There's nothing loving about you, you bitch!" He almost choked on his tears.

Emma did not fight back. "Isn't there?" she asked. "Yes, I killed Thomas. It was necessary. Yes, I killed Fridurih centuries ago, and a thousand others, maybe! But it was the hunger, nothing more!" Her eyes took on a strange intensity, "Just as you killed your friend! It was the hunger. Nothing more. Does that stop you from loving him even now, even after you just murdered him?" She panted, "I guess people do unexpected things when they're desperate!" She eyed him wildly.

Stuart's hand choked tighter. "How dare you!" he growled. His nails tore the skin of her neck, and he squeezed tighter as her blood ran. But then he fell back, weary and disillusioned. His body shook. "You didn't ask me," he sobbed, quietly. "You didn't ask me if I wanted this... How could you?"

"In all the years I've known you," she whispered, rubbing at the blood on her neck, "do you really think that your eyes never asked? True, maybe your lips didn't. Your restraint was like none I'd ever seen."

She sat close to him. "But you asked, Stuart. Every time The Coven came together, every time I walked in on you, every time you saw us, you marveled, and I saw it. I asked you to come with me tonight. You didn't say no. It was the curiosity, wasn't it?" She stroked his face. 'Curiosity... yes," she hissed seductively. "Curiosity. Trust me... you asked."

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