Blood, Fangs, and Psychopaths

Chapter 5

It  feels as if I had just crawled into bed when a loud explosion followed by the creaking of wood breaks into my reoccurring nightmares, you would have thought I would be happy for the interuption. Smoke pours into the room though the open doorway, creating a thick blanket on the ceiling. My lungs burning for air, already the pain is shooting through my body as I slide out of the bed and onto the floor. Crawling towards the front door, my head is already feeling too heavy to lift up, I cough roughly as the smoke forces its way into my lungs. Arms wrap around me suddenly, lifting me off the hot floor and over a shoulder, carrying me out the front door as the ceiling collapses behind us. Sparks are flying into the night sky and dissappear between the stars.

"Are you hurt?" Panic floods Emmett's voice as he sets me on the wet grass in front of the burning cabin. He looks me over quickly before the roar of an engine comes from behind the cabin, my heart is beating so loudly in my ears I barely hear his voice or the truck. "Come on, Ronan and Annabella got the truck ready. We have to go before he finds you." Once again I'm slung across a shoulder like a bag of groceries and he takes off running to the truck. Once inside the truck, both Ronan and Annabella take their sweet time making sure I'm okay. Ronan stares at me while Annabella rubs my cold arms with her even colder hands. Panic floods through me as I realize that once again I am the reason that others are under attack, that I am the reason that the pack's home is burning down to the ground.

"We have to stay! We have to help them, this wouldn't have happened if I wasn't here." I shake my head, my voice rising hysterically as Ronan starts driving away from the cabin, now almost just a pile of embers. Wolves, the size of a small ponies, are darting around the camp. Golden eyes cutting through the darkness as they look for the intruders who set their home on fire, the intruders who are interrupting their lives.

"We can't Aj." Annabella's voice is strikingly calm as we speed away from the camp, her eyes watching the road intently. "If we stay here he will find you, we don't know if he wants to kill you or own you. What we do know is that we can't let him get to you." She shrugs slightly and pulls her arms around herself, something was bothering her and it couldn't be something good. My eyes are still burning from the smoke, my lungs finally starting to function normally, how many times will I almost die before this is over?

"You ran into a burning building to save her." Ronan's voice has a hint of surprise in it as he glances at Emmett in the rear-view mirror. "Wolves hate fire. Yet you went in and got her before Annabella and I could get there." Emmett shrugs slightly beside me and stares out the window, what the hell was going on in his mind.

"I couldn't see you lose someone else." He shrugs and with that Ronan is silenced again, an easy guess what he was thinking about. I lean my head back slowly, tears threatening again as I wish that Harlow was here, that Harlow could wrap her arms around me and tell me that everything would be okay.

"You should get some sleep, one of you will have to drive when the sun rises. Ronan and I will have to put up blankets over the windows in the back." Annabella glances at me over her shoulder and I see the fear in her eyes. "We're going to Riverbend, where Alexander lives." As his name roles across her lips, I know why she had that fear in her eyes. After more than a hundred years Annabella would be facing him again for the first time. The man she loved, the man who made her immortal. Silence is almost deafening in the truck as Ronan drives down the road leading in the opposite direction from where we came. Slowly the elevation drops again as we leave the mountain side and my eyes grow heavy with exhaustion. The heat radiating from Emmett, who had fallen asleep almost immediately, lulls me along with the movement of the truck. Once again I drift into my dreams, but things have changed. No longer is my dream about Harlow and how I watched her die but tonight I'm back at the cabin. Deep in the woods behind the cabin eyes are watching and waiting, they're too late. An unnatural growl echoes as the cloaked figure lashes out at his companions, the hood falling away from a young girls face as she flinches away from her attacker. She is beautiful but beautiful in an unnatural and mesmerizing manner. Her eyes are violet and her hair a glossy caramel color, her fangs show as she hisses at him. They were one step behind again, but they were determined to find me, he was determined. As the others turn away he turns back, once again his menacing eyes finding mine in the night. The gaze sends shivers through my body just like the night that Harlow was killed.