Fear and Blood

Chapter 33

Mae just shook her head. “That's not really the point and I think you know that,” she said softly. “You may know that he's gone and that you can't have him, but that doesn't mean that you've let him go. I think part of you still believes he's coming back.”

“And maybe I have to believe that,” Rome said, forcing back the tears that threatened to start falling any second. “Maybe that's the only way I can get through this without falling apart.”

“At some point you're going to have to face it Rome,” Mae said as she stood up. “You're going to have to realise that you're a human and he is a vampire and there is nothing either of you can do about that unless you are willing to give up everything you have, your entire life, for him.”

* * *

Ly had been feeling Rome's erratic emotions for a while now and they were distracting to the point of madness. He was sure he had felt the moment she woke up when she had gone from close to panic, to strangely calm then back to panic for a second to calm again. It had been the point of intense anger that had almost caused him to drive straight off the road. He had to wait until her anger stopped reflecting his own so he was composed enough to keep driving.

Now her emotions were steady again, thought he could tell she was sad and, as he parked his car a short distance away from Marcus Taylor's private residence, he wished that he could ignore her. That he didn't have to feel every little thing that was wrong. He wished that her emotions didn't mirror his so perfectly and he wished he could tell if they really were his emotions or if he was only feeling this way because she was.

He growled to himself before placing his head against the steering wheel and taking a deep breath. How could anyone stand being linked to someone else, it was driving him insane.

This is no time to be distracted by a human, he told himself firmly. You need to concentrate on the task at hand. Somewhere in that house is the man who's behind all of this, all you need to do is find him.

As he got out of his car, Ly looked up at the massive house that towered over him. True it wasn't as big as the Aleron family home, but where the Aleron house was home to a great many vampires, this place was only occupied by Taylor and his wife, who was currently overseas on a business trip. It was unnecessarily large and extravagant for just two people.

The house was three stories. The exterior was rendered in a light tan and the windows were large and made of reflective glass, making it impossible to see inside. It would be hard for Ly to locate the man without entering the building first. It would be slightly easier to avoid the numerous guards patrolling the wall that ran the entire girth of the residence. As far as he could tell all of the guards were carrying some form of silver, that in itself marked them as hunters.

If Ly had needed proof that Taylor was a vampire hunter he had just found it.

Silently Ly made his way past the guards, blending easily with the shadows when one came close. It was disappointingly easy to get past them, he had been expecting more from trained vampire hunters. It was almost an insult to his kind that these people were considered hunters at all.

There was only one point when Ly came close to being spotted. He made it over the outer wall and was crouching behind a large bush when a guard walked past, coming closer than expected. The silver he was carrying reacted badly with the freshly healed wound in Ly's shoulder, causing a sharp pain to run down the entire length of his arm.

Before he could stop himself, Ly groaned softly, but not soft enough. The guard turned sharply, torch pointed straight at Ly's hiding place, but by the time he steadied the light the young vampire was gone, sprinting off to hide in the heavy shadow the building created.