New Blood (The Blood Saga Book 2) (10 page)

My senses weren’t at my best as I
was watching the ground more than where my feet were taking me. It was easy to
avoid the trees but I had never expected to run into Phoenix of all people. Of
course he had seen me coming. He was only aiming to stop me.

His hands grasped my arms before I
could fall from the sudden impact as my body slammed into his. “Anna!” He
seemed surprised, but I somehow doubted it. “What the hell did he do to you?”
Phoenix whispered with a flair of anger in his voice that I didn’t understand.

“What? How did you know? He didn’t
do anything,” I quickly corrected as I went to pull away but Phoenix kept one
hand on my arm.

“You can’t lie to me.” He seemed
bewildered by the thought that I had tried.

“Why would you care?” It didn’t
come out harshly just painfully sad and curious.

“What makes you think that I do?”
His cryptic taunting hit my last nerve. Jerking my arms away I started running
again. But it did no good. Phoenix was by far faster than me.

“Stop,” I wouldn’t have if his
voice wouldn’t have intimidated me so. Phoenix didn’t seem like the type of man,
let alone Vampire, anyone should cross.

“What do you want from me?” I
breathed out in annoyance. “I’m leaving okay! What more could you want? I know
you want me gone so please don’t make this worse. You’ve won!” My brow
furrowed. No matter how angry I tried to look or sound my eyes gave me away. I
was learning a new form of pain.

Cautiously his fingers came up,
pulling back the wild strands of hair, tucking them behind my ear. “I don’t
hate you,” he said with a sigh. “I’m not a complete ass, despite whatever
anyone else is telling you. Come. Let’s go for a walk.”

He didn’t touch me again as we
walked at an easy human pace. Nor did we talk for quite some time. At long last
we came upon a fallen tree in the woods. Waiving his hand for me to join him, he
sat down against the trunk.

“He loves you, Lianna,” he said it
so simply that it sounded almost plausible.

I nodded, pulling my knees to my
chest. I believed Damien loved me, but that he loved her more. “I know.”

“Then what’s the problem? The fact
that you’re a touch more blood thirsty than they are all used to?” Unable to
verbally respond, I shook my head no.

“There’s so very much that you don’t
know yet. But you will learn. Just hang in there.” He leaned forward picking up
my hand, holding it between both of his own. His eyes focused on mine. I couldn’t
say a word. I could only look back. “You can’t give up yet, Lianna.”

His voice sunk so low I thought I
imagined it, “He doesn’t deserve you.” As he gazed off into the woods, his
mouth pulled into a slight smirk. Following the line of sight, I jumped up, but
Phoenix’s hands around mine became an iron grip. He had been holding me here
for Damien. Literally.

“Thank you, Phoenix,” Damien spoke
as he came through the trees.

Phoenix released me after a soft
squeeze. “Of course, brother. Though do watch the fire, Damien, for she does
burn,” Phoenix spoke, looking back to me briefly before he disappeared.

“Let me explain,” Damien pleaded
before me. He nearly dropped to his knees as he came to stand in front of me.

“You don’t have to. I get it.” If
he wasn’t so much faster I would have taken off right then.

“No- you don’t.” Desperation in his
eyes, he took my face in his hands. His gaze pleading with me. “You don’t
understand anything right now. And neither do I.” My brow arched. Had he lost
it? “Just trust me, Anna. Believe me when I say that the only bonds I have with
anyone is you.”

“You knew her. You knew her name,
not even I knew her name,” I refused to give in so easily despite how badly I
wanted to.

“Yes, and I love her just as much
now as I did then.” For the life of me I wanted to scream and wipe the grin off
his face for hurting me like that. I was letting him go. How could he rub it in
my face? With that he kissed me.

His lips brushed mine as he spoke-
still kissing me, “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies,
according to Aristotle. However he didn’t take count for reincarnation.” Damien
chuckled almost bitterly. But I wasn’t laughing. Pulling me tighter to him, his
eyes begged me to understand.

“What the hell are you trying to do
to me?” Breathing out in a rasp, my eyes clinched shut. He still held me tight
against him.

“Come on, Anna. You mean to tell me
you don’t believe in reincarnation despite the fact you’re a Vampire? You were
right, Anna, the spell certainly did bind me to you.”

Dumbfounded, I just stood there
clung to him, trying to grasp the straws of my sanity, desperate to understand.
“That’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“I’m nothing like her.”

“It’s the only reasonable explanation.
I found you, didn’t I? I was unexplainably drawn to you. Before now I couldn’t
remember a thing from before I turned. But when you showed me your dreams it
brought things back. Just that day. Nothing else yet, but I remember every
single thing about that day. When she looked at me I knew for certain whom she
was. Who and what she became...” It wasn’t possible. He was wrong. Clawing in
desperation at the most unfathomable possibility.

Forcefully, I pushed him away from
me, stepping back from his touch, despite my body screaming to feel him near
me. “You’re wrong.” I shook my head as I continued to back away from him.

“Anna, how could you doubt it? Why
would you even want to believe anything else?” The pain in his eyes mimicked my
own.

Swallowing down on the painful
thoughts, I took my breath to try and make him see this as I did. “If I choose
to believe it then I am choosing to believe I took away your entire choice in
the matter of loving me, and possibly somehow am responsible for your turning.”
He said nothing as the ideas of either possibility sunk in. “There is still a
great amount of pain to side with your beliefs, Damien. Consider those. And consider
this, even if they are true; do you really trust in a love that was coerced
against your will? Those dreams were always a painful haze. I never fully
understood anything about them beyond the death, and the horrible pain. Why do
you think they haunted me so much? I can scarcely recall them now, and I have
no want to try.”

Despite my want to defend my heart,
I hated that I was hurting him so completely. “I don’t need to consider
anything!” he begged.

Reaching my hands out, I held both
of his within my own. “While I say this, my heart tells me that I am not your
Shayla. The dream of your love tells me that it was stronger than any magic,
and that she’s not ever going to give up. That she will find you. Most
importantly that if I am here when she does, we will come to learn true heartbreak.”
My hands fell away.

“Anna, don’t do this. Please don’t.”
I couldn’t respond to him. When the heart and mind war with one another it’s
anyone’s fight. Desperation stained his words as well as his features. As if
exhausted his hands came up to scrub over his face. “Okay. I have waited this
long for you I can wait until we find out the truth, or at least until I prove
there is no one in existence now or otherwise that I could possibly love more
now or ever going forward.” Never had I seen him so flustered. “It’s not like
you don’t have an eternity.”

 It would be hard, but it was the
last hope my heart had. “Okay, I’ll stay for now. Until… Until something sways
though, I need time.” His eyes narrowed with confusion. He’d just begged for
time, what did I mean? “I need to protect my heart, and in doing so I think
yours, too.” Time away from him emotionally. Were we breaking up? Did Vampires
date in a way that allowed them to break up the same as mortals? If they did or
didn’t- they did now. His hand came up dragging over his face and through his
short messy hair. I had hurt him.

We walked slowly at a human pace
rather than running as we usually would. Neither of us could speak. There was
simply too much for us to say. We needed time to think now. We had actually
ended up about five miles off the protected property line. About a mile into
our walk Damien stopped in his tracks and grabbed a hold of my arm. As I moved
to pull from him, he put his hand over my mouth.

As he pulled his hand away, my brow
furrowed. His index finger placing over his lips silently asked me to stay
quiet. Still holding my arm, he pulled me closer to him protectively. Deep in
concentration, he closed his eyes. It was then that I caught the smell. Woodsy
and wild. Stronger than any ordinary animal with a strange bitterness to the
odor. “Run,” he whispered as faint as the sound of a feather falling on snow. “Don’t
stop until you’re inside the house.”

Jerking me from my reprieve, Damien
propelled me forward quickly. We moved fast as a speeding train and silent as a
ghost. He didn’t answer my unspoken question until we were in view of the
house, “Shifter. Not a friendly one. He had friends coming.”

“How could you tell?” He released
my arm finally as we began to slow. Tapping a finger to his head, indicating he
heard the Shifter. “What did he want?” Damien didn’t answer.

Questions flooded my mind for him.
Did he know who it was? Was it someone with Demetrius? Was he going to tell the
others? He didn’t answer me. He didn’t even look at me, acting as if he never
heard the thoughts at all.

We never slowed as we entered the
house. Lara was the only one sitting down stairs. Her face was twisted out of
the ordinary angel like expression into something more disturbed. She didn’t
speak to us directly, but I was certain she was saying something to Damien. I
could read it in her eyes. She had seen something.

Damien looked to me with a sigh. “Sit
down. Everyone else is coming now.” Damien sat in his usual seat. Feeling at a
loss, I sat on the floor leaning back into the large couch across from him.

Phoenix entered first through the
back doors. He sat on the couch directly beside me. I refused to think of any
questions revolving around that.

Before long the living room was
full. Hendrick stood by the stairs. Jezabell occupied the loveseat. “What does
she know, Damien?” Jezabell questioned.

“Nothing yet.” Damien had been
watching me closely up until then. Upon Jezabell’s question his eyes dropped to
the floor. Jezabell’s brow lifted curiously. More silent communication passing
between the two. Was he telling her about us? Or the Shifter?

“The Shifter,” Damien said to me,
catching my eyes briefly with his answer. I replied with a soft nod.

“He was a tracker. He wasn’t here
to attack, but I believe he would have if he had caught one of us alone. There
was another one further out. They were hungry,” Damien spoke, his eyes narrowed
as he glanced to Phoenix. Glancing up at him, I caught the slight movement of
Phoenix shaking his head no.

“Okay can you all quit with the
telepathy for a little bit?” I grumbled in obvious frustration.

Phoenix looked down to me with a
twisted smirk. “My apologies, Anna. He was just asking me if I told the others anything
of our walk in the woods. Which I have not.”

Damien looked down to me before his
gaze fell to the floor, slumping down in his chair. He’d aged years in less
than an hour, and for the first time in possibly decades truly looked like he’d
not slept since mortality. Lara looked back and forth between the three of us. “We
have secrets from one another now? What’s going on?” Lara’s eyes moved from a
stone silent Damien to rest on me. “What did you do to him?”

Phoenix nudged me with his knee in
the shoulder, to urge me to speak. “I thought I was the one owed an
explanation?” I grumbled in complaint.

“You first, Anna.” Phoenix nodded
encouraging me to explain things. In a rapid accession I began. Unable to look
at Damien, my vision focused on my knees as I told them the entire story. I
hated this but what choice did I have. I went over the dreams, then the
meditation that lead us up to today when Damien saw Shayla. Before I could
continue Jezabell interrupted. Her expression overjoyed surprise.

“You remembered something? She
actually was able to trigger a memory before you turned?” she bounced in her
seat eagerly speaking only to Damien.

“Yes, Jezabell,” Damien’s somber
biting tone and hard glare made her instantly quiet again. I finished the story
in almost a whisper.

The silence hung thick in the air
for much longer than I was comfortable with. At long last it was Hendrick who
spoke up, easing the tension tenfold. “So where does that leave us all?” He
looked confused.

“Well Anna has shared her side of
the story. But she did manage to leave out the part where I explained to her I
believed the dreams were acting as a life window.” I looked to Damien questioningly
at the term as he spoke. “A window into your past lives. That you were
reincarnated due to the spell. That your binding spell is what brought me to
you.”

Lara seemed awed over the
possibility. Jezabell was reeling with excitement. But we hadn’t gotten to the
bad part yet. Damien looked at me to continue. Daring me. “I told him I didn’t
believe him.” I could hardly speak. Phoenix casually nudged me with his knee
again to force me to continue, though I nearly choked on my words. “It’s not
possible. She and I are nothing alike all right. I met her before I turned, and
while those memories are vague she never indicated anything of the sort.” They
looked at me, waiting for that story, too. “I am allowed to keep some privacy,”
I bit out each word. Not saying it didn’t keep me from thinking about it.

Literally the day before I died, I
was healed. In healing me, the Descendant, my friend Neesa, put me into a state
of unconsciousness. There I met her. Shayla. The key was in the blood… How
right she had been. Demetrius and his people had come for me. I sacrificed myself,
and for it, Damien had stopped them. “If it is true, how do you explain two
separate entities being able to meet at all?”

Jezabell looked down on me with
eyes that were horribly angry, and hurt all at once. Why was she so upset? Hendrick’s
head hung down, looking like a wounded puppy despite his size. Lara was hard to
look at. She looked as if her heart had been broken. I’d hurt their brother,
and there was nothing they could do about it.

Phoenix was the only one not
radiating with tension. Unconsciously I found myself leaning against him.

Damien was the worst of course. I
simply couldn’t look at him. Slowly, I stood up. All eyes following me, I
walked out the magnificent set of French doors out to the even more splendid
garden. Unable to appreciate it, I sunk down onto a stone bench.

“That’s impressive. I’ve never seen
them all so upset without the risk of a physical threat,” Phoenix spoke from
behind me, shutting the door quietly before coming to stand near me.

“What do you want?” I sighed as he
stood in front of me so casually.

“That is the question, isn’t it?
But truly what I want has nothing to do with why I am here.” All I could do was
stare at him.

Without much thought, I truly
looked at him. Saw every curve of muscle, his long arms and legs stretched by a
lean, hard torso. The curve of a nearly white neck, diamond cut masculine jaw.
The hard line of his tightened lips. Two blue eyes staring hard at me that
gleamed with power. His brow rose slightly and I mentally cursed mind readers
again. I couldn’t be certain of course just a gut feeling.

“So why are you here then?” I
sighed, giving up on caring what anyone thought for the moment.

He shrugged casually. “A lot of
reasons. The foremost being that someone needs to be on your side. And as much
as I like Damien, trust me when I say only I will take
your
side on
this.” He motioned to the bench and I nodded, scooting over to give him room.
He sat next to me leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, hands joined
together.

“I don’t really want to talk about
it right now. But thanks. I guess.” My brow arched slightly, not sure if he had
any ulterior motives at this point. Phoenix hadn’t liked me from the start. I
didn’t understand why he was being nice now. My knees pulled to my chest,
laying my chin on them.

“That’s understandable.” His eyes
glanced to the glass door, eyeing everyone inside. I could hear their whispers
but not make out the words. “Don’t worry, no one’s speaking ill of you. They’re
just trying to figure a way to convince you, and what step to take next. They
want to find out who turned him, and they think you might be able to help them
find out. Lara thinks they can help him turn off the thoughts. Or at least turn
the volume down.”

“So it’s not my imagination, you can
read my mind, too. Great.” He chuckled, shrugging his shoulders.

“I can. But I didn’t need to in
order to know what you were thinking. I’m able to turn it off and on as I see
fit, unlike most.” His eyes looked to me curiously. “But you couldn’t hear me
even if you tried, is that right?” Shaking my head no, I looked down to watch a
lightning bug land on a star lily growing nearby.

His question caught me off guard. “What
all has Damien explained to you exactly? Has he taught you anything?” He seemed
perplexed at my lack of information.

“Yes. He’s tried to teach me to
stop attacking everything that pisses me off. I don’t seem to be getting it
however.” I gave him a rather menacing glare, but it was marred by a puckish
smirk. Phoenix grinned. “I think Damien’s been more caught up in keeping me
from killing anyone else, and keeping anyone else from killing me mostly,” my
tone proved the justification was a valid one.

Phoenix’s back straightened as he
absorbed the information though he didn’t comment. “You have a great deal to
learn, Anna. But don’t worry. There is a great deal of time to teach you.” His
lips twisted to a slight smirk.

“So teach me something then.”
Despite the somber mood I couldn’t hide my intrigue.

Phoenix’s eyes sparked at my show
of interest. His lips parted to speak and then clamped shut eyeing the door
once more. “Not tonight, cupcake.” He nodded at the door as it opened.

Damien nodded to Phoenix. It was obvious
they were talking. This was becoming more than annoying.

Damien caught my flare of
frustration and narrowed his eyes regretfully. “I’m sorry, Anna. Old habits die
hard is the saying, isn’t it?” I didn’t laugh, so as a result neither did he.
However Phoenix looked quite amused.

“Lara wished to know if she should
set up alternative room accommodations for you.” His lips pressed into a thin
line. Damien was grateful I was staying but very hurt by my decision to
distance myself from him while we figured things out.

“No.” The look on my face and the
tone of my voice showed he’d obviously caught me off guard. “I don’t need to
sleep so there’s no need. Unless you would prefer me to of course?” Did I hide
the pain well? Probably not. I would need to shower and access to clothes so I
had to ask.

“Of course not.” His brow scrunched
between his eyes in agitation. No one seemed to know what else there was to say
then.

Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, I
moved. The movement was so fast it seemed to occur the instant my mind
processed the want to be elsewhere. Before I knew it I was alone in the woods
running.