Demon in Love (Book 3)

Chapter 2

“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”- Robert Frost

Chapter 2

-Karen-

“That’s loud,” Nate furrowed his eyebrows. His vampire ears were probably bleeding right now.

“What the hell is going on?” Jon screamed over the police sirens. Three cars were heading towards the woods, followed by an ambulance. “I swear, every time I hear the sirens—”

“We need to follow them,” I said, my eyes darting between Jon and Nate. We couldn’t just run after these speeding cars. The sirens were already fading, but I wanted to know what was actually happening. “Let’s just go.”

“Get in!”

All of us turned around when we heard Zayasu shout. He was standing next to his blue Beetle with keys clenched in his hand. When I gave him a questioning look, he nodded at me. For some seconds, I stood there frozen, debating if we should take his offer or not.

“Hop in,” He said to us, getting in the driver’s seat. “I promise I’m a good driver.”

Jon was the first one to react. He quickly walked towards the car and threw open the backseat door. His blue eyes met mine before he started to get in. He tilted his head and let out a sigh when he saw the indecisive look on my face. He could evidently read me like an open book.

“Karen, what are you thinking about?” He asked. “We have to go.” His eyes flickered on Nate beside me. “Are you gonna run there?”

Finally, I shook myself out of the trance and moved. I jogged to the passenger seat and Zayasu opened the door for me. I heard a loud bang from the backseat, as I put on the seatbelt. The whole car shook with the impact. My heart literally jumped to my throat and I saw Zayasu tighten his hold on the steering wheel.

“Man, don’t break the door. I told you to close it, not freaking break it, dumb vampire.” Jon screamed, burying his face in his hands “First those sirens nearly made me deaf and this gave me a f*****g heart attack.”

I puffed, letting out a breath of relaxation. Glad to know, I wasn’t the only one who was jumpy today. I looked at Zayasu whose knuckles had turned whiter than paper. He loosened his grip on the driving wheel when he saw me staring.

“It’s completely fine,” Zayasu smiled, putting the key in the ignition. “He has never travelled in a car before. I’m really glad the door didn’t come off or I would have had to send a notice to his brother for the p*****t to fix this.”

“And where would you send the notice?” I questioned. Deep inside I was not convinced that he didn’t know where Victor was.

He pulled the car out of the garage. “If you really know Victor, then you should know that no matter wherever you put the notice, he would eventually read it. It’s like he has eyes everywhere in this area.”

“So, basically what you’re saying is that he is still watching us,” I glanced at Jon from the corner of my eye. “If you’re trying to scare us, it’s not working. We’re not scared of him or whatever he is capable of doing.”

“I didn’t mean to be creepy,” Zayasu sped up the car. “The only thing I was trying to be was funny.”

“It didn’t work as well,” I said after a deep breath.

“You’re just like I imagined you to be. Not that Victor left any detail out for me to imagine you,” He said. “He wouldn’t stop talking about you even when I told him I was no longer interested in listening. He had this awesome memory which was unquestionable when it came to you. From the color of your eyes to the dress you wore, he knew it all. I had never seen him so whipped.”

I wanted to be angry and annoyed by what he had said but instead, I was blushing. I felt my cheeks grow hot. I lifted up my eyebrows and stared out of the window. I didn’t want him to notice it. Damn you, Victor. Why are you making it hard for me to hate you?

“He was practically stalking her,” Jon spoke up from the back. “He was spying on us according to his disappointing plan.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zayasu tapped his fingers on the wheel. “I don’t think you know him better than I do.”

“You do realise that his brother is sitting right here, huh?” Jon shot back more aggressively than I was expecting. “I bet if anyone knows Victor-The deceiving bastard more than you; it’s him. He might have been your friend but this person beside me has been with him for centuries.”

“He was asleep for half of it,” Zayasu simply commented.

I glimpsed at Nate, contemplating whether he would speak or not. He wasn’t even paying any heed to the heated conversation in which he was being mentioned. He was looking out of his window as if he was counting all the passing cars and trees. I shook my head disapprovingly.

“Oh? What’s your point exactly?” Jon let out a sarcastic chuckle. “Just because the brotherly bond was missing between them for a long time, he turned to you to speak his heart out.”

Zayasu chuckled bitterly in response too.

“My point is; Nathan wasn’t there to see the changes in his brother. He only remembered him as an elder brother who was always at his throat to kill him whenever they had a fight,” His eyes were focused on the road ahead. “They are vampires. And when vampires fight, it isn’t entertaining and cute. By the way, who doesn’t fight with their siblings?”

“Sure, siblings kidnap and threaten their loved ones just because they want to execute their plans,” Jon replied, gritting his teeth. “I don’t know if you’re blind or just plain stupid.”

Shaking my head, I raised my right eyebrow at Jon. He sounded totally pissed off, and he was talking to Zayasu as if he was talking to Victor himself. The car took a sharp turn and I looked at Zayasu. His jaw was clenched visibly and his dark eyes were locked on the road.

“You aren’t going to crash this car, are you?” I asked, trying to lighten up the suffocating atmosphere inside. “We’re only five minutes away now.”

“Maybe that’s why he was so keen to give us a lift,” Jon replied instead.

“Jon,” I said in a warning tone.

Jon sighed loudly. “Whatever.”

“You know, I can understand why you all are angry. He left you with pieces to put together and you’ve no clue where, to begin with. I still can’t believe that he would try to hurt you, Karen. There has to be something that you are missing,” He said, frowning. “The way you described he behaved the last time you met, is usually when a vampire is kept away from the blood for many days.”

“There were days when it used to be a punishment,” Surprisingly, Nate joined in. He wasn’t looking out of the window anymore. “Rogue vampires were kept in a room without any blood. That made them either insane or taught them a lesson to never defy the orders of the Vampire Elder Society.”

Suddenly I remembered what Victor had said.

He kept me in the basement of the mansion for many weeks without any blood.

“That’s what Lord Valentino did to Victor when he killed a lot of people while drinking blood,” I said, realising how hard the punishment would have been. “Why didn’t he go insane then?”

“I’m pretty sure he was always insane,” Jon muttered under his breath.

We ignored him and his increasing hate.

“It depends on the willpower of a vampire whether they give up to their dark side or not. Some vampires give up easily, while others don’t,” Nate told us. “It takes a lot of self-control when we are kept away from the blood. Yes, Victor was punished in his early days; that’s what I’ve heard from him. He was reckless and on a rampage after he was turned.”

“Did the VES ask Lord Valentino to do this to him to cover their tracks in the human world?” Zayasu asked.

“VES?” Nate narrowed his eyes questioningly.

“You know, the Vampire Elder Society,”

“Oh, the elder society might have been behind the idea of putting him down,” Nate replied. “Those vampires who went entirely insane were executed painfully. I’ve heard they were exposed to the sunlight so that they could burn down into ashes. Though the punishment was harsher than the execution, Victor survived it only because he didn’t want—”

“To die,” I completed his sentence. He was dying from Tuberculosis in his human life. Of course, he had to relive the experience again during the punishment but he was more afraid of death. “He didn’t want to die. He wanted to live through all this and that’s what kept him sane.”

“You can say that,” Nate nodded in agreement. “Victor is in love with the concept of immortality.”

“Then what happened to him now?” I asked.

“We’re here,” Zayasu commented as the car came to a sudden halt.

I squinted through the windshield to see the cops sealing a large portion of the wolf woods with yellow tapes. Obviously, there was a crowd and people were peeping through the semi-circle with their mobile phones to take pictures. The ambulance wasn’t there but there was a green pick-up truck, parked behind the police cars.

I opened the car door, slowly stepping out of the car. Had there been some kind of accident?

“I can smell a lot of blood in the air,” Nate whispered behind me.

I turned around to see him standing with troubled features on his face. His face was pale, and his green eyes looked intoxicated. He swallowed hard and licked his lips repeatedly to hide his fangs. Only he was failing miserably.

“You should stay in the car while we three go and check,” I advised. It was better if he’d stay in the car. I didn’t want him to walk on the path his brother already had. “Don’t come out of the car.”

“You’re right, I should stay back in there,” He looked down at his shoes. I waited for him to open the door and just get in. He didn’t. He looked up at me again. “I’m sorry, Karen.”

Okay, I admit, I felt the raw emotions and heard the c***k in his voice when he said those words but I was too adamant to forgive him that I shook my head without even thinking twice. I was not ready to forgive him. Not yet.

“Get in the car,” I said firmly. “We’ll be right back.”

“Karen, please,” He took a step near. “I know I should have told you.”

I raised my hand in front of me, “We’ll talk about this later. I hope the little trust that’s left between us doesn’t vanish.” I turned back on the heel of my feet. I didn’t want to hear him whine anymore.

“Karen,” Jon called me as I heard Nate shut the door, without smashing it this time.

Zayasu and Jon were standing some steps behind the crowd. While Jon was jumping up and down to steal glances over the crowd, Zayasu stood there with his arms crossed over his chest.

“What is going on here?” I asked Zayasu.

“The ambulance just carried away three bodies,” He explained. “I asked one of these people,” He gestured to the crowd. “All of them were teenagers, camping in the woods maybe. Two of them were already dead when the man with that pick-up truck was passing by,” He pointed at the green truck. “He stopped, called the cops, and got out of his truck to see if there was any sign life. One of them was barely alive when the man checked.”

“He kept chanting ‘vampire’ before he fainted,” Jon added, raising his eyebrows.

“Oh God,” I was knocked out of breath. The lump in my throat made it hard for me to say anything else. What if it was Victor?

“There is too much blood,” Jon said and I gave him a confused look. “What? Even I can smell it from here. We shouldn’t go there to check or something. I don’t think my delicate stomach can handle the sight of blood splattered on the road.”

He really did look sick. Were his werewolf abilities—No, please.

“He is right. The cops are sealing this area for investigation,” Zayasu whispered. “We can’t stand here and do nothing. If it was really a vampire, do you think it could be Victor?”

I trembled.

“I can’t believe Victor would do this,” Jon said, looking genuinely baffled. “He murdered two people out of three. Why would he draw such attention by keeping one alive to tell the cops that it was a vampire? He may be stupid but he isn’t that stupid.”

I found my voice again. “Victor would never kill anybody.”

“Well, he did kill that girl in front of us,” Jon said to me. “How can you forget our terrible efforts to carry her dead body to Crane’s?”

“He didn’t kill her in front of us,” I specified. “He brought her with him out of the portal.”

“Karen, are you still dreaming that it wasn’t Victor who killed her? He had blood smeared all over his mouth and shirt,” Jon continued, “He attacked Nate, and he had this creepy smile on his face which screamed satisfaction. It seemed like he had done what he wanted to.”

“I thought you were the one who said he wouldn’t kill them,” I nearly shouted.

“I’m just stating the obvious fact,” He said, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “Victor would never kill these people, leaving the traces behind for the cops to follow up.”

I remained silent. I didn’t know what to think anymore. The more I thought, the more I got lost in the maze of thoughts.

If it wasn’t Victor, then who was it?