Point Blank Range
Chapter 1
When Klaus didn't get answers that satisfied him, he went in search of truth. But there was a chance, this time, that the ever elusive truth might break his heart.
He and Milla had been together for more than a year and sharing a home for six months. They had just returned from France a week ago after nearly three weeks of leisurely travel. She was bright and happy during the trip. She was just as happy to see her father again on their return. He'd come to understand that she loved to travel, but she loved being home, too. Having a home base seemed sensible, and, of course it should be near her father.
Over the last three days, though, there had been a subtle change in her. Some of the brightness had dimmed in her eyes.
She was gone for hours at a time, which wasn't really unusual. They both had their own business to attend to after having been gone so long. But she was vague about where she'd been and her scent was…different. That was the part that trouble him most. Thinking on it too hard made his stomach clench.
She smelled of solvent and soap, a chemical scent that wasn't unpleasant, but was noticeable with him knowing she preferred florals. When he asked her about it, she shrugged off the question saying she'd used some soap her father had introduced her to. But her answers felt evasive.
Niklaus had the distinct impression there was more to it. And it was a feeling he couldn't shake.
Milla was also worn and tired after her long absences. She had even fallen asleep on the couch the night before. That was something he'd not seen her do since they had first started this thing between them.
He loved her with all he was. To distraction. Milla was his last thought as he fell asleep in her arms and the first thought when he woke. Klaus had spent nearly a millennia searching for what he found with her. And it didn't grow cold and tired. It didn't fade away to boredom like so many relationships up until now….not for him, anyway.
Three days of this uncertain feeling was about all he could stand. It was time for answers.
When she left on the fourth morning, Klaus followed her car with a heavy heart as it navigated the interstate and turned toward an industrial area of Richmond he'd only seen in passing until now. She made several sharp turns and ended up parked in a gravel parking lot behind a large unmarked aluminum sided building. He'd watched quietly while she gathered her things and disappeared behind a nondescript door wearing cutoff jean shorts, athletic shoes and a black tee-shirt.
Folding his arms, he leaned against the outer wall of an abandoned warehouse as he waited quietly. It wasn't clear to him what he was waiting for. Ideally, the best case scenario would have her wandering back out and heading home. The worst case would be that he was waiting for her to get deeply involved in whatever she didn't want him to know about before he made an entrance of his own.
As he waited, he pondered possibilities for why she would be hiding from him. All the roads he travelled in his mind led back to her having found someone else.
His chest ached just at the thought. She was not a dishonest person, would never set out to betray him. But the realistic side of him knew that those things weren't always planned. Passions could erupt as easily as they could grow cold.
He shook his head, realizing his heart was aching for a path where they could survive such a thing together. And he was doing it before he even knew for certain if she'd done the thing he feared.
If she was behind that door with another man, it might kill him. And in a rage, he might in turn kill anyone that stood between him and her. The thought horrified him. So, he stood there for two hours before he forced himself to close the distance. Dark dread made his steps slow and methodical. Shoulders squared with hard resolve, he reached for the handle.
As he opened the door, the smells of industrial cleaners, engine grease and gasoline assailed him. The sharp clang of metal against metal and the rustle of chains filled the air.
A garage.
After a moment, he spotted Milla. She was head first under the hood of an old car, bent at the waist. Beautifully muscular tanned legs and a shapely bottom, with her cutoff blue jean shorts riding up, were on display. It reminded him of an inversion of the heart symbol frequently scrawled across the notebooks of teenage girls. Car parts were organized around her on a tarp on the floor.
She also had an appreciative audience. Four men, all dressed in uniforms, wearing navy blue pants and shirts all stood at varying positions, striving for the best possible view of his girl's hindquarters. He smiled as he decided couldn't blame them.
One of the men was standing close, handing Milla tools as she called for them. This one was roughly the size of a mountain. He stood easily three inches taller than Klaus himself and half again as broad. One massive arm was roped with muscles. The other arm was masked in a sling and a cast that was strapped to his chest. He had dark brown hair and a full dark beard.
Klaus drew in the scents of the entire contents of the building with great care. He could be certain that he and Milla were the only nonhumans present.
He came to a stop ten paces from her and the Mountain turned to meet his eyes. A white label on the man's shirt told Klaus his name was John. Klaus looked Milla up and down pointedly before he met John's green eyes and smiled. John's expression grew to a wide grin and he whistled soundlessly in agreeing appreciation of the view. No one questioned Klaus' presence there, making him sure that Milla had a tendency to draw male spectators.
Klaus tucked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and finally spoke.
"Quite a spread you have there, love." He said with a smile.
There was a chorus of deep male laughter around the garage. He might have been referring to the car parts skillfully organized on the floor. But he also might have meant the fine display of her rear that everyone was admiring.
Milla froze and jerked her head up at the sound of his voice, slamming it into the opened hood of the car in the process. She was still cursing under her breath and rubbing the back of her head when she stood and met his eyes. Her face was hotly flushed and her golden eyes wide.
"Klaus." She whispered as she took a small step in his direction.
John let out a long, deep booming laugh.
"English here is the boyfriend." John announced in a voice as loud and deep as a mountain should have if it could speak. There was an answering chorus of male groans as men turned back to their work around the garage, disappointed that the show was probably over.
Both labels in John's booming announcement made Klaus smile. He'd been called "English" like it was his name before and the title boyfriend appealed, though she didn't call him that.
When Milla reached him, he carefully touched the spot where she'd hit herself.
"Are you alright?" He whispered at her, still smiling his relief.
She nodded sheepishly. She had black smears of grease covering both hands and scattered up to her elbows. There was a dark smear over one brow. The grease explained the solvent soap he'd smelled before. This was what she'd been doing.
"Are you mad?" She asked quietly, searching his face.
Klaus only smiled and shook his head. The strong grip dread had on him had loosed its hold. He was relieved. Immensely. Her interest was in a car.
"What is it you are doing, exactly?" He asked her, his eyes moving again to the old car she'd been immersed in.
"I'm helping John with the engine since he's only got one arm that works right now. It's a long story." She shrugged broadly with her dirty hands. "Dad…" Her words trailed off.
"Your father taught you." Klaus finished for her and she nodded. Klaus knew her father was a skilled mechanic. Evidently she'd spent a great deal of time at her father's garage over the years. She'd never mentioned it.
Klaus took a step forward and pressed his lips to a clean spot on her forehead.
"You do your work and I will see you tonight at home." He winked once at her and watched the tension drain from her.
She was turning back to the car when Klaus slowly moved toward the door and back out it again.
A car. His girl wasn't tangled up someone else. Milla was wrestling a car engine. He shook his head and laughed at himself, his heart light again.
That evening Klaus was sitting on their couch when she stepped in and closed the door behind her. Her steps were slow and cautious as she joined him, sitting in the chair across the room.
He waited, letting the silence speak for him, to see where it would lead.
"You are mad." She said after several minutes.
He turned and met her eyes. "No." He countered. "I am confused."
The ripple between her brows asked her questions for her.
"Why would you avoid telling me about the garage?"
She held up a hand and he could see dark stains on her fingers. Her eyes were on the floor. "Because it's not feminine, or sophisticated. It doesn't even matter."
He went to crouch in front of her so she would meet his eyes.
"What it is, is you. That makes it matter." He took one of her hands and kissed it. She met his eyes then. "I do not want for you to pretend to be what you think I want. Be yourself. It is you I love, not some imagined person you have concocted for me."
He had already made that mistake himself, imagining she would want someone good and righteous. Those things were definitely not him. He was wrong then, just as she was wrong now. He wouldn't care if she wrestled alligators professionally. He just loved her.
She had grown quiet as he spoke.
"Now, tell me how you ended up in a garage fixing someone's car."
"I went to get the oil changed." She grinned sheepishly.
"Even though you could do it yourself and just did not want me to know that." He filled in at her smile and she nodded.
"There's a window where you can watch them. They were moving an engine on a lift. One of the chains was rusty and it snapped."
"Someone got hurt?"
"It landed on Big John. He was the one in cast and sling. Broke his arm and a couple of ribs."
"How did you get involved?"
She flushed. "I sort of panicked. I've seen it happen at Dad's place. It was something I was afraid of when I was a kid. John was pinned under it, between the engine and the car. So, I went running back there and lifted it off of him. By myself."
Klaus shook his head at the picture that must have made. A beautiful blonde hefting a four hundred pound engine.
"What did they do?"
She grinned. "Everyone sort of froze. So, I stood there for a second and asked them where I should put it. Someone pointed at another lift and I walked it across the garage and stood there while they hooked it up."
Klaus couldn't help himself. He laughed at the idea of all of those grizzled men watching her open mouthed.
She stopped and looked at her hands. "I guess I'm a lot stronger than I realized. They all think I'm some sort of gym rat."
Klaus' eyebrows shot up and she explained. "Someone who spends all of their time working out with weights. John kept asking how much I can "dead lift" and I had to finally tell him I had no idea."
She grinned again. "I don't even know what that means."
"And repairing the car?" He prodded her.
"In the confusion of rushing John to the hospital, they pretty much abandoned the place. When they got back I had hooked up the engine he was working on and the car was running."
Klaus shook his head in wonder at her and she nearly glowed with it but she shrugged.
"Since they're a man down while he heals, they let me come back every day since to help out. I guess I've missed it."
"Then you should be doing it." He was still crouched and reached a hand to touch her cheek. "If you are happy, I am happy."
"But why did you end up there?" She asked, her eyes narrowing. He pulled his hand away and backed up to sit on the edge of the coffee table. It was his turn to examine the floor.
"I could tell there were things that were not being said. If I do not have answers, I go find them. That is just something I have always done." He wasn't proud of it in this case.
"You thought the worst." Milla could hear it in his voice, see it in the way he wouldn't meet her eyes. He nodded once, honest, as always.
Milla drew a deep breath. She'd avoided telling him the truth and he came in search of it. She wasn't exactly in a position to be indignant. If she'd had the courage to tell him what she was doing he would never have thought she was seeing someone else and been hurt by it. She had made a mess with her unintentional game of hide and seek.
She drew a shaky breath and went to her knees in front of him. She ended up between his bent knees with her forehead braced against his chest.
"I'm sorry." She leaned up and kissed him thoroughly.
She broke the kiss and pressed her cheek to his.
Milla felt that all of life was held together with a common thread of uncertainty. Forever promises sounded like fairy tales to her ears. Real life was too harsh for fairy tales. For that reason, there were no promises between them. But this, this she could control.
"I wouldn't hurt you that way. Lie or sneak around. That's a promise I can give you. I hide when I'm embarrassed. That's all it was. I won't hide from you. You deserve better."
"I love you." He said it as he pulled her to his chest.
"I love you, too." Milla whispered against his shoulder.
She was clamped to his chest with one arm and moved so fast she blinked in confusion. When she did finally look around, he had backed her up against the living room wall. One of his hands held both of hers firmly above her head. She saw his smile as he leaned down and kissed her throat.
"When I walked into that garage, you made quite the picture. A fantasy men would put on posters to adorn their walls." He ran a hand inside her shirt and it split, falling open in tatters around her.
"As long as it is only my walls you are actually adorning, we will be fine." A finger moved under the edge of her bra and it came apart in his hand, torn at the seams.
One of his knees came up between her legs to brace her, lifting her up off the floor and he leaned down to draw the tip of one breast into his mouth.
Sensation roared through her and a gasp escaped before she could stop it.
On a deep breath of surprise, she said huskily, "I think I like where this is going."
Her breathing picking up its pace. Since she couldn't use her hands, Milla tilted her hips and wrapped both legs around him in an attempt to pull him close, moving restlessly against him.
One of the things Klaus loved most about her was how quickly she could go from prim to passionate. If she was one of the cars she loved so much, her engine would go from zero to ninety miles an hour in two point four seconds. Only a moment, a touch and she was racing for the finish line carrying him along with her.
But it was Klaus' turn to drive. She tried using her legs to draw him in, but this time he stayed where he was, lingering long with his mouth. Finally, he shifted and moved to her other breast, running his free hand over smooth, muscled skin to cup her where his lips had just been. Her breathing progressed quickly from gasping to a hard pant. Her eyes closed, she unconsciously turned to where his mouth was against her. Eyes on her face, he watched her draw in her lower lip, trying to keep a low moan from rising up. It echoed from her chest after a second anyway.
It always shook him deeply that he could touch her and make her breach the barriers of control she kept for herself. Her body trembled against him and Klaus' frame was rocked with a hard shudder as his own chaotic need rattled loose in answer.
Klaus tilted Milla's world on its axis as he carried her against his chest at lighting speed. In a few seconds they were both across their bed and stripped bare of everything but their need for one another.
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Elena sat alone at the edge of a fountain in the middle of a busy Farmer's Market twirling a single daffodil between a thumb and a finger as she watched the flow of brightly dressed people around her. Lovers walked hand in hand. Mothers carried their children in their arms, on their backs or pushed them in strollers. The flood of people and the kaleidoscope of color they created fascinated her.
As the crowd moved, one small girl broke from the stream and came to sit next to Elena. She had raven black hair pulled up in long pigtails that curled on the ends. The girl wore denim shorts and a black tank top. She appeared to be about ten years old. Bright silver eyes watched Elena closely, though she was turned away.
Elena's gaze swung around slowly and jolted in surprise as she noticed the girl. She hadn't realized she wasn't alone anymore until that moment.
"Well, hello." Elena said finally because the girl continued to just look at her.
"Hi." A small, high voice answered.
"Are you lost?" Elena asked, her eyes narrowing in concern.
The little girl smiled up at her and shook her head.
"You're very kind. But I'm ok. Thank you." Although her voice was high and she was small as she would expect, the words seemed strangely mature.
Elena's brow rippled in confusion.
The girl scooted half a space toward Elena and leaned close.
"I've come for you, actually. To offer you some free advice." She said, conspiratorially.
Elena smiled. A ten year old had advice for her. It struck her as funny.
"And what would that be, sweetie?"
The little girl turned and faced her, shifting her body to drape a bent knee between them.
"You already know that fear has its purpose. It protects us. Warns us and works to keep us safe. It can even drive positive change if need be, to avoid it." The girl reached forward and laid one of her hands over Elena's.
"But making a home for it to linger in is a dangerous thing. The thing we fear can grow and overtake us, smothering out everything good." The girl's silvery eyes met Elena's frankly as she leaned back, asking without words if Elena understood.
Elena froze as the girl started to speak and a dark flush worked its way across her face.
"Who are you?" Elena asked her, her own voice deepening in alarm. She drew in the child's scent. All she could detect was a human child and a trace of lavender.
"I am no one." The girl shook her head, her curled pigtails flopping around her. "I only want to help."
With that, the child stood and turned, walking quietly back into the stream of people.
"Wait!" Elena called after her, but the girl was gone. Elena stood, her eyes searching the crowd. Desperate suddenly to find her, she said it again, louder. "Wait!"
Elena woke with a gasp, the word she'd just called echoing in the darkness of the bedroom. She sat up, drawing deep breaths. Her skin was cold like ice and she was covered in gooseflesh.
Elijah, thankfully, still slept next to her. At least she'd not woke him with her cry.
She covered her face with her hands as her eyes filled. That felt real. The whole dream, the little girl speaking like a sage…it all felt like it had really happened. Elena shuddered as she remembered every word.
Her first instinct was to tell Elijah about the dream, because she felt sure she'd just had her dreamscape invaded. Another vampire? No, she dismissed that immediately. She could move into another person's dream, but not take another form while she was there. Even Damon, with his gift for dreams, couldn't do that. And there were no vampire children she had ever encountered and certainly none that would know her so well. The child had referred to things Elena had never spoken to another soul.
She had to promptly dismiss the idea of talking to Elijah about it, because he'd want to know everything she saw and heard. There was no way she was going to tell him what the girl said about fear. She'd be forced to explain why the words were so disturbing. He'd ultimately want to know what it was that Elena feared. She'd be forced to explain how she had come to live and breathe under fear's loathsome shadow; just as the child had implied.
To calm herself, she turned on her side next to Elijah and studied him. He slept on his back, his chest rising and falling smoothly, his handsome face relaxed and at rest. He looked younger somehow and innocent. One of his hands was stretched out above him, on the pillow.
Elena's heart swelled in her chest at the picture he made, her love for him rising up. Her eyes welled as they moved over his profile. The sheet was stretched taught over his bare chest and torso, a diagonal swath that stretched from his hip up over his broad chest. He slept without clothes and she knew all too well what was hidden from her sight. One of his scars caught her attention, imagining for the thousandth time the weapon that had made it, piercing him beneath a rib, so close to his heart, when he was still human and vulnerable.
Thinking of his pain from so long ago, before she could offer comfort, had her leaning close and pressing soft lips there. He made a soft sound in response, like a sigh, before he grew quiet again. His chest continued its rhythmic rising and falling, telling her he was still asleep.
But something about the sound he made drew her close again, pressing another warm kiss to him, at his side. He shifted in his sleep, moving toward her and she dropped another low on his hip bone that was exposed, her hands sliding over a flat stomach as she did. A soft sigh became a low gasp as her hand slid under the sheet and down along his thigh.
Dark eyes opened slowly as her fingers trailed back up again. Without warning she was on her back and he was over her, nestled close. She smiled as she ran hands over his back.
He returned her smile, his eyes still dreamy from sleep, before he kissed her. She was the one that deepened it, wrapping arms around his neck to draw him in. She needed this, needed him. More now than ever.
Hours later Elijah sat in the kitchen watching the morning sunlight stream through the window. He was reviewing the list of tasks he'd committed to for the day. For the first time in more than half a century, he was free to focus beyond the empire he'd built, with possibilities around every turn.
Since handing the business over to Elena almost two years ago, he'd loosed his hold on the reins, allowing her to make the decisions. He offered to help in any way he could, but she always refused. And he could hardly argue with her results.
Elena had singlehandedly increased their profit margin by twelve percent in the first year. She'd put together a sales team that had expanded their business, rather than the travel and sales being left only in the hands of the two of them. She had a gift for finding people who could be trusted and delegating responsibility. Conversely, he'd always felt that a job well done was one he did himself.
His Elena was smart, innovative and determined.
So why did he feel this uncertainty?
There were small changes in her that worried him. Most of her work she now did from home. This was a good thing. He kept telling himself that. She could multi-task here as she couldn't somewhere else.
It didn't mean that she'd withdrawn from the world. Not really.
It shouldn't matter that she'd grown quieter in the last months. She had a lot on her mind, working through obstacles and finding solutions all day and sometimes into the night. But now he was the one that woke frequently to a cold bed. He'd often find her sitting alone in the living room in the dark, a night's rest lost to her.
His little chatterbox had grown quiet and serious. Probing questions found no answers. It only got him more worthless smiles that didn't reach her eyes. Real smiles had become a rare event to be celebrated.
Just that morning she'd woke him with one of those real smiles and he'd been unable to resist her. Not that he'd really wanted to resist her.
Elijah couldn't help but think that his beloved wife was unhappy and he didn't know why. The tight band of pain in his chest had become a permanent condition in recent months.
He couldn't help but revisit to the idea that his being the one responsible for her change would destroy them eventually. They had dodged that bullet so far, but it felt like there was always a chance it might strike at his very heart at any time.