Chapter Two
'Blissss. . .
'Bliiissss. . .
'BLIIIISSSS . . .'
The gangly Texan girl sat bolt upright in bed, fighting back the bloodcurdling scream trying to rip its way from her throat. Where am I? she wondered dimly. Bliss Llewellyn stared around her familiar bedroom, memories trickling back from the foggy depths they had escaped to.
The necklace, Lucifer's Bane . . . her mother's picture, the inscription on the back . . . a loud noise, glass shattering . . . a glint of light caught Bliss's eye - shards of glass beneath her now broken window, a strange blue-red liquid almost dried on the carpet.
"Dylan!" The name came out in a wild gasp from Bliss's hoarse throat. He had been here, he'd come back, he was alive but injured, he had come to warn her, he knew who the Silver Blood was.
"Dylan?" Bliss called out desperately, knowing she would receive no answer. The sad-eyed boy who had stolen her heart was gone again, maybe forever . . .
Had he been able to tell her who the Abomination was? Bliss searched her hazy memory while pain threatened to engulf her - there was so much blood, and he had been so weak.
As much as she tried, Bliss couldn't remember anything past "I know who the Silver Blood is". She must have blacked out; cursing the strange symptoms of morphing from human to vampire, Bliss wept openly, tears pouring from her eyes onto the floor, mingling with the drying droplets of Dylan's blood.
"Do you need any help unpacking?" Jack asked as he lay Schuyler's bags on the queen-sized canopy bed.
"Sure, thanks." Schuyler said, looking around the room that was to be hers. The majority of her possessions had been dropped off an hour before she was, and sat in cardboard boxes all over the vast room.
The walls were a rich, almost macabre red, like human blood; golden crown molding joined the walls to the ceiling, which was off-white stucco. The furniture was large, made of dark ebony, solid and masculine. The bed followed suit, with a wild assortment of golden pillows.
Jack had opened the large bag filled with Schuyler's baggy black-on-black thrift store wardrobe, and was carefully placing her clothes on polished wood hangers in the boxy armoire. Schuyler moved to help him, vaguely noticing he wasn't using the Velox speed he was so skilled in.
"You don't have a lot of clothes, do you?" Jack asked when they had almost finished. The armoire was just over half full. "Mimi has four of these just for underwear."
Schuyler bristled at Mimi's name - the girl had unintentionally allowed all hell to break loose in a vicious attempt to murder Schuyler, trying to command a Silver Blood to do the job.
Jack, always watching her closely, noticed Schuyler stiffen suddenly. Silently cursing himself for mentioning his sister, he turned to face the beautiful girl who looked so like the woman whose face had haunted his dreams for countless years.
"She didn't mean to hurt you, Sky." he whispered, letting the pet name roll off his tongue. "She's never really try and kill you."
"Oh, so what happened at the Repository, with Bliss being attacked and Mrs. Dupont killed - that was Mimi not trying to kill me?" Schuyler whipped around to face him, a black tank top in one hand and a combat boot in the other.
She was so beautiful; her bright, mysterious eyes, bluer than a prairie sky, lined in kohl shadow, stared Jack down; her full lips pressed into a thin line, the normally alabaster skin of her cheeks now a rosey pink. Her thick, blue-black hair was falling across her face. Unaware of anything but how much he really cared about Schuyler, Jack reached out a hand, brushing the locks away from her eyes, behind her little ear. He held her flushed, shocked face in his hand, running his thumb along her blushing cheekbone.
Schuyler couldn't move, couldn't breathe. Jack just stood there, holding her face in one hand, staring into her eyes.