Now Elijah was really frustrated. Now he was beyond furious.
Cleaning up Leah's mess had been the last thing on his mind when Jared had interrupted them. He'd appeared suddenly at the top of the stairs clutching his neck and begging for help - a loose end with the worst possible timing.
Elijah highly doubted this was Leah's idea of a threesome.
The mood had been killed as quickly as the anger rose within him. Quick and commanding, Elijah was now all business, forced to take matters upon himself - had he let Leah have her way she would have snapped the boy's neck and stepped over his body on the way to the bedroom.
Elijah grabbed him, healed him, threw him through the doorway.
Jared was swung across the threshold, crashing to the porch in a heap. He struggled to his feet, clinging to the railing as he pulled himself up.
"What are you people?" he screamed in terror, shivering from the trauma of his night. It probably also didn't help that he'd just been dragged down the stairs and over the body of his dead friend, but such trivial considerations were just that.
Elijah was in a very dangerous mood and his rage emanated in every direction - it lashed out at the boy and at Leah and at himself most of all. He should never have allowed this nonsense to progress so far. Leah had too easily distracted him from her own indiscretions and Elijah did not appreciate being manipulated with sex. It was a sobering reminder that love was a blindness - in the best ways and the worst.
Leah stormed out of the lodge after him, pulling her shirt back on and tossing her hair from her eyes. With the new clarity she was beginning to see the results of her actions; the haze of her bloodlust was lifting and the stony edge of Elijah's voice was quickly sharpening her senses.
While it was a relief to him that she was almost herself once more, it was a very inconvenient time for Leah to start caring about people again.
She offered Elijah the lighter he had ordered her to locate, hesitant over his intentions.
"What are you going to do to him?" she demanded. "Don't hurt him."
Elijah didn't have the patience to explain the irony of her request.
"I'm going to compel him," he said simply, grabbing the boy roughly by the front of the shirt.
Jared flinched in fear and Leah stepped forward, pulling on Elijah's arm.
"Just let him go. Please, he didn't do anything."
"But neither did you, Leah, so now I have do it for you."
As if Jared wasn't traumatized enough, the tenor of Elijah's voice as he compelled him could have shattered stone.
"You will remember nothing of tonight - not that we were here, not that I am saying these things to you. When I release you, you will drive immediately to the nearest police station. You will tell them what has happened: that you and your friends had a party, there were drugs and alcohol, you can't remember exactly what happened, but you escaped and it's a terrible tragedy that your friends all died in the fire."
Leah leaned in, staring up at Elijah in confusion.
"Why did you say the thing about the fire? There's no fire."
"There will be," he inhaled, taking the lighter from her. He shoved it into the boy's chest.
"You will take this and when we have left go into the lodge. Anything that is paper, that is cloth, that will burn, you will light it. Then you will get in the car and you will drive - do you understand?"
"I'll do it all," he agreed without choice, clasping the lighter in trembling hands. "Just please don't kill me."
Elijah dropped him and immediately extended his hand to Leah.
"Let's go."
She hesitated, sharing a look with the frightened boy - he had been so nice. Jared had complimented her smile, offered his phone charger, invited her inside. He reminded Leah of a friend she'd grown up with in New Orleans. They had both been raised as wards of St. Ann's and besides Hope he had been the only other friend she could truly call dear.
Zach had been killed. The news had come to her while she had been out of the country with Elijah, months after the last time she had seen him at her graduation party. But Jared was so much like him; candid and spontaneous and adventurous and young. He would be graduating himself in just a few weeks – he didn't deserve this.
Leah hadn't meant to ruin his life. She never wanted anyone to ever look at her the way he was looking at her now.
"You can't do this to him," she begged Elijah.
"You've done this to him," he reminded her.
\
The only light in the forest was from the burning lodge. The smoke followed their footsteps as the couple made their way back toward their own cabin. Elijah set a determined, urgent stride and even with his human pace Leah found herself needing to double her steps to keep up.
The woods grew darker and for a long time they walked in silence, Elijah leading the way and Leah following, slightly shivering from the cold shoulder he had been giving her for miles.
"Elijah, wait."
She cursed, catching a bare foot on a branch and nearly spilling onto the forest floor.
"Can we at least talk about this?"
Continued silence.
"We have like five more miles and you can't find five minutes to just talk?"
Slowing for a second he whirled around to confront her.
"There is nothing I can say which I haven't already tried to tell you for the last nine months."
He turned and kept on walking. Leah put forth a burst of speed to catch up.
"I don't know what came over me, Elijah. I'm not just making excuses – ow, Jesus."
Leah had zoomed straight into a tree. She clung to it as he plodded on without her.
"Are we even going the right way?"
"You tell me, you've obviously traveled this path many times before."
"I wasn't looking for trouble," she said sardonically. "I don't try to make your life hard on purpose."
There were so many thoughts circling Elijah's mind, battling for his attention, that her words barely registered. His singular goal was to get back to the cabin and get Leah cleaned up without Hayley asking a thousand invasive questions and his brother making a thousand more unhelpful comments. He did not want to lie to them (he was unsure that was even possible) but he had yet to formulate what he would say if either of them asked where Leah had been all this time.
They were so deep in the woods that there was nothing before them that even resembled a path and Elijah was not as sure of the way as his confident pace would imply.
Leah stumbled as she continued on through the brush and paused to rub a stubbed toe. Elijah hadn't exactly given her a chance to go back for her shoes after compelling Jared.
He was now moving further away with every second and she cursed as she raced to catch up with him once more.
"Will you stop?" she begged, using her vampire speed to cover the ever-growing distance between them. She overshot again and slammed right into him. On impact, Elijah stopped in his tracks and turned, allowing Leah to cling to the front of his shirt to stable herself.
"Will you slow down, Elijah? Jesus, where's the fire?"
He ignored her tactless question.
"We need to get back."
"Like right this instant?"
"We are leaving in the morning, Leah. We need to pack the cars, erase our footprints, and move on before your little fun back there brings Mikael upon us."
"You were the one who torched the place," she threw out.
"To destroy the evidence. My father is a vampire, Leah, he knows how to track vampires. I couldn't have your mess making the front page."
Elijah continued to stalk through the woods, turning his back on her once again. Leah hung back momentarily, recovering from the sting of his words. By the time she had collected herself the Original was a dark silhouette disappearing into the night.
"I don't think we're going the right way," she called after him.
Receiving no response, Leah concluded even vampire men were terrible at directions. Taking a moment to survey their surroundings, she turned on her heels, hands on her hips, trying to recognize any sort of familiar marker in the pitch-blackness of the woods.
That's when she noticed there was another light in the forest. She squinted to the right, just beyond wherever Elijah thought he was going. It was a tiny light, likely several miles ahead of them, and it flickered like a star a million light-years away.
Perhaps it was a campfire from another cabin? She pulled out Hope's phone, glancing down at the display before shoving it back in her pocket.
It was nearly one in the morning, suspiciously late for s'mores.
"Are you sure we're going the right way?" Leah repeated, louder this time. She was speaking to nothing; she couldn't even see Elijah anymore, he was so far ahead of her.
With a frustrated growl she sped ahead again, bypassing Elijah and giving him a moment to finally catch up with her for once. She panted, catching her breath, and then paused realizing she shouldn't normally be winded.
There was something wrong with the air; it was thick and hazy and it scratched her throat and stung her eyes.
They were going the wrong way.
"Do you smell that, Elijah?"
He halted in front of her, wondering what game she was playing now.
"It's the smoke from the lodge, Leah, now come."
"Okay, but shouldn't we be going in the opposite direction of the smoke?"
"It's just the wind—"
"No," she forced him to listen, pointing now at the canopy above them. "Trust my hybrid instincts, Elijah. Look at the leaves; the wind's blowing from the direction we are heading. So we're either going in circles, or –"
"There's a fire ahead of us as well."
"Yeah, but that doesn't make sense, I mean, we are in a forest, what else could be on fire but -"
She swung around to face the flickering light in the distance. Her head still felt like it was full of cotton balls - that was the only reason she hadn't realized it sooner.
"Oh my God."
The words tumbled from her mouth as she finally got her bearings.
"Elijah, that's our cabin on fire."
Holy smokes! What's gonna happen next? Thank you for your wonderful reviews and theories! If you post one with a username I will always try to get back to you. In thanks, stay tuned for a second chapter later today!
