I had not yet reached the airport when my phone began to ring. The caller ID told me it was Ysabeau. I'd half a mind not to answer for fear that my will would crumble and I would find myself back in Diana's arms. God, how I wished to feel her arms around me, smell her honey sweet scent.
"Yes?" I answered shortly. With every second of silence, my resolve crumbled until the tires beneath me were rocking and rolling to a stop on the rocky surface of the side of the road.
"Maman? What is wrong?" I inquired anxiously.
"Are you on the plane yet?" Her voice was soft and contorted like crumpled silk.
"No, I'm still 5 miles from the airport. Why?" Her hesitance was not helping my nerves. Though I had already turned the car off, my hands went to the wheel and spun it all the way to the left, preparing for a sharp 180 back to Sept Tours.
"Maman, answer me." My voice traveled across the line in a dark growl.
"It is Diana, Matthieu." Her voice became softer with each word until even my vampire ears strained to hear her.
"What about her? Is she alright?" I turned the car on.
"She lost control, my son." Her voice was choked and I could imagine the red tears falling down her face. "Her tears – they became witchwater. She became witchwater."
I had left my heart in Sept Tours, yet I felt it plummet nonetheless. "What happened?" My voice was as cold as I felt. How odd – it had been over a millennium since I'd felt cold.
"The water came from everywhere – from her." A single sob came over the line. "She could not breathe, Matthew."
A wretched groan tore its way from my throat. "No. Please, no." It was a prayer and a plea.
"I'm so sorry, Matthew. She drowned."
I never told her I loved her. My beautiful, fierce Diana's words to me, mere hours ago, ran through my head like a ticker tape. 'Decide how you feel about me.' As if it were a choice to love her with everything I am. Please God, let her have known.
"She was fine –" A howl tore from me as my fist pummeled the steering wheel to mangled mass of leather and metal. "You promised me she would be safe. You promised to protect her!" I did not need to look in the rearview mirror to know that my eyes had gone black with blood rage, my upper lip was curled thinly over my incisors.
"I cannot protect her from herself!" Ysabeau's temper struck back before a ragged breath was heard. "I am so sorry, Matthew."
The crunch of metal and plastic was my only response and I allowed the broken bits of my cellphone to fall to the floor of my car as I welcomed the rage. It was better – so much better than the utter devastation that awaited me when my mind cleared – if my mind ever cleared of the rage. I didn't see how it could be possible.
The fifth woman I ever loved. The fourth love that I have killed. The third love I've killed of a broken heart. The millennia I have lived and shall live paid for with the blood of women I loved – of my mate. For Diana was my mate. What I had feared to contemplate even moments before was a truth now ripped from my chest. She had so quickly become not just the other half of my soul – she was my soul. It had been Diana's voice as my conscious recently.
But she was silent now. And I let the rage fill me. I broke her heart by leaving. My Diana's power turned the phrase 'drown in my own tears' to a reality because I had left and she could not trust that I'd return to her – not in the way that we both had desperately wanted. But I was not the only one to blame.
A growl rumbled through my body. My own punishment would come – I would make sure of it. But not until I had dealt with the congregation. I had feared the congregation's wrath. My mate was now dead because of my cowardice and the congregation's bigoted covenant. I vowed to dismantle the congregation piece by piece. My vengeance would be swift. With Diana I had felt as though my life finally had a beginning, a middle, and an end. The water had swept away my middle and brought me crashing to the shores of my end. All that was left of me was swept away in Diana's maelstrom.