Page 38 of Resurrecting His Soul
Melina took a sip from her glass, then slowly sat it back on the table with a raised brow. “Preoccupied. With what?”
Taking the last few steps between him and the table, he pulled out a chair and took a seat across from her. “Melina, I would really prefer if we could skip this game.”
“I am not sure what you mean,” she said, but a small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and he wanted to knock it off her face.
Sitting up, he leaned forward over the table so he was as close as he could get to her with the table between them. “Don’t,” he said. “We both know you carefully planned all of this. Finding Lisandra’s ex. And that herb. Even I’ve never seen it used before. Tell me where she is.”
She held her composure well, never flinching or breaking their eye contact. Slowly, she brought the wine glass to her lips again and took a long swallow. When she sat her glass down, she slowly and deliberately ran her tongue across her lips before she spoke.
“Look, I’m not going to lie. Yes, I did find her ex, and I made him a vampire, but I only did that to protect you.”
“Ha,” he laughed. It was a dull, almost angry sound. “And just how is bringing him into our lives supposed to protect me?”
“She was wrapping you around her finger. Had you convinced she was in love with you, but when I found out about her past, I knew there was no way she was over her ex. She’d run away from home because he wouldn’t commit. You were a nice distraction, but he was the one she was really pining for.”
He shot up from his chair so fast it went flying backwards and slammed into the wall behind him as his fist connected with the top of the table between them. “She doesn’t love him! He nearly killed her. She ran to escape him, and you brought him back into her life. Now where have you taken her?”
She didn’t even flinch. Her eyes softened, and she looked at him with pity and sighed before reaching across the table and trying to put her hand over his fist, but he quickly snatched his hand back, afraid that if they touched, he would lose his resolve to not kill her. He needed information first.
“Seeing you like this breaks my heart. You gave her so much. Gave up so much of yourself to please her.”
There was some truth in her words, and he hated the way acknowledging that made the anger in him boil. While he knew Melina meant her words to have a different meaning, in a literal sense they were correct. What Melina didn’t understand was he was happy with the changes Lisandra had brought out in him.
“I’m not here to discuss your opinion of my relationship with Lisandra. Start telling me what I want to know or you will not make it out of this house alive.”
Her eyes grew wide for a moment before she composed herself. “See, Ricardo, that’s where you are wrong. If you kill me, Jameson will kill your precious Lisandra, but only after he forces her to watch her human pet die first.”
He jumped over the table, knocking her to the floor. The chair she sat in cracked beneath them. With a roar, he sank his fangs into her throat and she screamed when he yanked back, ripping a hole in her flesh. It wasn’t enough to kill her, but it would hurt like hell.
She screamed and clawed at his chest. He leaned over her face, her own blood dripped from his mouth over her cheeks. “This is your only warning. I can make your death very slow and painful, or you can take me to Lisandra and I’ll consider letting you live.”
“Ha,” she smirked up at him. “We both know you won’t risk her life by killing me. She has made you pathetic. You taught me how to be a vampire. Taught me that humans are food, and how much fun we could have destroying them. You told me they were beneath us. Hell, the whole reason we met your pet, Lisandra, is because you drove us to that carnival with every intention of turning it into a massive blood bath. You know, it is becoming harder with each day to remember what I saw in you. Maybe I’m just wasting my time.”
“I was wrong to lead you down that path, but it doesn’t excuse what you’ve done now. I won’t make excuses for you anymore. If you take me to Lisandra and Allison, I will let you live, but it won’t be here with us.”
He didn’t realize she was crying until she wiped a tear from her cheek. In all the time they had spent together before Lisandra came into their lives, he had never seen her sad. His guilt started to rise again. Yes, she’d done something bad to the person he loved more than anything, but what could he expect. He’d taught her to be ruthless, and that’s exactly how she was behaving. But crying was not something he expected from her. It showed a side of her he had taught her to keep hidden. Something he would have made her believe was a weakness. Maybe this was a good sign. A sign she was wearing down. Unfortunately, it didn’t make a difference, not anymore. If she were to turn over a new leaf, it would be somewhere else, on her own. He was done giving her chances. His need to give her time to change had already put Lisandra and Allison in harm’s way. Once they were safe, she was gone, one way or another.
He got up and held out a hand to pull her up from the floor, then he walked over to the kitchen island and grabbed a dish towel and wiped her blood from his face.
She sniffed and rubbed her palms over her cheeks, wiping away the last of her tears before looking up at him. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see in her eyes, but it wasn’t what he got. Her eyes were narrowed, and her mouth was drawn tight. She was pissed.
“Go ahead. Kick me out. Do what you want, but you’ll regret it. You think she loves you, but she just wants to change you and you’re letting her. I loved you without making you change. I loved you for you. I thought you could see that, but instead you tossed me aside the minute Lisandra told you to. Like I mean nothing!”
Before he could respond, or really even let all of what she’d said settle in, she turned and ran of the house. Part of him felt more guilt. If he took the time to look at things from her perspective, he could see how she would feel like he ditched her. He’d given her no reason to believe he was not happy with the life he’d shown her, so she could easily perceive the changes he had been making as something he was doing strictly to make Lisandra happy. What he’d been blind to was her declaration of love. He knew she cared about him, but he had attributed it to the bond they shared as maker and progeny, and maybe that really was it. He knew from his own past that certain feelings could be mistaken for love. It was only after meeting Lisandra that he realized he had not truly been in love with Emily in his former life. Maybe Melina was confusing infatuation with love, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still feeling abandoned. If she believed what she felt for him was love, then that was what was real for her in the moment.
Still, none of that changed his mind about how he would deal with her going forward. No matter how much he wanted to put the monster inside him in the past, he wouldn’t keep it contained when it came to Lisandra’s safety. Melina manipulated him and worked to hurt Lisandra in the worst way possible, and the need to bring her pain was too strong to deny, but he would, at least until he found Lisandra and Allison.
ChapterTwenty-Five
Lisandra
The room was dark, but it didn’t hinder her vision. Where was Allison? Why couldn’t she remember them being taken out of the woods? Something had pricked her, but Ricardo had never taught her about a poison strong enough to take down a vampire. Something else must have happened.
She looked around the room. It wasn’t what she expected, not that she really had any set expectations for where Jameson and Melina would take her, but the room she was in was far from what she would have imagined if she’d taken the time to think about it. The bedroom she was in was large and comfy. The bed she’d woken up in was a large king-sized bed, covered in a plush comforter with a pink and golden woven pattern. Rubbing the kink in her neck, she climbed off the bed and took in the large room. Allison wasn’t with her. As much as she hoped they had released Allison, she knew Jameson well enough to know that was unlikely. She needed to find where Jameson was holding her and get them both out of there fast.
Checking her pockets, her cell was gone, so calling for help was out of the question. As fast and quietly as possible, she snuck out of her room and checked the rest of the house, room by room, trying to find Allison. Silently she prayed Allison was in a comfortable bed, as easily accessible as she had been. Unfortunately, as she closed the door to what appeared to be the final bedroom, that turned out not to be the case. Walking back to the front of the house, she looked outside. There were no cars in the driveway, not that Jameson or Melina needed a car. As vampires, they could run fast enough to get anywhere they needed to go in no time. Still, driving was a habit one picked up as a human, and not something she imagined most would give up even as an immortal. Ricardo hadn’t, and he had been a vampire far longer than he’d been a human. Maybe Jameson and Melina had been foolish enough to leave them in the house alone, thinking she would be knocked out longer than she had.
There was a small building at the back of the house. Looked like the kind of thing a homeowner might use to house a lawn mower and gardening equipment. She didn’t think it was likely they were hiding out in there with Allison, but she’d cleared the whole house, and it was the only place left to look. If her friend wasn’t there, she had no idea where to even begin searching for her.
