Chapter 19 #2
“You’re tired and miserable because you’re at war with yourself. Something that we never recommend. There will come a time when you will lose, so why not give in?”
She stared down at the phone and groaned. “It’s just too much, and I don’t need that right now.”
He sighed and then said in a very soft voice, “Have a nap. I’ll watch over you. You need to recharge emotionally, and then we’ll talk again.” And, with that, he ended the call, before she even had a chance to register what he said.
Stefan would watch over her.
She wasn’t even sure how he would do that, yet for some reason it brought her a certain amount of peace. She just didn’t know how or why.
She called out to the room around her, “Thank you for that.” And damned if there wasn’t a soft chuckle.
You’re welcome. Now get some sleep.
She walked over to her bed and, without ceremony, collapsed onto it, pulling one of the blankets at the foot of the bed up and over her shoulders. Within minutes she was asleep.
*
Eric walked over to her bedroom door and knocked but heard only silence on the other side.
Even with his ear against the door, he wasn’t sure if she was sleeping or if she was even in there.
When he tested the doorknob, it opened easily.
Frowning, he peered around the door, and there she was, crashed on the bed, sound asleep.
He smiled, but only briefly as he suddenly watched her fighting some unseen demons in her dreams. She shifted, almost in pain on the bed, caught in some agonizing nightmare. He hated to see her suffer like this.
She had so much going for her, yet had battled so many demons she wasn’t even aware of. He tiptoed in and pulled the blankets back up across her shoulders, hoping it would help ease her panic. She calmed under his ministrations, only to rear up in anger, with some weird look in her eyes.
She turned, shifted on the bed, and stared at him.
He stepped up because clearly something was wrong. He just had no idea what or why. “Are you okay?” he asked cautiously, not sure if it was her or somebody else.
The person who stared back at him blinked several times, then sagged back into the bed, only to have a weird cackle come through, a noise that made the hair on the back of his head rise.
He pulled out his phone and tagged Stefan, who answered his call on the first ring. “Is she asleep?”
“She is, but I don’t know what’s going on.”
“She came back with somebody,” Stefan shared, his voice strained.
“I’m trying to figure out who it is before we send them back because we don’t want to leave them out there to torment other people.
She doesn’t have any training,” he shared, “and she’s too powerful.
Her light, her innocence, is so strong that anything can latch on and is trying to do so. ”
“And they’re all coming from that hellhole?” Eric asked, hating himself for having gone in there, for opening it up, when she had clearly asked him not to.
“From the hellhole, yes,” Stefan confirmed, “but it also looks as if it’s growing—expanding.”
“Meaning, it’s already caught more victims?”
“No, I think it’s growing because it needs more victims. It’s pulling in all the energies it can from around the place, to find what it needs to feed on.”
“And you think it’s pulling on her energy, or is it looking to feed on her?”
After a moment of silence, Stefan said, “Both. Once they find somebody as strong as her, I don’t think they’ll let her go, not without a fight.”
“They can’t have her,” Eric declared hotly. “She told me not to go in there. It’s my fault because I wouldn’t listen.”
“It’s not your fault. With something like this, you can blame the energies that are twisting us all up in knots,” he shared. “What we have to do is confirm that she doesn’t become the next victim to this Origin.”
“Agreed,” Eric snapped. Then he stared down at the woman who was becoming way too important in his life. “Should I try to wake her?”
“No. I know it sounds harsh to you, but it would be good if we could learn something first.”
He stared down at his phone. “I don’t want to just let her suffer here as some learning experience. And that’s not the Stefan I know either.”
Stefan sighed. “It’s not that I’m letting her be hurt, but she’s caught up in some nightmare, and I don’t want that nightmare to be something that hurts her as we try to bring her back. You know yourself that, if it can hurt, it will hurt.”
He hesitated at that and then realized what Stefan was saying. “Fine, but I want her back, safe and sound.”
“Oh, I know you do. Believe me that I know. We need to also see that she doesn’t have to go back in there again.”
“Yes,” Eric muttered. “She was open for the longest time. I’m not sure how she managed to close herself down or whether her grandmother did.”
“I don’t think it would have been her,” Stefan replied, “because it sounds as if the grandmother insisted Eden stay and keep working to keep her mother alive, even though her mother wanted to leave. … People like that often can’t let go.
So, in this case, she used her granddaughter and everything she had available to force Eden to keep the healing going, even though her own daughter was ready to leave. ”
“I just can’t imagine doing that to a child.”
“Desperation brings desperate times,” Stefan noted. “You can’t judge her grandmother for it.”
“I can,” he snapped. “Absolutely I can.”
A moment of silence came from Stefan, and then he added, “We will help Eden, and we will free her from this, but first we need to free her from the Origin portal, which is sensing her. I’m afraid it might have sensed her a while ago.”
“Meaning?”
He sighed. “I have this absolutely horrible feeling that Debbie was killed in order to bring Eden back here.”