Chapter 12 – Elliot
ELLIOT
I’ve finally created the perfect plan. All I have to do now is wait for the shade to come back, and I’ll be out of here before I know it, with the monster as my prize.
Even if there’s no chance we’ll be able to kill all the vampires.
Although I might be able to take out a few of them...
When the shade appears back in the room, I open my mouth to take the first step in my plan, and freeze. She looks afraid. Her skin is ashen, and she holds herself as if she’s trying to hold herself together.
“Are you okay?” I say instead of all my carefully practiced words.
“Yes,” she whispers, but she sounds anything but fine.
Going to her bed, she lies down on her side, her purple eyes staring at nothing.
An instinct flares inside of me. One I can’t quite identify. In this moment, I want nothing more than to find out what’s upset her. Except maybe to then destroy whatever the hell it is.
“You don’t look fine.” My words come out nearly a growl.
Her gaze slides to me. “Do you ever hate what you are?”
Every muscle in my body stiffens. Of course I do. Every day I wonder what it’d be like if I’d grown up as a human instead of a gargoyle. I would’ve gone to college and studied some science-related field. I’d have learned how things worked, instead of how to kill them.
But she wasn’t a gargoyle, she was a monster.
“Do you?”
She closes her eyes. “It’s selfish. What I do…it needs to be done. Cruel people shouldn’t be allowed to continue living without being punished. I just,” she hesitates, “I hate being the one to punish them. I don’t like the feeling of taking a life. And I don’t like going to the Underworld.”
I’m stunned into silence. The Elites didn’t describe her or what she does like this at all. Do they know that she’s more a pawn than the mastermind they’ve labelled her?
“Then why don’t you just stop?”
She’s quiet for a long minute. “Then who will avenge the innocent?”
Hell, what do I say to that? “Come here.”
Her eyes flash open, and she regards me with interest. For a second I think she’ll refuse me, but then she sits up, slides from the bed and climbs down onto the floor near me.
Which is when I realize that I have no idea what I should do now. I’ve never had to comfort a woman before. “What can I do to make you feel better?”
She nibbles her bottom lip, studies me again, then moves beside me, laying her head on the pillow near me. Hesitantly, I lie down beside her. She grasps my hand and pulls it around her waist the best she can before my chains tighten. And there, we lay together.
At first I feel tense. I’m pretty sure the last thing I should be doing is spooning our enemy and the woman who is imprisoning me. But then she sighs and snuggles closer to me, and something inside of me just releases. I hold her, close my eyes, and breathe in her sweet scent.
So this is what it feels like to hold a woman. I never imagined I’d have the experience. Not as a crippled, unwanted gargoyle.
And yet, this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.
Not even close.
“I met a friend of yours in the woods,” she tells me.
I stiffen and my blood runs cold. “Is he okay?”
“Yes. He pinned me to the ground and poked me with his hard cock, but we came to an understanding.”
My brain must have exploded. “What?”
She pulls the blanket up over us and sighs again. “His name was Cody. He wants me to help free you.”
“He poked you with his…?”
The thought bothers me. A hell of a lot. Did they fuck? I can picture Damon meeting the innocent shade and having sex with her in the woods. But Cody?
Still, it pisses me off. What exactly happened?
“Am I not using the word ‘cock’ right?” she asks.
“No, you’re using it right,” I explain, my words dry. “I’m just wondering if you can elaborate…”
“Oh,” she says, that innocent voice of hers making my anger jump two levels. “He was just naked and—“
“Naked?” I repeat. Hell no.
My arm tightens around her and my damn chains jingle.
She nods and looks back at me, her expression strange. “I caught him bathing. I tried to leave, and he caught me. Then we talked about you.”
“So…no sex?”
She surprises me by laughing. “No. He was hard, like you are right now, but you were on his mind.”
I shift, suddenly aware that I am hard again.
“Want me to stroke you again?”
“No,” I say, but damn it I want to say yes.
“So he asked about me?” I ask, frustrated as hell.
“He said you’d want to be rescued. I told him you’d rather stay here where I can give you pleasure and treat you the way you deserve.”
I try to picture Cody’s face when she spoke to him, and I find myself grinning. What must he be thinking I’m doing here?
“So, was I right or was he right?”
My gaze jerks back to her, and it takes me a second to remember what the hell we were talking about. “I want to escape.”
Her disappointment changes her entire face. “Oh. Okay. I understand.”
I don’t know why I feel guilty as I say, “They’re my family. And I’m not safe here.”
“I could protect you!”
“Not forever.”
Slowly, she nods. “Okay then. I guess I’ll help you escape.”
I’m surprised. I had a plan to get her to help me. A complicated plan. But it seems I needed to only ask this strange woman.
“What can I do?” she asks.
I take a deep breath. “Have you seen an object of great power here?”
She frowns and shakes her head.
Damn. “Whatever is keeping us from shifting into our stone form has to be an object so powerful that you’d know it if you saw it.”
After a minute, she smiles. “I haven’t seen it, but I think I know where to look.”
“Okay,” is all I should say, but I can’t help but add, “but be careful. If they find out you’re helping me, they’ll hurt you.”
She doesn’t seem to hear me as she speaks, almost to herself. “But how to get to it…”