"Sarah. Come to me." I whisper. I feel her next to me when I can see her again. I pick her up and wink her to Marcus's. I hold her tightly.
Aleks is there instantly with Ben, Hanna, Roland and the doc.
We stand in the middle of the living room, covered head to toe in black blood and disappointment.
We have failed. In every way possible. Well, except for getting back Ari. She is nearly unconscious on the ground and looks like she might die any second. So the success feels less than that.
Ben and Roland leave the room with the black blood coating their muzzles. Lucas sits and cries sad wolf sounds that break my heart. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fix her. I don’t know anything, except that if she dies I will never heal. None of us will. She is the bane of our existence but she is the heart as well.
His soft wolf sobs are killing me.
"Go change." I say.
He looks at me. His green eyes are filled with tears. "Go change. I won't leave her side."
He stands and leaves.
The children are crying. Even Anne.
Lucas and Ben come running back in. Lucas is pulling is shirt on.
"Aimes." He says.
I shake my head, "I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I, we need Lorri and Sam and Dorian." I'm shaking.
"She needs to be examined." The doc looks at Marcus, who is sitting on the couch in a bathrobe and greasy hair. "Want to help me, old friend?"
Marcus looks at him and then back at the TV.
"MARCUS!" Doctor Jekyll shouts.
Marcus climbs off the couch looking hideous. "Fine. Jesus. Stop the shouting." He walks toward the lab. Dr. Jekyll lifts Ari up off the floor and carries her towards the lab. Lucas and Ben follow. I stand, frozen in the middle of the room. I don’t know what to do.
Sarah sobs in my arms. She never should have seen any of that. Any of the death and horror. The witches never even fought back. We slaughtered them and they let us.
Abbey gets up from the couch and picks Sarah out of my arms. She winks at me and carries the sobbing child down the hall to a bedroom.
"Everyone get cleaned up, so when Lorri gets back we're ready. Her and Sam will know where they went." Aleks says to everyone and walks over to me. He takes my hands in his. That's when I notice the blood for the first time. I pull my greasy hands away from his and wipe them on my pants. I can't get it off. I'm scrubbing to the point of it being raw. He grabs me and flashes us to his house in England. We are in the old bathroom. I stand there frozen as he undoes my pants, "She's going to be okay."
I tremble, "I can't lose her. I just can't."
He looks down at me and stops my breath, "Hey. You won't."
He pulls my shirt off and starts the old shower. The water smells funny. He says it is how the water smells in the country. I just know it's hard to wash my hair with it.
He lifts me into the shower when he has us both naked. He takes a facecloth and rubs a bar of smelly soap against it. He starts at my arms and slowly scrubs. He is gentle but thorough.
He lifts my arms and does my armpits and under my breasts. It would feel like an invasion of privacy with anyone else, but somehow with him it's intimate. I don’t scrub myself with him, ever. He isn’t forcing me. He's charming me.
I need him to. I need to feel something.
He rinses and soaps up again and makes his way south. I feel my body tense up. He leans into me and kisses my lips slowly, but doesn’t stop his hands from taking the cloth between my legs. The roughness of it makes me moan into his kiss. His tongue in my mouth is slow and lazy. Distracting.
He turns me around and rinses the cloth. He scrubs my legs and butt cheeks while kissing my neck and back.
He stands and tilts my head back. His huge hands run the shampoo through my hair. He massages and scrubs. I moan again. His erection is against my back but I don’t get the feeling that this is a happy ending shower. He rinses my hair and conditions. He dumps tons on the top of my head. I wince but don’t say anything. He scrubs it in and rinses too. That should be interesting later.
When he's done he turns me back around.
"My turn."
I smile and look up at him. He hands me the cloth and the soap. I scrub it on there, "You'll smell like pretty roses too."
He grins. I start with his face and scrub the soap in. He laughs as I push his face into the water. He sputters. I never realized being so tall and close to the showerhead would be a pain. He sputters again. I pull him out of the water, "Sorry."
He swallows and makes a face. I stifle a laugh and scrub his neck and shoulders. They're muscled and thick. My fingers dig in. He raises an eyebrow at me. I drag it down his meaty pecs and chiseled abs. I don’t remember to soap up. I just rub the cloth and eventually my other hand, dropping the soap.
"Aimes."
I look up, "Sorry. Right." I bend down and get the soap. I stand, red faced and continue. I lather the soap in my hand and start scrubbing his belly.
"Don't use the wash cloth on that." He nods at his erect cock.
I let my fingers drag down the shaft and slide my soapy hand up and down. He moans and I grin. His moans are like a food of sorts. They satisfy something inside of me. I stroke his thick cock, until I notice he is pushing against my hand. I stop and rinse him off. He bites the fat part of his lip. I shudder and turn him around. I stand on my tiptoes and pour a huge amount of shampoo into my hand. I realized I used the same amount I would use. I look at his short hair and grimace. I put it on and lather. He laughs. I know he can feel me bathing his head in shampoo. It takes forever to rinse it out."Do you need conditioner?" I ask.
He shakes his head.
I lather his back and rinse it off. He spins sharply and pins me to the cold tiled wall of the shower. He lifts me into the air but I shake my head, "We have to go. I need to see her."
He growls, "Aimes."
"I need to."
He puts me down. I'm aching with hunger and needing him, but it's not right. I rinse once more and climb out. I hear the water change in power. I grin.
"Making it cold?" I ask.
He doesn’t answer. He makes a grunting noise. I pull back the curtain as he turns it off and pass him a towel.
"You're trying to kill me." His light blue eyes flash anger. I laugh at him and walk to his room to throw on his clothes.
I'm pulling on my ass kicking boots when Giselle comes in, "Aimes, we have a development." Her face looks funny. Shane is behind her.
I jump up off the bed and grab his arm. He looks at me like I'm crazy.
Giselle shakes her head, "Chill Aimes. He's fine."
I'm lost, "What?"
Shane takes my hand off of him and looks at Giselle adoringly.
"What did you do?" My tone is skeptical.
"I charmed him. Watch this." She looks into his eyes and speaks slowly, "Shane, dance on your toes and spin like a ballerina."
He goes on his toes and spins like he has known how his whole life.
"What did you do?"
She shakes her head, "Not a clue. I had him against the wall and told him to stop being so naughty and then he did. So I told him to kiss my hand and call me your highness and he did." She looks excited. I laugh. It's nervous and frightened.
"Can you do it to anyone?"
She shrugs, "I don’t know."
Aleks walks into the room in a towel. Giselle grins at him, "You kiss me as hard as you can." Aleks frowns at her, "No, thank you?"
I laugh, "Okay it doesn’t work on him."
She looks bummed by that.
"Shane stop spinning." She says it and he does. "Now tell Aimes what you told me."
He looks confused, "Which part your highness?"
I laugh, "This is sick. You need to make him stop being a servant. It's creepy."
"The part about the south of France thing."
He turns like a robot and speaks, "When I was with Jonathan, he said he bought a chalet in the south of France, for Lillith to live in until Tristan killed her. His plans had to keep changing cause you guys were changing things. He wanted Ari dead, so no one could change the time again. She has a poison spell inside of her that is going to kill her, slowly. They wanted to try to take her power before she died. Also he needed Tristan back. He made me wipe Phillip's mind and tell him that everything he knew was a lie. He believes Ari is the problem. That Lorri is the devil, for real. Jonathan wants the power to be in Tristan so he can kill his mother and take her powers. She is weak. Really weak. When she dies Jonathan is going to make Tristan do spells on him to make him more powerful than anything. More powerful than you or Lorri or God. Marcus made me eat Hanna to change her into the beast. Jonathan made Marcus brainwash me to be an all-consuming monster. Giselle's kisses taste like honey…"
I put my hands up, "Okay. Got it."
I looked at Aleks who stands with his arms crossed over his broad chest and shake my head, "I knew he wouldn’t be evil for no reason."
Aleks sighs, "Can you take away all the brainwashing?"
Giselle shrugs and grabs Shane's arm. She looks into his eyes and speaks, "You forget everything Marcus made you do and everything he made you be. Just be the Shane we always knew before and don’t remember the bad stuff you did to the humans."
She steps back. His eyes fuzz over. He looks at me and then at Giselle and Aleks.
He points at me with a limp hand and frowns, "Aimes. What's going on?" He looks down at Giselle, "Did we kiss?"
She laughs, "I guess. Sort of. No." She looks at me, "What should I say."
I smile. "The truth. She kissed you and you are cursed. Those are two things you're going to need to work out."
He steps towards me, "I kinda got the impression you and I were trying to work something out."
I step back and shake my head, "No. Not doing this again. Shane, you and I are good friends. Very good friends. This is actually my boyfriend, Aleks."