I was in standing in a large foyer, torches hanging off the brick and stone tudor house creating the only light in the noble room. There were stairs to my left leading to an unknown second floor, hallways to my left and right that disappeared around corners. There was also a large open area before me that showed a large glossy dining room table. The windows behind me illuminated nothing but darkness from the ever-growing night. I was towering over the filthy humans flitting around me with various baskets of fruit, looking like they were caught doing something wrong. I was wearing a long black cloak, nearly completely covering my clothes but my blood red tunic stuck out a bit. My hair was pulled back into a loose and messy ponytail that swayed when I moved my head to follow the scampering servants. Where was I? What was going on? The house smelled like blood and death, a rotting smell making me crinkle my nose in disgust.
"My lord!" There was a loud bellowing before I heard a scrambling noise before me. It came from my right so I turned to see a thin bearded man wearing a long blue woolen robe and white coif wrapped around his ears. Some of his dull blonde hair stuck out from the white crimped hat, his scruffy beard patchy from stress. He looked almost like a skeleton wearing his death robes, sweat dripping by his thin skin on his forehead. I realized I was once again in Elijah's body as the man was significantly smaller than me, like a child looking up to their parents.
"Bless the heavens you answered! I have long waited for your arrival." His thick but posh voice irked me, but I felt like my annoyance was from an issue that happened earlier but I couldn't quite place it. He began to wave me over to the direction he came from and I unwantingly followed.
"This hadst bett'r beest important. Mine own jointress is fell I did miss our anniversary moon to beest here." The man instantly locked up and I could hear his heart almost jump from his throat. He took us to the next door in the hallway and opened it up. When he did there was only a large blood red canopied bed resting in the almost pitch black room. A dim candle swayed, illuminating a golden haired beauty sitting on the mattress. She was smiling coyly, pulling at her almost see through linen smock. I instantly grew enraged, looking down at the quivering man with pure anger.
"Mine daughter Marie hath did hath't thee in that lady eye and the lady did wish to hath't moment with thee. " There was a snap in the room as I cracked my fingers at his insinuation. However, there was also a longing in my core as if I felt unsatisfied and disappointed. Deep down I knew his needs hadn't been met in a very long time, and this offer of flesh excited him as much as it enraged him. Marie was grinning, still as beautiful as she was in the modern age. She lifted up her smock to reveal more of her thin legs making something catch in Elijah's throat.
"Will you allow me to serve you my lord?" He swallowed hard at her words and felt a tight coil in his stomach.
"My heart belongs to another." She stood up and her father gently shut the door behind him, leaving Elijah and Marie in the room together. She sauntered over to him, smiling seductively and eyeing him from head to toe.
"I don't need your heart now," Shd curled her fingers around his robe and pressed herself against him causing him to groan, "Just your body." She went in the very tips of her toes and only managed to brush her soft lips against his collar bone. His breath became ragged as it felt like his chest tightened to an almost unbearable amount as she drew her fingers around his pelvis. He seemed almost frozen in space, unable to leave. His mind flashed back, drawing my consciousness with me. It was too my sickly doppelganger, smiling up at him from a wicker chair as she trembled. Too weak and fragile for any form of intimacy. I sense that she had weakened decades to centuries prior leaving him wanting. Now there was a gorgeous woman throwing herself at him, weakened from lust and greif from his wife's deterioration. Their fighting, their separation. Like a tree given a final hit before falling, Elijah caved into her touch and I melted away from existence.
The more memories I saw through Elijah's eyes, the more I understood why he was so pained when he thought of his wife. Why he would have fallen into Marie's clutches so easily. No marriage is perfect, but one thing I couldn't wrap my head around. If he loved Sara, why wouldn't change her permanently so they wouldn't have these problems. These thoughts twirled endlessly through my head as I sat in bed, watching as the grey man from earlier installed a new pane of tempered glass. Elijah has removed the broken nightstand from the wall and used his diamond like fingernails to traced out a perfect rectangle for the pane. Luca put in some insulation and finally the grey man-- who I found out was named Phillip-- pressed the pane into its final place snd scooted out of my room. It was still cold, but with the burning fireplace on it was slowly warming up. The sunlight sparkled and made me smile, no longer feeling claustrophobic and trapped in the large open room. I hummed merrily as I lay curled in the goose feather duvet, flipping lazily through the pages of a strange crime novel that Ziva had brought me. She confided in me that Elijah loved mysery novels and has a special bookcase filled to the brim with murder mysteries. She brought the one every day to distract me. I could usually finish them within that day and so far I had gone through four since Marie's unfortunate visit. Elijah nor Luca had visited me since their strange behavior two days prior, but I still felt a presence around me when I slept and suspected Elijah as the culprit. I couldn't be sure, but I often woke up from the meaningless memories from small touches and humming that showed me an empty room. I never mentioned anything to Ziva, worried how she would react if Elijah had seen my bruises. Despite being fresh only days prior, they were quickly dissipating quickly. Now only red marks and brown smudged remained. Even the strange glistening scab had flaked off during my daily bath and only a little bit remained with a red mark. I was feeling much more at ease, and almost loved in this strange home. Ziva was almost like a maternal figure, with Luca as a caring brother when I had seen him before Marie's freak out. Elijah was....
My face burned red as I thought about Elijah. Everytime I thought about him but my chest hurt and thumped painfully. It was like it was being squeeze and my palms became sweaty.
"Did you get to a good part?" A soft voice purred above me. I screamed and the book flew from my hands. A flash of darkness lashed out and the book stopped in midair. A large pale had had grabbed it from the air and I shivered as I followed the long arm up to see Elijah's handsome face hovering over me. He was smiling softly down at me and I felt like my chest was going to explode.
No I didn't like Elijah. He's a rude man who insults me as a joke and quick tempered. I don't like him.
I repeated the words in my mind over and over again and as they sunk into my heart it slowed to a stop. The only reason I was this flustered into seeing him was because of the naughty memory between him and Marie I had accidently spied on in my dreams. I couldn't get the vision of them intertwined wildly out of my head and my humiliation and guilt grew higher than the man before me.
"Why are you flustered, tesoro?" He poked my cold nose and frowned at my frosty skin.
"I am fine, just startled." It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth. The more I stared into his rubies, the more I could see the carnal scene between him and Marie flash across my eyes. He looked like he didn't buy it and turned to the dog eared page in the book I was reading and smiled wickedly.
"Oh, so this is the kind of reading you enjoy?" He sounded devilish and I realized that I had been reaching in the traditional erotic scene most mystery novels had between the disgruntled agent and the female final girl.
"Give it back! Its your dirty book!" I reached out to snatched it from him but he pulled it back. Without even thinking I jolted forward, pressing myself in a similar manner that Marie had in my dream. I paid no mind to it, but Elijah's breath caught in his throat as he tried to pull the book farther away from him. He lifted it into the air, and I tried to move to stand to get it as he was sitting on the bed next to me. As I got to my knees, the buckled from the movement and his free arm shot around my waist to stabilize me. I was barely fazed by my shakiness and snatched the blue bound novel from his razor grasp.
"Hey, hey, hey! You can't move so fast!" He was now annoyed and concerned, using his shoulder to bring my rear back down to the bed. I couldn't help but giggle at his almost paternal behavior as he looked concerned and began wrapping the duvet around me. He made me look like a purple caterpillar, wrapped tightly in the warm blanket with the book pressed tightly against my chest.
"I am not that cold." The warmth from the thick blanket flowed through me, but he looked unconvinced. His skin almost shimmered like diamonds in the streaming sunlight, but it was just a hallucination of his beauty. He pushed his long fingers through his undercut hair, the long hair in top coiling around his fingers like tendrils of darkness trying to pull him away.
"Your nose says otherwise." I rolled my eyes and shifted myself farther into the bed, my back hurting a little bit from my inactivity.
"I need to start exercising. I'm going to lose muscle mass by being on my butt all day." Elijah twitched a little bit at my words a little bit, eyes darting to the door.
"I'm not going to run away Elijah. And I'm sorry about that." He blinked in shock while I came to a stunning realization. I never truly apologized from my actions in that day, in fact neither of us had. He had shown enough actions to show his regret, but had never said those fateful words. He reached out to me and placed his large hand on my wrapped up form, nothing realizing how high up my my thigh he was grabbing.
"I'm sorry too. My temper... its always been a battle to wrestle with the demons in me." My chest felt lighter and I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. It was like those simple words had removed weeks of pain drowning me silently and slowly, and finally I was in the light.
"Its okay." He shook his head and gripped my leg causing me to squeak from the almost intimate touch.
"No its not okay. Scaring you and acting like that was the most disgusting thing I have done to someone on centuries. I will try to hold back my rage in front of you, because you do not deserve it." There was a emotion in his garnet eyes I couldn't place, and a heat in my chest that welled around my body at his sincere words. His tone was similar to that a lover would use to another, his hand calming on my thigh like a anchor holding in this world. No one had ever spoken to me with such fondness and care in their voice other than Kevin and Holt. This felt different though, less parental and more romantic in feeling. I threw the thought of romanticism in my head, certain that I was reading too far into it. His tone was probably only for my cut and paste face of his wife, and not from me as a person. This saddened me, but I put on a fake crooked smile and brushed away the grief. The glittering sunlight around him became mocking, as if trying to prank me to confess the feelings bubbling in my chest or deny them I already was doing.
"I appreciate it, but I swear I'm not a fragile little girl you all think I am. I am sick, and I may get scared but that doesn't mean I'm going to be scared of you for losing your temper. It happens to the best of us." His sharp features softened and he took his anchor off my legs and dug into my wrapped up body. Something that should have looked awkward and funny, he made graceful and intimate. He reached into the duvet and located my free hand, lacing his cold fingers through mine. His thumb brushed over my knuckles tenderly, and I felt all tension melt away like it was natural.
"When can I leave the room?" I asked, trying to pull myself from my daze. His soft smile faltered at my question and he looked a little embarrassed, stressed and sorrowful.
"Luca and I are trying to get everything ready for you to leave the room. We are worried that Marie will try to attack you, so we are trying to find a way to prevent her." He wasn't telling me everything, and was chewing his bottom lip a bit to hide it.
"I thought she wasn't allowed in the house? Isn't it your house why does she have permission to come and go as she pleases?"
"Ancient law is different from human law," He twisted himself so we was sitting next to me with his back on the headrest. He was still clutching my hand and running his thumb unconsciously across the skin on the back of my hand. His arm was pressed against mine in a friendly way, platonic in feeling.
"When one of the seven groups makes a new being, they take responsibility for their existence until they have their own creations. Marie has avoided this by never making a new vampire. She is technically under me, so there is no spell or curse blocking her from entering my home. There is a law against creations harming family of their creators, and can be punished or destroyed by the Convocation."
"Didn't she--" I gulped remembering the nightmares, "Didn't see kill your wife?" He stilled for a moment before continuing his movements.
"She did. However an improper investigation was done since there wasn't enough evidence to convict her, she roams free. They have a hawks eye on her movements around me though so she can not hurt anyone in my family without consequences." I felt like I knew where this was going and my heart let out one loud thump. He looked down to me and leaned down over me, planted his chin on the top of my head to soothe me which surprisingly worked.
"Shes going to try and kill me, isn't she?" Silence fell over us and it was deafening. I couldn't even heart the crackling of my heart as it forced itself to beat.
"We will figure out way to make sure that doesn't happen." As if on instinct her craned his neck down, his warm breath fanning over my hair and face. Thats when I felt a cold and soft pressure on the top of my head. It took me a second to realize it, but he had planted a chaste kiss on the hop of my head. It was pure and full of sincerity, like a kiss a lover would give to their spouse to calm their nerves. Before I could even react, I realized he has started speaking to me.
"Whatever path we find for your safety, it will have to be done no matter the circumstances. Understand?" He was firm and demanding but there was fleece in his voice like he was wrapping me with his soft tone. I had a feeling that he knee what he had to do, but was refusing to tell me. We sat there for a few more minutes, the dusk rolling by taunting as if counting the end of my semi-normal days.