Gabriel had not been the one to save me. I didn’t understand why Elias had done it, but he had actually saved me from the brink of the death.
Very briefly, I felt Elias’s intent. He was so angry and confused, but he was about to end it all.
I was his target. Even he didn’t know what he was going to do. He was going to either kill me or take me away.
Gabriel had stabbed him numerous times with the stake, all around his chest, stomach, and shoulders—everywhere except for the heart he’d aimed at.
Blood poured from Elias. He stumbled and fell toward me, but Gabriel was right behind him. The stake went into Elias's chest again just as his fingertips brushed my arm. His blood splattered onto my face.
Elias's eyes flashed at me once. They were full of a jagged pain that . . . begged. Then he blurred and was gone.
Gabriel stared threateningly at the open doorway as he loomed over me. He looked down at me, the anger in his eyes dying into horror as he stared at my shoulder.
“Kara,” Gabriel whispered brokenly.
“It was a sliver knife.”
He tore my manacles free, his bloody hands shaking. The cuts and bruises that marked his skin were healing before my eyes.
He gathered me into his arms, and we clung to one another desperately. I was going to shatter.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. . . .” He kept repeating those words, his voice filled with worry, anger, guilt, love. He trembled against me.
“Are they alive? Thomas and Inola, are they alive?” I nearly screamed.
“They are alive. I should have waited for them, but I figured out where he was keeping you, and I panicked and left them behind.” He rose up off the floor and cradled me gently in his arms. “I’ve got to get you to a hospital.”
I should have been ecstatic. Relived. Instead, a dead, numbing calm filled me the moment I knew I was safe.
I couldn’t feel anything. I could hardly register what was in front of my eyes. The world moved, and I did not.
There was darkness and night air. I thought Gabriel was talking to me, but I couldn’t be sure. Cold flitted over my face and down my arms.
Time no longer existed. Warped voices floated around me. White walls soothed my eyes, and different pressures prodded my body.
Dreams and sounds melded together and made no sense. My senses had become a jumbled mess, disconnected and distorted. Very rarely could I make out anything, and when I did, I was unable to care what was happening. The words the voices said didn’t faze me.
“I’ve Controlled the doctors and nurses to not log her information. It will be as if we were never here. Her shoulder has been cared for, and she has antibiotics and pain medication.”
“They didn’t seem too concerned with her tachycardia, but what about her catatonia?”
“There’s nothing more they can do for her besides putting her in the psychiatric ward, and I’m not going to do that to her. She needs to be surrounded by people who care about her, not by strangers who will see her as nothing more than a means to a paycheck. I’m going to take her someplace safe, and try to reach her.”
“She has PTSD, Gabriel. There’s no telling what all he did to her. There’s no telling how many times he may have harmed her and then healed her to begin anew. The doctors said there was no evidence of rape, and I hope more than anything that they are correct, but like I just said, if Elias used his blood to heal her after hurting her, we have no way of knowing what all she went through. And do not get angry, but you may have contributed to what she’s going through. Seeing you may only make matters worse.”
“She will never leave my sight again, Thomas.”
“No offense, my friend, but she was in your sight when all of this started.”
Green, black, and blue lights were nearly always there. The lights were so bright and pretty, and I tried my hardest to focus on them. They were the only objects linking me to the world, and it felt like those lights cared about me.
I wanted to reach out to the lights, but I didn’t know how.
There was no way of knowing how long I stared at the lights, or how long it was before the black and blue lights disappeared and only the green lights remained.
And inside of me, deeply buried and possibly imagined, I thought I felt a presence. It held an unsettling mixture of hesitation, detachment, and anger. As I vaguely understood there were things trying to reach me from the outside, it was like there was something inside of me also trying to wake me.
Before I could fully understand, the presence vanished.
Timeless ages later, I became aware of a change in the strange atmosphere I was trapped in. Everything suddenly became tinged with desperation. There was a snapping sound and pain-free pressure at my neck.
Light started to fill me, a blissful warmth that overtook my being and consumed my very soul.
“Kara, can you hear me? Can you feel me? Please come back to me. . . . I love you, dearest heart. Follow my voice. I am here with you. You are safe. Come back to me, Kara. Come back to me. . . .”
The thick wall I had been trying so hard to keep up and tear down at the exact same time broke into a million pieces.
I knew I was able to move again.
I could feel the blood coursing through me, hot and alive. My eyes clearly saw the room I was in. I could feel that I was sitting up in bed against a headboard, my body being held by someone gently. The smell of pine needles was overwhelming.
“Gabriel,” I gasped.
The blissful light left my neck.
Gabriel lifted his head, his fangs retracting
