For several minutes they continued like that, her combing her hair while they glared, until with a muttered, “Marta never complained,” Christofer turned his back on her, picked up her discarded towel and threw it in the bathroom. When he turned back around and found her gaping at him, her mouth wide open as she looked at him with unmitigated horror, he asked, “What?”
“You…,” she started to say, only to pause so that she could swallow back the revulsion that was sending her already queasy stomach into turmoil, “you did that to Marta?” she finally managed to get out, horrified at the thought of Marta being forced to suffer through that kind of torture. She’d barely survived it and couldn’t imagine a woman in her eighties surviving such an ordeal.
“Of course,” he said with a frown as though there was nothing wrong with what he was admitting to doing.
“Y-you sick bastard!” she snarled, horrified on Marta’s behalf.
“What?” he asked with a puzzled expression on his otherwise handsome face, which did nothing but make her shake her head in disgust.
“How could you do that to an eighty year old woman?” she demanded, wondering how she’d missed Marta’s screams for help those times that Christofer had helped his sister with her shower routine, the one thing that Marta had refused to allow Cloe to help her with.
Now she wished that she had ignored Marta’s wishes and taken over that chore. It would have added another hour or two to her day, but at least Marta would have been able to enjoy a pain free bath for at least a little while.
“Eighty?” Christofer repeated back, looking as though he had no idea what she was talking about. Then with a sigh and a shake of his head, he explained, “I haven’t bathed Marta since she turned twelve.”
“You helped bathe her every morning,” Cloe pointed out even as her brain struggled to register what he’d just said and what that meant.
“No, I just helped her get in and out of the shower,” Christofer explained just as she realized what he’d said only a few seconds ago. “She needed help, but she was embarrassed about…..some marks on her body,” he said, shifting his gaze away.
“You bathed Marta until she was twelve?” she asked, wishing that she’d misheard him, but she had a sneaking suspicion that she hadn’t.
Which meant……
“How old are you exactly?” she asked, swallowing back dread as she looked him over, really looked him over as though she was seeing him for the first time.
The man was utterly perfect. There wasn’t a single flaw marring his face or body. There didn’t seem to be a single ounce of fat on his body. His hair was a healthy golden blonde, his eyes crystal clear blue, and his skin perfectly tanned. He didn’t look a day over twenty-five, but could probably pass for a thirty year old with the right clothes. But if he’d been able to bathe Marta when she was twelve, that meant that he was-
“I’m ninety-nine years old,” he announced with a shrug as though it was no big deal and to him it probably wasn’t.
Unfortunately for her, she couldn’t just shrug it off, not when the realization that she’d made out with a senior citizen had her running for the nearest toilet.
Chapter 29
“Cloe,” he said with a heavy sigh as he hunched down in front of her and moved to push a strand of damp hair out of her face.
“Go away,” she muttered angrily, pulling her knees up and hugging them tightly to her chest. She looked so damn lost and scared that all he wanted to do was pull her in his arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay, but he couldn’t do that.
Right now Cloe was terrified and confused, not to mention getting closer and closer to losing control of the monster inside her, and he was afraid of doing anything that would make it worse for her. He’d hoped that she would be relaxed after her bath. It would have made the transition to drinking blood easier, but somehow that plan hadn’t worked. He still couldn’t figure out where he’d gone wrong.
Women loved baths and they especially loved being pampered. At least, he’d always thought so. His stepmother had always seemed to enjoy it when his father would pamper and spoil her as did his aunts and the servants that had worked for his family. He’d seen more than one maid giggle and blush under the attentions of an admirer when they were surprised with bouquets of flowers, chocolates and gifts. But Cloe, as he was beginning to understand, was not a typical woman. She hadn’t appreciated his attempts to help her relax. Every time he realized that she wasn’t enjoying herself he tried harder to help her relax, but nothing seemed to work.
Now they were out of time and he was running out of options. If he didn’t do something soon she was going to fall prey to what Ephraim had referred to as bloodlust and if that happened, he was afraid of what that kind of loss of control would do to a woman like Cloe. He couldn’t take back what he’d done to her, but he could make this transition easier for her, but only if she let him.
“Just leave me alone,” Cloe mumbled, absently shoving his hand away, clearly intent on continuing to sit on the bathroom floor feeling sorry for herself.
With another sigh, he sat down in front of her. He ignored the murderous glare that she shot him since acknowledging that she had every right to go for his balls was counterproductive at the moment. He decided to try another approach to get her to listen before he was forced to finally give up, drag her to the kitchen and force feed her a half dozen bags of blood before this fucked up situation got any worse.
“Cloe,” he said, pausing as he tried to figure out what he could possibly say to convince her to listen to him and trust him when Cloe gave him the opening that he needed.
“I just want to go home,” she mumbled pathetically, averting her eyes as she roughly rubbed the back of her arm across her eyes, letting him know just how upset and terrified she really was and breaking his heart. More than anything he wished that he could take her in his arms, hold her tightly and make all of this go away, but he couldn’t.
“Cloe-”
“I’m not going to tell anyone about any of this. I just can’t deal with being here, Christofer,” she said slowly, clearly struggling not to lose what little control she had left.
He thought about lying to her, telling her that everything would be okay and that this wasn’t really a big deal, but he couldn’t lie to her. It killed him to see a strong woman like Cloe breaking down like this, but if it helped him explain to her why it was so important for her to stay here then he was going to be blunt with her and pretend that it didn’t kill him to be the one to destroy her last shred of hope.
“If you leave right now, Cloe, you will kill someone before the night is over,” he explained softly, praying that his tone was enough to soften the blow. Judging by the way that she’d flinched as though he’d struck her along with the absolute look of horror on her face, he realized there was nothing that he could say or do that would make this easier.
So he stopped trying.
“I would never-” she started to protest with a determined shake of her head, but he didn’t allow her to finish, knowing that the words would come back to haunt her one day.
“Yes, you would,” he said firmly, reaching out and taking one of her trembling hands into both of his. “You think that you can control this, that you can control what you are, but the truth of the matter is, Cloe, that right now you pose a danger to every man, woman and child that makes the mistake of crossing your path.”
“You don’t know that,” she bit out tightly even as her stomach rumbled viciously as if to give credence to his words.
“Yes,” he said, looking up and meeting her terrified gaze, “I do.”
*-*-*-*
“I would never hurt anyone,” Cloe said weakly as the truth of his words sank in.
But that’s not why she was starting to believe him.
The reason that she was starting to believe everything that he was telling her was quite simple. The tenuous grip that she had on her self-control was quickly slipping away with every passing
second. If she didn’t get away from him or figure out another way to get through this, any other way, she wasn’t going to be able to ignore Christofer’s scent for much longer and that would destroy her last hope that she wasn’t really a monster.
She refused to accept this.
She didn’t want to be like this, didn’t want to crave something so wrong and she sure as hell didn’t want to worry about losing control and-
“I can help you, Cloe,” Christofer said, cutting into her panicked thoughts before they could take her to a place where she had no hope of escape. “I can help you get through this, learn to live with the changes. I can show you how to stay in control, but I can’t help you unless you let me.”
She released a mortifying sniffle as she forced herself to focus on the way that his hands gently held hers. She refused to meet his gaze, terrified that he’d see just how afraid she really was.
“You’re the one that did this to me,” she lamely pointed out, struggling to hold onto the last strands of her humanity even though she already knew that it was a losing battle.
He gave her hand a small squeeze, but it was enough to make her look up and meet his determined gaze. “And if you give me a chance, I’ll be the one to fix this.”
Terrified of what she would become without his help, she reluctantly nodded. “Just don’t let me turn into a monster,” she said, forcing herself to meet his gaze head on.
“I’ll do my best,” he said, giving her hand another gentle squeeze that was probably meant to be reassuring and surprisingly, it was.
*-*-*-*
Christofer sighed heavily.
He couldn’t help it.
“That’s not going to work,” he pointed out, but she refused to listen to him.
With a mutinous glare aimed in his direction, Cloe picked up the piece of toast slathered in peanut butter and strawberry jelly and took a huge bite out of it. After a few seconds of chewing, her glare shifted to shock, disbelief and finally disgust as she turned around, grabbed the trashcan with both hands and spit out every last crumb. When she was done, she turned on the sink, cupped her hands in the water and proceeded to rinse her mouth out while he stood there, sighing heavily as he wondered just how much longer it would be before she finally listened to him.
“You need blood, Cloe,” he said for what was probably the hundredth time since he’d decided to try and fix the fuck up that the others had created.
“I want to see if this works first,” she stubbornly argued as she pushed the offending plate of toast away and with the same look of determination that had accompanied every single “test” as Cloe liked to call them, she grabbed the box of wheat crackers that she’d found in the cabinets, opened a sleeve of crackers, grabbed a small stack and shoved them into her mouth until it became obvious that this test had failed as well and she was reaching for the trashcan.
“Stop doing this to yourself,” he said, his exasperation clear as he watched her go through the process of rinsing out her mouth before that look of determination returned and she forced herself to reach for a can of beef stew.
“No one told you that you had to watch,” she said, keeping her focus on the small can as she grabbed a can opener and removed the lid. Cloe cringed when the aroma of cold, chemically preserved beef hit her, causing her to gag a little, but it apparently wasn’t enough to make her give up this asinine plan of hers. He watched as she went through the process once again, this time pausing to rinse her mouth out twice as long to get rid of the taste of chemically preserved beef from her mouth.
“Are you about done yet?” he asked, noting that she was quickly running out of food to test.
Looking determined, she picked up a can of tuna fish and nibbled on her bottom lip as he watched her try to force herself to go through with the next test. Reluctantly, and a with a cringe, she picked up the can opener, secured it to the can and with a muttered curse, dropped the can and the can opener on the kitchen island and finally said, “Fine, we’ll try it your way.”
Making damn sure to hide his triumphant smile, he went to the refrigerator and grabbed two bags of blood. As he closed the refrigerator door, he contemplated heating up the blood, but then he decided against it since the heat had a tendency of making the rusty smell worse. He did however grab two coffee cups, hoping that by placing it in something normal like a cup that it would help Cloe pretend that she wasn’t drinking blood.
“How much b-blood am I supposed to drink a day?” she forced herself to ask.
“Four bags a day should help you stay in control,” he answered, knowing damn well that’s what she was worried about, losing control.
She seemed to consider his words before she asked, “And you’re sure that there are no other options?”
His gaze lingered on the kitchen island covered with open food containers and shook his head, wishing that there was another way to do this for her. “This is the only way.”
“Okay,” she said, shifting nervously as she watched him cut a small hole in one of the bags and pour the red liquid in two cups before he carefully placed the opened bag of blood in a plastic bowl by the sink.
“And this will stop the cravings?” she asked, sounding hopeful and he should have lied to give her this small amount of comfort, but he didn’t.
“No, but it will make things more tolerable,” he said, deciding not to use the fact that the scent of her blood probably still had the power to shred every last ounce of his control if he allowed it.
Since that most likely wouldn’t comfort her, he handed her a cup of cold blood and held his up in a mock salute. “Cheers,” he said, chuckling as she shot him another glare.
“I hate you,” she ground out as he hid his grin behind his cup and took a long, leisurely sip of his blood. He watched her every move, afraid that she would balk at the idea of drinking blood and he’d be forced to-
“Oh my God!” she choked out as she pulled the mug away from her lips after taking him by surprise and swallowing a large gulp of the cold, metallic liquid that admittedly took some time getting used to. “That’s disgusting!”
“Yes, it is,” he agreed with a pleased chuckle as he took another sip of his blood just as she did, further shocking him.
He’d expected her to throw the cup in the sink and go back to her “experiments” or play twenty questions with him again, no doubt hoping that she’d stumble across something that he’d missed, but Cloe it seemed, was determined to get through this. She wanted control of this thing and was willing to do anything to get it. Although he knew that she hadn’t fully accepted what happened to her or was even happy about it, he was relieved that she was no longer fighting him on this.
It was going to make taking her with him a hell of a lot easier if he knew that she could take care of herself or at the very least, he mused as he took another sip of blood, keep herself from attacking everyone in sight.
Chapter 30
“Are you sure that you’re okay?” Christofer suddenly asked and she’d just barely stopped herself from flinching.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said absently as she pulled her legs up and shot another nervous glance around the large penthouse, her gaze pausing on all the doors and the large windows before reluctantly returning to the large flat screen television above the fireplace where some horrible romantic comedy was playing.
“Are you planning on staying up?”
“Uh huh,” she murmured, struggling not to glance around the large open space to make sure that everything was still as it should be.
“Do you want some company?” he asked, pushing away from the kitchen island.
She shrugged, trying not to let him know just how much she wanted him to stay with her. She didn’t want him to know how badly their little “talk” had affected her. When he’d volunteered to answer her questions, she’d been relieved and admittedly a little excited to find out what else she could do now. A lot of the stuff that she’d learned like being able to see in the dark, being able to f
loat and having inhuman strength had definitely helped take the sting out of her new predicament, but the other things that he’d explained to her had scared the hell out of her.
Not that he knew that.
As he explained things to her along with the new dangers that went hand in hand with her new existence, she’d forced herself to sit there and listen, making sure to nod at the appropriate times while she’d struggled to make sense of what he was telling her. She knew that there was still a lot of information that she didn’t know, that he most likely didn’t know either, but what she knew now had her terrified to take so much as a step outside of this building.
The monsters that had haunted her dreams and memories all these years, the ones that everyone including her therapists had claimed were just a figment of her traumatized imagination were in fact, real. Christofer hadn’t been able to give her much information about them other than they were apparently very real. A part of her had always wished that the therapists and doctors had been right, that her injuries were just an unfortunate circumstance from the fire, but deep down she knew that she hadn’t imagined the terrifying memories from that night.