I ignored Dom’s hiss of anger behind me and stormed towards the plane, finding myself up its steps in less than a second of time. Then I saw her, and it was if my heart stopped dead at just the sight. She sat with her back to me wearing what she’d had on earlier, the scent of her blood filling my nostrils and easing my panic.
“Amelia.” I whispered her name like a fucking prayer on the wind. I released a deep and regretful sigh the second she purposely didn’t turn to face me, and it was only when I made it within reach of her that the truth of those scents started to infiltrate through the lies. Her hair, her skin, and even the blood that coursed around her body…
It was all wrong.
The blood on her sweater was old and the only piece about the figure sat before me now that belonged to her. I reached out and just before I could touch her, the imposter turned around to face me.
“She gave me money.” I let my hand drop, forming a fist at my side on a snarl of anger.
“Get out!”
“Excuse…”
“I SAID GET THE FUCK OUT!” I roared making her cry out in fear before getting up and running out of the plane, pushing past Dom as he entered, the sight speaking for itself.
“Gods, no…tell me she didn’t…”
“Deceive us all…Yes, Dom, yes she fucking did!” I snapped walking past him myself and back towards the car, doing so with purpose. Because it looked like my girl had given me the slip and run from me, slipping right through my fingers.
Meaning that once again it was time for this King to go…
Hunting.
Chapter 3
A Hellish Force of Hand
By the time I returned to Afterlife I had issued so many orders, I wasn’t sure how many of my people I had out there searching for her, Dante included. So, granted the journey hadn’t been a waste of my time, despite cursing her name for half of it and cursing my own for the other.
Of course, I hadn’t been the only one to spend the journey barking orders as Dom had also been making his own calls. Although, I couldn’t help but point out that most of his would be pointless.
“You won’t find her that way,” I told him after he’d ordered whoever the fuck it was to monitor her bank accounts and have her passport flagged with all airports.
“Well, she won’t get fucking far with no money or use of her passport!” he snapped, making me shake my head as I got out the car once it was back in front of his building.
“I think you will find yourself eating those words when you discover the level of just how cunning your little girl can be,” was my irritated reply, hence half the journey spent cursing that very same cunning personality trait.
“Then what would you have me do, just fucking wait?!” he snapped back over the car’s roof after first slamming the door shut.
“Not at all, I am just advising you on what your men will find, as will most of my own,” I told him raking a frustrated hand at the back of my neck and making it crack.
“And that is?!” he demanded in a less than patient tone. So, as I entered the main doors to his club, I told him,
“Nothing, you will find…” I paused letting him overtake me once inside as suddenly a thought hit me, causing me to whisper the last word to that sentence,
“…nothing.” Dom looked back at me as my steps faltered. I then looked off to one side as my mind now focused on all the questions I had started to ask myself when she first stepped out of her hiding place. Questions that were only now starting to become relevant once more. Because, after I had found out she was missing, then nothing else had mattered but getting her back. And that same desperation in achieving this still stood strong but with little to go on, then it was time to find the answers I needed.
“What is it?” Dom asked obviously seeing it on my face as the last moments of her in the library started to play back in my mind. Then, the second I fixated on what I had seen after being flung back inside the library, I took off running. Doing so now with Dom following me and keeping up with my speed.
“You want to tell me what the fuck is going on now?!” he snapped the second I made it through the club, inside his home and back to the library, ignoring the obvious destruction we had caused.
“I am about to find out,” I told him as I walked straight up to the hidden door into the Janus Temple that I had noticed was ajar.
“I take it your vault is through here,” I commented as I opened the door and looked back at him. He raised a brow at me and nodded before following me inside.
“Amelia had the box in her hand when she found us,” I told him making Dom reach out and grab me the second we stepped into one of the Temple’s halls, holding me back long enough to tell me,
“She doesn’t know where my vault is, Luc.” I rumbled out a growl as I looked back towards the bloody footprints that now followed a path to only one door.
“No, but it looks like someone did,” I commented with a grim expression.
“You think she was led here by…?” I quickly interrupted his thought process with a growl.
“The witch, yes I fucking do,” was my snarled reply before we both continued to follow the path, telling me now why it was that her shoes were soaked, and the hem of her jeans covered in blood.
“What the Hell could have happened?”
“I don’t know but this isn’t her blood.” Dom growled at my answer and snapped,
“Please don’t talk about her blood like you are well acquainted with it, as we already destroyed my library.”
“And?” I asked with a raised brow.
“And I would prefer not to do the same to half this temple.” I scoffed but refrained from telling him it was a little too late for that, for I was more than acquainted with it, I was fucking addicted to it! Of course, the moment I came to the vault door that obviously belonged to Dom due to the family crest that was carved at the centre, I was growling for a different reason.
“Now that is her blood.”
“Yes, and I will ignore the reason it is now scented with that of yours,” Dom replied in his own scathing tone.
“And how the fuck is it you think I am keeping her eternally young and healthy Dom, a heavy dose of Vitamin C in her morning juice?” I snapped making him snarl,
“Just stop speaking, Luc, for the love of the Gods, just don’t say another word!” I smirked at that and focused back on the door, knowing now just looking at the center hole how the injuries to her hand had occurred. My only hope was that there was enough of my essence inside her that she would have healed by now. Along with the injury to the side of her head.
I moved out of the way so Dom could get the fuck on with it and open the door, one that wouldn’t have needed half as much blood from him that it most likely had from Amelia. The thought didn’t exactly sit well with me and from the hard look on Dom’s face, then I would say our thoughts weren’t that far apart.
“What the…?” he muttered the moment he opened the door and four inches of blood flowed out around our feet. We both looked inside to find the cause being from a large well situated through a wall of columns. One that could be seen overflowing with thick blood instead of the water that it should have been. Meaning that I knew just by looking at it, that it was no doubt fed by an underground spring that bordered the realms of Hell. Now, the biggest question was how it had turned to blood and had managed to flood the long passageway that led to what I assumed was Dom’s vault.