Page 35 of Love Lives
Aldrich closed his eyes and allowed exhaustion take him.
Chapter Fifteen
"Areyou sure you want to do that?" Elle asked for what must have been the tenth time since I’d offered to activate the Seeker Stone.
"I'm not going to let anyone else do it." Sitting cross-legged on the couch in Morgan's living room, I held the stone in my hands. Aside from me and Elle, only Puck occupied the room. Luke and Collin had tried poking their heads in, but I'd asked them to chop some vegetables for me to help with dinner preparation. Luke had frowned and Collin had grumbled a bit about being busy with the baby, but in the end, they didn't put up much of a fight.
I still knew how to keep my younger siblings in line.
"What memories are you going to sacrifice?" Elle asked.
"I don't know." I stared at the stone. It felt cold in my hands, its color a dull blue. "But if Jared could do it, I can too."
"Jared wasn't thinking straight at the time," my sister reminded me.
"Even more reason that I should do a better job."
"You're impossible," Elle complained. She only complained, though, because she hadn't seen what I'd seen. I knew better than anyone in this family that we needed to act. The fact that I had an odd mark on my belly didn't help either.
I glared at the stone as if that would help anything.
"I haven't used the stone myself," Puck spoke up, "but with magical artifacts like that... I'll venture the guess that the value of the memory you offer will correlate with the clarity you'll gain as reward."
I glanced at him. He was standing by the door as if he wasn't sure if he needed to leave soon or not. Odd. I would have thought he'd want to get a closer look at the stone in action.
"It pays to be careful around objects like that," he said, interpreting my expression correctly. "No offense, but I've spent too much time amassing my knowledge to have it sucked out of my head by an artifact gone rogue."
"It could do that?"
Puck wiggled a finger at me. "There's no guarantee that itcan'tdo that. When dealing with magic, you have to expect the unexpected. Especially when dealing with ancient magic such as this." He gestured at the stone.
"It'll be fine," I promised. Closing my eyes, I held the stone to my forehead, just the way I'd seen Jared do. Time to get some answers. I knew just the right memory too. It wasn't one I wanted to lose... but that was the whole point, wasn't it? No memory I'd gladly let go of would ever be enough to feed this stone. Biting my teeth together, I pulled up a memory of my grandma, leaning over the kitchen counter as she diced tomatoes, getting dinner ready. The way she'd pause to smile at me every so often.A young boy needs to eat,she'd say.You'll like this.
She was always right too. At six years old, I was convinced that my grandma was the best cook in the whole wide world. To be honest, part of me was still convinced of that to this day.
The stone grew warm in my hand, began to glow. Instinctively, I tried to yank my hand away from my forehead, but I couldn't move. My head felt light. The memory of my grandma faded. Replaced with an image of a vampire. Vlad. Holding a green stone. I swallowed as the implications of that image burned themselves into my mind.
"Remy?" Elle shook my shoulder.
Confused, I looked at her. Right, I was still in the living room at Morgan's house.
"You okay?" my sister asked.
I lowered the hand with the Seeker Stone and drew in a breath, taking stock of my body. My head still felt strangely light, but aside from that? I was fine. The stone was still warm, but not glowing as brightly now. Elle stared at it, then at me again.
"Did it work?"
"Yes, and yes."
"What did you see?" Puck asked.
I grimaced, rubbing my temples to maybe get rid of that 'light' feeling in my head, but it was no use. "We're not the only ones looking for that stone. Vlad already has it. Hell, we should have known. He's probably had that one since before we helped him find this one." I closed my hand around the Seeker Stone.
"Vlad?" Puck mulled this over in his head. "I haven't heard from him since the fire. Where is he?"
"The south side," I said, before I even realized that I knew. Before I could think about how weird that was. Another image popped into my head. "There's a vampire base. A large one."
"So he's gathering vampires around himself." Puck twisted one of the rings on his left hand. "We'll have to prepare for the possibility that he's switched sides with his memories gone." His eyes narrowed as he added, "Which is exactly why you need to be careful around magic that roots around in your brain."
