Page 64 of Fanged Embrace
Even when she had a gun aimed at my chest.
I held Laurie’s gaze, felt her terror, but not once in that dingy little hellhole of a laboratory did I ever doubt her.
The Doctor didn’t even see it coming. If he’d been a little more cautious, if he set aside his bloated ego, he might have noticed the slight shift in her expression. He might have seen the fiery rage igniting in her eyes. But he didn’t. Not until the gun was aimed at the middle of his forehead, and Laurie was pulling the trigger.
The shot rang through the lab like a firecracker, deafening in the small space.
The Doctor dropped like a stone, electricity sizzling out at his fingertips. At such close range, that single bullet did more than enough damage. One shot was enough to make sure the Doctor would never bother anyone ever again.
How could he, when he was missing a head?
Silence settled after that shot, the lingering force of it left buzzing in our ears. The glyphs on the gun blazed red in Laurie’s trembling hands, and I witnessed the real damage that weapon could do to my kind.
I climbed to my feet and hobbled toward her—then paused, halfway across the floor, looking down at the monstrous man she’d shot. The Doctor’s body was burning away, crumbling from the neck down and dissipating into ash.
One bullet did all that?A vampire killing weapon indeed.
Behind me, Dylan crawled to her feet, swaying slightly and still twitching with the remnants of that electric charge. Laurie stared at the crumbling corpse, the pistol still raised in the air where the Doctor’s head had been. Then her arm wilted, and she crumpled beside him, knees hitting the floor with a hollow smack.
The gun clattered away, cast aside with a vehement twitch of her hand.
She drew one shuddering breath, then another, but no sound left her lips. She just sat there and stared as his body disintegrated, with the wide-eyed shock of a survivor who had just learned that monsters can bleed.
I knelt next to her, my own body still buzzing with residual electricity. “Laurie…” I reached for her shoulder. She didn’t flinch, didn’t jerk away. Her eyes were fixed on nothing at all, glassy and distant. She simply… wasn’t there.
Everything the Doctor had said to her, every word was fresh in my mind. I understood now how that monstrous man had twisted love into chains, balanced praise with possession, taught her obedience, isolation—and convinced her that was the only way to live.
“This guy’s not doing too good.” Behind us, Dylan was crouched over Arlon, who she’d hauled out of the locker and onto the floor. He was conscious now—kinda—blinkinggroggily and murmuring something faint. Dylan glanced back at me. “He’ll live, but he might have a concussion.”
“Get him back to Leyore headquarters.” I turned back to Laurie, brow wrinkling as I tried to get a read on her aura. “Tell Jordan what happened here and let her know I’ll be around tomorrow to discuss what to do next.”
“What about you two?” Dylan lifted Arlon over her shoulders and the guy muttered something unintelligible at the rough handling.
I kept my eyes on Laurie, who was slowly rocking back and forth with her arms clasped tight around her knees. Her aura was going haywire, but it wasn’t the usual flavor of rage or terror. This was a thunderstorm tainted with grief. Untangling that confusing web of emotional turmoil would take time. Patience.
I set my jaw, but softened my voice, drawing her gently into my arms. “We’re going home.”
I got Laurie in my car and home in a heartbeat, carrying her up the front steps like she could shatter if her feet so much as touched the ground—and considering the quake in her hands and the way her body trembled in my arms, that felt like a very real possibility.
She didn’t say a word, mute and checked out of the world around her. It was only her aura that gave me any indication of what was going on in her head.
I could guess what she was thinking right about now. She’d just taken out someone on her list, one of the monsters who had caused her so much pain during her time in the facility: She was wondering why it didn’t feel good.
The catharsis of pulling the trigger was no doubt short lived, replaced instantly by a tidal wave of conflicting emotions.Guilt, anger, grief, betrayal and more. All of it tied to the vampire man she’d killed. He was gone now, but the Doctor was still hurting her. He’d left his mark and that mark would remain.
I had no words to comfort her. All I could do to soothe her was keep the turmoil of her emotions at bay.
In the guest room, I helped her out of her jacket and guided her to the bathroom, making sure to keep the gun I’d been carrying for her well out of view. The glyphs had stopped glowing, but the metal still felt charged, radiating with magic long after the bullet had left the barrel.
Laurie swayed, unseeing and unresponsive when I sat her down at the edge of the bathtub and pulled out a cloth to clean her face. There was no blood to wipe away—it had fizzled to nothing just like the rest of the Doctor’s body, but her cheeks were tearstained and her forehead was hot, sweat still beading on her brow.
I crouched in front of her and looked into her vacant eyes. A storm of emotions warred inside her head, leaking out and washing over her, bowing her shoulders low. I poured calm back in, gentle waves lapping at a splintered hull.
She didn’t put up a fight when I fetched a fresh set of pajamas for her and gingerly lifted her shirt over her head. She lifted her arms when I asked her to and she stepped into the silky soft pants with one hand on my shoulder to steady herself. She moved like a mechanical doll, going through the motions without really registering what was happening. Too far gone from reality to feel embarrassed about it.
When she was finally dressed, looking smaller and more fragile than ever in layers of soft white cotton, I wrapped her in a blanket left strewn over the chair and guided her over to the bed. She clambered onto the mattress without a word, burrowing into the pillows and hiding her face from view. Thesun was nowhere near close to setting, but Laurie didn’t seem to care.
She looked like she was ready to sleep for the rest of her life.
