He looked around and noticed the masterpiece in the middle of the floor. It seemed to radiate in the single light shining upon it. He stared at it for a minute, entranced. Remembering that his manager had called him, he went back toward his office. “Robert!” he called. There was no sound. “Robert!” he called again. He walked inside the office, and there was no sign of his manager anywhere. He noticed on the floor a few red spots. Kneeling down for a closer look, he saw what appeared to be blood. “Robert!” he called again, alarmed.
He heard a hissing sound. Turning around, he didn’t see anything. Walking back toward the entrance, he asked the security guard if he’d seen his manager. The security guard told him that he saw him leave earlier in the evening.
“This isn’t funny, Robert,” Cristian said, incensed. “I need to call Sage,” he thought taking out his cell phone. “No signal,” he said frustrated. He noticed as he looked down at his hand that the blood from the wound on his wrist was seeping through the bandage.
“That could’ve been the red spots I saw on the floor,” he said. He decided to go back to his loft to clean and apply a new bandage to the wound.
As he walked out the gallery, a dark figure stood in the light staring at the portrait.
John continued to stare at the text message pensively, when Sage appeared in the doorway. “What did he want?” she asked pointedly. He jumped. “He….he….he wants for me to get you to come to the Lake Cemetery tomorrow night alone.” “It’s in Staten Island,” he said.
“I’m not surprised that he would choose a cemetery to meet,” she said. “Thank you for informing me of his plan.” John stared down at the floor feeling guilty. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. He looked up and she was gone.
Sage went and grabbed a black hooded cloak, putting it on. “I need to find Cristian,” she said. “I can’t reach him by phone.”
“Maybe it’s taking longer for him to explain things to his parents,” Anna said. “It’s a lot to digest.” “Maybe you’re right,” Sage said removing the cloak.
“And we need to deal with Pedro’s betrayal,” Anna said. “The penalty when a vampire betrays another vampire is banishment or death.”
Sage nodded her head sadly.
The elevator cage opened as Cristian walked inside his loft. Taking off the bandage, he walked into the bathroom to take out a first-aid kit. As he ran water into the wound, the cage opened and closed by itself.
Cristian looked up, suddenly shutting off the water, sensing eyes on him.
Looking toward the open bathroom door, he didn’t see anything, so he resumed cleaning the wound.
The door adjacent to his bedroom opened as the ominous figure stared at the drawings of Sage. After Cristian finished rewrapping the wound with gauze, he walked out the bathroom, startled to see the adjacent door opened. “I know I left that door shut,” he thought. Then he remembered his mother mentioning seeing the drawings in the room. “Maybe she left it opened,” he mused. He shut the door and walked into the living room. The next sight he saw left him speechless in his tracks. The portrait was now sitting on the couch in an upright position. “How in the world…” he said.
He heard a growling sound as Pedro appeared and grabbed him, tossing him across the living room. He went to grab his cell phone, but Pedro grabbed it and crushed it with his hands. “No one can help you now,” he said. His eyes were black as midnight. “You had to ruin everything,” he said with snarled fangs. “I waited patiently for her. I was about to finally win her heart when you came along. After I lost Emilia, I didn’t think I’d love again. All that changed the day I saw Sage’s beautiful face. I knew that she belonged with me.” He glared at Cristian, “And not you. She doesn’t love you,” he said. “She loves a memory.”
“That’s not true,” Cristian said. “She loves me.”“Why? Because you have the same name and face as the man she loved centuries ago…I know the story,” Pedro said, bored.
“That’s not why she loves me,” Cristian said firmly. “I am that man she loved centuries ago.”
Pedro gasped taken aback. “You’re lying!” he yelled. “There’s no way that you’re the same man from her past. He died.” He lifted Cristian up by the neck, his hand pressed firmly on his jugular and threw him across the table smashing it into pieces. He picked up the portrait as Cristian got up slowly. “You painted this portrait to steal her away from me,” Pedro said, crazed with jealousy.
He threw the portrait down to the floor and tried to trample it, but Cristian shoved him back, crashing into the wall and leaving an imprint. Cristian cried out as the wound began to bleed again profusely.
“Once you’re gone, she will come to love me,” Pedro said gruffly. “She will see that it was I who loved her.” He eased out of the wall and began to stalk toward Cristian, crouching like a wild beast about to pounce on him. Cristian lunged for a jagged piece of wood on the floor from the broken table and held it up as Pedro jumped on him, landing on the tip. He gave a strangled cry as Cristian realized that the wood had lodged in his heart.
Lisa doubled over clenching her chest screaming in agony.
Cristian sat up stunned while an astonished Pedro looked at him as he began to disintegrate. Sage saw an image of Pedro in agony as she and the others could feel the impact of his slow death. “Mi reina!” Pedro screamed as he disintegrated into dust. “Pedro, está muerto!” Lisa screamed as she cried uncontrollably.
“The coven seven is broken,” Anna said shocked.
“Pedro…,” Sage wept.
Cristian sat shell-shocked as the reality set in of what had just happened. “Sage,” he said as he buried his face in his hands and wept.
Cody took Lisa in his arms and held her as she cried. Samuel placed a comforting hand on a distraught Sage. Daniel sat down, stunned. John accompanied by a stricken Billy came out to see what had happened as he looked at the vampires in mourning. Billy, unable to contain his emotions, collapsed to the floor, weeping.
Cristian tore down the drawings from the wall with his bloodied hands. Working feverishly, he piled all the drawings into the fireplace, struck a match, and watched them go up in flames. “Forgive me, Sage,” he said remorsefully, watching the drawings burn to ashes.