ohn looked on silently as a grieving Samuel knelt down beside Billy and they cuddled together. He watched as Anna held Sage and at Lisa and Cody clinging to each other while Daniel sat in silence. He felt his eyes begin to well up watching the vampires comfort each other. Slowly, Sage got up and, without a sound, exited the room as the others continued to grieve.
“Pedro…,” Lisa cried.Anna stared at John watching them. “What!” she said, irritated. “You’ve never seen vampires grieve before. We do have feelings too, you know,” she said.
“I never thought that vampires had feelings,” John said softly. “I was always told that vampires aren’t human.”
Anna walked out the room in a huff as John followed her. “Wait!” he yelled.
“What is the significance of the number seven?” he asked. She stared at him blankly. “What is the meaning of the coven seven?” he asked.
She took a breath. “Naturally, the coven seven means the seven members, who are,” she sighed, realizing her faux pas, “who were members of our coven. The number seven represents perfection or completion. It can also mean control, and it was the ancient Egyptian symbol of eternal life.”
“So now that the number has been broken, what then?” he asked.
“I can’t answer that,” Anna said disappearing into the darkness of the hallway.
Cristian stepped into the taxi weakly holding the covered portrait against his arm. “Are you alright?” the taxi driver asked him. “Fine,” Cristian said. He instructed the taxi driver to take him to Tribeca as he figured out how to explain to Sage what had happened. He replayed the scene in his mind repeatedly of the image of Pedro disintegrating right before his eyes. He heard Sage’s voice in his head telling him vampires could be killed and shivered at the thought.
The others dissipated into their own quarters, not wanting to leave the loft after a night of nearly losing Sage and then losing a member of the coven. The door to Pedro’s bedroom was sealed shut with a black shroud made of silk draped over it.
John, not knowing what to do, sat in silence in his bedroom when Lisa came to the door. They stared at each other without uttering a word. She sat down beside him.
He looked at her, trying to figure out what to say. “I’m sorry about your…about…,” his voice trailed off. She looked at him and silently nodded her head, acknowledging his awkward attempts at trying to comfort her. He nervously took his hand and placed it on her shoulder. She glanced at him, giving him a tiny smile.
“How did you end up working for Pearson?” she asked. He stared at her, blinking incessantly as she waited for a response.
“He found me,” he said. “I was living on the streets after I ran away from home.”
“He offered me a job, because I told him I’m good with computers, and he took me off the streets.”
“Why did you run away from home?” she asked. He stared down at the floor. “My father didn’t like me,” he said. “My older brother was the favorite son. He had everything—looks, friends, girls, a promising career. My father would compare us, and I never lived up to his expectations. He hated the way I dressed, the way I ate my food. No matter what I did, it wasn’t good enough for him. However, he didn’t know that his favorite son had a drug addiction that he kept hidden. I found his stash one morning by accident. He had a bag of cocaine hidden under socks in his drawer.”
“What happened when you found it?” Lisa asked. “I tried to tell my father, and he didn’t believe me. He accused me of planting the cocaine because I envied my brother. He told me that I wasn’t his son—that he only had one son.” He trembled, fighting back the tears at the memory. “So I packed my bags and I left.”
Lisa clasped his hand. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” she whispered. John was touched by her compassion. A vampire, thought to be an evil, godless, demonic creature, showed him more compassion than he’d ever received from a human. He realized that maybe he had pegged the vampires wrong, based on the perceptions of others.
Cristian got out of the taxi and rang the doorbell. “Sage!” he called out.
The door opened slowly. “She’s waiting for you,” Anna said solemnly.
“So you know?” he asked.
“We know Pedro is gone,” she said with a sober look. She led him through the hallway, taking him through another long hallway and up a flight of stairs. He could hear strains of an eighties song about love and loss playing loudly from Billy’s room. The haunting lyrics seemed to verbalize Cristian’s love for Sage. Finally stopping at a doorway, she motioned her hand for him to go through the door. He walked inside and saw Sage standing at the window in her crimson gown, her back turned toward him. He placed the covered portrait down, leaning it against the wall, noticing that on the wall hung a painting of Queen Nefertiti.
“Sage, I’m sorry,” he said mournfully. “It was an accident.” She turned around to face him. “How did it happen?” she asked. “He somehow followed me to my loft and he was crazed with jealousy. He said I stole you away from him and he tried to attack me. We struggled, and he was staked in the heart with a broken piece of wood.” “It wasn’t intentional, Sage, believe me,” he said. “I was defending myself.” “What did you do with the broken piece of wood?” she asked. “I took all the broken fragments and discarded them…,” he looked down, “including the dust when Pedro…,” Sage nodded her head.
“Pedro in his jealous fixation betrayed us all,” Sage said.
“He was the one who told Rafael of my whereabouts.”
“I didn’t want to be right about him,” Cristian said.
Sage noticed how pale Cristian appeared. “Cristian what’s wrong?” she asked, alarmed.
“The cut on my wrist,” he said. “I think I cut it too deeply.”
“And I took too much blood,” she said. His legs began to buckle as he collapsed to the floor. “Cristian!” she yelled.
She ran to him and rested his head in her lap. The bandage on his wrist was saturated with blood. “You’re bleeding to death,” she said horrified.
Cristian stared at her as he felt himself getting weaker.
Sage felt as if she was reliving Cristian’s death in a cruel joke. “I can’t lose you again,” she said as tears flowed down her eyes.
“You only have two options, Sage,” Anna said, standing in the doorway. “Either turn him or let him die.”
“I can’t let him die,” she said.
“Then you will have to do the unthinkable, Sage,” Anna said. “There’s no other way.”
She looked at Cristian as he stared into her eyes. This was the last thing she had ever wanted to do. She fought against it, and now she didn’t have a choice. She either had to embrace her vampirism and turn him or reject it and watch him fade away. She looked at his bandaged wrist dripping with blood, feeling the hunger in her arising.
“Do what you feel is best,” Cristian said to her telepathically. “My love for you will never die.” She leaned down and kissed him. His lips felt cool, like a winter’s chill on a rosebud. She tilted his head back until she could see his jugular, focusing her eyes on it and listening to his weakening heartbeat. She felt her fangs growing, continuing to concentrate on the vein pulsating from his neck. She lowered her head and kissed his neck softly before sinking her fangs into his vein. He whimpered as she bit down harder, drinking his blood and feeling him writhing against her.
Pulling herself away, she stared at him. He was nearly pasty white, his breathing labored. She took her claw and cut her wrist placing it over his mouth as if her love was literally bleeding from her veins. “Drink,” she said huskily. He leaned up, took her wrist to his mouth, closed his eyes, and began to drink her essence.
Her body felt like a bundle of nerves as he drank from her wrist like a sensual kiss, taking as much as he could before collapsing from exhaustion. Knowing what she had to do next, she leaned down cradling his limp body in her arms, the droplets of her tears falling on his face and bit down again, drinking until his flesh was colorless. Falling back to the floor and catching her breath, she could still feel her body tingle from the erotic embrace.
Suddenly, he began to convulse violently as his body began to undergo the throes of a physical death. Sage sat up and watched with anguish as his body continued to spasm, his eyes rolling to the back of his head. Then as soon as it began, it was over. He lay still. His eyes semi-opened. “Cristian,” she said frightened. He lay still and unresponsive.