Lilith's Shadow Ch. 04

Stefan:

When I saw him lead her upstairs and then proceed to kiss her, I really wanted to take his head off, but the worse part was that she let him. I've never felt betrayed by anyone in my life but in that moment I felt like she'd ripped my heart out and handed it back to me. Feeling the tears in my own heart, I disappeared from the house and began to walk away from where I knew they were.

I didn't have the heart to watch him paw all over her and listen as she let him do it. I thought about just letting her go. It would hurt but I would be better off finding someone who had more of an inclination to stay faithful. I figured this woman would just rip my heart out and not think twice. I was trying to convince myself to do that when I heard her say my name.

I was immediately hit with a longing that went deep to the depths of my soul. Turning around, I imagined myself back at the house. It was then I heard her telling him she didn't want to go through with it. My heart did a little happy dance,but that lasted only for a second because my head snorted, "She can't be faithful so don't get your hopes up."

I walked around downstairs until I heard, "Just one kiss and then I can go?"

For some reason my brows shot up in alarm at this statement. There was silence and then I heard her say, "Fine, but make it quick." Again, I thought it was strange for him to ask for a kiss and her to agree to it was even stranger. It was then I heard her scream. My first thought was that I was going to kill him, and then my second thought was that I needed something with metal and a piece of wood.

I heard the two tussling upstairs and it scared me even more to think of what could be going on. I heard him growl at her and then call her a bitch. This infuriated me. Grabbing one of the legs from off the bottom of a chair and then running toward the kitchen, I stopped when I saw an Agincourt sword hanging above the juke box and grabbed it.

Once I had it, I went up the stairs and just as I heard her yell I want to go home, I heard him slap her and I froze, feeling every bone in my body freeze. This lasted only a second before I ran over to where he held her down on the bed and with all of my anger, pushed the wooden steak through his heart. I watched as blood squirted everywhere and then he got up. When he turned to face me, I yelled, so angry that he would even do that to someone I loved. Taking the hilt of the sword, I swung and watched as his head rolled off his body and onto the floor. Not long after, his body turned to ashes.

I looked over at Odilia and saw the confusion, fright and irritation on her face. "What in the hell are you?" She asked. Looking at me, big brown eyes wide. My eyes resumed their natural color and my fangs slowly receded.

"I'm your mate." I told her.

For some reason, this struck her as funny. "What?"

"We are married."

This struck her as funny again. I found it agitating that she would find this amusing.

"What do you mean we are married? We don't even know each other."

"In my world you know each other by spirit."

She narrowed her eye brows and got up off the bed. "You sound crazy you know that? And to think I almost wanted to see you again."

"I'm not crazy, it's the truth. There is something else you should know."

She glanced over at me, "What that you're a vampire? I think we got that covered already, I mean it's not everyday that you see human beings sporting long canine like fangs, and sharp ones at that."

"Well, at-least you're not in complete denial about that." I stated, following her to the door. For some reason, her energy began to make me sexually frustrated and I wanted to grab her right there.

She turned around to face me, shoving her feet into her boots, "How can I when you just freaking ran a steak through this guy's heart and decapitated him and not only that, but the bastard turned to ashes. That would be stupid to deny, wouldn't you think?"

I smiled at her and said, "I imagine so."

Her gaze lingered on my mouth and I was once again filled with the desire to kiss her. She chose that moment to turn around and begin her decent down the stairs. I watched as her waist length hair moved along with the rest of her body as she continued talking, "So, what else do you have to tell me? Now that you and I are married, that should mean that I am a vampire too right?" I cleared my throat, not sure how she was going to take the next bit of information. "Well, actually, we are married because our spirits have joined. However, you are in what we would call the Moonlighting phase."

She stopped at the stairs and turned around to face me. It was then with me being two stairs down from her, I noticed that she wasn't wearing a bra. Again, this ignited my desire for her and I really wanted to take that shirt off. I looked down at the rest of her outfit and was reminded that this is how she'd dressed when she was on the prowl, so therefore, it wasn't done for me, it was done because she'd wanted something. I felt the anger rekindle.

Turning my eyes to her, I listened as she said, "You know, you are starting to sound like you are crazy. Vampire or not, it was just sex, that's all and I'm not married to you and I am not in any moon lighting phase."

Her chest heaved up and down as she spoke.

I leaned close to her face and said, "Odilia, I thought you were rational. You seemed like you had a good head on your shoulder after all, you are going to school for medical science, right?"As soon as I said that, I regretted it.

"How did you know that?" She stepped back away from me.

My tone was extremely quiet, as I said, "I can read your thoughts."

She shook her head no, "Get away from me. Get away from me, now."

"It's the truth." I stated.

She started yelling then, "You are fucking crazy! get the hell away from me."

She turned to run away from me and opened the door.

I yelled, "Damn it Odilia, you can't be out there by yourself, it isn't safe." She didn't hear me, she just got in her car, started it up and took off.

Odilia

I was so damn angry!

Furious is more like it. Either this guy was so damn crazy that he'd entered into another world, or...I wouldn't even allow myself to think down that road. I believed he was a vampire, but all that crap about me being his mate and about moonlighting and the mind reading thing? That was stupid. No other being could read someone else's mind, so how could he?

I grabbed one of many lingerie sets out of my closet and trekked off to the bathroom. I willed myself to stop thinking of Stefan and vampires and moonlighting. what in the hell was moon lighting anyway? Going to the shower, I twisted the knob to the center and pulled out. I stripped down and hopped in the shower. When the cool water hit my skin and hair, immediately I felt better. My hair drew up into curls all around my head.

Taking my hands and running them through my hair, I devided the hair into three pieces and braided them in plaits around my hair. As I was doing this, it occurred to me that if Stefan couldn't read minds then how did he know that I was in that house, after all, only Marcus and I had been at his house. At-least I think we were the only ones. I felt goose bumps go down my spine at the thought of Stefan being there through the whole ordeal.

This saddened me but quickly I got over it as I grabbed the shampoo and squeezed a lot out over my hands. I grabbed the hair sectioned off and began squeezing it through my hair. What if what he said was true? I soaped up the rest of my hair and then rinsed it out. I put some conditioner on it and then just let the hair sit as I stepped away from the water to wash my body down.

Stefan:

As soon as I returned home, I called my sister and brothers in for a meeting. The only one who was my brother by birth was Lance. Van and Reina were brother and sister by blood swapping. This ensured us that we were able to keep in contact with one another. Seeing as how they were up as usual, they all came to the library without any real problem.

I was rummaging through different books as they came in. Van was the first to arrive. Van was a little taller than I was at six five with shoulder length blonde hair and iced over hazel eyes. His eyes looked as if they were shrouded in a forever cold glare, when in reality, he was the more serious of us all. He watched as I got several different books off the shelf. As I did this, he picked up a book. " Krav Maga, self defense Techniques."

Glancing up at me, he inquired, "What are you planning to do with all of this? I'm sure you can protect yourself just fine."

I continued to look for one more book I had on Krav Maga. "It's the most practical way to defend yourself when you are being attacked. Israel have been using it for decades." I stated, continuing my search.

"Israel has been using what for decades?" Reina inquired.

"Krav Maga." Van replied.

"What are you doing? And what's the meeting for?" She wanted to know.

"She needs to learn self defense, and where is Lance? It shouldn't take him this long to get down here.

"I'm right here, little brother, what's going on?"

Lance wanted to know as he strolled into the library, his curly hair wet and hanging in ringlets over his face from the shower he'd taken.

Reina groaned, "So, it's starting already? I thought it took three days before she would begin to start shadowing?"

Lance took the glasses he'd brought with him and placed them on the bridge of his nose, "What do you mean? She? Who's shadowing?"

Reina turned with a spark in her eye, "Our dear brother has found his mate, and from the looks of things, she's beginning to shadow."

"What the hell?" Van stated, his tone ever serious. "Stefan I thought you were happy being single, what happened to that?"

"I was until I saw her. I felt a strong urge to have her."

Lance saw this as comical, "Looks like your urges were too strong."

I turned after finding the book for myself, I glared up at him, "Ha, ha, ha. At-least I won't be alone anymore."

"Yeah, the only thing you have to worry about is keeping her alive." Van replied sarcastically. He liked things the way they were. They didn't need mates. When ever they took a mate, it meant that should the mate die unexpectedly, so would the vampire. This, he didn't like. Not for him, not for Lance, not for Reina and sure as hell not for Stefan. He was the only one Van felt he could go to when he needed someone to talk to. Running his hands through his hair, Van asked, his tone tight,

"So, now you want to break out all the self help books, right?"

I glanced over at him from the table, "She will need to read to understand the techniques of what I'm going to teach her. She needs to understand the art of self defense."

Lance rolled his eyes at me, "Dear brother, it's nice that you plan ahead, but she only has one week to complete her transformation. There is no way she can learn what she needs from a book. She will need contact." He stated.

"He's right, Stefan, you can't teach her anything from a book. Desperate times call for desperate measures."

I felt Van's frustration over this. He glared at me, "Are you guys serious? Does anyone not see the big issue here? We went out for dancing, drinks and to have fun and our brother comes back telling us he's freaking mated. It makes me wonder if the poor girl was desperate herself or something, because that is a very serious commitment."

Reina laughed, "Yeah, right, that girl didn't even know what he was doing. All she saw was a quick fix and what did he do. He obliged a little too eagerly."

I was angry that they were talking like this but more so at myself for the decision I made. It was bad enough that my actions were done purely out of lust, but to make matters worse, she wasn't the right kind of girl for me, this I knew now that she wasn't in front of me, making me drool over her. Clenching my jaw tightly, I said, "Ok, yes, I may have messed up some, but I told her the truth, ok?"

They all turned to look at me. "When?"

"Last night,"

"And, her response?" This came from Lance.

"She called me crazy, although she did believe the part about me being a vampire." I stated.

"Humans and their idiocy. How can she believe the vampire part but not the other?" Van questioned, his voice hard.

I sighed and placed my hands over my face, "She went out last night and I followed her to a club."

"And?"

"Well, I sort of ended up shoving a stake through some guy's heart and beheading him."

Lance's eyes went wide, "Ouch. What did he do to deserve that?"

"He attacked her."

Van was listening and found holes in his stories, "Wait a minute, I thought you said you followed her to a club?"

"I did."

"So then what happened at the club?"

"She picked up some guy and they headed back to his place."

Lance's loud laugh echoed through out the library.

"So, she's a club hopper? Oh, my god Stefan, did you link yourself to a street walker?" My sister shrieked.

I licked my lips, feeling sickened at that thought.

"She's not a whore, Reina, just a little open with her sexuality."

I defended Odilia, but even as I said it, it sounded kind of dumb. As if knowing that, Lance broke out in another fit of laughter.

"Shut up Lance," Van growled.

"Nicely done brother. First you screw her brains out and then you turn her, and now your life depends on whether she lives or not, how poetic. You take hers and now she has yours in the balance."

I inhaled sharply and said, "I just wanted to let you guys know that she'd be coming here."

Van and Reina glared at me, because they knew it meant that they would have to fight too.

"One week, that's all." I stated.

Van threw the book in his hand down on the table and walked out of the room without so much as a look in my direction.

Lance stood up, stretched and said, "Well, let the games begin. Maybe I'll get to use that machete I bought five years ago." He looked at me with a grin and said, "You sure know how to pick em Stefan, maybe I will let you pick my mate." After saying this, he laughed again and shook his head, walking out.

I was left alone with Reina. She didn't say anything, just exhaled sharply, grabbed me in her arms and ran her fingers over my hair. "You try too hard sometimes Stefan."

"I don't know why I didn't see the realization that she did this on a regular basis. I don't know what came over me. Everything just felt so intense, so right. The way she responded and everything was enough to make me know that she was who I wanted." I stated, still confused over my choice.

I heard Reina sigh behind me as she continued to stroke my forehead in a motherly fashion. "Dear brother, I'm sure there is more to her than meets the eye. Maybe you saw what she could be."

I groaned and pulled away from her, "No. I saw what I wanted, not what I needed." I took this time to take my leave.