The Second Time Around Ch. 07

Paul returned home to find Brigitte gone. He thought that maybe she had gone out for a couple of hours, but those couple of hours turned into a few hours and a few hours into several. Being that they never really questioned each other about the goings on of their lives, he wasn't one to care about what time she returned. However, he had a niggling feeling that something was off. He stared at his cell phone pondering whether he should call her or not, but as the grandfather clock chimed eight p.m., making it a solid six hours since her departure (well, his return home since he wasn't all too sure how long she had been gone), he picked up the phone and pressed her speed dial number.

"We're sorry. The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected. Please hang up and try again."

"What?" he asked the automated message system as if it could actually respond. "What do you mean it's out of service?" In disbelief, he dialed the number a second time then a third time before storming up the steps to her room. He hesitated at her wing of the house. Brigitte always thought that he wasn't interested in what she had to hide over in her little rotten corner, but the truth was that he could never get through. Through what? The damn barrier. It was so damn strong that if he even thought about it, his skin would start to burn.

He couldn't explain it himself. The issue didn't surface until after his wedding night with Brigitte. They had consummated the marriage which even he had to admit had been a spectacular experience, but not due to the sex. He had been able to drink in her clean spiritual energy and his body had felt more revitalized than it had ever felt in the past hundred and twenty years of his existence. From the very moment that he had laid eyes on her at the cemetery, he had felt the pull. She was different and definitely special. Just holding her gaze alone had called to the darker nature within him. His spirit had itched to have a taste of her. She had been so innocent and trusting...so broken that it had taken him less than three months to get into her good graces. He courted her, or at least the energy he felt was richly harvested within her, and after much persistence Brigitte began to give.

Each time that they touched, every time that they kissed, his spiritual pressure received an exponential kick. He wanted her soul and he had every intention of taking it, but the set back was that he had to make her his own in order to claim her. Either that or make her profess her undying loyalty to him. However, from her reservations and morals, she never allowed anything more than a kiss. No petting and definitely no sex. So what did he do? He proposed to her with the intention of draining her on their wedding night. Yet somehow, he had underestimated her strength. She had far too much energy for him to devour in one go and even Paul had to admit that only an idiot would drown themselves with such immense spiritual pressure. The best way to consume such force was kind of like enjoying good wine: you pour it in your glass, swirl it about, give it a good sniff, and then you slowly take a sip to savor the flavor and let it wrap itself around your taste buds. Besides, he had seen too many of his fellow colleagues jump to their own demise by rushing things.

He had planned to pace the draining process as slowly as possible, but something that he had never counted on was the barrier. After their wedding night, they moved into this godforsaken house and he found that he could no longer touch her; just being in her physical presence made it hard for him to breathe. At first, he had thought that it was Brigitte locking him away from her, but he did his research and found out that the house's previous owners had dabbled in white magic which would explain why he had had to strengthen the incantation he had used to maintain his human appearance upon stepping foot inside of it. Damn human body. All he needed to do was devour two thousand more human souls, or in this case drain Brigitte for all she had, or he would have to find and slay a Collaborator to be strong enough to do without the incantations. Collaborators, however, weren't so easy to come by.

One didn't just go out on the street and say, "excuse me, my good fellow, you might not happen to be a Collaborator would you?"

"Why yes, young chap, I certainly am!"

"Then I hope that you wouldn't mind if I was to break the spiritual orb encased in this human flesh of yours and consume all of your spiritual pressure? Would that pose a problem?"

"By golly no! Do as you wish!"

No, things were definitely not that easy. And if he was ever to see said Collaborator, he would head for the hills. The last battle he had faced with one had left him half dead. Damn Raphael! That had been his name, Raphael Jones. He had tried to kill the man's partner, but had only succeeded in infuriating him and getting his ass kicked back to a level one trainee. It had taken a lot of begging and pleading with his superiors to reestablish his rank as a fifth rank soldier for a second chance. This time, if he failed, there would be no more chances and only death.

He had also planned to sell the house, but Brigitte had insisted on keeping it every time the issue came up. What was he supposed to say as a good enough reason for getting rid of it? "Well, honey, the thing is...this house is impeding me from sucking out all of your spiritual energy. Can't we just be rid of it, dear?"

No, he couldn't say that he thought the house was protecting her from him. She would have thought that he was crazy. Hence he did the next best thing; he distanced himself from her, quarantining her to the opposite wing until he could figure out a way to get close enough to drain her without zapping his own energy.

Brigitte had been concerned at first, begging and pleading with him to go to counseling when she felt the giant rift in their marriage. She kept telling him that it was unusual for such a young marriage to already have problems and that she would do anything to set things right again. He had almost been tempted to ask if she was willing to spiritually sacrifice herself in order to do so, but he held his tongue and told her that it wasn't worth it. After trying, with no avail, to get him to open back up to her, Brigitte stopped caring and the mutual dislike of each other set in. She stopped attempting to revive emotions and ignored his efforts to have cordial conversations with her. But he drew the final line when she came to him for a divorce. He gave her a straight hell no each and every time then dealt with her yelling and accusations that he was keeping up their marriage for appearances. No, he was keeping up their marriage because he refused to release her from his claim until he was incinerating her lifeless body into billowing dust after having drained her dry.

Gritting his teeth, Paul steeled himself to go inside of her room, but as soon as he stepped foot into her hallway, he cried out in pain, his flesh broiling with fever. "Damn it!" he cursed angrily, shaking the house from the volume of his voice. "Come on!" he told himself, pounding a fist into his chest like a caveman before refortifying his resolve and stepping into the barrier. He forced himself against the immense spiritual resistance, his flesh peeling away from his bones like ribbons of thread. His lungs closed up on him as his lead like feet drug themselves towards the door of Brigitte's room and he pushed them open. Touching the knob alone melted the skin right off of his hand and left him staring down at bare bone. No amount of words could describe the pain he was enduring for this woman. If he ever was able to get his hands upon her again, he would make her pay.

Pushing the door open, Paul used all of his might to drag his body inside of what was once Brigitte's room. Her things were gone, the bed was finely made, nothing was out of order, but her personal effects were missing save for her wedding ring which casted an eerie yellow glow inside of the dark room.

"No!" Paul yelled feeling the bond and hold he once had over her begin to slip and dissolve. His earthly body was going to collapse if he didn't get out of there. He back traced his steps as quickly as possible, gulping in large quantities of air as his body burned while the dripping flesh reversed their downward fall to the ground to wrap back about his bones the further away he got from Brigitte's bedroom. He stood in the center of his room, glaring at himself inside of the mirror, watching his face reform upon the semi-naked skull staring back at him. He trembled with rage, unable to understand how he had allowed her to slip through his fingers. That ring wasn't just an ordinary jewel. He had used one of his strongest incantations which would make it impossible for her to take it off. Then how in the hell had she accomplished such a feat? Maybe his powers were weakening and he hadn't noticed. Whatever it was, he needed to find out why this was happening, but first he would need to rest and regain his force or stepping out into the sunlight alone would physically crush him.

"Damn it!" he spat at himself as he cracked the mirror with his anger. That didn't suffice. He wanted and needed to hurt someone, instead he settled on trashing his room with his telekinetic abilities. "Brigitte, you will be mine again!" he vowed.

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"What's wrong?" Caid asked when Brigitte jumped awake in bed. He felt a slight chill accost his body in spite of the humidity inside of the room and pressed her closer to his chest.

"Nothing," she replied running a shaky hand through her hair. She could have sworn that she had heard someone calling her name...and not just anyone. That eerie, angry, hateful voice sounded like Paul's. "Hold me."

"Like this," Caid replied tightening his arms about her.

"Tighter," she told him until her heart stopped pounding in her chest and her fear waned into anxiety that slowly dissolved into a warm tingling sensation that only he could give her. She returned to sleep though it was now fitful and arose early into the morning to watch Adriano sleep. He looked so peaceful that she couldn't help but to place little kisses all over his handsome face. She jumped back realizing that old habits die hard. She used to do the exact same thing to Caid when he slept. Caid. She missed him so much. If only she could turn back the hands of time and work out their issues. He would definitely still be there with her. They would have been married, hopefully, with a baby on the way. She had wanted to give him many children especially after the loss of his brother and her being an only child. He used to always tell her that two weren't enough. It was still lonely at times.

"You were awake?" she asked when his masculine hand caressed its way up and down her back. She smiled when he sighed in his sleep then pulled her closer for a morning kiss. It has been ages since she's had one of those.

"Why are you up so early?" Caid peeked at the alarm clock then yawned; it was barely seven o'clock in the morning. "You rise just as early as Mamma," he mumbled then buried his head full of black curls underneath a pillow.

He sounded so sexy in the morning and that accent of his made Brigitte want to strip naked and wait for him to pounce on her. Why was he so delicious? "I couldn't really sleep," she said tracing her fingers up and down his bare back.

"Why didn't you join Mamma for a cup of coffee instead of staring out the window like a depressed old woman?"

"Your mother scares me," Brigitte admitted bashfully as he pulled the pillow away from his head to look up at her. After officially being introduced on the very same day that the woman learned of Brigitte moving in, things were kinda heavy—it was safe to say that the tension could have been cut with a knife. Adriano's mother didn't approve of her. For one, Brigitte was still married and for two...she just didn't know what the second reason could be, but she had felt the elder's disapproval. Not to mention the way in which Dante had eyed her had made her ready to ball up and disappear. It wasn't a judgmental type of staring, but his look had told her that if she was only toying around with his little brother that she needed to get the hell out.

Well, it was too late to rethink her decision to leave Paul. The man was no doubt furious and would probably send her flying out on her ass if she had enough guts and lack of dignity to go crawling back to him. Not that she had considered doing such a thing. Why would she when Adriano treated her like a cherished queen? The only one in the family that she could say actually liked—or maybe tolerated—her was Gina. She had told her a simple 'welcome to the family' and left it at that.

"You needn't be afraid of her. She is a sweetheart."

"Yeah, to you because you're her son and not a slut who ran away from her husband," Brigitte told him as she stared down at her hands. Now she was really beginning to regret her decision.

"Brigitte, don't ever say that again," Caid told her. If he hadn't been a jackass in the beginning, they would have been married by now and living in their own little happy world instead of him underhandedly stealing her away from a slime bag. "Mamma has no ill feelings towards you."

"Of course it's easy for you to say that. You're her son!" Brigitte emphasized with her hands as she threw the covers away from her pajama clad body to storm into the bathroom. She would leave. There was no way that she would consider going back to Paul. Now that she had her freedom, which she felt the instant that she stepped foot outside of that house, she knew that she would never willingly go back there again. So she would go to a hotel or anywhere else she could think of to get away from the muck she had just made of her life. What was she supposed to do?

"What are you doing?" Caid asked as he leaned against the bathroom door watching Brigitte throw her toiletries back into the bag she had recently taken them from the previous night.

"I'm leaving. I don't feel comfortable here and I should have never gotten you involved with my marital problems in the first place.

"Where will you go?"

"I don't know," she said briefly stopping her packing to look at him. "I'm not going back to Paul if that's what you're thinking. I wouldn't even if my life depended upon it."

"Brigitte," Caid said softly stepping inside of the bathroom to steady her moving hands and look down into her eyes. "You're not going anywhere. I won't let you."

It's funny how something said by the right person could have such a wonderful result. Paul used to tell her that so many times, but he would yell at her and scare her enough with his anger that her hands would stop packing. The man had never actually put a hand on her except on their honeymoon when they slept together, but the force of his anger always left her feeling as if he had slapped her. Yet here was Adriano telling her the exact words that her husband used to say and her hands had stopped moving for an entirely different reason: love. He loved her. She could see it in his blue eyes, hear it in his voice, and feel it in the way he touched her. He loved her.

Her eyes closed as she shook away the confusion within her mind. She couldn't allow his feelings to make decisions for her, but she wouldn't only be hurting him if she walked away. She would also be scarring herself. Just a year and a half ago, the roles had been reversed. She had begged Caid to stay with her and he had left only to die in a car accident. That morning alone she had chastised herself for not trying harder to hold on to him instead of allowing him to slip away from her. Tears burned the back of her eyes as they slipped down her brown cheeks.

"Don't cry, Brigitte, I'm going to take care of you."

Her gentle brown hand covered her mouth to mask a sob as she leaned into Adriano's strength. "What am I supposed to do? I'm scared."

"Lean on me. I'm not going to let you fall."

"But your mother..." His lips were claiming hers before she could finish her statement and Brigitte allowed herself to become enraptured by their kiss. Her arms wrapped about his neck and pulled him closer until their bodies were tightly pressed against each other. By the time Adriano pulled away, her muddled mind couldn't recall what she had been complaining about.

"Let's get you some breakfast. You're cranky when you don't eat." His graceful limp led her out of his room and into the kitchen where she squirmed about in the presence of his mother.

"Good morning, Mrs. Comito," she greeted unable to make eye contact.

She didn't really respond, save for a brief head nod of acknowledgment; instead she fussed about her son, making sure that he wasn't only consuming coffee for breakfast then she left the kitchen.

Brigitte looked at Adriano with puppy dog eyes filling with tears. He knew that it was important for her to have the acceptance of his mother since her parents had died when she was very young. He sighed, standing to his feet to go to her when he watched his mother return to the kitchen with a brown manila envelope. She gently set it before Brigitte who was now looking up at her with confusion in her brimming eyes.

"Gina explained everything to me. You don't have to worry now. I've gotten you what you've needed. Now all you have to do is sign on the dotted line, piccola mia."

"What? I don't understand," Brigitte confessed watching her tears drip onto the counter beside the envelope. Mamma inclined her head towards it, telling her in a nonverbal manner to open it and see the contents. Brigitte gasped when she took in the divorce papers then shook her head in dismay. "He won't sign them. He never does."

"Then we'll keep sending them until he does. If that doesn't work, we'll take him to court," Mamma said with a nonchalant shrug of her right shoulder. "It will keep me entertained. Now, the sooner you sign them is the sooner I'll be able to mail them to him."

Brigitte nodded her head then slightly jumped when Dante—who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, mind you—offered her a pen. "Thank you." Signing the papers made a physical weight lift off of Brigitte's shoulders. She thought that she had only been imagining things when she had taken off the ring yesterday, but she knew that the sensation had been real this time. An overwhelming sense of peace took over her as tears of joy clouded her eyes. She wasn't alone anymore.

"It's all right, Brigitte, I told you that I would take care of you. We all will take care of you." Caid had only meant to sooth her nerves, but his gentle words seemed to have had the opposite effect as he watched her burst into body shaking sobs as she held him tightly. "Just get it all out," he encouraged rubbing her bed head until her tears turned to sniffles.

"How embarrassing," Brigitte said when she noticed that now the entire family (being that somewhere during her bawling fest Gina had entered the kitchen) had been watching her emotional breakdown.

"You don't have to feel ashamed. Just two nights ago I finished a whole pint of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey and I cried my eyes out because I ruined my diet," Gina confessed with a shrug.

Dante rolled his eyes at his sister. She was forever being overdramatic. "Don't listen to this ditz, Brigitte. She'll rot your brain."

"Who are you calling a ditz?" Gina asked dropping her buttered toast to glare at her older brother.

"You," Dante said not backing down as they argued like eight year olds until their mother broke it up then kissed them both on the cheek to appease their tempers. Even as adults she still spoiled them with affection.

Brigitte smiled truly enjoying the family atmosphere that she had missed out on as a kid. She yawned as the urge to sleep overtook her then rubbed her eyes in an effort to fight it.