Supernatural Night

Chapter 3

Leo watched the Vamp stare after Elena after she had left the pub. There was clearly history between the two of them. Elena seemed determined to ignore it. He wasn’t so sure the Vamp wanted to ignore their history. She rarely spoke of her life before they ended up in the same holding cell.

“Do you have a vehicle nearby?” Leo asked Damien.

The Vampire shook himself and looked back at Leo. “It’s at my hotel, I walked here,” he answered. Clearly, he was trying to assimilate everything that had happened in the last few minutes. He looked a bit shell shocked.

“Let’s get out of here then,” Leo said, leading the way out. He might seem very relaxed and laid back, but he was very aware of everything and everyone around him. He had also noticed that a few of the patrons at the pub had been eavesdropping on the entire conversation. He was sure that they would be rushing to give news to their masters soon. News in the Supernatural world travel fast. And a Vampire able to heal would be a hot commodity.

Damien followed Leo out into the street, where a black SUV was parked. He didn’t much pay attention to where they were going. His mind was still on the scene in the pub. He had found Elena, but the Elena he had found was not the Elena of ten years ago. She had changed in a big way. Although the Elena he had grown up with and knew had been feisty, she had been a warm loving person. This Elena seemed cold, unemotional. He couldn’t find anything of the old Elena in her. She was still as beautiful as ever, maybe even more. And he was unsurprised to find out that she still affected him physically now as she had then. What had happened to turn her so cold?

“What happened to her?” Damien didn’t realize he had spoken out loud until he heard Leo clear his throat.

“What history do you guys have?” Leo asked. He was weary of sharing any kind of information with people who he didn’t know. Elena was one of a handful of friends he had, and he would defend her to his last breath.

“We all grew up together. Elena and my sister, Lilly, were best friends. She was more at our house than at her own home,” Damien said, spearing his hand in his hair. He couldn’t get over the knowledge that he had finally found Elena after 10 long years of searching for her.

“Ah,” Leo said. So, this was the family she had done everything for.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Damien asked the lycan next to him. He sounded all knowing. They were arriving at an old building in the factory district of town. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but it had an electric garage door that opened up smoothly, the drive into the building was hassle free and looked to be brand new.

Leo parked the SUV and got out. “Come on,” he said and walked towards an elevator.

Damien followed, he was curious now. The inside of the building did not match the outside. There had been a lot of renovations done inside. They rode the elevator to the top floor. It opened up into a living area. There was a huge living room area with couches that looked comfortable, a huge TV, PS5, DVD player and other electronic gadgets. The kitchen was a chef’s dream kitchen with gas hob, granite counter tops and more cupboard space then what was needed. There was a double door fridge with ice dispenser. To the side there were a couple of doors leading to presumably bedrooms and bathrooms. The floors were laminate flooring. The windows high with views of downtown.

“You guys live here?” Damien asked. It suddenly dawned on him, that Leo and Elena might be involved. The thought didn’t sit well with him. He didn’t like the idea of Elena with anyone. In all the time he had searched for her, he had never once considered that she would hook up with someone, because he had always thought that she belonged to him.

“Nope, this is Elena’s place. I just stay here, if we’re planning a mission, or if I’m recouping from an injury. Elena doesn’t think I can take care of myself,” Leo said, going over to the fridge and grabbing two beers, handing one to Damien.

He noticed that the Vamp had only relaxed after he had confirmation that Leo didn’t stay with Elena. Did he think they were involved? What a joke. Elena didn’t give any male the time of day, much less other females. Leo was of the opinion that she didn’t have a s*x drive. But maybe that’s because of a certain Vamp?

“So, what’s the story between the two of you?” Leo asked Damien as he sat down on one of the couches in the lounge. They were so comfortable, you could sleep for weeks on them. Well, Leo could anyway.

“I told you, we grew up together,” Damien said. He couldn’t sit down. He needed to move around.

Leo watched the Vamp prowl around Elena’s space. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Vamps were renowned for their calm and control and lycans were known for their short tempers and yet, here the lycan was calm and relaxed on the couch and the Vamp was prowling around like a caged animal. He couldn’t help the grin.

“Yeah, you said that before. What happened?” Leo asked taking a swig from his beer.

Damien sighs and told Leo of Elena being befriended by the Vampire Hunters under false pretense, them making an attempt on Lilly’s life and Elena protecting and defending Lilly. He tells Leo how he had reacted when he’d found his sister on the floor in a pool of blood and how he had treated Elena. “I’m not proud of myself, and despite my fear for my sister I should never have spoken to Elena the way I did, and I should never have treated her like she was at fault,” Damien said staring out the window.

Leo heard the sincerity in Damien’s voice, but there was regret and something else in his voice.

“Once I realized what had happened I rushed over to her parent’s house to apologize and to make sure that she was okay. If she wasn’t I would have made sure she got the best medical care. But,…” Damien shook his head. “She wasn’t at home. She had packed a bag and taken off. No one knew where she’d gone to. Over the years I had trackers, detectives both human and supernatural try to find her and nothing. Not one whisper of where she was.” Damien turns around to look at Leo, “And then when I come looking for the Guardian to find these bastards who are trying to kill my sister, I find Elena.”

Leo heard the confusion and hurt in the guys voice and sighed as he shook his head. “There was nothing you could have done different. Elena didn’t want to be found. She had a mission and nothing and no one was going to stop her. Trust me, it wouldn’t have mattered if you had advertised it on TV, social media, wherever that you were looking for her. You still wouldn’t have found her,” he said. This was the family she had been protecting.

Damien leaned back against the window. There was something in Leo’s voice. He knew things that Damien didn’t know. She had a mission and nothing and no one was going to stop her. What did that mean? What mission?

Leo saw the frown on Damien’s face. He was trying to figure out what had happened. He now knew that she was the Guardian, but he didn’t really know what that meant. He didn’t know who she really was now. He still thought of her as the human girl who grew up with them.

“You do realize that she’s not human, right?” Leo asked. He waited for a reaction.

“Not human? Of course, she’s human. What else would she be?” Damien said, frowning at Leo. What has the lycan getting at?

Leo shakes his head. “You might want to sit down for this,” he said, indicating the other couch. He waited until Damien sat down.

“You really don’t know where she went or why after the attack on Lilly?” he asked Damien. At the shake of his head, Leo took a deep breath, he was going to tell Damien everything, because he didn’t think Elena would tell him anything and the guy need to know, so that he could understand what drives her. But he also needed to understand that she was not human. Leo wasn’t sure what Elena was, but she sure as hell wasn’t human. She was other.

“Ten years ago, I was being held in a cell by the Hunters. They had chained me to a wall like a dog and tortured me. I was about ready to give up on life, I had no reason to live. My pack was gone, killed by the Hunters,” he paused, breathing through the pain of losing his family and friends. “There was a commotion and the next thing I knew they were dragging in this slip of a girl who was fighting them like a demon. They chained her up and left for a few minutes.” He smiled for a brief second. “She did a lot of damage to them physically. I think one guy had a broken leg. Anyway, I watched this girl struggle against the chains. It was like she was possessed or something. She was mumbling something under her breath, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. A few minutes later these hunters came back, and they started interrogating her, wanting to know why she had broken into their facility. What did she want? Who was she? Where did she come from? On and on the questions went,” he took a swig of his beer. That day was etched into his mind for all time.

“She told them they had to stop hunting vampires. That what they were doing was wrong.”

Damien closed his eyes. Elena. He whispered in his mind. What had she been thinking, trying to take on a group of hunters on her own?

“They laughed at her, calling her all kinds of names. They weren’t taking her serious. Then this big guy came in. He was huge, built like a tank. Meaty hands, thick bulging arms. He was a mean bastard. He wanted to know who had killed two of his men and incapacitated five more. He was really pissed off,” Leo looked down at his bottle. He could still taste his own fear when that guy had walked into the room.

Damien had a bad feeling. He didn’t think he was going to like what he heard next.

“The others pointed at Elena, saying she had broken into the facility. She just looked at them all like they were cockroaches under her feet. This guy smacked her so hard that her head twisted, and she looked straight at me before looking back at them. She gave him such a cold look that for a second he pulled back from her. And then she told him that if he touched her again, she would kill him. He laughed at her. He bent over and just laughed his head off. He didn’t see her as any threat. I guess she hadn’t meant to amuse the guy, because the next minute she had kicked him in the head and managed to knock him onto the floor.”

Leo was looking a bit pale. Damien held his breath. He knew he was going to hate whatever Leo told him next.

“The guy didn’t take to kindly to being kicked in the head and knocked down by a little girl. He came up swinging. He just kept swinging. He wouldn’t stop. He just kept going at her. I,…” Leo faltered for a moment, the memory still fresh after all this time. “I heard bones break and the sound of his fists hitting flesh was sickening. I shouted for him to stop, for the others to make him stop, because he was going to kill her. No one listened to me.” Leo shook his head. “She never made a sound. Not once did she cry or beg for him to stop. She never gave them the satisfaction of knowing how much he was hurting her. She was as quiet as a church mouse, right up until she died.”

Damien felt light headed. Elena had died? His chest felt too tight as if his heart was shriveling up.

“I heard her take her last breath and I knew she was gone. The hunters, they all freaked out. It was fine to kill one of us, supernaturals didn’t matter to them, but they had killed a human. Someone would be looking for her. Who knew that she had come to the Hunters facility? They all just bolted out the room and closed the door. I was furious with them. I screamed and screamed until I had no voice. They had killed a young woman and just left her there.”

Leo was quiet for a while. Damien saw the haunted look in his eyes. He couldn’t imagine what it had been like for him. But he was also being haunted, because his worst fear had come true and he hadn’t even known it. Elena had died. Yet she was alive now. How was that possible.

“I don’t know how long they left me in the room with Elena’s body, it could have been hours or minutes, I’m not sure. But suddenly there was this cold that permeated the room. It was like a freezer in the room. I started shivering and I could feel my hair starting to turn in to icicles. It was the coldest I had ever been. And then suddenly that girl started to breath again. I couldn’t believe it. She was alive! Not only was she alive, but there was not a scratch or bruise anywhere on her. It was as if she had never taken a beating. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I was hallucinating. Because, chains don’t just fall off of someone. And the dead don’t rise and walk over to you. But she did.”

Damien thought he might be in shock. Or something. Because he was having a hard time wrapping his mind around what Leo had just told him. What he told him, just wasn’t possible. People didn’t just come back from the dead as if nothing had happened.

“We broke out of the facility that day and planned our revenge on those assholes. Turns out, they were not part of the Hunters Council. They were rogue hunters. We got the message across that we were not going to allow any hunters to just hunt supernaturals because they didn’t understand who or what we were. Elena forced them to sign that treaty. The Celestial Council and the Hunters Council came to an agreement. They police their own now. Hunters are only given license if there is a need to bring down a rogue or a pack that’s gone off the rails.”

Damien shook his head. He should have realized that Elena would go after the ones who had threatened Lilly’s life. He should have thought of that. If he had, he would have found her sooner. But he didn’t understand the dying and coming back part. It didn’t make sense.

“Elena’s human. My family and I grew up with her. We’ve been to her house, she spent time at our house. Her parents are as human as they get. There’s nothing special about them, other than the fact that they are good people,” he said to Leo.

“Look man, I’ll take your word on what you’re saying. You grew up with her and you knew her then. But, I’m telling you I know what I saw, and it wasn’t the last time it’s happened. Elena’s been killed by enemies more times than I care to count.  They are all over the moon when they kill her. She’s the Guardian, there’s a certain reputation that comes with that title. So, they all think that she’s not all she’s scratched up to be. Then, they get one hell of a surprise when she gets up and knocks them down.” Leo wasn’t going to try to convince the guy. He either believed him or he didn’t.

“I just don’t understand how that’s possible,” Damien said. There had never been any indication once that she wasn’t human in all the years that they had known each other. He would have known if she wasn’t human.