The Kiss of Death

Chapter 8

Will's POV:

    I let the door fall closed behind us silently as I begin to tug El along by her hand, moving away from our room and out of the building. Just as we arrive at the end of the hall, I press my back against the wall and peer around the corner to be sure the coast is clear. I curse too low for anyone to hear and lean my head back against the wall, hiding once again as I consider any possible way to sneak past the staff cleaning near the entrance. 

    Normally it wouldn't be a big deal for me to be seen leaving, but at this hour with no known plans until later in the day and with Matthias present... It's too sketchy. He'd ask too many questions and though I'm a good liar, I know I won't fool my longest and oldest friend. I pull El's hand to my chest and look down at her serious gaze, studying her face as she studies my own, trying to decide what the best course of action is.

    I nod once, deciding on an action as I pull her hand to my lips and press a quick kiss to the palm of her hand. Before she can do much more than process what I've done, I hoist her into my arms so that her chest is pressed to mine, wait until she buries her face in my neck, then speed us past the staff and out the door, much too fast for any human eyes to have picked up the movement. I don't stop until I'm half way back to the spot we'd picked Eleanor up at last night. When I've finally reached the spot where Matt had snatched her up I stop.

    "You okay love?" I ask, keeping my voice low so as not to overstimulate her considering she may already be light headed from motion sickness. I hold her up by her thighs, her legs and arms wrapped almost too tightly around my waist and neck. "El?" I murmur softly against the side of her head as she starts to stir in response.

    "H-Hold on.." She groans out as I gently try to peel her off of me. I stop then, waiting like she's asked. 

    "I'm sorry. I should've known it would make you sick. I'm so used to moving this quickly I just didn't think about it until we'd stopped." I rub circles into her back in short, comforting motions, trying to be patient with her as her arms and legs slowly start to loosen their grip. 

    Finally, long minutes later, she drops her legs from around my waist and stumbles away from me as her feet touch down on the ground once again. I watch her closely, waiting to see how she'll do on her own wobbly legs, giving her a chance to right herself on her own. When she staggers into me I catch her, supporting her weight with my hands and noting the way her face has gone pale and green.

    "I get really horrible motion sickness." She murmurs as an apology, gripping hard to my shirt as she straightens herself out again. "It'll pass soon, just give me a minute."

    "No rush little love, take your time. We can head out when you're ready." I respond, looking around at the scene to see if I can see any signs of where she'd come from. I don't see any clear trails and if I'm being honest it's kind of hard to pick anything out with my instincts screaming at me to focus on El until she's feeling better. Even recognizing that weakness doesn't stop me from sneaking another look at her.

    "Okay." She takes a deep settling breath, stepping back from me on steadier legs. "I think I'm better now." She glances around the clearing, noticing now where we've stopped and no doubt trying to decide which way to go. Her coloring is definitely pinking up and I know she's right, so I won't have to worry about her passing out on me. 

    "Lead the way, you know better than me which way to go from here." I throw my hands out, elbows bent and palms up, in a sweeping gesture that can generally be read as 'after you'. She offers a small smile, her brows furrowed, concentrating on which direction to go. She starts off heading east into the woods, stopping occasionally at a set trap or two that she must have set herself or at least known about, probably to remind herself from which way she'd come.

    After about fifteen minutes she seems to have some sort of epiphany or somehow spots something that tells her exactly where we are and she quickens her pace, making her way easily through the surrounding brush as if she were born to do it. If it weren't for my extra sensitive hearing, she'd be almost impossible to track, her movements are too quiet for other mammals to pick up on and she seems extra careful not to leave a trail to trace back to her.

    "You seem very skilled, the way you move out here." I murmur as I hasten my pace to keep up with her. "How long have you been hunting?" I ask her inquisitively, assuming that those traps were hers, especially considering she'd been carrying a bow when we'd found her yesterday. Actually now that I think about it, I think she'd had a rope of rodents around her hip as well, I wrinkle my nose at the thought, waiting for an answer. 

    She glances back at me over her shoulder and shrugs lightly. "As long as I can remember. Dad would take me out to learn how to shoot in the clearing just outside of my hometown during hunting season. He wanted me to know how to find food in case we ever got separated so I wouldn't starve, or fight back if.." She trails off, knowing that neither of us needed her to finish that statement to know what she was referring to.

    "He taught you well then." I offer an awkward half smile, not wanting to think about the life my girl must have been living before I was in it. Did she spend much time being afraid of monsters like me? Surely a younger Eleanor would be afraid of the dark and of the creatures that lurk within it. I can imagine what she would've been like as a toddler easily. Small and bright, she would've been full of courage, putting on a brave face even though no doubt she had to have been afraid. I wonder, if I had come across her in her younger years, if she would have been afraid of me too.

    I shake my head, trying to clear the thought from my head along with the all too clear image of how that interaction would have likely gone. I can't be sure that I would've known then what I know now and the thought that I could have hurt her, or killed her even, sends shivers racing down my spine.

    She stops then, kneeling down beside an old, long forgotten campfire and turns her head quickly to the left, straightening up once again before running straight at an old rotting oak tree that seems to have hollowed out over time. There's an old crumbled up camo blanket sitting in the tree, along with what looks like small bottle and a backpack. It would be short climb up and into the tree and I'm assuming this is where her sister had been when she'd left her yesterday evening, which would mean this is her stuff.

    "No.." She whispers, so softly I almost don't pick it up. "Ed?" She whisper screams into the woods surrounding, "Eddie?" She screams again, louder this time though still not so loud as to draw attention to us from any unwanted predator. As she finally reaches the tree, she desperately pulls the items out one by one, as if hoping that maybe her sister is hiding underneath it all. "Damnit Ed!" She throws a hand-woven pouch of food to the ground angrily, nuts and berries flying in all directions across the dusty ground.

    "What does this mean?" I question her, bending to pick up a flashlight that had rolled from the bag she'd tossed aside as well. 

    "She's not here." She leans back against the tree, running a hand through her hair, her panicked pants and pale face giving away her feelings of unease. "If she left on her own, she wouldn't have left her stuff behind." She murmurs, thinking out loud. Her gaze falls onto the bag and she suddenly lunges for it, falling to her knees as she dumps the content onto the ground, running her hands over all of the supplies until she settles on a pocket knife and lets out a cry of anguish. 

    "She doesn't even have her knife. She never goes anywhere without her knife. God she must be so scared." I can see tears swimming in her eyes and my heart breaks for her when I watch the first tear spill over onto her cheek as she stands up and rushes towards the edge of their little makeshift camp, probably intent on searching further ahead. "Ed!" 

    "Sh-shh!" I shush her violently, reaching out to pull her into my arms, stuffing her face into my chest so as to quiet her screams and her sobs. I can't risk her drawing anyone else to the scene. "We'll find her. You have to be quiet, El. Shh, calm down." I wrap my arms tightly around her, rubbing her arms and back comfortingly in a desperate attempt to calm her. 

    "No! No, I have to find her! She needs me! Edith!" She cries out, sobs wracking through her slight body now, her shoulders shaking hard as she struggles to breath and free herself from my hold. "I told her.." She draws in a harsh breath, "I told her I'd be back for her. She was so afraid.." She pulls her head back to look up at me, tears streaming down her face now, and shakes her head vehemently. "She tried to tell me but I wouldn't listen. I thought we'd been too careful but she knew!" She tries to hold back the next sob and fails miserably, a heart-clenching groan falling from her lips instead. 

    "She knew what?" I stroke a hand down the side of her head, petting her, still trying to comfort her even though she's quieted her screams. 

    "T-There was a m-man." She stammers, "A vampire." She swipes a hand over her cheek and under her nose to clean her face as the tears begin to slow and she struggles to think through the panic that had enveloped her. "Ed thought for sure that he was following us from Killarny Creak but I told her not to worry. I brushed her off like it was nothing.." She hugs her arms around herself, clenching tightly to her sides as she stares straight ahead, unseeing bloodshot eyes zoned out as she relives those last moments in her head.

    I stuff my hands into my back pockets and roll onto the balls of my feet as I look around the campsite, examining the area and looking for tracks, gathering all the information together. It seems pretty clear what happened here. Edith had been grabbed, likely by a vampire, taken from her little makeshift home in the middle of the night and dragged away. 

    My eyes stop and focus on what appears to be a broken branch and some scuffled foot prints in the dirt just a few feet away from the hollow tree. I step closer to investigate and peer back at El as she continues to pull herself together, crouching low to the ground and rocking slightly back and forth. 

    When I finally reach my destination, I crouch down low, following the signs of the struggle until I can no longer track their patterns about ten to fifteen feet away from her original resting point.

    "There's still hope Eleanor, come look at this." I call back to her as I stop and straighten back up, waiting for her light footsteps to draw nearer before speaking again. "It looks like she must've heard something and gotten up to investigate because the patterns in the dirt don't start at the base of her tree. No, she got about eight feet away before someone grabbed her and the struggle ensued." I pause as she takes in a startled breath but only inclines her head in response, studying the scene before her.

    "I'm guessing you're probably right about the vampire, but from the looks of it, he wasn't here to kill her." I offer, trying to reassure her that her sister might be okay after all.

    "How can you tell?" She asks suspiciously, probably trying to decide whether to believe me or not.

    "There's no blood, no body." I turn back to the trail. "If he'd wanted to eat her, he would've done that here and no doubt left the body behind too. Instead he struggled to move her away from here. He probably sped away so that the trail would cut off here and it would be much harder to follow them. My guess is that he wanted to sell her or keep her as a pet to feed off of long term." 

    She shudders and nods stiffly once, soaking it all in as she sniffles and wipes her hands across her face to dry her tears. "Okay. Yeah that makes sense.." She tilts her head and looks up at me, her eyes still shimmering and red. "So she may be alive, but who knows how much longer he'll keep her?" She asks rhetorically, thinking out loud.

    "Well as long as she doesn't give him too many problems, he'll likely keep her alive until he grows bored of her. A lot of us tend to keep pets for several years, so there's a good chance we may be able to find her again if we keep looking." I pull her into my arms and place one hand on her cheek as I lift her face to meet my gaze. "They headed north back towards Killarny, so maybe we start there, okay?" I press a sweet, warm kiss to her lips and pull back slowly, resting my forehead against hers. "There's still hope."

    She closes her eyes, leaning into my warmth and nods almost unperceptively as she takes a deep, calming breath. "There's still hope." She whispers, her warm breath fanning out across my lips and I nod back, never creating space between us. 

    "There is." I whisper back, eyes closed as I try to decide how to broach the next subject. Seeing no other way to say it, I open my mouth and begin. "We're out of time. We need to get back before anyone notices we were missing." She opens her mouth to reject my statement but before she can get a word out I press one finger against her lips to silence her. 

    "We'll come back. I'll schedule a route to Killarny tonight when we get done with everything today. That'll be the first stop on our way home, I promise." I open my eyes to find hers already open wide, fixed on me as she struggles to come to terms with what I've said. I can tell that she wants to argue, to demand that we keep searching and head out now to find her sister, but I know that she knows as well as I do that it must wait. She doesn't have to like it, but it is what it is.

    After a few long minutes of her trying to decide whether she should argue or concede, she finally nods once and rests her head on my chest in defeat. "You're right. Just please, you have to help me find her." She murmurs softly into my shirt, calm enough now that her voice shakes only a little when she speaks.

    "I will." I murmur, peering over her head at the scene, frowning at the possibility that I could very well be wrong but hoping, and hoping hard, that we would find her sister alive. My sweet little Eleanor might not live with the guilt or the blame that she would lay on herself if this ended any other way. "We've got to head back. I'm sorry to do this to you again, but I need to speed back to the room." I pull her up into my arms then, letting her wrap her arms and legs around me again.

    "I'll keep my head down and my eyes closed, maybe that'll help." She sniffles again, holding tightly to my shirt as I wrap an arm around her waist to secure her to me before I speed off back in the direction of the Inn and the town it resides in. I make it all the way back to the room, unlock the door using the room key, and quickly disappear within the safety of those four walls, latching the door firmly behind me.

    "You okay?" I ask her, stroking the hair on the back of her head lightly with one hand as I continue to hold her up with the other. "Please don't get sick on me." I plead with her as she shakes her head against my chest. 

    "No, I'm okay, I think. Really, it wasn't so bad this time, you can put me down." She whispers as she lifts her head and drops her legs from around my waist to plant her feet firmly on the ground. I release my hold on her and hold my arms out to her in case she stumbles and needs my support, but a quick study of her face tells me that she's not nearly as sick as before because there's still a light blush to her cheeks.

        I lower my arms back down to my sides and offer a sad half smile before I set about packing all of my things away into my bags and stacking them by the door. I notice her watching me and stop to stand by the door, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot. "We'll stop for a muffin or something at the cafeteria in the hospital when we go to pick up your records." I mumble as I nod my head towards the door. "We should head out to the landau." 

    She nods her head once and comes to stand just in front of me, her arms wrapping around my waist, her thumbs hooking into my back pockets, offering me one last hug before we have to leave the secluded confines of our room and enter the crowded streets where a similar gesture cannot be repeated. I wrap my arms around her as well, letting my hands rest on her hips and smile reassuringly at her. 

    "Let's just make it through today and tomorrow we'll resume the search for your sister, okay?" I murmur, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead, both of her cheeks, and her nose before letting my lips finally meet with hers for a warm, sweet, lingering kiss. I squeeze my eyes closed, trying to savor this last bit of affection we'll be able to show each other until the days end.

    I pull back finally as a knock sounds from the door behind me and I know that it's Matt on the other side. I sigh, already mentally exhausted from the day that hasn't even started yet and stare into her face. She smiles a sweet smile and nods her head once, grabbing my hand and squeezing once before stepping away from me altogether, putting a more appropriate distance between us for Matt's sake. 

    "Okay." Is all she says before the door creaks open and this very long day, begins.