The Last Chance (sequel to A Hundred Lifetimes)

Thirteen

“Hey, I already tinted the windows more,” Chiara triumphantly announced as she made her way back to where Dorian slouched on the sofa. “Okay, now I'm just going to… clean you up a bit, okay?” she said, knowing that that’s what she was supposed to do, but not entirely sure how to go about it. Her “patient" was still thickly clothed, with some bits and pieces of trees and plants in his hair and some dirt on his face from all the haphazard driving.

“Mmm hmm,” Dorian tiredly nodded, the crook of his neck resting perfectly on the shape of the backrest of the sofa. “Thank you,” he breathed out, and then he looked like he was fast asleep—eyes closed, soft breathing, arms and limbs carelessly and heavily strewn around. He looked like one hot mess, and theoretically, he should’ve been an easy case to fix up—heck, Clarissa had fixed Chiara up more than once from being soaked in blood! But then again, she was no saint like Clarissa, and she doubted that the old lady would ever agree on the forming ungodly thoughts inside her brain as she anticipated having to remove even just a piece of Dorian's shirt.

“You’re welcome,” Chiara cleared her throat, trying to keep her head sane and clear as she wrung the cold cloth and began damping it on top of Dorian's forehead, wiping away the dirt. His eyebrows moved a little, but he didn’t wake, and when the towel moved carefully to the bridge of his nose and down to the sides of it, his eyelashes moved ever so slightly that Chiara couldn’t help but smile. Then she moved the towel to his cheeks then the skin around his lips, and suddenly she wasn’t smiling anymore as she found her thumb lingering a second more than it should where pale skin from his chin met the plumpness of his lower lip. Dorian was really beautiful, and there was no doubt about it—Chiara swallowed and sat up, suddenly realizing that she had somehow leaned closet without knowing. A sense of guilt ran over her as she thought of how weak minded she was, when she should just be cleaning the man up and not objectifying him while doing so..

So, Chiara splashed some cold water in her face and placed the towel back. The next bit would be a bit more trickier, and she needed both hands for it. The first barrier she would have to get through was a jacket which should be easy enough, except underneath was a long-sleeved shirt two sizes bigger than what Dorian needed, buttoned all the way from top to bottom. So, Chiara went to work, struggling to take the sleeve of the jacket off his arm then pulling it from underneath him just so she could pull the sleeve off the other. With that out of the way, then there was the buttoned shirt.

Chiara involuntarily swallowed as she started from the bottom most button, careful not to touch anything indecent as her fingers shook. If Clarissa had done this task, she was sure they would have been over 10 time faster. With a sigh, Chiara tried to concentrate as she finally reached the last four top buttons on Dorian's shirt. By the time she was at the second to the last, she noticed his breathing slightly change and his eyelids fluttering a bit before a corner of his lips twitched up. He was awake.

“I wish,” he said so quietly while Chiara kept at her task. She could feel his throat move ever so slightly as he breathed and spoke. “I wish you told me sooner back then how you felt for me,” he continued.

Chiara let out a breath through her nose as if to laugh as she finally reached the last button resting below his chin. “What good would that have done? I would have lost you as a friend,” she softly replied, tilting his head up so she could see the button easily.

“I would have been awakened from my foolishness faster,” Dorian replied, and when Chiara looked at him, she saw that his eyes were half-open, looking down at her.

She let out a small chuckle as she rested her chin on a palm and her elbow on the backrest of the couch beside his shoulder, gazing down at him. “I don’t know if you could’ve been helped by then. You were pretty full of yourself, and so was I,” she thoughtfully recalled. “We would have been friends still,” she shrugged, “and then you would have fallen for the next girl that was like Clara all over again.”

“I highly doubt that,” Dorian seriously said as he placed a few strands of Chiara's hair behind her ear, then pulling her face closer as he lifted his head off the couch.

This was not how Chiara envisioned the afternoon to unfold—she really was just trying to help, but that didn’t mean that this was not a very welcome surprise—after all, she had waited more than a hundred years for this. Her eyes slowly closed in anticipation just a second before she could feel Dorian's lips on hers. It wasn’t their first, but every kiss felt like such that the novelty would always make her stomach do a little turn while her heart seemed to go like crazy before halting to a stop—and then all she could feel was Dorian—the softness of his lips, the moisture of his tongue, the way his breath would tickle her cheek, and how his fingers would softly caress her hair and her ear. He tried to sit up by pushing his upper body weight off the backrest with his other hand, when the very motion made him grimace in pain.

Chiara quickly pulled away, examining Dorian for any injuries. “What’s wrong?” she asked, and he showed her his badly bruised wrist.

“It will fix itself in a while, it just took longer because of the heat,” he explained, shaking his hand off as if it was nothing. Chiara nodded then settled her head to rest on the space between Dorian's neck and shoulders.

“Will it really be okay to leave Mary out there alone?” she asked out of nowhere. “What if the locals get her?”

Dorian wrapped his good arm around her and pulled her closer, resting his chin by her forehead. “The locals have kept a peaceful life here so far, and as long as Mary keeps down and just parties, she should be fine,” he confidently assured her, only he could still sense her hesitancy after a while. “You’re still worried,” he observed.

Chiara nodded admittedly. “It’s just… What about the Council? It’s late at night.”

“They should be busy with something else for the meantime.”

Chiara frowned. “They wouldn’t have followed us here?”

“They would have sent some smaller men first to scope the place, spy on us, confirm that you or Mary really are tied to the Order, and then arrange an attack tomorrow. But it has been midday and not one has come—and if one were to, I would be alerted by my new friends down the pier. That means,” Dorian placed a small kiss on her forehead, “we have bought ourselves two more days, at least.”

“And you know their tactics how?” Chiara curiously looked up at him. “You used to be a part of them?”

“Most of our kind are under the Council except those who decided to rebel or declare war against them. As for myself, I never played an active role. They only helped clean up after the m******e in Cherry Lane, and that’s when I first met Amiya who was only barely a decade my senior back then, with her youngling twin brother Tyrrell,” he recalled. “They were still the lower men then, sent to clean up dirt.”

“I figured Tyrrell was older in vampire years,” Chiara breathed out in awe, thumbing at the button by his neck mindlessly.

“Amiya was the first to turn,” Dorian let her know. “I heard she was on a small ship to travel to meet her fiancé when a vampire attacked them. Killed everyone on its path, except for her. He probably wanted her to join him for her family’s wealth, and she managed to make him believe she would. But the moment she turned and got a hold of her skill, she managed to kill her very own turner before they even reached land, and she supposedly set him and the ship on fire.”

Chiara blinked. “That sounds… crazy.”

“And once she found her way back to her family, she turned Tyrrell against his will, then they killed their family and took over the wealth,” Dorian said so simply that it took a while for the message to register in Chiara's head.

When it finally did, she looked up at him and muttered a horrified, “Dear God.”

Dorian nodded and lightly played with her hair. “They say that once you turn into the monster devoid of life, you begin to crave for more, you show your true self,” he thoughtfully relayed. “And so they did. They had their money and their new abilities, then they sought for more power by finding and training under the Council. In less than half a century, they climbed ranks and here they are now—two out of three.”

“And Gabriel? The quiet hawk-like guy who destroyed the door?”

Dorian let out a breath through his mouth, and Chiara wasn’t sure if it was of awe or fear. “Now that is an entirely different story—an entirely different beast in itself.”

***

Mary couldn’t believe it—she was finally out and about at a beach after that week of complete drama. She finally felt like she was back in her own skin—amidst a bunch of loud, partying, sweaty strangers, sand beneath her feet, a glass of cocktail in her hand, loud music in her ear, grinding up to some hot local boy around her age.

Brown eyes, jet black hair, washboard abs, and tanned skin—this good-looking local boy making eyes at Mary would have been just what she needed, but then he just had to take her hand to flirtatiously spin her around during that one part of the song to reel her in. The first contact their skin made and Mary knew that that boy's tan was as fake as Magic Mike's bulge. His skin was too cold, and he looked way too interested too fast—he was obviously one of the local vamps like that cashier in the Lagoon, but the question was what did he want from Mary? More importantly, should Mary try and find out?

The boy smiled at her and danced closer, lightly touching her fingertips then moving onto her hips, until he was slowly backing away and leading her out of the crowd. It was a common move, and Mary let herself get dragged along. After all, “I won’t punch first,” was all she remembered promising to Dorian—no one said anything about dancing or kissing or maybe later retaliating.

Local vampire boy “managed" to pull Mary out to the side of a hut, away from the party and all the nicely colored lights. He was good at acting flirty and slightly tipsy, but Mary was better at acting like she was the perfect prey. He lightly pinned her against the wall, kissed her with his cold mouth here and there, and when he thought he wasn’t being inconspicuous, he finally asked, “Got any friends visiting the island with you?” all casual-like. Mary, whose hands were still lovingly admiring the boy's nicely shaped topless body, was quite disappointed that it was all going down so fast.

“What friends? I came here alone,” she innocently replied.

The boy took a step forward, making it seem like he was just playfully putting Mary's hands up on the wall. “No friends?” he asked again.

“No friends,” Mary repeated the bold-faced lie with a proud smile.

There was a low growl from the pit of the boy's throat, and Mary could feel his fingers slightly tighten impatiently over her wrists. Finally, Mary thought, they were getting somewhere.

“Where are your friends?” the boy asked through gritted teeth, fingers now tightening to hamper the blood supply to her hands. “You have a friend. A vampire, and this is our turf.”

“Get your hands off me in three seconds or I will—” Mary stopped as her arm got twisted behind her back the next second. Not enough to do damage, but just a bit to finally rile her up. She could feel her smile widen as the adrenaline she had been looking for finally made its way into her. “Does that make you want to throw a first punch?” she asked almost maniacally, and boy, with the irritating past few days, did she truly hope that local vampire boy would throw the first punch.

Mary could feel his anger, and she could sense a few more creeping their way—of course they came in a pack in such a small community. The more, the merrier. If she were right, there were probably around 4 of them against her and that Swiss army knife and daggers she always kept with her. Four could be quite a big number, but judging by the look of this kid, he and his friends probably weren’t the most sophisticated bunch—just a couple of territorial goons. It would take probably ten minutes, but Mary would happily oblige. All she was waiting for was for one of them to take the first punch—just so she could say she didn’t technically break a promise.

“I will ask you one last time,” the boy hissed into her ear from behind her, and she could feel his energy change. His eyes were probably glowing and his canines were probably obviously sharper than before—and Mary could feel her chest about to explode with anticipation.

“Three,” Mary counted.

“Where are your friends?”

“Two.” She could feel her hand about to break, but her smile didn’t fade. In her head, she already knew what step to take to incapacitate him in less than a minute. “Last chance,” she tauntingly sang, and that seemed to run the man out of his patience, for the next thing she knew, his elbow was on the back of her head and her face was pressed so hard against the side of the hut.

Mary let out a breath of relief as she felt her skin get scratched. That would do just fine for a “first punch.”

“One,” she counted down excitedly, but just before she could kick him backwards, they both heard a loud thud made by the contact of someone's head onto the middle of a coconut tree. Mary and the local boy stopped then turned to look at each other in confusion—as if any of them could have done that.