Chapter Thirty-Four – Faith

 

As Dr. Lawrence held me in place, with my arm twisted up behind my back, I heard nearly every word Tanchovsky said to Sam downstairs. About what he’d seen in my dreams, how our kiss had broken the strange curse on the house. How what we had between us was true love.

And, as the upier’s words drifted up to my ears, realization set in. The vampire, damn him, was right. I was in love with Sam. A weird, abnormal kind of love, with a man I barely knew. But there was something there. Something destined. Maybe it was fate; maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t matter, because the vampire was right. I did feel that way. Deep down, I cared more for Sam already than I ever had for any man I’d dated for months or years.

God, we hadn’t even made love, or had a proper dance. Rather, we’d just chased after supernatural creatures while he lied to me the whole way.

But my feelings for him, the strange sense of protectiveness and duty I already felt in the core of my being, were undeniable.

I wanted him for my own. I wanted him safe. I wanted him to make it out of this in one piece.

Just as importantly, though, I wanted Tanchovsky to pay for creeping around inside my brain the way he had. For him to have justice visited upon his head. For him to pay for the crimes he’d committed against other innocents along the way.

Of course, as Dr. Lawrence shifted his frighteningly strong old man’s grip on my wrist, I was reminded that there were a couple of impediments to everything happening the way it needed to.

And then, downstairs, Sam began to talk about surrender. I knew why he was doing it, too. It was because of me. If I hadn’t shoehorned myself into this little adventure, there’d be nothing they could hold over his head, no threat of punishment severe enough to deter him from his course.

He was just that kind of man.

I cleared my throat. “Dr. Lawrence?” I asked, a little whimper added to my voice. “Do you think I could straighten my arm out? Please?”

“But, the master said…”

It broke my heart to hear the deference to this monster in my old boss’s voice. Especially coming from a man as proud, and as sweet and understanding, as the doctor had once been.

“Just for a second? Tanchovsky doesn’t need to see, I promise. As soon as he’s done with Sam, you can wrap me right back up, okay?”

He sighed.

Suddenly, I found myself wishing I’d taken at least one drama class in high school or college. Anything to help my acting chops right now. “What can I do?” I asked, trying to purposefully make my voice weakened and defeated. “You’re faster and stronger than me, Dr. Lawrence, and I don’t even have a weapon. Besides, what am I going to do? Call the cops? You already fixed that.” When we'd come into the kitchen, he'd grabbed my cell phone out of my back pocket and smashed it on the floor with the heel of his dress shoe. Now it lay in a pile of broken glass and circuit board components.

Beneath my shirt, the amulet continued to burn against my skin uncomfortably. I knew it wasn’t actually hurting my skin, or damaging me in any way, but I had a hunch it might not be so forgiving when it came to a vampire’s, or its servant’s.

He sighed again, releasing my arm. “All right, Faith. But promise me: the moment he comes back up, I want you back by my side.”

With my back still to him, I pulled my arm around front, rubbing my raw wrist where his fingers had left indentations in the skin. A frown on my lips, I looked back over my shoulder at him. “I promise, Doctor. Okay?”

“All right, Faith. All right.”

As he spoke, though, I stopped rubbing my wrist. Instead, my hand found its way beneath my shirt’s neckline. I pulled the amulet up from between my breasts, wrapping it tightly around my fingers. Without Dr. Lawrence really realizing what I was doing, I pulled hard on the necklace, applying steady pressure as I attempted to break the string holding it.

The emblem burned my hand with its heat, and the cord cut into the flesh beneath my hair as I struggled to snap the string, sending a sharp, fiery stab of pain through me. But I kept going. This was something I needed to do. I couldn’t leave Sam to just give up, to surrender to this thing. And, since Sam was worried about my well-being, I was nothing more than leverage to the vampire downstairs.

I didn’t care if Dr. Lawrence saw what I was doing. I had a feeling that his master hadn’t exactly initiated him in all the finer details of his existence, just like my friend Sam hadn’t with me. I grunted as I continued to pull the amulet from my neck, tugging and straining.

“Faith? Are you okay?” Dr. Lawrence asked, still behind me as he put his hand on my shoulder. “What are you doing?”

Finally, my struggles bore fruit, and the necklace broke free with a snap. In my ears, it sounded like a twig cracking in an empty forest, but I knew Dr. Lawrence wouldn’t have any idea what the noise actually was.

“Faith?”

“Nothing, Dr. Lawrence,” I said, gripping the ceramic hand in my own, the heat almost too much for me to bear as my fingers closed around it. “It was nothing.”

“Are you sure?” he asked as he pulled back on my shoulder, forcing me to spin to face him.

Still shocked at his strength, something I couldn’t ever get over, I yelped as he spun me around in a half-circle.

There he was, his wrinkled face, his deceivingly strong body. Something about him, about the choice he’d made to take up with this creature, made my stomach roil. If what I had planned actually worked, I knew he’d be getting exactly what he deserved. But that didn’t mean I had to like it.

“I can’t let anything happen to you, you know,” he said, peering into my eyes.

Downstairs, below the floorboards, I heard Sam speaking to Tanchovsky. “Really? You’re going to break our deal that fast?”

I swallowed hard, trying to wind up all the courage that I had around me and pack it into a small ball in my gut, in my hands. I closed it tight around the amulet in my fist.

Dr. Lawrence’s eyes flickered down to my hand. “What’s that?” he asked, his eyes flickering over the strings dangling from my fist. “A necklace or something?”

“Yeah,” I replied, trying desperately to keep my voice even. “It’s one Sam gave to me today. Want to see it?”

“A gift from the man downstairs?”

Licking my lips uncertainly, and silently saying a prayer to whatever was upstairs and watching over the world, I slowly stretched out my fingers to reveal the amulet. If this didn’t work or have some effect, I didn’t know what I’d do.

“A hand?” he asked, bending over a little to peer at it. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah. Here,” I said, “have a closer look.”

And then I screamed as I shoved it in his face.