Struck (A Vampire Novel) ✔

Twenty

I tried not to think about what had just happened between Jacobi and me. For one, I wasn’t sure what had exactly happened. And also I didn’t think the terms ‘Jacobi’ and ‘me’ belonged together. For every moment I remembered the sensation of his rough hands tracing my flesh, I also forced myself to remember him using those hands to shackle me in a torture room. When I held my breath while seeing his golden brown eyes bright in the night looking at me in my mind’s eye, I remembered the fear that came when they blackened like death preparing to take my life. And every time I recalled hearing that voice asking permission to touch me, I remembered that same voice stating many times that I was going to die and threatening to do horrible things to me.

I shouldn’t feel anything other than disgust and fear towards that man. But I just couldn’t shake that powerful electrifying feeling that had come from him without explanation. I’d never felt anything like that before. Something told me I never would again. At least, never by the hands of anyone else.

Jacobi Bryant, I spat at my own thoughts. He’s the reason I’m in this mess in the first place.

After sighing, I looked around at the garden of statues next to the lake and decided to wander around in hopes of distracting me from the confusing thoughts that were flitting through my mind. Coming across the first statue, I noticed they weren’t made of stone at all. In fact, upon further inspection, I noted it was actually polished wood. Someone had carved the figure of people into wood so delicately and finished it with polish and paint that it looked almost realistic.

Remembering the carvings in Jacobi’s bedroom, I could guess who made the statues. I lightly traced the surface of one, feeling the smooth solid structure. I’d never known someone so into something like carving wood. Drawing, sure, but carving wasn’t typical for the people I’d known. I wondered what made him take up something like this. I wondered why he had carved statues of people in this hidden garden in the forest.

As if calling to my musings, an image of the figurine in my dream appeared before my mind: a phoenix falling into a fire. The woman in my dreams wanted me to tell Jacobi something. I’d never been plagued by one person so persistently in my strange dreams before. Sometimes I’d been given hints to certain things, maybe things that happened or will happen, but never had a person haunted me like this woman did. Perhaps I should have just told Jacobi about it by now. But honestly, why would he listen to the silly dreams of a silly Monet girl? Who was that woman to him, if she was real at all?

My breath was struck from my body when I saw her before me in the garden.

“You,” I whispered, widening my eyes. She was standing closer to the lake, not quite in the middle of the garden but close to it. Her hands were cupped over her heart in between her breasts. Her face was content and amused, staring off into the distance. It was only after a long moment of a near heart attack that I realized she wasn’t actually the woman from my dream. She was another statue made of wood in the dark garden.

I hesitated, but then walked closer to the statue slowly. When I was close enough to touch her, I sighed with a small relief knowing I wasn’t crazy after all. She was real, at least to Jacobi. She was real, which meant my dreams were real.

“I know you,” I said quietly, touching her face and remembering her lips against mine in her desperation to give me her message. “I’ll tell him what I know.” I looked down, seeing a platform under her feet. There, etched into the platform, were the carvings of the phoenix I knew she was fond of. Those phoenixes circled her name: Adelaide.

I was shocked. This was the girl from my dreams? Eve’s Kindred; Jacobi’s possible mate?

“I see you’ve found our Master’s secret garden,” I heard Aveline’s voice behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin, turning to see her looking past me and at the statue of Adelaide. Her expression was plaintive, but she quickly pulled away from revealing emotion on her face when she looked at me.