Blood Land by J.R. Lawson (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📖

angrily sighed as she then sat down on the couch, placing her head in her hands anxiously.  Kale immediately sat next to her.

“Look, I’m sorry…but there was no other way!” he continued to argue.

“You still love her don’t you?” Nora then uttered as she still looked downward.

“What?  What kind of question is that?” Kale astoundingly asked.

“It’s true though, right?  She comes back here and so do the feelings.  That’s it, isn’t it?” Nora now looked up at him as she spoke.

“Nora, you’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I?” Nora shouted, now getting to her feet again, “I’m not the one letting her back into this house over and over.  She attacked me!  I told you to make amends with her so she wouldn’t tell on us, not invite her back in and have some sexy hunting night with her!”

“God damn it, Nora!” Kale now took to his feet also.

“Forget it!” Nora now screamed as she pushed Kale out of the way and she began to head up the stairs to her room.

“Nora!” Kale screamed after her, but she didn’t respond to him, she just kept going until she made it to her room and he heard the loud slamming of a door.

“Jesus, what is her problem?” Caroline cracked a smile from over in the kitchen.

Kale looked back at her for only a second before he then made a bee line right to her. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he angrily began, “I’m going hunting with you tonight, but I’m only doing it because you agreed to give me information.  Do you understand?  This means nothing.  We are divorced.  And it stays that way.  And if you ever come between me and Nora again, I will choose her.  And I will kill you.  Do you get it?!”

Caroline’s smug smile now faded into a somewhat serious but also surprised look. “Jesus, Kale, what has this girl done to you?” she then quietly asked.

Kale didn’t respond but then turned around and began to walk away from her.

“You love her or something?” Caroline then suddenly asked, causing Kale to abruptly stop in his tracks.

He didn’t turn all the way around to face her, but instead just turned his head so she could now see his profile. “I don’t love you.  And that’s all you have to worry about.  I’ve said all I needed to say.”  And with that, he continued his walk to eventually up the stairs and to Nora’s room.

Once the pleasantries of knocking and entering were over, Kale made his way to sit in Nora’s rocking chair while she sat on her bed, knees up and arms hugging around them.

“We need to talk again,” Kale just jumped into it, “This time about me and Caroline.  About what happened with us.”

“Kale, I told you, I don’t need to know about that,” Nora argued but Kale shook his head in response.

“No, you do. It’s very important that you know that nothing else is going to happen with her and I.  And why that is.”

Nora just looked downward slightly as she rested her chin on both of her knees.  Kale, however, went right ahead and started his story.

“It started after I’d already been working for Dagon.  For several years, really.  Had I been a human then, I’d have been around twenty years old, but in non-geminous years I was only eighteen.  I can’t exactly remember the very day I met her.  I was on some kind of raid, breaking up some illegal human farming or something and she was there.  Part of the crowd of vampires that usually accumulate to find out who got busted.  I remember going to talk to her after, thinking she was the most beautiful vampire I’d ever seen.  It didn’t take long after that for us to spend almost every waking minute together, that is, when I wasn’t doing work for Dagon.  Our relationship was a typical one, you could say, except that we both seemed to not need much time to find out that we were in love.  And within the next year we were married already.  We were fairly happy for the most part, like any newly married couple, except that Caroline didn’t really like me working for Dagon.  She hated the things he was making me do and also didn’t like how dangerous my work was.  She wanted me to quit.  It didn’t really take much convincing from her, because, I was already having some of those same thoughts.  I didn’t like who I was becoming either and all I did know was that I liked who I was when I was with Caroline.  So, with that, I quit.  Of course, Dagon hated that.

“He tried making my life miserable for a long while, cutting off my funding, not allowing my areas to get the proper care they needed, etc.  But what he didn’t know, was that Caroline and I had already started building this house here, before I had even quit officially.  We knew Dagon wouldn’t let me go so easily and we wanted a place away from him.  Where we could just be us.  Safe and away from all that shit.  And once it was finished, we moved in and it was just that.  Practically a paradise that we enjoyed for the next two years of our marriage.

“However, it didn’t take long for that happiness to dissipate.  I noticed Caroline getting distant, more and more.  I wasn’t sure what was wrong and I tried asking her numerous times but she never wanted to talk about it.  Eventually I found out that she had an affair with a vampire named Jack.  I never got the pleasure of meeting the guy, just a note from Caroline after she decided to just up and leave without telling me.  I, of course, wouldn’t accept it.  I wrote her back numerous times, tried tracking her down, tried to beg and plead her to come back so we could work it out.  Of course, her and Jack kept moving and I could never pin point them or get any response from either of them.  But I wasn’t giving up on her.  I knew that what she was going through was just a phase and she would eventually realize that she still loved me and that she’d made a mistake and she’d come back to me. And I’d be there with open arms because I wasn’t determined to throw our love away so easily.

“But…that didn’t happen.  Instead, after several months of waiting on her, I got a letter in the mail.  And it wasn’t what I expected it to be.  It was a letter, along with a set of divorce papers.  The letter asked me to sign them.  Told me that she didn’t love me anymore and she wanted a divorce.  It also said to send them back and to not come looking for her at that address because they will have already moved by the time I sent them.  I held on to those papers for a while.  A couple times I tried sending them back blank, but they kept getting sent back to me.  Finally, I guess I just accepted defeat and signed them.  I realized that if she really still loved me, she wouldn’t have asked me to sign them in the first place.  Apparently, she wants to be with this Jack guy and I couldn’t do anything about it. And I guess I blamed myself for falling in love with someone that I didn’t ever really know.”

“I…I’m sorry…” was all Nora softly said, still hugging her knees as she sat on the bed.

“It’s o.k.  I got over it.  I moved on.  I don’t love her anymore.  I can’t.  Not after what she did to me.  I could never go back to loving her again.  And I wanted you to hear that story so you know why when I say that to you, I mean it.”

Nora and Kale just sat in silence for a few seconds, however, soon Kale spoke up again, “And I know…I’ll admit, it’s been confusing…her coming back and saying she still loved me.  And she never signed those papers herself.  But that’s all it is, confusing.  What I’m not confused about, is my lack of feelings for her.  Or the fact, that if it came down to a choice between her and you, I would pick you every time.  And that doesn’t have anything to do with this Vinculum thing.  It has to do with the fact that we’re friends.  And I want you to know that.  To really believe that.  And to feel confident in me…that I would protect you over her.”

Nora looked over at Kale, noticing the sincerity that covered his face.  She nodded silently but then lifted her head a bit and said, “I do believe that.  I do.  And…I trust you.”

“You do?  Really? Because, honestly, this thing…this hunting thing I’m doing with Caroline tonight…it’s just to get information from her.  Because I promised you we’d figure this thing out together.  And I think the more we know, the more that could help us against Dagon.  But that’s all this is.  It’s nothing more than that…o.k.?”

Nora nodded again.  “I know.  I’m sorry…I got…so upset earlier…”

“It’s o.k.  You have every right to.”

“No, actually, I don’t,” Nora now sighed with a slight smile.  “I don’t have any claim over you or anything.  It’s like you said…we’re just friends.  That’s it.  And after this Dagon thing is over…we’ll probably just go our separate ways and that’ll be it…ya know?  So really…I don’t have any right to be mad about what you do concerning Caroline.”

“Hey, you listen to me right now,” Kale now sternly said, causing Nora to abruptly look over at him. “We are friends.  And that’s gonna stay that way no matter what happens with this Dagon thing.  When it’s over, we’ll still be friends.  No matter what happens afterward.  O.k.?  I mean it.”

Nora nodded and just gave Kale a small smile.  She tried her hardest to hide the blushing she could feel starting to surface.  Again, she felt slightly ashamed that she had let Caroline get to her a second time.  Or even that she had let Kale scare her.  She needed to keep trusting in herself and in him.  They were friends.  That was a truth.  Straight from his mouth and she knew it was real.  However, she still had a slight bit of fear about him going hunting with Caroline, only because she didn’t trust her.  She worried it could be a trap.  However, she was hesitant to tell Kale this, because he would just think she was being paranoid wouldn’t he?  Maybe she should start trusting that maybe he won’t because wouldn’t she feel worse if she didn’t tell him and something were to happen?

CHAPTER 35

 IT WAS HERE.  Sunset had finally fallen on this day and it would soon be dark.  Nora sat on the couch, a kerosene lantern lit and sitting on an end table next to her, seeing as the coffee table was still broken from the earlier brawl.  She wore a pair of black leggings with an oversized red sweatshirt as she huddled to keep warm and bit her fingernails nervously.  She was extremely worried about tonight.  She really didn’t want Kale going out, especially with