He sat beside her on the sick bed, watching her breath slowly and waiting for her eyes to pop open. He had been there for an hour, waiting for any sign of recovery from her.
He was so patient and for the first time, Lot waited with him without throwing any tantrums at him. He held her hand and kept looking at her fingers. He always saw something new when he looked harder.
He felt her blood flowing but yet no response from her. He tried talking to her and begging her to wake up but nothing.
Yes, he was frustrated but he didn't find it in his heart to leave her. He felt terrible about everything. Kimberly was dead and Lexa was broken because of it.
Elliot too was also broken but he knew that the bond they shared was stronger than the bond he could ever have with Kim.
He sighed and bent his head, placing her hand on his forehead... waiting for something.
"Any response from her, Mr Vile?"
Elliot didn't know when he entered but he didn't seem surprised. "Nothing." He rose his head. "She's okay, isn't she?"
"Yes, she is. It might take a while for her to recover from the shock."
His mind drifted to another issue. The only reason his Alexa was in that state and Kimberly was dead was because of one person. He grew immediate hate for the culprit.
"Who did it?" It was a simple question but it had millions of potential answers.
Elliot had many enemies, more than he could count but ever since Lexa arrived there was no one in the picture that he could point fingers at. He had no suspects.
"The culprit is intelligent. He left no traces. And the venom..." The doctor sounded confused at that point. "...seems very natural but there is no known creature with such venom. I can't explain how an animal will contain such dangerous venom and the venom is not man-made from our findings."
That narrowed his suspects. It meant the people he was dealing it weren't human. They were not from earth.
Elliot knew the doctor could not help, he wanted to handle it on his own. "Call no cops. Do not investigate further."
The doctor now looked more baffled than he was about the venom. "But Mr Vile..."
"I have said what I have to and you have to do as I say."
The doctor kept quiet, knowing who Elliot Vile was. The doctor from that moment decided to wash his hands clean from the case.
"As you say."
Elliot stood and kissed Lexa's hand before moving away from her. "Watch over her. Once she recovers call me."
Elliot left the room in a hurry. He had to get to the bottom of the case no matter what it cost.
***
Lexa's POV
I was shivering. Shivering like a lost puppy in the middle of a winter storm. I placed my hands on cold ice... no it was snow. My eyes flashed open as I quickly stood up from my lying position. No wonder I was feeling so cold.
I dusted the snow from my body and looked around me. I realized that I was literally the lost puppy in a winter storm. Snowflakes were falling like harsh drops of dry ice on my skin.
I was wearing nothing but the clothes I took in to the hospital. The hospital? I remembered Kimberly, my mother. The hurt came and I crashed back to the ground.
I tried to cry but my tears froze before they had a chance to come up. I was so cold and I knew I had to get out of there but I felt so weak and tired, like I was in a deep sleep.
I searched around me again, this time trying to look for a resting place before I froze to ice. My eyes caught a small cottage that was lit in deep orange light. 'Fire,' I thought.
I stood again and staggered towards the cottage. I then wondered how I even got there but I didn't care at the moment. I needed heat.
I stood on a stone made mat that said welcome and tried to knock on it. I guessed someone would be inside since the lights were on. But before I could place my hands on the cottage door, it swinged open.
Like a vacuum cleaner, air from inside the cottage dragged me in and the door closed shut. I was on the floor but the floor I was expecting to be on was something different.
I was sitting on grass that felt like soft feathers of a pillow. In the grass I could see insects, flowers and bugs. I stood and scanned my surroundings. I was now in a garden. A beautiful flower garden that was painted with flowers of different unworldly colours.
The cold I was first hit with was replaced by a warm breeze that melted all the ice from my body. There was no sign of the cottage I first entered.
I looked up to the sky and saw a calm blue sky filled with bright birds that chartered and swarmed the skies happily. For the first time in an hour, I felt... happy.
"It's good you feel so."
I turned to the familiar female voice but saw no one. "W-who's there?"
"Don't you recognize my voice again, Alexandra?"
Yes, yes I did but I couldn't just place it. "Come out this instant!"
"I was never hiding."
I turned to the direction of the voice, my left, and there I saw a woman. She backed me and she was sitting on a wooden rocking chair while facing a small crystal blue river that flowed peacefully like the wind.
All I saw of the woman was her long, black but rough hair. It was thicker than mine. As I was about to reach her, a moving chair stumbled on me. I fell, sitting on the chair and it carried me to face the woman directly.
"What is this?"
I looked at her, trying to pinpoint who she was but she was looking down and her rough hair had covered her face. She wore a black net dress and had many body piercings along with deep black lipstick on her thin lips.
She was caressing a baby in her hands but suddenly, the baby disappeared like smoke in air. She raised her head up and faced me. I was given the greatest shock of my life when I saw who she was.
Except she looked nothing like the woman I knew. "How are you, Lexa?"
"Miss Rica?!" I was shaken and confused. "W-what are you...why...how...when..."
"Let me explain." She cut me in and relaxed herself on the rocking chair that gradually transformed to a regular wooden chair, like the one I sat on. "I was your Miss Rica in the Palace of Jabs."
I froze as memories of the young woman I always remembered but couldn't recognize hit me. "It was you?"
"I am a witch Lexa." She let the cat out of the bag.
I would have passed out again if I wasn't in a fantasy world. I had had just too many discoveries for a day. "You? But the orphanage and the kids..."
"I've always loved them and I will always do. I've lived longer than you can imagine. I can't speak to you in my body because I'm lost in there."
I had a lot of questions to ask and I was going to get my fill right there and then. "Who are you?"
She didn't hesitate to answer my questions. "I am Ricarda Esmeralda..."
"Esmeralda? You don't mean the children-eating witches..."
"I'm afraid so. That is my family bloodline."
"But the evil forces killed them all."
"All but me. I escaped the devil's hands. I was nothing like my family. I hated them for what they did. That's why I promised myself to always take care of children."
I believed that aspect. If she was truly eating children, neither I nor the orphanage kids would be alive and I had never heard of any missing children's case in the orphanage or in our town in many years.
"Did you say the devil?" I asked curiously.
"Yes, that evil force was Elliot. Your darling Elliot." Rica found it hard to say. She felt like puking worms. "He spared none of us, not even the innocent."
I was curious to know why because I didn't know what Elliot could have against them. I couldn't say he was a good guy then because... he was the devil.
"Why?"
"A witch from my family beat him to having a kid." 'A kid to eat?' I thought in fear. "So he destroyed us all."
I felt some kind of unexplainable pity for the witches even though they were not good people either.
"I-I don't know what to say."
She looked away. "You need not say anything." She paused and looked at me with a smile on her face. "I cherish you a lot, Lexa, that is why I have to lead you in the right way."
"Have I gone astray?"
"Very astray." She tapped her chair. The chair geared up, along with mine and it sped into another area of the fantasy world. Before I knew it, we were in a darker place.
Everything there was in twilight. I could see a disappearing moon in the sky and shadows of different objects around us. Even in that dark, the same warm feeling was still there.
I didn't bother asking Rica how she did all that because I knew. She was a witch and witches had many supernatural powers. There were also many types of witches and the type of witch a new-born would become depends on the family and bloodline.
Did you know witches make our dreams? Don't find it hard to believe because there are dream witches as well, and I knew from everything around me that I was in a communication dream made by Rica.
The chairs finally stopped as they surrounded a medium sized crystal ball like all the ones I had seen in my first life, and the ones I had seen in movies in this life.
The white crystal ball provided light, and it was the only way I could see Rica's face.
"I warned you, Lexa. If you don't stay away from him, he will kill all those you love."
I got scared. "Who?"
"The devil."
That discovery scared me to the deepest marrow of my bones. I didn't believe what she was saying. She was talking nonsense.
"That's not possible. Elliot is not the devil the world portrays him to be."
"No, he's not. He's worse."
I shook my head. I would never believe anything she said. I was with Elliot and I had seen how good hearted he was, the only thing that was evil about him was his demon, Lot.
"You won't believe me without proof. He has blinded you with his pretending acts of good. It's time for you to see. I'll take you to the past, Lexa."
She circled her hands round the crystal ball and the images and video-like occurrences appeared in our front like a projector would have done.
Videos of what the past devils had done to people showed, but the witches called the videos...waves.
There was death, bloodshed, screams, terror... I found it hard to watch them all. Hell was shown and it was truly a terrible place I never wanted to go to.
There was weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, darkness, flames, burning, torments and everlasting punishment!
Then Elliot showed on the screen. He was planning something, he was looking for something to take over but I didn't know what. Another wave showed him killing people. He was ruthless. Another wave showed him around many naked sluts and ungodly whores, where he was kissing, touching...
"Stop!"
Rica laughed. "This is the truth, Lexa and the truth is always bitter."
"Elliot has changed!"
She snickered. "Evil will always remain evil. You are of good Lexa and you don't belong to him."
"Stop showing me what has happened in the past. It's all in the past. If you have no other proof then let me go!"
I was not ready to sit down and hear false or forgotten accusations of my lover.
"I've got more." The crystal glass turned red, preparing itself for another wave. "Did you ask Elliot where he went to when he was not able to mate you?" I didn't say anything. "Let me show you."
The crystal ball showed another wave. In this wave, I could clearly see Elliot transform into a wolf of great size. It was black and you could only tell he was there because of its bright red eyes.
He was hunting animals, tearing their flesh and sucking their blood. I looked away, glad they were not humans.
"Are you sure about that, Lexa?"
I looked at her alarmed and turned to the wave. There were a set of teenage campers in the forest that night, looking for a spot to settle down. They seemed like an adventurous and daring set to camp in such a wild forest.
But in a heartbeat, only their dead bodies were left. And those dead bodies had no blood left in them.
I couldn't say anything for a minute because I was in shock. "It might not be recent. It..."
"You are a Queen, Lexa. You know that a crystal ball never lies."
"That was Lot. Not Elliot."
"And what's the difference?"
I closed my eyes, trying to erase the horrible images from my memory but it was an impossible task. I convinced myself that Elliot could never do such a thing.
"How can I trust you? You've been lying to me from day one."
"You knew me before you knew Elliot."
"It doesn't matter."
Rica knew I would not believe her so she released the big guns. "Did you know what your mother told Elliot the day she asked you to excuse yourself from the ward. Do you remember that day?"
I didn't want to know but I couldn't help myself. "W-what did she tell him?"