Immortal Love Book #2. Evil

3. "Danger"

My heart started pounding just with the thought of Dennis being in danger. I didn't know if it was the blood bond we shared, but I felt sick just thinking about him getting hurt. My nightmares started going through my head like flashbacks. What if it was a sign? What if Dennis was trying to reach out to me these past few weeks and I had just ignored him? I couldn't live with myself knowing I had just ignored his calls for help, if that were the case.

"Stella?" Alexander's deep voice brought me back to reality. I blinked a couple of times to make sure this wasn't just another nightmare. "Did you hear me?" he asked. I nodded.

"Why do you think he is in danger?" I asked, composing myself. I couldn't understand how I could feel so many horrible emotions in such a short second.

"I said I thought he might be in danger." he clarified, like that would make me feel better. It didn't.

"Okay, but why?" I insisted.

"Can you reach out to him?" he asked, deflecting my question. Reaching out to him would be a good idea to find out whether or not he was in danger, but lately, every time I used our bond to get to him, I felt nothing.

"Right now?" I asked. He nodded.

I thought I'd try one more time, because I didn't lose anything by trying. So, I took a deep breath and I closed my eyes to focus, then I visualized him. I felt nothing. Just like the last couple of times I had reached out to him. It was like a cold void, and it was starting to scare me.

"So?" Alexander called my attention impatiently. I blinked a couple of times to get back to reality. "What did you feel?" he asked, looking at me.

"I felt nothing." I said with a worried tone. Alexander's look when I said those words led me to believe that feeling nothing wasn't a good thing. "What is it?" I asked, more concerned by the second.

"It's not good for a vampire to feel nothing, Stella." Alexander said, with a seriously worried expression.

Seeing Dennis worried scared me, because he was usually trying to be calm for me. On the other hand, seeing Alexander worried was scary, because he was usually very calm about everything. The last time I had seen him genuinely worried was the night Darko made his vampire zombies kill everything on their way and almost unleashed a war, so you can understand how scary it was to see that expression again. It was different, though. For some reason I felt like Alexander's concern this time wasn't about him, but I didn't know much more than that, and not knowing was killing me. It couldn't be about Dennis, right? Maybe it had something to do with Jacqueline.

"Stella." Alexander called my name to get my attention. I looked at him. I had gotten a little distracted.

"Alexander, I need you to be very clear with me." I said, and he just kept looking at me. "What does it mean?" I asked, referring to the feeling of emptiness I got every time I reached out to Dennis. Alexander took a second to think, and then he answered.

"Well, there is only two reasons I can think of." he said, and I nodded in understanding. A second later he continued. "One possibility is that he actually feels nothing, and the other one is that your bond with him is being blocked by some sort of magic." he finished, leaving me a little less confused than before, but still confused. "And I honestly don't know which one is worse." he said, and I felt the same way.

"So, what do we do?" I asked, ignoring the fact that Alexander worrying about Dennis was the weirdest thing in the universe.

"It depends on which one is the actual reason. If it's the fist one, then I need to find him and make him feel again." he said. I gave him a confused look.

"Make him feel again?" I asked, unsure of what that meant. "So, you're saying he can just stop feeling?" I apparently still knew nothing about vampires.

"It's not that simple, but yes. We can decide to stop feeling if we want." he explained. Well, it sounded pretty simple to me, but it didn't sound like something Dennis would do.

"But Dennis wouldn't do that." I said, and Alexander rolled his eyes. Had he turned into Jacqueline all the sudden?

"You don't know what he would do because you don't know him at all, Stella." Alexander said in an annoyed tone. I frowned, surprised at his words.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, unsure of what his intentions were. It almost sounded like he thought he knew Dennis better than me.

"I mean that you barely spent a couple weeks together in which I'm sure you didn't even talk much, and you already think you know how a vampire works." he said, still annoyed. I crossed my arms on my chest and took a step forward. Now I was the one getting annoyed.

"I'm not saying I know how vampires work, I'm saying I know Dennis." I said, unsure of my words.

Did I know Dennis? I wasn't sure anymore. That night we told each other that we loved each other I could have sworn I would never feel scared of him, but I did the night we said goodbye, the night he murdered those people. I felt like I knew Dennis in his heart, but Alexander was right about something; I didn't know how vampires worked, and Dennis was a vampire at the end of the day.

"You don't." Alexander said, confirming what I had already figured out. I though moving past this was the only way he could find a way to help Dennis.

"Okay, let's say he doesn't feel anything anymore, what's the big deal?" I hated the thought of Dennis feeling nothing, because that meant he felt nothing about me, about us, but I didn't see that as a situation in which Dennis was in danger, so it wasn't that big of a deal, right?

"The big deal is that feeling nothing for a vampire as old as me, works, but for a vampire like Dennis, who barely controls himself when he was emotions, is usually a disaster." Alexander clarified, and I saw what he meant.

Dennis was a "good" vampire with his emotions, because they made him put himself before other people. I had seen that side of him when he saved me, and Sophie, and then me again. The only reason he had done any of those things was because of his emotions, and if he didn't have them, he would have just let us die. Even though I couldn't see Dennis making the choice to stop feeling, I had to be open to the possibility.

"What could happen?" I asked, because I wanted to be informed of what we were up against.

"The Academy doesn't allow for vampires as young as Dennis to stop feeling, so..." he took a pause, like he was afraid to finish his sentence. "... they usually end up dead." he said, and my heart took a turn.

"Why?" I was more full of questions that I had been in a while, and I needed to get them out.

"Because a young reckless vampire without their emotions is even more reckless, and they usually don't respect authority, and The Academy can't have that. So, what usually happens is that the emotionless vampire kills a bunch of people and then The Academy kills them." I felt a pit in my stomach start forming again as soon as Alexander was done talking. If that was what would happen to Dennis, we had to find him as soon as possible and get his emotions back, if that was even possible.

"And could he get his emotions back?" I asked, and Alexander nodded as he leaned against the wall behind him.

"I would have to get him back and force him to feel, which I would be delighted to do." he said, with half a smile. Now I was the one to roll my eyes.

"Okay." I said as I nodded. I was starting to feel my heat beating calmly inside my chest again, because there was a way to save Dennis, we just had to find him. Then I remembered there was another possible reason I felt nothing when I reached out to Dennis, and my heart started racing again. "Wait, what if that's not it? What if it's the other reason?" I asked.

"If a witch is blocking your bond with him, then there's something bigger going on." he said with a serious expression. I swallowed nervously.

"Something like what?" I asked, unsure if I really wanted to know the answer to that.

"To be honest Stella, I have no idea." he said what I was most afraid of. "All I know is that no matter which reason it is, I need to find Dennis as soon as possible."