A Legacy of the Damned: Daughter of Astaroth

Chapter 53 - Cabin on the Lake

A black Mercedes crawls up the long winding driveway to stop right in front of us. The door opens and Elias jumps out of the passenger seat in a black rain jacket with the hood pulled over his head.

He leaves the passenger door open for me while he opens another door at the back and dives in after Katherine. At first, I don't get why he wants me to sit at the front but once I get into the car, I understand why. Sacha is sitting behind the wheel.

I want to throw my arms around him when I see him sitting there because I missed him, but something in the calm expression of his insanely beautiful face stops me from doing so. He looks aloof and the flexing muscle above his jaw warn me that he's furious.

His bright hazel eyes take in my whole appearance from my drenched face and hair to my legs in the wet denim shorts. When they settle on my wounded hand, something flares in them. In a flash, his hand circles my wrist.

"What happened?" he asks through clenched teeth as he brings my hand close to his face for inspection.

"Nothing," I say at the same time as Katherine says, "The sealed door got to her."

He turns his piercing eyes on Katherine in the backseat and I could almost hear her swallow hard. "What do you mean the sealed door got to her?"

His eyes are like lasers on Katherine and if looks could kill, she'd be minced meat. No wonder she's intimidated by him. He could be very intense, especially at a time like this.

"Why are you questioning my girlfriend as if she's at fault?" asks Elias, wrapping his arm around her shoulders as though he's trying to shield her from Sacha's wrath. Katherine's gaze, however, shifts from Sacha to the mansion and back to Sacha again.

Just as I'm about to say something, she jumps in and says, "Can we at least get out of here before we discuss this?"

Sacha keeps his cool stare on her a while longer before returning it to my hand. "That must hurt. We should put something on the cuts before they get infected."

"It doesn't hurt. I'm fine," I tell him. "It's just a little scrape."

That causes him to scowl. "This is more than just a little scrape."

"It's nothing serious, Sacha, and it's healing already. Look, it's not even bleeding anymore."

He scoffs but he lets go of my hand and changes the gear to drive. Very slowly, he maneuvers the car out in the rain that seems to have grown heavier during the last few minutes that we've gotten into the car. It's like someone pours buckets and buckets of water on the windshield, it's hard to see outside. The wipers don't make any difference but I trust Sacha to know where he's going as he keeps driving.

I could almost hear Katherine's sigh of relief once we roll out through the open wrought iron gates of the Blackwell Estate. For someone with such powerful energy, the estate seems to have an effect on her. She's more scared of the mansion or whatever it is in that room than I am even though she seemed to be fully in charge of it. I guess, Astaroth is my Achilles heel or Kryptonite and the Estate is hers.

"Where are we going?" I ask a while later when I realize that we're not heading toward the Gauthier Mansion.

"We're going to our cabin on the lake," replies Elias.

I stare at Sacha while he drives. He doesn't say a word but the way he's acting makes me think that there's something more that's bothering him than my outing with Katherine or my injured hand.

The drive takes about forty minutes and by the time we arrive, the rain has stopped. Their "cabin on the lake" turns out to be a two-story house that could qualify as a mansion on Mercer Island.