Crimson Kiss

8 Claim (Ezra)

The driver dropped Ivy off first. I waited in the shadows for her to enter her home. I waited for the lock to slide home and for her to make her way to her room. The door would squeak twice when she opened her bedroom door, and the screen once when she closed it. Her heavy booted feet became lighter, more relaxed, as she stepped out of her shoes. I looked up from my hiding spot up to her window. She lifts one of the stones she had placed on the windowsill, looking at it and then turns away with it tossing it in the small basket on her dresser. She returned and scrubbed her hands over the windowsill. I could smell burnt lavender and sage wafting through her room. A protection spell. Against me? But she was breaking the spell? Why?

I was both angry and flattered. Did she worry about me coming into her room? Or was she protecting someone other than me? Has Marcus been here? No. I would have noticed. When I looked back up, I watched as Ivy stripped off her shirt and tossed it in the hamper. I tried to make myself look away. I was really stalking now, wasn't I? I had come full circle. I stalked her at school, on the way home, I messed with her head a little and now, I was watching her undress. My eyes were glued to her skin, committing every detail to memory. I began to feel my thirst surface as I watched her and my fangs slowly and painfully formed from my jaws.

I snapped back to myself when my phone rang. I blinked and fished my phone from my pocket. I sighed. Now that I knew Ivy was in for the night, I had damage control duty on the homefront. I lifted my hand, answering the call.

"Yes, Amira?" I said as I started running at a blur through Manhattan streets. I am closer to home than I realized. She was not far at all. If anything were to happen to her, I would be by her side in seconds. "I am on my way!"

I hear her sigh and there is talking in the background. "I have a bad feeling about this, Ezra. The whole Clan is here. Plus the alliances! Marcus did this!" she hissed at me.

I could see my castle like home before me now. I rushed through the doors, throwing them open, hearing the wood crack and splinter. I flew up the stairs and met Amira by the Council Chamber.

"Everyone Is here, Ezra. What does he have on you?" she demanded I meet her in the foyer.

My mind flashed back to about ninety second ago when I had been watching Ivy undress. I blinked and shook my head at her. "Nothing," I assured her. There was no way it was about that and I knew I had not done anything wrong. I followed my father's law. I glanced into the council chamber and saw my father sitting there, his face smooth and thoughtful. He was a tall man, his black hair streaked with perfectly placed silver, thick eyebrows and stubble goatee around his jaw. Today he was dressed in a green satin button up blouse, a black waistcoat and dark clad jeans. My father was more heartless than most Vampier's. Perhaps it was because of the war's in Romania. He had been alive a long time and had survived many battle's in his day. However, Dragos was the King of Vampires. He had fought his way to victory.

I watched as the look on his face became bored and he looked up at me through the door. "What is taking so long?" I hear him ask in a low voice.

I smile a hard smile at him. "What is going on?" I asked him.

It was easy for my enhanced hearing to hear every word he was saying, even when he was about sixty feet away from me, at the other end of the room.

My father sighed and shook his head. "No idea."

I walked into the chamber then, Amira beside me. She had not been lying when she had said the whole counsel had been summoned. My mother Sira stood beside my father, dressed in a simple pair of slacks and a white blouse. She was shockingly relaxed in the dress code today. Not that we had one but we Vampires like to dress up for the dramatics sometimes.