Stone Cold

Chapter 47

Time seemed to have slowed down as she watched the metal doors slowly rotating around their hinges, allowing her to take one last peek at the villager’s crazed grin before meeting midway to create a loud clattering noise. Her only source of light remained to be the rapidly burning hay and for the first time in her life, she wanted darkness to embrace them again.

“Why did you do it? Why did you not run away?”

Upon hearing his voice, her head whipped impulsively in his direction before she forced it back to let it hang low.

‘They would have impaled you otherwise.’

Instead of voicing out her thoughts he just pressed her lips together to stop any sound from escaping.

“Where are Gabriel and Henry?’

‘Gabriel is outside. He’ll give Henry his blood after Ruth and Cyrus are gone so that Henry doesn’t get himself killed in the quest of trying to save you.’

There were so many things that she wanted to say to him at that point yet she couldn’t as she was well aware of Ruth eavesdropping on their conversation. Her lips had remained tightly shut but on the other hand, her thoughts were running wild, swinging like a pendulum, rapidly moving from one memory to another.

She always wondered why they crossed paths, how she ended up in that mansion that night, those nightmares she suffered from, why he had been so cold to her in the first place and most importantly how she ended up here in this timeline but now everything had become clear.

Ruth was currently blinded by her need to save her only blood relative­ — her son and no matter how much Faith tried convincing her she wouldn’t listen. The urge to save her only child was too strong but soon she would realize the mistake she’d made but at that time there would be no way of bringing Ares back to life to deal with the chaos her son was causing except for wait for Faith to be born.

Faith, on the other hand, had thought of a way.

Gabriel.

Ruth had unknowingly told her that Vampires turned to stone could be rescued with the blood of the person they had last consumed and she was going to use it to their advantage.

Gabriel could only feed one vampire, Henricus in this case, but Faith had asked her to somehow sneak a little amount into Ares’ mouth so that his blood is the last Ares has before getting turned into stone. Gabriel would stay behind the castle and with Henricus’ help come back to bring Ares’ back to life after everything settles down.

“Faith.”

It was that voice again, the voice that had been hunting her in her dreams for the past several months, trying to drag her back into a reality she didn’t want to face.

Stuck in her inner turmoil, she was trying to figure out a way to continue dodging his questions when the silver doors started clattering once again, deviating her attention towards them. A moment after, the doors parted, this time to reveal a frowning Gabriel standing before them. His frown visibly deepened as he cast a quick glance around the burning room before hurriedly running inside to unchain her.

That’s when she noticed something unusual. Something or rather someone was preventing the fire from reaching the altar,

‘Ruth…’

“Gabriel, Where’s Henry?”

The similar question once again resounded through the room, directed at a different person yet it was met with the same answer. Silence.

“Gabriel, I am asking you where is Henricus?”

No movement.

“Do not leave him to burn. He is but a child!”