Reborn

Chapter Twenty Nine

Leah didn't come back after that, not that I had expected her to. We had all gone back to Shadow's home after the window had been replaced, knowing that we had strength in numbers and that splitting up would do us no good now. Losing Leah to the dark side, as Rose liked to phrase it, had hit us all, so we'd come together more closely.

The lingering tension in the air between Shadow and ALec hadn't dissipated any; if anything, it only strengthened the more we tried to figure out what to do. This should all have been over with by now, we were supposed to have handed over the fake grimoire. Now, we knew we couldn't do that. Leah knew what we had done and she would have told them, so our plan had gone down the drain.

Vince had never wanted to torture somebody as badly as he wanted to hurt her, that I was sure of. We had all been working desperately to find Ric and get him back safely, but nobody knew where to start in searching for him. Not knowing where they could have taken him had only further angered Vince because he had never trusted Leah and now, we were finally seeing that he was right not to. It was no wonder he was so angry with her - we all were.

As Shadow, Vince and Marl were the only ones that actually knew Benjamin, they had been in charge of trying to find out where he lived, who his friends were and things like that. It was under the vain hope that we would find out something important that kept us all working diligently to find something that would lead us to our friends whereabouts.

Ric being missing for four days had even got Rose warming up to the vampires she now lived with, working with them to get Ric back. I knew that it was because of her growing feelings for the blonde, but I couldn't help smile. It took a crisis like this to bring her closer to my friends and I couldn't deny I was pleased she was actually making an effort. Even Alec had stopped snapping at her every few seconds, something that had come as a surprise to us all.

"I'm just worried about my girlfriend, okay?" Was all Alec had said when confronted about it, but we never responded. I knew that he was struggling to come to terms with the fact his girlfriend had turned against us all, him included.

It was now a Thursday, and we were still attempting to come up with a plan that Leah couldn't possibly ruin. We were still going to hand over the fake grimoire but that was a last resort now. Not knowing whether Leah had told Benjamin about it had us hoping it wouldn't come to that though.

I had been pacing the room with my phone clutched tightly in my grip, thinking of all the possible places where Ric could have been taken, when my phone suddenly started to ring.

One glance at the caller I.D. told me it wasn't anybody I knew, so I instantly answered it. I usually would never answer a call from an unknown number but I had the sinking feeling that the call would help us become one step closer in finding Ric.

"Hello?" I answered the call hesitantly, taking a deep breath despite not needing to. I knew I would have to go hunting soon though, because the second I breathed in I was hit by the scent of Rose's blood. She sat on the sofa a few steps away from me, completely oblivious to the blood lust that was slowly starting to take over. I hadn't been hunting at all in the past few days, ever since Ric had been taken, purely because I'd been too worried and too busy. Now, I was seriously regretting that.

"Hello, Violet." A voice spoke through the other end of the phone, chilling me to the bone. "Do you remember me?"

"How could I forget?" I asked sarcastically, images flashing through my mind instantly. Jane and William, two people who had turned out to be friends of my mother... dead because of him. How could I ever forget that?

"Do I detect a hint of hatred there?" He mused, more to himself than to me but I felt the need to answer him anyway.

"What do you think?" I snapped, gripping my hair in frustration. "Where have you taken Ric?"