Free The Vampire's Warden by S J Wright

my mouth, I think I was more shocked than he was.
     
    “ I’ve been having some… thoughts about Michael.” I dropped my peeler and covered my mouth with trembling fingers.
     
    Alex’s face transformed into an expression of worry and intense anger. He dropped the potato he had been working on and it tumbled onto the floor.
     
    “ You went to him?” His fingers gripped one sleeve of my corduroy shirt as he loomed over me. His eyes were a fiery green, pulsing with repressed hostility.
     
    I jerked my arm from his grasp, “Cut it out. I wanted to ask him about my mother.” I picked up the peeler and began with a new potato, ripping at it in frustration, “Nothing really happened. But I can understand now why she was tempted.”
     
    He eased slowly back into his seat and put his hands over his face, “You can’t go out there again, Sarah. It’s too dangerous.”
     
    “ I thought he couldn’t hurt me.”
     
    “ It’s a rule of his detention.” He sighed and stared at the table before him, “He’s not supposed to hurt you. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible.”
     
    I shrugged, trying to ease the tension between us, “Well, I tried to stay outside of the detention border. There’s a diagram in the journal that lays it all out.” Then I hesitated, remembering how far Michael had managed to get from where the border should be, “But I don’t think the diagram is right.”
     
    Alex pushed his chair back and went to one of the two windows across from the table, staring out into the darkening day, “His powers may allow him to extend the original field. There’s no way to know how far he can go at this point, if that’s true.” He turned back to me, alarm sketched over his handsome face. He approached the table, leaning on it with his palms flat against the tabletop and fixed his eyes on my face.
     
    “ Sarah it may be possible for him to get to the house.”
     
    Oh, God. What if he got to Nelly? The guests could even be in danger. My breathing became ragged and my pulse raced as horrible images flooded my head; Nelly, eyes wide open, throat slashed open, lying in a pool of her own blood, drops of scarlet falling onto the floor beneath her bed. I imagined everything in silence, as if a demon had passed through and destroyed everything that was real.
     
    “ No, no. He can’t.” I whispered.
     
    “ If he’s managed to stretch the detention field, he certainly can.”
     
    I nibbled on my thumbnail, trying to come up with some solution. The only one here who could tell how far the field extended was Michael. However, someone else must be able to sense it, to give us some idea if we were safe in the house. Another immortal, maybe. However, I refused to consider asking for the help of my mother.
     
    “ The Council.” I stood up from my chair and began pacing from the entryway to the dining room and back across the kitchen, “Someone from the Council should have some answers for us.”
     
    “ How can we contact them?” He asked.
     
    I raced upstairs to my bedroom. Nelly’s head popped through one of the bedroom doorways as I flew by, “Where’s the fire, dear?”
     
    Instead of answering, I grabbed the journal from my nightstand and began flipping through it desperately to find anything my grandfather might have written about contacting the Council. There had to be something there; some kind of “contact in case of emergency” phone number or something. All I kept seeing were names that meant nothing to me. Isaiah, Eleanor, William , Chester .
     
    Chester Fleming. I whipped my cell phone from my dressing table and made the call.
     
    “ Sarah those horses are loose again!” Nelly called from down the hall. It was true. From my bedroom window, I could see Lenny stretching his neck over the short garden fence trying to get to the last few green peppers left on the plants out there. Messenger was loping around the side yard, trying to avoid Sadie who was barking and appeared