It didn’t take me long to discover where Logan was. The house was empty and nothing distracted me as I searched. I found him in the backyard of the house, just around the side. He was crouching down on the ground near one of the bedroom windows; one of his hands was filled with dirt. He was letting it seep through his fingers and fall to the ground at his feet. He looked up as I walked across the yard, towards him. “They were here,” he said. “Looks like we just missed them.”
I nodded, thoughtfully. “Do you guys have any clue as to where they are now?”
“No,” he said, through clenched teeth, it was very visible that he wasn’t happy about that fact.
I sighed. I didn’t want to talk about what Micah was doing, or where he was. Oh well, I thought, it’s now or never. “Logan, we need to talk.”
He’d been gazing down at the ground again and as I watched I saw his body stiffen. “I know,” he spoke quietly. He obviously knew what I wanted to talk about, he wasn’t stupid. “But, not now. Later. We’ll talk later.”
I shook my head. “No, I wanna talk now.”
Logan looked up and his eyes met mine. “Not now, Roxi.” I could see the dark circles under his eyes, remainders of a few sleepless nights. He looked so tired and I hated to push him now, especially when I had a feeling that those sleepless nights were because of me and everything that had happened. But if we didn’t talk now, when we had the chance, I didn’t know when we would. “When we get back to the Manor, we’ll sit down and talk,” he paused, “about everything.”
“There are too many people around at the Manor. Someone will hear something we don’t want them to hear. This place is practically empty, now’s the perfect time to talk.”
He didn’t look convinced. In fact he looked as though he’d happily put this conversation off for as long as possible. God, men.... why are they all the same, I thought?
He was shaking his head, just the tiniest bit. “There’s just so much we need to talk about. And here’s not the best place, no matter what you say. When we do this......”
“When?” I cut him off. “Not if?” I asked.
He smiled slightly, still looking at me. “Not if,” he said quietly. “Not if.”

It all came down to one thing. “Logan, do you want to be with me?” I asked him. I knew how I felt, knew what I wanted. If he felt the same way, then everything would sort itself out, in time. I was sure we could find a way.
He hesitated, just the smallest amount of time, barely a second. “Yes,” he spoke, still quietly and rose to his feet. He dropped whatever dirt he had left in his hand and wiped his palm on his jeans. “I want to be with you, but....”
“Is my being a vampire an issue?” I blurted, cutting off whatever he was going to say. Can you blame me for asking? He is still a hunter after all.
“No,” he said calmly, stepping towards where I stood. “It’s not. It should be, I know that, but it’s not. Not to me.”
I was staring into his blue eyes, finding myself drowning in them. They were so deep. They always were.
“From the moment I met you, you turned my world upside down,” he continued speaking. “You confused the hell outta me, and I couldn’t understand you. I couldn’t see the reason’s for why you acted the way you did or even why you did the things you did.” he paused and smiled, remembering. “And every time I thought I had you figured out, you threw something else in that left me dazed and sent all my conclusions out the window.”
My heart was pounding so fast in my chest I thought that at any moment in would burst through my chest. I didn’t dare interrupt what Logan was saying. They were things I’d waited so long to hear.
“But now I think I understand you. I know who you are and honestly....,” he broke off, and brushed my cheek with his fingertips. “I have never met anyone like you," he said, an incredulous tone to his voice. "You’re beautiful and brave and you have an inner strength so strong, it’s hard to believe.”
“I’m not strong,” I couldn’t speak louder than a whisper, the moment was too intimate and I didn’t want to shatter it.
“Oh, but you are,” Logan said. “Even if you can’t see it, others can. After everything you’ve been through, after everything you’ve faced, you’re still standing. And that’s more than a lot of people can say. Other people would have given up, but not you. You’ve kept fighting.”
“Because I have to.” My tone was still quiet. “Because I don’t have a choice. Claudia, Callie, they need me to keep fighting. They need me to be strong. And that’s the only thing that’s kept me from falling apart.” I paused and reached up to grip his arm, his hand still on my face. “They depend on me to be a strong, and that’s why I am, because they wouldn’t cope if I was a mess.”

He was nodding. “I understand that, more than you’ll ever know. After everything I’ve seen and faced it’d be easy, oh so easy, to walk away from this life. I don’t though, because I know that people’s lives depend on wether I can keep them safe or not.” Logan brushed his fingers against my lips, making me tremble. “Sometimes though Rox, it’s okay to be weak. It’s okay to depend on someone else.”
I stared up at him. How could he say that, I thought? This was the same guy who was always the picture of perfect composure, who never let people see if he was upset or worried. People always saw him as deadly and dangerous. He kept all his emotions hidden, so people couldn’t see them. But not always, I thought. Not with me. I could see through that and so could he. He saw and most likely understood what I was feeling. He knew me. More than my own family, maybe more than the covenant. He understood.
“Hey! There you guys are.” Greg’s voice called from over the fence, from in the front yard. “Dave’s here with Lancer and the men are ready to high tale it out of here. Logan? You coming, man?”
“Yeah, we’ll be there in a sec,” Logan called over his shoulder at Greg. He had dropped his hand from my face, but his eyes had stayed glued to my face. It was as though he couldn’t look away. And if I was honest with myself, neither could I.
“Okay, man. We’ll meet you guys at the car,” Greg’s voice called again, before disappearing.
“What now?” I asked shakily. We still hadn’t really figured out anything.
Logan was shaking his head, running a hand through his blonde hair. I’d noticed he did that a lot, when he was unsure. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t know how we're gonna do this, us,” he paused, smiling dryly. “And believe me, when I tell you that I’ve thought this over. From a thousand different angles. I don’t even know if we can make this work.”
I bit my lip, unspeaking as his words sunk in. Of course, he’d thought about this, it was the way he was.
“But I still want to try,” he continued. “All I know for absolutely sure, is that I can’t fight how I feel about you anymore. And I’m not going to waste anymore energy trying to. I’ll go crazy if I do.”
I felt my lips twitch into a small, dry smile. I knew how that felt, trying not to feel the way you do. It sucks.

“So we will try Rox, I promise you we will try,” he said, his face set with determination. He was positive about this.
I felt my spirit soar. This was all I ever wanted. I’d wanted him to tell me he felt the same and that we would figure a way to make this work. And we would. We would find a way. There had to be one. Yes, we still didn’t have all our answers and yes, this was gonna be hard as hell, but between the two of us, we could do this...... together.
Logan took the last step and covered the distance between us, standing up against me. He stood right in front of me and bent and brushed his lips against mine. It was only a soft kiss, soft and sweet, but it was enough to send tingles down my spine. I closed my eyes and rested my hands on his chest. I felt his palms on my back as his arms held me close. Eventually he pulled back; I had absolutely no intention of, so he was the one that had to, and rested his forehead on mine.
“Rox, we have to get back to the Manor,” he said, breathlessly.
“Hmm,” I mumbled.
I felt a rumble in his chest as he chuckled. “Come on, lets go.” He stepped away from me, brushing my face with his fingers one last time as he did. Then he turned and slowly started walking towards the back door, with me following close behind.
As I walked behind him, I brought my fingers to my lips and lightly touched them. We’d figure everything out, I thought. Surely we weren’t doomed. We had everything ahead of us and for the first time in a long time, I felt some I hadn’t thought I’d feel anytime soon....hope.
Greg greeted us at the Lancer. “Finally,” he scoffed. “We thought we were gonna have to send in a search team.”
“Sorry Greg. We had some things to discuss,” Logan answered, not looking at me.
“That’s alright,” he answered. “As long as we can go home now.”
“Home?” I asked him, smiling and slightly unsure.
Greg looked down, embarrassed, but with a huge grin spread across his face. “Well, the Manor.” He waved his hand in the air, brushing it off. “You know what I mean.”
I nodded, feeling my mouth pull up at the edges. I caught Logan’s eye as we got into the car and his face was the mirror of amusement mine was. His eyes were twinkling, reminding me of diamonds.

***************

Despite my happy attitude, the drive back to the Manor was a quiet one. Greg drove and Logan rode up front with him, they seldom spoke, but I wasn’t paying much attention. I was crammed in the back with the two other hunters. Both Logan and I wanted to keep things between us quiet. The last thing we wanted was to draw attention to ourselves, so we had decided, despite not actually talking about it; it was just assumed, that we would keep a certain amount of distance between us.
Even though Claudia had told me to call her if things had gone bad, I still tried to call her. I wouldn’t be able to go into any details with the hunters in the car, but I was sure I would be able to hint things to her. Yet I couldn’t get through to her. Her message bank kept saying that the phone must be out of range. Strange, I thought, slipping my cell back into my pocket.
My stomach was starting to feel flat as we neared the gates of the Manor. I think subconsciously I knew something was wrong before I saw anything. We were pulling up the driveway when the Manor came into view. It was creamy, plain......... and on fire! In the darkness, the light from the flames lit the entire property. It was so bright it hurt my eyes to look at it. Smoke was streaming from the windows and it rose above the treetops filling the air, looking like a haze.
I heard Logan curse in the front seat, before he pulled out his cell and called for back up. I also heard him demand that they send fire trucks. This was bad. Real bad. When a person burns, their blood more or less dries up and this, to a vampire, is the equivalent of blood loss. The result for us is death.
Before the Lancer had even skidded to a stop, I threw open the back door and scrambled out. I was sprinting across the lawn at the fastest pace I could, and my feet were just about to connect with the stairs when I felt strong arms wrap around my waist, pulling me to a holt. They then proceeded to drag me backwards.
“No!” I shouted, squirming around. “Let me go!” I was still staring straight ahead at the Manor’s front door, my intended destination. It was shut and there was a plank of wood bolted across it, preventing it from opening and from letting anyone out. Whoever had been inside was still in there, unable to get out. “We have to help them.”

“We can’t,” Logan’s voice was near my ear, as he bent down. It was strained and I could hear the desperation in it, as I struggled and pulled in his grasp.
“Yes, I can,” I shrieked. Why wouldn’t he let go, I thought? “Let go of me,” I shouted again. I was pulling desperately in his hold, trying to break free. But I wasn’t having any luck; his arms were wrapped firmly around my waist. At one point he had me lifted off the ground as I twisted and turned, kicking out at the air with my feet.
“No!” He was dragging me farther and farther away from the Manor. “You can’t help them. You can’t help them!” His voice was as loud as mine as he shouted above the noise of the fire.
The noise of the fire was blaring. I could hear crackling and snaps as things inside burnt. It was blazing and the heat was intense, stinging my skin, as I was standing so close to the house. But I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting inside that house. I have to help them, I thought.
“We have to help them,” I moaned. I could hear the tone of my own voice and I could hear it shake. My eyes were wet and I could feel a few tears slide down my cheek. I continued to pull in Logan’s grasp. It was only a matter of time before I broke free, I knew. And I did.
However I hadn’t even moved a step before he reached out and seized my wrist, pulling me back and turning me to face him. He held both my wrists in his hands, raised between us, his fingers holding tightly. “They’re dead!” he shouted. “Roxi, they’re dead, you can’t help them!”
This brought me to a stop. I stopped moving and shouting and looked up into his face, lit by the flames. I could see something in his eyes, other than his determination to keep me back, something I’d never seen in his eyes before; fear.
I felt my heart shatter and break into a thousand different, tiny, pieces as I realised he was right. He was right, they were dead. And I knew it. If they were still inside, then they were dead. And no one had gotten out, that was evident.

I felt my legs fall out from under me and I collapsed into him. He caught me and I broke. The tears overflowed from my eyes and I sobbed into his chest as the pain took over. We sank down into the grass and he held me close to him. I rested my head on his shoulder and I felt his hand on my hair.
I was dimly aware of the hunters and fire trucks as they arrived, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I didn’t care about anything; I didn’t have it in me. People and activity buzzed around us, as people rushed around, trying to put the fire out.
We sat on the floor and I drowned in my grief. Logan held me and rocked me slightly, while I cried. He whispered it was okay, and I knew he meant that it was okay to fall apart. Because nothing else was okay. Things would never be the same and they would never be perfectly alright. And there was nothing he, I, or anyone else could do about that. The covenant, almost everyone I knew was dead. The people who mattered to me and who had stood by me and held me up when I would have fallen down, Alana, Quintenn, Ben, Callie..... Claudia, I choked when I thought of Claudia and I felt Logan’s arms tighten around me. Almost my whole world had been inside that house, that house that was now not much more than a pile of ashes.
Things would never be okay........ because they were gone!