Story Notes:
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Evangeline swam beneath the surface of the quiet, peaceful lake, the coolness of the water temporarily soothing her restless soul. She came up for air just in time to watch the trees stir in the evening breeze.
The sun was disappearing fast, and Van felt herself shiver as she hurried to shore and gathered her clothes. She needed to get back to the cabin before it got completely dark, or else she wouldn’t survive the night. She dried off with a towel and slipped the simple white cotton gown over her trembling body, her eyes glued to the horizon. The red-orange ball of fire lowered in the sky at an alarming speed, and her stomach clenched.
“God help me,” Evangeline whispered as she quickly put on her sandals and sprinted through the trees towards the small house on the other side. All around her, the sounds of the night creatures echoed through the woods, and she was almost paralyzed with fear. Their harsh growls made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and forced her to run faster to escape. Soon, she told herself. Soon she’d be safe in the cabin, away from those things that came every night wanting to hurt her.
Finally, Van reached the house, and not a moment too soon. The darkness had come. She hurried to enter and bolt the door behind her just as she heard cackles and a loud screech outside the cabin. Evangeline grabbed the arm of a nearby easy chair and dragged it across the floor, using it as a barrier between her and the threat outside. She did the same with the kitchen table and all the furniture in the place until her terror began to fade, but she knew to keep her guard up.
By now, she had done this enough times to know what happens when she got too relaxed at the wrong moment. Evangeline knew what it was like to lose one’s life, because she’d died before. She also knew what it was like to take life away.
Keeping the big kitchen knife close for protection, Van sank to the floor while training her eyes on the large glass windows for any signs of intruders. She was tired from all the energy she spent running for safety, and her hand automatically tightened on the knife’s handle as she fought to stay awake.
The nightly visions were as close to Hell as she ever wanted to get, but she had no choice but to deal with them since she awoke in this strange and lonely place. During the day, it looked like the beautiful countryside where she and her parents used to go on picnics when she was little, but at night it was her prison. It was a brutal jail where the guards came out to torment her after sundown, reminding her that she was alone in this world that stood between the land of the living and the dead. She was in a coma, and some racist asshole had put her there.
If I ever manage to get out of this place, I plan to return the favor, you son of a bitch.
She remembered that day in Cristian’s studio, when she suddenly became lightheaded and weak before slipping into the blackness. The very last thing she had felt was Bo’s kiss of life against her lips, and the last she heard was the sound of paramedics working on her failing heart. And now she was stuck in limbo with no hope of escape...
No longer able to resist the call of sleep, Evangeline drifted off into troubled dreams.
@@@
“John? Baby, what’s going on? Why haven’t you returned my calls?”
He stood next to the angel statue in the park, his head bowed in the shy, sweet way that Van loved but this time things were different. She sensed the change in the clenching of John’s powerful jaw, saw it in his brilliant eyes which were the same color as Arctic glaciers and just as cold. His smoky voice, endlessly sexy, almost distracted her from the hurtful words he threw at her.
“It’s over, Evangeline. We had fun and all, but now it’s time to move on.”
Van’s heart lodged in her throat. “What the hell are you talking about, John? Fun? What we have together is more than that and you know it! I love you, and I know you love me even if you can’t say the words yet. Why are you like this?”
John leaned forward and a lock of his dark chocolate hair framed his emotionless face as he stared her down. “Are you deaf? I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m tired and frankly I’m bored with you, so let’s just cut our losses and no hard feelings, okay?”
Evangeline’s pain shifted to anger, and before she knew it she delivered a resounding smack across John’s face. He stumbled back with a muffled curse, and when he faced her again she saw that he was bleeding from a cut on his lip. Despite the wound, he gave her a mocking smile. “That’s cute, very cute. Was that supposed to make me come to my senses and apologize? Sorry, but this is still goodbye.”
Gathering all her strength, she met his eyes. “All right, then. It’s your damn loss. All I have to say is this. If your goal all along was just to get your rocks off, then you should have been a grown-ass man about it and told me at the very beginning instead of playing with my heart by attaching strings and giving me your mother’s pearls and making me love you…”
A sob escaped her throat and Van bit the inside of her cheek to keep in control. John continued to stand there in the snow, the collar of his trench coat turned up against the wind. He had always been so beautiful to her, and it was ironic that she still desired him even when he turned into a sleazy rat bastard. She forced herself to continue, her tears glistening from the street lamps that illuminated Angel Square.
“I guarantee you this, John McBain. You will never find anyone better than me. Never! No other woman has touched you deep inside like I did, not even your beloved Caitlyn. Oh, and I know nobody was able to excite you and make your body scream with pleasure like me. You didn’t deserve the love I gave you, so now it will go to someone who’s looking for more than just a year long fuck buddy. You’ve just missed out on the best thing of your life, and to quote Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale, ‘You will never get another whiff of this!’”
Evangeline stormed off without looking back, leaving John alone in the cold winter’s night.
@@@
She awoke to a blinding white light, and she raised her arm to shield her eyes. Groaning from the dual pains of her head and heart from the memory of her breakup with John over two years before, she waited until her sight adjusted to the room that she now found herself in. After several moments, Van was ready to open her eyes again and face whatever the White Room had in store for her this evening. Each night there was something different, and it was impossible for her to prepare for what would happen next.
Evangeline took a deep breath and stood, walking towards the table in the center of the room. The twin gift-wrapped boxes were a pleasant surprise, but not without a measure of pain. She opened them one by one to reveal love tokens from two very different men: a string of freshwater cultured pearls and a very elaborate and expensive diamond necklace. She held the beautiful pieces of jewelry in each hand, unable to look away.
John and Todd were like night and day. Where John was quiet and reserved, Todd was loud and outspoken to the point of going too far. McBain always followed the rules while Manning tossed them aside and made his own. Both of them were deeply flawed men, but they were also very passionate…
Van shook her head to clear her thoughts but failed miserably. She’d tasted their passion. Whether over the course of a year long relationship or in one surprising kiss in an elevator, she knew what it was like to be the focus of such intense desire. She missed it so. More than anything, Evangeline wanted her life back. She wanted love.
She also wanted revenge on the person responsible for her coma, the hateful bigot whose actions robbed her of the opportunity to take a chance on love again after finally breaking free from the emotional black hole that was Cristian Vega. She wanted to find the OPP and make them pay for what they’d done to the minority citizens of Llanview as well as herself, by any means necessary.
Throwing her head back, Evangeline let the rage flood her soul, taking her over. She gave herself to it, hoping to find the strength to will herself back to reality. Her heartbeat quickened at the idea, and she dropped the diamonds and pearls back into their boxes. She didn’t need them anymore, they’d served their purpose. They’d reminded her of the life that awaited her on the other side, and with her plans for revenge, it was enough.
She stared at the white light coming from the ceiling, concentrating hard.
“Release me… Set me free…”
@@@
John McBain bolted upright in bed with a shout, his body covered in sweat. He ran a shaky hand over his face to wipe away the moisture, waiting for his heart to stop racing in his chest. He’d had a terrible nightmare where something happened to Evangeline, and he was scared shitless.
It was just a dream, damn it… but why am I so rattled?
He threw the covers aside and left the bed, heading to the bathroom to answer the call of nature. Moments later, he stood at the sink after washing his hands, staring at his pale face in the mirror. The shadows under his eyes were the same, having first appeared the day after he purposely broke Evangeline’s heart to protect his own emotions, and they never left him. The new addition to the collection of stress and sadness on his features was the look of complete hopelessness in the ocean blue depths of his eyes. The moment he saw it in the mirror, he knew he had to fly to Chicago to visit Evangeline and check on her himself. He couldn’t rest until he knew she was okay and that the dream meant nothing.
Leaving the bathroom, he checked his watch before grabbing the phone to call Bo. He was usually at the station pretty early, around 7am, so John knew he’d catch him.
“Buchanan.”
“Bo, it’s me. I need to take today off to see Evangeline…”
John grabbed a hunter green button-down shirt from his closet and slipped an arm in while juggling the cordless phone. He figured that he could catch the next flight out to Chicago, grab a rental car and drive to the special clinic where Evangeline was being treated, and would be back by that evening to catch up on his ongoing cases. The Spencer Truman case in particular was a real pain in his ass since John was convinced that David Vickers was taking the fall for someone, but he was clueless as to whom Vickers would protect at the risk of his own neck.
On the other end of the line, Bo nodded in understanding. He knew that breaking up with Evangeline was the hardest thing his Chief of Detectives had to do, and that he was still paying the price for his mistake. He could spare John for a few hours.
“Sure, John… but keep in mind that we’re all having a hard time staying afloat these days. I’m going to need you to come back as soon as you’re done in Chi-town.”
“Got it, boss. Thanks a lot for this.”
“No problem. Tell Eva I said hello.”
“Will do. Bye, now.”
John ended the call and finished dressing before leaving the room for Llanview Airport. I’m coming for you, baby. And if anything’s wrong, then God help the person who caused it because I’m gonna send the bastard straight to Him. Please let her be okay.
@@@
Todd Manning strode down the wide hospital corridor, whistling a cheery tune as he carried a large bouquet of pink roses for Evangeline’s bedside. He was devastated when he found out about the OPP attack from Nora, of all people. He’d had a change of heart about letting Van go with him to Chicago, so he left the plane and called her cell phone to invite her to join him on a later flight. Nora answered the phone, and he could tell from her voice and the lack of her usual razor-sharp insults that something was horribly wrong.
When he heard that Evangeline’s heart had stopped and she fell into a deep coma, Todd felt as if the floor had opened up and swallowed him whole. She was one of the very few people who had genuinely gave a damn about him, who stood by him when the rest of the world labeled him a baby killer, and the fact that someone hurt her because of the color of her skin greatly wounded him and ignited his rage like a spark with gunpowder. In the darkest corner of his soul, the old ghosts of past crimes leaped back to life and right then he vowed that he’d get the bastard who had done this to her and make him suffer until he begged for death.
He approached the nurse’s station, his thoughts still on the arsonist. He’d used all the shady private investigators he could get a hold of, and the trail was cold. The perp was obviously a professional who had perfected his deadly skill, and it frustrated Todd to no end.
The middle-aged nurse looked up from her paperwork, and Todd gave her a dazzling smile that covered up his earlier anger. “Hello, I’d like to see Evangeline Williamson.”
The woman’s face froze in shock, and Todd frowned at the reaction. “Is there a problem?”
Flustered, the woman turned bright red. “Um… I’m sorry, but… oh, my.”
Todd’s temper exploded. “What is it? Is she all right? What the hell is going on here? Will I have to make a goddamn phone call to get some answers from this quack institution? Answer me, or you’ll find yourself out of a damn job! I want to see Eva!”
The nurse snapped out of her worried state at the threat. “You can’t! She’s gone!”
His eyes widened and he yelled loud enough for the entire floor to hear.
“What do you mean, she’s GONE???”
The ding of a nearby elevator sounded behind him. Snarling at the interruption, Todd turned around to find himself face to face with John McBain, whose face was equally angry at the news he’d overheard. Speechless, Todd watched as John elbowed past him and walked towards the nurse, leaning forward until an inch separated their faces. His voice was rough and dangerous, and he looked like a walking time bomb ready to explode.
“I want to know what the hell happened to Evangeline Williamson, and I want to know NOW!”
To Be Continued…