Chapter 346: "I WILL KILL HIM!"
Belle entered the refreshment room and came to an abrupt stop at the sight before her. From her panic-stricken state, her emotions slowly shifted into full blown rage.
Angel was standing with the support of a table, crying his throat out with blood running down his forehead, while a man, whom she recognized clearly, held a thick metal ornament in his hand. He was shielding a woman behind him from the vampire baby in front of them and wielding the weapon, shooing her son away.
"Get away from here!" he ordered as he lifted the thing to strike again.
Angel bared his fangs in defense, but before the man could swing the weapon at her son again, Belle moved quickly and snatched him into her arms. She cradled his bleeding head tightly against her breast, his blood staining her dress.
Her eyes widened as she looked down at his broken skin. A deep slit had formed on his forehead, gushing blood as Angel cried even louder after seeing her. Belle gasped at the sight of the wound, her hands trembling as she tried desperately to stop the bleeding.
Then, with her son pressed protectively to her chest, she raised her rageful eyes to the blond-haired, blue-eyed man before her.
"How dare you hurt him?" she demanded, her voice trembling with fury.
"How dare he attack me!" Lady Althea exclaimed from behind Jamie Marchant, still hiding in fear.
A few minutes earlier, while Belle had turned her back on her son, Angel had truly meant to obey his mama, just as he always did. He had sat quietly in the comfort of the chair, his chin resting on his palm, smiling in contentment at finally being with her. Then, the sharp scent of blood wafted to his sensitive nose.
Angel, having a vampire’s heightened senses and an even deeper desire to drink blood, was still far too young to resist the temptation. He had not grown enough to understand that the smell of blood didn’t always mean it was feeding time. To him, whenever he caught that scent, it always meant he could drink.
Believing so now, and without a moment of hesitation, the baby moved with a speed even Belle would not have noticed. He crawled away from the shop and slipped into the room where the smell came from, pushing the door open with surprising strength for a small kid.
Inside, Lady Althea was sobbing, having cut her thumb by mistake on the design of the wedding attire she was examining. Jamie was trying to stop the bleeding by tying his handkerchief around it, coaxing her gently, when the door suddenly burst open. In crawled a vampire baby with a red, hungry look in his eyes.
Before either of them could react, the child leapt to attack. Lady Althea screamed in terror, but her hoarse voice was not loud enough to alert anyone outside, as the vampire lunged toward her.
"Get the thing off me, Mr. Marchant!" she cried, frantic with fear as she fell back with the vampire trying to kill her.
Jamie hastily reached for the metal ornament on the table beside them and used it to strike the creature’s head, hitting him away from his fiancée. The baby fell back with a hard impact, then scrambled up again and began to wail while staring at them.
It was then that a woman burst into the room, scooping up the creature and hugging him protectively to her chest. She dared to glare at them with heated hazel eyes, demanding with seething anger how they could dare hit the vampire who had only acted on instinct.
"That thing almost killed me!" Lady Althea exclaimed from behind Jamie, glaring in horror at the woman who clutched the monster to her breast.
"He is just a baby! How could you hit him with such a heavy thing?!" Belle shouted, unable to control her fury at the insensitive behavior of the two before her. She wiped Angel’s bleeding forehead with her sleeve while rocking him gently, her hazel eyes blazing as she glared at them.
"A baby?" Lady Althea scoffed. "That thing is a bloodsucker, and—"
But Jamie stopped his fiancée from saying more with a raised hand, his eyes fixed on the enraged woman before him, the one cradling the vampire child.
He had never seen her before, yet the longer he looked at her, the more a strange sense of familiarity consumed him, as though he knew her from somewhere deep in his memory but couldn’t put a finger to it.
"Milady... do I know you?" Jamie Marchant finally asked. But the flash of resentment that crossed her face when she turned her gaze from Lady Althea to him took him aback.
"How dare you?" Belle gritted out, her fury fueled not only by the sight of her injured son but also by the hidden rage within her that had long been seeking release toward this man, whom she had once thought she loved. Hate, she realized, was an understatement for what she felt toward him now as she looked at him, while he only stared back at her in confusion.
"I will make you regret ever hurting him with that thing, Jamie," Belle said through clenched teeth, angry veins bulging beneath her rosy skin.
Right at that moment, Evenly and Rav burst into the room.
"What’s wrong? We heard Angel’s voice!" Evenly cried, rushing to Belle’s side. Her eyes widened and she gasped when she noticed the blood trickling from the baby’s forehead.
"How did he get hurt?" Evenly asked, her voice raised with alarm.
Belle, her chest heaving with rage, suddenly handed the baby into her friend’s arms. "This monster hit him with that iron idol in his hand! And I will kill him for it! You will die today!"
Nobody saw it coming. Belle, after giving her son to Evenly, moved with swift, deadly grace that caught everyone off guard. She wrenched the metal idol from Jamie’s hand and, with all her strength, aimed to smash it against his head. Jamie barely managed to block the blow with his arm, but the impact instantly broke his arm, and he fell back in pain.
Not even giving him the chance to recover from the pain of his broken arm, Belle leapt upon him, raising the weapon high to finish him up like every instinct in her body wanted her to do.
Her hazel eyes darkened, flashing from hazel to black as she lifted the heavy iron with both hands. With a wild scream, she swung it down toward his head to smash it.
But before the strike could land, Belle was shoved away with great force. Rav lunged forward and caught her, wrapping his arms around her struggling form and pinning her to the floor to keep her down.
"LET GO OF ME! I WILL KILL HIM!" she screamed, thrashing like a wildcat, clawing and striking at him. Her nails raked Rav’s face, and her fists pummeled him as she fought to break free from him.
Her loud, piercing cries drew many people into the room, and soon a crowd gathered at the entrance, their whispers and gasps filling the air like a swarm of bees.
"Good heavens, what’s gotten into her?"
"I told you the lady was not in her right mind when she screamed at the entrance, Helga! Look how she’s attacking like a possessed person!"
"Is she really sane in the head?"
"Mark my words, no sane woman would behave like that in public. She should be locked away before she harms someone else."
"Someone fetch the guards at once!" exclaimed one of the ladies, clutching her fan to her chest as she and the others shrank back, horrified, watching the vampire struggle to keep her down.
"My lady, you have to calm down!" Rav gritted out, struggling to keep her restrained. His face was bleeding from her scratches, his jaw bruised from her punches, yet worse than the pain was the dreadful thing happening to her, her skin was darkening, black patterns creeping over her face, her eyes flashing dangerously as her rage consumed her like someone suddenly possessed.
She was heaving, screaming loudly, and fighting with such unnatural strength that even his vampire power could barely keep her down.
"I WILL KILL HIM!!"
Rav tried desperately to reach Rohan through their link, but to his horror, it was blank. It was as if there was no connection left at all between them. Not knowing what else to do, nor how to stop Belle before she killed the human whose arm hung broken on the floor as he groaned in pain, he made a split-second decision.
He struck her sharply at the neck. Belle went limp immediately, unconscious in his arms. The black marks on her skin faded and vanished before anyone could notice, as the gathering crowd couldn’t seemed to have the courage to walk into the room to see what was wrong from what they could see from the door.