Chapter Fifteen

At first, Allaura thought that the elf’s enchantment with the blue stone was amusing. The enraptured look on hs face, particularly in his eyes, made her smile. Even after he grabbed the necklace to keep the light connected to him, she was not alarmed. She had believed all she had to do to control him was give him a command.

“Legolas, look at me.” Her voice was soft. However, when the elf completely ignored her, she said, “Look at me,” in a louder and more commanding voice.

There was still no response, as Legolas continued to stare into the depths of the blue fire within the stone. He showed no signs of being aware of anything else.

In frustration, the woman reached out and put her right hand over the stone, effectively cutting it off from the elf’s sight.

This time, however, there was not the expected cry of anguish. Instead a low growl of angry warning came from the elf’s throat.

His eyes were captured by the stone’s light and would not leave it, but his mind was still functioning on a rudimentary level. Legolas’s mind was aware only enough to engage in doing whatever it needed to do to keep the light in front of him.

One of Legolas’s hands released the necklace and grabbed the woman’s wrist, squeezing it painfully.

Allaura jerked back at both the intensity of the look she saw on the elf’s face and the pain that his grasp was causing. She feared that he might actually try to do her harm, if she didn’t let him have his way. Reluctantly, she moved her hand and uncovered the blue stone.

Legolas let go of her wrist and once again cupped the necklace in both palms. He was instantly lost to the power of the blue fire.

Allaura stood and stared up at Legolas. How was this possible? How could the necklace so take over this elf’s being that he could possibly resort to violence to keep from being separated from it? This had never happened before, but she had to remind herself once more, that she had never used the necklace on an elf before. Still, this all-consuming reaction was disturbing.

Now that she had her hands on an immortal, she was not about to do anything to ruin it. This was new territory, and she had to handle it carefully, or she could lose him, something she was not willing to do.

Thinking fast, Allaura said, “Legolas, if you come with me, I will make sure that you have the light to keep.”

The elf didn’t break contact with

the stone, but his expression did change slightly.

Seizing on that , Allaura began to pull Legolas toward the bed, making sure she didn’t turn away from him. “Take off your clothes,

she said roughly. Perhaps she had not spoken forcefully enough before.

It made no difference. There was no response. This was getting to be more than frustrating. Allaura was not used to being ignored - for any reason.

Verbal commands weren‘t working, so there was no way the elf was going to take his tunic and shirt off himself. Maybe physical maneuvers would work, as long as he could keep his eyes on the blue stone. After all, she had been able to pull him toward the bed easily enough.

She would have to do it for him, not that she minded, though sex was not the purpose of what she was doing. Still, she saw no reason not to enjoy the action of partly disrobing him.

When the elf had been stripped from the waist up, Allaura put her hands on each of his shoulders and pushed him down onto his back across the bed. Due to the chain around her neck, she had to go down with him and stay close.

Through it all, the necklace remained at the same distance from Legolas’s face. He might as well have been a statue for all the movement his hands displayed. He also could be lying on cold rock on a mountaintop instead of a soft, luxurious bed for all he knew - or cared.

It wasn’t until they were lying down that she realized how difficult it was going to be to use the stone on him. She had to touch his body with it while chanting ancient words that invoked the power she sought from it. The elf was never going to let her take the stone away from his sight in order to press it to his body.

Well, she thought, if I do it quickly enough he cannot stop me. Thus deciding, Allaura snatched the necklace out of the elf’s hands. She quickly pressed it to Legolas’s shoulder, covering it with her palm in the same manner she had done previously with the ranger. As soon as it touched Legolas’s skin, she began chanting.

Legolas had a horrified look on his face. He let out a blood-curdling scream of anguish and pain. Whether this reaction was due to the elf’s separation from the blue light or from the necklace’s touch, was unclear. Either could have been the case.

Allaura was so surprised by the elf’s scream that she almost stopped the chant but forced herself to keep the ancient words flowing, aiming them at the elf’s right ear, as she leaned down closer to him.

The elf moaned and closed his eyes, his breath coming in short gasps before evening out when his body went limp.

Finishing the chant, Allaura carefully removed the necklace from the elf’s body. As with all of her victims, though she preferred not to think of them that way, a red burned area appeared, marring the otherwise flawless skin of the elf.

It wasn’t the elf’s reaction that had shocked her. It was the fact that she didn’t feel any different. She rolled over on her back and stared up at the ceiling. Why hadn’t she felt anything? Calming her racing heart, she came to the conclusion that it was because she had just had the ranger and didn’t need to be infused again so soon. That was what she told herself, at any rate.

Still somewhat shocked and trying not to shake, Allaura gripped the necklace in her hand, covering the stone and keeping it from once again touching the elf, as she raised herself on one elbow and. stared down at Legolas’s frowning tace. It was clear that he was troubled even in unconsciousness. This had definitely never happened since she had first possessed the necklace.

She had lied to the ranger about how she had gotten the necklace and the earrings. Her husband had not given them to her. The truth was far different.

Many centuries ago, Allaura’s parents had died. She had been four years old at the time, and she was sent to be raised by her father’s father and the woman she had believed to be her father’s mother.

Her grandfather had died two days after Allaura turned fifteen, and her grandmother followed him three months later. After the shock of her second loss wore off, the teenaged girl began to go through the old woman’s possessions.

Tucked away in a closet, Allaura found a small wooden box, the same one she still had. In the box, she found the necklace and the earrings and immediately became entranced by them. The first time she put them on, a thrill went through her that she could not accurately describe or even understand.

In the bottom of the box, under the velvet lining, she found a handwritten note that explained the power of the necklace’s stone. It gave brief but detailed instructions on its use.

The one thing that caught Allaura’s attention was the statement that the necklace, when used as instructed, would grant the user immortality. Her grandmother had always been young and beautiful, not at all looking like the typical grandmother, at least not until shortly before she died. So if she was immortal, why had she died? It made no sense to Allaura at the time.

Later she was to find a letter her grandmother had written to her husband shortly after his death. She wanted to be with him and had put the necklace away and never touched it again, knowing that without its power to transfer a man’s life force into her, she could not sustain her immortality, and thus she had finally succumbed to old age.

How long she had lived, Allaura had no way of knowing, but it was plainly the love of her last husband, if indeed she had ever been married before, that had taken hold of her heart and turned it, so that even the necklace could not break the bond.

Her grandmother had not been a cruel soul. However, a mood of melancholy had overtaken her shortly after she had first used the necklace, and she could never escape the deaths she was forced to cause. Releasing its power had not been hard for her do. All this she had explained in the letter.

Allaura, on the other hand, had reacted differently to what the blue stone could do for her. She had not been a bad person growing up, but the power offered to her was a cruel kind of seduction she had not been able to reject.

No love, not even the man she herself had married just a few short years ago, could turn her from the immortal life she had gained . The very act of transferring the life forces she required was like a drug to her. She craved it beyond even her need to have it. She had loved her grandmother but considered the woman weak for letting a man turn her from the joy of what the blue stone could do for her.

Allaura laughed. If it had not been for her grandmother's choice to die, she herself would never have had the necklace to begin with. She would have lived a common, perhaps dreary, life and died a common, dreary death.

Soon her heart had been totally corrupted, and she thought nothing of the men she destroyed to maintain her life, not only the length of it but the quality of it, as well.

For centuries she had continued in the same pattern, using up the essence of men until they had nothing left to give, and then she discarded them, caring not that they were soon to die.

It had been a day in May, almost twenty years ago that she had met the man who would become her husband. She had liked him, certainly far more than any other man she had ever met. She had even loved him in her own twisted way.

When he had taken her to Ravenlore, she had known she must have it. It was then that they married and moved into the large stone house, which was more a fortress than a home.

Ravenlore was secluded, making it hard for Allaura to find the men she needed to sustain her. At first she had been reluctant to use her husband. However, necessity had won out over any genuine feelings she may have had for him.

It was only in recent years that he had begun to lose too much of the essence he needed to remain viable to her. It was then she had hired Grath and his men to find her new men, who could keep her in the physical condition she was accustomed to.

And now Grath had brought her an elf, someone she had never thought of using before. Someone she had soon realized could be her llife source for eternity.

Allaura stared down at the unconscious elf. This would never do. How was she going to handle this unexpected occurrence? Every single man she had ever taken had been easy to control. All she had ever had to do was give a command, and the men would do exactly as she wished.

Perhaps this elf was going to be too difficult. She could always go on the way she had been. But there was something in her make-up that wouldn’t allow her to give up on anyone, especially this one. She would keep him. All she needed to do was figure it out.

Allaura stood up and walked over to her dressing table and put the necklace in the wooden box. She didn’t want the elf to wake up and have the blue stone be the first thing he saw.

Going over to one of the windows in her room, she looked out over the manicured lawn and the forest beyond. She would wait until the elf woke up and see what condition he was in. Then she would go from there.

*~*~*~*

Far below the house, Aragorn languished in the stone vault. It was not so much the discomfort of the place as it was his worry over Legolas. The elf had been gone for hours.

It wasn’t until his stomach let him know it was not pleased at not being fed, that the ranger realized the guards had not come with his med-day meal. When no evening meal showed up either, he forgot his hunger and concentrated on his friend. “What has happened to you, mellon nin? What has that woman done to you?” He didn’t really want to know the answers to those questions, because if he did, he was afraid he would either be very angry or brokenhearted. Probably both.

He sat on the stone bench and shook his head, running his hands through his hair. It didn’t take long for him to become restless. He jumped up and started pacing. He wanted to throw something but there was nothing to throw. He thought about taking a boot off and throwing that against the wall, but that would only end up hurting him, because the floor was littered with the tiny pebbles from the ceiling.

Instead, Aragorn concentrated on calming himself down. He knew from experience that getting worked up was worse on the one doing it. Giving himself a fit wouldn’t help Legolas nor would it upset Allaura or the guards, if they ever found out about it, which was highly doubtful.

Aragorn sat back down, got up and paced, sat back down, got up and paced. On and on.

A loud crash above him, accompanied by a muffled bellowing noise and tiny pebbles and stone dust falling on his head halted his pacing in mid stride.

Once the dust settled, the ranger looked up. Thinking about what had just occurred, he began to believe that Legolas had been right about who - or what - might be above this vault.

“Treco, is that you up there?” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

He was not surprised when there was no reply. If a dragon’s bellowing was muffled, then surely a human’s voice, even one that was yelling, would be impossible to hear.

“If Legolas were here, he could probably...” The man couldn’t finish the sentence, as a fresh pain entered his heart. “If Legolas were here, I’d be a much happier man right now, because I‘d know how he is.” Aragorn felt like doing his own stomping.

The vibrations and bellowing began again, and this time, they didn’t stop. So many pebbles and stone dust descended on Aragorn that he had to pull his tunic up over his head and mouth to keep the little rocks from hurting him and the dust from choking him.

He stood up on the stone bench and faced the wall. He was sure the ceiling was going to come down. After a few more violent shakes, it did.

TBC