An Immortal in London: Corruption by Bethanie Hardie Page A

“you’re intelligent Victoria you’ll figure it out.”
                  We sat in silence looking up at the stars, our differences put aside and our pasts far, far behind us.
    “Thank you for doing this for me.”
                  “I owe you one for not killing me when you had the chance.”
                  “I’m going to have to tell Levi, if he finds you he won’t give you a chance to explain,” I said more to myself than to Oliver.
                  “Who is Levi?” Oliver asked, and I told him.
                  I told him everything that had happened since our immortal beginnings. It felt good to tell him everything, the good and the bad.
                  “I’ll make sure to avoid him,” he said, laughing lightly, “He must be a good guy for you to put up with all of that.”
                  I took a breath and nodded with a small smile. I turned to him and stood as I said, “I should head back.”
                  “Be careful,” he called after me.
    “Goodbye Oliver.”
     
    When I got back to Gabriel’s he was on his porch waiting for me. I stood in the driveway for a while simply looking up at him. Slowly I walked towards him and he stood and took me into his arms. Jesse had left shortly after I had, telling Gabriel where I had gone. Everything was a mess, ten times more so than it had been before.
                  “Tomorrow I’m going to see George,” I announced, over dessert.
                  Gabriel looked up to me and nodded with a smile, “He’ll be glad to see you again.”
                  “I hope so; we’re hoping that he can help us. That way we might be able to avoid further punishment.”
                  “Levi didn’t seem to mind,” he said, bitterness creeping into his tone.
                  I shrugged and took a drink from my glass of iced water, “It’s not all up to him.”
                  That night I slept far from soundly. The dream was torturous. It was the same as the others, it replayed throughout the night until my mind wandered from sleep. Levi was stood before me his hands held out, blood soaking them. Each time I looked down and saw the blood pouring from my empty chest the dream would begin again, I knew as he held me the final time before I awoke that he was dreaming with me.
     
    “Jesse called by earlier, dropped this off,” Gabriel said, sliding a sealed envelope across the table. I sat down, my arm itching furiously. Gabriel watched me with curiosity as I scratched my arm and tried to open the letter simultaneously.
                  I opened it as I took a sip from my cup of tea. I frowned as I read the letter that Jesse had written up for Oliver. “Mortals,” I cursed, standing up from where I sat at the table and I ran upstairs to change.
                  I drove to the address that I was given for Jesse’s hotel and knocked onto his door impatiently.
                  “You got my letter?”
                  “What does this mean?” I asked, thrusting the letter into his hands.
                  He read over his typed words and looked out up and down the corridor. “What is it that you don’t understand?” he asked, as he offered me a seat.
                  I stayed standing in the doorway and stabbed the paper where the name Bernadette Francis was printed, “She has been missing for forty years, what on earth has she got to do with this?”
                  Jesse put the papers down and began to explain. Oliver had been to where he believed the mass of the dead had been created, and killed two untrained hunters before a third and final terrified girl gave him Francis’s name. She told him how she had been visited by a woman who had told her would help her out financially, she ran an agency that gave