Me: Can you come back to the house?
Karsten: Okay. Everything alright?
Me: Yes, Emilie has some crazy notion. Hard to explain.
Karsten: On my way.
Shirley Temple and I waited on the porch for him to return in uneasy silence.
I didn’t want to know the answer to this question.
The punishment for leaving a new Moroi was death.
Sten couldn’t be Emilie’s maker.
When he finally loped into view, I tried to act nonchalant but couldn’t get rid of my worry frown.
“What’s wrong?” He asked lightly, looking between Owen’s fiancé and me. His uncomfortable laugh ruptured the silence, as he leaned against the porch railing across from us.
I spoke first because Shirley Temple just stood there looking sheepish. “She thinks that you’re her maker.” I furrowed my brow.
I watched as disbelief followed by irritation flashed across his face.
“That’s crazy, little girl.” He told her, reined in anger making his accent thick. “This isn’t a game. I’m not about to play this with you.” He told her pointedly.
In my peripheral vision, she took in a big breath, then let it out before hurrying inside on a sob.
The screen door bounced open and closed a few times after her exit.
“Hvad helvede! I didn’t make her. I would think I’d remember that. Was she serious?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I patted the seat next to me. “Come sit with me?”
“I can’t.” I watched as he looked around at the forest. “The team’s late. I’m going to patrol around the house until they get here.”
I pursed my lips and watched as he took off at a jog.
My cell phone buzzed, and I looked at the caller ID–Hazel Richards, my friend, and maker.
“Hey! Karsten told me the team is late, what’s up?” I asked.
“I’m so sorry, Sarah. But there’s been a change of plans. Aurev wants Khama’at here on the east coast. There is a team coming, but their orders are to bring her in. She’ll do her work in a secure work environment.”
“What the hell, Hazel? Is this because of Owen? What does Aurev say?”
“Aurev has complete faith in you that you’ll be able to control Amy. We all agree that she’d be better off at your lab in Trenton.”
I sighed into the receiver. “Fucking Owen.”
“Look, if Owen had wanted her there, then we’d make it work.” She hesitated, her tone still bright. “Unless there is something I need to know. Some reason why you think you’re better equipped out there in Colorado. Is there?”
I shook my head, and the silence lengthened. “I understand. I was thinking that I made a mistake bringing her here anyway. I didn’t know that the team had left or that my kids would be here.”
“So, have you visited with them?” Her voice warmed with hope. I imagined her in her usual 40’s style dress and nylons, her hair in victory rolls.
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to have any kind of relationship with them being so far away while I’m in New Jersey.”
“I know sweetie, just hang on. You’ll have them back in your life in no time.” There was another long pause before Hazel’s soft voice came through my phone speaker again. “We’ll figure something out. Owen is a rational man, he won’t try to keep you from them.”
With that, we said our goodbyes.
I watched out into the woods and leaned back onto the wicker couch.
Now I had to go work some magic with Amy, or Khama’at, or Amilia or whatever we were supposed to call her.
When I did find the teenager, she was still rambling off documents to Daniels, the tech.
“Hey, Daniels, mind if I take Amy away for a break?”
He was flustered by the interruption but nodded.
“Amy, want to come upstairs and have a cookie?”
She looked at me suspiciously.
Following me up the steps and down the hall to the large kitchen, she sat, saying nothing.
“Do you like Daniels? He’s pretty nice.” I said as I opened the rooster cookie jar and filled a single plate full of cookies. “Do you want coffee?”
“Black,” she said.
I sighed as I poured us both a cup. I handed her a mug before scooping sugar into mine.
“So, there’s been a change of plans. We’re going out east.”
A smile briefly played across her lips as she looked up at me with that mix of innocence and insight. Her pale blue eyes have witnessed lifetimes upon lifetimes. It was a shame that she’d been turned as a child; she would’ve been a beautiful woman.
“I like your eyeliner; can you show me how to do that?” I asked.
Her smile widened, “Oh my gosh! If you like this, I’ll show you another way, it would look so good on you. There’s like a small wing, then a large wing or colors. Black would look good on you–I’d do like brown on Emilie, but she doesn’t seem like the eyeliner type.”
Laughing, I pulled out my own eye pencil, “Come here, show me.”
Turning my chair, I handed it to her.
“Did you want small wings or big wings?”
“What do you have?” I asked.
“I don’t have wings, just regular.”
“Umm… you think wings would look good?”
“Uh huh.” She nodded.
“Okay, small.”
Bending forward, she deftly lined my lids.
“Look up,” she directed me, finishing the lower line.
Lifting my compact up, I examined her work.
“Nice, thanks,” I said.
“Well, that was better than dictating to boring-McBoring-face down there.” She told me around a bite of cookie in her mouth. Crumbs fell to the plate, and one stuck to her chin.
When she’d finished, she pushed the crumbs around on her plate. “I know y’all don’t believe me, but David’s alive.” She wiped her hands on a napkin. “I’ll keep helping you if you look for him.”
“Okay, I’ve already contacted a private eye about him, but…”
She rolled her eyes at me. “But what?”
“But, you know. I want to make sure that you behave with the soldiers who are coming to protect us.” Emphasis on ‘protect.’
Teenagers must’ve been making the same look of incredulity since the dawn of time.
“Whatever. Don’t be such a loser. You need to have a little faith in me. It’s like you think I’m some kind of child or something.” She let out a sigh of disgust.
“It’s called communication, Amy. I’m communicating with you so that we understand each other and don’t have a misunderstanding.”
“Whatever.” She spat. “I want my phone back.”
Oh my God! I was going to pull my hair out. How on earth could this ancient vampire still think and talk like a fourteen-year-old? Yet she was also the same person who created the Moroi Plague. It baffled my mind, and I wondered briefly if David hadn’t really been the Butcher.
“You’ll get a new phone from Chronos when we get there.”
“I don’t want a new phone. I want my phone!”
I smiled tightly. “Look, you aren’t a prisoner. You can leave whenever you want, but you won’t have any protection. Who will help you find David?” I paused for dramatic effect. “You can’t find him if you’re dead.”
She crossed her arms and pouted. “Fine.”
There was a wicked, scheming gleam in her eyes that I didn’t like though.
Why did I feel like I’d won the battle but lost the war?
Amy cooperated remarkably with the security team. She didn’t even balk at being handcuffed, which I thought would completely freak her out.
When we were inside the Chronos Corp jet that was sent to retrieve us, I watched out the window as we took off. The sun had already gone down, and the roadway lights twinkled below.
The whole situation with Emilie weighed heavy on my mind, and I couldn’t fathom someone
making an accusation like that up.
But the other alternative was that Karsten made her… Or made her maker… Or who knew what connection they had. I hadn’t delved into Moroi parentage, and bonding stuff.
Watching my Viking out of the corner of my eye, my mouth curved into a small smile.
Maybe I could have both a relationship with him and his help. Deep feelings began to stir for Karsten, something I’d never felt with Owen.
My mind took me back to the beginning when I’d first seen my ex. He’d been an intern at the hospital where I worked. He was serious, grounded and I thought that he’d make a good dad. Rushing into marriage, we assumed that it would be easy for me to have children, but it hadn’t been. Strange symptoms had plagued me for a while, but I’d never put two and two together until the miscarriage–I had Huntington’s Disease. I was devastated, and as a physician, I knew exactly what the outcome would be. Aurev had been hounding me to make the transition since my eighteenth birthday, but I wanted to have children, so I chose to wait.
At first, my doctor at Chronos suggested that they just turn me, but when I refused, they began treating me with their blood. It altered me and I no longer ovulated. So, I met with a Moroi physician.
Dr. Seals was a fertility doctor, but she also had been researching gene editing long before the human scientific community knew anything about it. I chose her because she could edit the trinucleotide repeats out of the HTT gene, therefore removing the mutation that causes Huntington Disease. She did so for 9 embryos, two of which became Rebecca and Jackson.
Across from me, my soldier caught my eye.
“You’re making a strange expression. What are you thinking about?” He asked.
The corner of my mouth quirked up in a sardonic smile. “Ghosts,” I said just above a whisper.
He pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow. “That’s a dangerous game, don’t let yourself be drawn in. Memory is fallible, even our memory.” He was talking about Moroi. We had “perfect” recall, but I wondered if it was susceptible to change like the way human memories could change.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Five Months Later
I’d been so busy sorting through Amy’s notes and testing some of her research, that I’d had almost no time to think about blood. I’d like to think that I was just getting that much better, but I knew it wasn’t true.
It was there, beneath the surface waiting to come take my breath away and make all reasonable thought fade away. There was no control over my thirst, but I managed it and kept it at bay since we’d caught the Butcher.
Walking the empty New Jersey streets toward my building, I could feel my Viking’s eyes on me. His presence comforted me, especially since he’d thwarted a few attacks on my lab.
The streetlights made pools of light every half block, and my eyes continuously scanned the roadway. The black asphalt was still wet after a brief nighttime rain, and the smell of ozone hung in the air.
It was a little after 3am. Back in my internship days, we called this the witching hour.
Only unnatural things happened at this time of night.
As a creature of the night, I should know. I was up and awake and going to work.
When I came to the nondescript door of my building, where my research lab was located, in the industrial part of town, I waved my hand over the scanner.
Everyone who worked for Chronos had an RFID chip implanted that gave them access tailored to them.
While other Moroi clans prided themselves on maintaining the old ways, Chronos prided itself on charging into the future.
Amy had been given living quarters on the third level of the building, so I began my day going there.
She didn’t sleep very much, so I’d be surprised if she weren’t awake.
Two guards sat playing cards at a small table outside her door. I hesitated before knocking, “Sten, will you wait here?”
He gave me a barely perceptible nod before pulling up a chair to the card table.
When there was no answer, I carefully turned the lever and called out. “Amy? Are you awake?” I struggled with the multifaceted person Amy was. I still found it hard to believe that this girl, this child was also a murderer, a scientist, a tinkerer of the Moroi body. However, I’d seen the evidence with my own eyes. The things we’d learned that she had done were… staggering… amazing, but irrevocably wrong.
“I’m up.” She mumbled from the other room.
I walked around the corner and into her bedroom, where she lay sprawled out on the large bed, the glow of the TV lighting her face.
“I had some news for you so I figured I’d come over here and see how far you got last night.”
“Well, you’re going to be disappointed. I quit about the same time you went home.” She turned her head to finally look at me. “What? I’m not a slave, I need downtime.”
“You’re right. Did you like that pizza Dr. Peter’s brought you the other day? I could get you some more when I go back to HQ.” I told her.
“Eh… It was okay. I’m sooooo bored here!” Her eyes were back on the TV. I looked over my shoulder to watch the old show M.A.S.H.
“So, let's add some excitement, huh? I have something to tell you.”
“Eh…Whatever.” She crossed her arms and straightened herself against the headboard. I noticed she’d been clutching the stuffed Easter Lamb that I’d given her after we’d first met. “I’m just tired of being a prisoner.”
I’d learned better than to contradict her. Scooching the empty pizza box, a half-full bag of popcorn and a grocery bag full of candy over, I sat next to her on the bed, digging through the bag until I found a lemon drop to pop into my mouth.
“Wow, network TV?” I asked.
“I feel old.” She sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I keep telling myself that David’s alive, but I don’t know. I was so sure before, but the connection has faded. I think I’m losing him.”
I put my arms out. “Come here.” She nestled into me, and I held her like the child she appeared to be. We may not be human anymore, but everyone, including Moroi, needed to be touched. “You’ve been so sure, what’s happened?”
She fingered the edge of the blanket and pulled on a loose string.
“I was sure,” her voice barely above a whisper. “But, what happens when the connection stops? When I feel nothing?” Another sigh, “Maybe I sense someone else. Someone else whose blood I drank. I’m not even sure it’s David anymore, the connection has grown so weak. I barely feel it at all.”
Smiling, I squeezed her. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up, but maybe you need something to look forward to, even if it doesn’t pan out. The private eye I told you about has sniffed something out in Ohio. He thinks that he might have found David.”
She pulled away from me. “We’ve got to go there! We’ve got to get him! He needs me!”
I reached out and grabbed her skinny arm. “Stop. Right now, we’re collecting information. We don’t know for sure that it’s him.”
“What? No! I can’t…”
I opened my phone and found the picture that Forest had emailed me.
“Here, look at this. Is this him? He might look different.” I held it out to her, and she examined the image of a young man through my cracked screen.
Her features softened, and she fluttered to the bed to sit and stare at the picture. It was of a young Moroi with dark blond hair and big brown eyes. He was healthy and fit.
Amy swallowed and her lip trembled, when her gaze met mine, her expression was filled with an emotion I didn’t understand. Her pale blue eyes were wide and she chewed her thumbnail in a worrisome gesture.
After several shaky breaths, she pushed the phone away.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure it was him before this moment. But one look at Amy told me everything I needed to know.
David was alive.
The teenager looked at me with wide sorrowful eyes, a tick in her cheek. “What’s the plan?”
/>
“Well, I’m glad you asked. I was going to fly to Ohio. He’s living with a clan of Amish Moroi.”
She screwed her face up and asked incredulously, “There are Moroi that are Amish?”
I shrugged. “That was news to me too. If you think about it, it’s pretty clever. A closed society, little interference from the outside world.” I nodded.
Amy gave me duck lips and squinted her eyes. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought she was just another teenager.
When she flew out of bed and began throwing her new clothing into a bag, I held up a hand to her.
“You can’t come. You need to stay here where you’re safe, and we’ll bring him to you.”
“What? That’s bullshit! No, I’m coming.”
I just shook my head. “Listen. Sit down for a second…”
“There is no fucking way that I’m staying here! This is crap! You’re an asshole! You guys are just using me! You’re just some frustrated, pathetic mom who lost her kids and now you’re stuck with me!”
Her tantrum was shocking but didn’t take me by surprise anymore. She began throwing things. Her mug, the pizza box, even the bag she’d been packing was thrown at the wall.
The barrage of insults continued, and some of them even struck home deeply. But I forced my face to maintain a neutral expression as I made my way to the door, flashed my arm over the lock and left.
A loud thunk hit the door as I closed it behind me.
There was no talking when she was like this. I could only wait for her to calm down and then she’d be all smiles and apologies later.
Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a parent.
Outside the room, the soldiers continued with their card game.
Leaning against the wall, I slid down into a crouch and put my head in my hands.
“Are you okay?” Karsten looked at me over his cards.
I pulled myself to my feet. “Yeah. She’s just a teenager. I feel like she’s aging me though.”
He laughed. “You’re the only one who can put up with her baggage. Actually, I’m surprised you haven’t given up.”
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