“The boy?” I said.
“Did he appear to you as a boy? To me he is always an older man! But I suppose he takes the form you are comfortable seeing. He’s the familiar of Clan Walvis,” she said. “He’ll help you if you’re in a lot of trouble.”
“See?” Silvus said to Thom. “I knew what I was talking about. It all makes sense. If he’s your familiar, Alissa, that’s wonderful news. A familiar can appear any time, anywhere, to help you with magic.”
“I just call him?”
“Yes,” my mother said. “Hundreds of years ago, he used to protect the entire clan. The clan died out physically, but since your spirit was trapped in this world, he has been as well. He’s been waiting for your final life. But he hates people.”
“He…hates people?”
“Yes. He really does,” she said. “I think he’s begrudgingly getting used to me, but he doesn’t like to talk at all. So he has helped me with the garden and the animals now and then. He just knows what magic will help. I don’t have to say a word to him.”
“I guess that explains why he seemed like he was trying to remember how to speak English…”
“He would’ve been used to Dutch, of course,” my mother said. “But despite the dreams, I don’t know a word of Dutch!”
I was pretty overwhelmed by all this information. Not just a mother, but a real witches’ familiar! No one in the Order seemed to have a familiar. It was a taboo subject to even speak of them. Now I wondered if Father Joshua did something to the familiars because they might protect a witch from him, and they could escape the walls of the village easily. Having familiars would probably undermine the entire Order. Maybe my familiar had escaped whatever that fate might be by serving the clan instead of just me.
“He was helpful enough to us,” Silvus said. “Did you see the councilwoman?”
“The woman? Oh, yes, is she all right?”
“No,” Rayner said. “I’m afraid you made out much better than she did. The Order isn’t playing games if they would kill someone who is theoretically an ally to them. She must have asked questions he didn’t like.”
“And those bullets!” Silvus said. “They take magic away. They could threaten the entire race of vampires with such a tool.”
It was in a more solemn mood that we returned to the cottage. The men buried Father Bogdan while my mother looked at the mess in her cottage. She waved a hand to the fire and then stopped short. Her magic no longer worked. “Well, it hasn’t burned out,” she said, putting some kindling on the fire and stirring the coals back to life. She looked so weak but she was used to doing everything for herself. I knew the type. That was how my other mother was too.
“Let me help,” I said, rolling up my sleeves. “I know how to get a fire going. I can make breakfast. Can I use these apples?”
She smiled. “Of course.”
“I’ll surprise you.” I looked in her cupboard and found very basic supplies. She seemed to live on bread, soup, and fruit. She didn’t even have butter. I found a jar of bacon grease for cooking the apples. No cinnamon. I wondered how the fresh rosemary would taste.
“You must have grown up working hard there, in the Order…,” my mother said. “I’m sorry, Lisbeth. I would have rescued you if I could. I was alone…I didn’t know what I could do.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I said. She must have been about my own age when I was born… “They would have killed you.”
“I saw Rayner too. Before you were even born, I knew he would come for you. I saw that my destiny was to prepare you for the day he would come for you.”
“My destiny…”
`“Yes.”
“How would you have prepared me?”
“Well, I would have told you about Lisbeth, and all the things I remember about our lives in Amsterdam. We would have made a trousseau and I would teach you all the good and useful magic I know…” She paused. “But I also would have told you how to kill him.”
“You would have prepared me to marry him or kill him?”
“Those are your choices, I believe,” she said. “And only you can decide which one is your own fate.”
“Do you think he’s a good man?”
“I think he loved you more than any man in Amsterdam,” she said. “And now, he is also a vampire. The path of darkness will always be his to walk.”
I paused for a long time, considering the knowledge I might have had, and the choice I would have faced. But it would be very different if he had come to me when I was a powerful witch. “Do you think I should become a vampire?”
“Only you can decide such a thing. But you must defy the spell that has made you the ‘Blessed Thrall’.”
“Rayner thought you might have cast it,” I said.
“No. It was the Amsterdam covens. They thought you had been tricked. But I was your mother. I knew what was in your heart, then.”
“Even though you remember Rayner stealing me away to London?” I thought I had already decided I would become a vampire. But now I had to argue.
“Yes. At that time, he was all you wanted. Do you feel differently now?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you might.”
“I have been in the hands of bad men,” I said. “And now I think I would like a good one. But he isn’t a good man. They all admit it.” Rayner’s face was still never far from my mind. I could conjure up the feel of his shirt against my cheek and the woodsmoke smell of him. I chopped the apples with quick slams of the knife. “So you have memories of us…the first time?”
“Yes. At first I didn’t approve. He didn’t have very much money. But I’m sentimental. I thought, eventually, that a love like that would carry you through times when the purse is tight. And he was ambitious. He worked hard, even if he didn’t have connections. He made you a beautiful pair of shoes, embroidered with tulips and whales! Your father would never have even thought of anything so romantic as making me handmade shoes, and I thought that maybe the son of a shoemaker wasn’t so bad after all. The embroidery wasn’t even a man’s job. He did it just for you, because he couldn’t afford to buy you anything so nice.”
“I am sure I could never kill him,” I said. Rayner mentioned that he had made me beautiful shoes. He must have been very proud of them, to still be thinking of it centuries later, and I must have loved the gift.
“This is the truth,” my mother said. “How much he loved you. But what is also the truth, is the man he became. That was five hundred years ago. I don’t know who he is now. I have known other vampires, and no vampire lives to be five hundred years old without taking many lives and losing much of his humanity. I’m telling you what I saw, what I know. Just make sure you follow your own heart and not something the Order told you. You were meant to be happy, Lisbeth.”
“I’m not Lisbeth!” I snapped.
Her brows immediately softened with apology, which reminded me so much of my other mother, the one I had always known. It was the gentleness of a woman who loved me and knew me well, and it made my chest tighten. “You’re right,” she said. “Alissa. I’ll try to remember.”
“I—I hardly know how to think about it,” I said. “I just know that I have no choice. That everything has already been written in stone by all the lives I lived before. What’s left that belongs only to me?” I bit my lip. Did I have a right to insist that any part of me was mine alone? Father Joshua would have said no. I was there to wait for his order and submit to my father and then to him. I was a woman and I was nothing.
Rayner would not tell me I was nothing. He tried to give me freedom, but it never felt like freedom at all. I wasn’t sure if it was his own fault, or the bonds of fate that bound us.
My mother looked at the window, and then at me. “I’ve just been praying for your happiness, Alissa,” she said. “I knew what my dreams told me.”
The door opened. Thom walked in, looking dirtier and dustier than ever. He arched a brow at me.
He heard e
verything I said. I could just tell.
“We’re having a funeral now,” Thom said. “If you wanted to come and pay your respects to the councilwoman.”
“Sure…”
He took my hand. My brain was scrambling over the things I said, wondering if I needed to explain. He didn’t seem angry, but I wondered if he would tell Rayner.
“I won’t tell Rayner what you said, darlin’,” he said in a husky voice. “So you want to be free, is that what you were saying? Rayner told you you could go if you wanted to go. He even said he’d give you money.”
“Yes…”
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Thom whispered, his voice a silken threat. But then his smile came on its heels. Was he kidding, after all? “Nah,” he said. “You don’t really want to go. I thought you remembered how it was between us. You protested. You resisted. But you wouldn’t go. From that first day, we were tangled together and we would never be free from each other again. Still, when you talk about leaving but you don’t do a damn thing about it, it only makes me more excited for you to feel every knot that binds you…” His hand shifted to my wrist, his thumb and forefinger tightening. “You’ve got about eight hours to run, otherwise…tonight, I’m going to show you how it feels.”
In the panic of the last couple days, I had almost forgotten how these men could make me feel. Heat rushed through me in an instant before settling in my toes. All the feelings were giving me whiplash. But we had come to the graveyard so I had to compose myself.
Paola had seemed so strong, standing up to Father Joshua, and I wondered what it said about my dream of taking down the Order that she was just another person they had killed now.
I saw no other path I could take.
As Silvus led us in a somber prayer, I saw Waldemar appear sitting in the tree branches, looking as comfortable perched there as a bird. We met eyes, and it occurred to me that Rayner, Silvus, Jie and Thom were not the only ones who had waited for me for five hundred years. The familiar of Clan Walvis had been waiting too.
Chapter Fourteen
Alissa
“The darkest of days lead to the darkest delights. The greatest releases,” Thom said, late that night. “That’s what I’ve always found…and if anyone knows, it’s the likes of us…we see enough death, but we know how to live because of that…” His voice was a whisper, as he slipped the hair tie out of my braid and unwound the locks. “Are you ready for the night I’ll give you, darlin’…?”
“He gets so poetic right before sex.” Jie sat down across from us and propped up one of his boots to unlace.
“Well, if you’re ever going to be poetic, that’s the time.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I find it cute.” Jie grinned.
Was I ready?
I had seen just a taste of what Thom did to Bertie. So far, in this life, I had been treated pretty tenderly. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be as thoroughly corrupted as Thom promised.
“It’s been…it’s been a long day,” I said.
“Tell me what you really think.” Thom was massaging my arms, and I relaxed under his strong touch. Now his hands moved to cup my breasts. My nipples were already hard even before he flicked his fingers over them through my shirt. Now he unbuttoned the shirt enough to expose them and let Jie watch as he plucked on my nipples.
A part of me wished he would take all my control away and do what he wanted.
My breath quickened, little gasps barely restrained. Why did I want that?
However messed up these vampires could be, they never hesitated when it came to protecting me, my sisters, or my family. What Thom promised tonight…yes, I thought. It would be a release. Not a prison. A dark delight.
I had no idea what he would do.
He moved his hands down to open my thighs and lifted my skirt, slipping a hand sideways past the fabric of my underwear and gave me a teasing stroke of the slick folds. My nub of pleasure was already so swollen that even the slightest touch of any of the skin there sent me into little writhing motions of pleasure.
“Oh, she’s ready, all right…” Thom said huskily. “This is my specialty, you know. Making baked beans, and doing this.”
I couldn’t help the tiniest laugh.
But I went silent again as he pulled my hands behind my back and tied them together, so painstakingly that everything seemed to leave my mind except a sense of anticipation. He moved to my arms and then the rope crossed just below my breasts and lifted them a little, pressing into the soft flesh.
The ropes were softer than I remembered from my past life memories. But both times, Thom seemed to know just what he was doing. I could move a little, so I was almost comfortable, and I almost thought I had some control, but then I ran into the taut rope and realized I was in his hands.
“Where did you…learn to do this…?” I asked. “When you met Bertie, it was like…”
“Learn? Oh, I’ve never been much for learning anything, I just figure it out. Good thing I got to live two hundred years. Takes longer to know things when you’re stubborn as I am.”
“I’ve been working on him,” Jie said. “Sometimes I make him watch a Youtube video or something. He learned prettier knots from Japanese erotica on Instagram.”
“Kids nowadays have it too easy,” Thom said. “It was a lot more fun to think I invented bondage. No…” He looked at me. “I take that back, now. It could never be more fun than it is right now.” He ran his tongue across his upper lip and put his hand on my chest, pushing me back onto the pillows.
We had stopped in a bed and breakfast run by other vampires on our way back to catch our flight to Hawaii. The house was right on the street of a charming little town. As soon as the sun went down, kids filled the streets in costumes and the couple who ran the place handed out candy. After nine, the two bars in the town were hopping with adult parties. I could hear voices pass by on the sidewalk even at this late hour as the humans walked home. None of them seemed to know that two of their neighbors were vampires.
I was glad we were spending the night in a town like this. Everything seemed happy and normal here, and it helped me forget about the Order, at least for a precious hour.
I couldn’t hand out candy with our hosts Emily and Gerard, though. I couldn’t bear to look at all the happy little girls the same age as Carrie.
“Shh, now…let everything go,” Thom said, smoothing a furrow from my brow. “You can’t worry when you’re in Thom’s hands. I’m your world tonight. And you’re my whole world. Well, I guess Jie can edge in a little. You’re going to have some troubles in your life, same as you’ve always had, same as all of us have. Take it now and let it all go.” He slid down my body to fondle and suckle my breasts, to nip at my nipples with the smaller teeth between his fangs. My mind slipped away again as my body responded to the stimulation of sensitive spots. I rolled from shoulder to shoulder as my arms fought the ropes.
Every moment I struggled against the tight ropes, I felt a greater sense of relief. There was so much struggle in my heart, but Thom knew how to make it physical instead. To give me something to fight that was simple.
He put his hands on my legs and kept them open and now he flicked his tongue along my pussy, curling the tip inside my entrance. My whole body was compelled by him. I tried to move closer and he pulled away.
“This is the part where I remind you what you’re in for,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt like he enjoyed every moment of the strip tease. When he had undone all the buttons he flicked his shirt open and ran one hand through his hair, giving me his best, naughtiest blue eyes.
“Shameless.” Jie stood up and pointed at me. “You better not forget me just because I went easy on you the other day.”
“I—I won’t.”
He pulled his shirt off entirely, tossed it on the chair, and shook out his hair like a model.
“Showin’ me up on my night.” Thom shoved him.
“You wanted me here.” Jie flicked Thom’s chest.
At this p
oint my eyes were about to explode out of my head because—oh my. I couldn’t believe where my brain was at, but they were both hot. Every boy I’d ever glanced at shyly in the Order was nothing compared to the two of them competing for my attention right now.
My legs had drawn back together as I felt a trickle of wetness slide out of me onto the quilt.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Thom jumped back into the bed, pushed my thighs open again, and hooked his finger under the rope beneath my breasts. He pulled me back up into a sitting position and gave me a deep kiss, which I returned with a hunger that was exploding out of me.
He let me fall back down onto the pillows and he moved my legs, bringing out the rope again, tying my legs together so they bent together and when he sat me up again I was sitting on my feet. The ropes were tied like art, the knots in patterns as beautiful as anything I’d ever crafted, and he did them so fast and now my body felt even more prone. I couldn’t walk. Couldn’t kick. I was completely helpless and defenseless.
“What should we do with you now?” Thom growled to me softly, his voice sealing my fate before I could even answer. “Your heart is beating faster. And your sex is hungrier than ever… oh, I knew the moment I saw you. You still had Bertie’s eyes. Well, they’re just yours, aren’t they? The name doesn’t matter. You’re our girl. What should we do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I…”
“Say it, darlin’.”
“I want you inside me,” I gasped.
“Damn right you do.” He stepped back and unzipped his jeans, stripping them off, giving his hard cock a stroke as he set it free. “And I don’t think I can wait any longer.”
He climbed into bed on his knees and Jie got behind me and helped support my body as Thom lifted my hips up high enough that my legs had to spread around him and he thrust deep inside me with one fierce stroke.
Love Me Madly Page 10