"Why didn't you?"
With a faint smile that left his eyes cold, he said, "Bloody stupid sentimentality, like any mortal man. The same reason I kept it after taking it back from him. I even let the fellow live for her sake. She hadn't loved him, but she'd considered him a friend."
Cordelia's mind boggled at the idea of sentimentality overwhelming Karl's instinct for self-preservation. "Then this man transmitted the story to his descendants."
"I mesmerized him to make him forget about me, but as I now know, I got to him too late. He must have already written down everything he knew or suspected. It's just my rotten luck that his memoir eventually passed to someone who didn't dismiss it as a fanciful legend."
"All those years you lived together, did you keep drinking her blood?" She blushed at hearing that question come out of her mouth. After what Karl had done to her in the car, she suspected that topic was like asking about his sex life.
He confirmed her guess. "Yes, that's what we do with our lovers, if we're reckless enough to enter such a relationship. It's a depth of intimacy no human man or woman can imagine."
"But how did she survive?" The few vampire movies Cordelia had seen portrayed victims dropping dead after one bite.
"We don't drain our donors. We need human blood and life essence every few nights to stay healthy, but only in small amounts. The bulk of our nourishment comes from animals."
"Then you don't kill people?"
She glimpsed hurt in his eyes before he raised the shield that made his feelings impenetrable to her. "Only in self-defense. In all these years, Cordelia, have I done anything to make you believe I'd commit murder?"
Flushing hotter, she shook her head.
"If we're careful, the donor suffers no harm," he said. "In fact, the enzymes in our saliva actually guard against some forms of illness and preserve a youthful appearance well past middle age. That was one factor that made Lydia's would-be suitor suspicious."
"What was she like? She must have been special, for the two of you to spend most of her life together."
"Actually, you remind me of her." His voice lowered to a caressing tenderness. "Oh, not in coloring or height. She was much shorter and had chestnut hair. The shape of your face, though, reflects hers so perfectly it's uncanny." A glint of crimson flared in his silvery eyes.
Cordelia's pulse quickened at that look. "You had strong feelings for her, didn't you? You must have, to keep her journal all this time."
"I cared for her, a mistake I'll never make again. Becoming attached to an ephemeral, then watching her grow old and die cuts too deeply. Compared to my kind, you people have lives almost as brief as a kitten's." His fingers skimmed over Topaz's fur, and he added with a dry chuckle, "A drop in the bucket, as you said, or more like the ocean. Fool that I am, I'll probably not destroy that journal, even now. I'll just have to find a safer place to hide it."
That exposure of his feelings both embarrassed and confused her. If he could care for someone that way, Cordelia would have trouble hanging onto her new image of him as an inhuman monster. She went on the defensive. "So a bloodsucking creature of the night promised to watch out for my ancestors?"
The darkness lifted from his face. "You say that as if it's a bad thing. Even bloodsucking creatures of the night have our place in the order of the universe. Yes, I vowed to grant your family my protection as long as the line continued. Up until now, I've accomplished that goal without revealing my true nature. Since your aunt down in Richmond married young and appeared to be secure for life, I decided to concentrate on your father."
Cordelia's mind boggled anew at the idea that he might rush to the rescue of elderly, staid Aunt Jill, her only other living relative. "And she's never had any children, so now that dad's gone, we're the last of the line."
"Exactly. I bought the house where I presently live in order to be near your father in case he needed my help. Along the way, we became friends, so far as friendship could exist when I had to withhold that truth from him." He flashed a smile. "You might say I'm responsible for the existence of you and your sister."
"Say what?"
"Only that I introduced your father to Corinne."
"What?" She could hardly restrain herself from jumping up and slapping him. "You know our mother, and you've never said a word to either of us? Never mind me. You knew darn well Randy was always dying to find out about that woman."
"I respected Corinne's wishes. She had sound reasons for breaking off contact with you."
"Yeah? I can't wait to hear them. Exactly how did she get together with Dad, anyway?"
"Those occasional chess games I played with your father had been going on since shortly after we first met. Twenty-eight years ago, Corinne happened to be visiting me when he was scheduled to drop in for a game one evening. She and I were long-time friends."
"Vampires have friends?"
"We're solitary predators, but we don't shun our own kind altogether. Corinne and I had mated once, long ago."
"She's your ex?" A fresh twinge of jealousy stung Cordelia. She reminded herself that he could hardly have led a celibate life in all those centuries, assuming the age he claimed was true.
His sardonic smile implied that he guessed her thoughts. "Our relationships don't work that way. We don't marry. Females choose mates only to sire offspring, after which the father has no contact with the child. Corinne didn't manage to conceive with me. That wasn't surprising, since our race suffers from low fertility. On the visit when she met your father, she was about to come into season and invited me to mate with her again."
"Season? You mean, like going into heat?" Karl's tale got wilder and stranger by the minute. Could he be hoaxing her after all? But what reason could he have for spinning such outrageous lies about his past?
"That's how our biology works. I tried to persuade her to go elsewhere. She wanted a child, not just relief for lust, and our previous attempt had failed. Well, as I said, she met your father when he came over for our regular chess game, and they hit it off. The professor's expertise in Shakespeare intrigued her. She's a fervent devotee of the Bard. You ephemerals do have the ability to produce great art, something that's beyond us."
"Thanks a bunch." His faintly patronizing tone reminded her of someone praising a pet for a clever trick.
"At the end of the evening, Corinne went home with your father. She spent two nights with him. I suppose she must have used her mesmeric power so he wouldn't notice she slept literally like the dead by day."
It took a few seconds for Cordelia to match up the puzzle pieces he'd spread out before her. “Wait a minute--you're saying my father got a vampire woman pregnant?"
"Hybrid births are extremely rare but not impossible. They normally occur only between females of our kind and human males."
"Why is that?"
"Because male vampires become potent and fertile only when exposed to a female in estrus. Otherwise, with our long lifespans we'd outbreed our food supply in no time. Sexual reproduction doesn't hold great emotional significance for us." His eyes captured hers. "We get erotic satisfaction from feasting on our human donors."
She glanced away from him, stirred by the memory of how he'd "feasted" on her, although briefly. The humiliating awareness that he could sense her reaction didn't quench the rush of heat that flowed through her.
"At the time I wondered how a mortal man had the stamina to keep up with her needs. A female vampire mates several times an hour until her heat wears off. A human teenager would have trouble rising to that challenge, and Professor Torrance was already forty-nine then. I can only suppose Corinne kept him going by hypnotizing him, maybe not to the point of performing like a vampire, but enough to satisfy her."
Cordelia covered her ears in horror, not entirely faked. "Do not go there!" It was bad enough learning her father had hooked up with a vampire. She didn't need to imagine their sexual techniques.
She sprang to her feet as the full meaning of what he'd said crashed over her. "I
f you're not lying, you're saying our mother is a vampire. Randy and I are only half human." Her head spun. Gray spots clustered before her eyes. The next moment, Karl leaped up and caught her as her legs trembled. When her vision cleared, she found herself on the couch with his arm wrapped around her and her head on his shoulder.
Chapter 5
* * *
He brushed her hair back from her face and bestowed a cool kiss on her forehead. "Don't be afraid. I'm still here."
"That's supposed to make me feel better? You're the one who just informed me I'm a monster." She choked down the acid that welled in her throat. He'd shattered the universe as she knew it, and he expected her to relax and roll with the punch.
"Monster? What does that make me? You really shouldn't insult the bloodsucking creature of the night who has you in his clutches." His gentle mockery tamped down the frantic hammering of her heart a little. "What did your father tell you about your early life?"
"Not much, just that our mother abandoned us with him when we were babies."
"That's essentially correct. After a normal eleven-month gestation, she gave birth to non-identical twin girls. She named you after Shakespeare heroines in honor of the interest she shared with the professor. When you were six months old, she appeared on his doorstep with a pair of infants. After one night, she vanished, leaving the two of you behind."
Cordelia bowed her head on her hands and gulped several deep breaths, until she could gather her thoughts to speak. "Dad must have tried to find her."
"He did, and he demanded my help, which I refused. I wouldn't defy Corinne's wishes in the matter. She made the transition as easy for him as possible, leaving a notarized document naming Gary Torrance the father and relinquishing parental rights to him."
"Why didn't she want us?" She blinked to clear away the tears that burned her eyes.
"She did." He tightened his embrace and stroked her hair. "She bitterly regretted having to give you up. By the middle of your first year, it was clear your human genes would be dominant. Corinne felt you would be better off with your father, growing up as fully human children, safe from the shadow of your mother's heritage."
"We could've been given a choice."
"She didn't want to confuse and frighten you or your father. You were safer being shielded from our world. Some of our people would have disapproved of the interbreeding if they'd learned about it, perhaps violently."
"So Dad didn't know what you are?" At least her father hadn't conspired to hide her true origin from her.
"No. He must have suspected something unusual about me, of course, since I hardly appeared to age in all the time he knew me. But whenever he showed signs of undue curiosity, I simply told him not to worry about it."
She squirmed out of Karl's embrace, clenching her fists "You controlled his mind?"
"I nudged him gently in the direction I wanted. That was the only way I could maintain our friendship. After you and your sister came into his life, I spent more time with Professor Torrance than I would have otherwise. I couldn't allow his doubts about my nature to surface and grow."
“That's no excuse for rearranging people's memories like--like computer files."
"Don't worry, I can never do it to you, thanks to your mother's blood in you."
She gnashed her teeth in frustration at the way he missed the point. "Then I'm supposed to be perfectly all right with you doing it to everybody else?"
"I survive as I must. I'm not human. Don't think of my human appearance and behavior as more than protective camouflage."
"The way you treat human beings like toys, I don't see why you bothered associating with us. You could've fulfilled your vow of protection from a distance."
"Not after I promised Corinne to oversee your welfare. I have a double obligation to you." He ran his hand over Cordelia's arm as if smoothing the fur of an angry cat. "Don't think too harshly of your mother. Even if she'd kept you, you wouldn't have lived with her past the age of six, if that long. Women of our species nurse their infants for the first four years of life. For that period, but only then, the mother-child relationship has an intensity human parents can only imagine. Mothers sense their babies' emotions, although not the reverse. That power doesn't awaken until our teenage years."
"What happens when vampire kids turn six?"
"Within a year or two of weaning, the child's education is taken over by a mentor, usually an older relative on the mother's side if one is available. After the young one reaches adolescence, the mother doesn't lose interest, but she becomes at most a close friend."
"Corinne wasn't even that to Randy and me."
"She did whatever she could without putting you at risk. She left you in my care, to whatever extent I could carry out that wish discreetly, and she sent financial support."
"Big deal. Trying to buy us off." She folded her arms.
"I think she made the right decision. If Miranda hadn't insisted on meeting her and then got kidnapped by Howard, you never would have needed to find out the truth. Corinne's original assumption proved correct. You're both essentially human, Miranda more so than you. She inherited only the empathic perception you mentioned. Your psychic powers are more varied and highly developed."
"What does that make me?"
"Mainly human, but with enough vampiric traits to give you a uniquely piquant flavor--as I found out." His predatory grin made her insides quiver.
"Oh, God, does that mean I'm going to turn into a vampire?"
"Certainly not. Any tendencies in that direction would have shown up years ago. And before you ask, my bite won't change you, either."
"Then why is our mother still keeping her distance from us?"
"She did more than send money. She didn't remain as distant as you think. Twice a year, she came to visit me so she could steal a look at her daughters."
"What do you mean?" She wasn't sure whether the image of her mother spying on her from the shadows felt more reassuring or creepy.
"I drove her into Annapolis in the evening at times I knew the two of you would be out and about, to let her catch glimpses of you. It consoled her for the loss of her children, seeing for herself that you were thriving. Don't blame her for her caution. You can't conceive of how it hurt her, being afraid to do so much as speak to you."
"Well, we're not kids to be protected anymore." Although she still resented Corinne's abandonment and found it disturbing that her mother had hooked up with Karl as well as her father, Cordelia was more worried about why Miranda hadn't come home. "Exactly what did you mean, we were safer not knowing the truth? What's the danger you keep dropping cryptic hints about? Does it have anything to do with what's happened to Randy?"
"As I said, many of our kind disapprove of interbreeding, and Josef Kovac, as he calls himself now, is one of them."
"Is he really our uncle?"
"Yes, he's Corinne's brother. He's the main reason she left you girls with your father and cut off all direct contact. Josef doesn't make any secret of his contempt for vampires who get emotionally involved with ephemerals. Most of our people consider your kind fit only for prey or at most pets."
"Pets!" Did Karl think of her that way, only a step above Thor or Topaz?
"Why does it surprise you that creatures who are immortal and practically invulnerable would think that way? And I said most do, not all."
She wouldn't ask about his own beliefs, as if begging for his high opinion. "So Corinne thought her brother might hurt us because he feels that way?"
"She had good reason to think so. Josef urged her to abort the pregnancy. Instead, she went into hiding until you reached the age of six months without showing any nonhuman traits. When she finally allowed her brother to find her, she let him think she'd terminated the pregnancy and stayed away from him out of anger at forcing her decision."
"And now Josef somehow found out about us, or at least about Randy, and he rescued her from Howard. What for, if he thinks we should never have existed?"
&nbs
p; "Whatever his motive is, I'm sure it's nothing to her benefit. Since she had no idea he wasn't an ordinary man, she'd have gone with him willingly. If she showed any reluctance, he could have used his mesmeric influence on her."
"If she's more human than I am, she must not have the power to resist. She'd have been thrilled to meet our uncle, anyway. Two new relatives in a couple of days."
Karl's eyes turned hard. "Wherever he's taken her, we have to find them before he carries out whatever he plans."
"Do you have any idea where?"
"Josef and I aren't friends, far from it. We've never particularly liked each other. But we're not open enemies. I should be able to find out where he's living and get there without provoking an attack."
"You? Don't think for one minute you're going after Randy without me."
"We'll discuss that later. I'll investigate today and visit again tonight to report my discoveries, if any."
"Tonight? That long?" Her stomach churned. She'd thought Miranda was safe after escaping from Howard, but instead her sister might have landed in even worse danger.
"Given the choice, our kind sleep by day. It's not likely I'll be able to contact anyone before then." He stood, clasped her hand, and grazed it with a light kiss. "Don't be afraid, Cordelia. Miranda will come to no harm. You have my word."
After he left, she still trembled from the cool brush of his lips. Her insides knotted with anxiety, and a headache began to build behind her eyes. Her fingers wandered to the spot on her neck where he'd drunk from her. After all these years of fantasies about Karl's touch arousing and fulfilling her sensual desires, her daydream had started to come true. Yet it had the shape of nightmare instead.
* * * *
When Karl telephoned Corinne, he wasn't surprised to reach her voice mail. With the sun up for hours by now, naturally she had gone to sleep. He left her a message about Miranda's abduction and subsequent disappearance with Josef.
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