by Keary Taylor
For a while, they had to be respected, well liked, because even though they might have seemed strange, the Conrath brothers had come in and saved the economy from ruin.
Again, I put the photos away and turn to the last envelope.
The breath catches in my throat as I pull the photographs from the sleeve. Piercing eyes stare back. Strong, serious brows look so concerned at me. Pursed lips that are so very serious.
Henry Conrath, my father, stares back at me from the pictures.
The first is one of him standing in the foyer of this house. His hands are folded in front of him. He wears a simple black suit. The Conrath chandelier hangs above his head, and everything in the picture looks almost exactly the same as it looks today. The date on the back is 1904.
Another is a photograph of Henry reading in the library, dated from 1973. Another of him standing in the ballroom from 1898. And half a dozen others, all around his home, the years spread out.
Tears prick in my eyes and my heart flutters just as my hands shake. I have only ever seen my father’s portrait in the library. It’s impossible to have a complete picture of him from only one image, and I know that I still do not have one, but seeing him, in different places in his house from different angles, I see him in a different light.
A lonely man. A man full of solitude and longing.
A man who lost his only family.
I place my hand over my heart, feeling it swell and cry for more.
“Where are you?” I whisper to myself.
I bite my lower lip, so very grateful to have found these images. To be given this little insight.
I roll up onto my knees, and something at the bottom of the drawer catches my attention.
Stuck between the metal plates that make up the bottom of the drawer and the side is one last photograph. It’s stuck with only the back showing, so I have to tug gently to free it.
And my mind is blown when I turn it over.
The face is certainly younger than I’ve seen it now, though not by more than ten years or so. But the serious eyes, they’re certainly the same.
He wears simple clothing, dated and historical. He’s standing on the porch of the Estate, there’s no mistaking that. Lying before the house, I can see just the beginnings of the rows of cotton, telling me this picture was taken before 1875 when everything fell apart.
He stands behind a camera, and it’s instantly clear, he is the one who took all of the images I’ve just found.
From 1852 onward.
Rath.
I’M DIZZY. MY BRAIN IS racing a million miles an hour, trying to decide just what this image means. It was taken over one hundred and sixty years ago, and there’s not a doubt in my mind that the man in the photograph is Rath.
The only logical explanation is that Rath is a Born. Yet he doesn’t smell like us. I’ve never seen him drink blood. Never seen his eyes flare red in hunger or anger. And looking at the image again, he does indeed look younger than he looks now. Not a lot, but certainly younger.
“Alivia, are you alright?” Nial asks, causing me to jump, hard.
I’d forgotten I wasn’t alone.
“Fine,” I say, quickly tucking the photograph of Rath into my shirt. I place the pictures of Henry back into the envelope and slide them into my back pocket before I put the rest of the photos back into the drawer, closing it. I climb to my feet, attempting to regain my composure.
“You got awfully quiet,” he says, looking at me with slight suspicion. “Did you find something that upset you?”
I shrug, my emotions running a million miles a minute. I’m fighting back emotions, unsure what to say, what to reveal.
King Cyrus once told me he knew Rath’s story, but that it was not his to share. I don’t know the full picture yet, not even close, but just like Cyrus said, it is not my story to share.
“I just want some answers,” I tell him, going with an honest reply.
“That’s understandable,” he says, once more returning to his investigation.
“Have you figured anything out yet?”
“Well,” he says, returning a vial to its bin. “If the Genesis vials really are an attempt to recreate the product used to make vampires, I can only assume the others are related. I think it’s safe to assume the BC does not stand for Before Christ, as we are accustomed to. Perhaps it’s for Bitten Catalyst. He could be trying to break down how the Bitten are created, since he was researching how the Born are created.”
“That makes sense, I guess.” I walk to the door and pull it open, taking out a vial of Elle’s toxins. The ones next to a bin full of acid green vials. “Do you know what these are?”
“EW,” Nial says. “I haven’t figured that one out yet.”
A little smile creeps onto my face. “Good, because I actually know this one.” The look of surprise on Nial’s face is apparent. “Ian’s sister, Elle Ward, has this…poison garden. She’s brilliant when it comes to botany and chemistry. She created this toxin that can immobilize a vampire for twelve hours. I haven’t experienced it yet, thankfully, but plenty in the house will attest to how painful it really is.”
“Fascinating,” Nial says, his eyes widening. “Is this the girl who came to see you before you turned? The very young one?”
I nod my head. “I know, it’s incredible, right? Ian’s sister, she’s a unique girl.”
“So, if this is toxic to vampires, why did your father have a supply of it here?”
“And I need to ask Ian how long she’s been making this stuff,” I say, replacing the vial. “He has to have acquired it fairly recently. I mean, Elle only turned sixteen a while back, she’s not even seventeen yet. It can’t have been more than a year or two since she invented this stuff.”
Nial nods. “Alivia, there is more than a century’s worth of research in this room. While I can draw a few quick conclusions, it may take me months to really understand what your father was doing down here.”
I nod. “It’s a good thing that the one guaranteed thing we have is time.”
“ALIVIA?” THE TIMID VOICE SAYS on the other line. “It’s Elle.”
“Hi,” I say, surprised at her call. I didn’t recognize the number on my cell phone. “Is everything okay?”
It says something about the tensions around here when that’s the first thing out of my mouth.
“Um, not really,” she says. “I was wondering if you could come over here? I want you to see something.”
“Should I get Ian?” I ask, grabbing my purse and heading down the stairs. “He’ll be back in just a few minutes.”
“No!” she practically shouts. “No, please. He’ll freak out, and we both know how he gets sometimes.”
That’s all the explanation she needs to give. He does have a tendency to overreact. One of those times, he went straight to Jasmine and just hours later, he was dead. “I’ll be there in just a few minutes.”
I grab the keys to the Porsche and open the garage door.
It’s dark now, ten o’clock. The days are getting longer and longer and it’s only mid May. As I drive the roads to Lula’s house, I try to focus on what I’m doing and not let my mind wander.
The picture of Rath is still tucked in my shirt. I can’t decide if I want to ask Rath about it or not. I’m dying to know the full story now, in a bad, bad way. But he also hasn’t felt the need to tell it. Maybe it’s painful. Maybe he’s just tried to move past it. But I still want to know.
I pull off the road and turn right to head to the Ward property. Potholes threaten to bottom my car as it jostles around. It’s been quite some time since I’ve been out here. I’d forgotten how rough the road is.
Finally, I break out into the clearing. The swampland dies away and a meadow of green grass opens up, leading to a little yellow house, the moonlight streaming down on it. I park on the side of the house, my eyes continuing to follow the driveway, all the way to the little, rustic cabin at the back of the property. The one Ian built with his own hands.
<
br /> The past is past, and I can’t let myself keep crawling back to it. So I don’t dwell. I climb out and walk to the front door and knock.
Elle is unusually pale when she opens the door and lets me in. “Thanks for comin’,” she says quietly as she steps aside for me to walk through. And the scene I find is far too familiar.
“Oh no,” I breathe as I take in the state of the house.
It’s all upturned again. Broken pictures, bins dumped, doors askew.
“They stole more toxins again?” I ask, my eyes flicking toward Elle’s bedroom door.
“Yeah,” she says. I follow her toward the back room that is hers. Her room is a mess. “I didn’t have much in the cupboard. I haven’t had much time to make more since they stole so much last time, and I’ve been workin’ on other things. But I hid the rest.”
She opens the cupboard, and it’s a mess. Cleaned out, broken glass and liquid spilling all over the wooden shelves.
“You split the stash?” I ask her, helping her to set her room straight.
Elle nods. “Lula had a few hidden compartments around the house. Not that she remembers where any of them are anymore, but I filled two of them.”
A little light goes off in the back of my head and I stand up a little straighter. “I was going to ask you. How long have you been making the toxin?”
She pulls the blanket up on her bed and replaces the pillow. “Um, it’s been just under two years now. Took me six months before I got it just right, but the way it is now, just under two years.”
I hold the garbage can for her so she can sweep the broken glass off the shelves into it. “Elle, before that break in a few months back, did any of your toxins go missing?”
She nods, carefully wiping the glass that sticks to her hands. “Yeah, just a few vials, I think half a dozen.”
“How long ago?” I ask. My heartrate picks up as I lean in closer, holding onto her every word.
“Hmm,” she mulls, her brow furrowing in concentration. “Sometime during the summer. August, I think.”
My heart races all the faster. “Was it before or after I came to Silent Bend?”
My personal attachment to the question finally draws her attention that there’s a reason why I’m asking.
“Now that you mention it, I do remember,” she says, her eyes searching me for the reason behind my questioning. “It was about a week before.”
“Like right around when Henry would have died?” The breath stills in my chest and it’s hard to not grab her and shake the answer from this tiny girl.
“Yeah,” she says, growing wary, leaning away from me as if sensing what I’m trying not to do. “Why are you asking?”
“Just…” But I stall. It’s a long story, so complicated and with way too many question marks. “Nothing. It’s hard to explain.”
She studies me, unsure. But gratefully, she lets it go, and we finish cleaning up the mess. “Come on,” she says, walking out of the room. “I’ll show you.”
We walk through the living room, into the kitchen, and then to the back mudroom. Just off to the side, under a well-worn women’s pair of boots, she wedges her fingernail into a crack in the wooden floor and dislodges a floorboard.
It opens to reveal a small compartment, maybe four inches wide and six inches long. And crammed inside is a dozen vials.
“I think you should probably take them,” Elle says as she scoops them up and carefully hands them to me. “Considering everything that’s going on.”
“Thank you,” I reply, graciously accepting them and sliding them into my purse. “I’m sure these are going to become incredibly useful.”
“There’s more,” she says. She recovers the hidey-hole and opens the back door. I follow her around the back of the house, where the bushes are blooming with brilliant flowers, their fragrance potent and alluring.
We turn around the side of the house, the side where her garden grows, and where the wooden shakes line the side of the house, she swings one aside. There lies a very similar hole, just a few inches by a few inches. Containing another dozen vials.
I shake my head, surprising the smile.
There are so many secrets and hidden motives in my world. I don’t stand a chance at uncovering them all.
That sense of dread that hangs in the air suddenly grows thick and cold. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. A sound pricks in my ears and I turn to scan the trees that surround us.
“Elle, get back inside,” I whisper, throwing my arms up and backing toward her.
“Are they back?” Quickly, she begins running back toward the back door, me blocking her the entire time as my eyes flick from one tree to the next.
Elle has just rounded the steps when a beastly cry rises from the back side of Ian’s cabin. In a motion that is invisible with its speed, the figure darts across the lawn. My knees bend and my fangs lengthen. We meet over the grass in a great collision.
Yellow eyes burn back at me as my hand closes around a throat and jagged fingernails scrape my side. The man gnashes his fangs at me.
I may be stronger in species, but the man is built of muscle.
“Don’t!” I hear an unfamiliar voice cry from inside the house. “We’re supposed to bring her in!”
My attacker buries a swinging elbow into my gut, throwing me back ten feet and slamming into the ground.
“But she smells…” I hear a deep breath taken in.
Just then, I hear Elle scream.
With a bellow of my own, I get to my feet just as the man reaches me. Sliding a stake from my purse, I meet him with a quick swing, embedding it into his chest and tossing him to the side.
Not hesitating a second to be sure he’s fully dead, the ground blurs beneath me as I dart into the house.
A figure flees out the front door. A woman with tangled and dirty hair hovers over Elle, who lies on the floor, still as can be.
I swing back the stake and bury it in the woman’s back, straight into her heart, cracking multiple ribs with the effort.
She slumps to the ground, dead.
“Elle!” I scream, climbing over the woman and pulling my future sister-in-law from beneath her. Her face is ghostly white, her eyes closed. She groans in pain. “Elle, open your eyes, honey.” I pat the side of her face. “Open your eyes, please.”
Her eyelids twitch slightly, before opening. Her eyes roll around in her head, but they can’t seem to focus.
“No,” I mutter as I scoop her up into my arms. “No, no, no!”
In a flash, I’m through the house and barreling through the woods. I can run faster than I could get there in my car. The trees whip by, Main Street is but a brief flash before I’m darting through neighborhoods and back yards, hopping fences and startling dogs. A huge field stands between me and my House.
“Elle, can you hear me?” I call to her as I near the Conrath fence. “Please.”
I swear under my breath when her eyes only flutter once.
I take the fence in a great bounding leap and start out over the property.
“Ian!” I scream, knowing if he is home that he will hear me. “Elle’s been bit! Call Nial!”
When I get to the doors, Markov is already there, holding it open, telling me Ian is getting ready in the kitchen.
“What the hell happened?” he demands as he pulls on some gloves and is a flurry of action with some clear tubing. Three bags of blood already lie on the island, where I lay her.
“Someone broke in again, stole toxins,” I share. “We were rounding the rest of it up when a few Bitten attacked. They way they were talking, I think they were supposed to take her, but one couldn’t control their thirst. One was on me and the other bit her before I could get there. They’re both dead, but I don’t know how much blood she took from her.”
Ian swears. “Why would they want to take her?”
I shake my head, fear and adrenaline eating me up.
“So there’s a chance she’s going to turn?” suddenly Cameron�
��s voice comes from behind us. I turn to see the wary and scared expression on his face.
“Not if I can help it,” Ian growls as he pokes the needle part into Elle’s arm.
“Where’s Anna?” I demand of Cameron.
“Out patrolling town,” Lexington says as he walks into the kitchen. He stuffs stakes into his pockets and slings a crossbow over his shoulder. “I finally got a lead off that computer and she went with Smith to check it out.”
Markov walks into the kitchen, and we share a suspicious look.
“I need the three of you to go out and scout your asses off,” I growl. “I have no idea if there were more of them out on the property where we were attacked. You check it out and call Anna.”
The lot of them nod and dart out of the kitchen.
“Come on, Elle,” Ian begs as all he can do is wait for the blood bag to run into her fragile body. “Don’t you dare turn on me.”
“We will keep her safe,” I say, attempting to be comforting as I walk back to the kitchen counter where she lies. “If she turns, we’ll teach her, make her one of us.”
“She’s not turning,” he growls. He shakes the bag at me, telling me to hold it. I take it and watch as he hooks up another bag, puncturing her other arm, and letting the blood flow into that one, as well.
“I’m sure praying she won’t, either,” I say, letting my voice grow quiet. “But I’m just…if she does, at least she won’t have a Debt. I killed the vamp-”
“She’s not turning!” Ian bellows, shaking the bag, as if trying to get it to slide into her body all the faster.
“Alivia?” Nial’s voice cuts through the House as the front doors burst open.
“In the kitchen!”
Instantly, he appears in a rush, and he goes into ER doctor mode, checking her over, testing her pulse. He pulls a stethoscope from the bag he brought with him, listening to her heart.
“She lost a lot of blood,” he says grimly. “Her heartrate is very slow, uneven.”
“Is it getting better, though?” Ian asks in a growl.
Nial gives him a saddened look, his eyes telling the truth that he’s doubtful. But he places the earpieces in once more and lays the round part to her chest again.