“Hey,” he said with a smile that was all teeth and charm. Curse you. “I think this game is one-sided. I can infect the world with vampires, but not werewolves. Where’s the wolf love? I’m part dog. Everyone loves dogs.”
Surprisingly, I wasn’t in the mood to make jokes with him, and I was always in the mood to make jokes. I looked away and ignored him. Before he could break my silence, we had to get up to leave the plane.
Lucas grabbed his rucksack and held it to his chest like it had money in it and he’d just spotted a pickpocket. I rolled my suitcase off the ramp and into the airport with Knight and Lucas behind me. They followed me to the food court where we all got giant pretzels, and then we went to the car rental place. With our car rented and our bags in the trunk, I got into the front seat, Knight in shotgun, and Lucas in the back.
“Okay, Lucas. Where are we going?” He didn’t answer, as he hadn’t the last five times we’d asked him where our destination was. He’d said, ‘we can get there from Vienna,’ but left out the rest of the journey. “Lucas,” I said patiently, feeling very much so the need to beat him over the head with a magazine. “I need to know where I’m driving to.”
He pointed to the right. “That way.”
Knight chewed on his lip and sighed. “Look, man. You’re trying to protect this Anastasia, fine. We get it. You don’t have to tell us where they live, just what city it is, right? We can’t find them even if we know what city they’re in. We don’t even know what they look like. They’ll be safe, okay?”
Lucas thought it over with a series of expressions that made me struggle not to laugh. “Čachtice,” he finally said. Then his lips were buttoned, and he leaned back in his seat with his arms crossed tightly over his chest.
“Teamwork,” Knight gloated with a smile, reaching his fist up to me for a fist bump. I ignored it and started the car, seeing his fist slowly drop from of the corner of my eye. He started pouting too.
Čachtice, the home of Anastasia’s legendary mother, the Countess of Bathory. After four hundred years, that was where Anastasia had chosen to hide? A little on the nose. This was truly the last place vampires would look for her, though I couldn’t say if it was genius or just sheer lunacy. If she was as crazy as James’s journal said, it was the latter.
We pulled up to the town of Čachtice, Slovakia, and Lucas started to look like he’d swallowed poison. He rocked back and forth on his seat, whining quietly, with sweat starting to pool on his forehead.
“You okay there, buddy?” Knight asked, his eyes watching Lucas through the rearview mirror.
“Mmm, no. No. Not okay. Not.” Lucas shook his head like a crazy person, muttering things to himself in a language I didn’t understand.
Getting slightly agitated, Knight ran a hand through his hair and looked across the seat at me. “Crazy is going crazy. We should probably…” He stopped mid-sentence, froze, and grabbed my shoulder in a death grip. “Pizza,” he said so quietly I almost didn’t hear him.
My eyes darted around the city block we were on, trying to see what he was looking at. “What?”
“PIZZA!” He reached his large arm in front of my face, effectively blocking my view of the road, showing me what he was pointing at: a building with the words ‘Pizzeria Bathory’ in gothic font.
Please tell me this wasn’t a tourist town devoted to the mother of a crazy person, who in and of herself was also a crazy person?
Christ, it was.
Staring at me when we walked into the pizzeria door was a large painting of the Countess, her eyes following me no matter where I moved.
“Relative of yours?” Knight joked from behind me. Blood drinking jokes. Fucking awesome.
Lucas walked up to the painting and spoke some sweet words before planting a finger kiss on the painting’s lips. He looked back with a happy smile, holding his hand out for me.
“Lisbeth, come. Meet the countess.”
I approached the painting with caution. I’d initially thought her eyes were creepy, but now that I saw them up close…
Lucas went from me to the painting. “She was much prettier in real life. She had a class to her. She was a stately lady. I miss her.”
Those eyes… did I have… a memory of them? No. That was impossible. I stepped away from the painting to a respectable distance.
“Nice to meet you, Countess,” I told her. Lucas clapped his hands in joy at me meeting a damn painting.
“I was promised pizza,” Knight said right behind me. He plunked his chin onto my head and stared at the painting too, holding me in place when I tried to move away. “She’s fuckin’ creepy.”
Lucas deflated. “You’re fuckin’ creepy.”
Knight laughed and held out a fist. “Solid insult. You’re learning.” Lucas hesitated, but like his puppy personality suggested, he loved fun. He fist bumped his enemy.
A waiter walked up and spoke in the language Lucas had been speaking in the car. Lucas answered back smoothly as he motioned for us to find a table.
“Good thing we have a native speaker,” Knight said, sitting down next to me. I scooted away nonchalantly and he followed me. “I’m surprised you don’t speak the language, Lis. Isn’t that like, vampire 101? Learn to speak Romanian so you can get your vampire badge.”
Having just sat down with us, Lucas bristled from Knight’s comment. “She has never been here. She is not from here. Do not speak of what you do not know, peasant dog.”
I grabbed Lucas’s collar and pulled him as close to my face as possible without giving the impression I was going to kiss him. He was hot, don’t get me wrong, but the idea grossed me out. “Don’t ever speak to Knight like that.” Lucas gulped and his eyes grew wide in fear. “And I am from here. Transylvania at least, not here here. I was born in this country, but I was raised in England as an orphan of the Order.”
Lucas’s face turned red. “Who told you this? Who said you were from Transylvania?” He looked offended. This guy had more moods than a mood ring.
“Balthazar,” I answered. “Tall, gorgeous, amazing hair.”
“Humph, I know of Balthazar. Fucking little twat who can’t keep his cock in his pants.” Then he said, “stupid little shit can’t keep his mouth shut,” in German. Balthazar was many things, including a stupid little scheisse.
I let Lucas go and responded also in German. “Why is the father of my child a shit?”
Engrossed, he responded, still in German. “He swore on his life, on his soul, to the Countess to keep the secret. He swore…” Lucas’s face went blank as something I’d said sunk in. “You… had a child with Balthazar?” Then he laughed the biggest belly laugh I’d ever heard, slapping his hand on the table so hard I thought it would break in half.
“What’s so funny?” Knight asked with his mouth full of breadstick. I shrugged.
Lucas was still laughing when the food came, and he managed to eat around the chuckles. By the time we were finished, the napkins had all been used up to wipe his eyes from the tears.
“I wish I spoke a different language so we could have secret conversations,” Knight told me after he’d sat back in his chair, full for the moment.
“What would you say?” I asked him curiously. “I don’t think our friend is listening.” And he wasn’t. He was still laughing.
Knight glanced at Lucas and leaned into me. “I’d say that…” He reached a hand up and stroked my earlobe, a shiver dancing over my skin. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”
My heart sped up, my face felt burning hot, and I wanted to cry. “You thought I was dead?” He nodded, his hand moving to rest on my neck, the perfect position to pull me in for a kiss. A kiss I wanted so badly and didn’t deserve.
“Hey!” Lucas shouted suddenly, making me jump. “You will keep your hands to yourself, sir.” He shook a finger at Knight like a scolding parent.
Knight looked like he was about to give Lucas the finger. “Cock blocker.”
What?
I pulled Knight’s hand away
from my neck and stood up. “We umm… we should get going.” Knight sighed and stood up as well. “Lucas,” I addressed. He smiled at me with as much seriousness as he could muster. “We need you to tell us where Anastasia is.”
In lieu of an answer, Lucas hurried outside and started trekking down the street. Knight and I followed close behind, ready to bolt if he took off.
“You can find him again, right?” I asked in a whisper.
“I’ve smelled both his blood and his scent. I’ll never not be able to find him,” Knight assured me.
Lucas bobbed and weaved through the small town, going over fences and under bridges, even backtracking a few times like he was trying to confuse anyone following him. If there were humans or vampires tailing us, Knight and I would’ve known, but we played along with Lucas’s games.
It was almost time for dinner when Lucas finally stopped at one of the houses. It was a small, ancient thing, the white paint fading all over it. The real color came from the flowers in the garden and all the window boxes.
“This is her?” I confirmed as I pointed to the house, and Lucas nodded. Finally. I’d get some answers. I’d find out if Anastasia was a hybrid, and if she was, I’d know if my daughter was destined to repeat her carnage. I gulped slightly and the door to the cheerful house grew smaller and smaller, my chest constricting with wild anticipation.
Knight took my hand to steady me. “It’s okay,” he soothed in his gentle, loving voice.
“I’m so scared,” I admitted quietly, and moved closer to Knight so I could be further from the door. “I know I don’t deserve a hug from you, but…” He wrapped me in his arms before I could finish asking, and I hugged him back for a few precious moments. I let myself pretend that we could be together again, that this wouldn’t be our last hug. It soothed me enough that I pulled away and took his hand again. Lucas was still waiting at the door, looking bashful for some reason as he scratched his ear. “I’m ready,” I told him.
Lucas knocked on the door and we waited for the answer with baited breath. A few seconds passed with silence from inside until we heard footsteps coming from the middle of the house. It sounded light, like a woman’s, and she shuffled like she was wearing slippers. I focused on the sound and held my breath when the door handle clicked, the door opening.
A blonde woman stood in the doorway wearing a simple black dress with a faded white apron. Blonde? Anastasia wasn’t blonde. She had raven black hair. James’s journal was very clear about that detail in the pages after his recount of her story. The woman looked at Knight, stopped at me for a few confusing moments, and then she saw Lucas. Her face lit up with a gentle smile. I noticed the color of her eyes was the same purple as mine. That was weird.
“Lucas,” she said, holding her hand out to him. He took it and kissed it tenderly.
“Clara,” he breathed against her skin, almost like a prayer.
Clara? Who was Clara? Had this little shit led us all this way to see his stupid girlfriend?
I stepped forward, pulling Knight with me. “You’re not Anastasia?” She looked up at us and took her hand back from Lucas kissing it, making him whine. “We came here to see Anastasia.”
Clara was staring at me like she’d seen a ghost. She stepped off the single stair without looking down and came closer. “Who are you?” she asked me. Her chin turned with slight caution, almost disbelief.
Lucas wiggled his hand at me. “Show her the photo. Your child. Show her.”
I obeyed, more than a little confused, and handed Clara the photo of Kitty. She gasped and stared at it, back at me, to Lucas, and back to the photo.
“It cannot be,” she breathed with a gasp.
“What’s happening?” Knight said very close to my ear, so close that only I could hear him. I shrugged in genuine confusion. Why were they so focused on the photo of Kitty? Was it apparent she was a hybrid? Maybe they were afraid of her.
Lucas touched Clara’s shoulder to bring her away from the photo. “Where is she? I can’t hear her heartbeat.” I hadn’t thought to see if there was more than one heartbeat in the house, but I also could feel no other person here.
Looking up finally, Clara handed me the photo back. “Anastasia is at the tower. She goes there sometimes when I’ve gone to the market. I’ll take you to her. By you, I mean Elisabeth.” She pointed to me.
What. “How did you know my name?” Lucas hadn’t said my name to her. Did he tell her when he sent her a message asking where Anastasia was?
“You didn’t tell her?” Clara reproached in Lucas’s direction.
He flinched under her scowl. “I wanted Anastasia to tell her.” He tried to pet Clara’s arm in apology, but she pulled away in anger.
“I can’t with you today. Go inside with the boy. We’ll be back.”
Knight squeezed my hand, kissed my forehead, and went inside Clara’s house with Lucas. Clara grabbed a shawl from inside and wrapped it around herself after shutting the door. She stared at me with a mournful look.
“It’s time for you to meet Anastasia.”
12. Kiss the boy
“Elisabeth, this is your mother, Anastasia Bathory.”
That was the moment where this story really began, the moment when I had searched the world to find answers for my daughter, and instead, I discovered the answer to the question I’d wondered my entire life.
Who was my mother?
The answer was simple, it was the dead woman in front of me, the one who hadn’t moved a single muscle since we’d stepped across the broken floor to the edge of the crumbling tower.
It was also then that I realized my quest for answers about Kitty had failed, just like Castilla predicted. If I was Anastasia’s daughter, then she wasn’t a hybrid. Now I had no way to know what my daughter would become, but in a way, at least I could say there wasn’t a certainty she would become a psycho vampire killer. Maybe. And now that I measured that thought, I felt a sense of relief on that aspect. I’d convinced myself that Anastasia was probably a hybrid, and now that proof had been false. She was just a psychopath who murdered almost every vampire and Lycan in existence.
And she was my fucking mom.
Clara had taken my stunned silence a different way, so she left me to process the news of my parentage and was trying to coax Anastasia into standing up. Then I realized I’d just believed her without question.
“How do you know she’s my mother?” I asked Clara skeptically.
Clara looked surprised like she didn’t realize I wouldn’t just simply take her word for it. “Can’t you see the resemblance between you and Ana?” I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to look at her face and see myself in those dead eyes. “And if I didn’t need that as proof, there’s the photograph, the one of your child. She looks exactly like you did when you were born, and Anastasia, and our mother. You all looked the same. There are portraits of each of us as babies, I saw them often enough for them to be burned into my memory. You are a daughter of the House of Bathory, I swear it. Plus, there’s this.” She put a finger up to her eyes that were the same shade as mine. “A gift from our Incubus father. Speaking of, Lucas told me you know Balthazar, the incubus that mother made swear to protect you. I have no doubts about who you are. None.” She stooped to stroke at Anastasia’s cheek, trying to rouse her.
“Let me,” I offered when it wasn’t working. I picked my mother… no. That was so damn weird. I picked Anastasia up and carried her out of the ruined room on the unstable floor, out the tower, and down the wooden tourist stairs. Clara was right behind me, holding a pair of shoes she’d found in one of the passages, Anastasia’s I guessed.
“Lucky the site is closed,” she said, out of breath from trying to keep up with me. “Sometimes she comes in the daytime in front of all the tourists. That’s always horrid. They take pictures, they put it on the internet, and it gets messy.”
“Funny, I’ve never heard of the creepy lady in Bathory-ville.” Traveling downhill, I jumped off a small ledge and Anastasia made
a small noise in my arms. Her face was still blank when I checked it.
Clara caught up to my fast pace and bent over with a wheeze. “You think I’d be in shape after chasing her for all these years. Vampires walk so fast. One second, please.” She breathed in and out, bending backward to crack her spine. “Anastasia is rarely lucid. The only times I can get her to respond is when the humans are threatening our safety. She can command them with a single word. A flick of her finger. It’s terrifying sometimes, but it’s effective. One word and the humans delete the photos and never speak a word of it again. It’s how we’ve lived here for so long and no one notices us. Anastasia’s power blankets their perception.”
Shit, I’d never heard of such power. Did she binge? If she binged blood all day, I still wasn’t sure she could have that kind of power. It seemed effortless, from Clara’s descriptions, and blood binges weren’t like that, I could attest to that. It took effort, strength, control, and even then it was difficult, draining.
“How can she be that powerful?” I pondered out loud.
“There are many stories to tell today,” was Clara’s answer. She pulled up the hem of her dress and started walking again. “Come. The men are waiting.”
I slowed my pace so Clara wouldn’t have to jog to keep up with me, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to put this creature down as fast as possible. Even in my thoughts, I couldn’t accept that she was my mother. Every molecule in my body rejected that reality. Plus she smelled rank.
Finally, we made it back just as the sun was setting, and Clara threw the door of her cottage open for me. I stepped inside, my eyes immediately searching for Knight. I needed to see him. I needed his strength. He was standing in the kitchen next to an open window, the sunset casting a light on his face, and I felt myself break inside when I saw him.
Lucas stood from the rocker he was sitting in, looking from my face to Clara’s. “And now you know?” I nodded. “Everything?” he asked, glancing at Clara. She shook her head. Great, more secrets. He nodded back and stepped forward with his arms out. “I’ll take Anastasia.”
The Born Vampire series: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Complete Series, NSFW Edition) Page 43