Martin hesitated slightly, only for a second, but it was an eternity in my head. “Your mother has… visitors.”
12. Love rekindled
Kitty
“I swear to fuck, if you get us killed, I’m never forgiving you,” I warned Arthur as the looming gates of Salvation came before us. Dom stood on my other side with Shadow on his heels, and he peered up to the city like it was a mystery. Several vampires and Lycans stood at the main gate holding guns, probably for the sharks if any came nearby.
“If I get us killed, your mother will turn my corpse into tiny little pieces,” Arthur said. The bottom half of his face was covered with my mask, covering him enough that he might not be recognized. “I like my pieces where they are, thank you.”
I smirked and wondered at him for a second. “Never thought I’d see you be snarky. My mom’s sass looks good on you.” I was greeted with a glare, but I still smiled back at him.
Having seen our approached, the guards were slowly coming towards us, checking for sharks as they went. They smelled us and immediately looked at Arthur in alarm. The mask was to fool the bleeders. Our kind wouldn’t be tricked so easily.
“Arthur!” one of the vampires whispered as we got closer. Arthur nodded slowly, looking around for any humans within earshot. “What are you doing here? You’re a wanted man.”
One of the Lycans was less worried. “You here for her?” Her. They didn’t even need to specify who they were talking about. Arthur nodded again in confirmation.
“We’d like it if you didn’t tell the humans about…” I gestured to Arthur and squinted at the guards. How I wished I had mind control powers. The vampires and Lycans glanced at each other in wordless communication, but they didn’t seem upset to see us.
The first vampire lowered his gun. “The humans don’t have to know who all of you are.” He looked over at me and lifted a finger, pointing at my head. “Put her goggles on, Arthur. Your eyes are memorable.” I pulled my goggles off my neck and handed them to Arthur for him to put on over his blue eyes. He adjusted them and I couldn’t help laughing.
“You look like Bucky Barnes.”
I felt the glare from him even though his face was covering it.
“Shut up.”
“Martin, Dreya should be back soon. Let her know the Countess has visitors,” the first vampire said. The Lycan trotted off along the fence, disappearing behind a building. We followed the vampire to the gate and waited for it to be opened before it was locked behind us.
A prison. We were in a damn prison.
My skin crawled, my clothes seemed too tight, and I wanted to run in the other direction as fast as I could. Surely all the vampires and Lycans could hear my rapid pulse and ragged breathing. Dom’s hand gently found mine and entwined my fingers with his. My skin came alive, almost distracting me from my anxiety. He didn’t speak, just stayed that way beside me with my captured hand as the vampires cleared our visit with the bleeders. Shadow rubbed against my boots.
Next came the drug search. The vampires sniffed us all over —eww— and checked our bags for any stray Night Shadow. I’d wisely left mine with the Lycans. Then they shined a light in our eyes to check for dilation, and pronounced us clean. Shadow followed us out when we left the guard post with an assigned escort, a younger vampire.
“My name is David,” the vampire said as we walked. He kept looking back at me, so much so that Arthur elbowed him. “Sorry. You just look so much like her.”
Flicking my eyes to Arthur’s masked face, I took my hand back from Dom and stuffed it into my jacket pocket, mourning the loss of contact instantly. “Like the Countess?” David nodded and slowed down so he could walk beside me. “Why do you call her that, if I may ask?”
David got a hazy look on his face as he smiled at me. “The Countess brought us all here. She protects us, makes peace with the humans. She gave us a place to call home.” Sounds exactly like her. Except Arthur’s story tainted it all with a nasty shade of red.
“It’s not true about her killing all those humans either,” David continued, his face still hazy.
I found Arthur’s face again, this time in horror. What was he talking about?
“I’m not quite familiar with this Countess,” I said, trying to smile at David. Not like he’d believe that since we looked so much alike there was no question we were related. “Could you explain what you mean?”
David stopped on the city path we were on and stared at me in confusion, almost cracking a laugh until he saw how serious I was. “She’s the Countess of Bathory. You know, the one from the stories. She supposedly killed all those people, hundreds of years ago. And now she’s here, our matriarch.”
Ahh fuck, the whole world has gone insane.
“She’s not the—” Arthur cleared his throat to interrupt me, shaking his head where David couldn’t see. Okay, interesting. Why were they keeping up this story with everyone? I played along. “I mean, wowwww shit!” I plastered my face with an impressed look and reached back for Dom’s hand. I might’ve barely known him, but I needed the contact again. He took it without comment and held my hand tightly.
David led us forward, talking constantly about the city’s history and all that they’d done as far as development and technology. We went into a market area and all the bleeder venders glared as we passed them. Weird.
Arthur looked out of place with his face covered, everyone staring at us like we were strippers putting on a show at a Baptist church. The bleeders pointed and whispered to each other.
“...looks just like the Countess…”
“…can’t believe they’re letting in a damn drinker that dangerous looking…”
“…Governor Hendrix can’t have let more of them in…”
Judgmental little fucks.
David and Arthur got a few steps ahead of Dom and myself, so he felt safe to lean into my ear and whisper in a tone that sent a shiver down my spine, “I’ve never felt a hand quite like yours.”
A scoff came out of my throat, when I was seriously considering showing him exactly what my hand could do to him. “It’s just a hand. It’s not special.” He ‘hmm’d’ and straightened up. My legs were trembling from him being so close as he tugged me forward. I wanted to just stop and hear his accent in my ear again as he ran his hands all over my naked body.
Focus, Kitty.
I shook my head and checked Shadow’s presence at my feet. He trotted next to us like everything was fine. Eventually, David and Arthur stopped at a building in the center of town, a tall clock tower. There was a piece missing from the clock’s face, large enough for someone to fit through and stand on the balcony overlooking the city. Vampire guards stood at the front doors, their nostrils flaring when we came into range, and they stared at Arthur in alarm but said nothing as David walked us inside.
Several scents hit me when I went into the building, and I caught two I knew very well. A single tear rolled down my cheek in relief. She was here. Dom squeezed my hand, and I remembered where I was again. David led us down the hallway and up several flights of stairs where the scents became stronger, a potency only associated with a living space.
“This is where the Countess lives,” David explained to us.
Arthur sniffed, smelling no one else around except three people in one of the rooms. One of them I didn’t recognize by smell, so it had to be my younger sister. “We’ve got it from here, David.” The vampire nodded and left us on the floor to have some privacy.
I didn’t wait for a verbal cue from the men beside me, I stepped across the carpeted hallway to the room I knew held my family. The door flew open under my hand and I saw them there at a kitchen table, like I’d always remembered them.
Knight with a stack of pancakes.
Lisbeth with another plate in her hands.
And a blonde-haired girl sitting between them.
That one tear was followed by many as a choked sound escaped my throat when I saw those purple eyes staring back at me. She droppe
d her plate in shock and it broke against the tiles, littering the floor with shards and pancakes. Knight got up so quickly, he knocked his chair over. The girl stood as well, and though I’d never seen her before, I knew she was the sister Arthur told me of. She looked nothing like me with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and tanned skin, but there was something in her face I recognized from my own.
“Kitty?” she asked in wonderment, the first of the three to find her voice.
Lisbeth ran, throwing her arms around me, and her body shook with sobs against my chest. I held her so close, so close that I wished I would never have reason to leave her embrace.
Finally. Finally, I was home.
She cried. I cried. The girl cried. I let Lisbeth go only to fall into Knight’s arms and I held him just as tightly, with all the love I felt for him.
Dom and Arthur lingered in the hallway, waiting for us to finish our reunion. Or maybe unwilling to ruin mine with their own, but that changed when Lisbeth’s body stiffened beside me. She’d caught a scent, and she lowered her arms from my sides as she realized who I’d brought with me. Arthur slowly came into view from the hallway, his face still covered. He walked inside the room and Dom closed the door behind them.
Arthur lowered the mask, pulling the goggles off as Lisbeth took one tentative step, then two towards him, her face dripping with fresh tears. If I was a vision of the past, Arthur was a ghost she thought she’d never see again. And it was then I knew that something had changed between them. When it had changed was unclear, but it was something that we’d all been waiting for, for so long it felt like their story was mine too.
As she finally reached her slow journey across to him, she confirmed my thoughts with a single action.
She stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips.
13. Broken pancakes
Kitty
I‘d like to say that I looked away as my mother made out with the man she’d loved as long as I’d been alive, but I stood next to my half-sister and Knight, watching the couple like they were goldfish in a bowl, and as nauseating as it was, no one in the room could deny the raw, unfiltered love between the two. They kissed with a passion I’d only seen her have for Knight. The passion of real love.
With all that happening in front of me, I glanced at Knight just to see how he felt about it and saw him smiling with happiness at them. He looked down at me, putting a hand on my shoulder.
“Let’s give them some privacy,” he said in a whisper.
“I can hear you,” Lisbeth murmured, pulling from Arthur’s lips only for a moment. He gave her another tender kiss on the lips, on her nose, and her forehead, before holding her in his arms like she was a precious jewel. And even though he would’ve shot me for saying so, I could’ve sworn I saw tears on his face. “We were just…” Lisbeth tried before she broke out into a fit of tears. She buried her head in his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his neck to bring him closer.
“Having breakfast,” Knight finished, like he’d been the one talking. “I’ll clean this up and make more pancakes for everyone.” He busied himself with the task as Dreya approached the hugging couple.
Arthur pulled away from Lisbeth only for a moment to bring Dreya into their embrace. “I haven’t seen you since you were a tiny thing, Dreya,” he exclaimed with his lips pressed to her hair. “I realize asking if you’ve been behaving is redundant considering who your mother is.”
Lisbeth lightly smacked him on the arm and leaned in for another kiss. “I don’t remember you being this mouthy before.”
He ran a hand through her long curls and studied her face as if memorizing it. “Perhaps I became more like that which I missed, if only to ease the pain of absence.” His hand settled on her cheek and she leaned into it like a cat with a contented smile. “Maybe I also picked up your eloquence,” he admitted with, dare I say, a blush on his cheeks.
Dreya left their arms and held out her hand to me with a smile that didn’t fit someone that came from Arthur. “I’m Dreya. Short for Alexandria. You’re my sister Katherine, Kitty for short.”
I took her hand and pumped it a few times. She had a firm grip, I respected that. “We are a family with nicknames.”
“Except for Jason,” she reminded with a grin. The mention of his name turned the room cold. I stiffened and dropped Dreya’s hand as Lisbeth let Arthur go, turning to me with hope in her eyes. Hope I couldn’t keep afloat.
“Have you seen Jason at all?” she asked me with a face that looked like it would break into pieces if I said no. I shook my head, looking down, because I couldn’t bear to see her shatter. She sucked in a shaky breath of air, but she remained composed. Her bare feet patted on the tiles and she gave me a soft kiss on my forehead. “I’ve waited twenty years for my babies to come home,” she breathed against my skin. I fell in her arms again and felt a small sliver of happiness flood into me. She sniffed and kissed me again before she stepped away to help Knight pick up the rest of the mess she’d made.
Dreya brought over chairs for us and we sat around the table as Knight and Lisbeth made more pancakes. Every few seconds, he leaned over and kissed her head as she wiped more tears from her cheeks. When they were finished, Lisbeth sat down with me on her right and Arthur on her left. She held both of our hands as we started eating, unwilling to let go in case we were a mirage that would fade if she looked away. Arthur kissed her hand before letting it go so he could eat, but even as I tucked into my stack of pancakes, Lisbeth kept my left hand in hers, leaving her plate untouched so she could stare at me.
“Mom,” I murmured, wiggling my hand. “Aren’t you hungry?”
She let out a nervous laugh and set my hand free, picking up her fork and cutting into her pancakes. “Dreya, what color am I?” I looked over at my half-sister and saw her squint, turning her head. What was she doing? People weren’t colors. “Dreya can see auras,” Lisbeth explained to the rest of us.
Dreya was still squinting when she took a bite of food. “You’re cascading, like a rainbow waterfall. I hardly know where one emotion ends and another begins.” She turned her blue gaze to me and looked me up and down. “You, on the other hand. Very red. Grey. And there right in the middle…” Her blue eyes got even smaller as she focused on whatever she was seeing. “Deep, encompassing blue.” Her mouth tilted into a frown.
Ignoring her weirdness, I pushed a piece of the pancakes into my mouth and let out a loud moan that was not a noise I wanted to make around family. How long had it been since I’d had such a confection? Probably the amount of time between family visits. The sweet, savory maple syrup mixed with fresh blueberries and chewy pancake. Fucking heaven.
Dom was very focused on my face when I met his gaze, and the expression he conveyed, like he wanted to drip syrup all over me and lick it off, made me blush. I wasn’t the type for such a feminine reaction, but I felt slightly red just the same.
Did I… like him? No way. I mean, yeah, I wanted to see what was under his pants, but we hardly knew each other. I’d known him for what, two days? This wasn’t a sappy romance movie, for fuck’s sake. A very back part of my brain started to wonder what his blood would taste like. God damn it, Kitty! He’s not a Salisbury steak! Focus, focus.
Dreya giggled at me, no doubt seeing some kind of color shift above my head with her powers. She glanced at Dom and back at me with a knowing look. Great. I’d known my half-sister for ten minutes and she was already teasing me. It was growing up with Jason all over again. Maybe worse since Jason didn’t have vampiric powers. He would just turn into a wolf every time we had to do chores.
The thought of Jason had me back in that old house, looking at his filthy hair and tear-stained face. I shook my head several times to wipe the image away and took another bite of food.
“Dreya has to leave soon, so that gives us some time to catch up, Kitty,” Lisbeth said with a smile. “I remember you dislike an audience when we’re talking about personal things. Unless that’s changed?” I met her eyes and shook my head
, already feeling awkward about it. Talking with her again was probably one of the things I’d been looking forward to the most, but I also dreaded talking about my life for the past two decades without her.
“Off with your friends?” Arthur guessed, nodding towards his daughter. No doubt he felt as awkward as Lisbeth did, addressing the children they barely knew.
Dreya smiled anyway, looking as warm as melted butter. “I’m having tea with my boyfriend, Darius, and his father, Governor Hendrix.”
A loud clang echoed through the room as Arthur dropped his fork suddenly. “You’re dating Darius Hendrix, David Hendrix’s son? The human who runs this city, the one who banished me?”
There was a lot to unpack from that, but the main contender slipped from my mouth like poisoned slime. “You’re dating a damn human?” I shrieked at Dreya, my food forgotten. My appetite disappeared faster than a candle at a Bath and Body Works sale. Dreya’s dainty mouth opened and closed, and she set her fork down onto her plate, dropping her head.
“I forbid it,” Arthur declared with a humph. Lisbeth whirled on him so fast, we all bent away from her in our chairs.
“You forbid it?” she ground out.
Knight sighed next to me and rubbed at his forehead. “Fuck. Bro is back for less than an hour and he’s already awakened the Kraken.” He lifted my plate and handed it to me before picking up his own. “She might break the table. It’s happened before.” I raised my eyebrow at him and set my plate back down.
“I’m not a grenade, Knight,” Lisbeth grumbled, her glare still fixed on Arthur. “We’re talking later,” she warned, and he nodded stoically.
The table was rather quiet for a few minutes until I broke the silence before re-thinking my words.
“You might not forbid it, but it’s still fucking gross. Dating a human is like dating a drink dispenser.”
The Born Vampire series: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Complete Series, NSFW Edition) Page 73