Marked by Courage: Vampire Shifter Romance (Blood Red Series Book 3)

by W. J. May

“What now?”

  “You’re a weapon now. I know you might have become one with or without our help, but it’s what you are. Many will try to use you, and the call of family and maker are both strong. When it comes time for you to choose whether or not you destroy us, remember that there was a reason we feared Petra.”

  “I would never destroy you.” Kallie shook her head. “But why do you fear her?”

  “She searched for power in very dark places,” James said seriously. He stood, with effort. “And she found it.”

  Kallie inhaled sharply. She didn’t know exactly what that meant but the chill that ran through her was warning enough.

  “Kallie, please, if nothing else, remember that we are weak.” Liam looked at her, and she saw how the admission hurt his pride. “You could destroy us now if you wanted to. You know where we are. You know your powers.”

  “You can trust me.” Kallie locked her fingers in his. “I will never, ever come after you unless you try to kill my mother. My real mother. Not Petra.”

  “I knew what you meant.” He looked into her eyes, a smile teasing his lips but his eyes full of worry. “He didn’t mean it, you know. The things about me.”

  “I know.” But it had been so real that Kallie squeezed her eyes shut. “It felt so believable.”

  “I know.” He enfolded her in a hug. “I’ll never turn on you. I’m yours. Forever.”

  Chapter 12

  The streets passed by, familiar and unremarkable. It was Kallie who was different now. She turned her hands to look at them. The glow, whatever it was, had faded. She wondered if she was the only one who could see it. When she looked over, Liam was watching her with a worried frown.

  “Is everything okay? Do you feel…?” He shook his head. “I didn’t even ask James what it would feel like after.”

  “Incredible,” Kallie said before she could stop herself. “It feels amazing.”

  “Really?”

  “Like when you’re fighting and you can’t feel anything but that energy…except a hundred times better.”

  For a moment, he looked almost wistful, and Kallie wanted to smile. She could understand his yearning. For Liam, being a vampire had only ever been a sacrifice. She wondered if any part of it had ever felt good for him. Surprisingly, she felt a pang of guilt and she looked down at her hands again, clenching them in her lap. She had done the same, sacrificing herself to save her father. The same, and yet so different.

  “Now you look guilty.”

  “It’s nothing. Same old mess.” She sighed and tipped her head back onto the seat. “You should drop me at my house.”

  He didn’t say anything, but she heard him swallow. He knew what that meant: Caleb would be there. When Kallie took out her phone, his eyes darted to it, but he still said nothing. As he pulled into the driveway and stopped, she hesitated. She had no idea what to say now.

  “Be well,” he said finally, oddly formal.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that you told me you wouldn’t choose.” He reached out to put his hand over hers. “But I know that sometimes it’ll be difficult for you to know how to deal, and I’ll always step back. I’ll always wait for you to call me.”

  Her heart swelled, and she leaned over to place a quick kiss on his cheek. She turned her hand to squeeze his, and smiled. “I’ll text you. Soon.”

  “I’d like that.”

  She felt him watching her as she walked into the house, and then there was the crunch of his wheels on the concrete and he was gone. Kallie leaned against the wall, just inside the door, and typed out a quick text: Thank you for the help. It was terrifying, but thanks.

  Smiling, she considered what to say to Caleb. She stared at her phone, feeling slightly guilty that she spent one moment with one man, the next heartbeat she was craving the attention of another. Home safe, she typed finally. Can I see you?

  She hardly had to wait a second for the reply to come in.

  I’m on my way.

  She was waiting at the kitchen island when her father came up the stairs.

  “I thought I heard you.”

  “Hi.” Kallie looked over from where she was making tea. “You want some? You going to try acting human again?”

  “Sure.” He sounded amused. He came and sat at the island, and it was only when she turned around that he drew in his breath sharply.

  “What is it? Dad?”

  “You’re…something happened.” He shook his head. “You’re different. Are you all right?”

  “I’ll explain when—” Kallie broke off as she saw a streak of pale outside, and the door opened. The next moment, Caleb strolled into the house and stopped dead when he saw Kallie. “Well, I guess ‘when Caleb gets here’ would be now.” Kallie grinned, happy to see a healed Caleb. She beckoned him to sit down. “So boys…we found out what it means to be a Hybrid.”

  “We?” Caleb raised an eyebrow and looked at her father. “That means Liam, right?”

  “I thought I told you not to tell him,” Kallie’s father interjected.

  “I didn’t,” she protested. “He—” She broke off, trying to figure out how to keep the confidence of where the nest was. “He did research as well. Did you uncover anything about how a Hybrid’s power could be unlocked?”

  “I did, but it seemed very uncertain.” Her father shook his head. “It took years of meditation, they said, and I didn’t think there was time to train you for that. Better to focus on how things were now.”

  “It turns out there’s another way.” Kallie took a deep breath. “I don’t think you’re going to like it, but it worked, all right? Remember that it worked.”

  “Kallie…” Her father’s voice was a low snarl. “If he hurt you—”

  “He didn’t. Not really. The way to wake a Hybrid’s power is to strip away all conscious thought. Right?” When her father nodded, Kallie shrugged her shoulders. “You can also do that by making someone think they’re going to die, it turns out.”

  “What?” Caleb frowned.

  “If they think they’re outmatched, if they’ve fought until they can’t get up again, and they think they’re going to die—that also strips away all conscious thought.”

  “And you agreed to this?” her father demanded.

  “Well, I, er…couldn’t, could I? I mean, I couldn’t know that I was safe.”

  “He attacked you?”

  “Don’t be hard on him,” Kallie pleaded. She was speaking too quickly and she had to be careful not to give away James’s involvement. “He could have died, easily. When my powers came to me, I was unstoppable. Whatever you feel you can do, I can probably do a hundred percent more.”

  Her father breathed out in a low whistle.

  “He was able to unlock my powers.” Kallie nodded. “And he brought me home before dawn. Can we leave it at that?”

  Her father gave a shrug that looked remarkably displeased.

  “There’re more important things at stake now,” Kallie continued. “Like whether or not we can trust Petra.”

  “Of course we can trust her,” Caleb said at once.

  “I’m not sure of that.” Kallie exchanged a quick glance with her father. “Look, Caleb, right at the start—Liam told me that Petra was allied with the rogue Reds. I didn’t believe him, because both of you were saying such horrible things about one another and then she told me about how the Blues wanted to kill her. But every story has two sides.”

  “The side they’re telling you is a lie,” Caleb said fiercely.

  “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. Caleb, listen to me. There are weird rumors. The rogue Reds are in the Red Dragon. Some of them are trying to kill me for being Petra’s daughter, and some of them might be on her side. I don’t know what it means, but I can say that Liam is a man who isn’t afraid of much and he’s afraid of her, terrified actually.”

  “She’s the reason we were nearly able to wipe his kind out,” Caleb said. “Of course he’s afraid of her.”

&n
bsp; Unexpectedly, Kallie felt a surge of anger. “And what right did you have to do any of that?”

  “What?” His mouth was hanging open as he stared at her. “Kallie, they were planning to kill all of us. It was us or them.”

  “Was it? Or is that just a lie that all the higher ups told everyone? Because what it sounds like now is that they were worried about what Petra might do, and when they didn’t embrace her, she sided with the Reds and tried to kill them all. There’s a word for that, Caleb—it’s genocide.”

  “They’re Blues! They’re savage and-and—”

  “How, exactly, is that different from the Reds?” Kallie hissed back. “Dad tells me that every day he gets a little closer to snapping and killing a human. Reds have taken both of you and harvested your blood, while beating you almost to death. Reds left Dad to burn to death in the sun. So don’t you tell me that Blues are worse unless you can tell me a story that wasn’t told to you by a Red.”

  There was a ringing silence as Caleb stared at her. “So you’ve picked a side?” he said finally.

  “Yes! My own side, because no one else is trustworthy! It’s you, and Liam, and Dad.”

  “That’s not a side! It’s a contradiction.”

  “Kallie, he’s right.” Her father reached out to cover her hand with his own.

  “Okay, so you hate each other instinctively. I can’t deny that.” Kallie shook her head. “But the rest of it just seems like the leaders of both factions have been lying their heads off for just about ever, and all of this war is something made up.”

  “I—” Caleb began, but everyone broke off as Kallie’s mother emerged from upstairs with a trash bag. She smiled self-consciously when she saw Caleb.

  “I’d have put on a robe if I knew we had company.”

  “I’m very sorry, ma’am.” In the blink of an eye, Caleb was transformed into a proper gentleman. “Can I carry that outside?”

  “No, no. You’re a guest.” She smiled, clearly charmed. “I’ll take it out. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” She passed behind them silently, and Kallie saw again just how aware her mother was of the danger around her. She knew that any one of the people here could kill her in an instant.

  They waited in silence while she went to the dumpster. The last thing she needed was to hear them screaming at one another. The teakettle whistled, and Kallie was just taking down mugs when they heard the scream: high and absolutely petrified.

  For the first time, Kallie was grateful for vampire instincts. She didn’t sit frozen as a human might have, wondering what to do. She and Caleb and her father moved as one, flinging the door open and tumbling out into the night air. In terror, Kallie saw the sky beginning to pale on the horizon; when had she developed an instinctive terror of the sun?

  It didn’t matter. By the dumpster, she could see the Reds. They held her mother pinned between them, one of them just bending to put his teeth to her throat. Caleb collided with him a millisecond later, and her father’s snarl tore through the air as he launched himself at another one. He was still weak, but he was utterly furious.

  Kallie was in the fray a second later, trying to keep her head down as she lashed out with her hands and feet. Hisses and snarls filled the air, so loud that she almost missed Caleb’s full-on shout.

  “Kallie! Get your mother out of here and get inside!”

  A look at the sky left her no doubt as to why. Grabbing her mother’s limp form and shouting for her father, Kallie raced for the door. She could hear Caleb yelling something at the attackers, but she could not pause to find out what.

  They made it inside just before sunlight spilled onto the driveway, and Kallie felt her father shudder. This had nearly been his fate, barely one day ago. He was at her mother’s side the next moment, however, smoothing the hair out of her eyes and whispering her name. She didn’t move, and as Caleb came into the house, they turned to him pleadingly.

  “She’s in shock,” he said. “Give it a bit.”

  “Who were they?” Kallie whispered.

  “Rogue Reds. They said this was retribution.” Caleb shook his head. “But what the hell for?”

  Chapter 13

  Once the tears started, they wouldn’t stop. Kallie held her mother’s limp body in her arms and rocked back and forth, trying to keep the whimpers from becoming sobs. She could smell the blood, and an instinct to feed warred with the emotions in her heart. This was her mother, the woman she was supposed to protect, the woman she would do anything to save, and yet a piece of Kallie could not stop seeing her as prey. She suddenly wanted to be sick.

  She was still crying when Caleb pulled her away, and her father carried her mother up the stairs. Kallie rested her head against Caleb’s shoulder and cried, and he held her tightly.

  “It’s my fault,” she whispered.

  “Your fault?”

  “I’m hanging out with a Blue, aren’t I?”

  “Kallie, they hated you before you were even born.” He pulled away to look down at her. “Whatever game they’re playing, it’s older than you. It makes me furious that you got caught up in it, but this was why Petra sent me to watch over you. I know you don’t trust her right now, but she’s looking out for you.”

  “Well, some job she’s done of it!” The words burst out of her and Kallie yanked herself away. “She let my father get turned, she didn’t care enough about me to tell me who she was, and she isn’t even protecting the one human there is left!”

  Caleb looked away, and she realized how it must sound.

  “I didn’t mean…Caleb, I know you can be trusted. If she’s as evil as I’m worried she is, and I got you out of the deal, I’d count myself lucky.”

  He smiled, but any moment they might have had was wiped away by Kallie’s father calling for her. He beckoned her up the stairs. “I want one of us to be here when your mother wakes up.”

  “Do we need to take her to the hospital?”

  “No. Caleb was right; it’s just shock and one minor scratch. I don’t think they got any blood.” Her father’s eyes flared with rage. “But I want to speak to Caleb, see if he knows anything about the ones who were trying to hurt her. Will you stay with her?”

  “I should know about them all, too,” Kallie protested.

  “I’ll tell you everything,” her father promised her. “Go.”

  In the bedroom, she sat quietly, staring at her mother’s prone form. There was the start of a bruise on one cheek. Kallie had always seen bruises as dirty, looking to her like smudges of dirt on her pale skin. Now she realized what they really were: blood. She swallowed and tried to focus on the features of her mother’s face. This was a woman she loved.

  It occurred to her now that her family was hardly the first to have endured this. Had there been other families like theirs over the years? Living with secrets and trying to keep hold of their emotions? The thought of it made her feel infinitely less alone, but at the same time she wished she knew how those stories ended.

  She wished she knew how her story ended, Kallie could not help thinking over the past weeks. For two years, things had been terrible in some ways, but she thought they had been manageable. She was just now realizing that she had reached her breaking point sometime in those two weeks, and that the change of circumstances had pushed her over the edge. She was staring at the closed blinds when her mother stirred.

  “Kallie?”

  “Mom!” Kallie reached out to take her hand.

  “Your eyes are pretty like that…” Her mother sighed slightly and shifted in the bed, clearly still half-asleep. “Didn’t want you to turn into a vampire, but…”

  Kallie waited, cradling the woman’s warm hand. She was just happy that her mother didn’t seem to be stricken with terror.

  “You seemed so lost lately,” her mother said. “Every month, a little less sure. Now you seem strong. You have purpose.”

  I wish I knew what it was. She didn’t want to worry her mother any more than she already was. Kallie smiled and squeezed her fi
ngers.

  It was painful to see memory and awareness dawn on her mother’s face. The woman pushed herself up on the bed, looking around herself distractedly.

  “What happened? Why am I—” Her fingers reached up to trace the bruise on the side of her cheek. “What happened? I remember…” She shivered.

  Kallie realized that she should have been thinking of what to say while her mother slept, not thinking about her life and her problems. She shook her head. “There were vampires nearby. They attacked you. We don’t know why.” She thought it might be less horrifying to think of it as an accident, something random instead of being part of a greater plot. But at the paleness of her mother’s face, she found herself worried that she had made the wrong choice. “Mom?”

  “Darling, who’s…” Her mother shook her head. “Who’s Petra?”

  Kallie hoped that her face didn’t show her shock and horror. “Petra? I don’t know anyone named Petra.”

  “That’s odd.” Her mother frowned, searching for a memory. “I thought they said something when they attacked me. They said it was for Petra. I thought I knew a Petra once, but now I can’t remember anything about her. Maybe one of your father’s friends.”

  Kallie looked away. “I don’t know.” She forced herself to shrug. “Maybe you heard something from another backyard or something.”

  “Maybe.” Her mother’s voice was dubious. “I can’t stop thinking about it, though. I just know I know her, but I don’t know how.” She shook her head.

  “I’m sure you’ll remember at two in the morning,” Kallie joked. “Isn’t that how it always goes?”

  “My funny daughter.” The woman smiled and put her hand out to stroke Kallie’s hair. “Have you been crying, Kallie?”

  “I…I was just scared, that’s all.”

  “I was scared, too,” her mother confided. “I knew what they were but they aren’t like your father, or you. I feel safe when I’m with you guys, but they weren’t nice at all.”

  Kallie tried not to let her smile falter at the sound of the lie. Her mother was afraid of them both, even if she wouldn’t admit it to herself. But she was also correct that the rogue Reds were different. You could even see meanness in people, and vampires were the same—the ones who reveled in cruelty were truly scary.