Fractured (Vampire Awakenings, Book 6)

by Brenda K. Davies

  David glanced over at her but she remained focused ahead, and he knew she wasn’t talking to him. He rested his hand on her knee, causing her to start. She didn’t jerk away from him though. Her gaze came toward him; a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  She turned her attention back to the road as they drove out of the town and down a tree-lined street. He caught only glimpses of houses through the trees. If there had been leaves on the trees, he never would have been able to see what little he did of the roofs and chimneys.

  Mia made a right-hand turn onto a two-lane road. David didn’t see any homes through the bare trees pressing close against the road anymore, but he did spot a couple deer making their way through the woods. After about a mile, Mia made another turn onto a dirt driveway.

  The springs in the Rover bounced as she drove over the ruts in the road. Ice crunched beneath the tires when she slowed the vehicle to a near crawl, not because they couldn’t navigate the road faster but because David could feel her dread increasing with every passing second. She hunched farther over the steering wheel, her knuckles turning white as she kept her eyes locked straight ahead.

  Then the trees gave way to reveal a white house sitting in the middle of a couple acres of open land. Mia’s breath exploded from her. She hadn’t known what she would expect to find there—the charred remains of her home, a clearing, or absolutely nothing. She’d never considered that someone would have built a new home where hers had once stood.

  Behind the house, horses moved around a paddock munching on the hay that a woman was tossing out to them. A small squeal drew Mia’s attention to the two children who bolted out the backdoor and toward the barn.

  “We didn’t have a barn or horses,” she murmured. “And our house was yellow, a cheery yellow, not an ugly one. My mom loved the color yellow. She said it brightened her mood and made her feel as if the sun was shining, even at night.”

  They were the most inane comments, but she couldn’t quite process everything she was seeing. She’d thought the town had changed. This was a whole new world, and yet it was a world that was unsettlingly familiar. Her home had been a colonial; this one was a farmhouse with a wraparound porch.

  However, despite all the differences in the homes and landscapes, she began to pick out familiar things.

  “I used to play in that tree, over there,” she said, pointing to the large oak with its sweeping boughs. “And that pathway through the woods back there, it leads to a lake. In the winter my dad and I would go skating on it. Neither of us was very good at it, but we always had fun.”

  “I bet.”

  Her hands clamped hold of his as she sought to ground herself in the present while the memories of the past threatened to bury her. “I’m glad… I’m glad it’s not a burnt-out basement or an overgrown field, or whatever else it could have become. I’m glad life has continued here. And the family seems happy.”

  “They do,” David agreed as the woman approached the fence to stare at them. The screen door opened and a man stepped onto the front porch. “They’ve noticed us. Do you want to get out and look around?”

  While they’d been driving, she’d been determined not to get out of the vehicle, just to take a peek, say her good-byes to the past, and leave. Now, she found her hand falling to the door handle, and she pushed the door open. Reaching behind her, she removed her coat from the backseat and slipped it on before climbing out of the SUV. Her hand instinctively touched upon the stake in her inner pocket as the man and woman walked toward them. Sniffing the air, Mia realized the coppery scent of their blood was that of humans.

  David climbed out the passenger side and walked around to take hold of Mia’s hand. The man said something to the woman when they met in the center of the yard. The woman turned to call to the kids, who ran up to them. The man knelt and adjusted the coat of the little boy before the boy nodded and dashed up the stairs to return inside.

  Rising to his feet, the man took hold of the woman’s hand as the little girl ran back to stand by the fence. She gazed curiously at them but didn’t come any closer.

  “Can I help you?” the man inquired when the couple stopped in front of her and David.

  “I… uh… I’m sorry to bother you, but I used to live here,” Mia said. “Well not here, in this house, but on this land.”

  “Oh,” the woman said. Then “Oh,” with far more sadness in her voice and wider eyes.

  “The house on this land before us caught on fire,” the man said, and the woman shot him a pointed look.

  Mia couldn’t stop herself from wincing at his words. “Yes, it did.”

  The man cringed when he realized that it had been Mia’s home. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, and the woman shook her head at him.

  The man’s gaze ran over Mia before he turned back to the porch just as the little boy stepped outside again. The man waved to the boy, who jogged down the stairs toward them. Small and nimble, Mia would have guessed the boy to be about ten. The boy stopped beside his dad for a second and then turned to smile at them.

  “Hello!” he greeted happily.

  “Hi,” Mia said, grateful for the distraction from her memories and the couple.

  “I like your car.”

  David turned to look at the Rover before focusing on the family again. “Thank you,” he said to the boy.

  “Why don’t you go play, Kip,” the woman said and ruffled her son’s blond hair.

  Kip nodded and darted away. He ran around the Rover, rising on his toes to peer into the windows before running around to the back of it again. With a giggle, Kip raced past them to where his sister stood by the fence. The boy scrambled through the rails of the fence and the children both ran in and out of the horse’s legs as they raced to the other side.

  “We heard about the fire in town,” the woman said. “There was talk of a daughter, but no one knew what had happened to her or if she had perished in the fire, and for some reason, her remains were never uncovered. It’s kind of a local mystery and ghost tale around here.”

  Mia had gone into town a few times as a teen with her parents to see a movie or to do some shopping. Her parents hadn’t been turned into vampires until they were in their thirties, and though they looked young to have a teenage daughter, they didn’t seem out of place with her. They hadn’t moved into their house until Mia was twelve, so to the people in town she was aging normally, and her parents were aging really well.

  After a few more years of living there, they would have had to move in order to avoid suspicion about their lack of aging, but no one had paid them much attention back then. They hadn’t ventured into town often, and not until Mia was old enough to control herself around humans, but she’d been seen around there by a fair amount of people.

  Back then, the town had been smaller than the one they’d just driven through, and she’d heard the small-town gossip even during her limited time there. She’d bet there had been a lot of speculation about the fire and what had happened to her afterward. Some may have even whispered that she’d been the one to start it.

  “I wasn’t home when it started.” Mia had no idea why she was lying to this couple when they would erase their memories of her and David before leaving. The humans in town may not have known what she and her parents really were, but it was best if no one ever knew what had become of her. “By the time I got home, there was nothing I could do to help my parents. I don’t know what started the fire, and I just wanted to get as far from here as possible afterward.”

  “It was electrical,” the man said. “It started in the wall of the master bedroom and spread through the attic.”

  “It spread so fast.” Mia closed her eyes as she recalled all the dark wood beams and the musty smelling attic. Recalled the way her parents hadn’t been able to escape. Her father may have already been dead by the time Mia heard her mother’s screams. “It was an old home,” she murmured as her mother’s cries resonated in her ears.

  Mia’s grasp on his hand had becom
e bone-crushing, but David didn’t try to get her to ease it. David gripped her hand within both of his, drawing her closer as her heart raced in her chest. When she opened them again, tears swam in her eyes as she gazed at the pretty farmhouse.

  For a minute, Mia became so entrenched in the past that all she saw before her was a cheery yellow colonial, with red begonias lining the slate walkway. She could hear her mother’s laughter as her father picked her up from where she’d been hanging laundry on the line. He spun her around before setting her on her feet and kissing her.

  Mia had been petrified that the only memories she’d experience here were those of the flames consuming her home and her family. Instead, only the happy ones drifted through her mind. The warmth of her parents’ love enveloped her once more as tears slid down her cheeks. She wiped them away before the brisk air could freeze them on her face.

  “Would you like to come in for some coffee?” the woman offered.

  “No,” Mia said. “Thank you. I’ve seen enough here.” She turned to David. “I’m ready to go home now.”

  David gazed at her for a minute, knowing that she meant she was ready to let go of her past for a future with him. He pulled her against his chest and held her close as he kissed the top of her head. “I will take care of their memories,” he murmured.

  Mia stepped away when he released her to speak with the couple. The woman grasped the man’s hand as David took hold of their minds and asked them to call their children forward. The couple turned away to do as he commanded. When the children had joined them, David removed from their minds the memories of the two of them ever having been there.

  When he was done with the family, David pulled Mia against his side and they walked back to his Rover. He opened the passenger side door for her, and she slid inside. Hurrying around the front, he climbed into the driver’s side, started the vehicle, and turned it around before driving away from the house.

  “Are you okay?” he inquired.

  Mia contemplated his question. She hadn’t known how she would feel after coming back. It took her a minute to realize she felt good. She’d faced her demons, and a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The grief for her parents was still there, it always would be, but for the first time, she knew she would be able to live with it.

  “Yes. Better than okay, actually,” she said. “It was time to really face what happened here and to say good-bye. Time to move on.” She slid closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder. “With you.”

  Turning his face into her hair, he kissed her head as they headed back through the town. “Maybe we should get a room somewhere for the night,” she suggested as they pulled onto the highway. “It’s a long drive back, and I think we could both use a break from the road.”

  “That sounds like a plan to me.”

  ***

  Mia fiddled with the brochures in the rack near the door as she waited for David to pay for their room. There was white-water rafting in the next town over, a tour of some old village, a woodshop and lumberjack tournament, and numerous stores to shop for antiques. Most of the attractions were closed now and would reopen in the spring. The winter months were not an exciting time of year in this part of rural New Hampshire, something evidenced by the fact there were only three other cars in the parking lot outside.

  “Thank you,” David said, taking the key from the clerk behind the counter.

  Mia bit on her bottom lip when she saw it was an actual key. She’d spent her fair share of time in some pay-by-the-hour places over the years, and most of them hadn’t even used a real key anymore. David pocketed the key, grabbed the backpack she’d packed in case they did decide to stop on their way home, and swung it over his shoulder.

  He turned to her and slid his arm through hers before pushing the door open so they could step into the blustery night together. The wind whipped her hair away from her face and stung her cheeks as they walked down the road past the small cottages facing the parking lot. The few lights that still worked in the lanterns illuminating the way flickered with every gusting breeze.

  The motel may have been a little outdated, but the cottages were adorable. Each of them was painted a bright yellow and had tiny red shutters and doors. It reminded her of a village where hobbits might reside as the doors on each cottage were smaller than normal, and so were the haphazard, square windows. It had been her idea to turn around and spend the night there after they’d already driven by it. The place enchanted her.

  David pulled the key from his pocket as they walked toward the cottage they’d been given for the night. A flash of headlights in the lot drew her attention as a car pulled in. It parked near the front door of the main office, more than a couple hundred feet away from them. The flickering lights outside the office briefly illuminated the gaunt, bearded man who stepped out from behind the wheel of the car. Someone sat in the passenger seat, but she could only see their outline through the heavily tinted windows.

  Something about the bearded man tugged at her memory. She tried to place him, but he was too far away and too much in shadow for her to be able to see him clearly. She sniffed the air to see if his odor might trigger her memory, but the wind blowing around her carried the man’s scent away from her. She was about to take a step back toward the man when David spoke.

  “Here we are.”

  Mia turned as David slid the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open. She forgot all about the man as she bounced on her toes and eagerly waited to see inside; the outside of the cottage was adorable, and she hoped the inside didn’t turn into a disappointment. David reached inside the cottage and flicked on the light switch. She laughed in delight when the room beyond was revealed.

  “Definitely a place for hobbits!” she declared as she strode into the small room.

  David ducked beneath the door to enter the room. “Yes, it is,” he agreed and set the backpack on the floor.

  His gaze ran over the cream-colored walls and double bed. To his left was a kitchenette with a fridge the size of a pizza box. Until then, he hadn’t realized they made fridges so small. On top of the fridge was a TV that was even smaller in size, and the one burner stove beside the fridge sparkled in the light. The cottage may have been tiny, but it was spotless and it had Mia grinning from ear to ear.

  Mia sat on the mattress and bounced experimentally on it. “Little hard.”

  David plopped onto the bed beside her. “We’ll have to break it in and soften it then.”

  She giggled as she leaned against his side. “We’ll do exactly that,” she said before jumping to her feet. “Can you imagine the shower in this place?”

  David watched her rush around the corner, her laughter filling the room when she saw the bathroom. She was so different than the woman he’d first encountered in the warehouse; so different than the woman who had been brought to the training compound. That woman had been afraid, wary of everything around her. He’d never seen her smile, let alone laugh. Now she radiated joy.

  He knew she was still dealing with everything that had happened to her, but every day she smiled and laughed more. Every day she spoke of a future she never would have mentioned a month ago. He loved watching her flourish as her confidence grew and her sadness eased.

  Her head popped back around the corner; her eyes danced with amusement when they met his. “I’m not sure you’re going to fit in the shower,” she told him.

  David rose and walked toward her. “If you’re in there, then I will figure out a way to fit into it.” She stepped back so he could look around the corner. “Or not,” he muttered when he saw the tiny stall with a simple showerhead propped over a drain. “Is that the sink?”

  “Better the sink in the shower than the toilet.”

  “That’s a statement I never thought I’d hear before. I do agree with it though.”

  Mia couldn’t stop herself from giggling again as she stepped closer to him. She felt like a completely different woman, somehow reborn just as a new house had bee
n reborn on the ashes of her old one. She draped her arms around his neck and rose on her toes to kiss his cheek.

  “I’m so happy,” she murmured.

  His arms cinched around her waist, he lifted her up and carried her over to the bed. “So am I,” he said as he laid her down on the mattress.

  CHAPTER 18

  David’s eyes fluttered open when a scraping noise pierced through his sleep. He pulled Mia closer against him as he listened for the sound again, but all he heard was the howling of the wind and the rattling of the glass in the windows. Mia murmured something and turned into his chest. Her warm mouth settled against the hollow of his throat.

  He heard nothing abnormal, yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Easing himself away from Mia, he rose and tugged on his jeans before approaching the door. He couldn’t make it through the door of the cottage without stooping, but he could at least stand upright inside the small building.

  He’d pulled the heavy yellow drapes over the crooked window before falling asleep. Stepping beside the window, he peered around the edge of the drapes instead of pulling them back. He sniffed at the air, catching a whiff of blood on the wind.

  His fangs tingled and adrenaline pulsed through his body as he retreated to the bed. Resting his hand on Mia’s shoulder, he gave it a gentle shake. He placed his finger over her lips when her eyes fluttered open. Her brow furrowed as she gazed at him.

  Bending down, he rested his mouth against her ear while he spoke. “Be quiet and get dressed.”

  Grasping the blankets, she held them against her chest as she sat up on the bed. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Something’s not right.”

  Mia scooted off the bed and snatched her clothes from the floor, tugging on her jeans and sweater before reaching for her socks. She froze when a new scent tickled her nose. Sitting back on the bed, she sniffed at the air. A cold chill raced down her spine. For a disconcerting minute, the entire room tilted, and she was plunged back into a time when she’d worn chains.