I stand and rush to embrace her, but she steps back. “No, I mean like I’m a kid. Carry me on your hip.”
“Why?”
“Just…do it! Please?”
“All right.” I dip my knees and scoop her up, settling her on my hip. She clings to me like a child would as I straighten, then she closes her eyes again and repeats the phrase. I recognized the lullaby she sang earlier as Welsh, but this…
It sends chills ricocheting along my spine. It feels like very old, very powerful words, but I do not recognize them.
Her eyes open and she looks around, has me turn, and closes her eyes again, repeating the phrase, a little louder this time. She opens her eyes again, looks around, and is obviously getting frustrated.
“The trees were different. There was a certain way Dad always stood, facing certain stones.” She has me turn a little, and once again chants the phrase. “Why isn’t this working? It should work!”
Nothing around us but a still, clear night under a nearly full moon, with the barest hint of a breeze.
“Wait!” She pulls the ring off the chain, puts the chain around her neck again, and then, with a deep breath, she slides the ring onto her left ring finger. “Lazgo mandem tanneh cahl. Fozun rostray sephiahl.” She chants it, like a spell, and…
I am not ashamed to admit that while her jubilant screams are of success and celebration, mine are of shock and, yes, fear. My entire body tingles as, around us, the Welsh night shimmers and dissolves, replaced by a thickly wooded clearing that’s just larger than the rock piles outside the stone ring.
“Yes! Yes, motherfucking yes!” she screams, climbing out of my arms because, frankly, I’m too stunned to do anything but stand there, staring, turning around in a circle.
She darts around the stone ring, cackling in glee, whooping with her success, until a thought finally hits me. I blur to her side, grab her, and clap a hand over her mouth.
“Shh!”
“What?” she mumbles behind my hand.
“Quiet!” I hiss, listening.
A gentle breeze stirs the leaves of the trees in the woods around us. The creaking and chirping of some insects softly overlay that sound, but there are no cars or planes, nothing like that. I see no distant light pollution.
It even…smells different here.
When I look up, the moon is the same phase, and the stars all look like the constellations I’d expect to see, but every hair on my body is standing nearly on end as I realize we’ve…
Crossed.
Through the stone ring.
This is the stuff of cable TV shows and romance books, not reality.
Right?
Then again, I’m a vampire who’s about to sign a lucrative business deal with a werewolf, whose mate is apparently part psychic fae.
Sooo…yeah.
After a minute, I realize I’m hearing something that fills me with dread—the sound of something large, an animal or a person, moving through the trees some distance away, but heading toward us. I realize she hears it, too, because her eyes widen.
I grab her and blur, moving into the trees on the far side of the ring from where the sounds are coming, and I hold her in my arms, so she doesn’t accidentally shuffle her feet and make a noise. Also, so I can leap to safety, if necessary, and carry her with me. I have the ability to cloak my presence from the average human, but I’ve never tried it before while holding someone.
I try it now and hope it works with my girl in my arms.
“Stay silent,” I whisper, and she nods.
The footsteps approach, closer, until the person making them finally breaks through into the clearing on the other side.
The man stops at the edge of the woods, his nose to the air, hesitating. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was scenting us.
Before I can stop her, Eilidh gasps and throws herself out of my arms like a wild little demon badger. “Zuzu!” she screams, running through the trees and toward the stones.
Dammit! I’m already starting after her and attribute my delay in reacting to my shock over the fact that we’re apparently in another fucking dimension.
Except the man’s equally startled cry in reply pulls me up short. “Eilidh?” He screams in joy and drops the canvas satchel he carries slung over his shoulder, engulfing her in his embrace as she slams into him, crying now as hard as she is. “Mazbushka!”
He looks exactly as she’d described him, except this man can’t be older than Eilidh. In fact, he looks like he’s barely in his late twenties, if that.
And it takes my breath away to see how much he also resembles my Robert. That guts me, rendering me unable to do anything except stand there and witness their tearful reunion.
They both collapse to the ground, crying as he rocks her in his embrace and speaks to her in a language that…yeah.
I have no fucking idea what he’s saying, but if I had to guess, it’s the same language she chanted in the stone ring. I mean, there are plenty of languages in the world I do not know, but in this part of the world, there are none that I can’t at least hear a few words of and recognize the language, even if I don’t understand everything being said.
This?
It sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before.
But even I am not stupid enough to try to make him release my girl right now. So, I stand watch, listening for anyone else approaching, trying to stay alert to potential threats despite emotionally reeling over this latest development.
“I’m not crazy,” she whispers. “I’m not crazy. I forgot you, but I’m not crazy. I didn’t imagine you. You’re real.”
“Of course, I am real,” he tearfully says in accented English. “My sweet, darling Eilidh. There has not been a single day I have not missed you and thought about you and longed to hold you in my arms again. My sweet, sweet Mazbushka.”
I let this continue for a good twenty minutes, trying to compartmentalize that a) we are no longer in Wales, and b) this man apparently knows her, and c) we ARE NOT IN FUCKING WALES at this moment in time.
But the night is also thinning, and either we need to move someplace safe for me, or we need to return to the hotel.
To the hotel in fucking.
Wales.
Because I will be turning into a flaming pumpkin if we do not. Life just got extremely interesting in incredibly incomprehensible ways, and I’d like to stick around for a while longer and see what happens next.
Especially with Eilidh.
“Beg pardon,” I say, my old Scottish accent returning somewhat in my shock, “but who the bloody hell are ye, man?”
He smiles up at me, apparently completely unconcerned by my presence. “Zeuzehn. Oh!” He grabs his satchel and pulls out a small package of what looks like waxed paper and opens it. “I suppose it’s been forever since you had these, my little one.”
He pops one into her mouth and her eyes widen, then drop closed as she slowly chews and happily moans, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Rhozhen candy!” she mumbles, laugh-crying as she leans against him, her head on his shoulder. He protectively drapes an arm around her again, holding her, his face pressed against her hair.
Part of me wants to feel jealous and part of me is terrified because we’re not in fucking Wales.
The rational mind that’s kept me alive for longer than one of the world’s major religions has existed says I need to wait this out, as long as I’m keeping an eye on the time.
The rest of my mind is freaking the absolute fuck out right now.
There are literally dozens of questions I want to ask this man, the first and foremost one being where the bloody hell are we, but…
Eilidh.
I’m terrified if I’m this shaken how upset she must be feeling right now.
Okay, correction, there is a question that takes precedent above all others. “Are we safe here?” I whisper.
“Yes,” the man says, smiling as he feeds her another candy. “We are perfectly safe here.”
“All right, then.” I drop to the ground and sit next to Eilidh, my hand on her thigh, willing to wait this out for a little longer.
She removes the ring from her finger, pulls the necklace off, uses a lark’s head to loop the chain through the ring, and puts it on again.
Then she tips her head against the man’s shoulder and contentedly chews another candy he pops into her mouth before he kisses her forehead and smiles.
I should be jealous.
I should be ripping his throat out.
But this is Eilidh raw and real and emotionally bleeding. Yet she also looks more contented in this moment than I’ve ever seen her.
Although, technically, once again here is someone who has apparently known my girl longer, and, in some ways, knows her better than I do.
I’m not conceited enough to deny this simple fact.
It’s right here before me. I might be desperately in love with her, but we’ve spent barely a week together.
He strokes her hair, sniffs her, holds her close, still rocking her like a father would a child.
Yeah, that’s the other reason I haven’t killed him—because the vibe I’m getting is definitely father-child, not lover.
“I am so glad my call finally worked, my little one,” he softly says. “I was hoping it would. Parxon told me I was tearing my heart out to keep trying, but I would never give up. I came before, during, and after every full and dark moon, and even the quarters, and kept trying. Next to the day you were born, this is the happiest day of my life.”
“Wait.” Okay, so I will interrupt. “You’re so glad what worked?”
He holds up his left hand, where I see he wears a near exact mate to the ring Eilidh has, except for a small crack in the labradorite stone. “It will rarely work to allow a crossing unless you do it perfectly on the strongest nights. But it could still signal, or so I hoped. I would try to send a fahnihr to her, to find her, in hopes we could talk to her, or to let her know we were here. We never knew if it was working, but I hoped one day it would. A few times, I saw her through the stones.”
“Wait, we?”
He nods. “Me, and Parxon.” He smiles at her, so full of love and parental adoration it makes my own heart ache. “Her father.”
34
Eilidh
“Wait…what?” I stare at him. “My dad?”
I mean, yeah, I know Amber said he was alive. Yet, somehow, I hadn’t managed to convince myself of that.
Zuzu nods. “Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“He is away doing research but will return later today.” He smiles. “Wait until he sees you, love. This will bring such joy to him.”
I look at Dexter to confirm I heard what I think I heard. “He said that, right? He really said that? My dad’s alive?”
Dexter smiles and tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Yes, love. He said that.”
Zuzu literally doesn’t look a day older than I remember him. He smiles and touches my cheek, runs his fingers through my hair. I remember him braiding my hair when I was little, singing to me as he did.
“And who is this man, little one?” he asks, nodding toward Dexter. “Is he someone important to my angel?”
“Oh. Um, yeah. This is Dexter. He’s…mine.”
My what is still up for debate, I suppose. Gawd, are we ever going to get an uninterrupted stretch of time together where we can sort of, ya know, sort our shit out?
“It is very nice to meet you, Dexter,” Zuzu says, reaching out to shake hands with him. “I am Zeuzehn.”
“Why does she call you Zuzu?”
“Because when she was a baby, she couldn’t say my name and started calling me that.” The loving smile on his face—the paternal smile—nearly shatters my heart, and I throw myself at him for another long, desperate hug.
I’m afraid to move, afraid to leave the ring of stones for fear Zuzu will disappear and I’ll never see him again. I’m terrified this is some sort of dream I’ll awaken from, and none of this will be real.
That I’ll lose Zuzu again.
That I’ll lose any chance of reuniting with my father.
Dexter takes over the questions and I’m honestly okay with that. Zuzu’s familiar, comforting scent fills my lungs, and I really would rather just sit here, for now, and process the flood of memories spilling back into my soul.
Honestly? I don’t think I can even walk right now.
“So, it was you who sent the phantom dog after her?”
He nods. “Yes. That was the easiest form for me to conjure with the ring. To track you and hopefully lead you to me. The rings can summon each other. Act like beacons, when they’re worn. It was the only form I knew I could conjure with any accuracy.”
Dexter slowly nods while Zuzu pops another candy into my mouth like I’m five, and he’s just retrieved me from hiding because—
“Sers,” I gasp. “Uncle Sers.” A flood of fear washes into me. He was like a bogeyman. I always had to worry he might discover me.
“Oh,” Zuzu says, his voice suddenly filled with venom I’ve never heard him speak before. “You never have to worry about him again, little one.” He hugs me tighter. “He is dead, long in his grave.” He kisses my forehead again. “I am so sorry about your mother. We tried so hard to find you and come to you. It nearly destroyed your father’s sanity.”
I cling to him. “Did…my uncle kill Mom?”
I feel Dexter’s hand gently settle on my back as Zuzu answers. “Yes. I’m so sorry. We didn’t know Serxon had a crossing ring until he attacked your father that day. We tried to find where he hid it, but he would never reveal it. Your father left your mother with his, thinking he would take Serxon’s.”
“Can we start over?” Dexter softly asks. “Her mother told her that her father died.” I’m so stunned over all of this that I can’t even appreciate how sexy Dex sounds with a Scottish burr.
Zuzu sniffles. “Sorcha likely believed that. Understandably so. There was a weekend camp you wanted to attend. Arts and crafts.” As Zuzu tells the story, he plays with my hair. “So they enrolled you. Your father had to come here, and he brought your mother over for a visit, since you were to be gone overnight at the camp. But we didn’t know Serxon had arrived on the estate. He followed your father and mother when Parxon was going to take her back, and Serxon confronted them. Attacked them. Your father took her through the crossing, but then Serxon followed.
“That’s when your father realized Serxon had a ring no one knew about. Parxon left his ring with your mother and fought with Serxon, forcibly dragged him back through the crossing. Unfortunately, Serxon got away from your father and hid his ring.” He sadly shakes his head. “No amount of bribery would make him give up the location. He was so angry at your father for mating and marking Sorcha.”
“Why?” Dexter asks.
Zuzu sighs. “I am afraid I am not doing this story much justice,” Zuzu says. “It is very complicated. There are so many things you do not know about us, or how we do things here.”
“Where is here?” Dexter asks.
“It is still your Earth. It is a different…dimension, I think is the word? We call it Jotnunlm. This is the old world, the original world. Where you come from is the land where the old families sent the sorted ones after the ruling class decided to separate our kind, the jotnun, from the rest. During rangnork. The sorting. The ones who’d had the virus, and the shifters, and females. The hybrids who could mate with the females, but who weren’t Alphas or omegas, and who couldn’t give birth. What are now called humans, I guess you could say? And others who wished to go with them. There was very old magick here in this dimension, and none that they were aware of in the other.”
I find my voice. “Wait, what?”
“There is so much to tell you, Mazbushka. Oh, your father will be so joyful when he returns and sees you.”
Something pings my brain. “Wait, when is sunrise?”
He lifts the sleeve of his tunic, exposi
ng what appears to be a digital watch on his wrist. “Less than two hours. Why?”
I look at Dexter. “You have to go back.”
“Like bloody hell I will.”
“We have to send you back.”
“I’m not leavin’ without ye, girl.”
“And I’m not leaving until I see my father.” I focus on Zuzu again. “How far away is the house?”
“Not far, but I have a crew coming this morning to finish repairs on the roof. They will be there for most of the morning. And the estate crews will arrive soon, too, for morning tasks. I should not take you across the open fields while they are there. There is nowhere to hide.” He smiles. “Do you remember our hiding game?”
I nod. “Sort of, yeah.”
“You were always so good. No one ever saw you during your visits.”
“Why can’t anyone know about her?” Dexter asks.
“Because they will immediately know she is not of here.”
“But how? Can’t we disguise her?”
“The problem is that she is female.”
“So?” Dexter and I both ask.
Zuzu sighs. “It has been so long, little one. Here, in our world, there are no females. There haven’t been since the rangnork sent all the others to your world long, long ago. When the ruling class decided. That’s when the stone rings were created by the old families who controlled the magick. They were used to move the sorted, and anyone else who wished to go, to the other world. The old magick was centered here, but those who were sorted didn’t care because they were then free of the ruling class and could do as they wished.”
I’m glad Dexter looks as confused as I feel right now. His Scottish accent keeps bleeding through. “Then how do ye have babies if ye don’t have women?”
“Omegas, mostly. Like me. Some zetas and gammas, although most cannot, anymore. Some betas can father children with omegas, but most cannot with zetas and gammas.”
“So, does that mean ye’re her…mother?”
Zuzu laughs. “No! Parxon marked Sorcha and mated with her. He was secretly visiting that world to compile research when they met. He fell in love with her instantly and mated and marked her. I helped them keep their secret.”
Her Vampire Obsession Page 33