Because I still have a business to run if I wish to support my runaway girl’s lifestyle, don’t I?
Once it’s dark enough, with Eilidh’s ring on my left ring finger, I head downstairs to retrieve the rental. I need to find a way back through the stones.
I need to find a way back to her.
36
Eilidh
When Dexter disappears, I’m relieved to realize I’m still there, with Zuzu. Dexter has been sent back through to what I hope is safety.
Except Zuzu lets out a horrified cry, startling me.
I wheel around. “What?”
“You…sent him back!” I don’t understand why he sounds so…distraught.
“I had to! He’s a vampire. He’ll explode in sunlight. He needs to get back to our hotel.”
“But you sent your ring with him!”
“Well, yeah. But he can come back tonight. You have one.”
Wide-eyed, he walks over to me and places his hands on my shoulders. “Mazbushka,” he whispers, “he’s of that world. He cannot cross alone, and I don’t know if we can make the damaged ring work to allow you to cross to him.”
My heart pounds. “What?”
“I am sorry. If I knew you were going to do that, I would have warned you to take him and cross back yourself with the ring. Perhaps if you had mated with him and claimed him. But your mother could never cross alone with the ring, not without you or your father wearing it, because she was human.”
“You mean…I just sent the guy I love back…and might never see him again?”
His agonized expression mirrors the way my soul feels. “I do not know.” He pulls me in for a long hug. “If we can make the damaged ring work properly during full moon, there might be hope. But we have not been able to manage a crossing in so long. Because of the damage to the ring, it has to be on a perfect full moon when the chance is best. Your father almost didn’t make it back the last time.”
“Full moon,” I mutter.
He nods. “Your ring is undamaged. It will work in daytime or at night during full and dark moon cycles. At night only on the perfect quarters. But the damaged ring, we’ve only been able to make it work for crossings at night during perfect full moons, and even then, rarely.”
I’m…stunned and processing, and I hate that he looks worried for me.
“We must get you back to the estate and hide you, somehow. I must keep you safe.”
Taking my hand, he leads the way, and it feels so familiar and yet so strange that I can barely process it. We move quickly through the dark woods, but I sense dawn’s twilight closing in on us. It’s hard to fight the edge of panic gripping my system, to remember that I am not in danger from the sun.
I’ve lived my life for so long respecting the cycles of the sun because of who I worked for and because of my personal issues that I didn’t realize exactly how much I had internalized that fear.
When we reach the edge of the woods, we drop down behind a large boulder at the outer perimeter of the fields. “No, this will not work,” he mutters. “I cannot risk taking you across the fields. It is too bright already.”
As the sky lightens to the east, I spot the large house from my distant memories perched in the middle of the group of fields and surrounded by shade trees.
“Come.” He takes my hand again and, once more, we’re moving through the trees at the edge of the fields, angling away from the fields until they are no longer visible through the forest. Eventually, he pulls up short and leaves me in a thick copse of trees. He walks ahead, returning in a few minutes.
“You stay here. You will be safe here.”
“Where are you going?”
“I will return to the estate and get a vehicle from the garage. I will say I need to fetch something from the market. Parxon doesn’t like me driving and prefers I take a driver, but the driver is not at the estate this early. I will travel to town to buy something from the shops to set my story. On my return, I will pull over and call for you when it is safe. You will stay hidden in the vehicle until we are in the garage and I confirm the house is empty.”
Terror fills me. I’m honestly not sure if I could find my way back to the stone ring by myself now. If I can’t get there, I can’t reach Dexter. “How long?”
He hugs me. “Not long, little one. Maybe an hour. Here.” He removes his watch and fastens it to my wrist. I realize now the numbers don’t look like numbers I’m used to, but I can still read them.
A memory pops into mind, of Dad and Zuzu teaching me their alphabet and numbers.
How did I not remember that?
Then he kisses my forehead again and is off like a flash before I can stop him.
The woods begin to fill with a purply kind of light as dawn crests and breaks beyond the large, gentle valley the estate sits in. I pull my cell phone out of my back pocket and look at the time. 5:48.
Of course, I have no signal.
Obviously.
A hysterical burp of laughter bubbles free before I can stop it.
When I compare the time on the watch to the phone, it matches nearly identically, only a few seconds off from each other when the minutes change.
Okay. I can do this.
Maybe.
God, I hope Dexter made it to the hotel okay. I turn off my cell phone to save the battery. It’ll go dead quickly at this rate, as it tries to find a signal.
That’s when the shakes hit me, along with a renewed bout of tears.
I remember nights spent sleeping over at Zuzu’s, the two of us curled under a blanket on the couch in the living room in front of the fireplace, with him reading adventures to me from books that were ornately illustrated in a way I never saw in books at home. Pictures that almost seemed to shimmer and move, as if alive. I remember standing on a chair in his kitchen and learning how to chop orhtan for soup, a root vegetable like carrots. Baking cookies with him.
Maybe that’s why I suppressed so many memories. Maybe Dex is right, that it was too painful to lose both of them. I remember feeling a flash of anger that Zuzu couldn’t be with us when Dad was gone, wondering why he wouldn’t come to us.
Wondering why he’d leave us alone if he loved us so much.
I can look back on what I remember now and clearly see the duality of existence that wasn’t visible to me as a child. I see the lengths the three of them went to keep this secret.
To protect me.
I curl up against a tree, my arms wrapped around my knees, and rock back and forth as I try to process…everything.
This is why I was always able to accept the secrecy Mom imposed on me. Why I never asked about our nomadic lifestyle.
The unquestioning acceptance of non-humans, like vampires and shifters.
Because it was always a part of my life, even when my brain locked the knowledge away because the memories were too painful to bear.
When we lost Dad, I spent days crying for him and Zuzu. Mom had to hold me at night, because I threatened to run away, to take the ring and find the stones, even though I didn’t know where to begin because Dad always drove us out to the woods.
I’m not cold but I’m shivering, my teeth chattering, when I eventually hear my name softly being called. I struggle to stand and can’t.
Sobbing, I start crawling when I hear someone rushing through the brush.
It’s Zuzu, looking worried. “Oh, my little angel.” He picks me up and bundles me in his arms even though he doesn’t look like he’d be strong enough to carry me, and he hurries with me back to the edge of the trees.
The vehicle parked along the unpaved road is some sort of car, greyish silver, two large doors, and the trunk lid is open. I know it’s running, but it barely makes any sound. He rushes over with me, gently setting me in the trunk.
“Be very quiet, love. Do not move and make no sounds. Once we are inside the garage, and I know it is safe, I will open the trunk and let you out, right?”
I nod. “I love you, Zuzu. I missed you so much.”
He sadly
smiles and kisses my forehead again. “I missed you like my heart had been torn from my body, love. Now, be my good girl and stay still. It won’t be long.” He carefully covers me with a blanket and then gently shuts the trunk.
We’re underway again seconds later. I feel the vehicle swerve from side to side, plenty of bumps in the road, and I think it’s because it’s a dirt road.
Until I remember something Dad once said in a teasing tone when we were going somewhere in our car.
“Zuzu, I love you, but there is no way I will allow you to drive here. You are many wonderful things, but a good driver is not one of them.”
That’s why Dad has a driver for him.
He drives for several minutes. I stay quiet and still and listen as we slow, then stop. I hear voices, including Zuzu’s, and laughter. Finally, we start moving again, although much more slowly. Another pause, and then we ease forward, bumping over something, and then the car stops, the engine shutting off.
One of the vehicle doors opens and the car slightly rocks as Zuzu gets out and shuts the door. I hear the creak of a door being rolled shut, another door being opened and closed, and then silence.
Panic soaks into my soul. What about me?
It feels like forever, but is probably only a few minutes, until I hear the other door open and close, and footsteps across a concrete floor.
I slap a hand over my mouth when the trunk opens, but it’s Zuzu pulling the blanket off me. Flinging myself into his arms, I cling to him and refuse to let him go.
This place…it smells familiar.
It smells like home.
“Shh shh shh,” he whispers. Scooping me into his arms, he carries me into the house.
Into a house that looks virtually unchanged from when I was a little girl.
He carries me upstairs to a room I remember because it was my room, and there are paintings on the wall Zuzu and Dad bought for me, and some of my old toys still sit on a shelf. He’s closed the shutters on all the windows and put on music somewhere downstairs. But as he sits on the bed with me in his arms and rocks me, I softly cry, clinging to him, refusing to let go.
* * *
When I wake up, we’re still in my old bed. Zuzu sits up, his back against the headboard. In sleep, I’d clung to him, my head in his lap. I look up to find him smiling down at me.
“Good morning, little one,” he whispers.
Above us, I hear muffled bangs and footsteps, the workers on the roof.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Not long. Perhaps an hour.” As upended as my soul feels right now, he looks equally contented and happy. “We have missed you so much, Mazbushka. I never gave up hope.”
I don’t want to move. So many good childhood memories were made with him. “When’s Dad coming home?”
“He is scheduled to arrive before evening.”
“Can we call him?”
“We do not have portable phones like you do. Even if I could call, this is news best revealed in person. He will be so excited.”
There’s something in his tone, though. “Why don’t you sound happy about this?”
He sighs, playing with my hair for a moment before answering. “Because now we must find out how to send you back.”
“I don’t want to leave you!”
“You must, sweetheart. You can’t live in this world. It is too dangerous. Your father will come with you.” He tsks. “He will be very cross with me for continuing to try after he gave up, but he will not be upset for long.”
“What do you mean?”
“He travels a lot for work. I think it hurts his heart too much staying home. Missing you and your mother. He stays busy to keep his mind occupied. He feels guilty about Sorcha dying.”
“Why?”
“We will never know all the details. Apparently, Serxon figured out how to signal with his ring. To home in on your mother’s ring. We tried to guard the stones to keep Serxon from crossing, but he slipped through and somehow made it to her. Killed her.” His tone turns bitter. “All because he wanted to ascend to the ruling class.”
“I…I don’t understand.”
“He wanted power. Your father caught him upon his return, and Serxon bragged about what he did. Once an Alpha marks a mate, that is their mate until one of them dies. An Alpha cannot have a child unless they mark their mate. Serxon killed Sorcha to try to force Parxon to mark me to produce an heir. Your father raged and killed him, but in the fight, Serxon’s ring was damaged.”
He curls locks of my hair around his fingers as he talks, stroking them. “We hoped your mother had told you about all of this, but when full moon after full moon passed, and you never appeared, we suspected you didn’t know. Parxon had trouble crossing with the damaged ring, to the point where the last time he attempted it, he almost did not make it back.
“As the years passed, I kept trying to contact you. I never abandoned hope. Grieving, your father threw himself into his work.”
“But…what about you?”
“What about me, angel?”
“You’re…alone.”
He sadly smiles. “Your father is a kind, loving man. He is my friend. We have leaned on each other through these years. The plan was to reunite him with you, move him to your world, and we’d fake his death here so I inherit everything, and then I could start a search for my own true mate.”
“We’d never see you again.”
“You will come visit with your ring.”
“Why don’t you look any older?”
“Because we live so long, sweetheart. Your father is a little older than I am, but we are very, very young in our time. I am 162 and he is 169.”
I sit up. “What?”
“Shh!”
I drop my voice. “You’re 162 years old?”
He nods. “We can live thousands of years. I was thoroughly scandalized when Parxon told me Sorcha was only twenty-five when they met.” He softly giggles. “I was imagining her as a child. Then I met her, and he revealed humans age so much faster. That she was, comparatively, a little older than us, possibly a quarter of her life already.”
Stunned, I’m trying to process that. “I’m half…whatever.”
“Half jotnun Alpha, yes. And half human.”
The implications are sinking in. “That means…”
“You should far outlive the average human, yes.”
That’s why I look so young.
Good genes, indeed. “Why didn’t Dad…mark you?”
“Where you come from, it is, relatively speaking, easy for babies to be born. Here, it is difficult for a pregnancy to be achieved, and there must be a soul-deep connection between the couple for it to happen. While the ruling class tries to deny this is true, I’ve seen the secret studies your father and others have done. He knew that my greatest desire has always been to become a parent.”
He strokes my hair again. “Not that I don’t love you, because I do, Mazbushka. But your father and I knew we had no choice but to mate, thanks to our families. So, we agreed to pretend he marked me. That way, we would not be permanently tethered to each other.”
“That’s…sad.”
He shrugs. “But he was right.”
“I have…” I finally look around the room and remember things I haven’t thought about in years. Memories I thought happened in Cardiff.
Not…here.
“I have so many questions,” I whisper.
“I know, love.” He untangles himself from me. “You will feel better after a bath and breakfast.” He playfully smiles. “Matshush-keks. You have not had them in years, right? Your old favorite?”
I remember those, like a cross between pancakes and blintzes. “I love you.”
His eyes go bright as tears fill them again, and he cradles my face in his hands. “I love you so much, my sweet little angel.” He kisses my forehead, lingering, then hugs me. “Come.” He stands and holds out a hand to me. “I will set up the large bath for you, and then you will come downstairs, s
o I may cook for you.”
Wiping my tears away, I nod and take his hand. I’m worried about Dexter, but for the first time since I thought Dad died…
I finally feel like I’ve come home.
Except if I can’t figure out how to get back to Dexter, to Earth…
This might really end up being my permanent home.
Alone.
The thought of never seeing Dexter again literally hurts, like a dagger rammed straight through my heart.
Did I just exchange soothing my inner child’s aching, lonely soul for an even worse pain?
37
Eilidh
The only way I’m going to survive this without losing my mind is to do what I’ve always done and focus on placing one foot in front of the other, taking things one day at a time.
Right now, that means a bath.
Oh, my god. This bathtub, an ornate copper thing large enough for three people.
Holy cow, it’s huge.
I remember Zuzu bathing me in it when I was little, the floating toys I had. It’s in the master bathroom because I just have a shower in the bathroom attached to my bedroom. But I loved playing in this tub when I was a kid.
He sets it up with scented soaps and his own fluffy robe and soft towels, then leaves me to my privacy.
I remember bubble baths and singing. I remember Zuzu brushing out my hair for me, and the soft, dark blue robe I had.
Zuzu practically raised me.
The more I think about my childhood, the more I remember. How, sometimes, we’d drive out to the woods, me and Mom and Dad. Dad would leave for “work,” which meant walking into the woods. We’d wait there and, pretty soon, Zuzu would walk out of the woods in his place. Mom would drive us back to town and Zuzu would stay and take care of me at the apartment. We’d spend the days exploring Cardiff on foot.
Going to the beach.
Working on my lessons. He’d cook for us and do the shopping, and while Dad was gone, Mom would rely on him to help care for me.
How she said he was like a brother to her.
I’m trying to rationalize that I shouldn’t be here, that this is dangerous, that being caught in this house could literally get all of us killed.
Her Vampire Obsession Page 35