by L. E. Wilson
“Oh, come on! Let’s hash it out, as they say. We have nothing else to do at the moment, and we still have a few hours until we land in Seattle. I promise you’ll feel better.” With a naughty smirk, Aiden winked at Emma.
Nik’s mind spun, frantically trying to think of a way to shut him the fuck up. He needed something to distract him.
“Emma. You are a witch.” He hated throwing her under the bus, but if it would distract his so-called friend…
“What?!” she cried.
“I told you so!” Aiden crowed happily.
Well what do you know? It worked. He was really going to have to remember that trick.
“Your family comes from a coven of witches that dates back as long as we do, probably longer. I tried to tell you about this last night, and I understand your reluctance to hear it, really, I do, but…”
She was so tired of arguing about this. “I. Am. NOT…”
Slashing his hand sharply through the air, Nik cut her off. “You ARE. Every woman in your family, and some of the men, as far back as we can remember, have been witches. Your mother is a witch.”
“My mother??”
“Your sister is a witch. Unless there’s been some weird mutation in your gene pool when it comes to you, specifically, you have to be one too. The only thing that changes is the level of power from one person to another.”
Emma stopped arguing, a thoughtful look coming into her eyes. “If this is true, how would I have lived my entire life and not known? Why wouldn’t I know?”
“I have no idea.” He was just as baffled as she looked.
Aiden chimed in, “Maybe if we tell her some of the history?” Getting the go-ahead from Nik to continue, he went on to explain, “See, basically it boils down to this: There are two kind of vampires, good ones and bad ones. We,” Here he indicated Nik and himself, “are the good ones, and we call ourselves, simply ‘Vampires’. The other group, the bad ones, is known in our world these days as the ‘Legion’. Now the Legion, they are some wonky vampires. Leeha, their leader, is the worst one. She’s fabulously mad, and quite beautiful. Her arse alone makes a man want to…” Making appreciative grunting noises, he squeezed the air with his hands.
“I don’t think Emma cares about her ass, Aid,” Nik cut in, picking up where Aiden had left off. “But as he was saying, she is totally fucking psycho, and her followers are right up there with her.”
“Occasionally,” Aiden elaborated, “when a vampire is turned, they come out of it just, not quite right.”
“Long story short,” Nik continued, “Leeha is one of those Vampires. She was made a vampire illegally. Kidnapped as a human child by one of our males. He raised her secretly as his daughter, and on her 25th birthday, he turned her without permission from Luukas.”
Emma interrupted to ask, “Why would he need permission?”
“Because if we let every Vlad, Count, and Elvira make vampires willy-nilly, the population would quickly get out of control and we would run out of humans to eat.” Aiden informed her matter-of-factly.
“Anyway,” Nik scowled at Aiden, “when Luukas found out what he had done, the male who did this was tried by our Council and sentenced to death by fire. Leeha was spared as we believed, at the time, that she wasn’t to blame for his actions. We’ve since learned that she was not as innocent in all of this as she appeared.”
Pausing to gather his thoughts, he stretched his long, muscular legs out in front of him and crossed his ankles, drawing Emma’s attention to his flat abs and the way his running pants pulled taut over the impressive bulge at the apex of his lean, muscular thighs. He bit back a smile as she tore her eyes away and asked, “What made you reconsider?”
“We found out later from the servants in his household that he had raised Leeha to believe that she would one day rule by Luukas’ side, which is unheard of, and we don't know where he got the idea that it would ever happen. He’d taken her from her human family when she was quite young; he’s the only parent she remembers. When she turned about 14, he started…preparing her to be queen. He abused her as no daughter should be abused, and justified it by telling her that she needed to have sexual prowess to be able to win over the Master Vampire.” There was a flash of fang as Nik’s lip curled up in disgust.
“So vampires do have relationships with other vampires?”
“No. Never. Which is why we were so shocked when we found out what he'd been telling her. Sometimes they’ll, uh, hook up, but they never stay together in a long-term thing. Once in a while though, a Vampire and a human will mate.”
Emma was confused. “But aren’t humans just food for vampires?”
Nik’s blue eyes burned fiercely into hers as he answered, “Not always, no.”
“See, Em…I feel like I can call you ‘Em’ now…Is that ok?” At her distracted nod, and ignoring Nik’s scowl, Aiden repeated, “See, Em, Vampires don’t mate with other Vampires because they can’t sustain each other. We can feed off of other Vamps, it doesn’t hurt us, but it’s kind of like eating a rice cake. You can’t live off of it. We need viable, live, human blood to survive, and since feeding and sex are so closely intertwined, it makes sense to have a human as your significant other. Personally, I find monogamy quite boring, I would never tie myself down to just one flavor, but to each his own.”
“But Nik drinks donated blood, from a bag…”
Before Nik could defend his actions, Aiden added in all seriousness, “And you can clearly see how he suffers for it.”
She looked Nikulas up and down. “He looks fine to me.”
Going back to the whole mating thing, she resumed her questions. “What does the human get out of it? Other than being a food bank?”
“What do they get out of it?” Astounded that she would even need to ask, Aiden exclaimed, “They get protection, a longer life! They get to stay young, and beautiful! And, luv, most importantly, they get to experience mind-blowing vampire sex.”
“What Aiden is trying to say,” Nik blurted, “is that if a human is taken as a vampire’s mate, he or she will actually exchange blood with their vampire. Not as much as we drink, of course, but a little of our blood will go a long way.”
Emma’s stomach turned as she tried to imagine that. “That’s so gross.”
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, poppet.” Aiden waggled his eyebrows at her.
Curiosity getting the better of her, she turned her attention back to Nik to ask, “So, what exactly would your blood do?” He didn’t miss the fact that she was asking him this question.
“Um, well, if we exchanged blood, I would be able to find you anywhere. I would be able to protect you should anything ever happen. Also, my blood would keep you young and healthy, and you’d grow stronger than a normal human. You’d never get sick. You’d heal faster. It halts the aging process. You would be as immortal as I am as long as you were with me.”
“As long as no one cut off your head or ripped out a vital organ.” Aiden chimed in.
Ignoring him, she asked Nik, “What would happen if I stopped drinking it?”
“You would begin to age at that time, picking up right where you left off,” he answered her.
While Emma mulled that over, Nik tried to get the conversation back on topic, “Anyway, all this stuff isn’t important for you to know right now.”
“Mmmm, I don’t know, I think it is very important for Emma to know all of this ‘stuff’, and the sooner the better the way things are going…” Ducking quickly to the side to avoid the water bottle Nik chucked at him, Aiden watched it as it hit the floor and rolled towards the front of the plane. “You know, I’m beginning to feel a bit unappreciated here. I think I may just go hang out with pilot Bill for a bit.”
Shaking his head in disbelief at Aiden’s back, Nik waited until he shut himself into the cockpit before continuing, “So, back to the story. Leeha’s maker had told her all her life that one day she would rule alongside my brother. After he was sentenced, she started maki
ng advances towards Luuk on her own. He shot her down completely, and laughed it off at first. This went on for a number of years, until finally, one night, she requested that he come meet her in a secluded area just north of us. By this time, he was completely fed up with her, and had made up his mind to banish her from our area. He’d insisted on going alone, against everyone else’s wishes, as she demanded. We haven’t seen him since.”
Emma looked down at her folded hands, then back up at Nik. “But, how do you know for sure that Leeha has him? Could something else have happened?”
“Maybe. But what? Also, we noticed a group of our Vampires were suddenly missing the same night Luukas disappeared. It consisted of a number of besotted males who were unhappy with the Council for one reason or another, and who we’d heard had been hanging around with Leeha. Having fancy dinners, talking a lot of shit. Oh… and she told us she has him.”
Emma looked up at him in shock. “She told you this? When? Did she say anything about my sister?”
“No. She just told us that she has Luukas.”
“She didn’t mention anything at all?” she asked with a note of desperation in her voice.
He shook his head.
“Then tell me again why you think Keira is even with her,” she said indignantly.
Sitting forward to rest his elbows on his knees, he admitted, “Actually, as I told you at your house, we don’t know for sure, but let me continue before you go all ballistic on me. A few months after she claimed to have Luuk, one of the guys heard about your sister going missing. We knew of your family already, and we put two and two together.”
“That still doesn’t explain to me why you think she’s there,” she insisted.
“Like I told you, we think she’s there because the only way Leeha would be able to hold Luuk anywhere he didn’t want to be, is by having some way of keeping him weakened enough that he couldn’t escape. There are only two ways of doing that. She can starve him, obviously, but that takes time. Older vampires only need to feed a few times a month, so how would she hold him there long enough to get him so malnourished that his power would be weakened to the point where he couldn’t escape?”
“I know. I know. A witch.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
“Exactly. A witch. And your sister,” he said pointedly, “is the only one we know of who can’t be accounted for during the past seven years. Having a powerful witch on her side, Leeha would have the upper hand. There are spells that can weaken even a Master vampire like my brother.”
“I just can’t believe that my sister would have kept a secret like that from me,” Emma muttered, “Or that she would ever do something like this. She’d never purposely hurt anyone. She just wouldn’t.”
The hurt he could hear in her voice tugged at his insides. “I’m sure she had a very good reason for doing it.”
“Yeah, I guess.” After a breath, she asked, “How did you know about my family? Is there some kind of supernatural online community I don’t know about or something?”
He barked out a laugh. “Yeah! Allsupes.com - Meet other supernatural beings in your area! Vamps! Find your favorite blood type in our human donor database! Wolves! Looking for that perfect bitch? Just answer our questionnaire…”
Emma squinted at him in annoyance as he threw his head back and laughed. “I’m so glad you can amuse yourself at my expense. Wait…did you say ‘wolves’?”
He nodded as he wiped at his eyes and tried to get it together. “Yeah, wolves. Like werewolves, you know?”
“There are werewolves?” Emma’s face was so shocked, Nik started laughing all over again.
“Nikulas! Would you please stop!” Emma had to shout to be heard over all the noise.
“Sorry. I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath and wiped his eyes again, fighting to control himself.
“Ok. Sorry. Um…no, there isn’t a website. At least not that I’m aware of. And yes, there are werewolves. You may meet some of them in Seattle. They like the colder climates. They run kind of hot. I’m surprised you’ve never run into any living out in the country where you do.”
“I don’t get out very much,” she said distractedly.
Sitting back in her seat, she looked bewildered as she tried to absorb the fact that everything she’d thought she’d known about the world was false.
“Vampires, and witches, and wolves…are faeries real too? Magical elves? Dragons?” Waving away his answer with a muttered, “I really don’t want to know,” she returned to her original question. “So, my family? How did you know about us?”
“I’ve never met them personally, but vampires and witches have worked together throughout the years, for the ‘greater good’, so to speak. And the Moss family has always played a prominent role in that association with us, up until recently.” He smiled at her. “You witches agree to help us, and we agree not to feed on you. Unless it’s by mutual consent, of course.”
Ignoring that last comment, she asked, “Helped you how?”
“Witches from the family in our area have helped us control the Legion. And before that, there were different reasons. Vampires are notoriously territorial, so fights spring up all the time between each other or between us and another species. As witches are the only ones who can really hurt us, it was in our best interest to form an alliance with them right from the start.”
“So what you’re admitting to me, is that I’m the only one on this plane who could hurt you?”
At his nod, she wondered aloud, “Is that smart of you to tell me that? Aren’t you worried about giving me that power over you?”
“Are you going to hurt me, Em?” he asked her in a low voice.
“Of course not,” she answered softly.
“Good,” he answered back.
Which reminded him, “Speaking of which, as much as I hate to admit it, Aiden is right about one thing. We should work with you on helping you to control your ‘witchy side’ as he likes to call it.”
“I still think that I would know if I was a witch,” she insisted.
“At the risk of sounding like your worst Freudian nightmare here, why don’t you tell me about your childhood? Whatever you remember. What about, like, premonitions? Or, did anything ever happen if you were feeling really emotional? Like really angry or something?”
Thinking back over the expanse of her brief lifetime, she had to admit that yes, there have been quite a few “incidents”. And not just around her. Things happened around Keira too. At least, they did when they were younger.
Although, as she was thinking about earlier, those types of things seemed to have tapered off for her sister as the girls got older. Emma, on the other hand, had never gotten a grip on it until she’d started working out so much. Wearing herself out physically seemed to help keep her on an even keel - meaning less “incidents”.
“Yeah, I’ve had some weird things happen when I’m upset. Keira too. We never really talked about it. It was just something that happened. I don’t think we even realized it wasn’t normal until we started school.”
“Your parents never mentioned anything to explain why this stuff happened?”
“No. Not a word. They just acted like it was no big deal for things to fly across the room when I was mad that I couldn’t have dessert, or whatever.”
Shifting in her seat towards him, she crossed her legs and folded her arms across her body in an unconsciously defensive gesture. “In retrospect, Keira did go to a lot of ‘dance classes’, in spite of having the same social issues as I did.”
She didn’t elaborate any further on that, but Nik caught the tone of doubt in her voice.
“We had to change schools a lot until eventually, our parents just pulled us out and home schooled us. That’s when I had my first inkling that we were not normal, not by any means. The other kids were horrible to us, so we learned to just lean on each other.”
Moving past those unhappy years, she continued, “Once I got out of school and started working, things got a bit
easier. I had to bounce around jobs a lot, but it wasn’t so bad. Every time I started over somewhere it was like having a clean slate. No one knew about my past. I never applied anywhere in my town. I’ve been at my current job for over a year.”
“Why did you have to change jobs so often? Was it by choice?”
With a look that told him it should be obvious, she said, “Because people are uncomfortable around me. And I can’t say that I blame them. I work out a lot, and that seems to help, but sometimes I can’t control it. If I lose my temper or something, occasionally, things happen.”
“Yet, amazingly, nothing has flown through the air to be smashed over my head during any of our previous conversations. Other than some jumpy salt and pepper shakers at the bar, of course. Why do you think that is?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ve certainly deserved it a few times. And it’s not like I haven’t thought about it.”
Hiding his smile at that last comment, he asked, “Did you never wonder why these things were happening?”
She shrugged again. “I’ve always just felt like I didn’t belong. I never had any friends, except my sister. She had the same problems in school as I did, but it never seemed to bother her as much. I’ve always just thought she was stronger than I am. I guess I never really questioned it.”
“I’m not uncomfortable around you, and I can introduce you to someone who can help you learn to control it, if you’ll let me. You won’t ever have to feel like an outcast again, Emma.” Reaching across the narrow aisle, he took her small hand in his.
She jumped at his touch. Ever since their encounter earlier, he’d made it a point not to be anywhere within three feet of her, not wanting to tempt himself more. But after hearing her story, he felt the need to prove to her that he’d meant what he said.
Accepting his small gesture, she threaded her fingers through his. “What you were saying earlier? About when humans and vampires mate and what happens when they exchange blood? Does that work if it’s only one way?”
He knew this question was coming, he’d seen it click in her head earlier. Looking down at their joined hands, he gently played with her fingers, hoping she wouldn’t remember the ass he’d made of himself when he’d woken up. “I can sense you when you’re nearby, because I’ve had your blood, if that’s what you’re asking.”