I laughed. “No way. It’s not even possible. I’ve never been bitten by one of those…things, and I sure as hell have never had fangs. I’m fine in the sun, too. In fact, I love it.”
“Vampire myth has it all wrong,” she said. “The sun thing comes about because they used to hunt at night to remain a secret. And you don’t turn into a vampire because you get a virus from being bitten by one. It’s descended by blood; Pijawikas are born. They’re an evolved race of humans, but they can still procreate with us. That’s how I got pregnant with you.”
“You’re telling me my dad is a vampire? Yeah, right.”
“It’s true,” Garwin said. “How do you think you were able to fight that guy tonight? Anyone else wouldn’t have stood a chance against his strength and speed, but you did. In fact, you were able to defeat him.”
I recalled how fast I was in dodging the man, and how much strength materialized in my muscles when I broke his neck. I looked at Jaren to my right. His complexion had gone pale. His mouth hung slack in shock.
I turned, glaring at my mom. “I have never had any sort of real stability in my life, and the only thing that remained the same for me was who I thought I was. You shattered that. Why would you keep this from me?”
“I didn’t know how much Pijawika you’d have, so I didn’t want to say anything unless you started to show traits of your Pijawikan side. It is forbidden for Pijawikas to mix, or even have romantic relationships with humans. I did it for our safety.” My mom sighed, as if it was all for nothing now.
I sat stunned. Was this why she never let me try out for any sports teams? Had she been too afraid that it might reveal this awful part of me? “So, what? You watched and waited? Hoping, praying to God, that I would never reveal the monster inside of me, is that it?” Bile rose in my throat with the knowledge of what I was, and that disgust transferred to her for not telling me about it.
“You are not a monster,” she said, grasping my hand.
“Oh, yes I am. I fought that thing that tried to take me tonight. Did you forget that? Because I’ll never be able to forget. And to make my night even worse, you’re telling me that half the stuff that runs in that guy’s veins also runs in mine.”
“You can’t judge what you are by meeting only one Pijawika. It’s like saying all Mexicans are this, or all Canadians are that. You can’t make these judgments on people after only meeting one of them. Your dad was a great man, and I’ve met many other Pijawikas that were great, too.”
“Right, my dad’s a great man. That’s why he’s here now, right? That’s why he was there when I was born, and there to watch me at my dance recitals. Such a great dad, in fact, that he was there to teach me how ride a bike and to drive a car, and there for me for all those other big things a great man should do to be there for his daughter, right? He left us. He left because of me.” I slumped my shoulders, my anger transferring to disappointment. I was the reason he’d left.
“Oh, honey. Is this what you’ve thought all this time?” my mom asked, eyes blinking with heartbreak. She shook her head. “Of course you would. I haven’t told you anything to help you think otherwise.” Regret etched in the small creases around her eyes.
“Let me set you straight.” She wiped her eyes. “We, Garwin and I,” my mom said, nodding over at Garwin, “come from a long line of families that are kind of like the Freemasons. In that, our families are part of a secret society that knows all about the Pijawikas. Part of this society’s job is to feed the Pijawikas. I was the one who fed your father.” Her eyes grew distant and sparkled as if they visited happy memories.
“I loved him and he cared for me, probably more than I did for him because Pijawikas feel emotions on a stronger and deeper level than we do. But as soon as I found out I was pregnant with you, I ran away. I couldn’t risk his life, nor mine with yours developing inside of me, so I ran. I’m sure your father was crushed when I left, and I’m sure he would be even more upset to learn I had you, and that he didn’t get to know you. So you see, he didn’t know about you. He didn’t even get the chance to walk out on you.”
“So…you’re saying you used to be what? You were basically a call girl who would come over to let some vampire bite on her neck whenever he wanted?” I hoped I offended her. I was irate at how this conversation had gone, that neither my mom nor Garwin had told me about this, years ago.
Garwin stood. “How dare you? You have no idea of the sacrifices this family has made. Go upstairs.” This time he did raise his voice.
I figured this conversation was over, anyway, so I turned to Garwin to let him see the rage on my face and headed toward the room we called mine. It was actually a guest room, but I was the only one whoever stayed in it. Plus, I kept clothes in there for when we stayed over.
Jaren got up and followed me out of the den. The walk to the foyer and up the grand staircase to my room was silent except for Jaren’s sneakers that squeaked across the travertine. Once inside, I slammed the door.
“I cannot believe what I just heard! I find out my dad might have really wanted me, but the kicker is I also find out I’m a monster.” I turned around to look at Jaren and found his eyes cast to the floor with guilt.
“Oh, no,” I said, letting him know I caught it written on his face.
“I don’t know what to think about this,” Jaren said. “We’ve been through a lot in a short amount of time. Maybe we should cool it between us for a while to let this all settle in.”
“God! Can this night get anymore fantastic?” I screamed, throwing my arms in the air. I looked him directly in the eyes. “You know what? If you didn’t want to be with me because you wanted to be with Tiffany or someone else, that would hurt. Really bad. But to not want to be with me because of something I was born with, something in my DNA that I can’t even change, is a little too much.”
“I know it seems wrong, but you can’t even accept it. How can you stand there and expect me to?”
I plopped down on the bed defeated. He was right.
“I’m not saying it’s permanent or anything. I just need some time to think about this.”
I wanted him out of here before he could see me break down. “Well, there’s a room down the hall on the left you could use.” I was sending him to the furthest room away from mine. “You probably don’t want to go anywhere else right now—now that you’ve been associated with the half-vampire everybody’s after.”
“Brooke…,” Jaren started, but I don’t think he knew what to say.
“Just go,” I told him, closing the door behind him. He gave me one last conflicted look before the door met with its frame.
The latch clicked with decisiveness, and I let my life crash down around me as I fell to the bed.
I squeezed my eyelids shut, trying to ebb the flow of tears. When that didn’t work, I pushed against them with the palms of my bloodstained hands, thinking if I could just stop the tears, then the pain would stop, too. I failed at both.
My mom was right. I’d fallen too fast and much too hard for Jaren. Maybe that was the curse that came with being a vampire—feeling too deeply. He was everything I had dreamed about in a boyfriend, or at least that’s what I thought before. Maybe he still was, but I couldn’t recognize that right now. The only thing I was sure of at this moment was that my feelings for Jaren hadn’t changed, but everything else around me had.
What was the point of all this, anyway? What did the vampires want with me, and why did they have to come for me now, when everything was going so great with Jaren?
My shoulder burned and throbbed with the tempo of my broken heart.
10
I’m Mirko
I stood in front of my mirror, adjusting the lame attempt at a bandage I’d made last night for my shoulder. Tears blurred my vision and made it impossible to get the gauze on right. The harder I tried, the more it reminded me where the injury had come from, and why Jaren had broken up with me.
Around nine o’clock, I decided to head down for som
ething to eat. The prior evening’s carnage had left me desolate, and I needed the fuel. I hoped to at least appear strong when I saw Jaren today.
I stopped in the entryway of the kitchen.
Great.
Everyone was in there. Awkward much? I didn’t want to talk to Jaren, at least not yet, and I didn’t want to talk to my mom, or Garwin, either, because they had lied to me about who I was my entire life.
I grabbed the Cheerios out of the cabinet and set out to make some cereal in angry silence.
“You better hurry,” Garwin said. “I’ve arranged for you guys to meet an associate of mine at the Lynchburg airport.”
That stunned me out of the planned silent treatment they were supposed to get. “Why are we meeting with one of your associates?”
“This is an extremely delicate situation. Pijawikan society is very prejudiced against humans. They are even more so against mixed-bloods. It’s rare for one to survive long after they have been ousted to the Pijawikas. We can’t let anything happen to you, and despite my resources, I can’t offer you the proper protection for what you’re up against. My associate can.”
“How do you know what we’re up against when we don’t even know who’s after me?”
“Someone attempted to kidnap you in my own back yard. Whoever it is must be high up for them to even attempt it.” True. You had to be hard core to risk pissing off Garwin. He had the resources to make life miserable for those who crossed him.
“I’ve called your father’s stražar—or his head of security—Emerik, to inform him of the potential threat. If the Pijawikas know about you, then they might know who fathered you, too. If they do, your father could be in danger.”
My stomach tightened at the mention of my father. Garwin had a number to contact him? I wondered how he would react when he found out about me. Would he try to contact me? Protect me? Harm me to save himself?
“What about the guy at my house?” Jaren asked.
Right. The man I’d killed. I didn’t forget. It was still there, hovering in the dark shadows it’d created in my mind, but it had been pushed aside by the knowledge that I was a vampire. A monster incarnate. And the first guy I’d risked giving my heart to had handed it back to me because he was afraid. Afraid of me, the monster who killed other monsters.
“Taken care of,” Garwin said, referring to the body. “That reminds me, did you see a necklace on your attacker last night?”
I thought for a moment and tried to picture the guy’s neck without being mind-slapped by the image of the knife sticking out of it. “I don’t remember seeing anything around his neck,” I said, recalling the night’s events one more time to be sure. I looked over at Jaren to see what his response would be.
He shook his head. “That guy knocked me so hard last night that I’m not sure I could remember a necklace. Why is that important? And does this associate have a name? If we’re to go anywhere with this guy, we should know his name.” Jaren said.
I leaned against the counter wondering why he thought he was coming with me.
“Mirko’s his name. And it’s not the necklace that is significant, but what is on the necklace. Most of the Pijawikas that hold any kind of power have what is called a znak, or a symbol of their power. Whoever came for you did it as an order or as a close favor for the Lady. There are only a few Pijawikan women who hold any actual power, so this further limits the possibilities. If the kidnapper was wearing a necklace, he would have been wearing his ‘master’s,’ for lack of a better word, emblem. A necklace wasn’t with the body when my crew went to clean up, nor did they find one lying around had it been torn off in the fight. But had you been able to describe the znak, we could have pinpointed who’s after you.”
“What’s with all these funky names—Pijawika, stražar, znak? Is it some kind of secret code or something?”
My mom answered. “It’s Croatian. Pijawikas originated from there and a lot of the terms have remained.”
“Now eat up.” Garwin said. “You’re meeting Mirko at eleven. It’ll take you about an hour to drive there, so you’d better hustle.” He walked out of the kitchen.
That was a lot of information to process and again, brought up more questions. I asked Jaren the one I couldn’t hold back any longer. “Why are you coming?”
“Garwin thought it’d be best if I go with you and lay low for a while. Plus, I didn’t think you should go by yourself. Once we meet up with Mirko, we’re flying to Utah.”
“Utah?” I asked. That seemed like a weird place to hide out. I’d gone snowboarding there once when we were moving from California to Colorado. Utah didn’t really seem like a vampire hideout. Jersey, New York, or maybe even Cali, but Utah didn’t scream vampire sanctuary to me at all. Maybe that was the point, though.
“Yeah,” Jaren said, “there’s some kind of reinforced compound there that Garwin thinks will be able to better protect you.”
I looked over at my mom. “Are you coming, too?”
“No, honey. Rumor will take longer to spread about us if I don’t go there with you. I’ll be going up to Toronto.” Her lips curved down in regret. “I trust Mirko to take care of you, though, and I’ll come for you as soon as it’s safe.”
“This sucks,” I said, finishing my last bite of cereal. I didn’t even feel like drinking the leftover milk. I tossed my almost empty bowl into the sink and skulked back up to my room to get some stuff. I left my door open, but Jaren knocked, anyway.
“Come in,” I said, not as nicely as I used to talk to him.
“Just because I’m not sure what to think about us doesn’t mean I don’t care for you anymore.”
I really didn’t want to hear him say he cared about me if he saw me as a freak. “We have to go soon, so I need to focus on getting ready,” I said, turning back to the closet.
Jaren left, and my heart cracked all over again. I decided to let it out a little since I was going to be stuck in a car with him for the next hour.
My mom came in, surprised to see a tear running down my cheek. “Oh, Brooke. I know this is a lot to take in, but everything will work out fine.”
I threw down the blue sweater I held in my hands. “I’m not scared. Jaren broke up with me.”
“He did?” Jaren must not have told them anything about the breakup. My mom got up, anger creased in her lips.
I grabbed her arm, stopping her. “No! Just leave it, please?”
“Fine, but when he comes crawling back to you after he realizes that you’re still the same girl, I hope you remember what he’s doing to you right now.”
“Give him a break. I can’t even accept this part of me; how can I expect him to? We just need a little time to figure things out.” I was mad at Jaren, but that didn’t give liberty for everyone else to be, too. She gave me a hug.
“You better get going. You don’t want to keep Mirko waiting.” She grabbed my bag and walked with me down the stairs and through the front door.
When I stepped out onto the porch, I startled, seeing my car gone and Jaren in the driver’s seat of Garwin’s Land Rover. Garwin leaned in the passenger side talking to Jaren.
“You’re taking this since whoever was after you has to know your car,” Garwin said once I approached.
I nodded.
My phone rang. It was Kaitlynn. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to her, but she was my best friend, and I probably wouldn’t see her for a while. Fear sliced through me as I thought about what Kaitlynn would think if she knew I was a half-monster. I answered anyway.
“Hey, I know you’re hanging with Jaren today, but I needed to know if I left my history book in your car—”
“Um…,” I paused to take a deep breath. “I’ll have somebody bring it over to you. I have to go out of town for a little while, and I’m leaving here shortly, so I really have to go now. I love you.” I felt like this was a forever goodbye to my best friend. It was a lot harder than all of the other goodbyes I’d given when I moved.
“Wait
!” Kaitlynn demanded. “What do you mean you’re leaving town? Where do you think you’re going on such short notice, and why am I not going with you?” She paused for a minute and then asked, “Who’s going with you?”
“Jaren, but I really can’t explain it all right now, and—”
This time Kaitlynn cut me off, “Oh, no. Jaren does not get to go with you if I don’t get to go. What’s going on? What’s wrong? And don’t lie to me because I always know when you’re lying.” She was right.
I sighed, defeated. She wasn’t going to let it go. “Someone’s after me. I’m in danger, and so is Jaren because of me. If I stick around, you will be, too.”
“That’s stupid. Just call the cops. They’ll handle it,” Kaitlynn said. Best friends really do think alike.
“It’s a bit more complicated than that. You stay put. Okay? I need to know you’re safe.”
“Un-uh, you’re obviously going somewhere you think will be safer than here, so if you and Jaren are in danger, what makes you think I’ll be safer here? By myself? I should be going with you.”
She had a point. If whoever was after me had been having that man follow me, Kaitlynn would be the next target. If she was with me, she would be one less target they had, and I would know for certain where she was, and more importantly, that she was safe.
“’Kay, pack your bags. We’ll pick you up on our way out of town, which is in ten minutes.” I hung up.
“Slow down,” Garwin said, holding up his hand. “You can’t bring her or tell anybody about this. Pijawikas operate very similar to the way the Mafia does. More like the Mafia has taken after the Pijawikas in their methods of secrecy, but parallel nonetheless. I have to call Mirko and get this cleared with him first.”
“It’s only Kaitlynn. We can trust her. And what are they going to do? Kill me? They’re already after me, so what more can they do?” I asked, stunned he even considered I wouldn’t tell Kaitlynn about this.
“A lot. Trust me. And we don’t want to burn any bridges with the ones willing to help you, now do we?”
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