Ravaged (Vampire Awakenings, Book 7)

by Brenda K. Davies

  “I have a car at your apartment.” He’d packed a bag and placed it in the trunk in the hope he would be able to get her to agree to leave her place. “I think we should go somewhere that the Savages won’t be able to locate you.”

  “Where?”

  That was the question. He’d prefer not to take her to where Ronan and the others resided. She’d handled all of this well, but he didn’t think she’d appreciate being placed in the middle of so many vampires. He didn’t want to take her to his family in Maine, that could be more overwhelming for her, and he wasn’t stable enough to trust himself around his family.

  “A hotel, for now,” he finally said. “Until we can take down the Savages who attacked last night and make sure there aren’t more of them involved.”

  “Are they going to hunt me for the rest of my life?”

  “I’ll kill them all first,” he replied, and Maggie knew he wasn’t just saying that; he meant it.

  “I don’t have the money for a hotel.”

  “I’ll pay for it.” He held his hand up to forestall the argument he saw her gearing up to make. “You have to be kept safe, and you can pay me back later.” He’d never take her money, but he had a feeling she wouldn’t agree to let him pay otherwise.

  “I will pay you back,” she said. “How much time will we have to spend at the hotel?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  Maggie opened her mouth to tell him to forget it; she couldn’t risk losing her job. Then, she looked around at the growing swell of people, and a shiver crept down her spine. She had her pride, could take care of herself, and she didn’t want to lose everything she had, but she would have a lot less if she died.

  “I will do everything I can to eliminate this threat to you soon,” Aiden vowed.

  Maggie tore her eyes away from a passing man who was staring at her a little too attentively. Perhaps his stare only meant he was a creep, but it might mean he was tracking her to report to his bosses where she was. If she stayed in her apartment, this constant paranoia would drive her crazy.

  “There are things I need from my apartment if I’m going to leave it,” she murmured.

  Aiden hid his relief over her acquiescence as he led her across the street to her building. They climbed swiftly up to her apartment, and he waited while she packed clothes and toiletries into a large duffel bag. She rushed around, watering all the plants and murmuring promises of returning for them. He didn’t miss that she placed the picture of A.J. into the duffel bag with tender care.

  She stuck both coffees he’d bought her in the microwave and hit a button. Her foot tapped as she waited for the microwave to beep. She removed both cups and stuck one in the tray while she set the other on the counter.

  “I have to call out of work,” she said as she opened a drawer and removed a pair of scissors. With care, she cut away the packaging encasing her phone. “But I have no idea what to say to them or what they know.”

  “You don’t have to speak with them at all,” Aiden said.

  “And why not?” Maggie demanded as she yanked at the plastic and cursed loudly when it still didn’t open.

  Aiden took the packaging from her and tore it open.

  “Show off,” she muttered as he handed her the phone and he smiled.

  “Things with the police and at your work have been taken care of,” he said.

  “How is that possible?”

  “Lucien and Killean went to speak with your coworkers, and Ronan and Brian went to the police station after I contacted Saxon last night.”

  “Who are they?” she asked.

  “Men I work with.”

  “And what did they learn?”

  “The Savages cleaned their mess up well. The bodies of their friends were removed from the morgue. They did kill the morgue attendant, but there were no other casualties.”

  “Is that supposed to make it better?” Maggie whispered.

  “No.”

  “What about the police and my coworkers, what do they know?”

  “They know they responded to a false call at the alley last night. Ronan had some of the trainees clean up the alley after we left the club last night. So if anyone goes back there, they’ll believe the false call report. When you and Roger left the false call, you were in an accident. They believe Glenn and Walt were jumped and killed during a carjacking gone wrong. Their ambulance was found on fire about five miles from where we originally discovered it.”

  “Walt and Glenn?” she croaked. “What happened to them?”

  “Their bodies were untouched by the fire as, whoever killed them, removed them first and placed them in the alley.”

  “And who really removed them from the ambulance?”

  “Ronan and Brian. Ronan then placed an anonymous call as to where to find the bodies.”

  She rested her hand on the counter as a wave of nausea hit her. “Okay, but the police will be able to tell our ambulance wasn’t hit by another vehicle, and there was blood all over the back of it.”

  “The ambulance was destroyed, and the memories of any blood have been eradicated from the minds of those who saw it.”

  “How?” she croaked.

  “Brian took the ambulance to a junkyard. Your coworkers and the police have a record of an accident, but nothing to investigate. There are probably some loose ends, but not enough to worry about. Most people prefer to live in denial than to pursue the truth. They know others might find them crazy for claiming something unnatural happened.”

  Just like people found my mom crazy, Maggie thought. Unable to support her weight anymore, she leaned against the counter. “What about Roger, where is he?”

  “Mass General. He’s going to be fine.”

  “And where do they think I am?”

  “They believe you have a concussion, were disoriented, and walked away from the scene.”

  “They’ll want to see a doctor’s note.”

  “No, they won’t. They believe they’ve already spoken with your doctor. You have at least three days off, and if you need more time, I’ll make sure you get it.”

  The scope of the cover-up they’d perpetrated left her numb. She’d known Aiden was powerful, but she hadn’t realized how deep and far the power of him, and those he worked with, ran. “There were so many factors to take care of,” she murmured.

  “The Savages took care of some for us.”

  “What have I gotten myself into?”

  “Maggie…” When he rested his hand on hers, she pulled it away. “I’m going to keep you safe.”

  The color had faded from her face; she stared at the far wall as she bit her lower lip. She wanted to run, but she had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. “I’ll finish getting my things.”

  She shoved off the counter and hurried out of the kitchen to her bedroom once more. Aiden prowled after her. Standing in the doorway of her bedroom, he gazed at the paintings of ocean scenes on the walls and the blue comforter on the neatly made bed. He heard her muttering to someone in the bathroom to his right and turned to find her pouring water out of a fishbowl.

  “It’s okay, Beta Blue. I’ll get you some fresh water soon.” She came out of the bathroom with the bowl clasped in both hands. She stopped when she saw him and hugged the bowl against her chest as if he were going to take it from her. “I’m not leaving him.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ll ask Declan to take care of the plants for you if we can’t come back soon.”

  Maggie’s heart melted; her shoulders slumped. “I know it seems stupid, but….” Her words trailed off as she gazed at the plants hanging from their hooks and cluttering her sills. Many of them were orchids, but she had spider plants, an orange tree, two ferns, and three red prayer plants. She’d owned them all since they could fit in her palm.

  “I care for them,” she admitted. “And Beta Blue, or Blue as he’s better known, he’s been keeping me company for three years now.”

  “It’s not stupid,” he said, “but we have to
get out of here.”

  She followed him back into the living room with Blue.

  CHAPTER 23

  Maggie watched the city flash by from the passenger seat of the black Toyota. She’d spent her life in and around Boston. Normally it felt like her home; today it felt like enemies lurked in every corner of the vast city.

  “I feel like I can’t trust anyone,” she murmured.

  “You can trust me.”

  “I haven’t known you for twenty-four hours yet, so I’m not ready to hop on the trust train with you. I only came with you because I trust you more than a stranger. You ever hear the saying the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t?”

  “And I’m the devil?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  He smiled at her. “Let me know when you do.”

  “I will.”

  “The amount of time you know someone doesn’t always matter when it comes to trust. Sometimes you can know a person for years and still never trust them.”

  “True. We never can know what another person or vampire is thinking.”

  “But there are some we trust as much as ourselves.” There are some I trust more than myself, Aiden thought.

  “Do you have anyone like that?”

  “My parents, my siblings, and the Stooges.”

  “Who are the Stooges?”

  “Mike, David, Doug, and Jack. They all grew up with my dad and were all turned into vampires around the same time as each other. They’ve been together ever since. The Stooges are like uncles to my siblings and me. Do you have anyone you trust?”

  She rested her hand on top of Blue’s bowl as she shifted it in her lap. “I have Roger.”

  “What about your parents?”

  Maggie absently traced the opening of Blue’s bowl. “I don’t know who my father is, and my mom is nuts.”

  He chuckled. “I think all moms can be a little nuts, but I’m sure it has nothing to do with their children.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t either,” Maggie said with a smile. “But my mother really is certifiable. She’s also a murderer. She was locked away before I was born. I haven’t seen her since the day I turned eighteen. Which is also the only time, other than my birth, I’ve ever seen her. While I was a ward of the state, I wasn’t told anything about her. On my eighteenth birthday, I learned the truth about her, where she was, and I went to see her. I swore I’d never go back.”

  There were only two people she’d ever told about her mother. One was Roger, and the other was dead. She didn’t know why she’d revealed it to Aiden, but she figured he should probably have a heads-up if they were going to spend an unspecified amount of time together. If she were going to go crazy too, it would probably happen before all this was over, so he deserved to be warned she had homicidal lunatic ingrained in her DNA.

  However, after last night, she knew her mom wasn’t crazy after all, at least not entirely. At the very least, her mother had hit on the truth in her ravings.

  Aiden glanced at Maggie’s bowed head as her finger trailed over the opening of the bowl while she stared at the fish. He now understood why she’d handled last night as well as she had; she’d endured more than he ever could have imagined in her life. He rested his hand on her knee and braced himself for her to push it away, but she didn’t.

  “It was a fun eighteenth birthday,” she continued. “I became eligible to vote, and my mother revealed she wished she’d succeeded in killing me.”

  Aiden’s hand clenched on her leg. “Your mother tried to kill you?”

  Maggie thrust her shoulders back and turned to face him. “Yes, but to be fair, my father wasn’t exactly the type of man women are clamoring to have a baby with. The police chased my father off when they stumbled upon him raping her in an alley. Severely beaten, my mother couldn’t speak about the trauma she’d endured. The police took her to the hospital where her rape was confirmed, but they couldn’t get anything out of her aside from screams and mumblings of red eyes and vampires.”

  Aiden’s head turned toward her but shot back to the road when he drifted into the other lane and a horn blared at him.

  “The state and doctors put her under a psych eval for thirty days while the police searched for a family they never discovered. I have no idea if I have any grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins. I might, but the police couldn’t find anyone, and no one came forward to claim her. During the thirty days she was under evaluation, they learned my mother was pregnant with little ole me.”

  Brakes squealed and horns blared when Aiden jerked the wheel. He pulled the car to the side of the road and put it in park. He stared at the car in front of him as he tried to process what she’d revealed.

  “What happened after that?” he inquired.

  “They kept my mother’s story mostly out of the news because of her rape and consequent mental state, but I’ve read the police, doctor, and social work reports about her. I also gathered some information from her when I saw her. In the reports, I learned that upon hearing she was to be the bearer of vampire spawn, my dear old mom grabbed a scalpel and tried to cut me from her belly. She would have succeeded too if it hadn’t been for the doctors, nurses, orderlies, and guards who rushed in to stop her. Of course, this was after she already stabbed one of the other doctors and a nurse. The nurse didn’t survive.”

  “Shit,” Aiden breathed.

  “Yeah, pretty much. They deemed dear old Mom incapable of standing trial, took me from her as soon as I was born, and locked her away. She still screams of vampires, devil spawn, and Hell. And I… well, I am the source of her madness. I believed she was crazy, but the one thing I did figure out while we were running last night is that she’s not crazy. You yourself said you were born.”

  “You smelled the Savages,” he murmured. “I noticed a couple of times you covered your nose or picked up a garbage scent, but I assumed it was because there was garbage nearby, but you scented them.”

  “There was no garbage in the ambulance when they first attacked us, and I smelled the faintest hint of it then. I don’t think it’s anywhere near as strong as what you described, but yes, I think I can smell them.”

  Aiden felt like someone had punched him in the gut as he gazed at her. He recalled the way she’d reacted to him in the ambulance, then in the bathroom, and realized she might not be feeling the mating instinct as fiercely as he was, but she felt something for him.

  “It would be possible for a vampire and human to conceive, or at least I think it would,” he said as he tried to puzzle it out. “We’re unable to contract or carry diseases, but we do have many human functions, including producing sperm. However, most vampires are careful to keep our existence listed firmly in the mythological, and spreading half-vampire children around could rock that boat, big time, so we take care not to breed with humans.”

  “Judging from what I read about my mother’s condition that night, I don’t think she was meant to survive her attack. They reported a knife had slashed her throat, but I realize now it wasn’t a knife. The doctors feared she would die from her blood loss.”

  “Vampires who attack humans never intend for them to survive.”

  “So, my father is, or most likely was, a Savage.” For some reason, Maggie didn’t feel as sick as she’d thought she would over that realization. But then, she’d known she was the product of rape for six years. This knowledge was no worse than that.

  “It sounds like it.”

  “Why wouldn’t he go after her again to make sure she didn’t speak if you’re all so concerned about keeping your existence from humans?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Aiden replied. “Maybe he thought she’d died, especially if she was kept out of the news. Maybe he wasn’t strong enough to go through all the police, doctors, and everyone else who was involved to change their memories and cover his tracks. I believe that’s the most likely scenario if he didn’t kill the police, and her, at the scene. It sounds like he was a vampire who had recently given in
to his Savage nature.”

  “I wonder how long the asshole held out before he started killing,” Maggie snorted. “Do you think he’s still alive?”

  “If he got smarter about his attacks, he could be. If he didn’t, then no, he didn’t survive very long. Any vampire, Savage or not, would have taken him out to stop him from leaving more witnesses behind, as he did with your mother.”

  “Hmm,” Maggie murmured.

  Aiden didn’t want to say his next words, but he knew he had to offer it to her, especially if she became a member of his family and met his brother-in-law, Brian. “I know someone who might be able to help you find your father if you’d like to try?”

  Maggie bit her lip as she pondered this before shaking her head. “No. I got all I ever needed from that asshole.”

  “Okay,” Aiden said. “What about your mother’s family?”

  She considered it before shaking her head. “No, the past is best left to the past.”

  “If you change your mind—”

  “I won’t. What exactly is a vampire?” Maggie asked to switch the subject. “I mean, how is it possible you have so many human traits and tendencies?”

  “Vampires are the children of demons who once walked this earth. Those demons mated and had children with people to create vampires. We have human tendencies from our human DNA, but supernatural abilities from our demon DNA.”

  “I see.” Maggie dropped her head into her hands and rubbed at her temples. “This is all so crazy. Ever since I learned the truth of my mother six years ago, I’ve dreaded becoming like her. I’ve constantly searched for some sign reality might be slipping away from me. Acknowledging my father was most likely a vampire feels like a step toward the crazy train for me, but I can’t deny everything I saw last night or the fact you ran fifteen miles with me today when your spine was exposed yesterday.”

  Aiden squeezed her knee. She glanced at his hand as if she were contemplating removing it from her leg, but she let it remain. “Vampires are real. Admitting it won’t make you crazy.”

  “Have there been others, who had only one vampire parent, like me?” She wiped away the sweat trickling down her neck as she braced herself for his reply.