by M. Leighton
“And who might that be?”
“Bjorn Dahmen, but he goes by Bo.”
My mind spun. Could it be my Bo? It had to be, didn’t it? I mean, what are the chances of two people showing up at Sebastian’s looking for another guy named Bo? Probably like a gazillion to one. However, a small, skeptical part of me insisted that I consider another statistic. What were the odds that someone might show up looking for Bo and not be somehow evil and in the employ of Sebastian? Probably another gazillion to one.
I was immediately on high alert.
“I’m sorry. There’s no one here by that name.”
The couple glanced at one another and then back at me, the girl’s smile widening.
“I am sure it seems rather odd that two strangers show up on your doorstep looking for Bo, but I can assure you that Bo and I have a long history. I have been looking for him for many years. You see, we grew up together.”
“Well, that’s all fine and good, but I still don’t know who you’re talking about. There’s no Bo here.”
The girl chuckled and resituated the bag that was slung over her shoulder.
“One thing you will soon learn about me is that I am an excellent lie detector and I know you are lying. Just tell Bo I am here. He will remember me.”
“I told you, there’s—”
“Please. Just tell him Annika is here. He will tell you all about me.”
That gave me pause. And made me a little nauseous.
“Annika?”
“Yes,” she replied, smiling more widely. “Has he mentioned me?”
It was at that precise moment, when my heart was finally making its way back up from the toes of my shoes, that Bo returned. If there was any question about her identity, he immediately put it to rest.
“Annika?” he said as he rounded the corner of the garage to the front steps.
I’d been so distracted with Annika that I had neither seen nor heard Bo’s arrival. I watched him approach the front steps, a look of confused amazement on his face.
“Bo!” she squealed, charging down the steps and launching herself at him. Bo reluctantly raised his arms, patting her back awkwardly as she hung from around his neck. “Oh thank God! I have looked everywhere for you.”
When she finally released him and stepped back, Bo began to smile a little, which only made me feel worse about the whole thing. He was glad to see her. Surprised, but glad.
“Annika, what are you doing here?”
“I have been trying to catch up to you for…a while,” she explained hesitantly. Annika slid a quick glance over her shoulder at me before she leaned in toward Bo and whispered, “Is she one of us?”
Bo’s eyes darted from Annika to me and back again. A frown flitted across his brow before he nodded.
“Yes.”
“Good,” she said hurriedly. “I have been looking for you since you disappeared from Lindersberg in 1916.”
“What?” Bo and I exclaimed simultaneously.
Annika laughed.
“Why don’t we go inside and talk? It has been a long journey.”
As she and Bo made their way up the steps toward the door, I was jarred from my shock, remembering the tall, dark stranger that had accompanied the beautiful Annika. He’d stood quietly by as the reunion transpired, but now I wondered about him.
As if reading my mind, Annika introduced him as she reached the top of the steps.
“This is Cade by the way. Cade this is Bo and…”
She trailed off, looking meaningfully over her shoulder at Bo. He moved past her and came to stand by my side, sliding an arm possessively around my waist.
“This is Ridley,” he supplied.
Annika’s startlingly blue eyes darted from Bo to me and back again before she smiled tightly and offered her hand.
“Ridley, it is nice to meet you.”
Politely, I took her proffered hand and pumped it once, cordially, and then released it. Whether it was rooted in jealousy or something else, I didn’t like the fair Annika and I suspected that the feeling was mutual.
For the first time since their arrival, Cade spoke.
“Bo,” he said, nodding once in Bo’s direction before his obsidian eyes made their way to me. “Ridley, it’s a pleasure.”
His voice was a deep delight with a thick Texan drawl. His lips curved into a smile and, despite Bo’s presence at my side, Cade made no effort to conceal the blatant appreciation in his eyes.
“And how do you two know each other, Annika?” Bo said, referring to Cade.
“We met a few states ago and discovered that we had much in common. We have been traveling together since. We have a common goal.”
Bo nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving Cade. Cade just stared back.
Annika slapped the back of her hand against Cade’s chest.
“Stop that! Brothers are not supposed to compete.”
After a moment’s delay, Bo and I both gaped first at each other and then we turned our rounded, incredulous eyes on Annika. When we finally found our tongues, we both had one question. It came in the form of a word, a single word.
“Brothers?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I don’t have a brother,” Bo declared, turning a scowl on Annika.
“Yes you do.”
Truthfully, Bo didn’t have enough memory of his life to argue with her, which is probably why he chose to demand answers instead.
“Then tell me how it is that you came across this information, yet I did not.”
“Can we please take this inside?” she asked again, making every effort to keep her voice low and calm.
Bo glared at Annika and Cade for several long, tense seconds before he acquiesced. With a frustrated growl, he stepped aside, allowing Annika and Cade to enter. As Cade passed, Bo eyed him suspiciously, the tension between them nearly palpable.
Once they were inside, Bo closed the door, grabbed my hand and led the way into the den. After Annika and Cade had deposited their bags on the floor and taken a seat on one of the couches, Bo urged me to sit on the one facing them. He remained at my side, though standing, his arms folded over his chest in an intimidating posture that was rife with antagonism.
“Alright, we’re inside. I think you need to explain yourself.”
Annika snorted.
“I see that the fun-loving Bo that I remember has grown up quite a bit,” she began, her voice teasing. When Bo said nothing, Annika cleared her throat uncomfortably.
“Let me start with how I found you. I—”
“We can get to that later,” Bo interrupted sharply. “Right now I want to know why you think I have a brother.”
I glanced at Cade. He was watching Bo closely, as if puzzling over his reaction.
“You are just going to have to be patient, because it all starts with the night you disappeared from Lindersberg,” she said. “You and I were supposed to go hunting together. You were still showing me the ropes, showing me techniques and how to avoid infecting people once my fangs matured. Showing me the best places to find willing humans, all that. Anyway—”
“I was hunting humans?” Bo interrupted, dismayed and a little disbelieving.
“Yes. Why would you not hunt humans?”
“I don’t drink from humans. The person you’re describing doesn’t even sound like me.”
“Well, maybe not the current you, but it certainly describes the you from back then,” she declared. When Bo said nothing, she continued. “Anyway, you didn’t show, so I went to a place that we had been to before, thinking you might be there. And you were. You weren’t there alone, though. You were with a man, one I didn’t recognize. I waited for you to finish and then, when the two of you left, I gave you a few minutes and followed. By the time I got outside, however, you were already gone. Vanished. Without a trace. I looked everywhere for you, but it was as if you just disappeared.
“When you didn’t show up for three days, I knew something was wrong. I asked all around about the man
you were with, but no one seemed to know who he was. It took me almost a week to finally find someone, a new vampire, who remembered someone named Sebastian, someone who fit the description of the man I’d seen you with.
“After that, the trail went completely cold. I wasn’t able to pick up on any scent or find anyone who’d seen you for months, so I eventually gave up. It wasn’t until I moved to the states about five years ago that I stumbled across Sebastian again.
“I was in a small town in Texas visiting a bar I’d heard was a good place to feed. That’s where I saw him. He didn’t know that I had seen him that night in Lindersberg. I struck up a conversation about the local hunting grounds and he was more than happy to chat when I flashed him a smile and showed him a little cleavage.”
Annika paused to show us exactly the smile she’d used, one I could see being persuasive to nearly any male creature and probably even some females. Bo wasn’t impressed, however, only wanting more details about his father at that point.
“What did he say?” Bo asked stiffly.
“Er, not much really. He was very careful, which just made me that much more suspicious. That is why I followed him. Tracked him to a house. It was an old house, sort of off the beaten path. It didn’t take me long to figure out why it was so secluded. He was keeping a woman there. A woman and her son.”
Annika’s eyes darted to Cade before she continued.
“The woman was beautiful. She had dark hair and eyes, and she looked like an angel. I watched her house until he left and then I went and knocked on the door. It only took me about ten seconds of talking with her to figure out she was under the influence of his blood. I knew I would never get any information from her, so I thought to follow Sebastian. I kept up with him until he stopped in a town in Colorado called Buford.
“But just like before, I lost him. He can just vanish. It is incredible,” Annika exclaimed, her voice saturated with admiration. When she saw that no one else shared her fascination, she cleared her throat again and continued. “Luckily, after a few days of sniffing around, I saw your picture in the local paper in an article related to missing persons. That is when I knew without a doubt that Sebastian had something to do with your disappearance.
“I have traveled around America for nearly five years, seeing the sights and looking for signs of you. I found nothing so I ended up going back to Texas to try to catch up with Sebastian again. I had a feeling he would return to visit the woman and the boy eventually, so I hung around there until he visited them again a couple of months ago. When he left, I followed him as far as Virginia before I lost him again. That’s where I was when I saw the newspaper article about a rash of missing kids in South Carolina. There were a few pictures. Two of them were really blurry, but I still recognized you. I’d know your face anywhere.”
The smile that Annika aimed toward Bo made me distinctly uncomfortable. It hinted at a history that made me feel queasy. Bo seemed not to notice. He was too wrapped up in her story.
When it became clear that Bo wasn’t going to respond, Annika’s smile faded and a ghost-of-a-frown appeared. It looked like a tiny dent between her tawny brows.
Though it didn’t seem that he really saw me, Bo glanced toward me before he turned back to Annika and prompted, “And then?”
“Well, the rest is pretty much history. I came down here and asked around until I found out where Sebastian lived and…well, here we are.”
Narrowing his eyes first on Annika and then on Cade, Bo asked sharply, “And how did he get to be a part in all this?”
“Uh, I saw him in town a couple of days later and he recognized me from the first time I visited his mother. He’d heard that I was asking around about a man named Sebastian and mentioned that he was looking for him as well. We sort of hit it off and decided we might make good travel companions.”
Something about her vague answer made me suspicious of what she wasn’t saying, but I thought it best to keep that to myself for the time being.
“This all sounds very…convenient, but none of it explains how you came to the conclusion that he’s my brother.”
Annika snorted. “Look at him! You two could be twins.”
Both Bo and I turned to Cade. His eyes shifted lazily between us, not the least bit ruffled by our examination.
Annika was right, though. Bo and Cade were amazingly similar, right down to the intensity that shrouded them like a thick cloak. Bo began to scowl as he inspected Cade.
I was wondering about their physical characteristics just as Annika voiced a thought that explained away the doubts I was having.
“Your mothers must have looked a lot alike, because other than your swagger and your smile, neither of you look like Sebastian.”
“Swagger? I don’t have a swagger,” Bo snapped defensively.
Annika smiled. “Then that is another thing that has changed because you used to dominate any room you walked into. You certainly got my attention.”
Although Bo ignored her flagrant flirtation, I found that I could not and it was not doing good things for my temperament. I was becoming more and more irritated by her references to their past. It was obvious that they’d shared a relationship that was more than simple friendship and even though Bo didn’t remember it, I felt increasingly threatened by it.
I reminded myself that Bo was a different person now, that he was mine and that we were divinely destined for one another. No old flame could change that. But tiny termites of doubt and insecurity began to eat away at the foundation of my confidence, eroding the faith I had in our union.
Bo’s voice brought me back to the conversation at hand.
“That still doesn’t explain how you know he’s my brother.”
“He told me that you were his brother.”
All eyes turned back to Cade.
“And how do you know you’re my brother?”
He shrugged offhandedly before he spoke.
“My mother used to talk a lot about my father, Sebastian. He was basically absent for almost my entire life. He would drop in every few years and stay for a day or two and then leave.” Cade’s upper lip curled in bitterness. “Of course she didn’t mind. He made sure of that. Even though she had no memory of it, I knew what he was doing to her. I saw him do it a couple of times. He would feed her his blood and tell her all sorts of things, things that would erase all that had happened, all that they’d talked about. But I heard him. I knew.”
“What did he say? Exactly,” Bo said evenly.
“One night I heard them talking in her bedroom. She was asking questions about his life and he was telling her about a son he had with another woman, a boy that he called Boaz, and how that boy was trying to kill him. Of course, my mother was devastated. But me? I only wished that I could be the one to kill him.
“I hated him for what he’d done to her. It’s like he drained more and more of her life away with each visit. She got worse over time, like she was slowly going insane, and I knew it had something to do with what he was doing to her. The last time he came, I heard him tell her that he had hoped that their child…me…would give him the blood that he needed, but that I hadn’t. He said he’d had to inject an unborn child. Said that he’d found one even better, one that might be linked to the Chosen One. He said that he had no further need of us.” Cade’s nostrils flared as he tried to contain his hatred of Sebastian. “She was dead the next morning. That’s when I found Annika.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A hush fell over the room, as though we all mourned the death of Cade’s mother. Annika was the first to break the silence.
“So, now you know our story. Your turn. What happened?”
After a long pause, Bo sighed deeply and dropped down onto the couch beside me. Tiredly, he rubbed a hand across his face. Before I could stop myself, I reached out and pushed a stray piece of sable hair away from his cheek. He leaned back against the cushions and, without glancing in my direction, took my hand and laid it on his thigh, covering it with his o
wn.
“Honestly, I have no idea.”
A smile flickered across Annika’s face before she realized that he was serious.
“What do you mean you have no idea?”
“Exactly that. I have no memory of my life before three years ago.”
“What?” she asked in disbelief.
“It’s true.”
Annika frowned. “Then how did you remember me?”
A pregnant silence stretched across the room as Bo struggled to find an answer. I scanned the faces, taking in Cade’s eyes, narrowed in suspicion, and Annika’s eyes as they sparked with the light of hope. When Bo glanced at me, I saw that his were filled with regret. My only question was: regret for what?
When Bo answered, his voice was low, uncertain. “I have no idea.”
A satisfied grin twitched at the corners of Annika’s pouty mouth before she brought it under control, carefully schooling her features into a politely blank mask.
It was when her gaze darted to me that I knew my fears were very real. Our eyes met for only a fraction of a second, but that’s all it took for me to see that Annika had come to find Bo for one reason and one reason alone—to get him back. She was in love with him.
“Well, what do you remember?” she prompted.
“Just my life as it has been since a little over three years ago. Other than that, occasionally I have dreams that feel so real they’re like memories, but I have no real memories.”
“And yet you recognized me,” she added meaningfully.
“I might remember a lot more if I could see the places I’ve been, people I’ve known, things I’ve seen. Where did you say you’re from?”
“Lindersberg, Sweden.”
That’s when I realized the origin of the lilt in her voice. She was Swedish.
“Sweden. Sweden,” Bo said, nodding slowly and repeating the word as if testing the feel of it on his tongue. “Tell me about it.”
“About what?”
“Where I’m from.”
It was easy to see that Annika relished having all eyes on her, but more than that, she basked in Bo’s undivided attention. She reveled in the opportunity to paint the picture of their life together—their life before me.