by J. L. McCoy
**********
I heard someone calling my name and I groggily peeled my eyes open. My vision swam for a moment before my vampire senses sharpened. Blinking rapidly, I took in the room around me.
A middle aged man with long black hair and striking blue eyes was sitting a few feet away from me on a raised, elaborate gold throne. My eyes assessed him then immediately flashed to my surroundings. I saw that we were in a large, cavernous stone room and by the coolness in the air, I guessed we were somewhere deep underground. Rather than seeing, I heard ten to twenty people shuffling a few yards behind me before I turned my eyes to the man who had a hold of my left elbow, no doubt helping me stand. I had never seen him before; I’d never seen any of them before.
What the hell is going on? Who are these people and how did I get here? I thought with rising panic. I suddenly remembered being in the St. Ailbe church garden and meeting a man; a man who ultimately injected my heart with something. My eyes slowly slid down to my chest and zeroed in on the puncture mark in my brand new evening gown. A small stain surrounded the hole, ruining the material even further. So much for having nice things.
“Aww…dammit!” I wrinkled my face unhappily as I sighed heavily in disappointment. “I just got this dress!”
“I regret that your dress was damaged, Miss Morrison,” the man on the throne said as he tilted his head to the side, “but I’m afraid that was the only way we could secure an audience with you.”
Kidnapped…I’d been kidnapped again. Why do I have the worst luck? I took a deep breath and looked down at the floor, slowly letting my anger consume me. I was mad…livid, and these people were about to see how grave of a mistake they made in thinking they could kidnap me. Allowing my eyes to flicker completely black, I slid my gaze back up to the man in front of me. “I don’t take too kindly to being kidnapped, Dark One,” I growled lowly as I let my fangs drop. “In fact, it completely pisses me off.”
“I told you that kidnapping her wasn’t the best plan, father,” a familiar voice said behind me and a second later, Corvus Frost appeared at my side. He turned to me, his bright green eyes drinking me in from head to toe, as he smiled sexily, “Hello again, Skye.”
Damn, Corvus looked good, but unfortunately now was not the time to stop and enjoy the sights. “Corvus,” I replied, narrowing my eyes at him before bringing my attention back to the man on the throne. “So, I guess that makes you Atticus Frost.”
“Indeed,” he smiled, inclining his head. “I see you’ve heard of me.”
“Not really,” I explained with a tired cock of my eyebrow. “You’ve got exactly two minutes to satisfactorily explain why I’m here, Mr. Frost. At the conclusion, if I’m still bored, I’m going to kill your man here,” I tilted my head to the left, indicating the man holding my elbow.
“Jarvis,” Atticus motioned with his hand, “I think you ought to let go of our guest now.” Jarvis quickly dropped my elbow and flashed to stand with the group behind me.
“We mean you no harm, Skye Morrison,” the leader of the Dark Ones smiled tightly at me as he stood. “Your existence became known to us a mere fortnight ago. We heard rumors of a girl who’d been given half the soul of our creator; a creator we thought had died many, many millennia ago. You must understand we’ve been very eager to meet the woman who was sired by our very own creator. And what an oddity you’ve turned out to be.”
“Insulting me isn’t earning you any brownie points, Dark One,” I frowned, crossing my arms under my chest.
“Please forgive me, but you misunderstand,” Atticus said smoothly as he stepped down from his throne and took a few steps toward me. Corvus and two other men flashed to flank him, no doubt intending to protect their leader. The action made me chuckle audibly. If I wanted to kill Atticus, there was nothing anyone could do to stop me. Nothing on this Earth but the Sword of Saint Patrick could kill me and that was safely ensconced in Austin, Texas.
“We’d like to offer you a home here with us,” Atticus continued. “Even though you are part Day, your soul is still Dark. Your eyes confirm our greatest hope, Skye. Your immortal body contains the soul of our father, thus making you incredibly important to us, which brings me to my greatest wish. I want you to join us and make your immortal home among your own kind, those who will worship you as the goddess you are.”
My eyes grew wide at his words and I scoffed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Atticus’ spine straightened and he frowned. The change in his demeanor was like a cold bucket of ice water thrown in the faces of those in the room. Some gasped while others murmured their shock. “I assure you, Miss Morrison, I am not the kidding kind,” he said sharply.
“I did everything in my power to put down Amun, your so-called creator. I tried to kill him and in doing so, almost killed myself. You have to know that I hate everything about him; everything he stands for.” I took a deep breath and frowned confusedly up at Atticus. “Shouldn’t you be angry at me, Frost? Shouldn’t you want to avenge your father or something? I don’t get it. Why are you offering me a place here with you if I did everything I could to kill the monster you seem to hold so dear?”
Hushed whispers swept the room as Atticus and I looked at each other. Finally, he sighed and spoke. “There are ancient writings hinting to the age of our creator. Some say he is well over twenty millennia, some say older.”
“He told me he was tens of thousands of years old,” I confirmed with a nod, “but he didn’t give me an exact date.”
“When a human ages past a certain point, they have a tendency to lose their minds. The same can be said for an immortal. Amun has lived far longer than one should and it is my belief that he belongs locked away from the world. He went on a Day Walker killing spree that, quite frankly, caused me and every Dark One on the planet some grief. We are not at war with the Day and yet Amun chose to start one. He did it for purely selfish reasons, without thinking of how his choices would negatively impact his children, and this is unacceptable to me. I’ve worked hard during my reign over the Dark race to modernize our ways and thinking. We are not barbarians; we do not go on killing sprees eradicating whole family lines as Amun just did. We may be Dark, but we are not evil, Miss Morrison; we are not monsters. Amun became a mindless monster and he deserves to be locked away so that he cannot hurt you or others with his insanity again. It is my wish that his line live on, though, and that is why I’d like for you to join us. You belong here.”
I stared at Atticus, thoroughly shocked to say the least. He’s happy? My brain just couldn’t process it. “Look,” I explained diplomatically as to not straight up insult the man. “I’m a Day Walker, plain and simple. Archer Rhys is my father; he created me, not Amun. I’m flattered that you think I belong here, but the truth is…I don’t.”
Atticus considered my words for a moment and then made a motion with his hand. “Maybe this will change your mind.”
I heard footsteps as someone broke from the crowd and walked forward. A second later Lucian, the man I’d met at Les Oubliette, appeared before me. “Hello, Skye,” he smiled warmly.
“Lucian?” I frowned, shocked to see him standing in front of me. “I don’t understand. What are you doing here?”
“Tell her, cousin,” Corvus said excitedly with a satisfied grin.
“This wasn’t exactly the way I’d envisioned you finding out,” Lucian said gently as he took my hand in his, covering it with the other, and then taking a deep breath. “I’m your father, Skye.”
Chapter Twelve
I swallowed thickly and stared at the man in front of me. “I don’t believe you,” I whispered, shaking my head, thoroughly shocked. I jerked my hand out of his hold and took two steps back.
“It’s true,” he explained, a sad look in his eyes. “My human name was Steven Edward Mitchell and I went to school with your mother at MIT.” He pulled a wallet out of his back pants pocket and retrieved a photo with tattered edges. “This was taken about a year before you were conceived.
”
Reaching out with shaking hands, I took the photo and stared down at it. It was a picture of Lucian and my mother, smiling and appearing very much in love. Lucian looked much the same as he did now and my mother appeared to be around my age.
My gaze slowly slid from the photo in my hand to the man standing before me. I felt my eyes flicker back to their normal colorless state and I gasped a single word, “No.”
I wanted to throw up. I wanted Ashton Kutcher to come running out of nowhere and yell ‘Surprise! You just got Punked, bitch!’. I wanted to wake up from this impossibly horrible bad dream and find that I’d been safe all along at home in Archer’s arms instead of standing here looking into the eyes of the man who’d fathered me.
I swallowed hard and let the photo slide from my fingers. “You’ve got some fucking nerve, you know that?” I frowned angrily as I crossed my arms under my chest.
Lucian sighed and ran his fingers through his red hair…hair almost as red as mine. “I’m sorry, Skye,” he said softly. “I know I wasn’t there for you growing up and I regret that.”
“Please,” I scoffed. “You wrote my mother a check and threw it at her, telling her to get an abortion because you wanted nothing to do with me, you selfish bastard.”
“Is that what she told you?” he asked, his body instantly straightening with a look of pure, horrified shock on his face.
“Two days ago, matter of fact, when she found out I was a vampire and accused me of turning out just like you,” I bit out. “I guess she was right. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it Dad?”
“Regardless,” Lucian said, his intense green eyes boring into mine, “that’s not how it happened. I did give your mother a check, but it wasn’t for an abortion. It was for her prenatal vitamins and anything else she needed at the time. I wanted to be in your life; it was she who pushed me away.”
Murmuring from the back of the room drew my attention again and I suddenly remembered that we had an audience. “Look, I’m not having this discussion with you here. I don’t think a room full of people need to be privy to this particular conversation.”
My father turned to Atticus and addressed him. “Master, would it be possible to have some privacy so Skye would feel more comfortable?”
Atticus appeared thoughtful for a moment as he studied me. “I have a feeling you are a woman of your word, Skye, so I will take you at it. Will you swear that no harm will come to him or my people if I grant his request?”
I glanced back at my father and saw the pleading in his eyes. I could tell he very much wanted this. “I swear,” I whispered, looking back at Atticus.
“Will you also swear to hear him out fully before you decide whether or not to join us?” he asked and his request gave me greater pause. Would knowing my father ultimately sway my decision? I didn’t think so but stranger things had happened. The thought made me suddenly nauseous.
I sighed and closed my eyes. No matter how I felt about being kidnapped, some part deep down inside of me had been aching for this moment my entire life. I’d always wondered who my father was and now I had an opportunity to find out, direct from the source. Coming to a decision, I opened my eyes and met Atticus’. “I swear.”
“Excellent,” Atticus smiled, clapping his hands together. Shuffling behind me signaled that the room was being cleared. “You may utilize my throne room. Take as much time as you need.” I watched as Atticus and his men disappeared behind me and with a final, loud clang of a metal door, my father and I were alone.
“Come,” he smiled, motioning to a place behind me with his hand. I turned to see that there were chairs and two couches off to the side of the room and followed him to one. After sitting down on one end of the couch, my father sat on the other and stared happily at me for a few quiet moments. “I can’t believe you’re really here,” he said softly. “I’ve dreamed about this day for twenty-three years.”
“I’ve always wondered who you were,” I said honestly as I fidgeted with my fingers in my lap. “What you looked like, what your voice sounded like.”
“Did your mother tell you nothing about me?” he asked, sounding a bit shocked.
“I knew absolutely nothing of you until two days ago. Mom refused to talk about you my whole life and any time I asked she’d get mad.” I looked up at him and cocked one eyebrow. “She hates you, you know. You broke her heart when you chose immortality over us. She’s never gotten over it…or you.”
Lucian sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, this seemed to genuinely distress him. “I loved your mother very much, Skye, and it was not my intention to leave her forever. I tried explaining that to her when I told her about my decision to become a vampire, but she wasn’t hearing it.” He gazed over at me and his eyes seemed to beg me for the answer to his next question. “How is she?”
I sighed and frowned. “Pissed at me…very pissed at me. She’s not speaking to me at the moment and claims I’m no longer her daughter. I think it’s safe to say that it’ll be a long time before I see her again.”
“Your mother will come around,” he said simply.
“So, why did you want to become a vampire anyway?” I asked, genuinely confused. He’d seemed to have it all as a human; a good career, a woman who loved him, and a child on the way. I couldn’t understand why he’d thrown that all away.
My father leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “I was sick…very sick. I’d been diagnosed with Lupus my senior year of high school and as the years passed, my disease got progressively worse. It affected my brain and nervous system the most. By the time I was in my second year of post-grad school, I was having seizures almost on a daily basis, the headaches were completely debilitating and I was developing serious vision problems which felt like a death sentence to me. A neuroscientist needs their sight. I was barely able to work.”
“I thought Lupus was a treatable disease,” I shook my head, not understanding.
“It is for most people,” he sighed, “but I had a particularly nasty case. My immune system was very aggressively attacking healthy tissue and destroying it, mainly my brain. For a year or two after my diagnosis, my body responded well to the high doses of corticosteroids my doctors placed me on. But the more time passed, the more my body grew immune to treatment. Toward the end of my human life, nothing they gave me helped. When I met Vincent, the Dark One that turned me, he told me that becoming a vampire would fully cure me and I’d be free to work and live pain-free. Nothing in this world sounded better than a cure to me, so I begged him to change me.”
My brow furrowed and I stared at my hands, confused. “I don’t get it,” I said, finally looking up at Lucian. “Why would my mother tell me that you’d abandoned us? Nothing she told me about you two days ago lines up with what you are telling me now.”
“I did my best to hide the extent of my illness from your mother,” he explained gently. “I had a seizure once in the lab and she got very emotional. I didn’t want to subject her to the horrors of my disease, so I stayed quiet after that…spent less and less time with her as my body spent more time dealing with the symptoms.” He grew quiet for a few moments and I saw the grief on his face as he looked down at the floor. “I loved your mother so much, but I began pulling away from her in order to spare her. When she told me that we were going to have a baby…well, it was the happiest and saddest day of my life.”
“Why saddest?” I asked in a whisper.
“Because Vincent told me earlier that day that he would grant me immortality,” my father explained, looking up at me. Tears swam in his eyes and he looked tortured. “I couldn’t back out, not now that I was going to be a father. I needed to be at my best and strongest so that I could provide you and your mother the life you deserved.”
“But what happened with you and mom?” I asked, leaning closer to him. “Why did it end so badly? Why is she telling me you abandoned us? I don’t get it, Lucian. I’ve never known my mother to be dishonest with me. We normally hav
e a very good relationship…well, when she’s not being completely overbearing,” I added with a shrug of my shoulder.
“That day in the lab, I told your mother of my decision and explained how long I’d have to be away. When a Dark One first awakens…well, it takes some time to come back to the person you once were. I knew I’d need at least a year before I could try to see her again. Your mother wasn’t happy with that, to say the least. She screamed that I was abandoning her in her greatest time of need and that you would need a father. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her how bad my disease had really gotten so I stayed silent on that front. Vincent had instructed me that we were to leave for New York that night so I promised your mother I’d be back, cut her a check for ten thousand dollars, and told her that I loved her.”
I took a deep breath, letting his words sink in. Tears formed in my eyes and I didn’t know if they were from relief or what, but I was dangerously close to full out crying. “You never told her you didn’t want me?” I asked in a small, trembling voice.
My father scooted closer to me on the couch and cupped my cheeks as he lifted my face to his. “No,” he said fiercely. “Never. How could I not want my child, my own flesh and blood? Finding out that we were expecting you was best news I’d gotten in my life. I couldn’t wait to come back and be your father, Skye. I loved you from the second I found out about you and thought about you every day that I was gone. You were a part of me. You were my little girl.”
A sob escaped my lips and my father pulled me to him and hugged me tightly. “My precious daughter,” he whispered as he held me. “Don’t cry.”
I allowed Lucian to hold me and rub my back as I drank in my father’s smell and memorized the cadence of his voice. I wanted to firmly imprint this moment in my mind. When my tears slowed, I leaned back up and allowed him to wipe my tears with the back of his hand.