by Kristie Cook
“Lena had shit to do. And this is my home, not yours! What the hell is she doing here?”
The boy I’d seen with her at the cemetery came out from the same direction she’d come from. From their rooms, I recalled. My bedroom had also been down that hallway, at the end of the wing. He had the same color hair as mine, not quite as dark as Mom’s and Aurelia’s, but with the same brown eyes as our sister—the same brown mine had been before I’d turned. He was thin and awkward looking, like all twelve-year-old boys. He simply scowled at me, but didn’t say a word.
“She has every right to be here,” Addie said.
“She has no right!” Aurelia screamed.
“Her name is now on the deed,” Addie countered.
Aurelia seethed, her nostrils flaring as she glared at me. “That is so unfair! Two more years and it would have been mine.” Her eyes narrowed, shooting daggers at me. “What did you do to them? They weren’t supposed to go so soon!”
“Aurelia,” Addie warned with a kind voice.
“Just leave me alone!” She ran off, back to her room.
Gabe still stood there, staring at me. “You shouldn’t have come back,” he said flatly before turning and disappearing down the hallway.
“They blame me,” I said, my shoulders dropping.
“They were too young to understand.”
“Why would our parents do that to them, though? To all of us? The hell with being too young. I don’t understand.”
“Well, she’s right. They did go too soon. It wasn’t supposed to be that quick. They should have had at least another ten years, maybe longer. Long enough for those two to grow up and begin their own lives.”
“Away from here?”
“I think that was the plan.”
“But everything got messed up.”
“Yep. Goddess always has Her own plans.”
I crossed the foyer to the formal living room to our left, where all of the furniture was draped with protective covers, and walked over to the big picture windows lining two walls. Out one side was the spectacular view of the town spreading out below, looking like it belonged on the front of a Christmas card. The City Hall’s clock tower and a couple of church steeples stood up like sentinels over the town. The sun was nearly straight overhead, its rays blinding as they bounced off the snowy roofs and lawns. Across town, the ski lifts climbed the mountainside, and skiers carved their way down the slopes.
“Maybe we’ll get another snow this season to go,” Addie said from my side. “We can go up in the summer now, too. There’s a lookout with a snack shop at the top of the mountain over there. One of Tase’s new additions. He’s planning to add a slide and other things for the summer tourists next year. Eventually a restaurant.”
“Good for him,” I muttered as I turned to the other wall.
Although the view of town was beautiful, this one was breathtaking. Another mansion sat across the cul-de-sac, most of it blocked by evergreens. But beyond it was an upper portion of the falls. From here, they appeared to shoot out the side of a rock wall and free fall into the trees below. Right now, they were partially frozen over, cascades of ice that created an incredible work of art by Mother Nature herself. That explained why the roar had been muffled. In summer and close-up, the sound was nearly deafening.
I couldn’t see it from here, but I remembered what looked like a large log cabin at the top of the falls, but was a tavern owned by the Alversons. Lena Alverson was one of Aurelia’s good friends. I also recalled a pool at the bottom of the mountain that the falls poured into, surrounded by boulders and trees. During the warmer months, a great mist rose from the pool enshrouding the area with a magical feel. And if memory served me right—which it was starting to do—the pool fed a stream that crossed town and fed into Mathews River, which carved its way along the base of the south mountain. Tears stung my eyes as I remembered standing here with Mom, who loved those falls so much.
“So, uh, what do you want to do?” Addie asked from behind me.
I swiped at my eyes with the backs of my hands before turning, and then I looked around the room before my gaze rested on her face. I shrugged.
“I don’t know. It’s home, but it’s weird.”
She gave me a sad smile. “I figured it would be, but thought it’d help with the memories.”
“It has.” I glanced around again. “It just feels different. Without them.”
“I’m sure the covered furniture doesn’t help. We’ve had the house closed up for months on Mammie’s orders. Well, I thought we had. I don’t know how long those two have been coming here. They’d wanted nothing to do with the place until very recently. Aurelia said it was too painful, yet here she is.”
I trailed my fingers over the dusty cover on the sofa. “People deal with grief in different ways.”
“Maybe Mammie’s death changed their minds.”
“Or my arrival.”
“They’ll come around. This could be home for all of you some day.”
I shrugged as I looked around and let the memories in. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t think any of us are ready for that yet. I think I’m good at the inn.”
Addie nodded, then gestured toward the back of the house. “Before we go, then, I thought you should go through some things in your dad’s old study. Your mom left it virtually untouched, but maybe there’s something there that can help with the inn.”
“Like insurance or secret accounts nobody knows about?”
“Who knows? You don’t until you look, right?”
I started heading that way. “Yeah, I guess it won’t hurt. Well . . . it will, but it’s okay.”
“While you do that, I’ll go see if I can get anything out of Aurelia.”
As I entered my father’s formal study with its large mahogany desk and many bookshelves, all filled with leather-bound books, I took note of the mixed feelings I had for both of my parents. I was at once angry at them for what they had done to me, to all of us, yet I missed them so much and ached to see them just one more time. I hated and loved them at the same time. I supposed I wasn’t the only child who felt that way toward their parents, but it was new to me. A few weeks ago, I’d thought I had no parents, no family at all.
I pulled the covers off the furniture and sat in Daddy’s chair and spun it around, taking his office in. Heavy drapes blacked out the windows, and although my vampire eyes could still see, I turned on the desk lamp. After another glance around, I began going through the drawers, finding interesting tidbits here and there. At some point during my rummaging, music began playing again, but not rap and not quite as loud as before. Low enough that I could hear Aurelia and Addie singing and even laughing, and I smiled to myself.
Mom and Mammie must have been through everything, because I didn’t find a single item relevant to insurance, bank accounts, or anything of the like that didn’t have a copy I’d already seen at the inn. However, I did find some photo albums. I sat on the leather loveseat by the shelves and paged through them, allowing the pictures to begin filling in the holes in my memory. As I studied the photos of the three of us kids growing older, I could see in Aurelia’s face what I’d often seen in Aster McCabe’s, and a sadness filled me. She’d grown up in my shadow. And then our parents had shipped me off to have a perfect life without them, leaving them here to die and Aurelia and Gabe to pick up the pieces. Because I’d been turned, I hadn’t even been able to become the doctor that had been all of our dreams. Tears streamed down my cheeks by the time I closed the back cover.
“No more photos for now,” I muttered as I replaced the album on the book shelf and wiped my tears dry.
My gaze fell on one of the leather-bound books that looked to be different from the others. I pulled it off the shelf, and it wasn’t a press-printed piece of literature like the others. It was very old, soft, supple leather, tied with a leather strap. I carefully untied it and opened the cover to find yellowed paper with swirly handwriting. I’d found a journal. More specifically, I’d foun
d my mom’s journal. Dated in the 1840s.
“Whoa,” I breathed as I dropped back into the loveseat.
Turning the delicate pages carefully, I became immersed in Mom’s notes of a time long gone by, in a place far away. She wrote about her life in a small village in Romania, the ritual ceremony of when her parents triggered her moroi gene, meeting my father and marrying him. How they’d planned to use their gifts of giving people comfort and setting them at ease combined with manipulating earth and stone to build and run their own inn in Romania. I read about their life together as husband and wife, living near their families, including Luiza, who’d been married to my dad’s brother.
And then about the births of four children. One was Madame Luiza’s. And the other three were mom’s.
“What on earth?” I muttered under my breath as I reread the entries. I looked up, although not really seeing the office around me. “Mom and Dad had previous children. So did Luiza. What happened to them? Did I know about this?”
I don’t know how long I sat there wondering about these older siblings we had but was pretty sure we’d never known about. The office was only lit by the lamp, but the light in the hallway had changed. And then I realized how quiet the house had fallen. No music or dancing or laughing or talking. No breathing or heartbeats.
I tied the journal up to protect the pages and hurried into the main part of the house, out to the foyer. Night had fallen while I’d been engrossed in photos and journal entries, moonlight pouring through the soaring windows over the front door. “Addie? Aurelia? Gabe?”
Nobody answered me. Where had they gone? Why had they taken off, leaving me alone? I called for them again. Dead silence.
Then a large shadow swept overhead. I looked up. And screamed.
Chapter 11
A white bat hung from the ceiling. A bat the size of a man. I blurred for the front door, but it beat me there, dropping in front of me just as I was about to grab the handle. I jerked my hand back before I touched the hideous monster. It had the body of a man, naked and muscular, with large wings spread out from its outstretched arms to below the knee. Its bald head was also that of a man’s, but with pointed ears, sharp-edged cheekbones, and fangs. Its irises were pitch black, but a green light shone in the pupils. Grayish-white, leathery looking skin covered it from head to toe, not a single hair to be seen.
“Like what you see, puppet?” it asked me, and I gasped with surprise that it spoke. Teased.
I spun and ran, blurring for the back door. But the thing was faster than me, soaring over me, and swooping me up into talon-like fingers. I kicked and thrashed and tried to wriggle myself free from its hold, but it was so much stronger than me, even with my vampire strength. We crashed through the two-story Palladian windows at the back of the house and immediately climbed higher in the sky, veering to the right to avoid the mountainside. I opened my mouth to scream, but I suddenly felt like a hand had clapped over it, something invisible silencing me. No matter how hard I arched and thrashed, the beast kept its grip, its claws digging into my shoulders as we soared over town. The icy air bit at my face and hands.
Town square passed under us, to our right, and the lights of emergency vehicles sped below, headed in the opposite direction. I tried yelling at them to turn around, but couldn’t. The acrid odor of fire and smoke came faint on the air as we traveled away from the source.
We began descending on the far side of town as we approached the east mountain. The thing expertly avoided crashing through the tree branches before coming in for a landing at the back of a log cabin at the end of a cul-de-sac. I knew this house. I’d remembered it one of my first days here, although I hadn’t known why then. But now I did. I’d been here many times.
This was the Rocas’ home.
The thing released me several feet from the ground, and my feet had barely touched the wooden deck in front of the back door before I lunged for the edge. But a powerful hand grabbed me by the back of the neck and jerked me inside. Another hand gripped my upper arm hard enough to bruise it, and the person behind me shoved me forward, making me stumble. They kept me upright, though, pushing me until I started walking, through the familiar kitchen and headed for the basement door. They practically carried me by the neck and arm down the stairs into the dark cellar, unrelenting regardless of how hard I bucked and kicked, always missing my mark.
A second pair of hands wrapped around my wrists and lifted my arms above my head and out. I snarled and snapped at them, but they remained out of reach. Cold metal replaced the long, bony fingers, clamping around my wrists. The sound of metal grated against metal as my arms were lifted higher until my feet left the ground. More metal cuffed my ankles, and my legs were also pulled apart. I jerked against the bindings to no avail. A bright light was suddenly turned on, momentarily blinding my sensitive eyes. Once they adjusted, I found Mrs. Roca, wearing black dress pants and a yellow silk blouse, standing in front of me, and I was surprised I even recognized her.
I remembered thinking she was beautiful, just as beautiful as my own mom, but that wasn’t quite the word I’d use now. She was vamped out—her eyes bloodshot, her skin blanched and veiny looking, her fangs protruding between her lips—but her beauty could still be seen. Only now, her pale skin pulled taut over the sharper edges of her bones. Her lashes weren’t as long and thick as they’d been before, something I’d always envied a little of all the Rocas. Her hair wasn’t as thick and glossy as I remembered either. Not the jet-black it used to be. What happened to her?
A whimper from the corner beyond her caught my attention. My eyes bugged when they saw my sister and brother chained up just like me on the other side of the room. Blood dripped from Gabe’s lower lip, and Aurelia’s clothes were shredded. Fear shone in their wide eyes. I thrashed and fought against the metal cuffs, but they only dug in deeper. I tried to scream, but the invisible muffle remained.
A movement to my left brought the man-bat into view as it moved closer to my siblings. I tried to scream and fight again, ignoring the pain of the cuff’s bite into my skin. I just needed to get to them, free them before that monster hurt them even more.
“Where’s the witch?” Mrs. Roca demanded.
“She wasn’t there,” the creature said, and before my eyes, its wings disappeared and it morphed into Mr. Roca. Except a thinner, much more muscular and younger Mr. Roca than I remembered. He could almost be mistaken for any of his sons, if not for the glowing irises, now a lime green instead of black.
Mrs. Roca’s green eyes narrowed as she glared at me, but spoke to her husband, and as her vamp traits faded, I noted another difference in her. Her eyes used to be grayer. Moroi eyes, as Xandru had said. Now they were a brighter green. Almost as bright as her husband’s. “Did Adelaide see you?”
“No. She was gone before I got there,” he answered as he pulled a pair of black jeans off a work bench scattered with various tools and, I couldn’t help but notice, some mighty long, sharp-looking knives. I immediately averted my eyes to not give away that I’d seen them while I tried to figure out how to break out of these cuffs and reach the knives before they caught me. My vampire abilities were not an advantage with them. Come on, Kales, think!
“You damn well better hope so,” Mrs. Roca replied to her husband, “or she’ll have the Court here in no time. I will not watch them put you down.”
Mr. Roca buttoned his jeans, then pulled on a dark gray button-down shirt. He stared at me as he began buttoning it. “Nor I you. We’ll take care of this, Isabella. Just like I promised. Now, get the girl.”
Aurelia’s eyes widened with fear, her body thrashing against the restraints, her cries muffled like mine. I once again tried to fight my way to freedom as Mrs. Roca approached my sister, and tears filled my eyes. But then she passed Aurelia and Gabe and disappeared around a corner, a smirk on her face. Bitch!
A moment later she returned, gently leading a young woman about my age dressed in only a satin teddy. Her glassy blue eyes wandered around the room
as her finger twirled in a long, blond lock. Mrs. Roca walked over to me and beckoned at the girl.
“Over here, dear,” she said with a kind voice, and the blonde followed until she stood in front of me. Mrs. Roca gave me a tight grin. “We brought you a present, Michaela.” She said it like Mammie had, dropping the hard K. “How long has it been since you’ve had human blood straight from the vein?”
My eyes widened, and I shook my head. No! I tried to scream. It’d been more than two years, when I’d first been turned.
“Come now, dear, just a taste.” She placed her hand on the girl’s head and tilted it to the side, exposing her throat. The older woman blew across the girl’s skin, engulfing me with her delicious scent. My tongue automatically swept over my lips as my gaze fell on her prominent carotid. The throbbing artery called to my thirst.
But I knew what just a taste did. I knew there was no such thing as “just a taste,” not when direct from the vein. I’d almost killed last time I’d wanted just a taste of the fresh, warm blood. My mouth watered, and I was nearly panting.
“Here, I’ll start,” Mrs. Roca said, and she vamped out before bending over the girl’s throat and latching on.
The woman flinched but otherwise didn’t respond. She was under compulsion.
Mrs. Roca came up and licked the blood off her lips, but left the wound gushing. “Hurry, or I might take her all for myself.”
She shoved the woman up against me, her bleeding throat level with my nose and mouth. I turned my head, refusing. Mr. Roca suddenly stood behind me, his large hand on my head, pressing me toward the girl. My lips touched her throat, the deliciousness filled me, and I couldn’t help it. Just a taste. I licked the warm, thick liquid from my lips, my eyes fell closed, and for a moment, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I needed more. Now.
I lunged forward with a sudden thirst that felt like fire in my throat. My lips closed over her wound, my fangs sank into her skin to widen it, and I sucked her delicious, sweet and salty life force, my eyes rolling back with bliss.