by Dale Mayer
Tessa's mother rushed over to them. Tessa tried to open her eyes but couldn't stand the light from the kitchen. "Light hurts," she mumbled.
"Let's take her to her room." Her mother led the way and Cody followed, still carrying Tessa. In his arms, she didn't feel like she was large or awkward or any of the other million mixed-up feelings she usually had to deal with.
Now there were new ones.
"Here. I'll pull back her covers." Blankets rustled, then Tessa felt the coolness of cotton sheets against her back as the beautiful warmth of Cody's body disappeared. She protested.
"Shhh. You'll be fine now. Let your mother take care of you."
Cold on both sides, Tessa curled into a ball while her mother pulled the blankets over her.
"Cody?"
"I'm here." He reached over to take her hand gently in his.
"Thanks," she whispered as she let the darkness take her away.
*.*.*
"Go. I'll look after her. You need to explain what happened to Serus. I don't know what's going on, but this has to stop. She's not like us."
Cody looked over at Tessa's mom in surprise. "Rhia, I think she's more like us than you realize."
Rhia stopped stroking a white streak of Tessa's hair to glance up at him. She looked surprised. "What do you mean?"
"I spent more time alone with her tonight than I think I ever have, and I know she surprised me. Maybe I've been as guilty as everyone else of assuming her genetics made her less of a vampire." He shook his head. "I have to tell you, I think it's made her a better one." With that cryptic comment, he cast one final look at Tessa and walked out to face the gathering of angry vampires below.
There was only one way to handle this and that was to tell the truth. Tessa wouldn't appreciate it. It could mean she might never be allowed free on her own again, at least for a good long time. That didn't change the fact that something ugly brewed in the vampire world, and everyone needed to know what was going on. Cody, for one, wanted the others to help him find out what that was. The best he could do would be to minimize Tessa's involvement.
Or better yet, accent the strengths she'd showed tonight. Foolish and impulsive actions, maybe…except her heart had been in the right place.
Then again, as he thought about it, he didn't need to embellish anything. Tessa had done just fine tonight – all on her own.
Tessa woke to a darkened room. She surged upright, wincing at the pounding in her head as memories of last night crowded into her awareness. Her panicked glance showed the same curtains on the window of her childhood room and the cozy blanket David had bought for her birthday last year. Home. Sighing, she relaxed into the pillows.
Not wanting to face the day and not yet truly rested, she pulled the blanket up to her neck and tried to snuggle deeper.
Loud noises from below disturbed her peace. She didn't know what they were arguing about, but it had gone beyond normal family fighting. That's probably what had awakened her. She lifted her hand to her head and gently explored her skull, wincing as her fingers caught on the dried blood matting her hair. A shower would be wonderful. Just the thought of exerting that much effort made the rest of her body scream in protest. The events of last night had sapped her energy.
Images and feelings mixed with odd impressions and partial memories, leaving her unsure of what had actually happened. And then there was Cody. Even as she thought his name, a gentle sense of connection swept through her. She sighed. She needed to get a grip before Cody got wind of that. He'd just laugh at her.
Speaking of Cody. Was that his voice? Shit. She glanced at the clock and groaned. She'd hardly slept. Less than an hour had gone by since her return. As her father's blustery voice whipped through the house, Tessa cringed. Cody had saved her. She'd been the one who hadn't wanted to go back and get help. Please don’t let him get ripped by her father.
Cody had been the hero. She'd been the idiot.
They could blame her if they wanted. They would anyway, to a certain extent. But they shouldn't be treating Cody badly. Knowing she'd never rest if she didn't do her part to right the injustice, she slowly sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
The room spun around for a few seconds, then calmed down. Using her night table for support, she stood up and carefully made her way to the doorway. She didn't want to face her father's wrath. In truth, no vampire in the world would. But she couldn't let Cody take the blame for her actions.
Good intentions were fine, in theory. Navigating the stairs to make good on them was a different matter.
She misjudged the distance to the last stair and accidentally stomped down hard. She gasped as spikes drove into her temple. Biting her bottom lip, she forged ahead into the living room. The room swelled with vampires.
Great, there'd be an audience to hear her admit her stupidity. Bitterness washed over her in waves. Surely, for once in her life, some things could be private? Not this, apparently. Then again, of all her actions, this one would have the most widespread repercussions.
"I don't want to hear it," her father snapped at someone, his barely leashed temper adding a cutting edge to his voice.
Tessa couldn't suppress the moan that slipped out. His voice… Could he please remove the spike now deeply embedded in her brain by his raised voice? She massaged her temple and fell back against the doorway.
"Tessa?"
The room erupted into chaos.
Her mother rushed to her side. Cody beat her to it.
"Why the hell aren't you sleeping?" he snapped.
"Uh, gee, maybe because of all the yelling going on," she snapped back. She didn't argue as he slipped a hand under her elbow and led her to the closest chair. Sinking into it, she closed her eyes briefly. And opened them to see her mother glaring at her father.
"I told you to keep your voice down," Rhia said.
His glare swiveled from Rhia to Tessa and back again. "Maybe it's better this way."
Tessa watched her mother draw herself up to her full height, in no way prepared to give an inch. "You will not question her right now. She's injured. Twice, I might add."
"I know that. I'm not going to beat her, for Christ's sake," he muttered. "I just want to ask her some questions. Get some answers we need."
Any other time, Tessa would have grinned at her father backing down in the face of her mother's wrath. Those two had been together for centuries. They knew just what boundaries they could cross and which ones they couldn't. The sooner everyone knew what had happened, the faster they could do something to save Jared. "Mom, it's okay. I'm fine."
Her mother spun on her heels, frustration firing her voice with heat. "No, you are not fine. I want you to march upstairs and get yourself back into bed. And stay there. Do you hear me?"
Tessa heard the words, and when she looked in her mother's eyes she recognized real fear behind the tone. Tessa smiled gently. "I love you too, Mom."
Her mother's eyes filled with tears and she rushed over to hug her only daughter. "Tessa, you could have been killed. Do you understand that?"
"Yes," Tessa whispered against her mother's blue-black locks.
Her mother wiped away her tears and pulled back a little to look down at Tessa. "Please, wait until you're feeling better. I don't know much about the kind of injury you have. Maybe I should call a human doctor…? Taz." She brightened at the idea. "Yes, that's what I'll do. Let's go back upstairs. Taz will be happy to come."
Tessa glanced over at David and Seth, who both rolled their eyes at her. "Mom. I'm not human, remember? And Taz isn't going to want to come into the house with this gathering going on." She motioned to the room full of black-clad vampires. "Though I might get injured a little more than the rest of you, and I might take longer to recuperate, that doesn't mean I don't have any vampire traits."
Cody stepped closer. "And I'd be the first one to say I've seen more than a few of them in action over the last few hours."
Her fat
her glared in Tessa's general direction, effectively including the entire family and Cody.
Tessa glared back, then winced. The tempo in her head clashed with the movement, and a fine tremor went down her spine.
"Tessa?" Her mother crouched down in front of her. "Honey, please go back up and lie down."
But Cody placed a hand on her shoulder. Heat crept up her face. Maybe she hadn't imagined those solicitous touches earlier. Did he really care, or was she just the little sister he didn't have in his life? What a depressing thought.
"She can go back up in a few minutes. She's my daughter, not some weak lily-livered human." Serus's tone brooked no argument.
Straightening her spine, Tessa stared at her father. Showing weakness hadn't gotten her anywhere with him before. Maybe showing some backbone would. "What do you want to know?"
"I want to know what the hell you were doing ignoring my orders."
Her chin jutted out on its own. Any attempt to force some stiffness into her spine was forgotten. It straightened on its own now. She wasn't going to put up with a dressing down for not listening to her father – not in this instance. Jared was in trouble. And if her father still refused to help her – well, she knew where the front door was. She refused to consider that the knock on the head might have had something to do with that answer. "I'm not even going to discuss that with you. Not here and not now." Tessa's words were quiet but clear as she stared her father down.
His jaw dropped.
She'd have laughed if the subject wasn't so important. "I came down here to make sure you weren't taking chunks out of Cody’s hide and to tell you what happened so you could help. But if you're just planning to tell me off, to ground me for doing what I felt was right…" she stood up slowly, her temper putting steel into her rubbery legs, "And to tell me that you wouldn't have done the same thing, then I'm leaving."
Silence. Tessa didn't think she'd ever heard such an absolute absence of sound. She refused to tear her gaze away from her father, who looked like he'd been struck by lightning. The rest of the audience held their breaths, waiting for the explosion.
"Tessa, that's hardly fair. You know your father needed to speak with the Council first." Her mothered hovered between them.
"And second? And third?" Tessa scoffed. "While Cody and I tracked Jared's kidnapper and the men – who attacked me, I might add – to the house where we found a human, chained and dead."
Soft gasps rippled through the house.
"I know perfectly well how incompetent and incapable you believe me to be. I, however, won't let your opinion stop me from helping someone I care about. Whose predicament I feel responsible for."
Dimly, in the back of her mind, she felt Cody's withdrawal. She'd have to reason that out later – right now, in the vampire den, she dared not show weakness. "There are times when you just have to stand up for what's right. This was one of them."
Her piece said, the steel morphed into marshmallows and she collapsed back into her chair.
"You care about this…this human?" The question came from her father's sister. Aunt Rosha was cold, hard, and a bitch…but all bitches had families and she happened to be part of Tessa's.
Letting her lip curl in disdain, Tessa cut through the implication hanging in the air. "Yes, Aunt Rosha. He's a friend."
"A friend?" she asked delicately. Her tone implied so much more.
And just like that, Tessa had enough of it all. Of Aunt Rosha's innuendos, her criticisms, her belief that Tessa was stupid and naïve – the constant nastiness Tessa had endured from this relative. "Think whatever you want, Rosha. You will anyway."
Her mother's shocked gasp at her side would have made the old Tessa cringe in horror at being so bold. This Tessa, the beaten, chased, and now attacked-on-all-sides Tessa could no longer afford to be anyone's doormat. "He's a friend. That means he's someone I go to school with. Someone I went to the movies with. He's not my lover." More murmurs wafted through the room. "He's a friend."
"Interesting," Rosha murmured, studying her long nails, a sneer on her face.
"Yeah, it's a human thing and a friend thing. Obviously, you wouldn't understand."
David, who came to sit on the armrest of her chair, gently nudged her shoulder. Tessa half leaned into his touch, accepting both the comfort and the warning. At least for the moment.
Her dad knew his sister was being insulted and it was obvious he didn't know what to do about it. "I think it's time Tessa went to lie down."
"No, Dad, it's time for someone to help me find Jared." She took a deep breath. "Before whoever took him kills him, like they did the other man."
"That's human business," murmured someone from the back of the room.
"Who said that?" Tessa snapped, glaring at the blank looks turned her way. "It's not human business. It's vampire business. It was vampires who took him, vampires who killed the other man, and vampires who have Jared right now."
"Of course we only have your word that this other man is dead." Rosha smirked at Tessa.
Tessa turned to look up as Cody stepped forward. His temper showed on his lean, dark face. "Not true. I also saw him."
Then Tessa remembered the evidence she'd gathered. Standing up again, she reached into her back pocket for the man's wallet. "Here. His name was Carstairs Wallace." Her voice gentled as she looked down on the wallet she'd taken. "I hoped we might help him, too. Someone somewhere will want to know what happened to him."
She wanted to give it to her father, but as there was no give in his face, she handed it off to Cody before sitting down again.
As Cody walked forward, an oversized vampire stormed into the room. Goran's temper moved ahead of him, automatically clearing a space. "What the hell is going on here?" He spun around in a circle, his gaze taking in everyone in the room in an instant. When his eyes lit on Cody, some of the anger drained from his face. "There you are. What's this all about?"
"It's a long story, sir."
"Then you'd better get started."
As succinctly as he could, Cody relayed the evening's events for his father. It made interesting listening for Tessa, who could only vaguely remember some of the details and none at all about the fight or that he'd defended her. Her insides turned to mush at the thought. Tidbits of memories flashed through her mind, some of them heating her insides and making her face flush.
"Are you warm, Tessa? Your face is turning pink," David asked in concern. Tessa rolled her eyes. That was yet one more human trait the others couldn't understand. Maybe that was a good thing. Blushing wasn't something she wanted to be advertised.
"I'm fine," she murmured, keeping an eye on the two most powerful men in this part of the world. Her father and Goran had been friends forever. They held the same beliefs, followed the same code…and generally viewed life from the same vantage point. If Cody's father sided with Tessa's father, then Cody and she could both end up in deep shit.
Goran's heavy brows beetled together. His gaze lit on Tessa once before bouncing to Rhia then off to stare at Tessa's father.
"So what are we going to do about this, Serus?"
"Hell if I know. I'm trying to get to the bottom of this mess."
"Pssshaw. You and your talking. This is a time for action. If vampires are breaking the treaty we have to stop them. That's all there is to it. We can't go back to the war zone we once lived in."
Serus shook his head. "No, we can't do that. However, we don't know who took the humans."
Goran turned to study his youngest child. "Cody?"
"I can show you the house and the vehicles. I'd definitely recognize the vampires again..." He hesitated. "One called the other Benj, but I've never seen them before."
"Imported?"
Cody nodded. "I think so."
"What?" roared Serus. "You never mentioned that."
"I didn't get a chance, sir."
Goran stomped his feet, a big grin splitting his face. The bones of the house quake
d with the movement. "Well, boy, what else did you not get a chance to tell?"
Cody glanced down at Tessa. She frowned. He was holding back something…but what? That it had to do with her was obvious, but what it was she couldn't imagine.
"What? Just say it," Goran urged.
Cody hesitated. He looked over at his father. "I'm not sure they were normal vampires."
For the second time that night, silence overtook the room.
Serus, his voice tempered steel, asked, "What do you mean by that?"
Everyone in the room leaned forward to hear Cody.
"They didn't know anything about my family line, and they didn't know Tessa."
Serus frowned, not understanding.
Goran whistled. "Now that's interesting."
Seth stepped forward, surprising Tessa. She hadn't seen her oldest brother since she'd made her way downstairs. "Why does that matter? Not everyone knows Tessa. Or your line, Cody."
Frowning, Rhia stood up and walked over to stand in front of Cody. She searched his face carefully. "When you say 'normal', are you suggesting they were 'turned' vampires?"
Tessa sat back, stunned. The practice of turning victims into vampires had been outlawed centuries ago. That was considered an even worse transgression than kidnapping humans, and if the two went together… She whistled softly.
"Exactly, young lady." Goran nodded, despite the serious anger building on his face.
Cody frowned. "I couldn't be sure, but there was something very odd about them."
"In what way?" Rhia stepped closer to Serus, new worry creasing her face. Serus wrapped an arm around her shoulders, hugging her close.
"They looked wrong." Cody shrugged, not knowing how else to say it.
"Come to think of it, they smelled wrong and they did look different." Tessa pondered just what it was about them that made them that way.
Goran pounced on her. "Different? How?"
Closing her eyes, Tessa tried to retrieve the memory of what had bothered her. She'd managed to see the attackers through both kinds of vision. What had been so different? "Their energy trails."