He was waiting under her window. Teddy had shut the drapes against his eyes and Sarah didn’t protest when she did it. He looked almost as bad as I felt. It softened me, I guess. No one could ever argue that I liked the guy, but Sarah loved him. It was a sad thing.
It was too bright under the street light and the reflection of the light off the snow was torture. I put the stupid sunglasses back on to block some of the light out and went to stand next to Michael on the wet sidewalk. He kept his eyes on her window.
“You told her,” he said.
“Not everything.”
He glanced at me quickly. “What else did Selena tell you?”
“She’s not Sarah’s real mother.”
Michael’s face contorted in surprise. “What?”
I hadn’t thought much about Michael’s reaction. Given the fact that he’d personally known Robert, I assumed that he had known. He was clearly shocked. He grabbed me by my jacket and hauled me towards him.
“What the fuck are you saying?” he growled.
It took some effort, but I pushed him away. “Lay off.”
That’s when he noticed my condition. His gaze moved over me slowly.
“What’s wrong with you? You don’t look right.”
“You think? Jesus, you can be stupid sometimes,” I replied. I bent over, pressed the tips of my fingers against my screaming skull and groaned. It was getting really bad. The thing was, I had no idea what to do about it and no one could help me.
“How long have you had the headaches?” Michael asked.
I straightened up slowly and tried to ignore the pain. “Only a couple of days.”
“Did it get worse when you came up north?”
“Yes.”
His cell phone rang. I didn’t pretend not to be interested in the call. It was likely Victoria. He dug the phone out of his pocket and hit a button. “Vic?”
“No. It’s Katie.” I heard her clearly, as if she were standing next to me. She sounded rushed.
Michael’s tone changed almost instantly. “What do you want?”
“Sarah’s not answering her phone and there’s no answer at the farm.”
“So?”
There was a brief pause before she spoke again. When she did, her voice was different—scared. It brought something to life inside of me. I wasn’t really sure where it came from, but I needed to talk to her.
“Michael, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I don’t want anybody to get hurt,” she said.
“Give me the phone,” I told him sharply.
He hesitated for a few seconds and then handed it off to me.
“Where are you?” I asked.
She didn’t speak right away, but I didn’t know if she was with the other vampires or if she was just surprised to hear my voice. After a few seconds, she finally responded.
“I’m in Indy. They left me a few minutes ago to go hunt.”
“They left you?”
“William and Meekah kept fighting about me being with them. She finally got pissed off and left. He followed her. Amanda has been gone since yesterday.”
I looked over at Michael. He returned my stare and then said roughly, “Amanda’s either on her way here or she’s already arrived. She also knows about this house.”
“Katie, get away from there,” I told her. “I want you to find Victoria and Jones.” Michael nodded at me as I talked. I explained to her what Jackson had done in the caves and about the other vampires waking up. I advised her to be careful, told her where the stockpile of bagged blood could be found in the basement of the house and asked how she was.
“I’ll be okay,” she answered. “What’s going on with Sarah?”
Michael took the phone from me at that point. It was good that he did, because the waves of pain moving through my head were increasing in intensity. I walked back to the steps leading up to the front door and sat down with my head in my hands. I was glad that Katie was safe. The idea that Amanda could be watching our every move made me uncomfortable.
“She’s heading to the farm,” Michael said. I didn’t bother to look up at him when he approached the stairs. I was in too much pain to make eye contact. He sat down beside me on the step. “There’s a doctor here in Chicago that I know. Do you want me to try to get in touch with him?”
I shook my head slowly. “There’s no point. He wouldn’t understand what I am, much less how to fix what’s wrong. My best hope at this point is to get some seriously powerful pain killers.”
“They won’t help either. But there is another option.”
His features were edged with tension and his eyes appeared silver when I finally had the guts to look over at him. I didn’t like the way the numb feeling in my fingers had spread further up, into my palms and the back of my hands. I rubbed at them, hoping to restore the feeling.
Michael’s voice was low when he addressed me again.
“I could drain you.”
CHAPTER 19 – Sarah
“You need to calm down, Sarah.”
Teddy was talking, but I didn’t really want to listen. She had finally let me out of the bedroom. We were in her sitting room. She had her assistant, Leon, make me some tea. He was a quiet, gray-haired black vampire who always seemed to be hovering in the shadows. I had yet to hear him utter a single word towards me or Teddy.
I was a wreck. My hands still showed signs of tremors. I had to put a lot of effort into keeping my hands still enough to be able to drink the tea without sloshing it all over myself. Teddy was getting worried about me, I knew. She hadn’t said much about Michael. She probably thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown.
“What’s going to happen to Michael?” I asked quietly.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
“But if they knew that Amanda gave him Isaiah’s blood, would it make any difference? Can you say with absolute certainty that his actions weren’t directly connected to the blood she gave him?” I was probably reaching, but I had to try.
“I can’t say because I don’t know. There is to be a preliminary investigation into everything that happened with him. There is a possibility that some of the Council members will see it that way. But they would have to be presented with some scientific evidence to back up the idea that Isaiah’s blood has a negative effect on impulse control. The only ones who can give that kind of evidence are employed by Isaiah. We can’t bring in outside help without exposing ourselves to the general public.”
I nibbled on one of my thumbnails. “So we would need to get one of Isaiah’s people to testify in our favor. That’s not going to be easy.”
“It’s not your problem, Sarah,” she admonished gently.
I crossed my arms. “Of course it’s my problem. Michael and I are a couple. Nothing is going to change that. If he killed someone, it was under the influence of something much darker than himself.” She was ready to interrupt me, but I waved her off. “I won’t give up on him. I can’t. He loves me, Teddy.”
“He could live for another five hundred years, Sarah. But you can’t do that. How is that fair to him?”
It wasn’t fair to him. I knew that. There had to be another way.
“What do you know about the Breath-Giver, Teddy?” I asked.
Her white eyebrows rose. “Only a little. But it’s all conjecture. Some humans claim to have seen her, as have some vampires. Your mother, for instance.”
“But how else could Alex have changed back into a human?”
The look she gave me was gentile, almost motherly. “Sarah, what if he was never human?”
“But…”
“No. Listen to me. I know there are forces at work that most humans and vampires cannot imagine. I’ve been around for a very long time.” She paused for a moment in thought and then continued calmly. “However, reanimation of the human form from an undead state is physically impossible. No one can create life in a place where life cannot exist.”
It was too deep of a su
bject for me. I was looking for answers and she was turning it into a theology debate. “Okay, I understand that part. But at some point, Alex had to be human. Why else would the Council imprison Michael?”
She became very quiet, her black eyes were vacant. I was never sure what vampire powers Teddy had been gifted with. Victoria had the ability to read minds. Meekah could see visions of the future. Michael had been given eternal sexiness, I guessed. But Teddy hadn’t shared much with me about her life as a vampire. The first time I’d met her, she’d had some sort of a vision in the middle of our conversation and told me that I had to leave.
“Teddy?”
I started to reach out to touch her shoulder, but Leon, who had said nothing the entire time I’d been there, finally decided to speak.
“Miss Wood, do not make any physical contact.”
Turning my head, I stared at him. “Why not?”
Declining to answer, he again stood at attention and closed his mouth. His gaze settled on Teddy and stayed locked on her. She sat very still for several long minutes and then blinked rapidly five or six times. There was a definite change to her expression when she looked at me again. And her tone of voice was hard and angry.
“Leon, bring the car around. Sarah, your clothes have been cleaned and are in the upstairs linen closet next to your bedroom door. Change into them and freshen yourself up in the bathroom. We need to leave here as soon as possible.” She got up quickly and moved to leave the room.
“What’s going on now?” I asked, jumping to my feet.
She didn’t look like she was going to tell me at first, but then she turned and said sharply, “The hearing has been cancelled. Isaiah is dead.”
CHAPTER 20 – Michael
The point had been to dilute the blood of Isaiah that I had running through my veins with Alex’s blood. It was done in an effort to even out my temperament as well as to see if the lower levels of supernatural blood in his system might help Alex with his deteriorating condition. I wasn’t trying to gain additional power by drinking his blood. I’d had his blood in the past, but that had been before his recent biological changes.
We had found an abandoned house not far from the shore. There had been vagrants there at one time. Their trash was scattered across the floor. Food containers, water bottles, old newspapers, soiled cast-off clothing. The smell was atrocious. I gathered all the trash from one room and threw it out into the alley behind the house. The floor was still awful, but there were a few spots that were less dirty than others. And while a hotel room would have been far more comfortable, the possibility of being detected by security cameras was a serious concern.
Alex laid his coat down on the floor and then lowered himself onto it with his dark sunglasses still on. There was only a few hours left until the hearing. I had to be there, but Alex didn’t. If our little experiment worked, he would have several hours to recover before I came back for him.
There was, of course, a part of me that wanted to abandon him completely. I could recognize those kinds of impulses as byproducts of Isaiah’s powerful blood. It hadn’t seemed separate when I’d killed the two humans who had witnessed the car accident. But as I sank my fangs into Alex’s wrist and began ingesting what was, ultimately, the polar opposite of Isaiah’s essence I saw it all more clearly. I felt the particles contained within me begin to fight for control of their host.
Alex was absolutely silent. Outside the house, cars rumbled by on the street. Shouts of occasional laughter drifted over us from a few houses away. A feral house cat prowled through the alley, investigating the trash we’d thrown out there. I could hear hearts beating, pulses ringing, radios blaring. But nothing at all from Alex.
“Talk to me, mate,” I encouraged him.
He blinked behind the glasses and swallowed. “I told you that Selena wasn’t Sarah’s mother.”
I had already taken more blood from him than was necessary. Finally, I sat back and wiped my mouth. “That was a surprise.”
“She doesn’t know.”
“Did Selena say who Sarah’s mother really was?” I knew what was coming. It was true that I had been shocked by the initial information, but once I had begun to process it, it seemed clear that there was only one person who could rationally have given birth to Sarah.
“It’s Nelly.”
I nodded. “It had to be her if it wasn’t Selena. I wouldn’t have guessed it by the conversations I had with Robert, though.”
“I never met him.” Alex’s voice was becoming weaker.
I stood up and looked around. “Are you quite sure you’ll be safe here?”
“Yes.”
“How’s the head?”
“Much less pain. I’m just tired.” He rolled to his side and pulled off the sunglasses. “Are you going to tell her?”
“About Nelly? No. But if she doesn’t come out with the truth when we get back to the farm, I’ll have to say something.”
He looked up at me with dull eyes. “You really think they’ll let you go after all this?”
“I have to hope.” I shrugged a little and tried to smile. “I’ve got to make something out of myself, right? Something other than a freak of nature?”
“Well, good luck with that,” he replied. “If you see Isaiah, give him a kick in the ass for me.”
The doubt about leaving him grew as I stood there. If anyone were to make their way into that house, I didn’t see how Alex would defend himself if necessary. There wasn’t anywhere he could really hide. There was no doubt in my mind that when I saw Sarah, she would ask where he was. I couldn’t tell her that I left him alone and powerless in an old abandoned house.
“You can’t stay here. It’s not safe. I’ll just take you with me,” I told him.
He protested when I hauled him up over my shoulder. “This is stupid. Put me down.”
“I really don’t want to carry you, either. But if I leave you here, I’m going to have to explain it to Sarah. I would rather not give her the opportunity to tear me a new ash-hole.”
“It’s asshole. Not ash hole. Dumb ass,” he countered.
I turned around and started towards the front door of the house, kicking my way through the garbage on the floor. But something was not right. I stopped in the middle of the room and listened.
“What’s wrong?” Alex asked.
“There’s someone here.” I leaned down to put Alex on his feet. He remained upright, but leaned on me heavily. I smelled something odd in the room. It reminded me of lamp oil, but there were some subtle differences in the scent.
Then I felt a low vibration, starting from the floor. It grew and moved. The walls seemed to absorb it and send it back towards us in strange waves. There was a distinct change in the darkness as the pulsing vibration grew stronger. Pinpoints of light with no discernible source appeared in front of us.
Alex went down. When I got down on one knee to try to help him up, the light became more solid, surrounding both of us. Alex kept trying to say something, but I couldn’t really make out the words. A stunning flash of light burst directly in front of us.
Then I heard the voice of a woman and it echoed through me.
“Michael Graviano.”
The room grew quiet once again, but the light remained. Alex coughed and tried to repeat what he had been trying to tell me.
“The Breath-Giver.”
I looked up quickly. There was no face, no body to the thing that was speaking to us. There was only a brightness that looked unreal and did not seem to match anything I’d ever seen before. It did not remain stationary, but bounced slightly from side to side. The movement gave away the game.
Unsure of how to proceed, I stood back up.
“You chose well, vampire,” crooned the voice. “You did not leave him.”
I gestured weakly at the light and told Alex. “This is the Breath-Giver?”
He nodded but kept his eyes down, almost in reverence. I wanted to laugh. I would have if the situation hadn’t been so horribly tim
ed. There was no time for games. Although I knew exactly who was behind all this, I was hesitant to reveal the truth to Alex while he was in such a miserable condition.
“Oh, Great and Wondrous Breath-Giver! How may we serve you?” I bowed deeply and hid the smile that threatened to break across my face. Alex looked over at me suspiciously, but I ignored him.
“Michael Graviano, you must do as I say,” replied the voice. “You will go to a very tall building. Inside that building, you will find a friend you have known for many years. You must tell her that the children in her care are to be set free from all convention.”
I rolled my eyes at the “being of light” and said sarcastically, “No rules for the children? Is that what you’re saying?”
Alex, sensing he was being played, struggled to his feet. “What’s going on?”
“Turn off the glamour, Sam. I know it’s you.”
The light flickered once or twice, then the female voice, sounding much younger than before, swore. “Damn it. Anne said it would work.”
“What the hell did I miss?” Alex asked.
A loud popping noise, followed by a groan of defeat filled the room. The space in front of us, previously displaying an impressive amount of magical light, was then suddenly occupied by one little blond girl with twinkling blue eyes. She rushed at me with a shriek and I picked her up for a hug.
Alex’s mouth dropped open in shock.
CHAPTER 21 – Alex
The little girl, Samantha, walked along next to me as we made our way to the Dwight Tower. I was still leaning on Michael for assistance, but the headache had not returned. Samantha explained in a polite tone of voice that she was a shape-shifting vampire and had a slightly younger sister named Anne who possessed the same gift as she did.
“Where is Anne?” Michael asked her.
“Back in New York. Teddy didn’t know it, but I shifted into a rat and hid in her suitcase for the ride to Chicago. It was a little scary, actually.” She kicked at a rock in her path and then hurried forward to kick it again.
“Are you sure that what you saw in California wasn’t some kind of stunt put together by Selena?” Michael asked. He loosened his grip on me a little to see if I could stay up. I did.
The Vampire's Release, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #4) Page 9