Shaking my head, I climbed up the steps at the front of the house and knocked lightly on the wooden frame of the screen door. I had to stop thinking about the past. It certainly did me no favors to recall all that had brought us to that point.
I smelled the familiar homey essence of Nelly before she unlocked the door and invited me in. She’d worked for the family for decades and had essentially been the mother that both girls lacked once Selena had left. I smiled and took another short breath of her scent. Another of my gifts, that relentless sense of smell.
“You can go on in, Michael. Sarah’s in the library.” She touched my arm briefly when I turned away. “How is Katie?”
“She’s doing quite well. Victoria is with her now. The transformation was completely pain free.”
Relief spread across her weathered face. “Thank goodness. I was so worried. When do you think it will be safe to see her?”
“A few days at least. She needs time.”
“Of course.” She patted me gently on the shoulder and headed back upstairs towards her room.
I watched her for a moment, perplexed by the capacity of some humans to maintain such a fierce loyalty to each other. Her relationship with Katie would never be the same. But perhaps it didn’t matter. Nelly was an entirely giving type of person. Her earlier jealousy and anger towards Selena had mellowed. The years she’d spent with the girls had been a great gift to her, and it was likely that nothing would change the love she felt for either Sarah or Katie.
Turning from the staircase, I moved towards the library.
CHAPTER TWO – Sarah
I was reading in the window seat of the library, feeling like a somewhat normal person again. I had put on my favorite pair of flannel pajamas, pulled my hair back into a ponytail and wandered downstairs. Nelly was finishing up a few things in the kitchen. The stranger staying in one of the guest rooms had already turned out his light. I was glad I wouldn’t have to see him that evening. Jackson Bennett could wait. I just wanted to lose myself in something totally normal and feel like a real person again.
I was deep into the first half of Gone With the Wind when a familiar deep voice startled me.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
Only one light was on in the study, and its muted golden tones contrasted sharply with the shape of Michael’s body in the dimness. It was too dark to determine the expression on his face. I put the book face down on top of the chenille throw in my lap and leaned back against the cushions behind me.
“Would it matter much if I said you were?”
He remained where he was. Only his low voice moved across the room, like a soft tendril of smoke in the air, “Are we feeling a little snippy this evening?”
Sighing, I looked out the window. “Not snippy. Just…”
“Tired of the drama?”
“Exactly.”
He shifted slightly, the movement as graceful and cautious as always. He seemed to do everything so carefully. Like he had a plan for everything. It made me nervous as a cat.
“So I hear that Alex left while I was in the caves. I didn’t get a chance to give him a goodbye hug.”
There was the sarcasm I knew. I looked at him and rolled my eyes. “I’m pretty sure the whole world understands that you’re not quite heartbroken about him leaving.”
“Are you overly devastated at his loss?”
“I’m not. But I do hope that he finds what he wants.”
“Ah, yes. The blessed Breath-Giver. You honestly believe he’d give up all his sparkly new powers to fall down into the dirty real world again as a human?” There was a hint of jealousy in his tone.
“Michael, you brought that exact same proposition up not too long ago,” I reminded him, turning my book back over and flipping through the pages to find where I’d left off. “It’s understandable that a vampire would want one last shot at humanity and the opportunity to die a real death. I wouldn’t trade being human for anything else if I had a choice.”
He was unusually quiet for several minutes before he finally replied in a dry tone, “You have no urge for power over others. That makes sense for you. Your mother was different.”
“Hmm…” I frowned when he mentioned my mother but wasn’t in the mood to reprimand him for it. All I wanted was to be firmly planted in the world of Scarlett O’Hara.
“All you’ve ever really wanted was to live on this place and work here. To possibly raise a family here. Am I correct?”
He stepped closer, bringing himself halfway into the circle of light beneath the floor lamp beside me. I could see then that there was an emotional transition occurring in his eyes. The clear steely blue of his eyes had become a cold shot of icy sea water.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’ve got a bit of a dilemma here, Sarah.”
“Really? What might that be?” I was pretty much ready to reschedule my reading time and beat it up to bed just to get away from him for a little while. He was not being a good friend. He hadn’t asked how I was feeling or anything. He’d said a few hours before that he had things that he needed to attend to. Phone calls. Why wasn’t he back in the meadow then? Why was he here to harass me?
“Alex is still dangerous. He can move into and out of the containment field at will. If Isaiah wanted to, he could find that out. Have you thought about what might happen if Alex decides to align himself with Isaiah?”
That was a rather sobering thought. I put my book back down and looked back up at him, noticing for the first time that his hair had been cut. Probably Victoria, I guessed. She did almost everything for him. It was a new look for him. He looked clean cut and a little conservative for the first time since I met him. I began to wonder about this change in attitude.
“What’s going on with you, anyway? What’s with the crew cut?” I asked.
“I need you to release me so that I can track Alex.”
I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bench and onto the floor. “Why would you want to do that? You’re in enough danger already.”
When I saw the expression on his face, I shook my head. He was out to try to protect me again, and I was getting pretty sick of the whole knight-in-shining-armor bullshit. “You can’t save me from everything, Michael.”
He reached out a hand and gently traced a finger over my cheek. It was enough to cool my anger for the moment. Especially when he was looking at me like that with his cool blue eyes so filled with intense emotions that somehow never took the form of spoken words. It all just gathered there in his expression, in the curve of his strong jaw and the luminosity of his gorgeous eyes.
Although Michael and I only shared just a kiss or two and an embrace, the fire between the two of us had always been there. I tended to think that we each had our own valid reasons for holding back our desires. My reasons were based on two perfectly logical facts. I’d been hurt badly before by someone who had used me for sex and then had quickly turned back to someone else. The other reason of mine was very simple. Michael was a vampire, and I knew that there was no future with him because of that.
There had been emotional moments when I had looked on the situation differently. He had earned my trust in certain ways, to be sure. There were moments when I felt very much alone and knew that I could depend on Michael. But he was from a different world than mine.
There in the study, he did lean down to press his smooth lips against my forehead and fold me into his strong arms for a moment or two. It was reassuring to have that powerful body against me and more than just a little arousing. When his hands slid down to my hips and his fingers tightened slightly against the fabric of my pajama pants, I felt his mood begin to change.
We both leaned back an inch or two and our eyes met.
“I should go,” he said.
“Probably,” I replied.
I couldn’t seem to stop staring at him. He had this certain way of making me feel like a little kid at one moment and then like a passionate woman th
e next. It was disturbing for me to feel so off balance. It wasn’t like I was a teenager or a virgin. It wasn’t as if I’d never been in love. But that’s exactly how it felt sometimes when he was around. Almost as if everything were happening to me for the very first time.
“You never answered my question,” he murmured.
“Question?” I couldn’t seem to remember a question, but that could be because he was so distracting, standing there with his arms draped loosely around me and his face so close to mine.
“I need to go track down Alex.”
I took a little breath and stepped back. He certainly knew how to kill a lady’s mood. He let his arms drop away from me and squared his shoulders.
“No. I can’t let you do that. Send Victoria and Jones.”
“Between the three of us, we may be able to take him down. But not those two on their own. They would need my help.”
I shook my head firmly. “No way.”
Picking up my book, I turned away from him. But he reached out and touched my arm.
“Please.”
“Goodnight, Michael.”
When I got into my room and had the door shut, I leaned against it and clenched my jaw in frustration. He had to have known that I wasn’t about to just let him leave. He had proved in the past that he would come back. It wasn’t about whether or not he would run off permanently. It was the thought of something happening to him while he was away. I couldn’t let him put himself in jeopardy for me anymore. He had done too much already.
Without turning on the light on my nightstand, I slipped in between the sheets on my bed and struggled to clear my head. It took me another three hours to fall asleep. The last thought before I finally drifted off into dreamland was that Michael might find a way to get out without my consent. Maybe my opinion didn’t matter much in the way of things.
I knew enough about him to realize that when he was determined, he would find a way. It didn’t really matter who was trying to convince him not to make a move he might regret. He was a vampire who was hundreds of years old. He thought he knew what he was doing.
He was wrong.
CHAPTER 3 – Michael
“She’s right, mate.”
Jones and I were in the meadow. We’d been discussing Sarah’s refusal to let me leave. Katie and Victoria were searching the woods, double checking for signs that Alex had been back. I’d been through the same forest three times and found nothing. I still found it hard to believe that he would not return.
“She’s not right. Not in this particular case.”
He took a deep breath and his russet eyebrows rose marginally. “She’s looking out for you. She also knows that Alex can take you down.”
“There has to be a way to stop him.”
“Have you considered the possibility that he might actually have good intentions?”
My answer came out in a low hiss, “Not after he nearly killed her, no.”
Jones pursed his lips, looking uncharacteristically somber. “Many of us were impulsive when we first began to experience our true natures. I recall one particular night in Hong Kong a few days after Amanda turned me… It was rather brutal.”
Shifting uncomfortably, I shook my head. “Different situation. And Alex’s powers are unequaled as far as I know. I’ve never seen any vampire extend that kind of energy from their body.”
The crackle of leaves and dead branches nearby alerted us to the return of the ladies. Both of them glided towards us across the meadow with neutral expressions evident on their pale, perfect faces.
“Nothing. He hasn’t been back, Michael,” Victoria said, sliding up to Jones’ side.
Katie looked pensive. “I really don’t think he’s coming back right away. We know he’s hunting for my mother and the Breath-Giver. I doubt he’s changed his mind on that point already. Did Meekah say something about him coming back? You seem very sure of yourself.”
“No. She didn’t say anything about him.” I refused to give any further details. I didn’t like the instinctual distrust growing inside me about Katie. There was definitely something she was trying to hide.
I’d been having visions during my resting time in the caves. They had started shortly after Isaiah and his guards had come to the farm. The source of the change was a mystery to me, but I trusted what I saw. The last one had been a bit hazy. What was clear was that Alex, Sarah, Isaiah and I would all come face-to-face again. I just wasn’t sure about the where and when of the matter. The young man who had come to the farm under Isaiah’s compulsion had also been in that vision. That was another unusual situation altogether.
Victoria followed when I left the meadow and headed back towards the house. I was hoping one more check around the place would ease my mind. She trailed behind me a few yards and then paused. When I turned to look at her, I saw an expression that I knew well. Her cool hazel eyes were vacant and her mouth was half open. She was reading someone nearby.
“Who?” I asked lowly.
“Sarah.” she nodded quickly to herself and looked up at me solemnly.
“Anything I should know?”
She didn’t answer me. I stepped closer and looked down on her, trying to imply that I required the answer without actually saying the words. She knew me well enough to understand that any inside knowledge regarding Sarah was important to me. Not just important, but vital.
“Vic?”
Slowly, she raised her head and met my eyes. “It’s an emotional thing that doesn’t really have anything to do with you. She’s not in danger though.”
“Her mother?”
“No. I really can’t say, Michael. I feel guilty for tuning it in.”
I watched her carefully. There were some thoughts that Victoria had picked up in the past from humans or vampires that had been shared between us and caused problems. Realizing that she wanted to protect Sarah’s privacy, I let it go and turned away.
“Have you heard anything from Meekah?”
She fell into step beside me, her long dark coat billowing out behind her. “I spoke to her a few hours ago. She’s in Paris.”
“Paris? Is she still trying to track down that witch friend of hers?” I asked.
“He’s more than just a friend, Michael.”
I chuckled. “They were living together for maybe three days before he took off, Vic.”
“Well, she loves him still. I believe she’d follow William anywhere. That’s love, Michael.”
“That’s stalking, not love. Look it up.”
“You’re rather grumpy this evening.”
She paused. We were only fifty feet or so from the house. I could hear the dryer running in the laundry room. The furnace had also kicked on in the basement. I also heard the scratching of a pencil on paper as well as steps in the parlor. The one in the parlor was Jackson.
Cowboy from Wyoming. Both of his parents were full Pawnee. He was a rarity, to be sure. I didn’t know much more about him. What I did know was that Isaiah wouldn’t hesitate to use him again if he got the chance.
I listened to him flip through the old albums in Robert’s collection and heard him sigh.
“Something significant is about to change, Michael. You need to prepare yourself.”
Startled by Victoria’s cool statement, I turned and stared at her.
CHAPTER 4 – Sarah
Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.
-Zelda Fitzgerald
Writing in my Dad’s journal was always difficult. I sort of felt like I was treading on sacred ground when my pencil began moving across those yellow pages near the back. He wasn’t the kind of guy to put words down on paper easily. But he knew his job. He was the Warden before I was.
I tucked a length of my loose light brown hair behind my ear and nibbled a little on the eraser at the end of the pencil. It was pretty difficult to accurately describe everything that had happened over the last week without revealing my personal feelings. I didn’t know who would end u
p reading this stuff. Maybe it would end up at the bottom of a landfill or something one day.
When I had gathered a few thoughts and begun writing, I heard something from downstairs that stopped my breath. It was the beginning of one of my Dad’s favorite songs. The soul-stirring vocals of Etta James drifted upstairs from the parlor, and I dropped the pencil.
Inside me, the strangest thing began happening. I felt separate from everything around me, like it was all just some hazy dream that I wasn’t actually a part of. Pushing the journal aside, I slipped out of bed and approached the bedroom door. My heart was hammering inside my chest painfully. I kept seeing my father’s sad eyes and the melancholy smile that he used to wear whenever he began playing those songs. I used to stand outside the doorway of the parlor during those dark nights, listening to the music and always wondering how life might have been better if my Mom had been there. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so sad most of the time. Maybe he would feel whole and happy.
That was all that was in my head when I made my way down there. I didn’t think about what I was wearing at the time. Before bed, I had pulled on a pretty white nightgown that Nelly had given me for my birthday that year. I wouldn’t usually go downstairs wearing something like that, but my mind was firmly set on Dad and I was wondering if he was still there somewhere.
I hoped that when I turned the corner and looked through that doorway that I would see him sitting in that old rocking chair by the window, the albums stacked next to him on the surface of the old sewing table that also held the record player. I wanted him to be there.
The wood floor was cold under my bare feet. Almost icy. When I saw the figure standing over the sewing table, I stopped in the doorway. His dark head was bent, studying the cover of an old Ella Fitzgerald album. The disappointment wasn’t there inside me when I realized it wasn’t my father. Something else was going on.
He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, taking a deep breath. The song was getting to him, and I understood it. His profile was lit from behind, softening each dark line--his proud jaw, his high cheekbones, and the tender curve of his generously shaped mouth. The dark ponytail that I’d seen before was gone. The color of his hair reminded me of how dark the trees outside became in the middle of the night. It was the blackest hair I’d ever seen. The sides were tucked back around his ears and the length of it was left to drift around his shoulders.
The Vampire's Redemption, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #3) Page 2