by John Conroe
Beside me, Nika stirred, and it occurred to me that she was reading my mind… had been reading my mind all night. The image of a violet face-masked helmet popped into my head and I pictured it sliding over my noggin.
Nika jumped slightly and turned to look at me, a flash of hurt crossing her face.
“What? What happened?” Lydia asked.
“He blocked me. You hardly ever block me from your mind,” the blonde vampire said to me, shocked.
“I don’t have much mind left. I have to protect what I have,” I said, feeling oddly like I had wronged her. Screw that! I shouldn’t have to justify defending my own mind from invasion.
“Never had much to start with,” Lydia said softly.
“What did I do to you? What, in my previous life, did I do that you constantly feel the need to snipe at me?” I asked the spike-haired vampire.
I expected an explosion of anger. What I got was an eruption of tears. She didn’t say a word, but her eyes filled with water and she turned away from me completely.
“Christian, that’s enough!” Tanya said.
“No, I’ve had enough,” I said, knowing I was somehow over-reacting but unable to stop myself.
“I have no idea where we are going. I don’t know where I live; hell, I don’t even know my PIN number for my ATM card or what any of my online passwords are. Do we even use passwords anymore?”
They were all staring at me like I had five heads—except Gina, who looked concerned.
“Let me out. Let me out of the car!” I said, suddenly needing to be moving on my own feet.
The driver looked in the rearview, his gaze questioning Tanya, who gave a tiny shake of her head. It sent me over the edge.
Grabbing the headrest behind my head with both hands, I jackknifed my body, bringing both feet up against the rear window—hard. The armored glass resisted breaking, but the frame that held it failed to resist my kick. The whole window popped out, and my legs followed it. I folded myself out the back window, my knees on the trunk. Somehow, I stayed there, momentarily fastened in place by something I could feel but couldn’t name. The car hit a bump, but my feet didn’t even slide. Standing up, I flipped sideways off the now-braking car, landing on my feet by the side of the road and startling a homeless guy who was crouched against the wall of a steel-shuttered video game store.
Red tail lights flaring, the limo stopped and the window opened. Tanya was halfway out the rear window, following me, when Gina spoke from the car.
“Chris? Why don’t you come back inside and we’ll talk this out?”
I shook my head, beginning to walk in the same direction the car was headed.
“You sure? I would love to tell you about your goddaughter,” she said.
My whole body snapped around to face her. Goddaughter? I had a goddaughter?
Chapter 30
Bait, bribery, enticement—it doesn’t matter what you call it. I responded like a fish to a worm. I had a goddaughter!
Back in the car, the popped-out window taking up space on an empty seat, we were again on the move. Gina’s phone was in my hand, a picture showing me with a beautiful little brown-eyed, brunette mini-clone of Gina riding on my shoulders. We were both laughing and she was holding my ears like a horse’s reins. Toni—her name was Toni, short for Antonia.
“Let’s talk a minute while you look through those photos. Then I’ll tell you about her,” Gina said, laying out her terms.
I nodded but kept my attention on the photos I was scrolling through.
“We—whether we’re human, vampire, or were—are mostly the products of our experiences. From the moment of birth, who we are is being shaped by interactions with life. Memories are what we carry forward from those experiences,” Gina began, speaking to everyone in the car, even the two in the front driver’s compartment.
“When we lose those memories, we lose part of what makes up our personalities. Chris has lost roughly the two most recent years of his life. They’re just gone. What he gets back of them, I can’t tell you, if he gets anything back at all. But for now, his life has been rewound to before he met any of us. Put yourselves in his shoes. He just suddenly found himself in unknown woods with a mysterious body and a bunch of people he didn’t know. Then he finds out that vampires and werewolves are real and that he’s been part of their world for two years, none of which he can remember. Now, he comes back here and everything that’s happened to him might as well of happened to someone else. He’s meeting all of us for the first time, no matter what we know about him.”
“That actually makes it really a lot worse—all the stuff you all know about me. It completely weirds me out,” I added.
“So, Lydia, he doesn’t know that you two have a history of picking on each other like brother and sister. Nika, he has no idea how valuable your reading his mind has been from the moment of his introduction to vampire life. His re-introduction is happening now. Tanya, the bond you share will be a major help, but he has lost everything the two of you have had. None of it is there,” Gina continued.
“What about Grim?” Arkady asked in his thick accent.
“Good question. How is Grim?” Gina asked me.
“The dark thing inside me? He’s there,” I said, unsure of how to respond.
“I think when Chris got shot, Grim moved his head slightly, avoiding a direct center of skull hit,” Stacia said. “Because his head came up when we stepped outside, like it does when Grim is out, and after the shot, he just bounced up from the ground and ran down the sniper, faster than I could follow. That asshat got off two more shots, but they were complete misses. He came back out, Grim that is, earlier today when we were attacked on the bridge. Drove off a full circle of witches with a handful of quarters.”
“I had some flashes of memories when he was out,” I said. “Really short, but vivid.”
“What were they about?” Gina asked.
“Tanya,” I said, glancing her way. Her face lit up in a million-candlepower smile at my admission. Uncomfortable, I went back to the pictures that showed the little girl I wanted to meet.
“That’s really good. Really, really good. Maybe Grim has some of your memories stored elsewhere in your brain. Like a duplicate computer file. You may get more when he comes out,” Gina said. “But here’s the point, everybody. You can’t rely on how things were before. You have to help him reforge new relationships with all of you—and everyone else. He may not react the same way as he did before.”
“What do you mean?” Lydia asked.
“A lot of factors impact how we react to every encounter we have. Mood, health, degree of mental preoccupation, amount of sleep we’ve had; the list just goes on. So meeting someone for a second time with the slate wiped clean could mean an entirely different outcome.”
“You’re saying that someone he liked before, he might hate now?”
“That might be extreme, but yeah, he will be forming new first impressions. And under different conditions. That little offhand display of superhuman athleticism we just saw was done without much forethought. Am I right, Chris?”
I nodded. My actions had all been instinct. I had needed to get out and my body just took the most logical path.
“So his control of his strength, speed, agility is ingrained a level below conscious thought. When he was introduced to the supernatural world before, it was pre Super Chris. He had to learn to control all his abilities. He doesn’t appear to have that need this time. So as he re-meets people from his earlier life, he’ll be doing it at his current level of ability. That’s gonna change how he views things and people.”
“I want to go home,” I said. I meant home as in my hometown, the farm where I grew up. It was a sudden, intense thought, but it felt right.
“Home’s coming here, Christian,” Tanya said. Again, her voice distracted me from her words, but after a moment, they sunk in. She understood my reference to home and suddenly I figured out hers.
“Huh? Gramps? My grandfather is com
ing here?” I guessed.
“I called him yesterday after Katrina told me about your… injury,” she said. “He was going to drive down today, but I sent a helicopter to get him. He will be here, in the city, in… oh… about a half hour.”
“Where will he stay? Where do I stay, for that matter?” I asked, shocked at this turn of events.
“You usually stay with me, in the heart of the Coven, in Citadel,” she said, then noticed my frown. “We’ll explain Citadel to you later. Your grandfather will stay in one of our hotels, and you and I can stay there, too. Right, Lydia?”
“Yeah. We have the Presidential Suite at the Murray on the Upper East side. Deckert and a couple of his guys will meet your grandfather at the heliport and bring him directly to the hotel.”
“Deckert?” I asked.
“He’s the head of our daytime security, all of which are humans. Ex-soldier types. Deckert is a Marine, so your grandfather ought to get along with him,” Lydia explained with a subdued smile.
“Thank you, Lydia,” I said. “I’m sorry I yelled at you before. It’s just very frustrating.”
Lydia just nodded and smiled, then got busy with her iPad.
Remembering how I had also yelled at Nika, I went ahead and dissolved the mental image of the faceplate helmet. From the corner of my eye, I saw her head jerk just a little as my barriers fell. If only I could read minds, then I might understand everything going on around me.
“Or be more confused. It’s not easy; people’s minds jump around a lot more than you might think,” she answered. I looked around to see how the others would handle her seemingly random comment, but their expressions seemed to indicate that they had figured it out instantly. Good lord, what was I doing in the middle of so many perceptive women?
Nika laughed. “It takes all of us to keep you straightened out!”
“So, want to hear about Toni?” Gina asked.
I nodded, not sure why I was so excited about this idea of a goddaughter but excited nonetheless.
“She’s seven, going on seventeen,” Gina started.
“More like twenty-seven,” Lydia interjected.
“Quiet, you! Now where was I… oh yeah. She’s into fashion, soccer, which she tried in gym class, and rats.”
“Rats?” I asked. “Is she a tomgirl?”
“No, she’s very much a girly-girl, but a tough one. She has a pet rat that you gave her two years ago. Named Sebastian.”
“I gave her a rat? Why would I do that?”
“I’ve asked myself that very question, but it’s a long story and there was some logic to it, albeit twisted logic,” Gina answered.
“And she liked it? The rat?”
“Toni likes almost anything that comes from her godfather,” she said with a smile. “You rank pretty high up on her important people list.”
It seemed odd that I was so excited about being a godfather, but as I examined the concept, I realized that having a connection to children wasn’t something I had ever expected. I never figured on having a girlfriend, let alone a family, so children were out. At the same time, children were often my clients, so to speak; children were a favorite target of demons. So I had interacted with quite a few kids under stressful conditions, and I like to think I handled it well. Having my own surrogate daughter stand-in was both scary and fascinating.
“Hmmpf. She likes me too, ya know,” Tanya said, staring at Gina.
“Yes, she does. Very much,” Gina assured her.
“So you’re like, what? Her vampire godmother? That sounds like a pretty twisted fairy tale. This kid is gonna grow up with a morbid personality, ya know, like an Adams family kid,” I said, only three-quarters joking.
“No, Chris, she’s gonna grow up and probably decide to rule the world and all of us with it!” Lydia said with feeling. This little Toni must be a real handful.
“Just you wait, Christian, just you wait,” Tanya said, reading me almost as well as her blonde mind-reading companion could.
Chapter 31
Gina warned me that Toni would be asleep when we dropped her and Stacia off, but a beautiful little girl in Finding Nemo pajamas waited next to a big bear of a man who was obviously her father. Toni looked older than I had imagined, maybe because of how she held herself.
Gina greeted them both with a hug and a kiss, but before she could do more than that, her daughter had slipped around her and zipped straight over to me.
“Hi, Mr. Chris. Do you remember me? My mom says you hit your head; did it hurt?”
I had a momentary flash of awareness, my senses expanding way beyond their normal sensitivity. The rooftops and upper floor windows above us came into ridiculous clarity and sounds, echoing around the street, painted a picture of my immediate environment. I felt my dark half peer out of my eyes, checking for threats and dangers and realized it was a reaction triggered by the vulnerable little girl in front of me. A memory flashed through my head of me holding a younger Toni’s hand as we walked down this very street on a sunny morning, maybe to school or something.
“I do remember you, Toni, at least a bit,” I answered, keeping my attention on her but noticing the people around me react. I squatted down to her level.
“How about my necklace? Do you remember this?” she asked, holding a small, shiny bear pendant up for my inspection. It glowed purple to my Sight, packed with aura. The sensation of almost remembering something hovered powerfully in my mind, but I just couldn’t quite grasp it. “Sorta, but I can’t get it straight,” I told her, frustrated with my inability to pull it out.
“You made it for me, Mr. Chris. Its name is Okwari!”
That triggered another memory, this time of dead leaves swirling up in a dust devil tornado and a pair of glowing red eyes, high off the ground.
A big furry head pushed under my arm, and a wet wolf nose snuffled the little girl’s hair and ear, making her giggle. She launched herself at the beast and wrapped both arms as far around Awasos’s thick neck as she could manage.
“Okay, munchkin. It’s well past your bedtime. You’ve seen ‘Sos and Mr. Chris, and he does remember you, although how anyone could forget you is crazy!” her father said, giving her a moment to untangle herself before swooping and scooping her up. He leaned her over close to my face and she planted a big kiss on my cheek.
“Thanks, Toni and thank you, Roy,” I said. Then I paused. How did I know his name? Where had that come from?
Oblivious to my sudden hesitation, Toni was urging her father over to Tanya, where she planted another cheek smooch. I noticed that Tanya stood absolutely still during the process, as if afraid to move. I got a flash of something, either insight or something from this bond we had. She was fascinated by Toni, but uncertain of how to act and what exactly to do. Which I decided would make sense. There were no children among the Coven. Toni was likely the only child she actually knew.
Roy took his daughter off to bedtime, the little actress leaning over his shoulder with arms out in my direction, pretending sorrow at our parting. I automatically held my arms out in a matching gesture and pretended the same. She started giggling.
Turning back to the others, I saw Tanya with her held tilted as she processed the little scene we had just acted. It was alien to her, but interesting. The others all understood, having been human once.
“She triggered some memories,” Nika stated to me.
“Just flashes, but yeah. And I remembered your husband’s name somehow,” I said, glancing at Gina.
“It’s only been a day and you’re already getting some things back. Give it time, Chris,” Gina said. “Now, goodnight all. I’m going to go tuck my daughter into bed.”
Gina left and Stacia turned to follow her into the house. “Thanks, Stacia. For… you know… bringing me back and stuff,” I said awkwardly. The vampires were watching silently, but I wasn’t going to let her leave without saying something.
“Anytime, Chris. Anytime,” she said, ignoring the icy stares of the others and giving me
a bright smile as she trailed Gina.
I turned to the limo, doing my own best at ignoring the vampire women. I waited for some kind of comment as I settled into the plush leather, but they were all silent. I could feel Tanya wanting to ask several questions, so I wasn’t shocked when she opened her mouth, but the subject matter surprised me a bit.
“How do you know how to interact with her when you barely remember her?”
I had no idea how to answer until I realized she was talking about Toni and not Stacia.
“I’ve had a lot of cases that involve children, so I have some experience. They’re just little people without all the baggage that adults come with. They don’t usually have prejudices or hidden agendas, so it’s easier to be around them.”