by Aliya DalRae
While they waited for one of the daywalkers to return with proper clothing for them, the three talked. Allon had taken his leave of them after assuring Rachel that they were perfectly healthy, albeit starving for proper food. A call to the kitchen had the kids happily shoving hamburgers and French fries in their mouths in no time, and when they realized the food wasn’t going anywhere they slowed down enough to chat.
“Do you get to eat like this all the time?” Talon asked.
“Well,” Rachel said, smiling at him, “not exactly like this. I have a kitchen in my suite, and it’s usually stocked with all the foods I like to eat.”
“Anything you want?” Phire mumbled around a fistful of fries.
“Of course, within reason,” Rachel added. “I realize you’ve been on your own for a while, but we will want to make sure you are getting your proper nutrition.” Both children groaned and Rachel laughed at the tortured looks on their faces.
“That doesn’t mean salads and tofu. I promise, you will be well fed.”
“What about blood?” Talon asked, ever the pragmatist.
“We are never in short supply of blood. My refrigerator is well stocked in that respect as well.” The children exchanged an odd look, their food lying forgotten on their trays. “What’s the matter?”
Talon, the braver of the two, spoke first. “You mean, you don’t drink directly from the source?”
Rachel blushed, but tried to hide it with a laugh. “Of course, that is the preferred method of doing things, but it isn’t always convenient. And there is also the small issue of knowing when to stop. I’m afraid you two have been leaving bodies all over Fallen Cross, and you’ve had the Warlord in quite a state.”
“We didn’t kill them,” Phire said, nibbling on the end of fry.
“Phire, your bite marks were all over them, and they were bled dry.”
“She’s telling the truth!” Talon yelled. He pushed his tray away and folded his arms across his chest, looking knives at Rachel.
“What are you saying, Talon? Someone else fed from them? Another pair of Vampire children are running around, feeding on indigents?”
“No, I’m saying we didn’t kill them. Uli brought them to us. Phire didn’t like it when they got all scared and stuff, so Uli would kill them and we would feed from them before they turned gross.”
“That’s right,” Phire insisted. “He said we had to be at full strength or we would never be able to find you.”
“That’s why we ran from the Legion for so long. We had to be strong enough, so that if they tried to take us away, we would be able to fight.”
Rachel couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Who on earth would fill these children’s heads with such lies?
“You say this man’s name is Uli? Is he Vampire?”
“No, not Vampire,” Phire said. “Something else, but he never said what.” Apparently, feeling she’d made her point and there was nothing left to discuss, she took a big bite of her hamburger and munched away.
Rachel felt a river of ice slide down her spine. Feigning a calm she did not feel, she asked the follow-up question, terrified of their response. “What does Uli look like?”
Talon narrowed his eyes at her, a look that said he wasn’t buying her attempt at nonchalance. Phire didn’t seem to notice, though, and was happy to answer Rachel’s question.
“He was really tall, with this crazy white hair. I thought he was cute, but Talon said I was nuts. And he was nice to us. Made sure we had someplace to stay every night where we wouldn’t get caught by the Legion…”
A puzzled frown worried her brow and her words trailed off. “Why do you suppose he didn’t want the Legion to find us?” Phire asked Talon. “I never really thought about it until now.” She didn’t seem particularly bothered by this realization, but Talon watched Rachel closely for her reaction.
“Is everything alright, Aunt Rachel?” the boy asked, quite astute for one so young.
Rachel gave herself an internal shake. “It’s fine, Talon. Everything is just fine. Now go on, then. Finish up that burger before it gets cold. I’m going to step out and see how we’re doing on finding proper beds for the two of you. I’ll only be a few moments.”
Rachel left the room, trying for all she was worth to shield her emotions from the children inside. This Uli person could be nothing but a Sorcerer, and the Sorcerers would be back for one reason only. To seek retribution for the death of Helmut Fuhrmann.
Chapter Sixty-Three
I felt like a zombie. Once Raven and I had cried ourselves out and dried our tears, there was nothing left but this tremendous emptiness.
For three months I carried a tiny life within me, had loved it and nurtured it the best way I could. Everything I’d done had centered around that soul. Every bite of food I ate, every margarita I didn’t drink, and the sleep I forced myself to keep up with. The furniture I hired Alex to strip so I wouldn’t subject my baby to the toxic fumes—everything was with the child’s wellbeing in mind.
And yet, here we were, mourning a life that, because of some genetic wack-a-doodle going on inside of me, never had a chance. Then again, without that same genetic craziness, we wouldn’t have conceived the baby in the first place.
For the one hundred fifty-seven thousandth time, I cursed the Vampire genes running around my body, creating all this havoc. Everything that was wrong in my life was because of that one fatal flaw. Fatal for our child, anyway—looked like I was going to live forever.
At some point, Raven had crawled back into bed with me, and we laid there wrapped in each other’s arms, holding on to the real, the solid, the only thing we had left.
My grief had taken a back seat to all the other emotions surrounding the changes that had burst out of me so soon after learning my fate. But from the moment Allon told us the child was Raven’s, everything came crashing back.
They say there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
There was no denying what had happened, and all the anger got me was a flashy new eye trick and a pair of pointy fangs. There was no one to bargain with, no deals we could make to bring our baby back. That left us with depression and acceptance.
I’d known for less than a day that my womb was empty. Raven had only known for a few hours that he was a father, the father of a baby who was no more. I decided it was too soon to expect us to accept what had happened and chose to embrace my depression for a while. I was sure I’d earned it, but I worried about Raven.
He must have fallen asleep, escaped into unconsciousness, and I didn’t blame him for that. The sun was up, so it was the middle of the night for him and I envied him this temporary escape into oblivion.
I needed to get up, to walk off some of my misery, but when I moved Raven’s arm tightened around me. I dropped my shields, opening myself to that bond we shared. Even in his sleep, Raven suffered. I took a moment to marvel at how much stronger this connection had become in the hours since I last drank his blood. Whatever it was, this thing between us, I would learn to deal with it, just as I had dealt with whatever that thing was Nox and I shared.
With my shields down, another emotion hit me in the belly. I took it as a new wave of grief, but when it happened again I realized these emotions were not my own.
Raven slept on and instinct told me they weren’t his either. This was the familial connection with Harrier and Rachel, and one of them was very upset.
I snuggled against Raven a moment longer, kissed his stubbled jaw, then pulled myself from his arms and out of the bed. I stopped briefly at the little mirror over the sink to see if I was presentable and was surprised/not surprised to see pink tear tracks covering my cheeks.
I was crying blood. One more thing to get used to, I supposed. I’d cried so many tears in the past hours, I had to wonder when they’d started to change. They weren’t bright red yet, so I chalked up bonus points for that.
I splashed water on my face and dried it with a paper to
wel from the dispenser on the wall. Then I headed out to see what was going on with my family.
By the time I entered the hallway, Rachel was exiting another room, hell bent on wherever it was she was going.
“Rachel?” I called, and she turned to me, but kept looking behind her, as though I were keeping her from something.
“Jessica—there you are. Harrier was looking for you.” Another glance over her shoulder. She was talking to me, but it was obvious I wasn’t her main concern.
“Looking and found,” I said, raising my arms to my sides and letting them drop. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, nothing. I need to find Mason is all.” Her distraction was growing in concert with the panic I felt through our bond, so when I reached her side I put my arms around her to try and bring her down a notch.
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, no, I’m sure Allon needs to keep an eye on you.”
“He’s seen me, said I’m…” Well he didn’t really say anything beyond that bombshell he dropped on us, but by the looks of things, I decided Rachel could do without the blow-by-blow for now. “He said I was healed.”
“I’m sorry, Jessica. I have to…”
“I’m going with you,” I said. “You look like you could use the support.” She really had me worried, now.
“Fine, come then, but be quick about it. We’ve got to find Mason and warn him. Shite. Your Raven might need to know this as well. And Nox. Jessica, round them up for me, would you? Bring them to Mason’s office. I’m sorry to interfere with your mourning, but I’m afraid this won’t keep.”
And away she went down the hallway without so much as a backward glance.
Chapter Sixty-Four
“D id you see that?” Talon asked Phire, as he worried the inside of his cheek.
“See what?” Phire was so engrossed in her food, Talon doubted she’d notice a dinosaur in their midst.
“When you mentioned Uli, Rachel got all weird. You really didn’t see it?” Phire paused in her chewing long enough to give him shrug.
She swallowed and asked, “Weird how?”
“She was fine, all ‘we’re gonna get this for you and that for you,’ but the second you mentioned Uli, that’s all she wanted to talk about. Then she went rabbiting out of here like her ass was on fire with that stupid excuse about finding beds for us.”
“Well…” Phire was starting to catch on, her hamburger forgotten on the tray.
“And besides that, didn’t you feel it? It was faint, like she was trying to hide it, but her heart was beating a million miles an hour and she totally felt off.”
“Why, though?”
“Well, it was Uli, wasn’t it?”
“But he was just taking care of us. Should I not have said anything?”
“I don’t know.” Talon picked up a fry and absently bit into it, chewing as he thought.
“Did Uli say anything to you to make you think these guys were out to get him?”
Phire thought for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t remember anything. You?”
“I just know he talked funny about the Legion. He would go on and on about how we needed to dodge them if we could, to not get caught because it wouldn’t be good for us, but he never really said why.”
“He was just protecting us, is all.”
“Maybe.” Talon drew out the word, searching his memories for answers. “He said we should wait to approach the Legion when the timing was right, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“But why would that be? Everyone’s been really nice to us. They aren’t even going to turn us over to the Primeval for any of the stuff we did.”
“We didn’t kill those street people,” Phire pointed out. “That was Uli.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t know that when they knocked us on our asses and dragged us here, did they? They treated us like common criminals.”
“At first…” Phire paused.
“Yeah, at first, until we mentioned Aunt Rachel. Then they got all nice and everything.”
“Do you think we shouldn’t have listened to Uli? Should we have come here first instead of waiting all these months?”
“Well, we sure would have eaten better,” Talon said, moving his tray out of the way and climbing out of bed.
“Should we try to call him?” Phire asked, her concern for Uli overshadowing any shenanigans the guy might be up to. “Maybe warn him that we accidentally told the Legion about him?”
“What we?” Talon said. “You’re the one with the big mouth.”
Phire’s eyes welled up, and Talon regretted his tone instantly. It wasn’t her fault. This was all so new to them both, she just got caught up in it all.
Still, should they warn their friend, or was he ever a friend to begin with? What if Uli had been using them to get close to the Legion? What if he hadn’t really cared about Talon and Phire at all?
The way Aunt Rachel was acting, it sure seemed like he was something to worry about, but Talon wouldn’t believe it until he talked to Uli personally.
He found his pile of dirty clothes near the bathroom door and searched his jeans for the burner phone Uli had given them for emergencies and stuff. He looked through all the pockets, but the phone was gone. It was possible it had fallen out somewhere along the way, but he had a sick feeling that it hadn’t disappeared all on its own.
Phire was standing beside him now, chewing on her bottom lip. This wasn’t good. The Legion was after Uli, and they had no way of warning him. He was going to be so pissed.
Chapter Sixty-Five
I went back to the room where Raven still slept, but not before giving a mental shout to his brother. He said he was in the Club but would meet us in Mason’s office in five.
I knew this was urgent, Rachel wouldn’t have behaved that way otherwise, but gods, I hated to wake my Vampire. Something big was going down, and chances were it was going to be bad. Raven had just received the worst news possible, and now I had to steal the little bit of peace he’d found to pile on more grief.
Well, not me, of course. I didn’t even know what it was.
I sat on the bed beside him and feathered a lock of that silky dark hair from his brow. He smiled without opening his eyes, and I stroked his tear-stained cheek.
“I don’t know if this is a dream or a nightmare,” he said sadly, “but I’m glad it’s you by my side.”
That nearly broke me, but I’d promised Rachel we would hurry. There would be plenty of time for tears later—like the rest of my life.
“There’s some sort of emergency,” I told him, and he cracked his eyes to look at me.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, but Rachel’s freaking out, whatever it is. She’s off to find Mason and wants us and Nox to join them in Mason’s office.”
“I’ll call Nox, then,” Raven said, reaching in a pocket for his phone.
“Don’t bother. I already…found him. He’s meeting us there.”
Raven was at the sink, washing the grief from his face as I had, and was dried and ready to go in under a minute.
When we got to Mason’s office, Nox was already there, waiting in the hall.
“No one’s here yet,” he said, rattling the locked door.
As he released the handle, Rachel and Mason came around the corner with their heads together, their voices hushed and urgent. Upon seeing the three of us standing there, they discontinued their conversation, and Mason pushed through us to open the door. Once settled in sofas and chairs, Rachel began to fill us in.
She was barely beyond the part about the Vampire kids, who were related to me in some complicated manner, when the door burst open and Harrier strode in.
“Hey Harrier,” I said, and he gave me that sad smile I’d grown more than accustomed to when my adoptive-parents died.
“Hey, Jessica. All right then?”
“No,” I said, “but it doesn’t look like I’m going to be given time to process. You know a
bout the kids?”
“I do, but not why it would require this kind of meeting.”
We both turned to Rachel and Mason. The former had her arms crossed and was tapping out her impatience with her foot, while the latter scowled.
“If you’re quite finished, Harrier, I was just telling them about Talon and Phire.” Rachel was one of the few people who got away with snapping at Harrier, but this wasn’t her usual sisterly banter. Something really had her freaked.
“Continue, sister mine,” he said, sarcastic to the end. Rachel ignored him and carried on with her story.
“It seems, they weren’t alone in their shenanigans,” Rachel was saying. “They’d come across a man who was all too eager to help them out, find them food, steer them away from the Legion. They’re only twelve years old, too young to have questioned his motives. They’d just been abandoned by their mother for chrissakes—pardon my French—but as soon as they mentioned him I became concerned.”
Please don’t say it’s Sorcerers, I begged silently, not the Sorcerers, anything but Sorcerers…
“I’m nearly certain he’s a Sorcerer.”
Damn it, Rachel! Why did it have to be Sorcerers? I thought with Fuhrmann dead and gone to Goo Town, we’d seen the last of their kind, but nope. Just another cherry on the Black Forrest cake of my life.
“Do we know what he wants?” I asked, but the all-around looks I received assured me it was a stupid question. “They’re after us,” I said, indicating me, Raven and Nox. We were, after all, responsible for the most recent death of one of their kinsmen. “So, what do we do?”
“Easy,” Raven said. “We hunt.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
“S top.”
Raven was nearly out the door, Jessica hot on his heels, when Mason spoke. Still, he must have heard wrong.