Born in Twilight: Twilight Vows

by Maggie Shayne

  Jameson’s heart leaped, but he didn’t dare think…no, she was drugged and grateful and overwhelmed. “Angelica,” he said, kneeling beside her. “You and Amber Lily are safe now. And free. And I’ve got no more excuses to coerce you into staying with me, the way I’ve been doing for the past few days. You…” He sighed hard. “You can go, if you want to. But Angel, I don’t…I don’t think I want to live long enough to hear you say goodbye.”

  “You’re immortal,” she said softly. “And even with that, you’ll never live that long.”

  He looked down at her. “What are you saying, Angel?”

  “I’m saying that I love you, Jameson.” She stared up at him through her tears. “I love you.”

  He blinked down at her, his jaw dropping, his heart squeezing into a knot. “Angelica…” He couldn’t go on, couldn’t speak.

  She lowered her head. “I was hoping…you might feel something for me, too. Maybe…maybe I was wrong….”

  Jameson gathered her into his arms, with their daughter between them, and lowered his head and kissed her deeply and passionately, as his heart swelled to bursting.

  He lifted his head away. “I’ve loved you all along, Angel. Even that first night, I felt something…something I couldn’t explain. I told myself I hated you, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. You…you’re everything to me, Angel. Everything.”

  She smiled weakly, and he kissed her again. He held her there, in his arms, and he caressed her face, and reveled in her closeness, her love. And as they embraced, the others surged out of the building, crowds of them, all that had gone inside and still more. Other captives, free now, some weak, some near death, but all rejoicing. And when everyone was safely outside, Damien stepped forward, focusing his gaze on the building before them for long, tense moments. And suddenly, it exploded in a blinding ball of energy. Every brick crumbled. The percussion rocked the ground, and the flames lit the night like a torch of hope. A deafening roar of triumph went up from the crowd of vampires.

  Epilogue

  No one would have guessed that most of the adult chaperons at the junior prom were vampires.

  Jameson held his wife pressed close to him in his arms. They swayed slowly in time to the music played by suited youths on the stage in the center of the decorated gymnasium. He and Angelica lingered in the shadows, as did most of their friends. Rhiannon and Roland sat at a candlelit table, watching the festivities. Eric and Tamara were dancing near the rear exit. It wouldn’t do to draw too much attention to themselves. They’d promised their little girl they wouldn’t, after all. And besides, this was her night.

  “Go ahead,” said a young man several yards away to another one who stood nervously beside him. “Ask her.”

  “No way. She’ll shoot me down and I’ll have to go jump off a bridge.”

  “Maybe she’ll say yes,” said the first.

  Both of them were watching the most strikingly beautiful girl at the prom. She was tall and slender, with hair as black as a raven’s wings that danced around her waist when she moved. And haunting ebony eyes that seemed to hold countless secrets. She stood near the punch bowl with her best friend in the world, Alicia. Both of them swaying a little in time to the music. helped him inside, moving all the way to the farthest reaches of the place, and then easing him down onto the cool, rocky floor. She hurried outside, leaving him alone.

  He didn’t suspect her of abandoning him this time. No, he was beginning to know her a bit too well to think she’d leave him in this sorry state. She might hate him, but she was a woman of ethics. He didn’t imagine she could leave her worst enemy in this kind of agony.

  She returned, moments later, her arms loaded down with pine boughs. Half a tree’s worth, by the looks. She wove a solid wall of them, and braced them at the mouth of the cave to keep out the sun. And then she came back inside, kneeling before him, sharp black eyes racing over his body, narrowing on every angry red burn mark that she spotted.

  “I could make a fire, to dry our clothes,” she said.

  “I’d rather not look at another fire for a while.” The burns were small brands, up and down his calves mostly, but a few patches on his forearms and back had taken some heat as well.

  “Will this kill you?” she whispered, her eyes meeting his.

  “You couldn’t be so lucky,” he told her, and he saw her lips thin. The pain in her eyes intensified.

  “You’re in agony.”

  “So are you,” he said, sitting up a little, searching her face. She averted it quickly, but not quickly enough. He’d seen the tears. “My pain will be gone with the night, Angel. It’s only a few more minutes until dawn. But yours is going to follow you into your dreams, isn’t it?”

  Her shoulders quaked, and when she turned to face him again, her cheeks were wet, her body trembling. “I thought it was her,” she whispered. “When I heard that baby crying, I thought….”

  “I know.” His own throat tightened. “I know, Angel. I thought so, too.”

  Her head bowed as the tears overwhelmed her, and he couldn’t help himself. He wrapped his arms around her shuddering frame and pulled her close to him. And he held her, choking back his Clearing his throat, the nervous teenage boy approached her. “Hi, Amber,” he said.

  And she smiled. “Hi, Jimmy.”

  “Would you…um…would you like to dance?”

  “I’d love to.”

  The boy’s face split in a delighted smile, and he took her into his arms.

  Amber looked across the dance floor and caught her father’s eye. I love you, Daddy.

  I love you, too, Amber Lily. He sent his thoughts out to his daughter without a word, and then added a wink. Just see the young man doesn’t hold you too close.

  Amber smiled and rolled her eyes ceilingward as her partner whirled her around the floor.

  “Have we done it, do you think?” Jameson asked his Angel, pulling her still closer, nuzzling her ear with his lips.

  “Made her happy? Yes, Jameson. I think we have.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have come,” he said. “Maybe we’re overprotective.”

  “She doesn’t mind at all,” Angelica whispered. “She loves us, Jameson. Don’t you know that?”

  He nodded thoughtfully, but still feared he might have offended his daughter by volunteering to chaperon her prom. He loved her so much, it was hard to know when he was overstepping, and when he was only being reasonable. “She’s so beautiful,” he said. Then he bent lower, and kissed the neck that so tempted him. “Like her mother.”

  “And every bit as stubborn as her father,” she replied.

  Frowning, Jameson glanced back at the dance floor. “So what do you think of this Jimmy?”

  “I think he’s cute.”

  He grumbled, and Angel kissed his nose.

  “I also think we should let Amber Lily decide about Jimmy. She’s inherited her father’s brains, as well, you know.”

  Jameson closed his eyes and sighed. “She’s really all right.”

  “You still having trouble believing it?” she asked him. “Even after you made Eric repeat those blood tests five times to be sure? The belladonna antigen is different in her,” she reminded him, repeating what Eric’s tests had proven time and time again. “The gene that causes premature death in mortals who have the antigen is missing.”

  He nodded. “And yet she has psychic powers as strong as ours—and her physical strength is getting more amazing every day.”

  “Rhiannon likes to think she inherited her preternatural abilities from her aunt, the princess,” Angelica mused.

  “It’s a miracle,” he said. “She’s a miracle.” He smiled and looked into her eyes. “Have I told you lately, my Angel, how very much I adore you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But feel free to tell me again.”

  Just as he was about to kiss her, he felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned to see his little girl holding hands with her young man.

  He straightened up, clearing his throat. />
  “Dad, Mom, I want you to meet Jimmy.”

  “Hello,” they said in unison.

  Jimmy gawked at them for a moment, then looked at Amber again. “You gotta be kidding me. That’s your mom?”

  “Looks great for her age, doesn’t she?” Amber sent her mother a knowing glance that probably only made her seem more mysterious to the smitten young man.

  “Yes. I mean…um, nice to meet you…both.”

  “Likewise,” Jameson said.

  Amber looked up at her father. “It’s almost the last dance,” she told him. “I saved it for you.”

  Jameson felt his throat go tight, and his eyes begin to burn. But he managed to blink them clear as he took his daughter’s hand, and walked with her onto the floor. As he held her in his arms, he met Angel’s eyes across the room, and he saw the sparkle of happy tears there that matched his own.

  “I’m glad you’re here tonight, Daddy,” Amber whispered.

  “I’ll always be here for you, Amber Lily,” he promised. “Always.”

  * * * * *

  TWILIGHT VOWS

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter One

  Irish countryside, 1808

  I walked along the path that night, as I often did. Bone-tired from working in my father’s fields, coated in a layer of good Irish soil spread fine on my skin and held fast by my sweat. My muscles ached, but ’twas a good sort of pain. The sort that came of relishing one’s own strength and vigor. Of late, I hadn’t done so any too often. I’d been taken with bouts of weakness, my head spinning sometimes until I passed out cold as a corpse. But today hadn’t been like that at all. Today I’d felt good, certain whatever had plagued me was gone. And to prove it I’d worked like a horse in Da’s fields. All the day through I’d put my brothers and cousins through their paces, darin’ them to keep up with me, laughing when they couldn’t. And I’d kept on wielding my hoe long after the others had called it a night.

  So ’twas alone I was walking.

  Autumn hung in the air, with the harvest beneath it and a big yellow moon hanging low in the sky. Leaves crackled under my feet and sent their aromas up to meet me as I walked by the squash patch, with its gray-blue hubbards as big as Ma’s stew pot, and orange-yellow pumpkins clinging to their dying vines. We’d have to gather them in tomorrow. Gram said there would be a killing frost before next Sabbath.

  A killing frost.

  A little chill snaked up the back of my neck as the words repeated themselves, for some reason, in my mind. Foolishness, of course. I’d spent too many nights as a lad, curled on a braided rug before the hearth listenin’ to Gram spin her yarns. This time of the year, her tales tended toward the frightening, with ghosties and ghoulies her favorite subjects. I supposed some of those tales had stuck in my mind. Though a man grown now, and all of twenty years plus three, I still got the shivers from Gram’s tales. The way her voice would change as she told ’em, the way her ice-blue eyes would narrow as if she were sharing some dark secret while the firelight cast dancing shadows on her dear careworn face.

  ’Twas a night just like this one, boy. When all seemed peaceful and right. But any fool ought to know better than to walk alone after dark during the time of the harvest. For the veil between the world of the living and that of the dead is thinning…and parting…and…

  “Hush, Gram,” I whispered. But a chill breeze caressed my neck and goose bumps rose there to mark its passing. I thrust my hands into my pockets, hunching my shoulders, walking a little faster. Something skittered along the roadside, and my head jerked sharply to the right. “Only the wind,” I said, and then I began to whistle.

  Any fool ought to know better. Are you a fool, Donovan O’Roark?

  I shook myself and walked still faster. There were eyes on me…someone watching from the crisp, black night. Or perhaps something. A wolf or even an owl. I told myself ’twas nothing, that I’d no reason to fear, but my breath began to hitch in my throat before puffing out in great clouds, and my heart to pound too quickly.

  Then the dizziness came.

  The ground buckled and heaved before me, though I know it never truly moved at all. I staggered sideways, would have fallen into the weeds along the edge of the path, had I not managed to brace my hand against a nearby tree. Palm flat to the warm, soft trunk, head hanging low, I fought to catch my breath, to cling to my consciousness.

  The tree spoke.

  “Alas, boy, I thought to wait…but I can see the deed must be done tonight.”

  I jerked my head up, then snatched my hand away, not from a tree, but from a man. Yet…not a man. His dark eyes swirled with the endless black of the very night, and his hair was black as soot, gleaming to midnight blue where the moon’s rays alighted. His lips, cherry red, and full. Yet the pallor of his skin shocked me. Not sickly-looking, not like death. But fair, and fine, as if he were some fine work of art chiseled of pale granite. As if he were a part of the moonlight itself.

  I took a step backward, leaves crunching, the breeze picking up to tease my hair. The wind grew stronger all of a sudden…almost as if it knew something dire was about to take place this autumn night…

  …the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is thinning…parting…

  I backed away more quickly.

  The creature only shook his head.

  “Don’t try to run. It will do you no good.”

  “Who are you?” I managed. “What do you want with me?”

  His smile was sad, bitter. “Many things, Donovan. Many things. But for now…just the one.” He reached out, though I never saw his hands move. They were simply there before him one moment, moving expressively as he spoke—and in the next instant they clasped the front of my homespun shirt. I struggled against him, but he pulled me easily to him, and my fighting amounted to nothing at all.

  I am not a small man, nor a weak one, despite my recent illness. I stood fully a head taller than my da, and half that much above any other man in our village. My shoulders were broad and well formed by a lifetime of hard work. I’d never met a man I wasn’t certain I could whip, should the need arise.

  Yet this one, this thing, dragged me to him as if I were a child. Closer, inexorably closer, even as I twisted and tugged and fought for my freedom. He bent over me. Fear clutched at my heart, nearly stopping its frantic beat. Pain shot out through my chest, and down my left arm, and I couldn’t draw air into my lungs.

  Then I felt his mouth on my neck…lips parting, and the shocking pain as his teeth sank deeply into the skin of my throat, piercing me. Pain that faded almost as quickly as it appeared. And as it faded, so did everything else. Everything around me, from the soft singing of the crickets to the smell of the decaying leaves. I no longer felt the chill autumn air. There were three things of which I remained aware, three things that filled all my senses. Darkness. Silence. And the feel of his mouth on my throat, draining the very life from me.

  Then even those things disappeared.

  * * *

  “Donovan! Donny-boy, wake up! Wake up!”

  Someone shook my shoulders. Da’s voice shouted in my ears, sounding like it never had. Raspy, panicky, afraid. There was a taste in my mouth, salty and rich. I wiped my lips with the back of my hand, as I fought to open my eyes. When I looked at my hand, I saw blood, glittering in the moonlight.

  What had I done? What…?

  Da scooped me up into old arms that shouldn’t have had the strength to lift me. And staggering under my weight, he carried me toward the village, shouting for help. It was only moments before others came, my neighbors, my friends. Alicia with her flowi
ng auburn curls and cat’s eyes as green as Ireland itself, the girl I dreamed about at night. My ma, and sisters. My body was jostled as neighbor men relieved Da of the burden, and bore me swiftly into my home. They lowered me to a pallet, while Ma shouted questions. But no one could answer her. No one knew what had befallen me out there on the path this night. Only me, and one other soul. A monster, a creature of nightmares and Gram’s tales.

  Gram. Gram would know what had happened, what this meant. I listened for her voice among the others, but it was a long while before I heard it. And its grimness did nothing to reassure me.

  “It can only be evil,” she all but whispered. “’Tis the Eve of All Hallows. Foolish lad, out walking alone tonight of all nights!”

  Ma hushed her impatiently, but I saw the way she stiffened at Gram’s words. She snatched up a lamp, elbowing the men aside and leaning over me as if to see for herself. Then Ma gasped and drew slightly away, her loving eyes going wider.

  “Lord a’ mercy, there be blood on his lips.”

  “Aye,” Da said. “But what does it mean?”

  My mother said nothing. Gently, her hands pushed my shirt aside as she searched for injuries. I forced my eyes to remain open, though sleep…

  Or is that death?

  …called to me, drew me closer just as the stranger had done. I couldn’t fight much longer.

  Ma looked down at me, fear growing large in her eyes, though I could see her trying to keep it concealed from me. “You’ll be all right, my boy. I’ll see to that. You’ll be—”

  As she spoke, she pushed my hair aside. ’Twas long, my hair. Hung well past my shoulders, thick and darkest brown. My Ma lifted the heavy locks, and her eyes changed.

  As if the light of love flickered…a guttering candle.

  She snatched up a cloth, muttering a prayer in the old language as she dabbed the blood away from my throat with one hand and lifted her lamp higher with the other.