Forever Night: Vampire Werewolf Dark romance fantasy (Blood Red Series Book 4)

by W. J. May

  “I…never wanted to see you become a vampire.” His voice was unsteady. “You know that.”

  “But I am one. And neither of us can undo that.” She didn’t want to blame him, but this was her destiny. How could it not be?

  “And so we lose everything,” he said softly. “Your mother. The life you should have had.”

  “We have a new future,” Kallie whispered. She reached out to squeeze his hand, feeling tears in her eyes. “Mom’ll never grow old and die, you won’t have to see that. It’s not all black and white. I know things aren’t that simple. I’ll fix this. I know you’re afraid I can’t, but I will. I’ll find a way so you two can be together again.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say that.”

  “Why not?” Kallie asked, stung. She wanted the same—for her parents, and for her.

  “Because when you put your mind to something, daughter, you’re almost unstoppable. You don’t back down, and this…” He reached out to brush her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “It’ll lead you to a dark place.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Kallie told him. A hardness inside of her spread through her. One moment she could be passionate about her feelings and the next, it felt as if she had no emotions inside of her. What’s happening to me?

  “No, I can see you’re not though you should be. But even if you won’t have a care for yourself, Kallie, have a care for me… Because I’m afraid every day that I might lose you. I have been since I first learned what I was. And with your mother, Helen…” His voice choked.

  “I’ll get her back! I swear I will.”

  “It’s not that simple.” He looked away. “She made a choice. She can’t just go back on it if you end the war.”

  “She did what she did to save you,” Kallie insisted. “To save you from Petra.”

  “And you know what that means, don’t you?” He stood up and went to the window, staring out into the darkness. “It means she remembers everything. Everything. She remembers that I tricked her. She knows you aren’t her birth daughter. And while she would never, ever love you less for that, it’s…different with me. You’re too young to understand. It’s… different.”

  “It isn’t!”

  “Kallie.” He looked back at her. “Imagine for a moment that one day, you found out you’d been living another woman’s life. You found out that Caleb or Liam had chosen to spend their life with her and had gotten you instead.”

  Kallie turned her face away. His words hit her like a blow, opening up a pit in her chest, and she wanted to scream at the realization to go away—but there was no stopping it. She understood, in one horrible moment, what her mother must have faced…and faced alone. It didn’t matter, the steady affection that had sprung up between her and Kallie’s father. It didn’t matter, the years of memories and the love between them, genuine love. She had been a consolation prize, not even second choice if truth were told. And she had never been given the chance to live her own life.

  Kallie bent over, pressing her hands over her eyes. She would never, ever love you less for that. But what about the children her mother should have had? What about the life she should have lived? She would be a fool not to think of that, and Kallie knew how smart her mother was. Kallie wasn’t her daughter. Her daughter had been stolen from her, and would likely never exist now.

  “Kallie.” Her father was at her side. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  “It’s okay.” The words were reflexive, and to her shock her father started to laugh. It was full of irony.

  “Oh, my daughter, it’s so not okay. None of this is. If I could go back…”

  Kallie lifted her head silently to stare at him.

  “I want to say I wouldn’t do it,” he said quietly. “It was wrong. I knew it then, and I only saw it more clearly over the years. It was wrong. Your mother should have had a choice in it. But as selfish as it is, I can’t help but be glad for what we had together, Helen and I. I loved her. I…still do.”

  “Then I’ll fight for that,” Kallie told him. Emotions that had disappeared moments ago flooded back. Tears were streaming down her face. “I don’t care what happens. I don’t care about the danger. You deserve to be with her. Mom loves you. I know she does.”

  “What if she doesn’t forgive me?” His face held only despair. “How could she?”

  “What she needs right now is to know that you’re sorry she didn’t get to make a choice—and she needs to know that you’d choose her again if she let you.”

  “I can’t just—”

  “Tell her the truth,” Kallie insisted. “Please, just…think about it.”

  She left him staring at his hands, face pale and determined, and climbed into the car with a sigh. She wanted him to pour his heart out, to keep the family together, and at the same time she knew she understood only a sliver of her mother’s pain. Her father, with a whole life behind him, would have better knowledge of his wife’s hurt. He would be afraid to speak out.

  If he didn’t, however, if he allowed fear to keep him from saying that he would choose Helen now… Kallie knew that there was no hope for the two of them.

  Chapter 4

  Liam met her in one of the hallways, relief on his face. “Thank goodness I caught you first.”

  “What’s going on?” Kallie stared at him a split second and her heart contracted. His dark hair hung slightly above his bright blue eye. His handsome face was dark with worry, hidden behind the relief of finding her. She made to push past him, but he blocked her way.

  “They’re all right,” he said seriously. The look on his face said that he knew she wouldn’t be still as long as she feared for them. “Kallie, they’re entirely all right. There were a few…scratches.”

  “I know. I smelled the blood at the club.”

  He flinched. “I hoped you wouldn’t learn about that.”

  “Why not?” That caught her unawares. “I should think you’d be glad to see another show of savagery from the Reds.”

  “Never,” he told her seriously. “These are your friends. I know…it must hurt that they’ve been dragged into this.”

  His words brought her up short. “It does,” she said flatly. “It really does.”

  “And I’m sorry for that.” His voice was low. “But even more sorry about what I’m about to ask you.”

  Oh, no. “Liam…”

  “I wouldn’t ask you if there was any other way,” he said desperately, “but it’s best if humans don’t know what’s out there, Kallie. Can you imagine what would happen? Guys would go hunting for vampires. Policemen would go out there…and they would be slaughtered. But they’d bring in the military after, and there would be vampires who would die, and they’d find out about weres and fairies and all the rest. I’ve spent my life hunting the bad vampires down, but I can’t bear the thought of us all being hunted just for what we are instead of what we’ve done.”

  Kallie ducked her head so he wouldn’t see her face. His words had a certain logic. And yet… “What do you want me to do?”

  He sighed. “I want you to help me convince them that this was a bad trip.”

  She gaped at him. “What?”

  “Neither of them have anything on their record, and I could make sure that nothing ever did get on there, Kallie. Slate wiped clean, I promise.”

  “I thought you wanted me to shut them up!”

  “I do.” His blue eyes were serious. “And the only way to do that, to be sure, is to convince them that none of it ever happened.”

  “No.” Kallie glared at him. “I’m not going to make them think they’re crazy.”

  “You wouldn’t be. There’s an explanation for it this way. People have bad trips all the time. You can say that it was an accident, that you didn’t know they were going to get drugged.”

  “How does someone get drugged by accident? They came over to my house and…”

  “And you all snuck out and went to a club, because you hadn’t seen each other in so long. And someone
put something in your drinks. You thought they caught a cab home, and you’ve just found out they were here.”

  “But…” Kallie shook her head. “But I’ll be lying.”

  “I know that. But think about it, Kallie. Think about how it hurt you to know what your father was going through. Think about what he still goes through when he remembers it. If they think it wasn’t real and no one really hurt them—that’s almost more merciful. I’d say it is more merciful than knowing the world is full of things that have hurt them and would again, and that they can’t defend themselves from.”

  “I lived with that for years!”

  “And when I met you, you were terrified,” Liam said flatly. “Listen…just…think about it. Go talk to them. Talk to their parents. There’s no reason this has to screw anything up for them, and it could save a lot of lives.”

  “I’ll…fine! I’ll think about it.” Kallie shook her head. “I’ll think about it,” she emphasized when she saw his relief, and she didn’t look at him as he led her down the corridor.

  “Are you ready?” he asked in a low voice. “Can you smell them and be okay?”

  “Yes. I just…want to know they’re okay.”

  Jeanna and Lisa were together, sequestered in a small alcove off the main bustle of the emergency room. When Kallie saw them, she wanted to be careful and remote to avoid risking them, but she could not keep still. Jeanna ran to her, and Kallie caught her up in a hug, face turned awkwardly away from her friend’s neck. She tried to take comfort in the strong pulse of blood that called to her under her friend’s skin. Jeanna was alive, not at all weakened by her ordeal.

  Lisa was next, trembling slightly as she hugged Kallie, and Kallie felt the tension as Lisa looked cautiously to her parents. They were staring at Kallie with an unfriendly look, and she knew that Liam must have laid the groundwork for the drugs story.

  “So is anyone going to tell us what happened?” Jeanna’s father asked.

  “I…” Kallie looked around at them, noting the look in their eyes. “Could I have a moment with them?”

  “I don’t think so,” Lisa’s mother cut in. “We don’t want you all getting your stories straight and lying to us.”

  “That’s not what this is.” Which was a total lie. Kallie drew herself up and tried to imitate even a fraction of Petra’s self-possession. “Look, it’s been a really scary night for all of us, and your daughters didn’t do anything wrong.” That, at least, was completely true. “I’m sorry I wasn’t with them when this happened, and I want to apologize. Alone.”

  They exchanged glances, and she felt Jeanna and Lisa’s relief as their parents filed out. Kallie drew them to the back of the little alcove and tried not to cry at the looks on her friends’ faces.

  “Thank you so much,” Lisa whispered. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “No one will believe us about what happened.”

  “We told them everything,” Jeanna cut in. “I don’t know who those people were at your house, but they were terrible. They came up on us out of the dark and…and…”

  “We were so scared,” Lisa whispered. “There’s a dungeon below the Red Dragon, Kallie. A dungeon! Don’t ever let Caleb take you there again. They’re sadists, and they’re—they’re—” She looked at Jeanna.

  “Tell her,” Jeanna urged.

  “They’re vampires,” Lisa whispered. “They’re vampires, Kallie. You don’t understand. It’s all real, they exist, and they’re terrible and they steal people and do you remember that girl who went missing our freshman year? What if this was that?” Her voice trailed off in a sob and she laid her head on Kallie’s shoulder.

  Kallie held her, biting her lip to control herself. She wanted to tell Lisa that she believed her. All of it was real. They had seen it, they remembered it. And the ones who had done this needed to pay. Her fingers clenched with anger.

  Still…she could see Liam’s predictions playing out. It would be a sport within days for young men to go out hunting vampires, and how many would be lost then? Who else would suffer when people began pointing fingers, accusing one another of being vampires and fairies and werewolves? And what would happen when the military came in, as it inevitably would, with planes and tanks? What would happen to Liam’s kin? What would happen to Kallie’s mother?

  She had made her choice the moment Liam asked it of her, and she was only now accepting it. It took all she had to pull back from Lisa’s shoulder. “It was the drinks,” she said quietly.

  Both of them froze.

  “What?” Jeanna asked.

  “Don’t you remember? We went to Red Dragon.”

  “No…” Lisa was shaking her head. “No, we didn’t.”

  “We did,” Kallie insisted, hating herself as she said it, and hating it even more when she saw the suspicion in her friends’ eyes. “That’s why I was wearing these contacts, remember?” She gestured at her eyes. “Guys, please tell me you remember that, at least. You’re scaring me.”

  “But we didn’t go anywhere,” Lisa said. Her voice was rising. “We never even saw you. They got us outside your house.”

  “No! You came in, you were all upset that you hadn’t seen me in so long, and we decided to go out.” It was an act, but it didn’t take any acting for Kallie to make her voice come out in a whisper. She wanted to cry. She was twisting their memories, telling them they hadn’t seen what they’d seen, and it was all wrong.

  “You talked with them,” Jeanna accused. “You talked with the police. You’re going to tell them it was a bad trip. It wasn’t! We remember everything.” She looked over at Lisa and her chin came up. “We’re not going to let you pin this on us.”

  “I had some of it, too!” Kallie cried. “I’m not blaming this on you. I’m not. It isn’t your fault. I was the one who said we should go out, and if I hadn’t…” She put her head in her hands. She couldn’t let them see her face. She was sure that her guilt shone through too clearly.

  “Kallie.” Lisa sounded like she was ready to cave, but she was fighting to keep herself together. “Why are you lying?”

  “I’m not lying!” Kallie’s voice rose.

  The curtain was pulled back, and Lisa and Jeanna’s parents were back, having heard the yelling. Praying that someday her friends would forgive her, Kallie played it for all it was worth.

  “I’m so sorry,” she told them. “It’s all my fault. Really, it is.”

  “Don’t listen to her!” Jeanna was shaking her head. “She’s lying! We didn’t take drugs!”

  “They didn’t know they’d taken drugs,” Kallie said, holding her hands out. “They didn’t, I swear. It’s all my fault.”

  “Why don’t you tell us what that means?” Jeanna’s father looked furious.

  “Look, I’ve been…well, it’s been a bad time.” And it really, really had. “My father and mother have been having some trouble. She got sick, and he’s been sick for so long, and I was trying to take care of them and dropped out of school.”

  “Honey, you know you could have asked us for—” Jeanna’s mother broke off at her husband’s glare. She swallowed and nodded to Kallie to continue.

  “Your daughters were worried about me,” Kallie told them. She shook her head. “I was embarrassed…ashamed because I’d dropped out. I didn’t want them to think less of me, so I just stopped responding to texts. I think they thought I was really in bad trouble.”

  “So we went over,” Lisa said, anger in her voice, “and outside Kallie’s house—”

  “You met up with me,” Kallie told her.

  “We didn’t!”

  “You did. And I asked you two to come out with me. I shouldn’t have left Mom, but I was tired of being good.” She spoke over Lisa’s protests, her eyes fixed on the girls’ parents. “I know I shouldn’t have gone out with them, not when they had work to do and I didn’t, and then…I started to feel sick at the club. I went to throw up, and when I came back they were gone. I could barely focus, and I guess I thought they’d taken a cab to get
home. It was only when I came to later that I realized what must have happened. When the police called my house…” She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, guys. I’m so sorry.”

  “You should be sorry,” Jeanna hissed. “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not! And don’t you see?” Kallie couldn’t keep from letting the tears escape. Her friends clearly hated her for telling this lie. “Don’t you see it’s all my fault?”

  “Well…” Jeanna’s father rubbed at his forehead. “It certainly is, young lady. But I don’t think you could have seen this coming.”

  “I agree,” his wife said quietly. “Thank you for owning up to it, Kallie.”

  “And let this be a lesson to you,” Lisa’s mother cut in. “You all shouldn’t have been out drinking.”

  “I know,” Kallie said humbly.

  “Next time, though,” Jeanna’s mother said. “Next time, Kallie, please let us help. We had no idea things were so bad for you.”

  “It’s okay.” Kallie shook her head. “I’m just sorry I let you all down. Lisa, Jeanna—”

  “Just get out.” Jeanna’s voice was ugly. “Get out, and don’t talk to me again unless you’re willing to own up to lying like this.”

  “I don’t get it,” Lisa whispered. “Why aren’t you telling the truth?”

  “Kallie…” Jeanna’s mother beckoned her to the door. “Could you give us some time with our daughters?”

  “Of course.” Kallie ducked her head and almost ran from the room. In the hallway outside, Liam folded her in his arms and rocked her back and forth, and she muffled her sobs on his shoulder.

  “I’m never going to see them again, am I?” The words came out choked.

  “Maybe someday,” he said, but his voice didn’t carry any assurance.

  Chapter 5

  They raced against dawn to get home, tumbling through the door to Liam’s house. It was an awkward jumble, Liam determined to be gentlemanly and have Kallie go first, and Kallie determined to get him inside before the sun rose. She froze once inside and crouched down, ready to attack.