by Lynsay Sands
“Yes. Of course,” Lucian agreed.
Allie frowned from one man to the other, really wanting to learn why Magnus was the only one who couldn’t read her, but knowing she would have to wait for that explanation. She wasn’t willing to wait for the answer to another question, though. “Does that mean Liam can read me too?”
“No,” Tricia assured her. “Teddy and Liam are too young to be able to read minds yet.”
Allie was just relaxing at that reassurance when the woman added, “Immortal children do not start to pick that up until the age of five or six.”
“What?” she asked with dismay. Dear God, her little boy might be reading her mind in another year.
“There have been a few who have picked up the skill a little earlier,” Lucian countered. “Although I have never heard of one mastering mind control before five.”
Allie’s alarm immediately increased and she squawked, “Mind control?”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she recalled the sense she’d had the night before of not being in control when she’d walked out of the pizza joint and got in the car. Her eyes immediately shot to Magnus. “Oh, my God, you controlled me last night and made me get in the car.”
“No,” Lucian said with certainty. “That must have been Tybo. Magnus can no more control you than he can read you.”
“Sorry,” Tybo said when her gaze shot to him. “But we needed to leave quickly and you weren’t cooperating.”
When Allie opened her mouth to respond, Sam piped up with, “Explanations later. I want to know what happened with Stella. She was saying you were the only person she trusted, and then . . . ?”
Allie stared at her blankly for a minute, and then sagged in her seat and tried to find the thread of what she’d been telling. She didn’t know why, though, if they could just read it from her mind.
“Because we can only read it if you are thinking of it,” Sam reminded her. “And right now you’re freaking out about what we can and can’t do and not thinking about Stella.”
“Right,” Allie muttered, and then glanced at the other woman sharply as she realized Sam must have read her mind to know she was wondering about that.
“Sorry,” Sam said with a shrug, and then prompted, “Stella had no one to trust but you . . . ?”
Allie scowled at her, but forced herself back to the subject. “Right, so after telling me her concerns about Stephen . . . Well, I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d found it kind of funky that he hadn’t gone with her either, so I could hardly reassure her. And I didn’t know about the whole mind-reading thing, so didn’t even consider that their sire might have read theirs, realized what they were up to, and used the knowledge to force Stephen to stay,” she added in a steely voice, but then frowned and admitted, “I wish I had. The thought that Stephen might have become like the others was crushing to Stella.” She sighed at the memory of Stella weeping.
“Anyway, after a few moments where neither of us said anything, Stella said she knew the things she’d done since being turned were unforgiveable, and that she was a dead soulless monster now, but that she used to be a good person and was trying to be one again for her baby. She swore she’d never ever hurt me, and said she needed me in her life. And so did her baby. I was the godmother, the only person she would trust her baby to if anything happened to her.
“It was a lot to take in,” Allie admitted quietly. “My feelings were very confused. But Stella had never harmed me. In fact, she’d been a wonderful friend—fun, generous, sweet. She just didn’t seem like a monster.”
“She was not a monster,” Magnus assured her solemnly. “She was just thrown into a nightmare situation and doing her best to survive it and keep her baby safe.”
Allie nodded, but the words made her feel better. Actually, all of this was making her feel better. It was a great relief to actually be able to talk about this stuff to someone. Allie had spent the last four years entirely alone, unable to discuss her life or Liam with anyone. This was helping to ease the very heavy burden she’d been feeling crushed under for all that time. Accepting that for what it was, Allie smiled crookedly and said, “In the end, I assured Stella I could handle the situation and we were still friends. And things pretty much went back to the way they had been, except I had a lot of questions.”
“I would be surprised if you did not,” Magnus said dryly.
She smiled at him, but couldn’t help wondering why he was the only one who couldn’t read her. Pushing that aside for now, she continued. “I made her show me her fangs several times, and asked where she was getting her blood. She admitted that she was picking up men in bars on the nights she went out, going home with them, and biting them. She said she was careful now not to take too much blood, and other than a couple of false starts when she first got to Calgary, she’d left her meals alive and well.”
“Maybe the town house owner was one of those false starts,” Sam suggested.
“Maybe,” Allie agreed. “It was a couple weeks after New Year’s that she went into labor. I had just finished a big project and—”
“Wait a minute,” Sam interrupted. “No one told me what you do. What project?”
“She works at the blood bank,” Tybo said.
“I’ve only worked at the blood bank the last couple of months as a temporary part-time gig. Really I’m a web designer,” Allie corrected.
Tybo’s eyebrows rose. “What websites have you designed? Anything I might have seen? What are you working on now?”
Allie smiled with amusement at the quick-fire questions. He reminded her of Liam when he got excited about something. Before she could answer, though, Lucian said, “She can tell you that later. Let’s finish this business with Stella first.”
“Of course,” she said calmly, unsurprised by it now.
“You were talking about Stella’s going into labor,” Sam said helpfully. “You were just finishing a big project and . . . ?”
“Right. Thank you,” Allie said. “So I was working in my office upstairs, and Stella was downstairs baking something. She had started to spend a lot of time at my place as it got closer to her time,” she explained. “I guess it was about midnight when I heard this crash. I rushed downstairs to find Stella on her hands and knees in the kitchen surrounded by liquid and glass. Her water had broken as she was making whatever she was going to bake, and she, for some reason, panicked about the mess on the floor, snatched for paper towels to clean it up, and knocked over a glass. Now she was trying to clean up both of them.”
“Oh, dear,” Sam said with wide eyes. “What was she thinking?”
“I have no idea,” Allie said dryly. “I’ve never had a baby, so have no idea how a woman’s mind works during labor. But Stella’s didn’t seem to be too clear in that moment. She was determined to clean up the mess. Seriously determined,” Allie stressed. “I ended up having to sweep up the glass while she mopped up the liquid before I could get her up off the floor. But when I tried to urge her to get her coat on so we could go to the hospital, she balked. She wasn’t going to the hospital. They’d know she was a vampire and lock her and the baby in a cage somewhere and do experiments on them.”
Allie shook her head. “I think I just stood there staring at her for a full two minutes when she said that. It had never occurred to me that she couldn’t go to the hospital. I mean, when I talked about getting a bag ready for the hospital and such before she admitted what she was to me, she’d nodded and agreed and assured me she’d handle it. Turns out she just did that because she couldn’t say she wasn’t going without explaining why. And we hadn’t talked about the trip to the hospital since the revelation because I was too busy asking stupid questions.”
Allie pushed the hair back from her face at the memory. “Liam was born in my living room on a mattress I dragged down from the guest bedroom. It was the scariest, most disgusting, most painful yet most beautiful experience of my life.”
“Painful?” Magnus asked uncertainly. “You mean f
or Stella?”
“Hell, no,” Allie said on a laugh. “I mean, sure, she was in terrible pain, but at one point, in that pain, she gouged grooves of skin out of my arms and I can’t count the number of times I had to warn her to let go of my hand or wrist because she was about to break the bone.” She shook her head at the memory. “I should have read up on childbirth. I had no idea it could be so gross. I mean, it wasn’t just the baby that came out, and when the pain was at its worst she started vomiting blood.”
Tricia was smiling wryly at this news, but Sam paled and whispered, “Oh, my.”
It made Allie suspect the woman hadn’t had children yet and she completely understood her distress. That experience had been enough to make her kind of glad she hadn’t had children herself and that she had Liam. Not that she still couldn’t have them, physically, but constantly being on the run with Liam wasn’t likely to lead to her meeting anyone she might want to have children of her own with.
“Liam was the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen when he finally showed up.” Allie smiled. “I insisted Stella stay with me for a while so that I could help look after him while she healed from the birth. She was seriously exhausted and pale by the time it was over. She was also incredibly cranky and basically ordered me to take the baby and leave her alone. I just thought that was the crankiness until she said I smelled like dinner to her and unless that’s what I wanted to be I should leave at once.” She grimaced at the memory. “Since her fangs were out, I took her at her word, scooped up little Liam, and hurried upstairs and then just paced around rocking him. It was probably fifteen minutes later that I heard the front door open and close. It was Stella leaving. I couldn’t believe she was up and about already, but she obviously needed blood, so I just continued to rock Liam. Stella returned a couple hours later and, I swear, looking at her, you wouldn’t believe she’d just been through what she had. She looked completely fine, her old self. Well, except that her stomach was completely flat again, and I know that wouldn’t happen with a mortal,” she added wryly.
“Immortals heal much more quickly than mortals,” Magnus explained solemnly.
Allie merely nodded. “Stella stayed with me for the next week, and then returned to the town house across the street so that I could work without Liam’s crying to distract me, which I appreciated. We still spent a lot of time together, and I watched Liam for her while she went out in search of a blood donor most nights, but by the start of the second week of February I was in a crunch with work. I had two deadlines for the fifteenth and was stressed out, so she insisted on taking Liam with her on her nightly outings for the next week, which I thought was just crazy. You can’t take a baby to a bar,” she pointed out. “But she said she’d go to one of the coffee shops that were open all night or something and insisted it would be fine and I could look after Liam for her again once I finished my projects.”
Allie fell silent briefly then, stealing herself against what she had to recall next. But finally, she said, “It was the fourteenth of February. I had finished one of the projects, which removed a lot of pressure, and I was nearly done the second, so I decided to give myself a break and stop early that night and finish up the next. Well, early for me,” she added wryly. “It was around eleven thirty when I shut down the computer and went downstairs to grab something for dinner. It was maybe midnight when Stella showed up at the door. She’d obviously just returned from town. She said they’d found her, removed Liam’s receiving blanket, passed him off to me, and pulled out a doll that she wrapped the blanket around instead. She also gave me her necklace—” Allie touched her chest where the locket was now hidden under her blouse “—and reminded me of my promise to look after Liam if anything happened to her, and then she was gone.
“I peeked through the blinds and watched her walk across the street to her town house pushing Liam’s carriage, and then she went in, and before the door was quite closed, the town house exploded and burst into flames.” Allie paused to clear her throat and blinked a couple times to try to shift the liquid gathering in her eyes. “At first I thought maybe it was a trick to make the vampires think she was dead. That she’d somehow caused the explosion that quickly. I mean, she could move so fast when she wanted to. Scary fast,” she recalled with a disbelieving shake of the head.
Stella had hidden that speed from her at first, but once Allie knew about her, she hadn’t bothered to hide it anymore and she was always stunned at the speed she could manage. Sighing, Allie continued. “I thought, or at least hoped, that she’d rushed out the back door to escape it. But the door hadn’t quite closed, and swung back open after the explosion. Stella stumbled to the entrance in flames, the doll still clutched to her chest. She stood there for maybe two or three seconds and then turned and just collapsed into the flames.”
“The rogues blew up her house?” Sam gasped with horror. “But I thought the sire wanted the baby if it was a boy? Why would he kill both of them that way?”
“Liam was not killed,” Tricia reminded her. “The baby Stella carried was a doll.”
“But they couldn’t know Stella would leave Liam with Allie,” Tybo pointed out. “They could have killed both of them with that explosion.”
“Which is why I don’t think the vampires caused the explosion,” Allie said now.
Everyone at the table turned to her and everyone but Magnus’s expression became concentrated on her forehead. She wasn’t surprised when Tricia exclaimed, “You think Stella set up the house to explode when she walked in. You think she sacrificed herself in the hopes of saving Liam.”
Seven
Allie read the disbelief on the faces of the people around the table and pointed out, “She had a doll to substitute for Liam, gave me her child, and reminded me of my promise to take care of him if anything happened to her. She then gave me the necklace she never took off, to give to him when he was older. She knew she was going to die,” Allie said with certainty, and then told them what she’d decided after years of pondering it. “Stella must have set up something long ago to make the house blow up. Maybe even when she first moved in. She probably planned to be going out the back door with her baby as the house blew up, and maybe even hoped to catch some of the vampires in the explosion.”
“You think her friendship with you changed her plans,” Tricia murmured, her gaze concentrated on her forehead. “That she decided Liam would have a better chance at a halfway normal life if the vampires actually saw her and what they would have thought was him die.”
“Yes,” Allie sighed. “But . . . I think she was suffering a bad case of postpartum depression too. I mean, before Liam was born, Stella used to struggle with the things she’d done when she was first turned. But after he was born . . .” Allie shook her head. “Stella loved him so much. She called him her little angel, but she started saying things like he’d probably be better off without having a monster like her for a mother.”
“As an immortal she couldn’t have been suffering postpartum depression,” Sam said quietly. “It was just her conscience and her belief that she was now a vampire that was tormenting her. The sad thing is if we’d known about her we could have told her what she really was and helped her deal with it.”
“She had killed mortals,” Lucian reminded Sam. “If we had known about her, she would have been put down as a rogue.”
“Oh. Yes, of course,” Sam said, but frowned at the realization as he turned to spear Allie with a look.
“Did you see the vam—” Lucian began, but stopped abruptly as he started to say vampires. Shock and then disgust crossed his face before he said, “Did you see the rogues she said had found her?”
“No,” Allie said apologetically. “I did look around to try to spot them, but it was very dark and there was no one on the streets.”
“But you have seen them since,” he said with certainty, and she supposed the fact that she was no longer living in Calgary probably gave that away.
“About a week after Stella died, I heard a noi
se in the backyard and looked out to see a man creeping toward the house. He was just a darker shape in the night, but then the moonlight, or maybe the lights from the neighboring houses, reflected off his eyes. Seeing that, I knew at once that he was one of the vampires Stella was so terrified of. Her eyes glowed like that in the night, and she had said it was the easiest way to identify one. So when I saw that, I just freaked. I immediately gathered up Liam, rushed to the garage, jumped in the car, and fled.” Allie grimaced and then finished with, “And we’ve been running ever since. The first stop was Edmonton, but there have been countless cities and towns between then and now. Toronto is just the latest in a long line of them.”
“They keep tracking you down?” Magnus asked with a frown.
Allie nodded and said with frustration, “I don’t know how. I left everything behind. I didn’t even take clothes other than what Liam and I were wearing. I had to replace them in Edmonton when I got there. I also got rid of my cell phone, and stopped using credit cards. Hell, I even drive hours from where I’m living when I have to go to the bank, just in case they can track my banking activity, but they keep finding me.”
There was silence for a minute, and then Magnus asked, “Did you keep the same car throughout?”
“Yes,” Allie admitted, glancing at him with surprise. “You think they’ve been tracking the car?”
He hesitated, but then said, “It is a possibility. It sounds like that is the only thing that has gone with you from place to place, except for Liam.”
“Well, that won’t be a problem this time,” Tybo pointed out. “Your car is still in the parking lot of your apartment building, and we’re taking a helicopter to Port Henry. They won’t be able to follow.”
Allie hoped he was right. It would be nice not to be looking over her shoulder for a change. It would be nice too not to have to give up blood to Liam, and even just to be able to talk about this stuff with someone. Those things were making Port Henry seem as attractive as a luxury resort in a tropical locale, she thought, and then glanced to Lucian with curiosity and asked, “Why haven’t you asked me to describe the rogues I’ve spotted over the last four years, or if I recall the head guy’s name yet?”