by A C Warneke
“Why’s that?” the Aradian asked. His name was Jiro and Jack understood that the man was his babysitter, despite the fact that he was no longer a vampire. The man had bleached blond hair and a multitude of diamonds that sparkled in the tropical sun. He also had brilliant silver-green eyes and for the first time in his life he could actually see the difference between a vampire and an Aradian. Malorie had always known, even when it seemed impossible, but that was Malorie.
In all of his time with Taella, he had never even known Aradians existed, that Taella was an Aradian and not a vampire. But her eyes were dull compared to this Aradian, whose eyes blazed with untainted power. Chucking another rock at the ocean, he spat out, “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I shouldn’t be a stranger to my own child. I shouldn’t be apart from my wife.”
“She’s no longer your wife, Jack,” Jiro said with a hint of sympathy, though his conviction was firm. “She’s mated to an Aradian and there is nothing you can do.”
“I could fight for her,” Jack ground out, knowing the futility of his words before he even spoke them but determined to at least try.
Jiro threw his head back and laughed, the diamonds winking in the sunlight, mocking Jack’s pain. “You do not understand the nature of a Breeder, Jack. They live and breathe for their Aradian mate and I have never seen a bond as… complete and all-encompassing as the one that binds my brother and your former wife.”
“Bonds can be broken,” Jack said with sullen conviction, ignoring the unease in his gut. Malorie wasn’t the same girl he knew all of those years ago, the sheltered fighter that worshiped her father and fought even though it was apparent she hated it. Of course, he wasn’t the same boy who idolized the man who had taken him in after his own family had been killed. He wasn’t the twenty-one year old virgin who worshipped Malorie. He was no longer innocent.
“Not this one,” Jiro said, shaking his head as silent laughter continued to shake his body. “Unless my brother wishes it broken it will remain and I doubt my brother will ever wish it broken.”
“Does he at least love her?” Jack asked softly, remembering seeing the two of them in the window after he woke up in the ditch. He hadn’t wanted to admit it, but she had never looked more beautiful than when she smiled up at the black-haired man.
“Love shouldn’t be a factor,” Jiro said, his words trailing off as a thoughtful frown wrinkled his forehead, “My brother has known countless women and yet Malorie is the only one he has loved so perhaps I am wrong and it is a factor. Gods know an Aradian has never been marked before and he wears her mark with absurd pride.”
Jack didn’t fully understand what the other man was talking about but he knew enough to realize Malorie’s new partner wouldn’t give her up easily. If she wished it, Jack would take on the world to keep her safe, including this new man in her life. Shading his eyes from the sun, he looked at his son and he knew he would die for the little boy. “What am I supposed to do? The moment I became a vampire I lost everything but now I’m no longer a vamp and I still have nothing.”
“Which leads me to the reason you’re here,” Jiro said, all business now as he faced Jack. Startled, Jack turned back and tried not to wither beneath the Aradian’s penetrating gaze. “How did you recover?”
Jack shook his head and shrugged his shoulders since he had gone over this a million times in the days since he woke up in the ditch. “I was a vampire and then I wasn’t.”
“Walk me through it,” Jiro prompted, his silver-green eyes darkening as he seemed to look into Jack’s soul. “Start with the evening your group attacked the human village on the nearby island.”
Closing his eyes, Jack forced himself to remember the time he desperately tried to forget. He hated the squirming, crawly feeling that rippled through him when he remembered what it was like to be a vampire, to be cold and… dead. How could it have ever felt like life? “We were in one of the frat houses…. Taella liked setting up shop in frat houses. She liked surrounding herself with young, human males who were easily impressed with beauty and sex. Being on college campuses provided her with an endless supply of donors, though she didn’t convert many college kids.
“She preferred vamps with little or no ties,” he continued from the things he had pieced together through the years. “College kids were for fun and fucking.”
“The day of the attack,” Jiro interrupted, encouraging him to remain on track.
“Right,” Jack said with a rueful grin. “We were sitting around half-starved because Taella had promised us a special treat if we didn’t eat for a week. Most of us obeyed without question because she was Taella, our creator, our goddess.”
Jiro snorted but quickly covered his mouth with his hand but Jack had heard. Now that he was no longer under her influence, he understood the derision but he still couldn’t laugh about it. Glancing at his son, still quietly playing in the sand, he continued, “She took those of us who hadn’t fed through this… blackness and a few minutes later we were standing on a beach in the middle of the night. I remember thinking that it smelled clean, pure, and the scent of healthy humans hung heavily in the air.
“She stood before us and explained that a feast had been prepared for us and that we’d be able to drink until death, all except for a single human who was hers,” he continued, shuddering at the excitement that had filled the air as her meaning sank in: they would be able to kill their prey. For a vampire who had never killed, the thought had been exhilarating and he remembered the anticipation of his first kill. He also remembered the rage he had felt when she had held him back and told him he wasn’t allowed to kill, could only drink, because that she had something special in store for him.
“None of you had ever taken a human life before?” Jiro asked, surprise evident in his voice.
“Other than creating vampires, none of us had ever outright killed a human.” Jack shook his head no, “Not until that night at least. She unleashed a horde of ravenous vampires upon a village of unsuspecting humans and they never stood a chance. Of course, she hadn’t counted on Malorie.”
At the thought of his wife, he smiled to himself. “I was with Taella when word of a Blood Soldier was amongst the helpless villagers and instead of reacting with fear or anger, she had smiled and said, ‘Ah, yes, my little gift for you, Jack.’ She drained me before reuniting me with my beloved wife and she told me I was allowed to convert her.”
His words trailed off as he thought about how close he came to condemning Malorie to a life she never wanted, a life she would have despised. Had he succeeded in converting her, he firmly believed she would have been able to break the ties between creator and created and she would have killed Taella. Shuddering, he shook his head, “I drank and drank but her blood seemed never ending. I gorged and feasted until I thought I would burst but before I could finish, there was a blinding light and then I woke up human.”
“How much of Malorie’s blood did you drink?” Jiro asked, narrowing his eyes as his lips quivered with excitement.
“God, all of it,” Jack grumbled, pressing his hand against his stomach as if he could still feel it burning his gut. If it hadn’t been for the light, he was pretty sure the blood would have burned through his entire body and it would have killed him.
“Before you became a vampire did you ever notice anything… unique about Malorie?” Jiro asked, the abrupt change of subject jolting Jack out of his memories. When Jack simply stared, Jiro waved his hands as if it would jog Jack’s brain, “Think, Jack.”
With a frown, he concentrated on his life before he died and became a vampire. “She was… quiet. Always watching, learning, and figuring things out and I think I fell in love with her the first time I saw her.”
“Jesus, does this woman have magic tits or something?” Jiro sneered under his breath. Seeing Jack’s frown, he offered a smile, “Never mind me. Please, continue.”
“Well, um, the first time we made love a field of flowers sprouted up around us,” Jack reluctantly admitt
ed. Remembering the first time he made love to Malorie filled him with bittersweet emotion because she had been so beautiful and scared and he had been so desperate to finally have her that he hadn’t done more for her. He had taken her without finesse and hadn’t slowed down to savor each and every moment.
Not wanting to talk about the first time, he cleared his throat, “And, um, whenever she got a cut and a few drops of blood spilled, a patch of grass would grow where the blood touched. It was the damnedest thing, really, because no one else seemed to connect Malorie’s injuries to the random patches of grass.”
Jiro’s eyes grew wide as a grin split his face, “You are a genius! Of course! The answer was in front of us the entire time, Jack. Her blood!”
Confused, Jack simply stared at the man, who stood up and began pacing the beach in agitated excitement. “Her blood, Jack, don’t you see? You were a vampire and you drank the blood of a Breeder. A Breeder exudes life, able to bring a dead plant back to life. Her blood brought you back to life! Gods, this is incredible! Do you understand what it could mean?”
Jack looked at Toby and met his son’s eyes. The little boy shrugged his shoulders and went back to playing, making Jack smile. Slowly, not sure if the Aradian truly wanted an answer, he admitted, “I don’t understand.”
“A cure for vampirism!” Jiro shouted, his eyes lit with righteous glee. A frown marred his forehead as he looked between Jack and Toby, “I want to get started on this right away but I have to babysit.”
Jack snorted, “Where will I go?”
Jiro nodded his head, his thoughts already miles away. “If you try to make a run for it I’ll kill you.”
“And risk upsetting mommy?” Toby asked innocently.
“She’s not my mate,” Jiro answered with a smile, squatting down in front of Toby and ruffling the little boy’s hair. “Keep an eye on the vampire, Toby.”
“He’s not a vampire anymore,” Toby countered with an easy grin, making Jack feel left out of his little boy’s life once again. At least if the prison guard left, he’d be able to have some one on one time with his son.
As soon as the Aradian disappeared, Jack asked, “So, do you like living on the island?”
Toby’s face lit up in a grin and he saw Malorie in that smile, making his breath catch in his throat because she had so rarely smiled. “I love it.”
Jack was at a loss, since that was the extent of questions he could think of to ask a six-year-old boy. Absently, he reached out and built up one of the outside walls of the sand castle, racking his brain for something, for anything, to say. A little hand smoothed the sand down and when he looked, Toby was smiling up at him, “It helps if you use water.”
“Thank you,” Jack smiled, love and fear swarming in his chest. It was strange that he should fear an innocent child but he did. The boy was so trusting and he was afraid of breaking that trust, of disappointing him, of being despised by him because Jack had been a monster. But there was no revulsion in the little boy’s smile as he patiently demonstrated the best way to make a sand castle.
“What was it like?” Toby asked in a soft voice a few minutes later. He was looking at him with those big, brown eyes and Jack didn’t know what to say, how to answer the impossible question. “What was it like being a vampire?”
“It was cold,” he finally answered with a shudder. “You don’t realize how cold you are because of the magic that keeps you alive but it was cold. And it was lonely.”
He hadn’t realized how lonely he had been because there were always so many of them congregated in the same place at the same time but there hadn’t been any friendships, not really. They had blind devotion to Taella and he supposed that is what bound them together but there was no love amongst the vampires. All of their love was for Taella, their creator, the vampire who hadn’t really been a vampire.
It had never occurred to him that she was anything other than a vampire. While she was the primary creator of vampires, all of them had been allowed to create vampires as well, though their creations had always been weaker. Jack had assumed it was because they were lesser vampires, not because they were created by a vampire instead of an Aradian. Besides, none of the other vampires had been as strong as him because he had fed the most from Taella, who had favored him in her own, twisted way.
“I’m glad I’m human again,” Jack finally murmured, not wanting to think about Taella because he had loved her with blind devotion. When he had been a vampire he had loved her more than his own life, more than his family. More than Malorie.
“Do you think Uncle Jiro is right?” Toby asked softly, reluctantly. “That momma’s blood can bring a vampire back to life?”
“Yeah,” he answered after a thoughtful moment. “I guess I do, since she brought me back.”
Toby lowered his voice and leaned even closer, “Do you think my blood could bring vamps back?”
“It’s not something I want to find out,” Jack said, cringing at the thought of a monster biting his son. He would break the vamp’s neck if he ever got close enough to harm his son. The overwhelming need to keep Toby safe surged through his veins and he knew that he would do anything to protect him, including taking him off this god-forsaken island if need be.
Malorie’s judgment was compromised by her relationship with the Aradian, much as his had been when he had been under Taella’s influence. He wouldn’t do anything right away but he’d come up with a plan as he kept an eye on things. At the first sign of trouble he would take Toby and bolt. Hell, he’d take Malorie, too, whether she wanted to go or not. It was for her own good because he knew what it was like to be under the influence of someone so much more powerful.
Poor Malorie. She was just as much a prisoner of her Aradian as he had been of Taella.
After a few minutes of companionable silence, Toby quietly asked, “Daddy, can we take a walk?”
“Of course,” Jack answered quickly, moved that his son wanted to spend some more time with him. Standing up, he brushed his sandy hands off on his shorts, held out his hand and held his breath. When Toby smiled and immediately slid his tiny hand into his larger one, Jack released the air and grinned like a fool. The two of them walked away from the ocean towards an area that was lush with vegetation. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a little spot where momma lets me create,” Toby answered absently, tugging on Jack’s hand to hurry him up. With one last look around them, Toby led Jack into a thick grove that was completely hidden from the beach. Trees bursting with ripe fruit filled the small space and Jack could only stare at his son in wonder. “Momma says it’s best if we don’t let them see all of my potential because they might not let me go if they knew.”
So she wasn’t completely under the Aradian’s thrall. Following his son’s lead, Jack sat down on the ground and watched in fascination as Toby thrust his hands into the soil and a small plant broke through the ground. Toby looked up at him with serious eyes and murmured, “Mommy can do this and so much more. She’s very powerful.”
He knew that Malorie had an affinity with plants but he had never realized the full extent of her talents. “That’s amazing.”
“Can you do it?” Toby asked in all earnestness.
Jack couldn’t help but smile as he shook his head no, “Unfortunately, I’m just a man, Toby. I can’t make a plant grow.”
Lowering his voice, Toby softly urged, “Will you try?”
Why not? Humoring his child, he put his hand into the soft ground and felt a strange buzzing along his spine. It radiated outwards and he almost pulled his hands free until Toby breathed, “Concentrate, daddy.”
His heart trembled in his chest as a few blades of grass struggled upwards, shaking with new and uncertain growth. It was nothing compared to Toby’s abilities but it was far, far more than he had ever expected. Staring at his son, he asked, “What do you think it means?”
Toby smiled at him, pleased with himself, “I saw it in you, daddy, the spark.”
After Jack t
ucked his son into bed, he went outside to sit on the veranda to enjoy the tropical night and plot the rescue of Malorie and Toby. He was still reeling with the discovery that he was like his wife and son, though nowhere near as powerful. At the beach, the two of them had spent another half hour in the hidden grove making plants grow, Toby’s encouragement the only thing that kept him from giving into anger that he couldn’t manage more than a few blades of grass.
If they escaped… no, when they escaped, the three of them could open a nursery and he’d be able to hone his new skills. Maybe it was only a matter of time before he could grow a lush grove like his son.
“You can’t escape,” Jiro murmured as he sat down next to Jack. “Even if you somehow managed to make it off this island, make it back to your time line, my brother will never let Malorie go. He will track you down and destroy you for taking what is his.”
Jack ground his teeth together, trying to contain his fury at the bastard’s words, his utter conviction. “She’s not here of her own free will.”
Jiro snorted, “The only reason she’s here is because of her free will.”
“I know how Aradians work,” Jack ground out. “You get into people’s heads and fuck with their minds. You mark them, change them, and consider them pets.”
“Yeah,” Jiro sighed with a fond chuckle. “Unfortunately, my brother genuinely loves Malorie and even when he tried to let her go she refused to leave.”
Rage pierced Jack’s gut because he had never asked to be made into a vampire, he had never asked to lose everything that mattered to him, and he had never asked to be brought back. What was left for him? Toby. He had Toby and he would hold onto his son with everything, even if that meant staying in the Aradian compound and watching the woman he loved live her life with someone else.