by Dawn Gray
"I understand that, but being alone at this time of night could give that jackass husband of yours the opportunity he needs to get you out of the way." Quinn sighed and rubbed his neck. "If you want to be alone, why can't you do it inside where you're safe?"
"I don't feel any safer inside that building than I do out here in the darkness. Actually, that's not true. I feel safer in the dark than I do in there. I always have," I told him.
"If I leave you alone, will you promise not to venture far?" He questioned.
"If I promise not to venture far, will you leave me alone? I don't mean out of just my sight either. I mean totally alone?"
"You know that I can't do that."
"Then, I can't promise anything."
"Why do you insist on being so stubborn?"
"Why do you boys insist that I am some sort of relic that needs to be guarded?"
"You really know how to push my buttons," he crossly said to me and I could hear the frustration in his voice.
"Yeah, turns you on, doesn't it?" I said sarcastically.
"Now, that wasn't very nice."
"I'm not in a nice mood."
"Can't we make a compromise?" He asked me and walked closer.
"No!" I answered and he stopped in is tracks. "I'm not being funny, Quinn. I'm being serious. I need my space."
"You need space?" He asked and crossed his arms, and then nodded as if he were trying to agree. "When you don't need space anymore, come and get me."
With that, he started to walk away.
"Quinn?" I said after him, but he disappeared into the darkness. "Men are so stubborn!"
I walked slowly up to David's door and knocked. There was a faint answer from the other side and I walked in. David looked at me and then back out the window.
"I thought you would be healed by now and back on your way to Victor," I said and sat on the end of the bed.
"Why can't you just leave me alone?"
"I want to know where my son is David," I told him and walked over to the window to stand beside him. "You have only two choices, from what I see. You can either tell me willingly, or I could have Quinn take it from you forcefully."
"I could get killed if Victor ever found out I told you about him."
"No, no, David. You're thinking about this the wrong way. Just think of how happy Victor will be when he finds out that you lead a powerless mortal right to his doorsteps, why he might just give you a promotion. He could imprison me, take my son, raise hell on Earth and you could be standing next to him, right by his side." I smiled at him and clapped my hands just to give him the impression that this would be how it would end. "Then again," his smile faded, "how long you stand beside him depends exactly on how long it takes me to rip out his ugly black heart and burn it on a stake!"
"I knew you were going to say something like that," David said and looked back out the window.
"Take a chance, David. Go for the gusto. Besides, with all my nonexistent powers how long do you think I'll last before he crushes me?" I smiled, laying it on thick. "I mean, come on, it's just one little girl. Just small, petite, little me against big, bad Victor."
"He lives out on Newport Island," David said and looked up at me after a long moment of silence. I nodded, kind of the way you would when someone had something less than important to say.
"In Rhode Island?" I questioned.
"He lives at the end of Witch Haven Road, in a large yellow mansion. He has many guards but if you go around back to the tunnel you can get in pretty easily," David blurted out.
"So, you will tell him that I'm coming?" I asked him. David nodded and this made me smile. He had no clue. "Good, I'll be looking forward to seeing him. Get well soon, David. I can't go unless you send the announcement that I'm coming soon."
I smiled at myself as I left the room then walked back to my own room. As I closed the door, the walls started to spin and the windows bowed in, as if the room was going to collapse. I closed my eyes and blindly made my way to the bed, where I laid down and fell asleep, fully dressed.
My room was full of light when I opened my eyes, but it was also full of sounds. I could hear everyone in the house and this included all three other boys that I wasn't supposed to be able to hear. I sat up straight and looked around, then closed my eyes and tried to find Michael's presence in the house. He was down in the cellar and it was hard to call to him, until I yelled.
Michael!
What? He asked me with an annoyed voice.
I can hear them, I said, ecstatically.
Who, Ash, who can you hear?
Julian, Quinn, and David. I can hear their thoughts.
Impossible, he said, then sounded quite interested. I’ll be up in a moment.
Michael looked at me as I grinned quite widely at him. He paced around the room, with his hand cupping his chin and thought about what I had told him for a moment.
"I don't believe it," he said as he sat by me on the bed and touched his fingers to my forehead. He concentrated on my mind and smiled as he heard the thoughts of the other three vampires in the house, then he broke away and shook his head. "It's got to have something to do with your heritage. No other vampire I know can hear the thoughts of others that they aren't connected to."
"I'm sure that no others that you know can levitate dishes and spin them around the room, either," I giggled at him. He smiled back at me and nodded.
"How very true," he murmured. "You know what this means, don't you?"
"If I did, I wouldn't have called you up here in the first place. What were you doing anyway?" I questioned.
"Never mind that, what it means is that you are a very powerful vampire, possibly the reason that you are meant to be Queen. Of course, there's always the problem with the King part, isn't there?" He smiled as I rolled my eyes at him. "These are delicate moments, Ash. You must use caution with these new powers so that no one will get hurt."
"Speaking of hurt, I think I need to find Quinn," I sighed and crawled out of bed.
"Why, is he hurt?"
"No, he misunderstood something I said last night and we parted on rather bad terms. I wanted to find him to tell him what I really meant." I sighed and looked at him as he still sat on the bed. "I'll talk to you more later, Mike."
"Take it easy on him. You know his temper." Michael smiled. I opened the door and left the room.
Quinn was standing by the wall of the patio, looking over the green grass. I could hear his mumbled thoughts about things that I really didn't understand, but as I stepped up to him, he never seemed to notice my presence. I reached out my hands and touched his back. As I moved them up and down his strong back, I felt his muscles tightening, his breathing started to get heavy, as if my touch aroused him. It wasn't just that though, it was the pulsating feeling, which had become quite strong again. His body shook, as if it had gotten a chill, then he relaxed and let his head droop downward.
"I'm sorry about last night," I whispered to him.
“I mistook it," Quinn said softly. "I know that you need your time and space. We all do." He turned and looked at me suddenly, taking my hands in his. "Ash, I'm afraid to leave you alone. I know that it's overprotective and that you don't like that, but I feel like something bad might happen to you and that worries me."
"I'm not going to just up and disappear. I'd tell you were I was going." I smiled at him, and then talked with my mind. I can read your mind now.
"How?" He questioned.
I don’t know, it just started happening. It makes me feel better knowing that we have this link, in case anything did happen. No one expects me to be able to do this. I smiled at him and then sighed. "I need to ask you a few questions, Quinn. They may be hard to answer, but they're important, and if you could try to help me, I'd appreciate it."
"Fine, but not here." He took my hand and we walked towards the entrance to the tunnels under the patio. As we entered them, I noticed that we walked in the same direction as he did the night I followed him in alone.
"To my room,” he said with a bit of a smile in his voice.
"I thought your room was in the house with the others," I queried, and then thought about the fact that I had never seen Quinn's room so why would I think that it was in the house. Knowing Quinn and the way he works, I should have known it was some place secret. I watched him stop at a wall and touch one side of it. A locked popped and the door opened a little bit. He smiled at me and we began to make our way into the darkness.
After we had gone in about fifty feet, Quinn reached up and flipped a switch and I watched as the string of lights flickered on down the dark hallway. We ventured further and I began to see large stone coffins in their own little rooms, then some spots with no coffins, but holes dug out of the walls and bodies placed in them. I stopped Quinn as we passed a place where it seemed that the bodies were a little small.
"Children," he sadly whispered in my ear, as if he were respecting the dead's privacy. "They thought that having them together would let their spirits come together in the afterlife, so they wouldn't be alone."
"So they could play with other children," I said softly as a response. He touched my forehead with his lips as I thought about Jack.
"Our children are worth more to us than the adults, for they are our future," he said, and then tugged on my hand to lead me on down the hall. We passed several more tombs and coffins before we reached a room with a door, under it I could see the light. I watched as Quinn fiddled with a key before getting it unlocked and letting us in. "Home sweet home."
I looked at his ‘room’, which was actually two. The first one that you walked into, though made out of stone, was the sitting room and the furniture was quite expensive. I let go of his hand and walked towards the opening to the second room. I drew back the long black curtain that hung as a door, and peeked in there. In the middle of the room was a large, king-sized bed, with only a base, no frame or headboard. It looked very comfortable. In the corner, dug into the stone, was rather large closet with wooden-sliding doors. I looked back at Quinn, who had made himself comfortable on the sofa that took up most of the room.
"So, what do you think?" He asked and smiled at me.
"It's definitely you." I smiled at him and sat down on the couch sideways so that I was facing him. "Why down here?"
"It's where I went after you left, when Julian went into the dark and Michael left. I couldn't leave here, so I built a room for myself, so that I could stay undetected." He smiled at me.
"But, why stay here now?"
"So, that I can be alone when I want to think about things, about you," he replied and touched my hair.
"Can you tell me about you and Victor?" I asked suddenly. He nodded and rubbed his eyes, and then he got comfortable on the seat and closed his eyes.
"I suppose Julian told you about our parents and how Victor adopted us?" He asked and opened one eye. I nodded and took his hand. "After Julian disappeared one night, I thought he had abandoned me. I didn't know that Victor changed him; I just thought that he was gone and he had left me alone. As the years went by, and after Julian let himself be known, I started to see Victor in a different way. I was frightened of him, after finding out what he really was, but at the same time I was fascinated, probably had a little bit of hero worship going on too."
"So, what happened between the two of you? Why did he do this to you?" I whispered as I ran my fingers from his temple to behind his ear.
"I'm not sure why he did it, but what happened was simply that I had fallen in love with this beautiful girl. She looked much like you and had quite a bit of your attitude as well. When I started to see more of her and less and less of Victor, I think he was jealous.”
"One night, after she had left, I walked up to Victor and told him that we were engaged to be married and that her father wanted me to live with them and join the family business. Victor got so angry and distraught that he destroyed most of the furniture in the room. I stood back and watched in horror as he changed right in front of me. He didn't even resemble the man I had known when his anger took over. He came after me and we started to fight, but he was too strong and he grabbed me and bit me. I knew then what had happen to Julian that night. He knew what Victor was, and begged us to leave, but this was his way of keeping us there." Quinn turned in the seat and looked at me, straight in the eyes. He touched my face and smiled softly. "This is why I get so upset to think about you out there alone. He's very powerful and you're very special to the others and I."
"But you left him, didn't you, and came here?" I questioned. He nodded slightly.
"But, it took us a long time to do it," Quinn replied, taking my hand, "and, even then, he followed us and keeps in constant contact. When you arrived, that summer, he was here."
"He was here, in this house?" I asked and watched him nod again. "Was that the evil I felt?"
"Yes, and he was also the reason we left." Quinn stood up and walked over to the bookshelf. He ran his hands along the long row of books then turned and looked at me again. "Julian and I were arguing about you one night, that there was something special about you and that you were dangerous. I was the one who thought that you could get us caught, but Julian told me you would never do anything to harm us. Stupid me. If I had only listened to my brother, Victor would have never gotten involved.
"He called us back; all four of us, to his home in France and brought us before a Council. It was an elders’ Council and we weren't there to be judged or anything, they just wanted to know about you. Julian wouldn't say anything, neither would Mike, but David talked quite a bit and, despite the fact that I thought you were just some fifteen-year-old brat, he made me mad.
"David and I fought about your safety and then, after they had been in a sort of meeting with each other, the Council came back out and told us that we should have nothing more to do with you. That you held a very dark secret that could harm us all." Quinn smiled at this and then shook his head. "Who would have thought that the spoiled little brat that we had left back here would be our Queen, let alone have a dark secret."
"I don't have any dark secrets, give me a break." I smiled and rubbed my eyes. "Well, besides the fact that I discovered my parents were both vampires, I think my life is pretty normal."
"The old woman, one of the oldest vampires there, told Julian to stop whatever it was the two of you were doing."
"Or they would have to be destroyed," I whispered.
"Yes, how did you know?"
"When you came back, after those eight months, and I had learned what you really were, some old woman, with a hunched back and a cane came to my house, with a man dressed as a priest and sat there telling my parents that they had given me to them because they thought my parents could protect me. I’d gotten involved with others of my kind, that I had been told too much all ready, and it must be stopped or they will have to be destroyed," I said and looked at the wall. "It's the reason we moved away, and the reason they tried to make me forget."
Quinn walked over, sat by me again on the couch, and kissed my cheek as a tear slid down my face. I hugged him tightly, but the pulsating feeling made me break away faster than I wanted to.
"We can't be afraid of this, Ash," he whispered in my ear as he kissed my neck.
"I know but I can't help but think that if I had stayed here, I would have found you sooner," I said quietly to him. He back away, only a few inches and looked into my eyes, his lips within an inch of mine. "We could have started so long ago."
"No, Julian was there, with you, at that time. I wouldn't have been able to help you like he did; I believed that you had a purpose and that none of us should be involved in it," he replied with a bit of seriousness in his voice.
"She said if I stayed any longer that I would have found out what they were trying so hard to protect me from," I thought aloud. "What could that possibly be?"
"Us," he answered. "They were trying to protect you from us, from Julian."
"From this?" I responded and touched his chest, letting the feeling take me over. "Do you think they knew that this would happen, that we would be together? Do you think that it was you they were trying to protect me from?"
"No, no. I mean, I hope not," he said and looked down at my lips, realizing that we hadn't moved that we were trying desperately not to give in, or to break away.
"But, maybe that was it," I whispered. He closed his eyes and back away a bit. He was going to get up, tell me that I was nuts, because why would we be a problem. "Quinn, listen. After Julian told me that he loved me, that morning at breakfast, I followed you down into the tunnel. I heard what you said to him. That we weren't supposed to meet, let alone fall in love, and that I was important to Victor. What did that mean, important to him?"
Quinn sat there thinking for a moment, and then he sat forward and covered his eyes with his hands. He sat in silence, then suddenly, after that brief moment, he straightened up and uncovered his eyes. He turned and looked at me with such shock that I didn't think he would ever find his words.
"I know why you were so important to Victor and the others. It has been sitting there in the back of my mind and it just wouldn't come forward." He took my hand. "You weren't supposed to meet Julian, or me for that matter. They knew that this would happen, he wasn't supposed to love you, and you weren't supposed to love him. It was the baby, the prince. If your relationship with Julian had continued then you would have never met Jack, and your son would have never been born. You were important to Victor because he was important to Victor. Oh God Ash, I could have stopped this. I could have stopped this whole thing, but I didn't."
"You knew that Victor wanted to take my baby?" I asked him. He nodded and reached out for me as I stood up this time. "Then, you must have known about Jack."
"No, no, all I knew was that there was someone that you were supposed to meet, someone that was supposed to be the baby's father. He was picked out for you, so that your son would be very powerful," he replied looking at me, pleading with me to believe him.