“Stop it,” the Dark Lord growled, peering at her with eyes that started to glow with silver flecks.
“Let us go,” Melissa growled back at him. “We don’t want any trouble. Let us go.”
“I said, stop it,” the Dark Lord argued, his voice rising with menace. Darkness started to curl up from the floor, and she could feel it pressing in on her knees, her thighs, as it slowly rose. Perspiration beaded on her lip as the darkness rose on a level with her chest, embracing her with a strength that was almost crushing. She panted, trying to catch her breath, but didn’t release the grip of her magic.
“Leave her alone,” Hunter exclaimed as he rose to his feet. He clasped both hands in front of him, and a swathe of light appeared, cutting through the fog of darkness that was even now trying to swallow Melissa. The surrounding Darkken gasped, some calling out in surprise and fear.
The Dark Lord turned to Hunter, and Melissa felt the darkness lift around her, just a little, as the albino warrior focused on the man who managed to split his gloom with the sharp length of light.
She could see the strain on the Dark Lord’s face as he battled both Melissa’s psychic attack and Hunter’s physical one.
“Stop it, all of you,” a woman’s voice commanded from the side of the room. Footsteps echoed across the stone parquetry, and Melissa noticed boots with narrow heels stride into the corner of her vision, followed by two shapely legs covered in dark leather, and a coat that almost touched the floor.
“Mother,” the Dark Lord growled, his expression fierce as he eyed Hunter, both of them battling to overpower the other with their talents. “This does not concern you.”
“Of course it concerns me,” the woman snapped, and Melissa tore her gaze away from the men to briefly eye the newcomer. Her dark hair hung like a curtain down her back, threaded with streaks of gray. She was an older woman, slim and still attractive. She eyed the two men with something that bordered on exasperation. “It concerns me when my son tries to kill his brother.”
Both Hunter and the Dark Lord blinked, and Melissa’s eyebrows rose as Hunter twisted to peer over his shoulder. The light in his hands flickered out, and his face paled in shock.
“Mother?”
Chapter 17
Hunter shook his head. No. It couldn’t be.
The woman who approached smiled, her brown eyes sad. “Hello, Hunter.”
He blinked, and his thoughts stuttered to a halt. She—What—? How—?
“No.” He backed away from the hand she lifted toward him, and he saw the hurt that flickered briefly across those eyes, so similar to his own. “No, it can’t be. You’re dead.” The face that stared at him was exactly as he remembered it; lines around the corners of her eyes and mouth that deepened with her smiles, the soft skin of her rounded cheeks that pinkened like a cherub with her laughter, the softness of her lips for when she’d kiss him and his brother good-night...
No. This could. Not. Be.
“My brother?” The Dark Lord extinguished his black cloud, and turned from Hunter to his mother, and back again. Hunter could see the incomprehension in the man’s crystal blue eyes. At least the albino was just as surprised by this as he was.
“Griffin, this is your older half brother, Hunter,” the woman said softly. She eyed both of the men for a moment. “Hunter. You have a new baby brother.”
Hunter shook his head. “I don’t want a baby brother,” he exclaimed, and his mother gave him a tender smile tinged with humor.
“That’s what you said when I brought Ryder home to you,” she told him softly.
“Clear the hall,” Griffin called, and one dark-haired vamp standing closer than the others nodded, then started guiding all of the gathered Darkken out of the hall.
Hunter stepped back as his mother reached for him, holding his hand up in warning.
“No. You died,” he said fiercely. “I went to your funeral, damn it. I even wore a tie.” It was such a trivial detail, but he’d always fought against the conservative, against anything expected of him—except for the day they’d entombed his mother. He would have done anything, worn anything, said anything, promised anything, to have his mother back.
She’d died, and he and his brother had mourned. He shook his head. This just didn’t make sense. “Was this all a lie?” His shoulders sagged at the thought. She’d drowned when the car she’d been driving plummeted over a cliff and into a lake. The rescue crews were fast on the scene, but he was told she’d been dead when she’d been pulled from the water. “Whose coffin did I cry over?”
Amelie tilted her head, her brown eyes stared at him solemnly. “Oh, I died, Hunter. That you can believe.”
The muscles in Hunter’s jaw clenched, and he lifted his hand to point from her head to her booted toes. “And yet, here you are. Riddle me that, Mother Dear.”
“My lover saved me,” Amelie admitted, and for a moment he saw his mother’s gaze flicker away. Then when she looked at him, her eyes glowed red, and her incisors lengthened. He heard Melissa’s gasp behind him but all he could do was stare at the woman who had once tucked him into bed and sung lullabies to him. The woman who was now a vampire. He shook his head, trying to make sense of it all. Then her words registered.
“Your lover?” Oh. My. God. That was news. It was the first he’d heard of his mother’s infidelity, and he wouldn’t have believed it if the detail had come from anyone else. But here he was, staring at what should have been a ghost. He ran his hand through his hair and turned away, meeting Melissa’s stunned gaze for a moment. She looked confused, confounded. Well, welcome to his hell. She stepped closer to him, and as he turned to face his mother again, he felt her hand slide into his. He almost pushed her away. He wasn’t the type to lean on anyone, to depend on anyone. He didn’t need anyone. His father had taught him that. Yet his fingers curled around Melissa’s, and he drew her a little closer to him.
“Explain,” he gritted. He lifted his chin. He was trying to hang on to his sanity, his calm, when all he wanted to do was release his light and screw the consequences.
“Yes, Mom, please do,” the Dark Lord urged softly as he folded his arms. No, what had she called him? Griffin? He eyed his so-called brother briefly. His brother. Seriously? Admittedly, the guy looked about as comfortable with the connection as he felt.
Amelie walked over and rested her hand on the Dar—Griffin’s shoulder. Hunter refused to call his brother by some fancy title. “I loved your father, Griff. Make no mistake.” She turned to face Hunter, grasping her other son’s hand. “I loved your father, too, Hunter, but I had no idea what he was really like until after the wedding.”
She lifted her chin. “He was quite cruel,” she stated calmly, and Hunter swallowed. He didn’t want to hear this. He knew his father could be a dick. Present situation, case in point. Knew he was a difficult man to live with, to please...but hearing the intimate details of his parents’ marriage was like sitting next to a banshee. Painful to the ears. Melissa’s thumb caressed the top of his knuckles, and he realized he was squeezing her hand tightly. He tried to relax his grip.
“Arthur was lovely at first. The perfect gentleman.” Amelie smiled dryly. “And then, on our wedding night, I discovered—”
“Mom, no, please.” Hunter held up his hand. He did not want to hear about their bedroom antics.
“I discovered the real reason your father married me was for my money,” Amelie finished in exasperation. “He made no secret how he viewed marrying the Galen girl and accessing her wealth was his biggest victory, so far.” Amelie shrugged. “He had such grand plans for building up a medical empire that would have all the shadow breeds relying on him... He loved manipulating people, me included.” She tilted her head, and Hunter watched the dark hair tumble over her shoulder, and the memory of her sitting at a dressing table, brushing the silken strands repeatedly, flare
d in his mind. He blinked and looked away. He wasn’t going to get sucked into some nostalgic fog that blurred the reality of what he was now facing. His mother had left. By choice.
“Your father treated me like a piece of art, to be trotted out to impress when needed, and to be ignored for the rest of the time. If I was lucky,” she added, her lips twisting. “And if I wasn’t—well, let’s just say your father had a unique way of using light.”
Hunter shuddered. He could only imagine, and damn it, he didn’t want to, because then he’d have to feel sympathy for his mother. He wouldn’t be able to give in to the anger that fluttered inside him.
“You cheated on him.” He said it as a statement. There was no accusation. His father was a jerk. He knew that. Accepted that. His mother and father were not a bonded pair.
Amelie smiled. “I fell in love,” she corrected. “Besides, I was not the first to sleep outside the marriage bed.”
Hunter grimaced. “Please. Don’t.” He did not want to hear or think about his parents’ sex life—or lack thereof. He was already going to need significant therapy after all of this. He drew his shoulders back. “So you found love and left your sons.” He nodded. That pretty much summed it up.
Her eyes narrowed. “I died, Hunter. The car I was driving went over a cliff, and I drowned. I did not leave you willingly.”
Hunter smiled grimly. “And yet, you didn’t come back. All this time, you’ve been living down here, and we’ve been living up there.” He gestured to the ceiling. “And you never once thought to come for your boys.” He glared at the albino. “But you stayed for him.”
He wanted to feel hatred for the man who had stolen his mother, but more than anything, the anger he felt didn’t even begin to compete with the hurt. “Was I so bad, Mother?” He whispered the words, and Amelie flinched in horror.
“No,” she breathed, shaking her head as she stepped toward him. Again, he retreated. He didn’t want her touch, didn’t want to crumble. His mother clasped her hands together, almost in a symbol of prayer. “Oh, Hunter, no.” She swallowed. “The night I died, it—it wasn’t an accident,” she whispered.
Hunter’s brow pulled into a deep V. “You did it on purpose?” Oh, hell, that was even worse.
“No!” Amelie’s lips tightened in exasperation. “No, I was murdered. My car’s brake lines were cut. I had no brakes as I went around that curve.” Her clasped hands shook and her eyes darkened as though focusing on a chilling memory. She looked over at Griffin, and smiled. “I was pregnant, and your father found out, knew the baby wasn’t his. If Griffin’s father hadn’t found us, both of us would have stayed dead.” She turned and met Hunter’s gaze evenly. “Just as your father planned.”
Hunter shook his head in disbelief. His father was a bastard, and yes, a man capable of murder, but to kill the mother of his children...? He swallowed, then dipped his head. Well, yeah. He could see that happening, sadly. “My father seems to be capable of the worst acts,” he commented, looking briefly at Melissa. Her green eyes were dark with shock.
“But when you—” He gestured to his mother, asking, “what, undied? Shifted?” He shook his head. That didn’t sound right. He’d treated vampires for all sorts of ills, and didn’t have any issues with them—or any of the other shadow breeds, really. He understood the mechanics of becoming a vampire. You needed to be fed a vampire’s blood by the next full moon after your death, and then had to feed by the full moon after that to complete the process. He had no name for the procedure, though.
“Metamorphosed,” his mother supplied.
He inclined his head. “Metamorphosed.” Of course. Like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. “When you metamorphosed, why didn’t you come back for us? You probably could have kicked the old man’s ass...”
Amelie smiled, but this time there was no denying the sadness and guilt in her gaze. “I tried. By the time I felt strong enough to face him, everything was legalized. I was dead. My will was read, my inheritance disbursed. It would have been terribly inconvenient for your father if I’d approached Reform Court for a reclassification.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “And he threatened to kill you and your brother if I came forward. I had two choices. I could try to claim you, try to rescue you, and you would die, or I could live below, with Griffin’s father, and all of us could live in peace.”
Hunter laughed, the sound harsh and tight in his throat as he remembered his childhood, about the continuous challenges his father had set for him and his younger brother, the constant attempts to gain his father’s approval and never quite winning it, and the woman his father had brainwashed in a twisted attempt to have his sons compete against each other to prove each other’s mettle.
“We didn’t live in peace.”
Amelie’s lips rubbed inward, and she nodded. She would have known what she’d left behind, what she’d left her sons to face on their own. He wondered what life would have been like, living with his mother instead of his father. Well, it was no use wishing for what couldn’t be—that ship had sailed long ago. He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to deal with it.
Didn’t want to face the fact his mother hadn’t died. She’d left.
Hunter faced the big, muscled albino. He already had a brother, damn it, and even that relationship was strained. This brother had powers like he’d never seen, but he suspected it was a result of the vampirism of the man’s sire warping the light force of his mother. Fine, he was curious—purely from a medical line of inquiry, he told himself. He’d survived this long without his mother, without the brother he didn’t know he had. He could plod along just fine without them.
“Now what?” he asked Griffin. Let him go, kill him for his crime—at this point in time, he really didn’t care. He was done. “Are you going to let us go, or punish me for defending myself?”
Griffin shrugged. “Beats me. I’ve never had to kill a brother before.” The albino folded his arms, his gaze assessing.
“And you’re not going to kill one now,” Amelie snapped. “You know the circumstances. Orion should have brought them to you, not tried to kill them on sight.”
“He was defending the perimeter,” Griffin growled. “And now we have a psychotic light warrior prepared to kill everyone he comes in contact with until he gets his son.”
Amelie faced her white-haired son, and Hunter could see the fury in her gaze. “That psychotic light warrior killed your mother,” she rasped. “What do you think he’ll do to your brother?”
“Stop calling him that,” Griffin snapped. “Just moments ago he was trying to kill me, him and his mate.”
“You started it,” Hunter called, and his younger brother rolled his eyes.
“You deserved it,” Griffin retorted.
“Oh, bite me,” Hunter returned.
“With pleasure,” Griffin said, his pale blue eyes darkening to a fiery purple, his teeth lengthening.
“Enough!” Amelie held up both her hands, eyes flashing. “For heaven’s sake, you’re acting like children.” She turned to Griffin. “Instead of focusing on your brother, focus on the real threat to your people, and you,” she said as she turned to face Hunter. “You will both be our guests—”
“Mother,” Griffin began, and Amelie shot him a dark look.
“Our guests,” Amelie repeated strongly. “Show them to a guest room, Griffin, so that they can rest. From what I understand, they’ve been on the run for some time.”
Hunter smirked as his brother rolled his eyes, the muscles in his jaw clenching as he beckoned over one of his men.
“Go to the light warrior,” Griffin instructed him. “Tell him I’m prepared to parlay, but if he kills any of the Darkken, I’ll hunt him down.”
The Darkken nodded, then strode from the room. Griffin glanced over at Hunter, not bothering to conceal his irritation, then lifted his chin in a jer
ky motion, indicating they follow him.
Hunter pulled Melissa along behind him. There was no way he’d leave her side while they were “guests” of the Darkken. His brother may have them under some sort of control—something he didn’t quite understand—but he didn’t trust them. Nothing personal, he didn’t trust anyone, really.
He glanced over his shoulder at the red-haired witch behind him. Except for one, maybe.
* * *
Melissa warily stepped past Griffin into the room he’d assigned them. She knew he had some vision limitations, but the man had an uncanny awareness, and a dark side that was more than just a thirst for blood. A shadow breed of a new dimension.
“What is this place?” Hunter asked, and Melissa looked away from the albino to take in the room. She gaped.
There was a large fireplace, with a roaring fire that provided the only illumination in the room. Still, the firelight was enough to see the four-poster bed butted up against one wall, with heavy golden drapes hanging from its canopy. A tapestry covered a large portion of one wall, and there was a leather settee and matching armchair facing the large fireplace, with a magnificent Persian rug covering most of the floor. A small lamp table sat between the chairs, and it bore a tray of bread, cheese and what looked like wine. A half-opened door revealed a private, marble bathroom. Melissa turned slowly.
It was—Wow.
Griffin smirked. “Apparently this belonged to some eccentric actor, back in the time before The Troubles. He built this mansion based on some castle in Old Scotland.” He glanced up at the ceiling. “I hear there are mansions just as ostentatious above.” A pale eyebrow rose as he looked over at Hunter for confirmation.
Hunter stepped over to the fireplace, holding his hands out. “Have you ever been? Above, I mean?”
Griffin’s expression grew somber, and he nodded. “Once. Didn’t like it.”
Melissa looked at the albino with curiosity. He sounded so serious, almost sad. Griffin straightened. “Anyway. Rest. I’ll have someone drop off some clothes for you to change into after you’ve slept. See you in the morning.” He backed out of the room before they could say anything, slamming the door shut and sliding the lock home.
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