by Kallysten
“Still raining?”
The question didn’t immediately make sense, but when he answered, Anando realized why Brett had asked.
“No, the storm passed.” He dropped his voice. “They could still come. I have a sunproof car, I could go get them.”
“All right,” Brett said with a light cough. “But… I don’t know if… The doctor said…” Another cough. Anando could smell blood. “Tell them I love them?”
Before Anando could say he would, Brett blinked and turned his gaze to the precious bundle Anando held so carefully.
“’S that her?”
“That’s her, yes,” Anando whispered. He shifted his hold on Emma, tugging the blanket to show more of her face. He angled her down so that Brett would see her better. “Meet Emma.”
“She’s beautiful.” Brett’s murmur was raspy, as though his vocal cords had been scrubbed with sandpaper.
Anando didn’t answer and frowned as he considered Brett’s eyes, a little unfocused and blurry. Could he even see Emma, truly see her? Or was he imagining what his body, already shutting down, wouldn’t let him see?
“Joy,” Brett said, so quietly that Anando wasn’t sure he had heard correctly.
“What?”
“Middle name. Joy.”
Brett’s eyes closed. These few words they were sharing had a cost.
Looking down at the child sleeping in his arms, Anando repeated her name. “Emma Joy.” A beautiful name for a beautiful child.
“Tell her…”
Brett let out a groan. One of the machines hooked to him emitted a strident sound. Emma’s tiny body jerked, and her eyes blinked open, her small mouth parting on a wail.
Such a quiet sound in the midst of too many noises, but it struck Anando right to the heart. She couldn’t know, of course not, that one of her parents was dying, so why did that wail seem so mournful, so reproachful?
“When she’s older,” Brett started again. “Tell her—”
“You could tell her yourself,” Anando cut in, his voice harsher than he meant it to be.
He kept his eyes on Emma, rocking her to soothe her, but his words were all for Brett. He’d never wanted this. He’d even run away from the possibility at times. He didn’t mind being a vampire—he was aware of all the things he’d never have experienced if he had remained human—but becoming a Sire had always been more than he could see himself doing. He saw the responsibility as tremendous, something he wasn’t ready for.
Things had changed in the past months, though, and especially now with Emma’s arrival. This responsibility wasn’t one he had thought himself ready for, either, and yet he had never doubted that he would be at Virginia’s side the entire time. This wouldn’t be the same but in a way, it wouldn’t be all that different.
And anyway, this wasn’t about him right now. It wasn’t about his fears or doubts. It was about the man dying in this bed—about the child who would have his eyes, or his hair. Maybe the shape of her face would resemble his, or maybe her eyes would crinkle like Brett’s did when he laughed. Would Anando be able to look at her without seeing Brett’s shadow? Would she know his guilt if he didn’t at least make the offer?
Sometimes, life wasn’t about one’s own wants and desires. Sometimes, one had to go beyond what was comfortable and do what was necessary instead. What was right. He’d teach that to Emma, some day. Or maybe Brett would. Maybe they’d do it together.
“Yes or no, Brett. I’m only going to ask this once.”
* * * *
The storm had passed, leaving the streets of Haventown wet and slick. Even a couple hours of sunshine hadn’t been enough to dry them yet, and the sliver of moon reflected in puddles broke into tiny shards every time the motorcycle splashed through water.
Leo drove fast, the way he always did, but fear never entered Lisa’s mind. The bike might as well have been an extension of Leo’s body. It leaned, turned, sometimes seemed close to falling, but always came back to balance—much like all their lives in the past few months. Hopefully, the road ahead of them would be smoother, safer.
A frisson traversed Lisa, and she tightened her arms around Leo, her face pressed to his back.
Brett had been at the hospital for hours. He hadn’t called.
He must have been too busy or too distracted. Lisa could understand that. She wanted to understand it. Better that than to feel hurt by his oversight. Better that than to be jealous, and she had promised herself she would not be jealous.
She wasn’t losing Brett to this child. It had taken her some time to understand that, but now she knew it, and she held that truth in her mind as tightly as she held the plush toy in her hand.
Someone new was entering her life. No one was leaving. And just because change had been painful in the past, it didn’t mean that she would get hurt this time. A hard lesson to learn, but an important one, too. Lisa hoped she wouldn’t forget again.
She’d tried to imagine what things would be like in five years, ten years, twenty years—and that was harder than it had any right to be. For decades, she had taken each day one after the other, knowing that things would come in their time, and that there was no rush for any of it.
It was still true for her and Leo. It might be true for Brett, if he still wanted them to turn him, come his birthday. But something would change, day after day. This baby would change, grow up, become a child, a teenager, a young woman, maybe a mother and grandmother. And Lisa, even if she still had trouble imagining any of it, was beginning to think she looked forward to that.
Leo had said it could be her child, too. She’d never be Emma’s mom, but she’d be there for her, alongside Brett and Leo. Maybe it wouldn’t be easy, but it didn’t have to be painful either, and she’d have Brett’s smile along the way to remind her what happiness was.
CHAPTER 24
Leo had no fondness for hospitals. In his mind, they were places where people came to die, not heal. He disliked their bright lights, sterile walls, and hushed conversations that failed to cover the buzzing of machines and the last breaths of dying humans.
What he truly hated, though, were the smells. He’d hated them as a human, and it had become worse after he had been turned into a vampire. At least, he didn’t have many occasions to visit hospitals.
As soon as he and Lisa entered the lobby, he could have sworn he could smell blood. Unlikely in this space, scrubbed clean and nowhere near the ER or operating rooms, and yet. Was it his imagination, or was the smell really that pervasive? Hard to tell; Lisa didn’t appear bothered in the slightest.
While she approached the front desk to ask directions to Virginia’s room, Leo hung back, looking around. A few oversized art pieces broke the monotony of the walls and bay windows, but the abstract lines of the paintings didn’t appeal to him.
As he was turning back to Lisa, something caught his eye and he paused, frowning as he peeked into a bright office. Two men were seated on either side of a desk. A third man standing with his arms crossed seemed familiar, and it took a few seconds for Leo to put a name to his face.
Jordan.
He came to the club sometimes—usually with his vampire Mate. Leo had been introduced to him at Anando’s place almost two years earlier, and had been startled to discover that Vincent Jordan was a Special Enforcer.
From seeing him at the club, Leo would never have guessed as much. Special Enforcers didn’t care for places where vampires and humans mingled as openly as they did at the club, and when they came there, it was to hunt down a vampire they believed was a killer. Then again, the man was Mated to a vampire, so maybe he wasn’t a typical Special Enforcer.
“She’s on the second floor,” Lisa said, coming to Leo and threading her arm through his. “Room 205. What are you looking at?”
She peered in the same direction he did and, before he could tell her about the Special Enforcer, asked, “Is that Anando?”
At once, Leo knew she was right, and he wondered how he had not recognized Anando sooner.
Even though he was seated with his back half to them, his profile was unmistakable.
They started walking together, and while the elevators were on the other side of the lobby, they detoured to pass the office.
“Think something happened?” Leo asked, sotto voce, unable to take his eyes off Anando.
His mind leapt to Virginia. Had something happened to her? If she’d encountered complications, if her life had been at stake, Anando wouldn’t have let her die. But would the front desk have given them her room number so easily if Anando had turned her?
They were now close enough to hear the conversation inside the office, even with the closed door—and also close enough to read the one word on the plaque on the door. Security.
“—past sundown!” Anando sounded frustrated, and even as he spoke, he stood from the chair. Leo’s eyes widened when he noticed Anando’s hands were cuffed behind his back. “You don’t understand, I have to be there!”
Lisa and Leo came to a dead halt, and Lisa voiced the very thought that was bouncing through Leo’s mind.
“Oh my God… He turned her.”
The man behind the desk had stiffened when Anando stood, but the Special Enforcer did not appear concerned.
“We should go there,” Jordan said. “It’s the only way we’ll know if any laws were broken.”
“If any…” The man behind the desk stood, and Leo could now see he was wearing a uniform. “Of course laws were broken! And this thing isn’t going anywhere. If I hadn’t caught him, who knows how many more people he’d have killed? I still don’t understand why you haven’t staked him yet.”
“You didn’t catch him,” Jordan said. “He let himself be caught. Now, Ms. Leary, would you please take us to the body? I’d be surprised if he hasn’t awakened yet.”
Confusion flashed through Leo. Who was Jordan talking to? And had he said ‘he’ or had Leo misunderstood?
A woman stepped forward from the back of the room, dressed in a pencil skirt and stylish blouse. She looked like an administrator rather than a doctor. Until now, she’d been hidden behind Jordan. She said a few quiet words to the security guy and he walked to Anando, his chest puffed up with his own importance.
Holding Anando’s arm in one thick hand, he marched him out of the office, Jordan right on their heels. Anando’s gaze found Lisa and Leo as soon as they stepped out, and he blinked, his eyes widening. He didn’t say a word to them and instead turned back to look at Jordan.
“They should come with us,” he said, his tone of voice more suited for a friend than a potential executioner. “It concerns them, too.”
The Special Enforcer observed them, and a gleam of recognition lit his eyes. He said something, but Leo didn’t hear. Anando’s words might have clued him in, but his scent told Leo what had happened, if not why.
Anando smelled like Brett.
He smelled like Brett’s blood.
“He didn’t sire Virginia,” Leo murmured, too shocked to do more than whisper.
Lisa’s hand tightened on Leo’s arm. She said Brett’s name. Anando, resisting the guard who was trying to lead him away, nodded at them.
“He had a car accident,” he said in a blank tone. “There was no time for you to get here.”
The next few moments seemed to pass as if in a dream. Leo barely recalled going up to the third floor or entering the small, windowless room. The security guard remained at the door, but the Special Enforcer motioned for him to let Leo and Lisa pass.
Brett lay in the lone bed, as pale as the sheet that covered him to his chest, completely and utterly still. There were fading bruises on his face. Even from where he stood, frozen, by the door, Leo could see the red marks on his neck. The only heartbeat in the room was the Special Enforcer’s.
“What happened?” Lisa asked in a small, breathless voice that did not resemble her.
The groan of tearing metal answered her when Anando pulled at the cuffs until the links between them broke. Jordan let out a quiet snort.
“You could have asked for the key,” he said, but Anando wasn’t paying attention to him, or to anything other than Brett, and Leo knew why.
Brett still hadn’t moved, but there was a different feel in the room. If asked, Leo might have called it a presence, though he would have been hard pressed to define it. He took a step closer to the bed, then another, and Lisa remained against his side, her fingernails digging into his wrist.
Together, they watched Anando sit on the edge of the bed. He tugged at one of the cuffs, and again the sound of screeching metal filled the room as he destroyed the metal bracelet, exposing his wrist and the healed but still brightly red tear that marred his skin.
“Let us—” Leo started, at the same time as Lisa blurted out, “We’ll do that.”
They stepped closer together, but Anando stopped them with one cool look. “Not this time,” he said. “That’s not how it works, and you know it.”
“That’s not how what works?” Jordan asked, but no one answered him.
Anando was right, and still Leo felt a pang when Brett jerked awake as though startled out of a dream. Anando was his Sire. It was his right and privilege to give Brett his first feeding.
A Sire who intended to have his Childe feed from humans—and kill—would offer a human prey to an awakening vampire, teaching him how good fresh, hot blood was, taken straight from a neck.
That was how both Leo and Lisa had learned to feed, under the severe and unforgiving stare of their Sire. Anando didn’t kill, though—or at least, as far as Leo knew, he hadn’t killed until siring Brett—not in a long time and perhaps not ever.
When Brett’s eyelids fluttered open and he sat up, it was all Leo could do to hold still rather than go to him. From the way Lisa shook against him, Leo imagined she felt the same.
“Hungry?” Anando asked in a low voice.
Brett’s eyes, unfocused so far, blinked once more and narrowed as they settled on Anando.
“I… Yes. Hell yes. What smells—”
His gaze searched the room, pausing on Leo and Lisa long enough to offer them the briefest of smiles before sliding on behind them to the human in the room. Leo knew how that hot, pumping blood would smell to him, how Jordan’s heart would be like a drum urging Brett onward.
Anando tore his wrist open with his fangs to recapture Brett’s attention. Brett’s nostrils flared, and his head snapped back toward Anando—and that, too, Leo could understand. The smell and taste of human blood was a delicacy, but the smell and taste of Sire’s blood…
“Anando,” Jordan said urgently. “I need to ask him—”
“Not now, Vincent. Give us a minute. Please.”
Brett sucked on Anando’s blood for a lot longer than a minute. Lisa started to pull away from Leo to go to them, but Leo held her back. They’d have their time and answers. This moment was Anando’s.
* * * *
The hallway smelled like blood.
Try as he might, Brett couldn’t find a trace of it on the gleaming white floors. So where did the smell come from? It was downright maddening. The smells of antiseptic, soap, even flowers, Brett had no trouble ignoring, even when they were so much more potent now. But blood…
From the moment Brett had awakened, it had been all he could smell through the skin of that man—that Special Enforcer—who had asked him what was possibly the most ridiculous question Brett had ever heard.
Had he wanted to be turned?
The timing had been unexpected, as well as the main actor, but there had never been a doubt in Brett’s mind.
“Make sure he feeds enough.”
At the quiet words, Brett’s attention focused back on the people around him. Both Leo and Lisa nodded at Anando’s admonition. Brett had a hard time not rolling his eyes.
“I’m not a child,” he protested.
All three exchanged a glance before looking at him with eerily similar smiles.
“Not a child,” Lisa agreed, stepping closer to him to wrap an arm aroun
d him.
“A Childe,” Leo elaborated on her thought.
“My Childe,” Anando finished. If Brett hadn’t known any better, he’d have believed they had rehearsed the whole thing. “Consider yourself lucky I’m letting you leave with them.”
Brett would have scoffed, but the fact that neither Leo nor Lisa seemed troubled by that pronouncement gave him pause. It didn’t help his confusion when he realized that, had Anando demanded that he stay, he would have had a hard time saying no.
Something stirred inside him every time he looked at Anando. It was nothing like what he felt when he looked at Leo or Lisa: not love, not affection either. Attraction, maybe, but that had always been there, and it wasn’t anything new. What he felt was different: not alien, but unexpected.
It dawned on him that, if he was Anando’s Childe, that made Anando his Sire. With that realization, the stirring changed, became a whisper. He didn’t think he had ever really understood what ‘Sire’ meant until that moment.
He remembered how jittery Lisa and Leo had been with their own Sire in town. Brett had thought at the time that it was because their Sire saw nothing wrong with killing humans while it disturbed them, but it had been a lot more than that, hadn’t it?
And to think that they had rebelled against him, going as far as to stake him, and all of that for Brett…
Anando snapped his fingers in front of Brett’s face, and he jumped, startled.
“Hey. Are you still with us?”
“Yes, I… What? ”
But it was useless to deny it. He had no idea what Anando had been saying.
“I asked if you wanted to see Emma again before you go,” Anando said, perfectly patient.
Brett opened his mouth to answer that he did, but the words died in his throat. He did want to see her, yes, and Virginia, but ever since he had awakened, the smells and noises around him had been playing havoc with his mind. He kept getting distracted, trying to figure out…
What was that plopping sound anyway? If he’d had to guess, he’d have blamed a leaking sink, but there was no such thing in the hallway.