by L. E. Wilson
She came back to him slowly. “Too long.”
“Are you hungry?” he asked, hoping to distract her from her past, but she shook her head.
“What about you? What’s your story? Your life has to be more interesting than mine.”
Interesting? He didn’t know about that. Longer, for sure, but not interesting really. “Not much to tell.”
She dropped her chin and gave him a disbelieving look. “Yeah, right. I showed you mine now you show me yours. That’s how it works. Now spill.”
He grinned at her choice of words. “What would you like to know exactly?”
She thought about it for a second. “How old are you?”
“I believe I’d just turned twenty-seven. We didn’t really keep track as much back then.”
“No, I mean, how old are you now? When were you made into...” She waved her hand around in front of him. “This?”
Ah, that. “I was found by Luukas in the 1800’s. I’m not certain of the exact date. I’d been mortally wounded during a buffalo hunt and was left to die among the animal carcasses. The buffalo had been stripped of their hides and their bodies were left to rot, as was I.”
Ryan stopped him with a hand in front of her. “Wait. I thought you said you were half American Indian?”
“Yes. My mother was Navajo.”
“And you were out hunting buffalo for their hides? Wasn’t that something the Indian tribes abhorred? Wasting the animal like that?”
“I wasn’t hunting the buffalo,” he clarified. “I was hunting the white men that were decimating the herds and causing the tribes of the Great Plains to starve and freeze.”
Her mouth dropped open. She snapped it shut a moment later. “That makes more sense.”
“Not to my father,” he told her. “He thought I was betraying my people. His people. He didn’t understand.”
“How did that even happen? Your mom and dad?”
She was still a bit pale, but his talking seemed to be helping her, so he kept going with his story. “My father loved my mother, and I think she loved him, but at that time, it wasn’t acceptable to marry for either of them. So they would meet in secret, and I would imagine had quite the scandalous affair.”
Her eyes were wide. “Couldn’t they just be together?”
He shook his head. “My mother was married to a Navajo man, and what she’d done wouldn’t be easily forgiven, to say the least. According to my father, when she gave birth to me and saw my lighter skin and my father’s eyes, she snuck away from her camp and gave me to my father to raise. Her husband wasn’t there at the time of the birth, and she told my father she was going to tell him I’d been stillborn. He said she was grieving heavily, and so he had high hopes that her husband would believe her. Neither of us ever saw her again. But she left this with him to give to me when I was old enough.” He raised his arm and showed her the silver cuff bracelet he was never without. “As soon as I was old enough, my father told me all about her. I wanted to know my mother, so I taught myself about her people and tried to live by their beliefs. My father hated that. He wanted me to be a good Christian boy. We didn’t get along very well. Of course, he was kind of an asshole. But I guess he did the best he could.”
“What happened to your father?”
“He died of disease when I was fourteen. After that, I wandered from place to place, picking up work where I could, and trying to fight for my mother’s people any way I knew how without actually being a part of their tribe. It was the only way I knew to try to know her.”
“I’m so sorry, Christian.”
“It was a long time ago. And I have a family now, thanks to Luukas. I owe him everything, and I have a lot to make for now that I’m back.”
“What do you mean? Make up for what?”
“For not being here when he needed me these past years.”
A look of confusion marred her brow. “But I thought you’d only been gone for some weeks?”
“Yeah, physically. But mentally, I’ve been checked out since he was abducted.”
“But that was hardly your fault.”
“It was my fault,” he insisted. “If I hadn’t been so worried about my dick, I could’ve done more to get him home sooner, and none of this would have happened.” He waved his hand back and forth, indicating the two of them.
She dropped her hands and pulled away from him with a stiff little smile on her face. He was confused as to why, until he realized what he’d just said. “Ryan, she’ashil, I didn’t mean…”
“It’s fine,” she cut in. “I’m going to go get cleaned up.” Taking the sheet with her, she slid off the bed and headed to the bathroom. He heard the lock turn in the door, effectively shutting him out.
Dammit. He hadn’t meant to make it sound like that.
Chapter 37
A soft knock on the bedroom door woke Ryan from a fitful sleep. After her long shower earlier, she’d come out of the bathroom to find Christian curled on his side facing away from her. The daylight hours must have finally gotten to him, for she could hear his soft snores across the room. Tiptoeing over to the dresser, she’d found a cotton tank top and pulled it over her head. It was so big on her that it came to mid-thigh and showed plenty of side boob, but she didn’t like going to sleep with nothing on. She’d never felt secure enough to be so free.
A quick survey of Christian’s side of the bed showed he’d already gotten up, but there was a piece of paper on his pillow.
Ryan,
I’m so sorry about what I said earlier. I didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did. I do NOT regret meeting you, she’ashil. Just the way it came about.
Had to go talk to the guys. Please help yourself to anything in the apartment. I’ll be back soon.
Christian
The knock sounded again. She’d nearly forgotten that that was what had woken her up. Folding up the note and setting it on the nightstand beside the bed, she’d just swung her legs off the mattress when the bedroom door cracked open and Keira’s dark head poked around the corner. She smiled when she saw that Ryan was awake.
“Hey,” Ryan greeted her. “Sorry. I must have overslept.”
“May I come in?” Keira asked.
“Oh! Yes, sorry. Come on in.” Hopping up from the bed, she straightened her borrowed tank. “Let me just run to the restroom.” Yanking the covers up on the bed to cover the specks of her virgin blood, she ran to the bathroom and shut the door firmly behind her. Lifting the toilet lid, she winced slightly as she sat down. She was still a little bit sore.
What was Keira doing here? Was she going to kick her out? Ryan had gotten the feeling that she was sort of the “queen bee” around here, being Luukas’ wife, or girlfriend, or whatever. Maybe she didn’t like the fact that he’d brought her here without asking.
Well, she wasn’t going to find out anything hiding in the bathroom.
Finishing her business, she washed her hands, brushed her teeth, and braided her hair over her shoulder. She didn’t have a hair band, but it helped contain the stuff. She really needed to cut it.
Enough stalling.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled open the door and left her sanctuary. “Sorry,” she apologized again. “And sorry about the shirt.” She plucked at the front of her tank top. “If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve found something else to wear.”
“Ryan, if you apologize one more time, I’m gonna smack you.” Keira’s teasing grin took the sting out of her words. “I brought you some clothes. They’re Emma’s, so they should fit you pretty good. You guys are about the same size.”
“Oh. Um…thank you.” Walking over to the bed, she picked up the navy yoga pants and slipped them on. They fit her like a glove.
Keira got up and wandered over to the window, she assumed to give her a little privacy to change her shirt. Little did she know that Ryan could’ve cared less if she saw her tits. “Thank you for the clothes,” she said again when she was decent.
“No probl
em,” Keira said from the window. With a last look at the sparkling lights of Seattle, she turned away from the view and climbed up on the bed. “I think I need to start a donation closet,” she laughed, but Ryan didn’t get the joke. “Come sit with me.”
She patted the mattress, so Ryan climbed up and settled back against the headboard. “What’s up?” she asked her.
Keira studied her hands twisting in her lap for a moment, and Ryan could feel her indecision. When she looked up, all teasing was gone from her face. “Ryan, I don’t know an easy way to go about this, so I’m just going to be straight forward. Okay?”
Sensing no animosity, Ryan agreed. “Sure. Okay. I prefer it that way, actually.”
“Most of us Moss’s do,” Keira smiled.
Most of us…what? “What are you trying to say?” Ryan asked.
Keira held out her hand for her to shake. “Hi. I’m Keira Moss. We’re cousins, I suspect.”
Ignoring the outstretched hand, Ryan stared at her like she’d lost her mind. “That doesn’t mean anything. Moss isn’t an unusual name.”
Dropping her hand back onto her lap, Keira continued, “My sister is Emma Moss, of course. Grace Moss, another cousin, I believe you talked to last night. We didn’t know about her either until Aiden brought her back with him.”
Ryan narrowed her eyes. “If you didn’t know about her, how do you know you all are related?”
“Because we can feel it, mostly. Don’t you feel it?”
She leveled those large hazel eyes on Ryan. The same eyes her sister had. Her sister that looked so much like Ryan. Did she feel it? She felt something, yes. Some kind of kinship with these women. But were they actually related?
“But also,” Keira went on. “Because of the curse.”
Ryan was jolted from her thoughts. “Curse? What curse? Christian’s curse?”
Keira frowned. “Christian is still cursed?”
“Never mind,” Ryan told her. “What curse are you talking about?”
She looked like she was about to say more, but she refocused and went back to what she’d been saying. “I don’t know how much you know about me, or any of us.”
“Just that Luukas had been abducted and was just rescued really.”
“Yes, he was. What you don’t know, is that I am part of the reason that he was abducted.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m a witch, and to make a long story short, I was forced to use my powers to help a very evil woman keep Luukas prisoner.” Her voice broke on the next part. “I kept him hungry and helpless, and I was able to do that because I can kind of suck his own power from him and hold it inside of me.” She sniffed and wiped at her eyes.
Ryan felt like she’d just walked into an episode of the Twilight Zone. Not that she didn’t believe her; after all, she had her own weird stuff. Which come to think of it had been awfully quiet since she’d woken up. But still… Luukas had powers? Other than being super strong and living off of the blood of mortals?
“Do they all have powers?” she asked.
Keira must have easily followed her thinking. “Not like Luukas. He’s a Master vampire. And the more ‘children’ he creates, the more powerful he becomes.”
“What can he do?”
“You’d kind of have to see it to believe it. But suffice it to say that he’s a force of nature when you get him riled.”
Ryan thought about that for a moment. “Is your sister a witch also?”
She nodded. “Yes. And so are you.”
“What?” Ryan stopped fidgeting with the bottom of her shirt and laughed derisively. “I am no witch.”
“You are. I can sense it, and so can the others. We come from a family of witches.” She seemed so certain that Ryan was one of them. “What can you do?” Keira asked.
“I can’t do anything,” she told her. “Except strip and shoot opiates up my arm.”
Her blunt words didn’t have the effect she was going for. Keira just rolled her eyes.
“Christian told us a little about your life. But you have magic, Ryan. I can feel it in you. You just need to figure out what it is. Hasn’t there been anything strange that’s happened when you’re around? Any weird premonitions? Anything?”
Christian had obviously kept his big mouth shut about her constant companions. Could it be that he was right? Did she hear them because she was sensitive to them and not because she was crazy? She supposed it wasn’t such a far stretch. She was sensitive to the emotions of the living. Why not the dead?
“I can hear voices,” she blurted. When Keira nodded encouragingly, she said, “They talk to me all the time. Well, most of the time. They’re actually pretty quiet right now.”
“When did you start hearing them?”
“When I was about fifteen.”
Keira nodded again. “That sounds about right. Most of us don’t come into our powers until we hit puberty. Your parents didn’t tell you why you heard them or how to control them?”
“I didn’t tell my parents,” Ryan admitted. “I thought I was losing my mind and I ran away. They don’t know where I am, or even that I’m still alive.”
“We should call them.”
But Ryan shook her head. “No. It’s better this way.”
Reaching out, Keira took her hands in hers and forced her to look at her. “Ryan, you’re not alone anymore. You have family here. You’re not crazy. You were just born into a family of witches is all. Your parents should have prepared you, but there are reasons why they didn’t. We’ll get into that later, though.”
Ryan’s head was starting to pound from all the True Confessions going on. First, trading life stories with Christians and now this.
“Ryan, we can help you learn about your abilities and how to use them.”
Ryan laughed. “Well, I haven’t had much luck controlling the voices up to this point. As a matter of fact, it’s been the complete opposite.”
Keira squeezed her hands. “Whatever has happened up till now isn’t your fault. You didn’t know.”
Taking the focus back off of her, Ryan said, “So, tell me about this curse you were talking about.” She pulled her hands from Keira’s to discreetly wipe at the moisture in her eyes.
“The evil woman I mentioned, the one that was obsessed with Luuk, she was a former adopted member of his colony. Until he forced her to leave because she was one crow short of a murder, if you know what I mean. And she abducted me also. Had her minions grab me up as my sister and I were leaving a carnival back in our hometown in PA. Those things of hers nearly killed Emma. That’s why she wears long sleeves and pants all the time.” When Ryan frowned in confusion, she explained. “Em has scars. Horrible scars. The things that attacked her and took me are like monsters from a horror movie. They have rotting skin and fangs like vampires. They drink blood like vampires also.” She shivered. “Emma barely lived through it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ryan said sincerely. Monsters? There were real monsters in the world? Ryan’s head was spinning.
Keira smiled. “She has Nik now, and he thinks she’s beautiful. Which she is. And which brings me back to the curse that I assume is the one you’re saying Christian has?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “So, this woman that took Luukas, she made me do a spell, a curse, on the other vampires that are close to him. She was hoping to weaken them, and as they were all made by Luukas and he’s affected by what happens to them, weaken him too. But I found a loophole in the spell, and when I cast it, I snuck it in there.”
In spite of her better judgment, Ryan asked the obvious question. “What was the loophole?”
“That Luukas’ Hunters would only be affected by the curse until they met their mates. I also put a little something in there to help those meetings along. See, years and years ago, witches and vampires used to hook up all the time, until a new High Priest took over the coven and forbid it. There’s a little more to the story, but that’s the gist of it. I just put things back the way they should be.�
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Ryan just sat there. Trying to take it all in.
“Oh, there’s one other thing you should know. Christian is your mate.”
“My mate?”
“Yes. Like penguins. Penguins mate for life. And so do vampires. I hope you like him, because he’ll never let you go now.”
She was teasing, Ryan knew, but that didn’t stop the rush of anxiety that made her heart pound and her head feel woozy. “No. No. You must be mistaken. We’re just…he just…I’m not staying here that long.”
Now it was Keira’s turn to frown in confusion. “Has he had your blood?”
“Yes, but…”
“And have you had his?”
“Yes. It helps with my withdrawals…”
“Ryan, honey. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you two are now practically married. No, wait. More than married. You’ve exchanged blood. You’re bonded.”
“No. We can’t be. I wasn’t planning to stay,” she argued.
But Keira just grinned at her and patted her leg consolingly. “Don’t take it so hard. Christian is a complete stud. And a good male from what I’ve been told other than his behavior the last few years, which he really couldn’t help.” Hopping off the bed, she said, “Why don’t you get some food and then come over to Nik and Emma’s? It’s right at the other end of the hall. We can start working on that entity problem you have.”
“Um, yeah. Okay.”
With a wave and a smile, Keira left Ryan sitting on the bed feeling like she’d just been hit by a truck.
She was a witch? That was why she heard voices? So, they really weren’t just in her head. In spite of everything that they’d done, she hadn’t really believed it until now.
And she had family she hadn’t known about. Women with weird abilities like her. Because she came from a family of witches.
And Christian. That stuff Keira had said. What the hell was up with that? Ryan jumped off the bed and began to pace around the room. No. He would’ve told her if that were true. He wouldn’t have given her his blood. Except he’d had to do it to save her. Or so he said.
But if that were the case, then he wouldn’t have had hers. He’d never taken from her out of thirst or hunger or whatever. Only little sips here and there when they had sex. She liked it, and from the sounds he made and the way he lost control when he took from her, he did too. But it wasn’t like he’d needed her blood. So, she would think that he could’ve controlled himself if need be.