They both twisted back to me, shaking their heads and trying to convince me that it wasn’t my fault. Looking desolate, Alanna muttered, “If anything, this is my fault. He’s my child. I should have seen this coming.” She looked back at me, tears dripping down her cheeks. “I just didn’t realize the extent of what he and Ben have been up to. And lately, he’s been asking mother and me to stay away, to help out here with researching all of the new leads, and with helping you. He asked to let him handle the meetings.”
She shook her head, her long, black hair settling around her shoulders. Her face was a picture of frustration and regret. “I didn’t think he was in a lot of danger. I mean, vampires aren’t necessarily evil. Just like humans, they come with all kinds of personalities. He was only supposed to be politely asking them if they knew anything, and then leave if they didn’t. That was our agreement when we started this.”
Alanna sighed, looking back at her mother for a moment before twisting back to me. “I knew he was getting into some scuffles, but he always assured me that he was being careful, that the fights were nothing serious, just a couple of misinterpreted actions, he’d say. I had no idea he was starting to…go this far.” She shrugged her shoulders, fresh tears falling to her cheeks. “I didn’t think he’d ever start purposefully provoking them. And forcing information from them? Making them talk? I don’t even know what that means.” She hung her head and Imogen brought her hand to her shoulder.
Uselessly wiping my cheeks, I shook my head. “What about Halina? She’d never let him get away with this?”
Imogen sighed and looked down at the floor, to where I could feel Halina obliviously sleeping. “Mother told me that he’s recently started conducting these meetings before full sunset, bursting in on still sluggish, quarantined-by-the-sun vampires. By the time she gets there, he’s already…interviewing them, sometimes heatedly. She told me she broke up a pretty decent fight a couple of nights ago, one that left poor Ben black and blue. She assumed the vampires were angry at being intruded upon.” She looked up at me, her eyes bloody. “I’m sure she didn’t realize what he has really been up to.”
Blinking back her tears, she sighed and rubbed her daughter’s back. “I tried to talk to him about it, to convince him that running in uninvited on drowsy vampires was a dangerous game, and that he should always wait for mother.” She shrugged. “But he said it was fine and the scuffles were blown out of proportion. When I told him I was coming next time, he sighed and said he’d wait for mother.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “I should have taken that as a warning.” She sighed and shook her head. “I knew he was getting desperate, but I never thought he’d do this…”
The room was silent for a moment as we all felt him drift even farther. “What did he say outside to you?” I asked Alanna weakly, still suffering from shock and sniffles.
She shook her head. “He was upset, angry, but he looked like he’d been crying too, after…your argument.” I wanted to apologize again, but she spoke over my words. “He was rambling, Emma. I don’t think he even knew what he was saying. He kept repeating that he didn’t have a choice, that they were leaving, and he had to get to them before they did. Over and over he told me that they could be the ones, they could be the nest that knew about mixed vampires, and he couldn’t risk them disappearing. The last thing he said to me, before I had to leave him, was that he wouldn’t start a fight…but they would tell him what he wanted to know. As long as he got a name, nothing else mattered.”
An ominous silence hung in the air after she said that. None of us really knew what that meant. None of us were sure how far a terrified-to-lose-me Teren would go, if he had to.
Alanna sighed drearily. “He’s been getting so manic about this in the past week or so. We really should have gone with him anyway, to make sure he was okay.” She looked back to me. “But…we had a reason to stay too…” She swallowed and looked over me in such a way that I knew she meant me. I suddenly understood the real reason why Alanna and Imogen rarely left my side. They were afraid I’d convert any day, any moment. And if I did, someone had to be here to help me when I woke up, assuming I did wake up. Conversions were the deadliest part of an undead vampire’s life. I knew that from experience with Teren’s. As Alanna’s eyes drifted down to my stomach, I remembered asking Teren to take the twins from me. From the look in Alanna’s eye, she was also sticking close by to honor that promise. If and when I keeled over, she was ready to take them, if Teren wasn’t around to.
I felt horrid. In a way, I’d made them choose between their son and grandson, and me and the twins. But none of us could have anticipated just how far Teren would take this. But time was running out and Imogen was right, he was getting desperate. And knowing that his family would never approve of his methods, he’d found ways around them. Secretive and stubborn as always, if it meant protecting someone he loved. And ultimately, that is what he was trying to do…protect me, save me.
We all three stayed in that bed for most of the afternoon, alternating between bouts of crying and worrying. At times Imogen and Alanna both got up to run to him. Then one would convince the other that making the attempt in daylight was futile. It would be better to let Halina get him at nightfall. She was faster and stronger than both of them. Imogen accepted it more readily than Alanna, not having as much of a threshold from the pain as her diluted daughter. Alanna looked ready to charge out into the sun anyway, to bring her child back to the ranch. But she stayed, knowing that, just like before, she’d only make it so far before she’d have to find an enclosed place to hide.
And me? There was more than one occasion when they both had to hold me down from flying unimpeded by the sun to his side. But I’d already hurt him once today, and I was scared of what another showdown between us might bring. Especially if it happened in the middle of an agitated vampire nest. I was already scared that he was going to make a stupid, fatal mistake because of our argument. I didn’t want to show up and have him be so thrown off by it, that someone got the drop on him. Especially with how distracting our bond would be to him. Especially if he was…unhinged.
Maybe sensing the heavy quiet in the house, Jack came in and found us all lying in bed. Alanna and Imogen solemnly told him what had happened. He closed his eyes and reopened them slowly to gaze at his wife. They shared a brief pain-filled hug, and then, discretely wiping his eyes, he walked back outside. I suppose, like us, Jack wanted to rush to him too, but it would do no good if he did. Teren was still moving, still on his way to the nest. By the time Jack drove to him, it would be too late; he’d be among the vampires. And if Alanna couldn’t get her stressed son to stay, I didn’t see how the comparatively weak Jack would, especially if Teren was in sight of what he wanted – possible answers.
We listened to the sounds of Jack puttering around outside, keeping his mind occupied with manual labor, probably so he didn’t have to think about the possibility of losing his son. As my eyes were so dry I couldn’t even blink them, my head throbbed in repeated patterns, and my stomach rumbled from lack of food, I thought maybe Jack’s way of handling the stress was healthier, or at least, more productive. By early evening, when I figured Teren was just approaching the nest that he had traveled to, Halina woke up.
I heard her moving around downstairs, sighing and stirring, possibly dressing, and I looked at Alanna and Imogen. “When do we tell her?”
“Tell me what?” Halina automatically responded. I sighed, forgetting just how good their ears were.
I replayed the fight, and what I’d caught Teren doing, essentially packing for a battle. Imogen sighed and Alanna sniffled. Halina cursed and responded with what sounded like stone crashing through stone. I thought that she may have just punched a hole in the wall.
“Stupid child,” she muttered, pacing her room, waiting for the last of the sun’s rays to die. “I will skin him alive, if they don’t,” she muttered.
I sat up in bed, my head woozy from nearly nothing in my stomach. “What are you going to d
o Halina? He’s too far away…” Wherever he’d gone, it had taken him a good chunk of the afternoon to get there before nightfall. She couldn’t run that far, and return before sunup.
She growled and when she spoke, her voice warbled, like she was holding back her own tears. “I will dig a hole in the desert if I have to, but I’m not letting him continue this foolishness without me.” I heard her resume pacing, all the whole muttering, “Supposed to wait…stupid…foolish…idiot…did I teach him nothing…men…”
I sighed and fell back to the pillows, exhausted. My stomach grumbled loudly and Alanna blurred to standing. “Oh, Emma. I’m so sorry,” Her face couldn’t have looked any more apologetic. “I forgot to make you and Jack something to eat. I’m so sorry.”
She blurred from the room but I called after her. “It’s okay, Alanna, you don’t need to wait on me. Besides, I really couldn’t have handled food today anyway.”
I knew the second the sun set, and not because Imogen grabbed my hand and walked with me down the stairs to the kitchen. No, I knew because Halina hauled ass out of the house. She was gone so fast, I stumbled with my step. The sense of her blurring away that quickly was disorienting. She streaked towards where our senses pointed out Teren. And she was letting it out, running faster than I’d ever felt her move.
Feeling somewhat better, now that he had a more substantial backup on the way than Hot Ben, someone who could stop him from doing anything too stupid, and hopefully get there before anyone did anything to him, I relaxed my fear as I sat down to a huge, refreshing cup of plasma beside a huge plate of pasta. Well, I slightly relaxed. I didn’t completely relax until the next morning.
I wasn’t sure what time it was, but I knew it was early in the morning, a few hours after dawn maybe. I’d had trouble falling asleep last night and had stared at the ceiling, watching my eyes highlight strange shapes in the textures, and considering studying my glow in a mirror, to see if I could hypnotize myself into a mellow state. I’d passed out some time later, well after the witching hour.
I woke up with a start when I smelled him. It hit me so hard, that it shocked me instantly into awareness. I turned my head and sat up, looking at the door. He was standing in the open doorframe, gripping the sides of it, to stop himself from hurling himself on me. I’d slept through the buildup again and wasn’t feeling the pull he was. But he was resisting, shaking with restraint as he gripped the wood.
I twisted around to face him, putting my feet on the floor and wanting to hurl myself on him. Not because of the pull, but because I’d missed him, because I’d been terrified, and now relief was washing through me, cleansing away every bad thought I’d had in the past several hours.
But he only continued to shake and stare at me from the doorway. I wondered if maybe he was still angry at me. I’d said some pretty nasty things before he left. I stood up slowly, not sure what to do. His eyes tracked my movement, his shaking increasing the closer I got to him. I tilted my head, holding a hand out for him. He looked down at it, biting his lip but still not moving or speaking.
Fighting tears, I took a deep breath, savoring the smell that was purely him, but registering the smell of other people on him, and the chalky smell of drywall dust mixed with the tangy smell of blood. There had been violence.
My eyes widened, my heartbeat increasing as I took another step towards him. I searched his clothes, but I didn’t see anything that even remotely looked like fresh blood. There were some holes in his shirt and a snag in his jeans, but those could have been from a previous fight or from natural wear and tear. Teren had been letting things like new clothes, slip by the wayside lately.
Just as I was about to rush into his arms and beg him to forgive me, beg him to talk to me, he bit his lip, his shaking increasing. And when I say “bit his lip”, I mean, he literally bit his lip. He clenched down so hard, he sliced right through the skin. A deep, dark trail of blood oozed from the wound and dripped off his chin.
He did nothing to wipe it away or stop it from falling, and it dripped right onto his shirt. The stain it caused was ominous and startling, and sent me right back into terror. I froze, my eyes wide, my heart pounding. I knew this wasn’t good for me, my heart being so stressed, but I couldn’t calm down, not when he was being so odd and still, his shaking his only real movement.
“Teren?” I said quietly, my voice trembling and echoing around the empty space between us.
My voice seemed to wreck him. His shaking increased and he released the doorframe, dropping to his knees right in front of me. The shaking, that I’d assumed was from his attempt to resist the pull, shifted to sobs as he dropped his head into his hands. Confused and alarmed, I carefully dropped to my knees in front of him. My hands slid over his cool shoulders, shaking from slight sobs now, as I pulled his head into my chest. “Teren, you’re scaring me,” I whispered.
I felt Alanna approaching, also woken from sleep by the return of her son. She stopped a few steps behind him in the hallway, watching us kneel together, just on the other side of the door. I held my hand up to her, wanting a minute with my distraught husband. She paused, waiting, her body tense with the desire to comfort her child, but her face resolved to give that responsibility over to another woman. I imagined that was a pretty hard thing for her to do.
Teren let a stuttered cry escape him and finally spoke to me. “Emma…” His arms slipped around my waist. “Oh, god…”
Terrified, I ran my fingers back through his hair. “What, baby? What happened? Please…talk to me.”
His body shifted, so that he was still kneeling before me, but his head was resting on my stomach. His hands come up to cup my belly and he began placing tender kisses along my stretched skin, the sleeping children inside only gently stirring at his caress. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” he repeated over and over.
The blood on his chin transferred to the white t-shirt I’d slept in, the contrast startling, even in the pale light of our glowing eyes.
I clutched his head to my stomach, not sure if he was apologizing for our fight or if something had happened. I reached out my senses, but Halina wasn’t in the house. I could sense her, miles away, but she was nowhere near the property. A streak of terror flashed through me; maybe she hadn’t made it, and I was sensing her corpse. Or maybe Ben…
“Teren…please, what happened? Are you okay? Is…everyone okay?”
He raised his head, his eyes wet and pained, his body still lightly shaking. His fingers cradled our children as he gazed at me, finally nodding. “Yes, we’re fine.”
I exhaled with relief and crawled into his lap. He laid his head in my shoulder as he pulled me as tight to his body as he could. Alanna behind him, exhaled softly, and nodding once at me, turned and left us alone. I had to imagine that her level of control right there, walking away from her stricken son, rivaled Teren’s, when he’d been thirsting for blood and restrained himself from taking mine.
He started lightly crying as he held me and I stroked my fingers down his back, wanting to help him in some way, I just didn’t know what was wrong. “Baby, is this because of what I said?” I pulled back to search his eyes, tears dripping off my own cheeks now. “Because, I didn’t mean it. I was just mad…I’m so sorry.” I sobbed a little after I said that, and he immediately began shaking his head and lightly kissing me.
“No, oh, no, baby. I know you were mad. I’m not…I’m okay.” He sniffled, more tears falling as he struggled for control. My hands ran over his face, brushing the cool tears aside as I tried to understand.
“Then…?” I shrugged, emotion closing my throat.
He pulled back, exhaling a steadying breath. With renewed moisture in his eyes, he whispered, “You were right.” He choked and swallowed roughly. “You were so right.” He shook his head. “This isn’t the way.” He broke down, leaning his head against my shoulder again.
I rubbed his back, closing my eyes as the despair washing from him, washed into me. “Teren…talk to me.”
He
sniffled, controlling his emotions, but not lifting his head to look at me again. “I got…nothing. They told me…nothing.”
I pulled back, grabbing his face in my hands. “It’s okay, baby. You have other leads, right?” I kissed his cheeks, a little surprised that I wanted him to keep looking, keep digging. I guess I just didn’t want to ever see this level of pain again.
He grabbed my wrists and pulled them away from his face. “No, I can’t…” He shook his head, his eyes older than I’d ever seen them. “You were right. I’m turning into something…I don’t even recognize. I’m obsessed,” he whispered.
I shook my head, fighting against his grip to hold his face again. He held me tight though. “No, I was wrong, petty…”
He cut me off, his gaze and voice hollow. “I almost staked a woman tonight.” I froze in his lap, my legs straddling his, stiffening with tension. He looked over my reaction, his voice so overflowing with emotion that it came out numb. “I almost plunged a rod of pure silver through her heart, because she wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know.”
His grip on me hardened as he angrily shook his head, tears springing back to his eyes. “I can’t even say it was self-defense.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t, she never even tried to touch me.” His eyes searched my face. I couldn’t even imagine what he saw there. “But…I knew she knew something - a name, a nest - something.”
Conversion Book Two: Bloodlines Page 38