“Oh?” she asked as she settled back without partaking in the lukewarm tea. “What sorts of nonsense are the blue bloods mad about these days?”
Ellie added a lump of sugar to her cup. Now that she’d decided to pretend nothing was awry, she needed to come up with a few details capable of convincing her mother that the High Society houseguests were nothing more than a gaggle of inane fops and fribbles.
“Well,” she said slowly. “One gentleman asked me if I’d ever been to Scotland. Twice.”
Mama jerked forward, her eyes suddenly intense. “And what did you say?”
“No, of course.”
Mama’s hyper-focused gaze continued unabated, as if she suspected Ellie of holding back details. “Was that the end of it?”
Ellie shrugged. “More or less. Oh, and he talked about some estate burning to the ground. A castle . . . Foulis, I believe.”
“What? No. It can’t be!” Mother clutched the armrests with trembling hands and stared at Ellie with too-wide eyes. “Why would they . . . When? How? Are there survivors?”
“You . . .” Unsettled, Ellie’s stomach began to churn with a sick feeling that had nothing to do with stale tea. “You’ve been to Scotland, haven’t you?”
Mama’s eyes glazed. “I—”
Ellie put down her cup hard enough to crack the china saucer. “You’ve been to Castle Foulis. Haven’t you?!”
Mama gave her head a violent shake. “I—”
Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “If you lie to me, Mother, I shall never forgive you.”
Mama’s chin lifted in her customary hauteur, then her face crumbled into a wholly unfamiliar expression of guilt and despair. Nothing could have frightened Ellie worse.
“I certainly hope that is untrue,” Mama said quietly, “for I have told you many lies in order to keep you safe.”
Frowning, Ellie leaned forward. “Safe from what?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
The tips of Ellie’s fingers traced the twin welts beneath the lace of her bodice. “Try me.”
Her mother slumped against her armrest, the sorrow in her eyes now tempered by a faraway look of remembrance. “Scotland. . . is very beautiful and very old. Memories are passed down through the generations, and magic is considered commonplace.” She shifted her gaze to the thick curtains covering the window. “There are even those who still believe the legends of the vampires of yore. . . .”
“It’s no myth,” Ellie muttered behind her teacup. Her mother shot up from the chaise. Out of surprise, Ellie did the same.
“Then you know?” Her mother’s voice cracked on the final word.
More confused than ever, Ellie ran the tip of her tongue over her sore gums before replying. “I am irrevocably convinced, although I admit to not understanding this conversation in the least.”
“Oh, Elspeth.” With the tea tray still on the table between them, Mama reached over to briefly lay a hand on Ellie’s cheek. “I owe you an apology. And an answer to all your questions. I had no idea you suspected . . . that you knew . . .”
Ellie stopped massaging her sore gums as trepidation set in. Whatever she thought she knew was merely the tip of an iceberg she hadn’t even known existed. The sick feeling in her stomach increased sevenfold. “Perhaps you should start at the beginning?”
“The beginning?” Mama’s laugh was high-pitched and humorless. “A few hundred years are far too many to recount in one sitting. Suffice it to say, I barely recall who I was before I became what I am now. I lived . . . if not happily, then at least contentedly under clan rule until early last century, when I met your father. He was so sweet, so—”
Ellie shook her head to clear the cobwebs from her ears. “Beg pardon, I thought you said . . . early last century?”
Mother nodded abstractedly. “It was forbidden, of course, under penalty of death . . . but a woman in love cannot refuse the call, even if she has the ill fortune of being in love with a human. And an Englishman, at that. He was—”
“You’re saying . . . you’re a vampire?” Ellie blurted as the pieces fell into place. Her flesh grew cold at the obviousness of the truth, now that her empirical mind could no longer disbelieve the signs. Her legs suddenly unsteady, she fell back to the chaise as if awakening from a stupor. “You are!”
Mother perched back on the edge of her seat, her gestures nervous, her eyes guilty. “Was that not what we were discussing?”
Ellie’s sudden laugh bordered on hysteria. “No, not at all, but pray continue. It seems I need to know your story in order to better understand mine.”
Watching her daughter uncertainly, Mama stammered at first, then let loose with a torrent of words as if a dam had broken free.
Ellie, on the other hand, could only listen and stare, unable to make a sound. Anger, disbelief, and wonder all crashed together as she tried to assimilate the flood of unforeseeable information and unbelievable twists to what she thought she knew about her own life.
Her mother was a vampire.
She’d been reborn in Castle Foulis, centuries ago, where she’d lived amongst dozens more of her kind. There was a clan. A family. A government.
Her mother was a runaway.
Outside of master-and-servant or hunter-and-prey, relationships with humans were verboten. Sexual relations were forbidden above all things, even though mixed-blood procreation was believed to be a myth. A mixed-blood relationship was repulsive and offensive in and of itself. Therefore, the only way for her mother to be with the human man she loved was to denounce everything that she knew and run.
They were being hunted.
If breaking the cultural mores of her brethren weren’t bad enough, Mama had also broken a betrothal contract. The vampires of Foulis Castle had agreed to sacrifice their most beloved maiden to the leader of the Pitreavie as a token of peace to end centuries of territorial disputes. Mama had been commanded to submit to the Elders’ bidding. But her heart was not theirs to rule.
They were in danger.
Searchers had been sent after Mama to bring her to justice over her transgression, but Ellie was the greater reason her parents had stayed hidden. Even in legends, half-human offspring were considered an abomination. Mama would be sent to the Pitreavie clan or to the castle dungeon. But discovery of the secret behind her daughter’s existence would be Ellie’s death warrant.
They were rich—but it did not help.
Mama had once been a high-ranking member of her society. She had a hidden cache of precious jewels that had been given to her by family and suitors. But despite its value, the jewelry could neither be worn nor sold because its very singularity meant it could be easily traced. Therefore, every time Mama had been forced to sell a piece for survival money, they’d had to quit town that night and travel as far as they could, before news of the sale had an opportunity to spread.
Ellie’s father hadn’t died before her birth, after all.
His name was Nigel. He’d been married to her mother for thirty years before Ellie was born, and died of old age decades later . . . while his daughter was barely out of leading strings.
“We thought you were human,” Mama explained softly. “He knew what I was, and still we dared to hope. You weren’t developing like other children, and I talked myself into believing you were a late bloomer . . . until even I couldn’t deny the truth. You didn’t grow at the normal pace and ceased aging altogether by the time you gained your current appearance.”
Ellie stared at her mother in both hurt and horror. “You knew I was a vampire and didn’t think it important enough to mention?”
“It came up,” her mother admitted. “Frequently. But as long as you were more human than not, you were still susceptible to a thought obfuscation technique we refer to as Compulsion. Whenever you asked dangerous questions, I simply Compelled you to forget.”
“You ‘simply’—”
“For your own safety, Elspeth! What would you have had me do?”
“Tell the
truth, for starters!” The teacup tumbled from Ellie’s fingers as the full impact of her mother’s words hit her. No wonder she had so many holes in her memory! Ellie’s head swam as an ugly suspicion sucked the air from the room. “Did you Compel me to forget my own father?”
Her mother reached out a hand. “You would never have believed you were human if you could remember decades passing whilst you were still a tot. I had no choice but to—”
“No choice?” Ellie repeated, choking on the words. She sprang to her feet. “You gave me no choice!”
“You hadn’t turned yet! You still haven’t turned. There was plenty of time for you to have a normal life. There still is. Maybe decades, centuries even. I know this must be difficult for you, but—”
“You know nothing.” Ellie whirled for the door, her head still spinning with hurt and rage and the desperate desire to flee the one person she had always gone to for comfort and advice. Even as the world tilted off its axis, Ellie could hear her mother scrambling to her feet behind her.
“Wait!” Hesitation shook her mother’s voice as she added, “Elspeth. . . I—I Compel you to stay!”
But Ellie wasn’t mostly human anymore. No longer Mama’s little girl, susceptible to vampiric head games. No longer even herself.
Ellie was out the door and gone.
Chapter Nine
Ellie had barely sprinted free of the guest quarters when an arm flashed out of the shadows, hooked about her waist, and reeled her into a small music room. The obsidian shine of a hulking piano was not what set her nerves afire, but rather the man whose strong arms locked her body to his.
Cain.
“Let me go.” Struggling to break free, Ellie pushed at his chest. “Leave me alone.”
“I just want to talk.” His voice was soft, worried, sincere.
She couldn’t have cared less. “I’ve heard more than enough for one day. I need to be by myself for a while.”
Despite the hesitant warmth in his voice, Cain’s grip did not slacken. “I can’t let you do that. Not after what happened.”
Ellie froze mid-struggle.
Not after what happened. He’d seen her fangs! And the fact that he had them, too, could mean only one thing: He was one of the hunters her mother had warned her about. Had been hiding from her entire life. And now that he knew the truth—thanks to her pursuing him, of all things—she and her mother were both going to die. Cain wouldn’t let her go, now that he had her. And Mama would never stand by and let her be taken.
“Please,” she whispered, risking a glance up at him to gauge his anger. “Not like this.”
However, he did not appear to be angry. If anything, his expression was stricken. His fingers relaxed, and he took a half step backward.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen.” His voice was low, but even she could hear the note of self-recrimination. “I just meant to kiss you. That’s all. I’d been longing to taste your lips from the moment we met, and I never meant to indulge that desire, much less . . .” He gave a dry little laugh and continued, “Much less bite you. That’s the problem with being . . . what I am. Less human. Less thinking. More instinct. If I could make you forget it ever happened, I would. To be honest, I even tried.” He shook his head. “Maybe I’ve been so long from my homeland, so long without a proper supply of . . . sustenance, that my powers aren’t what they once were. I don’t want you to be hurt. I can’t hurt you. And so I am asking you, not as a vampire but as a man, if you could find it in yourself to please keep my secret.”
His face was so earnest, his eyes so candid, his meaning so at odds with anything and everything she’d been expecting, that Ellie stared wordlessly up at him for a long moment before making sense of any of it.
He still thought she was human. He was afraid of her reaction, of what she might do. Ellie could have laughed at the sheer irony if she weren’t so close to tears.
For the first time in her life, a handsome gentleman actually liked her. Longed to kiss her. Fancied her. Right at the moment when she was no longer the girl either one of them thought they knew.
She was a vampire now, but nothing else of import had changed. She was still in the lowest class of her peers. An outcast. An abomination. And instead of simply receiving a cut direct, once the truth became known, heads would roll. Namely, hers and her mother’s. She couldn’t let that happen. But for how long could she hope to hide the truth from a centuries-old vampire hunter?
“I won’t tell anyone,” she promised. Years of unflinching honesty made her add in a mumble, “Except maybe my mother.”
“Oh, Ellie, you can’t. Your mother . . .” He gazed at her unhappily, as if trying to determine how best to candy-coat some undesirable truth. “I have reason to believe your mother isn’t truly your mother. No, don’t say anything. Come sit down. You can hear me out and then decide.”
He led her to the piano bench and seated her upon the cushion. He stepped back, paused, then stepped forward. He picked up her hands and held them tight. He let go as if her touch had scalded him and shoved his hands into his pockets instead. He sighed.
“Just because I currently find my Compulsion skills lacking does not make it any less real. I’m afraid that the woman you know as your mother cannot possibly be so. You are human. And she is as human as I. The woman you know as ‘mother’ is actually Agnes Munro, a vampire even older than me.” He gave Ellie a hard look, as if half-expecting her to tumble off the bench in a dead faint. When she did not, he took up her hands again and fell to his knees before her. “Listen to me, Ellie. You are in danger.”
Ellie shook her head. “She would never hurt me.”
“You wouldn’t remember if she had.”
“I would know.”
“Look at me,” he insisted softly. “You have a logical mind. Use it. Do you remember your youth? If not, that’s because she stole it from you. If you cannot recall your parents, it’s because she erased the memory of them right from your brain.”
This latter hit close enough to the truth that Ellie flinched involuntarily. She tried to mask the unwanted flash of hurt, but it was too late.
“See?” he murmured sadly. “Some part of you recognizes my words as true. Who knows what else may have been cleaned from your mind. Perhaps you have even served as an easy meal for years, or even decades.”
Ellie recoiled so violently that if Cain hadn’t been clasping her hands, she would have tumbled right off the bench. A source of food for her own mother? What a repugnant idea. Mama would never have done such a horrific thing . . . would she?
“Listen to me, Ellie. Listen to your own heart. If you don’t feel safe, it’s because you are not. If you don’t feel free, it is because you are not. And you should be. You deserve to be.”
“And my mother?”
“She . . . does not.” His spine straightened, and his shoulders seemed to expand. “Besides her crimes against you, she must also answer to her clan for crimes committed in the past, contracts broken in direct violation of blood oaths she voluntarily swore to uphold.”
“Are you her judge, her jury, or her executioner?” She tried to jerk her fingers from his hands.
“Neither,” he answered, holding fast. “I am a hunter. A warrior whose primary use to his clan is his superior ability to find that which doesn’t wish to be found. Two hundred years ago, I was sent to find Agnes Munro. I have found her. And I will bring her home.”
“That’s it? Your clan just says, ‘Go fetch this woman, dead or alive,’ and off you go for two hundred years?”
“Preferably alive. And yes, that’s what hunters do. Their duty.”
Ellie glared at him. “What do you mean, ‘preferably’ alive? That bit’s optional?”
“The elders mean her no permanent harm,” he answered carefully.
“Ha. Then why did she run away?”
“She’d broken a cardinal rule, which at that time was punishable by death.” The pads of his fingers stroked the backs of her hands. “But times have
changed.”
Ellie chuckled bitterly. “Have they?”
Cain’s brow creased, but his answer was firm. “Yes.”
“Then what are the new rules?”
“No more death. There are less of us now than ever before. The elders can’t afford to enforce the old ways. Either we change with the times, or we all die.”
“So her crimes have been forgiven? Or will she spend the next millennium chained to a dungeon, expected to be grateful to still be alive?”
“Ellie.” Cain still knelt before her, Ellie’s hands still clasped in his. “Stop worrying about Agnes and start thinking about yourself. You can’t go back to how things were. And you can’t go back to Aggie. I’m taking her with me. And then I’m going home.”
“What are you suggesting I do?” she demanded, as suspicion began to creep back up her spine. “Go with you?”
“Oh, good Lord, no.” Cain’s surprised laugh was short, but genuine. “When I said vampires were dangerous, I most certainly was not exempting myself. I’ve already taken a bite out of you uninvited. And here I am, making bad decisions worse by abducting you into a piano room and confessing clan secrets you have no business knowing. As I said, if I could have bade you forget, I would have. So to that end, I am no better than Aggie. Going forward, I want you to do whatever it is that you want to do. I want you to be safe.”
Ellie shook her head. “But if I’m not with her, and I’m not with you, then I’m alone . . . and how safe is that? I may be legally of age to fend for myself, but with no money and no property and no particular skills outside of reading books and solving riddles, where exactly do you propose that I go?”
Cain dropped onto his haunches and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his eyes were haunted.
“I don’t know,” he said simply. “You’ll have to decide. I have never been in this situation, and even if I had, I would never presume to make your decisions. I have some money. You’re welcome to it. I just need enough coin to return home, which should leave you with more than enough to take up residence somewhere, to be an independently wealthy, thrice-removed cousin of some far-flung nob. For long enough to make a new life, make human friends, and perhaps . . . perhaps even fall in love.”
Born to Bite Bundle Page 107