by Mysti Parker
Then all too soon, it was time to seek out my reluctant third mate so he could take me to see the father I didn’t know I had. If this got any more fucked up, we could end up on the vampire version of Maury Povich.
I could almost hear it now: Albert, you ARE the father!
****
I met Marlowe promptly at eleven thirty p.m. in the lobby. He said nothing, just opened the door that led upstairs to the hangar.
Just before I crossed the threshold, a fire started up on the wall right beside me.
I jumped back. “What the hell?”
Marlowe grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher and doused the flames until they were no more than a puff of smoke. “Sorry. Shall we?” He hung the extinguisher back on the wall and gestured up the stairs.
“Hang on. Mind telling me why there are random fires and a hundred extinguishers in this place?”
He shrugged. “It’s… I don’t know. Just seems to happen when I’m around.”
“Okay, but I hope you realize that’s not normal.” I walked by him and started up with him following behind me. I could feel his eyes on my butt and smiled. If he was going to play the part of asshole in this production, I wasn’t going to make it easy on him.
I’d found some of my mother’s clothes in her—my—quarters. She had a lot of business casual and formal clothes, but I was surprised that we shared nearly the same style of everyday clothes. She was a little bigger than me, but the clothes fit me well enough. I wore a pair of her faded black skinny jeans and a body-hugging blue sweater that hung off one shoulder and showed off my rose vine tattoo.
We emerged into the hangar, and I froze in my tracks. My car was sitting there, freshly washed and polished. The chrome gleamed under the fluorescent lights. I’d neglected her a lot since this whole journey began. It’s a wonder someone hadn’t stolen her already.
Sadly, she still couldn’t show off her peacock blue paint. She’d been concealed again with a fresh coat of dark brown Plasti-Dip. But how would Marlowe know anything about my car? We’d left it hidden off the side of the road near the cabin.
“Birdie?” Smiling, I turned to Marlowe, who stood there with his hands in his pockets. He’d traded his navy hoodie for a black one that really set off the gold in his face mask. “You got her back for me?”
“Zac did earlier today. He told me it meant a lot to you, so I let him go with some of my men.”
“Thanks.” I’d have to thank Zac later. He was probably asleep.
In my excitement, I grabbed Marlowe’s hand and squeezed it. Energy surged from the tattoo through my fingers and into his. He jumped like he’d been stung and pulled away. Staring at his hand for a moment, he finally shook out his fingers and went straight for a plain, black SUV.
“We’ll take this. Less conspicuous.” He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
Mind you, I’m not your typical queen. I didn’t expect anyone to open doors for me. But I didn’t expect to get brushed aside like this either. Especially when I knew he felt the same sensations that crashed through me in waves every time we came within a foot of each other.
I opened the passenger door and climbed in. Marlowe pushed a button on the SUV roof that opened one of the garage-sized doors on the far end of the hangar. As we drove through, I noticed the van we’d arrived in, several black SUVs, a couple of prop planes, some motorcycles, and a helicopter.
Before we left the hangar, Marlowe stopped the car and pulled a black blindfold from the console. “Put this on.”
“Sounds kinky,” I said, rubbing the silky fabric with a sly grin.
He didn’t seem the least bit amused. Or turned on. “It’s safer if you can’t see our surroundings. Then you can’t be forced to reveal our location if you happen to get captured.”
Since it seemed like I got captured every five minutes, I could see his point, even if his cold fish act was annoying as hell. Begrudgingly, I slipped the blindfold over my eyes. It didn’t keep me from smelling the world around us as we drove through rural Alabama. The scents alternated between honeysuckle, cow manure, crude oil, and fried chicken. A few quiet minutes passed until rumbling engines, a siren, and the thumping of a big bass speaker indicated we were in a town of some sort.
“Is this Skillet Lick?” I asked.
“It’s not far from there,” Marlowe answered. He pulled off the road, drove uphill along a twisty lane, and parked…somewhere. “We’re here. You can remove the blindfold.”
When I took it off, my gaze landed squarely on a big wooden cross over the doors of a massive graystone church. “Oh.”
“Surprised?”
“Surely he’s not in there?”
“What do you think would happen if he was?”
He was testing me. And of course, I’d failed. “I don’t know, honestly. I’ve never been inside one, even when Mama and I were on the run. She told me once that vampires weren’t welcome inside churches, but never told me why.”
“Did you ask?”
“Of course I did. She didn’t offer me a whole lot of useful answers, in case you think I was just too stupid to learn anything.”
“I never said that.” His tone was just on the verge of condescending.
And I’d had enough. “You didn’t have to.”
I got out of the SUV and stared up at the building. The sign out front read St. Francis Episcopal Church of the Ascension. It was set on a hill surrounded by a forest like its own holy island. An owl hooted from one of the nearby trees. Bats darted overhead to catch mosquitoes, their dark silhouettes flashing against the moonlit sky.
He walked around to my side. “Follow me. I’ll show you so you’ll know.”
Marlowe climbed the steps to the church. I followed. Each step felt heavier than the last, as though gravity weighed me down more the closer I got. He grabbed the iron handle and pulled open the heavy wooden door. It creaked and grumbled against the stone. A rush of cool, musty air that smelled distinctly of aged wood and paper blew my hair back.
Marlowe gestured for me to step inside. “Go ahead.”
“I won’t burst into flames?”
The half of his mouth not covered by the mask curved up. “You tell me.”
“Fine.” Surely he wouldn’t be leading me to sudden death. Despite his distaste for being part of my harem, I felt I could trust him. My instincts had served me well, even when knowledge was lacking.
I stepped inside the church. Or tried to, at least. As soon as my foot crossed the threshold, an invisible force that felt like a giant wall of gelatin pushed me back out. I might have fallen, but Marlowe caught me with an arm around my waist.
For the fleetest of moments, our gazes met. He had the most mesmerizing cinnamon-colored eyes. My tattoo buzzed and sent ripples through my core. His nostrils and eyes flared at the same time. He’d felt it too. Would he continue to resist it?
He let me go and stepped back, letting the door swing slowly shut. “Now you know.”
I nodded, rubbing my arms, even though the cool night air didn’t bother me. “So, where’s my father?”
“Back here.”
I followed Marlowe around the side of the church along a sidewalk that led to a big bell tower in the church’s rear. It was built onto the church but had its own entrance. I didn’t wait for Marlowe to open the door.
The bell tower smelled the same as the church sanctuary, but there was no heaviness or rush of air this time. Cautiously, I stepped over the threshold. Nothing happened. Marlowe came in behind me.
“Up those stairs,” he said.
We climbed a spiraling wooden staircase. Every step creaked louder than the last. There was no way to sneak up on anyone who might be up there. I sure hoped it was only my father. But I had no idea what to expect. My jaw trembled more the closer we came to the top. Would he remember me? Would he believe I was really his daughter? Would he blame me for my mother’s death?
All those thoughts and a million more swirled around me as we reache
d the landing. Silvery moonlight spilled in through one of the big open-air windows. A dark hooded silhouette stood from a chair.
Marlowe stepped in front of me. Was he protecting me from my father or my father from me?
“Albert, it’s me,” Marlowe said softly. “I brought her with me this time.”
The shadow approached. Finally, my night vision kicked in so I could see him clearly. This man wore no mask, but he probably needed one worse than Marlowe did. His face was burned so badly, it looked as though his skin had melted and solidified again like uneven candle wax. He lowered his hood.
I saw my own eyes.
Albert’s scalp was burned as well. No hair grew there. He extended both hands to me. I swallowed hard and took them in mine. His burned skin felt leathery, but there was something about them, the gentle strength in his grip, perhaps, that felt familiar.
“Is it really you?” He spoke in a distinct Scottish accent. “Is it my Wren?”
I nodded. “It’s me.”
He turned his head and spoke into the empty space to his left. “Bronwen, our girl has come home.”
Chapter Four
Marlowe
If I had a coin and flipped it, it might be a good indicator of how lucid Albert was at any given moment. Heads, he was in his right mind. Tails, he was all over the place. And if the coin landed on its edge as it so often did mid-conversation—hell, mid-sentence—with Albert, well, good luck. His good moments were becoming increasingly rarer.
Wren blinked at him and then flicked her yellow eyes to the shadows behind him. "I'm sorry, did you…? Did you just say Bronwen? As in my mother?"
"Of course! She's so happy you're here." He waved the imaginary specter of Wren's mom forward. "Come say hi to your daughter. She's the spitting image of you."
Wren stared at him with her mouth open, and it struck me then that maybe I should've given her a little more warning. But she'd been so intent on seeing him, and I wasn't so sure I should be the one to shape her perception of him after all this time. Besides, when he was lucid, he hated being treated differently. Kid gloves, he called it.
"You treat me with kid gloves, and I'll smack you with them," he’d told me once.
I couldn't argue with that, so maybe it was best I didn't tell her beforehand.
"Ah." Albert shook his head at the empty space next to him. "She's being shy. She'll come around once we have something to drink. Please, find somewhere to sit. I'll make us all something."
A hexagon of wooden benches circled the space around where the giant bell hung. I sat next to Wren as Albert crossed to his hot plate on a low shelf by the wall.
She leaned in closer to me, the smell of musky roses suffusing the air. "There's no one there, right?" The doubt in her voice opposed the hopeful glint in her eyes, like she both wanted to believe and didn't. Probably a strange state to be in.
"I don't see anyone,” I admitted, “but that's not to say he doesn't."
Albert started to hum as he retrieved a couple pouches of blood from his cube-shaped refrigerator and emptied them into a teapot. Occasionally he’d jerk his attention to the side, hearing something only he could, and then shake his head or make a shooing motion to the empty air.
Wren watched him closely. "How long has he…been here?" There was a heaviness to the question, as if she were asking a host of others with this one.
"About four years."
"And before that, where was he?"
I knew what she was getting at, and I knew we’d have to go to that topic eventually. I just wasn’t ready, which sounded painfully selfish. "The fire happened in an old warehouse."
"What happened?"
A part of me wished he could explain it to her since only he had known what was going through his head. Then, as an outsider looking in, I hadn't understood, but now…
I touched my tattoo through my sleeve and winced. Albert didn’t even know I had one yet, and I wasn’t so sure I would tell him. "He was trying to burn off his harem tattoo. The fire got out of hand and… It nearly killed him."
She looked at me for a long moment while the words sank in. "Why would he do something like that? I mean…he obviously loved my mom if he thinks he sees her now."
"I think he did it because he hated what the tattoo’s symbol had come to represent."
"Death."
"And pain,” I said, nodding. “Obviously your mom and her harem's lives didn't go as planned. It wasn't your mom he was trying to burn away, but the symbol itself."
"A five-pointed star that fell." She traced the spokes of hers, and each brush of her finger prickled around mine as she did, heating it, making it pulse around where my arm rested in my lap.
I shifted and scooted away some. "It's a lot of responsibility to lead and to stand behind those who do."
"I guess some people don't have it in them. I mean, look at Devin. He betrayed my mom, so did he ever really love her?"
"I don't know." One thing I did know was that I wasn't like Devin. It wasn't in my nature to betray someone, hence the line of work I chose. I helped people who desperately needed to be hidden and needed to feel safe. Like Wren, but only because it was part of my job. Nothing ever went beyond what my work dictated, which was why this tattoo was so goddamn frustrating. It would take me away from the SFBI and bring me closer to Wren, but that wasn't what I wanted. At all.
And with Wren… Well, what had happened to her mom and her harem could easily happen to us too. I stared at Albert, broken and disfigured, just like me. Hell, I had already become him.
“Here we are.” Albert turned with two teacups in his hands, both of them shaking so much that some of the blood inside sloshed out onto the floor.
Wren and I rose quickly to help him, automatically catching each other’s gaze as we did so. It was like our movements—and our need to help—were synced. We carefully took the cups from him.
“It’s pretty fresh,” Albert said and then seemed to reconsider with a frown. “I think.”
“It is,” I said, reclaiming my seat with my cup. “I dropped off fresh blood two days ago, remember?”
“Sure, sure.” Albert filled his own cup and pulled up a chair to sit across from us. “You come so often, I can’t even keep track anymore.”
Wren smiled over her cup at me. “How often do you come?”
“Three times a week, whether he wants me to or not.”
She pulled the cup away and ran her tongue over a drop of blood on her lip. My whole body flushed as I tracked the motion, and an image of me sucking her full lip into my mouth came unbidden into my mind. I shot to my feet, setting my cup aside, and crossed toward the window, needing distance, needing to not look at her.
“Whether I want him to or not,” Albert was saying. “Ha! I couldn’t keep you away.”
“Who else am I going to play cards with?” I wiggled one of the boards nailed across the window, needing something to occupy my brain other than Wren’s mouth. “You guys talk. I’ll fix this board for you, Albert.”
“You with a hammer again? Wren, hide your toes.”
She burst out laughing.
I groaned and searched the space for his toolbox. “That was one time, Albert. One.”
“Can you tell me about your artwork?” Wren asked him.
“Sure.” Albert zipped toward his art pieces that leaned against the wall, faster than I’d seen the old vampire go in quite some time.
He brought the paintings over to where she sat and showed her his favorites. When he got to the one he’d painted of Bronwen, I stopped my quiet hammering and looked over my shoulder to see her reaction.
She smiled though it looked pained, and she reached out toward it but didn’t touch it. They really did look a lot alike, but Wren seemed more open, more expressive, more honest in what she was thinking and feeling. For anyone else, those qualities were fine, but for a potential queen… Ravana would see right through her before she cut Wren down, piece by piece.
Albert paused as he set th
e painting aside, listening to the emptiness beside him.
Wren pursed her lips and looked to the shadows behind him again. “Is she talking to you?”
"Can you not hear her?" he asked Wren with a frown.
She flinched slightly and shook her head. "No. I can't."
"She says she's never been prouder of you, that you're more beautiful than she could have ever imagined."
"Must be the genes."
He chuckled. "You're welcome for those, by the way. Well, half of them. The other half was the better half."
Wren laughed, and I could see their resemblance as they gazed at one another. Their wide smiles, the same humorous twinkle in their eyes, the way they leaned toward each other. From what I knew of Bronwen, she'd hid much of herself behind a wall of secrets. Of course, as queen, she'd probably had to. She was closed off, guarded, and yet Ravana had defeated her. If Wren really wanted the crown, she’d have to be just as cutthroat as Ravana. More so, probably, but even then, it might not be enough.
Flames sparked out of my index finger, but I quickly shook them out. Damn fire. Now was not the time. When I lost control of my emotions, I lost control of the fire inside me, although sometimes it happened anyway. Spontaneous combustion, they called it, but it was just a curse to me.
With the window now fixed, I crossed back to the bench and sat by Wren, but not too close.
"How many of your harem have you collected so far?" Albert asked.
"Um…" She slid me a glance as if she wasn't sure to count me or not. "Three so far."
"Are they good men?"
"Yes," she said without hesitation.
Well, at least she trusted me. Sometimes the mask made it seem like I had something to hide, which I did, but I'd always thought myself as trustworthy.
Albert jabbed his thumb behind him. "When you find all five, your mom says it's like an energy rush that makes you feel invincible, that it never really fades, even when you realize you have five vampires to annoy the hell out of you for the rest of eternity."