Yvette's Haven

by Tina Folsom

  “Tell me what the witch did to you.”

  “What’s that got to do with you trying to attack her?” Haven asked.

  “Everything.” She didn’t even try to contradict him. What was the point? He wouldn’t listen. He’d already made up his mind about her. To him she was a bloodthirsty killer with no regard for the feelings of others. His assumption couldn’t be farther from the truth.

  “If you’re trying to make excuses—”

  “Kimberly stinks of witch.” Yvette took in a deep breath, her nostrils flaring into the direction of the brothers. Yes, the stench was definitely coming from their bodies too. It wasn’t just something that hung in the air because the witch had been here. “And so do you two.”

  ***

  Being accused of smelling like a witch was the last thing Haven had expected coming out of Yvette’s mouth. Not that being called a witch was an insult per se, but the way she expelled the word “witch” from her mouth, made it sound like a four-letter word.

  “What’s your point?” he hissed, unable to keep his riled-up emotions under control. Yvette got under his skin without even trying very hard. Just keeping away from her and not throwing her onto the nearest flat surface cost him all the strength he had left. And his brother was giving him shit about it. The boner he’d sported earlier hadn’t escaped Wesley, who hadn’t missed the opportunity to use the knowledge as payback for all the times Haven had accused him of thinking with his dick.

  How could he have let himself go like that when Yvette had fed from him? And why the fuck had she not warned him about the side effect it would have? Was she enjoying his humiliation that much?

  “The point is the three of you smell like witches now. It’s faint, but it’s there.”

  Wesley shook his head. “That’s bullshit. You’re just trying to distract us.”

  Yvette cut him an annoyed glance, giving Haven a chance to let his eyes rest on her beautiful face. Even angry, she looked sexy.

  “To do what?” With a speed so fast Haven’s eyes could barely process it, she charged at Wesley and pinned him against the wall. “Listen to me, you arrogant little prick. If I wanted you—or anybody—in this room dead, it would have already happened.” Her head snapped to the side as she saw Haven approach. “I’m not a killer.” Yvette paused and locked eyes with him, and damn it if he didn’t know in that instant that she was telling the truth. “Not unless I’m forced to. So don’t try my patience.”

  The slight quiver in her voice was barely audible, but Haven noticed it nevertheless. Was she at her breaking point?

  Yvette released Wesley and calmly walked back to where Kimberly was still sitting, looking a little bit shell-shocked.

  “Are you okay?” she asked the girl.

  Kimberly just gave her a blank stare. “Let me see: I’m locked up with two strange men, one of which kidnapped me; all three of you are constantly fighting; the room is protected by a witch, who’s been trying to get into my head; my bodyguard turns out to be a vampire, and now you’re telling me I smell like a witch. No, Yvette, I’m not okay,” she finished on a sob.

  Ready to interfere if necessary, Haven watched Yvette sit down next to her and pull her into an embrace, remembering all too well how comforting her arms could be. “Shh, kiddo, everything will be okay. I promise you.” She patted Kimberly’s back and stroked her hand over the girl’s hair as the tears flowed.

  Haven stared at Yvette. He hadn’t expected her to show compassion and to comfort Kimberly. Could a vampire feel emotions like these? Were her actions genuine, or was she merely pretending for the girl’s benefit?

  Haven glanced at Kimberly, feeling sorry for her. She was an innocent, and he was to blame for the predicament she was in. He wanted to reach out to her and help somehow. It was only when Yvette shot him a warning glance that he realized he was approaching them. He nodded to Yvette, trying to indicate that he’d finally understood that she wouldn’t hurt her charge.

  “I want to go home,” Kimberly wailed.

  “I know you do. Only a few more hours. Once it’s dark again, my colleagues will be here—I know it. They’ll find us.”

  Haven’s eyes connected with hers. “How can you be so sure about that?”

  “They’re my family. Wouldn’t you risk everything for your family?” she challenged him.

  He tried to hide the pain that sliced through him at the memories. Only half of his family was still left, and if he didn’t do something soon, they would all be gone.

  “So your suggestion is we wait for them to free us?” Haven asked. How could she be so passive? He’d seen her fight before and realized she was fearless. What had her sit back now?

  “Like sitting ducks? Stupid! We should make a break for it now.” Wesley interrupted, but his voice was calmer now, not as heated as before. He glanced at Haven then back at Yvette.

  “Impossible,” Yvette claimed. “Don’t you think I would have already tried if I could? We can’t get past her protective wards. Not even my strength lets me kick down the door or break through the boarded-up window. Witchcraft is a bitch. And I’m not messing with it. My colleagues will have to attack her from the outside. It’s the only way.”

  “What guarantee do we have that your vampire friends won’t kill us? It can’t have escaped your attention that we have no qualms about killing any of your kind.” Wesley squared his shoulders.

  “Wes!” Haven chastised, suddenly uncomfortable with laying bare his past in front of Yvette.

  But Wesley didn’t relent. “It’s true. Let’s not beat about the bush. Just because you’re developing scruples.”

  Which was true. He had scruples, and they built with every minute he spent in Yvette’s company. She wasn’t at all what he’d known vampires to be. Her fierce loyalty to Kimberly and her continued assurances that she would protect her were facets of Yvette’s personality that he couldn’t help but admire. The tenderness with which she cradled her charge to give her comfort and allowed her to cry on her shoulder, was the last thing he’d expected from a vampire. Yet it was tenderness and compassion he saw in Yvette. Bundled with her strength and determination, she gave off the air of a mother protecting her young.

  “They won’t hurt you if you don’t try to hurt them. But I have to warn you: we have to make sure they know you’re no danger to them; otherwise, they’ll defend themselves. And considering that you smell like witches, they’ll see you as the enemy.”

  There it was again, her claim that they were witches. “You must be mistaken. Maybe you smell the witch out there. But as I told you earlier, Wes and I never inherited our mother’s powers. We’re not witches.”

  Yvette shook her head. “That’s impossible; it never skips a generation. And for not even one of the two children of a witch to inherit her powers? That can’t be right.”

  Wes shuffled closer. “Maybe Katie inherited Mom’s powers.”

  “Katie?” Yvette asked.

  “Our sister,” Haven explained, “the one who was kidnapped by a vampire.”

  “And never seen again,” Wesley added.

  Yvette gave him a look full of compassion. “I’m sorry. No wonder you hate us so much.”

  “It was a long time ago, but I remember it like yesterday.” Haven caught Yvette’s expectant look. It encouraged him to go on. “Mom was attacked in her own kitchen one night. I tried to help her, but I wasn’t strong enough. I was just a kid. The vampire told her she had to give one of us up. I didn’t understand at first what that meant, but when he took Katie after he’d killed Mom, I knew. He’d said that he only needed one of the three of us. Just one. And Katie was the easiest to take.”

  It was still difficult to talk about it. Haven closed his eyes for a moment and took a few steadying breaths. Would Yvette understand now that whatever attraction was between them could never go any further? That he couldn’t soil his mother’s and sister’s memory by getting involved with a vampire?

  “Three,” Yvette whispered. “Three.”
Realization bloomed in her eyes as pieces of the puzzle suddenly seemed to click into place. Haven opened his eyes and stared at her. She grabbed Kimberly by the shoulders and held her away from her.

  “The Power of Three. That’s what the vampire meant.” Yvette stared up at Haven. “That’s why he said he only had to take one of you. One of the three.”

  “What?” Wesley asked, his voice as confused as Haven felt. He had no idea what Yvette was talking about.

  She jumped up. “Don’t you see? The vampire wanted to separate the three of you: Wes, you, and Katie. The three children of a witch.”

  “And kill Mom,” Wesley barked.

  Haven shook his head. “No, he didn’t want to kill her. He said he would have let her live, but she was fighting him. He killed her because she was trying to bespell him. She died for us, because she couldn’t let either of us go.”

  Yvette nodded. “All he wanted was to break up the three siblings. Destroy the power.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” Haven asked, curious now.

  “There’s a legend that the three children of a witch will upset the power balance in the underworld, the balance between vampires, witches, and demons. I don’t know much about it, but I know that if you and your brother are two of those siblings, then I think I’ve just come up with the reason the witch captured you. You—” Then Yvette turned her gaze back to Kimberly, who’d risen from her cot. “—and your sister.”

  Fifteen

  Haven’s incredulous stare bounced from Yvette to Kimberly and then back to Yvette. He vaguely heard his brother gasp in surprise, a sound he would have echoed had he been able to do anything other than gape. He took in Kimberly’s slender figure and her blonde hair. He and Wes both had dark hair, just like their parents.

  “It can’t be. Kimberly looks nothing like my parents.” He pointed toward her hair. “Nobody in our family has light-colored hair.”

  Kimberly rose, her movements tentative as if unsure of herself. “I’m not a blonde. They wanted that color for the movie. I haven’t changed it back yet.”

  Haven blinked and tried to see her with different eyes, blocking out her hair. He focused on her facial features: her eyes, the line of her straight nose, her lips, her stubborn chin. Some things looked familiar, others didn’t. There was no way to know for sure. He shook his head.

  “I don’t know.” He glanced at Wes, silently asking for reassurance, but his brother merely shrugged.

  “It would be too much of a coincidence. We’ve looked for her for twenty-two years. Why would she—”

  “Twenty-two years?” Kimberly asked. “I was dropped off at an orphanage a little over twenty-two years ago. The man who left me there never came back.”

  “Where was that?”

  “In Chicago.”

  Even though they’d lived in San Francisco at the time Katie had been stolen from them, the vampire could have easily traveled anywhere with her. The police search within California had come up with nothing at the time. And Haven’s later investigations once he was old enough to look for her himself, had been just as fruitless.

  “You don’t know who your family was?”

  The girl shook her head. “DNA was in its infancy back then. The staff at the orphanage thought that my mother might have been a teenager who’d gotten pregnant and that the man who dropped me off was her married lover.”

  Next to him, Wesley took a tentative step toward Kimberly. A moment later, Haven felt his brother’s hand on his arm. “Could it be?” his brother asked, giving him a hopeful glance.

  Haven made sure the wall around his heart was firmly in place, except for the few cracks that had started appearing. He shoved that nagging little detail to the back of his mind, refusing to acknowledge it. “Let’s not get our hopes up. This could be a wild-goose chase.”

  “I don’t think so,” Yvette interrupted. When he tried to contradict her, she held up her hand. “Just listen before you dismiss this. When I met you all individually, I knew you were human. I was alone in the car with Kimberly when we drove to the party. Her scent was human. No doubt in my mind. And then you—” She looked at him. “When we spoke at the party, your scent was human.”

  Haven felt his face and neck heat. They’d done more than just speak at the party. They’d practically sniffed each other out. The knowledge that she’d inhaled his scent and made a note of what he’d smelled like, excited him when he knew it shouldn’t matter. He cleared his throat, trying to push away his errant thoughts. “And?”

  Yvette pointed at Wesley. “Same with Wesley, but less so, because when we first came in contact, you guys were here too, you and Kimberly. He still smelled human, but something was a little different. I didn’t take notice much, because I wasn’t in best form.”

  Haven gave her a surprised look and noticed how she flinched as if she hadn’t wanted to reveal her weakness. So she had been hungry, just like he’d thought. “When you need blood badly, it affects your senses?”

  “Of course not.”

  He could see the lie roll off her pretty lips like too much ‘70s lip gloss.

  “I’d only just come around from the poison you used to knock me out. My sense of smell was off.”

  “Maybe it’s still off,” Wes scoffed.

  Yvette turned her scowl on him. “I’m fully recovered.” Her gaze drifted back to Haven, more specifically to his neck, and he recognized that she was thinking of his blood.

  Haven suppressed the shiver that tried to race traitorously through his body at her glance, but he couldn’t control his pounding heart. Unable to say anything for fear everybody would hear the sudden arousal in his voice, he was grateful when Wes asked the next question.

  “So, let’s just assume your nose is doing its job, then what does it mean? Why would we suddenly all be smelling like witches? Maybe the witch’s smell is just rubbing off on us, and it’s confusing you.”

  His brother could have a point. Maybe a vampire’s senses could get confused just like a human’s. Nobody was infallible. Hell, if a vampire could pass out from loss of blood, maybe they were a lot more vulnerable than he’d always assumed. And when he’d watched over Yvette while she’d been unconscious after giving him her blood, he’d sensed a vulnerability about her that she didn’t show when awake. Well, there was actually a moment when she had been without defenses while awake: when he’d kissed her into submission. He’d felt her melt into his embrace, her moans urging him on to take her. The wall around her had been down then.

  “What do you think, Hav?” his brother asked. “Hav!”

  He jolted out of his reverie. Shit, how long had he spaced out? “Uh, yeah, well.”

  Wes gave him a strange look, then continued, “See, even my brother agrees. It has something to do with what the witch did to our heads.”

  “No,” Yvette objected. “It’s the fact that the three of you are together. Almost as if together, you’re witches, apart you’re not.”

  “Ludicrous!” Wes huffed. He raked his hand through his hair.

  Something with Yvette’s words connected. “Hold it, Wes. I think there’s something there.” Haven looked at his brother and willed him to listen.

  “But you know yourself that we didn’t get any of Mom’s powers.”

  He nodded. “Yes, that’s what we always thought. But the witch seems to think otherwise. When I resisted her probing in my head, she asked me where the source of my power was.”

  “But—”

  “I know. I told her I had no powers, but she didn’t believe me at first. Would I really let her beat the hell out of me if I had any witchcraft to oppose her? You bet I wouldn’t.”

  “Figures.” Yvette’s lips twitched into the beginning of a smile which she tried to conceal with a snort, but he caught it nevertheless. When she looked at him like that, and when they engaged in these light, friendly, vocal sparring matches with one another, he could almost forget what she was.

  “So the witch is mistaken. We have n
o powers,” Wesley insisted.

  Maybe that was what they all thought, but there was one thing the witch had said before he’d passed out that made him suspect that they’d been wrong all these years. “She wondered whether Mom had ever told us.”

  “Told us what?” Sometimes his little brother could be really thick and slow on the uptake.

  “That you do have her power.” Yvette pushed her long hair back over her shoulder.

  “But then why wouldn’t we have known all these years? It makes no sense. I never felt any power.”

  “It’s the first time the three of you are together after you mother’s death. Maybe that’s how you all receive your powers, by being together.” Yvette shrugged. “I don’t know much about this, but I know what I smell. And the three of you are witches. Which means Kimberly has to be Katie.”

  Dead silence greeted this remark and three sets of eyes stared at Yvette out of identically shocked faces. Haven was the first to recover. “But if that’s the case, why would the witch put us all together if that gave us powers? What if we used that power to defeat her?”

  Yvette shrugged. “Do you feel any different? I mean, do you feel like you have some power now?”

  “How the hell would I know?” Haven grumbled.

  “Well, just think of moving something.” Yvette looked around, then pointed at the cot. “Move that bed with your mind.”

  Haven had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes. How would he be able to suddenly move objects? Not even David Copperfield could do that without setting up his trick beforehand.

  “Just try it,” Yvette urged. “All of you.”

  Despite the stupidity of the suggestion, Haven concentrated on the cot and willed it to move. Nothing happened. Just like he’d thought.

  He had no powers.

  “Nothing,” Kimberly said.

  “Same,” Wes confirmed. “We have no powers. Ergo, we’re not witches.”

  Yvette put her finger to her mouth, biting her nail. “I’ve never been wrong about my sense of smell. Maybe there’s a spell or something that you have to do first before you get your powers.” She paused, clearly thinking hard. Then her face lit up, and she stared at Haven. “Did the witch ask you where your seat of power was?”