Chapter Twenty-Two
The sun rose on the town’s near-total destruction. With orders given to the citizens not to discuss what had happened during the night, the army began constructing cover stories for what had been labeled “The Event.” Claiming a low-yield bomb constructed by domestic terrorists had accidentally detonated, government officials denied any stories circulating regarding vampires, Dragons, or other magical creatures.
Henry, who’d died the same as any of the other vampires when he tasted Junior’s blood, turned to ash in the sunshine. Mallory and Leigh didn’t stick around to watch him burn. They had a little life to care for and spent the first part of the morning asking around to see if any of the residents had known or been related to her parents. When no evidence of any relations turned up, Mallory and Leigh hesitantly decided to keep the girl as their own for the time being.
Leigh didn’t change or die with his maker’s death. Figuring he’d lost the maker tie to Henry when his life had stretched into multiple centuries, Leigh found himself glad to be rid of his last connection to the insane man who’d made him. As far as he knew, he was now the oldest immortal.
With the residents homeless and jobless for the foreseeable future, plans immediately went into the making for rebuilding the town. Leigh volunteered a generous anonymous contribution from his many millions of dollars. The accrued worth wasn’t much to him, anyway. The town was.
By noon the day after The Event, Daria and Lydia made their way to the final resting place of Jerry and the last of his Hunters. No evidence remained of the sect of killers, but sitting pristine in the wreckage was a mound of what appeared to be sapphire and obsidian. With their mother’s heart finally returned to them, the sisters made plans of their own. As the new Dragon matron, Daria became the keeper of the heart and the protector of the town as her mother had been.
While the residents received an outpouring of support and resources from surrounding communities, Lydia and the others took up residences in several of the abandoned homes on the lakeside. From there, they worked, loved, laughed, and began to heal.
One night after a particularly exhausting day spent working on the rebuilding of one of the town’s malls, Lydia proposed a bonfire. Autumn had come in full force, and nothing made the coming winter seem further away than a night spent around leaping flames. She remembered the last time they’d had a night like that and thought of the differences.
Dan was with her, and Jade was gone. The completion of her heart and the hole in her soul warred with each other while she tried to enjoy the night. Leaving the marshmallow roasting and conversation when she could no longer stand to be the sole solemn face, Lydia made her way to the dock and sat down.
She didn’t remove her shoes and socks to dip her feet in the water. The chill of winter had come early, and she knew the water was already too cold to swim in. Dan joined her, and they enjoyed companionable silence for a few moments before she broke it.
“Everything’s changed,” she said.
“Nothing’s the same.”
They looked at each other, and Lydia took his hand. “I love you,” she told him, as she had made sure to do every day since The Event. “I don’t think I tell you that enough, but I do.”
Dan smiled and kissed her. He heard it several times a day, but he wouldn’t argue if she wanted to say it more. “I love you, too,” he assured her. “Something on your mind, besides the usual?”
Lydia stared out over the water. “Actually, yes. You’re not a Fallen anymore. If you die, you won’t remember anything from this life. You won’t remember me. Does that bother you?”
Dan tucked a wayward strand of ruby hair behind Lydia’s ear. “Of course it does. I try not to think of it. The time I do have with you is precious. I’d rather have one human life with you than a thousand lifetimes as a Hunter without ever finding my redemption. You saved me, Lydia. You’re my salvation.”
The sentiment warmed her. She smiled. But the issue still remained. She didn’t want him to only have one lifetime with her. She wanted them to have hundreds together. Thousands, if possible.
“There’s something I was thinking about,” she said.
Dan nudged her shoulder with his, a friendly prying. “Go on. Tell me.”
“A Dragon’s heart is a special thing,” Lydia said at length. “It can be broken down to almost nothing but as long as a core remains, the Dragon still lives. A heart given to a love, a true love, can beat in two separate bodies.”
Dan followed her train of thought. Instinct prompted him to refuse. He didn’t want her risking her heart or giving any of it up to him. Instead, he said, “There’s no truer love out there for me than you. I already have all of your heart that I need.”
Tears sprang up in Lydia’s eyes, and she dashed them away with a small laugh. “You talk pretty, but I want your honest opinion. Would you be willing to take half of my heart?”
Taking Lydia’s hand, Dan placed it over his chest, where his human heart beat every second just for her. “Whether it’s this heart or your heart, everything I am is yours. I will take half of your heart, because I want as many lifetimes with you as I can get.”
Lydia kissed him, and he smiled as their lips pressed together. She’d made him a man worth saving. She’d given him a love worth dying for. To be together for longer than the span of this human life would be the greatest gift she could bestow.
Bringing the heart from its protected place in her body, Lydia took it in both hands. With no effort needed, the pieces fell apart, equally in half. With her left hand, she pressed one half into Dan’s chest. Swirls of golden, orange, white, and red light danced around him as the mound seemed to evaporate into his skin. He breathed deeply, lighting up from within. When the fire reached his eyes, gold overtook the previous color.
Lydia returned the half of her heart she still possessed to her body. Even though part of it was gone, she felt more complete than she had in this or any other life.
Face no longer solemn and sad, Lydia kissed her other half, pouring all of the heat and love she felt for him into the embrace. For the first time, she felt the kinship of fire reciprocated in the kiss.
Epilogue
Two Months Later
Mallory followed Leigh through the streets of a large nearby city. She’d never been more concerned for him, not even when she worried Henry’s death would cause him to revert to a human and die. She’d left baby Adonai with Daria until she figured out what was going on with her maker.
Leigh began suffering terrible nightmares less than a week after The Event had ended. Sometimes even when he was awake and moving around, he would slip into a near-catatonic state and become plagued by what he described as multiple death experiences akin to what happened when a youngling underwent The Turn. He experienced death in varied forms. The strength it took to continue to pull through them left him gaunt, drained, and unwilling even to feed.
Mallory worried if they didn’t find the cause and eradicate it, he would die. Was this his reward for allowing his maker to be destroyed, she wondered. If so, a return to human form and a simple death would have been preferable. Not only was it killing him, the concern and helplessness would also soon undo all the progress Mallory had made into her life as a vampire, as well.
They passed building after building, each abandoned and desecrated with graffiti and wanton destruction after the economic collapse. The city had lost nearly a third of its citizens, and many apartment buildings, businesses, and homes were left unattended to be vandalized or squatted in.
Leigh had begun walking four hours ago, as soon as the sun had set. He hadn’t stopped once in their trek to the nearby city. Now that they stood in front of one of the numerous abandoned apartment structures, his feet finally slowed.
The ancient vampire swayed, eyelids easing up and down sporadically, as though the muscles controlling the skin were suffering disconnect from his brain. Mallory reached out and touched him on his elbow.
“Leigh,”
she said in a pleading voice. He looked at her, but Mallory didn’t think he could actually see her.
“They’re inside,” he said, and pointed to the building.
A sense of dread washed into Mallory, and she looked up at the forbidding structure as Leigh collapsed toward the cracked pavement of the parking lot.
She caught him with a grunt of surprised effort and lowered him down onto the bare covering of snow. Bundling up her thick coat, she slid it beneath his head and let him rest there. She didn’t really need it. Though she felt the cold, it could no longer kill her or even cause her much discomfort.
Hoping Leigh would be all right where he’d fallen, Mallory started toward the apartment building. She needed to know what was happening to her mate. If the answer could be found inside, she would find it.
Mallory found the lock on the large front door already broken. She eased it open and listened for sounds from within. The sensitivity of her newbie senses had barely dulled, so she could hear the rhythmic breathing of at least ten bodies. They all breathed in unison, making Mallory uncomfortable. There was something unnatural about the sounds and feel of the apparent squatters within the building.
She moved down the first staircase she came to, following the breathing through the darkened halls. Boards covered the windows, rendering the hallways in different shades of shadow. She could still see from what little natural night light filtered in from the open door, but it became markedly more difficult as she descended.
When she reached the bottom landing, Mallory let out a squeak of surprise that lodged in her throat. A hand on her arm indicated the presence of someone who’d been able to sneak up on her. Thankfully, Mallory was able to identify Leigh’s essence.
“You scared me,” she said in a hushed tone.
The breathing stopped, all ten bodies at once going silent and motionless.
“I don’t like this,” Mallory told Leigh. She didn’t know if he’d heard the sounds and the sudden silence, but he certainly was able to feel the foreboding mood of the place.
Leigh pulled out his cell phone and activated his flashlight app. He swept the light around the lower floor, looking for anything to indicate what the presences they knew had taken up residence in the space were. A cracked door at the end of the hallway beckoned them inside.
“Stay here,” Leigh suggested.
Mallory grabbed his hand and muttered, “Not on your life.”
They moved together, listening for the breathing to resume. Throughout their trek to the far room, it didn’t.
Leigh pushed the door open with his foot and shined the light from his phone inside. Out of a pile of bodies, one young man who couldn’t have even been twenty issued a weak hiss. He seemed to recognize Leigh, and his cracked eyes opened wider.
Another head popped up, this one belonging to a woman with long blonde hair matted into a brown mess from her time living with the group as squatters. Ten sets of confused, wide eyes looked on Leigh and Mallory as though they were both strangers and saviors. Slowly, the dirty, disheveled people began to stand.
“I take it these aren’t just hobos,” Mallory murmured to Leigh. Speaking caused all of the men and women to turn and look at Mallory. Their attention hovered on her for only a moment, and then they returned their enraptured gazes back to Leigh. “I think they like you.”
Once again, the intense eyes swung back to her in unison. After less time than the first instance, they returned their attention to the ancient maker.
“They are mine,” Leigh declared. His voice vibrated with confusion and a flash of anger. “They must have broken their maker tie to Henry. As his oldest creation, I must have inherited them when he was destroyed.”
The dirty mass approached Leigh with hesitant hands outstretched. They touched him. No place on his body was occupied by more than one hand at a time. Obviously uncomfortable with the display, Leigh held out a hand to Mallory. She gripped it in an attempt to soothe him while the feral creatures attempted to establish a connection with the maker who’d been suffering near psychosis because of his separation from the confused younglings. Slowly, awareness filled each of their expressions.
“We…ran,” one of the men told Leigh. The effort to talk was enormous. “Didn’t…want stay with…him.”
Mallory’s heart clenched with sorrow for the ten disconnected younglings. Henry had had enough vampires for his army to care nothing about one set of deserters. The separation from an older vampire had made them almost insane. She didn’t know what they were going to do, but she knew they were obligated to do something.
“What are we going to do, Leigh?”
He sighed. “What we’ve been doing,” he answered. “We rebuild. We keep them, and we teach them what life they can have. Without Henry, it’ll be a better one. But we can’t stay here. And we can’t go home. We need to find a new place.”
Mallory kept his hand in hers as they led the confused group up the stairs and out into the night.
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
* * * *
Lydia pulled into Heddy’s driveway and parked her car. She appreciated the reprieve the wisewoman’s request to visit had given her. Even with Leigh’s seemingly endless amount of money and the amazing contribution of resources and personnel from the surrounding region, states, and even other countries, the effort to rebuild a town for nearly eight thousand people had been draining, to say the least. Front and center from the beginning, Lydia had worked herself to exhaustion every day to keep her loss at bay.
Her conflicted emotions still kept her up some nights.
They’d recovered her mother’s heart, thought to be lost to them forever. The joy in its rediscovery reverberated profoundly within Lydia. Already having the heart replaced in the infant girl, Adonai, Leigh and Mallory had rescued brought her immeasurable happiness. Yet they’d won their mother back, only to lose Jade.
Sitting in the car as the winter cold began to creep around her, Lydia thought again of how Jade’s heart had been shattered into pieces and then ground into dust. She hadn’t seen the act itself, but she knew how it had gone, what had to have been done to it to truly kill her sister. Henry had known how to kill a Dragon, that much was certain. But what he hadn’t known was that the most important thing he’d taken away wasn’t a Dragon. It was a sister.
Wiping errant tears from her cheeks, Lydia checked the mirror, not truly caring what she’d find reflected in the glass. Sorrow had tarnished her beauty, which she’d before thought would always be the only constant in her life.
Opening the door, Lydia stepped out into the clean-smelling, chilly night. Frost and the smell of once-vibrant, golden and crimson leaves danced together on the crisp air. Autumn had once been her favorite season, but now it blended into winter, both seasons reminding her of death instead of beauty.
She didn’t knock on Heddy’s door because the wisewoman had invited her. She knew it would be unlocked, pushed inside, and announced her presence. “Hello, Heddy.”
“Back here, Lydia dear.”
Lydia followed the pleasant voice to a guest room filled with porcelain dolls in hand-sewn dresses. Heddy sat in a rocking chair near the oldest set of dolls, brushing the golden locks of one in her lap.
“This room creeps me out, Heddy,” Lydia admitted. Heddy gave her a chastising smile, and then replaced the doll she’d been grooming with her glassy-eyed kin.
“They’re just dolls, Lydia,” Heddy scolded. “They can’t hurt you.”
“Did you want me to stop by to talk about your dolls?” Lydia asked as she followed Heddy out to the living room. Nothing important took place in any other room of the house if Heddy had a say in it. The living room had always been the heart and soul of her family home.
“Sit, dear,” Heddy said, taking her typical perch in her reading chair. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Lydia felt her pulse quicken. The wisewoman had only ever called Lydia to her home alone to deliver dire
warnings or commands of fate. Though Heddy and her mother had been friends, they hadn’t interacted as families. Heddy was the wisewoman, a woman of power and mystery, and she always had been.
This felt like one of the meetings when she’d been summoned to receive a prophecy. The feeling of importance hung over her like a cloud of smoke, closing up her throat and quickening her pulse.
“What is it, Heddy?” Lydia could barely force her voice through the tightness that claimed her throat.
Hesitation. Lydia saw it in Heddy’s expression. It couldn’t be a message from her power, then. Lydia had always seen the wisewoman’s psychic prediction delivered with the utmost calm.
“I have something,” Heddy said as she pulled a crystal jewelry box from its sitting place on the table beside her. Lydia hadn’t noticed its presence.
Without further anticipation, Heddy lifted the lid and removed what rested within. She held it in her hands, a sparkling lump the size of a robin’s egg. On the surface, the mass looked like a nugget of gold, but within the ridges and imperfections on the bumpy surface, emerald green flecks glowed with living light.
“Jade,” Lydia breathed. She moved forward, falling to her knees in front of Heddy with one shaking hand stretching out. “You have a piece of her heart!” Joyful tears swept down her cheeks, scrubbing away lines made by her days and nights of sorrow. She touched her fingertips to the precious piece of Dragon heart.
Heddy gladly handed it over. “I didn’t know if it was a big enough piece,” the wisewoman confessed. “I wanted to tell you sooner, but I had my fears. Judging from your reaction, it will be enough?”
Scorched [Pain & Love 3] (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 15
