by Melody Raven
“Safe? What do we have to be afraid of?” asked Rok with an incredulous tone.
“I don’t know how old you are, but we were not always as secure as we are now. It’s important that our safety is preserved.”
Rok smiled at that. “I’m glad you feel that way. That means we agree on our basic philosophy.”
Marcus highly doubted that.
“All I want is safety and security for our people. Aleksander,” he spat out, “thinks that means hiding from a species weaker than us. That’s not security. That is cowardice.”
Marcus bit his tongue to keep from disagreeing with Rok. At one time, he’d refused to hide as well. “Is that your plan then? To come forward to the world?”
Rok laughed out loud. Marcus noticed his two lackeys hadn’t changed expressions at all since he sat down. “I plan so much more than that. By the time I’m through, the humans will be the ones cowering in the sunlight.”
Marcus nodded. It was what he was expecting, and Rok was hardly the first to want to overthrow humanity. “That’s a commendable plan, but Aleksander has an army he can call on. What exactly do you have?”
Rok leaned forward. “I am not going to give all my secrets away, but let’s just say I have my own army, and they’re twice the size of anything Aleksander could ever throw together and much better trained.” Rok pointed to Kilk, who sat on his left. “See this beast? There are thousands more where he came from. Aleksander won’t even know where to start.”
Marcus kept his stoic expression. How could Rok have such a large vampire army with no one in the Council or monarchy knowing about it? “Where exactly are you hiding this massive army?” he asked, not sure he truly believed Rok’s claims.
Rok leaned back and took a quick drink of the dark red liquid in his glass. “As I said, I have to keep some secrets.”
Marcus tried to think of a different angle. “So what? You’re going to have your huge and well-trained army attack the Tower opening ceremony tomorrow?”
“That’s small shit,” he said. “No army required. But I’m going to make my presence known tomorrow. I wanted to talk to you about what security will be like.”
Marcus shrugged. “Well, fuck if I know. I can tell you what the plans were, but I cannot promise they haven’t changed to make sure I don’t show my face.”
“They would keep you out of your own property? Bastards. We will make them pay. I promise you that.”
I’m sure you’re so concerned about my feelings, thought Marcus. “At large events like this, Aleksander usually has at least twenty guards for him, but other members of the Council will have their own guards and I cannot guarantee how many that will be. Probably at least another twenty, so forty in total.”
“What about this Ironheart guy? What can you tell me about him?”
Marcus’s eyes met Rok’s across the table. If he knew Ironheart was going to be there, he undoubtedly already knew the number of guards who would be there. He was just testing Marcus. It was the oldest trick in the book: make sure you already know the answer to ninety percent of the questions you are asking. It put Marcus in the position where any lie he told could cause his immediate death, or more likely capture and torture until all useful information could be dragged out of him.
Marcus gave Rok the abbreviated truth. “Ironheart isn’t a guy. She is the leader of a band of mercenaries who have loyalty to no one but her, and she is better at killing than anyone, vampire or human, than any mercenary I’ve ever met.”
Rok raised his brow. “A woman? This might be easier than I thought.”
Well, at least something was going right. Ironheart and her well-trained men were not to be underestimated. If Rok was going to attack the opening tomorrow and knew half as much as it sounded like, they would need Ironheart.
Rok reached behind him and pulled out a long cardboard tube. “Goff, clear the table,” he ordered. Goff obediently and efficiently moved all the empty glasses to the table behind him.
Rok pulled a large piece of rolled-up paper from the tube and spread it on the table in front of them, facing Marcus. He immediately recognized it as the blueprints for the lobby level of Sonin Tower.
“These are the only schematics that we have for the building. We want you to go over these plans and tell us where you think the guards will be positioned and if there are entrances or exits we are not seeing. We also need to know what other security is at each door.”
Marcus spent the next hour or so going over every single little detail he knew about the Tower. He wanted to omit as much information as possible, but Rok kept on peppering in little details he already knew.
In the end, Marcus had given up everything. Not only that, but Rok gave him no useful information. Sure, he now knew that Rok wanted to make the vampires’ presence known to humanity, but he could have guessed that just as easily.
He knew Rok had an army, but that was also useless information. He didn’t know the location of the army and could not fathom how Rok could have thousands of vampires ready to turn against Aleksander that no one knew about. Something didn’t add up, but Marcus was fucking clueless about what that was.
Rok’s two men just sat quietly and menacingly the entire time. If they were any indication of this army, Aleksander might not be able to win this fight.
Marcus knew there was going to be an attack on his people tomorrow night and he was powerless to stop it. Hell, he spent half the night giving secrets to the enemy.
He knew he was supposed to be pretending to be a traitor, but at that moment, he didn’t feel as if he was pretending anymore.
Gena felt like a traitor. She was betraying Marcus. In her defense, she’d fully intended to tell him she was meeting Joy along with Hope. Everything had happened so fast once she brought Lady in from their stroll.
She couldn’t interrupt him kissing her. Then he’d been hungry, and she didn’t want to get in his way there, and then, of course, the rebels had called and he had other things on his mind. She didn’t want to be any more of a hindrance than she already was.
Because of the suddenness of the call Marcus got, she ended up at the restaurant about an hour early, and it felt like the longest hour of her life. The meeting spot was a smaller Italian restaurant with dim lighting and soft music playing in the background. It would have even been a peaceful environment under different circumstances.
Instead, Gena was filled with anxiety. She was anxious that her being alive would freak out Joy too much. She was worried about Marcus being alone with the rebels again, especially considering what had happened the last time.
She also knew Joy was going to try to convince her to come home, and she had no idea how she could tell her best friend she could never go home again.
Soon enough the wait was over, and Gena saw Hope walk into the small restaurant. Gena jumped up and looked around for Joy and couldn’t hide her dismayed expression when she didn’t see her. She walked up to Hope and gave her a big hug, taking a moment to relish in the simple pleasure of a friend’s embrace. “Where is she?” asked Gena.
Hope took a deep breath. “Well, something came up.”
Gena gave her a questioning look. “What could possibly come up?”
Hope glanced to the empty table. “I think you should sit down.” Gena shook her head in confusion but did take her seat. Hope took another steadying breath. “You know how you didn’t want me to tell Joy, but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut because seeing her in pain hurt me too much?”
Gena rolled her eyes in frustration. “We had this conversation like five hours ago.”
“Apparently Joy has the same problem I do,” said Hope.
Before Gena could ask what that meant, a soft voice came from behind Hope. “Gena?”
She recognized her mother’s voice before she even had a chance to look up. She pushed her chair back and ran as fast as she could into her mother’s arms, and neither could stop the tears from flowing. Gena hadn’t made sense of why she was there, but she coul
dn’t hide her elation. She had been afraid she’d never see her family again.
Her heart broke as she got a good look at her mother’s face. There were obvious signs of stress, between the dark circles under her eyes and her messy hair that was usually pulled back so neatly.
Gena and her mother, Jill, had always looked alike, with dark hair and blue eyes. Her mother now had gray peppering her dark hair, but somehow it made her look even better. Her cheekbones stood out more with age, but the huge gardens she kept up during her retirement helped her to maintain a healthy physique for a woman in her sixties.
“I don’t understand,” said her mother in a soft voice as she cupped Gena’s face and took a good look at her.
Gena felt uncomfortable under the close scrutiny. Would her mother notice any of the differences? “I don’t really understand either. That’s why I came here.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?” The pain in her mother’s voice was so apparent.
Gena mentally kicked herself for not going to her family, for not believing they would understand. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I just panicked and got the hell away as quickly as possible.”
Hope interrupted and whispered, “Maybe we should sit down. People are starting to look and we are talking about, um, sensitive subjects.”
Gena glanced around her and noticed that most of the other diners were in fact looking in her direction. She put her head down in embarrassment and led her mother back to her table. “What exactly did Hope tell you?”
Hope answered, “I didn’t say much of anything since there’s little that I actually know. I told her about Ryan and the circumstances of how you woke up.”
Gena narrowed her eyes. “All of the circumstances?”
Hope nodded. “Right down to the missing scars.”
Gena looked to her mother, who sat calmly across the table. “This doesn’t freak you out?”
Her mother tightened her lips. “I don’t understand it any more than you, but you can’t expect me to view this as anything other than a miracle. I buried my daughter yesterday and yet here I am talking to you. If that’s not miraculous, I don’t know what is.”
Gena couldn’t argue with that logic. It was pretty damn amazing she was sitting there, alive and well. “So you don’t have any idea why I’m still here?”
Her mother solemnly looked down at the table and Gena’s heart sunk. “I was expecting you to just say no. Is there something you know?” She already knew that her guardian angel other mother had brought her back (again), but she didn’t expect her biological mother to have any clue about this. Which one was her biological mother? Jill had given birth to her, but that body was now six feet under, and the body she was sitting in had been “created” by her angel mother.
Gena shook her head at the confusing thoughts and looked to Jill. “What are you not telling me?” she asked again at her continued silence.
“There are things about your birth that you don’t know. I’m not very proud of this, but I need you to know that I love you so much and the only reason I kept this from you was to spare any hurt feelings you might have.”
Well, this didn’t sound good. “What was so bad you were afraid to tell me?”
“Your father and I were desperate to have a baby of our own. You know we’d been trying for years and I suffered three miscarriages. Each one was just as devastating as the last. When I got pregnant for a fourth time, I told myself that this would be different, but right around the fourth month, just like the first three pregnancies, I felt such an intense pain in my stomach and the blood started.” Her voice caught and tears welled up, but Jill forced herself to continue. “I was so convinced I was losing another baby. Your father rushed me to the hospital and to everyone’s surprise, not only was the baby fine, but they couldn’t find anything wrong at all that would have caused the pain or bleeding. They sent me home and I was on bed rest for most of the duration of the pregnancy. And five months later, I delivered a healthy baby girl.” Her mother met Gena’s eyes and a tear rolled down her cheek. “I looked down at your beautiful face, so perfect and innocent, and I just knew. You were not mine.”
Gena sat back in her seat and stared wordlessly at her mother.
“My postpartum depression got worse and worse over the next few months. All I could think was that I had the wrong baby. Your father was very nice, all things considered. He attributed it to the other miscarriages and me thinking about what I could have had with our three lost children.
“I was so convinced you weren’t mine that I had the inside of your cheek swabbed and sent in for a maternity and paternity test. The results took months to return, and things changed in those months. You became more than just a baby. You would smile and giggle. You became Gena. I fell in love with you. By the time the test results came back, I had forgotten I had ever sent them out to begin with.”
“The results were negative, weren’t they?” asked Gena, even though she already knew the answer.
Jill reached across the table and grabbed Gena’s hand. “Whatever those tests said, you are my baby girl. Always have been and always will be.”
Gena gently removed her hand from her mother’s and wiped away her own silent tear. She needed to be strong for her mother’s sake. “I haven’t always been yours.”
A look of fear crossed her mother’s face. “Gena, I’ve always loved you.”
Gena shook her head. “I believe that, and you have to know that I love you and this doesn’t change any of my feelings about you. I came to the city to find out why I didn’t die. Well, I found out.”
As simply as possible, Gena told her mother about her angel mother, Anael, and Mary. She told her that Mary had been murdered and Anael had held on to Mary’s soul until she found a family good enough to raise her. “It took five hundred years for her to find a mother as good as you,” said Gena softly, mentally thanking Anael for finding her such a great surrogate family.
Hope, who’d been mostly silent during Jill's tearful confession, couldn’t hold back her excitement. “You were reincarnated?”
Gena shrugged. “I don’t think there really is a word for what happened. I guess you could say I was reborn?”
Gena almost laughed at the big smile across Hope’s face. At least someone was enjoying this craziness. Her mother wasn’t exactly smiling, but she wasn’t running for the hills yet either. She breathed a silent sigh of relief. Knowing that she could still talk to her mother in this strange afterlife she was in was beyond comforting. How many times had she had to fight the overwhelming urge to call her for support?
But it wasn’t just her mother there to support her now. Of course, Marcus had promised to help her in any way he could, and she also had Hope and Joy to bring her back down to earth when the world that Marcus lived in got to be too much.
Though Gena supposed that this was the world that she lived in now too. The more time she spent in this strange world of vampires and magic, the more comfortable she became with the idea. Could she ever go back to the day-to-day monotony that she’d been living in before? Sure, any nursing job was going to be much more interesting than an office job, but it was nothing compared to the little she’d seen of Marcus’s existence.
Would his crazy life seem half as tempting if he weren’t in it? What if it had been someone else who Anael had directed Hope to? Would she have been half as accepting of this life if she’d never had the opportunity to kiss Marcus?
Gena shook the thoughts of “what-ifs” away and focused on how great it was to see her mother. They both knew Gena would have to let her father know she was still alive. As far as he knew, his wife had taken an impromptu trip to deal with the grief of losing a daughter, but Gena and her mother knew that he was alone right now and dealing with his own grief.
As much as Gena wanted to tell him herself, she promised Marcus that she wouldn’t leave and she wasn’t breaking that promise. Her father would just have to take her mother’s word and she could see him when
some of the craziness blew over.
There wasn’t any more immediate family who needed to know. There were a few cousins, but Gena wasn’t comfortable telling anyone more than necessary, and to Gena, her mother, father, and best friend were all necessary.
Gena, Hope, and Jill stayed at the restaurant until every other diner had left and the staff was cleaning off all the tables. Part of Gena didn’t want this night to end, she was still so overjoyed with being reconnected with her family, but another part of her desperately wanted to see Marcus again. She wanted to make sure he was still safe and sound after being behind enemy lines again.
She just wished she had a cell phone to send him a “how are you doing?” text, at least. If he was going to be spending time with such dangerous crowds, she really should have some way to track him.
Gena gave Hope a quick hug good-bye and then held her mother so tightly she was afraid she was going to break her. Hope reminded her again that Joy was in town and would be seeing Gena sometime in the next week. Gena eagerly agreed that once Marcus was back they would arrange a meeting.
Even with the gun and silver knife in her purse, Gena would feel safer if he was around. Sure, she’d proved she could handle herself in a tough situation, but she’d rather have backup if she found herself threatened again.
Gena watched Hope and her mother drive off in a cab before she turned back to make her way to Marcus’s penthouse. She periodically glanced behind her to make sure no one was following her, either a rebel or her mother. She didn’t want to be attacked unaware, and she didn’t want anyone she cared about knowing where she was staying, as to keep them as far away from the danger.
She was supposedly immortal now, but she didn’t want to take any chances, nor did she want to risk anyone who was more vulnerable than her.
Though she kept looking over her shoulder, she never saw anyone follow her. She eventually felt safe enough to hail a cab. She kept a close eye on the cars behind her, which was hard with so many cars on the road and the dark night sky making it hard to distinguish colors and models of different vehicles.
