by Kiki Howell
“That’s okay,” she interrupted him, cupping his face in her hands. “I’m not going to either. Come on. I’ve wanted this for too long.”
She tilted her hips up at the same moment he pressed forward. He slipped in all the way, her body welcoming him, embracing him as though this was exactly where he belonged.
Even after all this time, they found their rhythm again, the one that always left them panting and gasping and so close to that edge they both craved so desperately and yet wanted to push back just a little longer. He’d said he wouldn’t last, and in truth he didn’t, but he did the same thing he’d always done when they’d made love: took care of her needs first, made sure she came, and only then did he let himself fall.
Still intimately entwined, their bodies moving with the same breathlessness, they clung to each other for a long moment before he slipped out of her and to the side, disposing of the condom before drawing her close to him again. He was shaking as hard as he had earlier.
“Kirsten?” he murmured into her hair. “Don’t take it back. Please.”
She knew what he meant, of course, and her throat tightened at the thought of how much she had hurt him while trying to save herself from being hurt.
“I’m not going to,” she said, turning her head and seeking his mouth to brush her lips against it. “I promise.”
She’d hoped it’d be enough to reassure him, but his voice remained hesitant.
“What if I went back to the fight?” he asked, even more quietly.
Kirsten had to let her mind process the question before she could find her voice.
“Are you going to?” she asked.
“I might not have a choice.”
She understood that much too well for her own comfort.
“If you go back to fighting demons...” she started, but had to stop to think on how she would continue. In the end, it wasn’t all that hard to figure out. “I’ll come with you. Every time.”
Jacob propped himself up on one elbow. In the faint light, she could just see how wide his eyes were.
“You can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“You might get hurt or... or...”
She reached behind herself to turn on the lamp on the night table. When she took a good look at him, she could see she hadn’t imagined what she heard in his trailing voice. She smiled faintly.
“Now you get how I feel, huh?”
His eyes, usually so clear, seemed to darken a little.
“If you’d tried to tell me from the start...”
“I’m sorry.”
He considered her for a long moment and finally reached to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.
“No,” he said quietly, then again, a little louder. “No, I shouldn’t have said that. The past is the past, and I’m not going to hang it over your head. We’re here now. It’s all that matters.”
He sealed it with a kiss and it felt like a promise. She hugged him tight and found his lips again. They started over, and this time, they made it last.
STRICTLY SPEAKING, Andrew didn’t have anything to do in his office at the moment. Payroll was done, invoices sent, every last bit of paperwork completed and filed. He could have been in the training room with Vinnie and Rachel, or even still in bed with Nicholas. Neither option however would have allowed him to keep such a close eye on the front door—and on Jacob and Kirsten when they came in.
Through the door he hadn’t fully closed, he listened in when they arrived, but didn’t hear much more than a quiet, “I’ll see you later, then.” Kirsten’s kitten heels clicked on the stone floor as she walked to her office next to Andrew’s. She closed the door behind her, but then that was nothing new.
Well. That had been anticlimactic.
Abandoning the pretense that he was working, Andrew went upstairs, though he soon realized Jacob was in his room. The closed door didn’t invite visitors. Andrew resolved to wait in the kitchen and set a pot of coffee to brew, more to give himself something to do than because he wanted a cup. The aroma, at least, seemed to help in dragging Jacob out of his room, and he came in to help himself to a cup.
Andrew offered a quiet, “Good morning” that received an answer in kind, but Jacob seemed very intent on not looking at him. He sat at the table with his coffee, idly looking at the newspaper on the table, his cheeks growing redder and redder even though Andrew didn’t say a single word.
Before Jacob finished his cup of coffee, Nicholas walked in and strolled to the fridge, throwing over his shoulder, “So. Kirsten. Getting lucky?”
Jacob started choking on his coffee, which seemed to amuse Nicholas greatly.
Grabbing a paper towel and handing it to Jacob, Andrew hissed Nicholas’ name reproachfully, but Nicholas merely gave him an innocent look.
“What? She’s been working on those diaries for weeks. Can’t I ask if she’s having any luck with them?”
“You weren’t talking about her magic,” Jacob said in between two fits of coughing.
Nicholas raised his eyebrows at him.
“I wasn’t?” he asked with badly faked puzzlement. “What was I talking about, then?”
“God, you’re horrible,” Jacob muttered, glaring at him.
Nicholas answered with a beaming smile. “I have no idea what you mean.”
Jacob finished patting dry the coffee he’d spilled, his movements a bit more forceful than necessary.
“No,” he said, gritting his teeth, “she’s not having any luck with the diaries. Looks like she’s getting discouraged about it, in fact.”
Andrew came over to the table and took a seat; this would only be one more serious talk they’d had at this table...
“Well,” he said, “we always knew it was a possibility that she wouldn’t find anything.”
And if he was honest with himself, Andrew might have wished it would be the case...
“I think she really believed she’d get somewhere,” Jacob said.
“So did you, huh?” Nicholas asked with a twisted smile that hinted they were off topic again.
“Nicholas...” Andrew said with a sigh.
“What?”
Nicholas’ innocent smile had long ago ceased to fool Andrew.
“Yes, we’re together,” Jacob said abruptly. “That’s what you want to know, isn’t it? Now you do. Happy?”
Nicholas immediately dropped the pretense.
“Are you?” he asked, sounding perfectly serious.
“Am I what?”
“Happy.”
Jacob looked at him with a frown, as though the question had taken him aback—as though he hadn’t asked himself that, yet.
“Yes,” he said after a second, a slow smile spreading on his face. “Yes, I am happy.”
“Then that’s all that matters,” Nicholas said matter-of-factly. “Isn’t it, Andrew?”
“Always was,” Andrew said, a little choked up.
Epilogue
LONG BEFORE KIRSTEN was done talking, Jacob knew what both his fathers would say. Nicholas’ always present half-smile had faded into a tight line as he pressed his lips together. Andrew, meanwhile, had pushed his chair away from the table and was leaning back, his arms crossed over his chest.
“I don’t like it,” Andrew said, and Nicholas nodded his agreement.
Jacob turned to Kirsten and gave her an ‘I told you so’ look. He’d warned her this would happen, but they were ready for it. He rested his hand on top of hers on the table, lightly touching the simple gold band on her ring finger, and faced his fathers again.
“What don’t you like about it?” he asked.
Andrew let out a little huff. “Where do you want me to start? Magic using blood? Magic using my son’s blood? What could I possibly like about any of it?”
That, too, Jacob had seen coming.
“It’s just a few drops,” Jacob pointed out. “They take more when I donate at blood drives. This isn’t going to hurt me.”
“You hope it’s not
going to hurt you,” Nicholas said pointedly. “But Kirsten has been wrong before when doing a spell that used your blood, and look where you two ended up.”
It had already been more than two years, but Jacob remembered quite well their little detour through the demons’ world, he didn’t need anyone to remind him of it. Nicholas knew that, like he knew that Jacob didn’t like to be reminded of those few days that had changed his life; he wasn’t playing fair.
Then again, had he ever? When it came to keeping Jacob safe, both Andrew and Nicholas could be absolutely ruthless. It had been true when he’d been a child, and it was still true now that he was closer to thirty than twenty years old. It’d probably still be true when he was too old and too frail to do much more than sit in a rocking chair and reminisce about the good old days.
“But I wasn’t trying to use his blood that one time,” Kirsten said, her tone calm but cool. She could be a little touchy about her magic skills, especially when they were questioned so blatantly. “That time, it was an accident that his blood got mixed with my ingredients, and that’s why it went wrong. But when I did the reverse spell knowing his blood would help, it worked fine, didn’t it? And this time I know exactly what I’m doing. I based the whole spell around his blood.”
Nicholas bared his teeth in something that could just barely be called a smile.
“I still don’t like it,” Andrew said, inflexible. “That’s not what you talked about when you asked for the diaries.”
Kirsten grimaced. That was another touchy subject. It had taken her a long time to give up on her initial plan—at Jacob’s insistence—and agree to think outside her initial parameters. Once she’d started on that path, however, she’d quickly found her way. Creating this spell hadn’t been easy either, but she’d never become as hopelessly stuck as she had been while trying to figure out how to stop the demons from invading Earth.
“Believe me,” she said, “if I knew how to close the way so the demons can’t get to us anymore, I’d be more than happy to do that. But I can’t. I’ll keep trying to figure it out until my last breath, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get anywhere with it. And this is something concrete. Something I am certain will work. And help.”
“Something you hope will work,” Nicholas interjected again. “What if—”
Kirsten sat up a little straighter. She was bristling.
“Do you honestly believe I’d put Jacob at risk if I wasn’t sure? Or the people this will impact?”
Nicholas was undeterred. “But what if—”
This time, it was Andrew who interrupted him, first by reaching out to lay a hand on his shoulder, then by asking, much more calmly than Nicholas, “Explain to me again how it would work.”
Taking a deep breath, Kirsten leaned back in her chair. She looked a little put off, and Jacob could understand why. They’d expected resistance, yes, but she’d already explained this; why did Andrew need to hear it again?
“When Cara was working on her spell,” she said coolly, “she used your blood and her own. It was a sort of focus, to use a layman term. It was supposed to make fertilization possible despite the fact that vampires can’t father children. That part worked, but that wasn’t all your blood did. It also transferred some of your vampire abilities to Jacob.”
Something shifted in Andrew’s expression, and Jacob thought he knew why. Even now, after so many years, Andrew still had ambivalent feelings about Jacob’s abilities—not that Jacob had been using them all that much in the past couple of years. Jacob sometimes felt guilty about neglecting his skills, and that probably was why he’d been so quick to agree when Kirsten had first told him about the new path she was exploring. Andrew, however, felt no such guilt; on the contrary, he’d made no pretense about being glad that Jacob was remaining out of the fight.
“I don’t think that’s what she intended,” Kirsten continued, a little more gently now. “But that’s what the spell did, from father down to son. I’m reversing that part of the spell so that Jacob’s strength, his speed, his fast healing will be transmitted upward. It won’t affect him, but he’s the catalyst. From Jacob to you. It won’t change you, but it won’t stop there. The spell will flow to your sister’s line, to all her descendants alive today. Then back a step to your uncles’ and aunts’ descendants. The spell will change them as well, but I think it’ll probably be a little bit less. Then back a step again, to your great-aunts and uncles. Same thing. Some branches will be extinct, and a little less power will be transmitted the farther we travel up your family tree, but in the end it should be a lot of people on Earth who find themselves quite a bit stronger because of what we do together.”
“And a bit more capable of fighting the demons,” Jacob added; it was, after all, the whole point of the exercise.
One of the greatest difficulties faced by those who battled the demon invasion was simply the difference of strength between humans and demons. Humans made up for it with speed and agility, but added strength would help. One only needed to look at the vampire fighters to see that every little advantage helped.
“Do we tell them?” Andrew asked gruffly.
Jacob relaxed, stifling a sigh. Andrew wouldn’t argue anymore. They could have done this without his and Nicholas’ approval, but Kirsten’s initial bargain to get the diaries had been that she’d get their approval before doing anything, and she had been adamant about not breaking her word.
“Tell who?” she asked now with a small shake of her head. “Jacob and I tracked down your sister’s descendants once. We found a couple hundred people. What do we do, give them all a call, say they’re distantly related to a vampire and are about to become a little more vampire-like? Who in their right mind would believe us? And what about all the others, the ones we don’t know are related to you? Genealogy isn’t all that easy when you go back that far.”
“And it’s not up to us to demand that anyone join the fight,” Jacob added. “It’s not about telling them, you’re stronger now, go and pick up a sword. We just want to give them an edge if that’s what they decide to do on their own.”
Both his fathers were staring at him now, and Jacob knew exactly why. For a long time, he’d denied that he himself had any such choice and that fighting was his duty because of who he was. It had taken a lot for him to accept the fact he might be wrong about that.
“And even if they don’t want to fight,” Kirsten went on, “if they have kids they’ll share those genes on down. With every generation, it’ll spread out. More people will be a little stronger. Maybe it won’t make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. But maybe it’ll be the edge that we need to defeat demons once and for all. Either way, it can’t hurt.”
Now leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table, Andrew voiced one last doubt.
“Are you absolutely sure it won’t hurt? Cara had good intentions too, but look what happened.”
Kirsten’s voice rang with certainty.
“I’m sure,” she said.
“How about waiting for a little while?” Nicholas said. “So you can double-check your research.”
Kirsten glanced at Jacob, and it was the same smile on her lips that was pushing at his own.
“I did double-check,” she said. “Triple-checked, even. And we can’t wait.”
“Why not?” Nicholas pushed.
“Because most female mages see their magic abilities decline after the first few weeks of pregnancy and until a couple of months after delivery. So if I don’t do it now, I won’t be able to do it for almost a year. That’s a lot of time.”
The slow understanding on both his fathers’ features made Jacob wish he’d been filming them. It was all he could do not to burst out laughing, not to mock them, but from sheer elation. He’d been laughing a lot, lately; smiling a lot, too.
“You mean...” Andrew murmured, his gaze flicking back and forth between the two of them.
Kirsten nodded.
“I’ve been waiting for you two to say somethi
ng about a heartbeat for a week,” Jacob said, grinning. “Seriously, how did you not notice?”
“Well, you could have said something,” Andrew said, his voice suddenly thick with emotion.
“Or you could be quiet,” Nicholas added, sounding just as touched, “so we could actually hear...”
He fell silent rather than finishing. Jacob knew that both his fathers could now hear the fast beat of a tiny heart, like he could. After a few seconds, Kirsten huffed good-naturedly.
“I am feeling completely left out right now.”
A wave of happy laughter rang through them all, including Kirsten. Jacob leaned over to press a kiss to her cheek.
“So when are you going to do the spell?” Andrew asked.
Jacob raised an eyebrow at him. “Does that mean you agree?”
“Is there anything I can do to stop you? I could say no, and then what? You go home and do it on your own without telling me.”
The words hit a nerve in Jacob, because he’d first suggested Kirsten keep all this from his fathers, and she was the one who had insisted to get their blessing.
“Well, I did promise to tell you about whatever I came up with,” Kirsten said. “And it’s not as easy as going home and doing it there. I need to get at least two or three people to help me. I’ll ask Julie, and there were some people I studied magic with who I think might want to help. And we’ll need a large space. Downstairs might work pretty well if you’re okay with it.”
Andrew nodded absently. “How much are you going to tell them?”
“Only the minimum,” Kirsten said at once. “We’ll say that Jacob is your son and how that’s possible, but not how that’s linked to the demons. And we’ll explain about his powers.”
The word had the same effect as always: Jacob rolled his eyes.
“I don’t have powers,” he said with a cluck of his tongue. “You make it sound like I’m Superman or something.”
Snorting, Kirsten shook her head at him.
“Fine. We’ll tell them about your freakish abnormalities. Any better?”
He grinned at her and leaned over again. This time, his mouth founds hers.
