Called by the Vampire - Part 7

by V. Vaughn

  The room is so quiet that when I walk over to choose my weapon, my footsteps seem to pound in my ears. I reach for the sword, and I hear a collective gasp from some, a few chuckles, and even a whispered, “Yes!”

  I have to force my grin into a small smile. I know I was the main attraction tonight, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted how memorable my introduction to the kingdom would be. Let the show begin.

  Chapter 3

  Maggie

  “Margaret,” Sebastian says. “Please come out of the bathroom.”

  I’ve been sobbing for a while now without a care that Sebastian can hear me. “Go away!”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You’re a danger to humans and yourself right now.”

  The bathroom floor is cool under my bottom as I hug my knees and lean back on the door. “Yeah? Good. Maybe I’ll die.”

  “You know I can break in and get to you easily, but I won’t leave your mother with one more thing to deal with.”

  Mom. I can’t even begin to imagine what she’s going through. She watched Sebastian turn me into something she never thought existed. Something horrible. “How could you, Sebastian?” I whisper. “You—” I inhale a shaky breath. “You ruined my life and turned my mother’s into a nightmare.”

  Sebastian is silent as I think about how I was dying. And then I wasn’t. I bolt to my feet. “Really? Now you’ve got nothing to say? No wise words for me, boss?” I pound my fist on the door. The crack of wood from the impact is like a gunshot.

  Sebastian sighs, and I hope it’s because my words hurt him. I think about Mom and wonder how she’s supposed to continue on with her life, knowing what I am now. Because she’s no longer blissfully unaware that vampires exist, it’s highly likely Sebastian is going to keep her under his watch. He can’t afford to take the chance she’ll start talking. Will he make her move to the mansion? Leave her lifelong friends and the job she loves? I lean my forehead on the door and ask, “What’s going to happen to my mom?”

  “She’ll be fine, Margaret. I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep her safe.”

  “Safe. But not happy. You just made it impossible for her to see her own daughter.”

  “Yes.” He pauses. “But not forever. You’ll learn to manage your bloodlust and be able to spend time with your mother. Perhaps she’ll be happy to see you strong and able.”

  He doesn’t sound convincing. “Strong enough to snap her neck and able enough to kill,” I say. “Yeah. She’ll love that.”

  “Margaret.”

  I sigh as fresh tears burn in my eyes. I’m a vampire. “I didn’t choose this, Sebastian. I don’t want it.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, my dear.”

  Did Sebastian just apologize? “You’re sorry.”

  “I am. Come out of the bathroom, Margaret. Please.”

  I can’t stay in here forever, and I am a new vampire who doesn’t know how to be one. The truth is I need Sebastian, even if I hate him for what he’s done. My stomach feels hollow, and I place my hand on it as if I’m hungry. But that’s not the right word. My desire is more an instinctual need for energy. And I want blood. I wonder if it has to be human. I glance over at the toilet and frown, because apparently food is out of the question. I shudder when I recall the last of Sebastian’s blood in my mouth. But the thought of the warm red liquid makes me salivate like a dog waiting for a treat, and I realize I’m more than hungry. I’m starving. The faint odor of my mother is in the air, and while I know she’s not close, it’s enough to make the urge to feed rise in me.

  “Sebastian?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m really hungry.”

  “I imagine you are. Let’s go feed you.”

  I flash to the night I saw Sebastian sucking on Lyndsey when he wanted to scare me away from having friends. I grimace as I envision myself doing the same thing as I wonder if that’s how I’ll feed. I know the Hart brothers drink blood drawn safely from humans as if it’s wine, but I’m not sure if I can do that yet. I say, “Please tell me I don’t have to suck blood from a person.”

  “You don’t. Unlock the door.”

  Sebastian’s voice has a note of panic in it, and I look out the window to notice the sky is light with the approaching sunrise. I recall when I was leaving Joan’s bookstore and collapsed outside the limo. Sebastian rushed outside to get to me, and the brief amount of time he spent in sunlight resulted in a severe sunburn. If we don’t leave soon, I’ll be stuck in this house until nightfall.

  The doorknob is hard in my hand as I grip it with purpose, but I hesitate and glance around the bathroom. I remember when I was too short to see myself in the mirror when I brushed my teeth, and then being tall enough to see my eyelashes to apply mascara for the prom. I think about bubble baths in the tub as a kid and shaving my legs for the first time. For a moment, I long to be that Maggie again. I shake my head at myself because even then my life wasn’t normal. All I’ve done is trade the danger of being alive with a bad heart for the danger of being undead. I clutch at my chest. Elizabeth?

  The door creaks when I open it, and Sebastian steps aside to let me lead the way. “Adly is waiting outside for us,” he says.

  The moment I step out of my house, Adly opens the door to the limo sitting in my driveway and grins at me. “Maggie, I’m so glad you’re going to stick around for the next few hundred years with us.” He winks at me before I climb into the car. “Human friendships are so short-lived.”

  For a moment I forget what I am and chuckle as I settle back in my seat. After Sebastian joins me and Adly is behind the wheel, a bright-orange sliver of the sun appears on the horizon, and I realize just how close to danger I was. Adly turns to speak to me and hands me a travel mug. “Sebastian said you’re hungry.”

  “Thanks.” I take the drink from him and sniff it. I’ve been around enough blood in hospitals to know it doesn’t have a strong odor, and I’m surprised when the aroma makes me tremble. Without any thought for manners, I tear off the top of the mug and toss it aside so I can down the contents in record time.

  “Oh god,” I say as I wipe the back of my hand across my mouth, and I let out a moan as warmth and sensations that border on sexual fill me. “Wow.”

  “Right?” asks Adly. “Even alcohol never felt that good. Did it?”

  I shake my head. “I want more.”

  “I figured you might,” says Adly as he hands me a take-out paper cup used for soda. Ice rattles in it, and I sip on the straw to find I’m drinking chilled blood. He says, “If you drink too much too fast, you’ll get sick. You should begin to feel satiated soon, but that doesn’t stop new vampires from drinking all they can.”

  I nod as he turns his attention to driving the car. I glance at Sebastian and take a long sip of my drink. He glances at my cup, and I expect him to lecture me about slowing down, but instead he says, “Feel better?”

  “Yes.” I’m still mad at him, but my emotions are similar to when my mother would punish me. I know Sebastian changed me into a vampire out of love, and that he does know what’s best for me right now. But something about how I feel for him has changed. I gaze at his face and realize the craving to kiss him isn’t there.

  Elizabeth? She used to fill me with the warmth of her love for him, and I frown as I realize she’s not flooding me with emotions. I recall how when I first discovered I had a piece of my donor’s soul, I didn’t like it. But over time, Elizabeth became like a best friend. Now that she’s gone, I feel empty, as though someone died. I want to cry for her, and I would if Sebastian weren’t here. I speak to her as if she’s still a part of me. Oh, Elizabeth. I hope you’ve found peace.

  Sebastian asks, “Margaret. What’s wrong?”

  It occurs to me I need to tell Sebastian I think Elizabeth is gone, but he’s going to be devastated. I inhale sharply when it hits me. I don’t want to hurt him. I shake my head, “It’s nothing.” He drops his chin and looks at me in the way that tells me he’s annoyed I’m not telling the t
ruth. “Fine,” I say. “I’m wondering what happens next.”

  “We take you home.”

  Home. I think about the house I just left and say a silent goodbye, because something tells me I’ll never see it or the town I grew up in ever again.

  Chapter 4

  Maggie

  The world as a vampire is not what I would have expected. It’s as if I’d been swimming underwater all these years, because now that I’m no longer human, it’s as though someone turned up the volume on everything. I don’t like it. I’m sure I’ll get used to it over time, but right now it’s giving me a headache. I stare out the window of the limo as we pass a rest stop, and it makes me want a coffee drink. Something sweet and creamy. But of course I can’t have one without my body rebelling. The remains of the blood I’m drinking slurp loudly when I sip them through a straw.

  Becoming a vampire isn’t anything I’ve ever wanted. While Sebastian and Alexander seem to enjoy themselves now, I know it took them a long time to get to where they are, and I imagine it was a pretty awful existence for decades. One I’m going to have to live through now. I replay the scene of Sebastian drinking my friend’s blood from her neck, and then the uncontrollable urge I had to suck my mother dry. I’m afraid I’m going to cry again, so I take the cover off my cup to grab an ice cube. I pop it in my mouth and talk over it. “How long until I can control my bloodlust?”

  Sebastian looks up from his phone, and I wonder if he’s texting with Alexander about Mom. “It’s different for every vampire.”

  I crunch on my ice loudly, because we’re playing Sebastian’s favorite game where he makes me work hard for information he doesn’t want to tell me. “Where’s my phone?”

  Sebastian hands me a small tote bag I recognize as one I left at home when I moved to the Hart mansion. I open it up and find a change of clothes and my cell. I pull it out and text Alexander. “Where have you taken my mother?”

  Alexander doesn’t reply. I guess he’s still in transit with Mom to somewhere safe, which leaves me with Sebastian to ask information. I ask, “Weeks? Months?” I pause, and when he doesn’t jump in with an answer, my stomach flips as I think the worst. “Years?”

  “It could be any of those,” says Sebastian.

  My patience is thin considering my predicament. “Seriously? It could be years before I can be around people? What the hell am I going to do all that time?”

  “Margaret. You’re getting ahead of yourself. We can’t know how long it’s going to take for you.”

  “Why not? You’ve been around for more than a century, Sebastian. Surely you have some idea. Since you seem to change people into vampires whenever it suits you, I have no doubt you’ve witnessed the process with dozens of new ones.”

  Sebastian swallows hard as he stares at me in his infuriatingly calm way, and it takes every ounce of my self-control not to continue to lash out at him. After a moment, he says, “Most children learn to read between the ages of four and seven. It’s dependent upon a lot of factors, but no matter how much you push a child, they can’t do it until the developmental pieces are in place.”

  “Why can’t you ever give me a straight answer?” I glare at him as I figure out what he’s saying. “I have to wait until my vampire self grows up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great.” I cross my arms and slouch down to sulk. That means I’m stuck with Sebastian, who’s not going to like me very much once he discovers Elizabeth is completely dead, and Alexander, who’s missing in action for now. But there is a silver lining. Since I’m definitely no longer attached to Sebastian by Elizabeth’s heart and I’m no longer human, I might be free to pursue the soulmate connection I have with Alexander. I close my eyes and pull up my favorite memory of the time we first kissed. He was cold to the touch, but he managed to heat me up anyway. I bet he wouldn’t feel that way now, though.

  Excitement courses through my veins as I think about being with Alexander again. I try not to bounce when I say, “Hey.” Sebastian looks up from his phone at me with his eyebrows raised, and I realize I have to be a lot more subtle about how I get my information since I need Sebastian right now. “Do you know where Alexander took my mom?”

  “He took her someplace safe. There is no need to worry.”

  “But I do, Sebastian. She’s my mother.”

  “Margaret, please. Trust me for once.”

  I frown because Sebastian is clearly annoyed with me, and it makes me wonder if he’s aware that Elizabeth died when I became a vampire. “What you did affected more than me,” I say. “Are you ever going to let my mother go back to her job at the hospital and her friends?”

  “I don’t think that would be wise.”

  I expected that answer, but it doesn’t help me like it. “Since it could be decades before I can be in the same room with her, she’s going to be lonely.” My heart tightens as I imagine how my mother must be feeling right now. She watched me become a vampire, and if that wasn’t horrific enough, she probably knows that I was aware of what Sebastian and Alexander were. She’s got to be so pissed off at me for being so naive in believing nothing bad would happen to me. And because she’s been sucked into a world where she has absolutely no one she can talk to now. “What’s going to happen to her?”

  “I don’t know,” snaps Sebastian.

  “Whoa.” This is a side of him I’ve never seen. If he’s angry, he usually gets all glowy eyes and hissy with his vampire.

  Sebastian closes his eyes and rubs his temples. “I’m sorry.” When he looks at me again, I see an expression I never expected to see. I think Sebastian’s ashamed. “I made a mistake, Margaret. An impulsive decision that has repercussions I can’t fix.”

  Things are starting to make sense now. Perfectly controlled Sebastian screwed up. Big time. While I’m sure it’s eating him up, in an odd way it’s satisfying to see him be fallible. “So you didn’t come to my house planning on changing me into a vampire.”

  “No.” He reaches out for my hand, and I let him take it. “I’m so sorry. When I thought I would lose you forever, I made a selfish decision. What I did is unforgivable.”

  Elizabeth may not be in my heart any longer, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling something for Sebastian. While I don’t love him romantically, I do care for him. I also know Sebastian well enough to understand how much what he’s done is going to stick with him for a long time. Empathy for my boss softens me but not enough to forgive him yet.

  Adly calls out from the front of the car. “Sebastian, I’m going to stop for gas.”

  As the limo pulls into the rest area, I watch a mother with two children walk toward the building. The little girl is skipping, and sadness fills me. When I got my new heart, I began to hope I’d have a family one day, and now it’s never going to happen.

  We stop at a gas pump, and I remember the night I woke up leaning against one without any recollection of how I got there. Robert Kearns got into my head to gather information from me, and I still don’t know what he was after. Or what he found out.

  A girl about my age is at the next pump, taking selfies on her phone as she waits for her gas tank to fill. My mouth begins to water, and I chuckle as I wonder what she’d be sending out to her friends if she knew she was parked next to three vampires.

  “Margaret,” says Sebastian. “Look at me.” The hum of the car engine stops when Adly turns it off and I look at Sebastian. “You’re going to smell blood when Adly opens the door. You’re beyond satiated right now, so your bloodlust shouldn’t be as bad as it was earlier.”

  “Okay.” I tense up like a cat poised to pounce.

  “Sometimes it helps to take deep breaths like when you were human.”

  I nod as my muscles twitch with a desire that is so deeply seated in me I can barely sit still.

  Adly asks, “Ready?”

  Sebastian doesn’t break my gaze and raises his eyebrows. I’m reminded of trying to please my favorite nurse by not crying during painful procedures, and I nod. I
cover my mouth with my hand and plug my nose with the hope I can keep the scent of human away, and the song “Happy Birthday to You” comes to my mind. I think I’ll sing it in my head for a distraction. But I don’t even get the first word out before the tantalizing aroma of warm blood invades me. Accosts me. My vampire side nearly explodes from my body as the need to escape the limo becomes paramount, and I manage to pull the door handle before Sebastian grabs me. I fight against him with every ounce of strength I’ve got. My need is as fierce as someone jumping out of a skyscraper window to their death in order to escape the heat of a burning building, which apparently works to my advantage. The adrenaline rush must make me stronger than I should be, and the two of us tumble out of the car.

  I barely feel pain as my fingers scrape at the pavement for any purchase I can get. The girl looks over at us, and her eyes widen in surprise as I lock my gaze with hers and growl out, “Miiinne.”

  I barely make headway before Adly steps in front of me and grabs my arms and wrestles me off the ground while Sebastian drags me back into the car. Adly shoves me so hard I fall back, and he slams the door shut. I let out a scream of frustration and then hear him laugh as he turns to the girl, who is frantically trying to put the gas nozzle back in the holder on the pump. He says, “Best haunted-house stunt ever. It’s going to scare the heck out of kids. Am I right?”

  I scream again as I thrash against Sebastian. My body is humming with my craving, and I watch the girl nod vigorously as she slides her back along her car toward the driver’s door. She’s escaping! I get a hand free and slam it against the window with the hope I can break through to get to those pulsing veins full of sweet nectar.

  Sebastian grabs my wrist, and this time he yanks it behind my back hard enough that burning pain slices through my shoulder. I turn toward him and let out a moan of agony.