* * *
Tara lay in bed three nights after the boys had been born. Dru had his arms around her and she lay her head on his chest. They were quite, full bellies and rarely fussy. Tara was nervous, it was the first night they wouldn’t be in the little crib carts in the room with her, but she knew that wouldn’t last long anyway. She couldn’t help but keep her listening focused in on them, keeping an ear out for the slightest disruption.
Dru was already drifting off to sleep. Tara startled when she heard a thump, so lightly, on the stairs. Jumping up she went to the door and looked down the hall. The boys’ room was across the hall. As she stood frozen, she scanned the hall and the stairs nearby. She swung around as she noticed the thin beam of light under the door of the boys’ room. Trying to be as stealthy as possible, she eased toward the door. Carefully she turned the knob and pushed the door open. As it swung inward, someone jerked upwards from one of the cribs.
Blaine stared at Tara with white-green eyes. Her face was more angular, her hair fuller, she had been turned.
“Put him down.”
“No, sorry, I can’t so that. I know someone that wants him much more than you, plus, you already have another one. You don’t need two.”
Tara eased an inch forward.
“No, no, no,” Blaine angled one hand on the child’s tiny head, as if threatening to break his neck, “I can leave you a broken one and take the good one if you come any closer.”
“I’m telling you, you will not get out of here alive if you don’t put him down.”
“Tara…” Dru slid in behind her, “Oh shit.”
“Looky, Dru, I found someone to do what you wouldn’t. And you thought no one would believe me about Tara, that no one would help me. You’d be surprised what some vamps will do to get their hands on a genuine vampire baby.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“No, not today. Move out of the way, I will kill him if you come near me, I promise.” Blaine stepped toward them forcing them back into the doorway.
Tara felt Dru’s hand behind her, probably pressing the alert button for the guard station. After the incident with Jared, Dru had hired all vampire guards. It paid well and they got to feel like bad asses in their all black swat style uniforms. Blaine kept pushing them forward. Tara’s eyes were latched onto her son, her brain trying to figure out a way out of the situation that wouldn’t cause her son harm.
Although they had already presented possibilities, especially in the lab tests on their blood that Salvador ran, of being much hardier than humans, they didn’t believe they had the regenerative powers of a regular vampire. Dru had explained that he had gotten cut as a young child and still had the scar from the incident, that healing wasn’t like it was for the other vampires. Diseases and sickness were almost impossible to get, but physical damage could still be severe.
“What do you want, Blaine? Money?”
“Haha, no, you are far too late for that. I want you to pay for abandoning me, for not loving me, for not turning me, and for having all this with her. My name is a foul word to almost everyone and I nearly died just trying to find someone to help me deal with you. And I did. And she wanted a baby, and I knew the perfect person for her to go after. She planned most of it and then turned me in exchange of me bringing this back to her.”
“That’s seriously twisted, and petty, Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you?”
“Nothing, not anymore.” Blaine darted around them and down the stairs, Dru and Tara on her heels.
As she ran through the house to the front door, Tara could hear the commotion outside. Automatic rifles and a lot of yelling. As Blaine backed out of the front door, Dru and Tara could see a black van with darkly tinted windows sitting just a few feet away in the driveway. Men were engaged in combat all over the yard, giving it a war zone appearance. Tara ran at the van as Blaine ducked inside.
Dru slammed his fist into the side panel causing a deep indention. Tara punched out the passenger window and tried grabbing the man inside. One of their guards turned his gun toward the van and took out the tires. Dru yanked the side door open and saw Blaine staring, her eyes wide and her hands on either side of the baby’s neck. She was staring at Dru in horror as he snarled, climbing into the van.
“I swear, I will kill him.”
“Then you will die a much slower death.”
“No matter what I do, I die, why shouldn’t I make you suffer?”
Tara ducked down as shots rang out around her. Her focus was on the woman holding her baby, but the gunfire was getting closer. She was afraid one of the bullets would end up in the van or ricocheting and hurting her son.
“Stop shooting! Stop! There is a baby in there!”
A few of the men stopped, those hired by Dru, but even less of the men with Blaine did. Tara had faith that Dru would take care of their child and spun around to kick the first t-shirt wearing thug into the ground. Grabbing his gun, she wielded it like a baseball bat striking any of the men not dressed in the uniforms Dru had provided, for situations just like this.
She had five men down when she looked back at the van, Dru with his hands held out, his face twisted in fury, trying to argue with Blaine. Tara shook with rage, swinging harder and faster as she attacked the men who were still shooting.
“If you shoot my baby I will rip your heads off!” she screamed as she flew around the yard swinging the gun.
As the last man crumbled, either by her swings or one of her men, she ran back to the van. Dru was backed up. His hands at his side, fisted and shaking with fury. His eyes almost glowed a white hot color. His teeth bared, he was all but gnashing at the woman. Blaine was still holding the baby, her hands still positioned around his throat, her eyes pleading.
She knew that no matter what she did, she wasn’t leaving alive this time. There was no more safety, no more reason for them to let her live. And now she was an unregistered vampire. She was dead. She just wanted to try to bargain, trying to think of any way to use the child to get out of the situation.
“Hand me my son and be done with it, or I swear, I will keep you alive for centuries, feeding my children off your blood.”
“You can’t feed your children if you only have one child! What don’t you get about this? I will kill him if you don’t let me leave here. I can leave with him alive and you can raise your other son however you want, or I can kill him just so you can kill me. This is an impasse, is it not?”
Tara raised the gun and put two holes in the woman’s forehead. Dru leapt forward in a blink and caught the baby as he fell from Blaine’s limp fingers. He turned to Tara and handed the baby to her.
“Take him inside. Put both cribs in our room.”
Tara kissed him and nodded as she backed away. She saw Dru pulling one of the long blades from one of his guard’s belts. He would decapitate the bodies, put them in the van, and they would be burned and then the evidence spread over a large area. The men would probably get a bonus after a night like this. Tara swallowed back her anger and residual fear as she held her son close to her. In their room she put the infant in his bed before pulling both of their cribs across the hall and into her room. It would be a long time more before they would be sleeping in a room alone.
*
Dru sat back against the headboard holding Viktor as Tara leaned against him snuggling Sebastian. The boys were already fed and asleep again, but neither Dru nor Tara could bear to close their eyes. They had a lot of cleanup to face, and neither knew exactly how to proceed next.
“I have an idea, but I am not sure how you will like it.”
“I’m kind of open for anything at this point.”
“Well, we already know that another vampire here knows about the boys and will try to send others after them. We can’t stay here, Tara.”
“I know, I thought about that.”
“Well, we can always go to Norway.”
Tara turned her head to look him in the eyes.
“Norway?”
Tara’s mouth dropped as she searched for any signs of him kidding, though she knew that he was telling the truth.
“Do they know about the boys?”
“No, not yet. I didn’t want to risk trying to tell them. I figured in a week or two I would send them something cryptic and when they invited us, we could go stay. But I think we need to leave, especially the United States. The government will get involved again and everything is just too messy here. Where I am from, things are a bit old fashioned. My parents sort of have run of an entire region.”
“Wow, you haven’t said anything about them.”
“Well, old fashioned is the catch here. We need to be married before we leave. I put in the paperwork, but we have to stage some photos or something. They are the kind of people that, rare natural grandkids or not, they will not be as accepting if we were not together legitimately before conception.”
“Ok, so we try to do some photography sessions and get everything in order and start getting things packed up here?”
“Well, not really. We need to do the photos in the next day and be ready to go in less than 24 hours.” Dru saw the apprehension on Tara’s face, “Look, the vampire behind this is going to know something is up when her people don’t return. And if any of this somehow got the attention of anybody, we are going to have a lot of explaining to do. I had another group come in and help clean up for tonight. Everyone is getting a hefty paycheck this week. But we need to be gone soon before either more vamps or the government is on our doorstep again. I can’t risk you or them to that.”
Tara nodded. As much as she agreed, the idea of leaving this home, where she died and was reborn and where she gave birth, was heart wrenching. The gardens and library, Dru’s museum stuff, all of that would be a hard thing to leave behind. She wanted to ask if they could send it, but figured that wouldn’t work well either.
“What about the stuff up in the museum room that you have? Or your secret memory room?”
Dru’s eyes looked sad at first and then he died laughing at the second half. Tara glared at him.
“My secret memory room. Would you like to see it?”
He was still laughing as Tara followed him with narrowed eyes. Dru cradled Viktor’s head in his hand, smiling at Tara and shaking his head as she followed him with Sebastian. Her curiosity was nearing bursting as they drew closer to the door. Dru turned the knob, it wasn’t even locked. As he stepped in, his laughter gained ground, causing Viktor to blink his white-blue eyes open and glare at his father.
“Oh my god.” Tara started chuckling herself as she looked around the room.
Dru seemed to have a secret obsession with movie vampires. He had posters, DVDs, figurines, and even shirts with different vampires from movies, TV shows, books, and whatever else. It wasn’t a secret collection of old memories, it was a secret collection of a ridiculous subject matter. The humor was almost too much. They both found themselves in giggles, trying not to be too loud in case they woke the babies. Nevertheless, eventually both were blinking around in confusion at the laughing vampires.
“Well, I think we should watch some of them.”
Dru refused at first but after the night they had, staying up watching cheesy vampire movies and shows with the boys sounded fun and relaxing. They even made sure to get a bottle of the good wine and mixed it with some O positive. Tara couldn’t remember the last time she laughed that hard, and felt so much better as they eventually drifted off to sleep.
The next evening was spent divided among getting specific things in some of the rooms sent to a special storage facility and posing for the fake wedding pictures. They decided not to go too far with the deception and made it a small event. They had the vampires who worked as guards bring any female friends and stage a few scenes. Tara felt awful that they were faking something that she actually enjoyed, and in some aspects, had wanted.
Dru promised her many more occasions that she could wear something as fancy as the beautiful gown he rented for the event. With his parents’ position, he told her that it wouldn’t take long before she would be sick of dressing up and being in pictures. Since vampires no longer had to hide, they had become rather obsessed with pictures. There was no longer a fear of being immortalized on something as proving as a photograph.
Dru spent a large portion of his time in the office speaking in a foreign language. The words seemed different, nothing like Spanish or French. She thought it sounded like a mixture of Swedish and German but older. After an hour, Dru found Tara in the atrium with the boys. Both were swinging a steady rhythm in their double chair swing. Tara was laying on the larger swing next to them, rocking them with her foot as she read one of his books. He wasn’t surprised that she went for his basic manuals on the older Norwegian and Welsh languages.
“Well, I have spoken to my parents. To say they were stunned is an understatement. Good news is, they are more than happy for us to come to Norway. Not as great news, they are flying their jet in tomorrow and will be here to take us back with them. They insisted on the escort.”
Tara stared at Dru in uncertainty. She knew she would be meeting them, that was par for the course with moving, but she thought she would have a few more days before having to worry about it.
The idea of not only meeting Dru’s parents and her sons’ grandparents, but from what Dru said, they were about 900 years old and tended to live half of their lives with present technology and the other half with feudal era beliefs.
Tara wasn’t sure she was ready for the tension and possible head butting. What if they don’t like how she was taking care of the children, or if they tried to butt in to her and Dru’s life? She didn’t know if she would be able to tolerate that. For the first time, human systems and beliefs were a sincere concern. She never thought being a vampire would result in a family and the dynamics and expectations that went along with that.
“Okay..” Tara picked up Viktor and Sebastian and put them on one side of her on the larger swing, watching as they sunk back and were nestled into the cushions.
“I know I made it sound like they were assholes about old ways, but I promise they will be so thrilled with you and the kids that they are going to be much more lenient than I have ever even known them to be.” Dru smiled reassuringly before heading off to the kitchen to start preparing the boys bottles.
Tara had started making a mix of breast milk and vampire blood for them since their teeth were already growing in and causing quite a pain for her. They discussed ideas with Salvador and he suggested the vamp blood and milk mixture. Both he and Ardo had gone back to their respective homes the day after the babies were born, with plans to return in a week and a half, to give Dru and Tara time alone with their children. Dru had to inform them that he was going back to his childhood home and that they would have to contact that location when they wanted to come see the babies or check in.
Tara held one child in each arm and headed to the kitchen, she sighed as one of the workers walked by carrying a wooden crate with “fragile” written on the side. At least they wouldn’t lose all of Dru’s treasures, though it may be a while before they saw them again. Tara tried not to think about it as she and Dru fed the babies before having their own dinner out of the warm bags of blood. Dru told her that in Norway she would have to learn to take from the source, that his parent’s home had people hired specifically for “nutrient purposes.”
As the evening progressed on, Tara could feel the beginning tensions of what all they had to do. As she prepped the boys for bed, she heard a buzz from the intercom on the wall.
“Extraction team trying to get in through the front gates. Two enemies neutralized, possibly four more on foot and several more breaching surrounding walls. Request family evacuation.”
The message was repeated two more times as Tara grabbed several of the babies’ diapers, clothing, and bottles, shoving what she could into the diaper bags and grabbing both babies, one in each a
rm. As she exited the room, she nearly ran into Dru. He grabbed Sebastian and they ran downstairs and through the back door to the garage.
Dru was on his cell phone calling a nearby airfield and requesting a charter flight using codes Tara had not heard before. As they approached the garage, they could hear shots being fired sporadically around the yard. The garage door lifted and a large SUV backed out. The rear doors opened and two men jumped out.
Tara had a split second to almost start swinging and kicking when they suddenly stood to the side, scanning the surrounding yard while Dru helped get the infants in the back. Tara was pushed in and Dru jumped into the passenger seat. The two men opened the rear hatch and jumped in the back. The driver backed up and took off down the drive. The gate was open, a white van slammed into one side of it, the windows shot out. Men were yelling, shooting, and some were even grappling.
“We have a plane waiting for us at the airfield. I will call ahead to my parents and let them know the change of plans. We have to get out of here right now, no exceptions. When we get to the airfield, grab the babies and run for the plane. It will be dark blue with a white lily on the side. Hurry towards it, don’t turn around and do not stop. Ok?”
“Yes, yes, okay!” Tara nodded. Once again she found herself torn between anger and fear.
As they drove down the street, Tara couldn’t help but glance out the windows and listen for vehicles following them. She kept a hand on each child, though they needed no comforting. The intelligence already shining from their vivid eyes gave her great comfort. They would be amazing men one day, she would make sure of it. She just had to get them to safety first.
The trip seemed to be taking forever until Tara saw the sign for the field. The driver smashed into the gate and kept going. He slammed on breaks with the back door lined up to the steps of the plane. Tara grabbed a son in each hand and flew out the door and up into the plane. Dru was right behind her. As they climbed in, Dru went to the front to check with the pilot. He came back to the cabin, his face unreadable.
Cured By Blood: A Vampire Pregnancy Romance Page 14
