She did, seeing the beauty of the restored mansion. The crystal chandeliers, completely repaired and glittering, the high sheen of polished hardwood everywhere, the fresh paint and billowing linen drapes. “It’s a vampire’s paradise,” Bell said. Then he sighed. “But you’ve been through hell, haven’t you honey?”
She met his eyes, tried to speak, but tears choked her.
“Oh, come on, Emma, come with me. I decorated your room myself. I can’t wait to show you. You just need some you time, that’s all. Come on, it’s right next to the one I put your mother in. Your dad’s on the other side. Um, unless he wants to share with your mom.” He winked. “I couldn’t figure out a tactful way to ask about that.”
He led her to the wide, curving staircase and up it, then down a long hall, around a corner, then another, and finally past her mother’s room to the one next door. “It’s right in here. You just rest, take some time. Oh, and there’s a mini fridge with a few bags of A-poz, in case you need a snack.”
He left her outside her door and headed back the way he’d come. Emma went into her room and looked around. It was beautiful, all done in bright cheerful yellows and greens, like springtime and sunshine and baby grass. And yet, all she felt was heartache.
She had everything she had wanted. She’d fulfilled her heart’s desire. She’d found her mother. She’d achieved her most recent goal, by rescuing her dad. She’d walked with vampires and learned their ways. And the choice she’d been anguishing over making had been taken from her hands. She was a vampire now. It was a done deal. And she didn’t regret it.
She had absolutely nothing to angst about now.
Except for Devlin.
He was, she realized, the love of her life. And he always had been. That was why she’d been unable to get him out of her mind from the first time she’d seen him as an impressionable teenager. That was why she’d dreamed of him, even found him as if drawn by some invisible force right to his side. Everything that had happened told her that they belonged together.
And yet he was planning to send her away.
She went to her window, looked blindly out, saw people everywhere. How could he not feel what she did? How could he just send her away after all they’d been through?
Letting the curtain fall into place, she squared her shoulders and left her room, heading into the adjoining bathroom to take a long, luxurious, steaming hot shower, and when she still felt the need for more soothing, she depressed the plunger and let the tub fill, then lay there soaking and asking herself over and over again, why?
She tried to put herself in Devlin’s shoes, to see their relationship from his eyes. He’d been married once, that was the first bit of light that seemed to shine through the mire of questions swirling in her head. He’d had a wife. And he’d lost her. He’d loved her and he’d lost her, and he didn’t think he could live through that again. He had given her a laundry list of reasons why they couldn’t be together, but the more she mulled on it, the more certain she was that there was really only one.
She lay back in the deepening water, closed her eyes, and imagined herself as a handsome, strong vampire with a wife and little baby boy who were still human. It must have been a lot like her own mother’s situation. He, like Diana, had tried to keep living his life. To hold onto his human existence.
He’d trusted someone with his secret, his friend, he’d said.
And that friend had gathered a mob of frightened, ignorant humans, gone to his home while he was away, and murdered his family. Torn his entire life away from him. Although, he couldn’t have known then that life had been gone from the moment he’d been turned. A vampire couldn’t live a mortal life in the mortal world. Her own mother had tried. Just like Devlin had.
Hours passed as she mulled on this. If she were in love, if she’d had a child, and they had been murdered because of what she was, would she be able to love again? And even if she was able, would she be willing to take the chance? Maybe not.
Maybe Devlin wasn’t either.
She didn’t get out until the water was cold. And then she took her time, browsing through the bottles and jars of creams and lotions and cosmetics Bell must’ve chosen for her. Her love for him grew even more.
Eventually, she got dressed–her room was stocked with clothes, too–and went to the room next door, clasping the knob and turning it gently, pushing it open.
Her father sat in the chair beside her mother’s bed. Her mother’s eyes were still closed, but her face was almost fully restored. More than before, the vampiress in the bed looked like the mother Emma remembered. Her hair was a pale yellow orange now, and beginning to take on the familiar spiral curls again. “Come back to me, Diana,” her father was saying. “I know you can do it. Look at you. Look at you, as young and beautiful as ever.”
She wasn’t, Emma thought. But another day of restoration, and she just might be.
“And I’m old,” Oliver went on. “I’ve aged. I’m just a mere human. But come back, my love. Come back all the same. I won’t make you stay if you don’t want to.”
Emma’s heart jumped as her mother slowly opened her eyes. Hints of their former color were there, though dulled and muddy. She blinked three times, then shifted her gaze to the man beside her and whispered, “Oliver?”
Oliver lifted his head, tears on his cheeks.
Weakly, Diana lifted a hand and reached out to press her fingertips to those tears, absorbing them. “You foolish genius,” she whispered. “Do you think... I would walk away...from the only man I ever loved?”
A smile came to his lips, all tremulous and uncertain.
“No one will ever...take me from you again, my beautiful husband. No one who tries...will live another hour. I swear.”
He clasped her hands, brought them to his lips.
“Where is my...little girl?” she asked, her voice weak, raspy. “Where’s Emma Louise?”
“I’m here, Mom,” Emma said, stepping the rest of the way into the room. “I’m right here.”
Her mother looked her way, and her eyes registered surprise, shock. She blinked rapidly, and recognition came very slowly. “But...but....”
“You’ve been away a long time,” Emma said. “I’ve grown up.”
Diana blinked rapidly, her eyes shifting back and forth between Emma and Oliver. “No,” she said softly. “I missed it. I missed it all.” Her entire body was beginning to shake, her eyes were darting back and forth, her vision turned inward. “How long? How long...was I in that box?”
“We don’t know exactly. But it’s been fifteen years since you disappeared.” Emma went closer, sliding onto the edge of the bed opposite her father, and clasping her mother’s cold, trembling hand.
“They stole those years from me! I can never get them back.” Diana’s tears choked her, and her trembling was getting worse. Her whole body shook.
“They stole time from you, love,” Oliver said softly. “But time is something you’ve got plenty of. Time is eternal for you, now.”
“But not for you,” she whispered, turning to gaze into her husband’s eyes with so much adoration spilling from hers that it almost brought Emma to tears.
“There are ways, Mom,” Emma said. Her own voice was hoarse.
They both looked at her, startled and curious.
She shrugged. “I’ve spent my entire adult life researching vampires, in hopes of finding some clue that would lead me to you. I even planned to turn it into a book, tell the world the truth about the Undead, make people realize they aren’t monsters at all.” She sniffled, shook her head at the idealistic notions she’d once held. “I’ve learned a lot. There’s a lot more I don’t know, but I do know some things. I met the woman who changed you, Mom. I met Sarafina.”
Diana blinked at the name, her eyes revealing the connection she felt to her maker.
“Her husband is an ordinary mortal. But he’s alive and well. Thriving. And they’re happy together. So there must be a way.”
Oliver sear
ched his daughter’s eyes. “Are you saying you think they have some way of…extending an ordinary’s mortal lifetime?”
“I don’t know, Dad. But I will find out. Mom, you and I, we’re vampires now. We have access to this information. I won’t have to sneak around gleaning it in bits and pieces, reading tabloids and sensationalistic books trying to pick out the crumbs of truth between the chapters of hype. We have access now. We can find out everything the vampires have learned in centuries of existence.”
Her mother’s face calmed. Her trembling eased. All she had needed was hope. Emma felt good that she’d been able to give her that. And yet, she still seemed sad. “I missed your childhood, Emma.”
“No you didn’t. I grew up the day you left us.” She closed her hand around her mother’s. “Besides, Dad and his camcorder captured every event, no matter how minor. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had footage of me sleeping.”
Diana’s smile was shaky, but real. It reached her eyes. It was the first time Emma had seen a hint of the old light in them. “You’ve inherited your father’s positive attitude, haven’t you, Emma?”
“For the most part,” she said, not admitting that her goals had changed from peace mongering to mass murder once she’d realized what those bastards had done to her mother. But that was temporary. She still believed peace was the best way for everyone.
Her father must’ve read her face, because he said, “Everything happens for a reason. Even this. There was something, some greater purpose. We were torn apart, and now we’re together again. We need to look forward, my girls. Never back.”
Emma met his eyes, nodded as if she agreed, even though she wasn’t certain she did. Cheering her mother up when she was feeling so miserable herself wasn’t easy, and if she stayed much longer, she’d surely bring them all down. She bent to kiss her mother’s cheek, and then got up off the bed. “I should go.”
“Not yet,” Diana said. Then she sent a look at her husband, which he read as easily as if they’d never spent a day apart.
“I’m going to go find some human food,” Oliver said. “I heard they were keeping some on hand for the kids.” He leaned in to kiss one woman, then the other, and then he left them alone.
Diana patted the bed and Emma sat down again.
“I’m not...a hundred percent, Emma,” her mother said softly. She touched her forehead with the pads of her fingers. “There’s a whole lot of...something. Like fireworks going off in my brain, all the time. Sparks and explosions. It’s difficult to think clearly through all of it.”
“I’m not surprised. You’ve been through hell.”
“It’s over. I think...I’ll get better.”
“You will.”
She nodded, though she didn’t seem as certain as Emma had tried to sound. “I did pick up on the...” She shook her hand rapidly as she searched for the word. “...vibration,” she said at length, “Between you and that big fellow. Devlin.”
“Vibration,” Emma repeated.
“The...you know, the energy. Please don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean, Emma. I’m having enough trouble with clearness...clarity...”
“No, you’re right, I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m...” She bit her lip, nodded once, and just said it. “I’m in love with him.”
“Yes. And he feels the same.”
“No.”
“It wasn’t a question, Emma. He feels the same.” Then she frowned. “But if that’s obvious to a vampiress with a broken mind after fifteen years in captivity, why, I wonder, isn’t it obvious to you?”
Emma shook her head. “He’s planning to send me...us...away from here.”
Diana shrugged. “So refuse to go.”
Emma looked at her quickly, widening her eyes. “Mom, it’s not all that simple. I can’t just–”
“Yes, you can. Why would you leave the man you love?” She tried to sit up in bed, and Emma quickly shoved another pillow beneath her to support her as she went on, her voice gaining strength as she did. “What force on earth could compel you do the very opposite of what your heart and soul are telling you to do?” She shook her head slowly, then relaxed back onto the pillows. “I had time to think, to contemplate. I had time, nothing but time, and the clarity that came to me was powerful. The most real truths that could ever exist. And the truest of them all is love.” She closed her eyes, licking her dry lips, clearly fighting exhaustion.
“You’re weak, Mom. Try to rest.”
“This is too important. I have to tell you, in case...in case it gets lost in the swamp that seems to be my brain right now. Emma, love is the only real thing there is. When you find it, you have to wrap yourself up in it, wallow and roll and bask in it, because...it’s too precious...to do otherwise.” She gasped a few breaths, that old habit still strong in her. “I stayed alive in that box for fifteen years when I could have let go. I could have embraced death. But I fought it. I fought death and I fought madness because I would not give up on love. I endured what I did just for the slim hope that I would find you and your father again.”
“Oh, Mom–”
“You do not walk away from love, Emma Louise Benatar. If I am only allowed to teach you one thing, then let this be the one. You do not walk away from love. It’s the only thing that matters.” She clasped both Emma’s hands and gazed into her eyes.
Emma stared back, wondering how to live up to the strong, powerful woman her mother was, even now, after all she’d been through.
Chapter Eighteen
There was a brief knock on the door before it opened slightly, and Emma’s father stood there, a worried frown marring his brow. “Devlin asked me to send you downstairs, Emma. Something’s gone wrong, people seem very agitated.”
She got to her feet. “Stay with Mom,” she said. “I’ll send someone to fill you in as soon as I find out what’s up.” Already her senses were tingling with alarm.
She kissed her mother’s forehead, then quickly left the room, hurrying through the halls and down the stairs, across the foyer and out the front doors.
Vampires were rushing around. Bellamy, Tavia and Devlin stood together in a huddle, and Devlin looked her way as she approached.
As soon as his dark eyes met hers, she went soft inside. Her mother was right. Love like this didn’t come along every day. Maybe only once in a lifetime. She wasn’t going to give up on this thing, at least not until she found out for sure whether he loved her too.
Their gazes held so long the others began to notice, so she lowered her eyes and said, “What’s going on?”
“Wolf and Sheena sensed danger approaching,” Devlin said. “It’s one gift that all the Offspring seem to share. They seem to detect threats from greater distances than vampires can.”
“So I started scanning and after a while, I felt Andrew,” Bell said quickly. “We um...we broke up and he left here, furious with me. He accused me of being hot for one of the guys who just arrived. As if.”
“He wanted to leave. He was accusing you of nonsense so he’d have an excuse. And now he’s coming back,” Tavia said.
Bell nodded. “It did seem that way. He’s blocking, but I can feel him near us. Nearer all the time.”
“And I can sense mortals with him,” Devlin said.
Emma frowned. “You think he would bring humans here?”
“You did,” Tavia accused.
Emma felt the barb. “My father was taken by DPI for trying to help our kind, Tavia. He’s one of us. More so than Andrew is or apparently ever was.”
“Enough. This is no time for...it’s enough,” Devlin said. “Emma, if they see the island, they have to die. I know you’ve been against violence, but–”
She clamped his upper arms in her hands. “This island is my home now.” She lowered her head when she saw the flash of panic come and go in his eyes, then let go of him to face Bell. “As for Andrew–”
“I’ll kill him myself if I get to him first,” he said. But there was pain in his voice.
A
handsome young vampire led a plethora of others out of the basement via an open hatchway door, and they were all carrying weapons.
“You don’t need all that,” Wolf said softly. “My sister and I can fix this. All of it.”
“It’s too risky,” Devlin said. “You’re just kids–”
“Besides, we owe you.” Sheena looked at Wolf. He stared back, intensely, but then he nodded his agreement.
Devlin’s jaw flexed. “I don’t have time to argue with you. Emma, I want you to get your parents out of the bedroom and into the basement. Use the tunnel that leads to the hidden cove. Tavia says there’s a boat there large enough to hold you all if you need to escape. Wolf and Sheena, I want you to go with them.”
He was trying to protect her. In that moment, their entire relationship became crystal clear to her. Despite everything she’d done as a human, despite that she was now a vampire, and as powerful as many of the others on this island, Devlin still saw her as weaker. In need of defending. In need of protecting. He was projecting the vulnerability of his mortal wife and baby onto her. He probably didn’t even realize he was doing it.
She opened her mouth to argue, but he was already moving on. “Bell, what direction are they approaching from?”
“Dead on from the coast, Dev.”
Devlin nodded. The handsome vampire who’d been leading the armed troops from the basement came to them, rapidly pulling rifles off his shoulders and handing them around. Tavia, Devlin and Bell each took one.
Emma touched the cold steel of the one he offered her, then stopped and drew her hand away. “I can’t. I couldn’t use this even if I wanted to.”
“You might not have a choice.” Devlin took the rifle and pushed it into her hands. “Go. Now. Get to safety.”
His voice brooked no argument. “Fine,” she said. “But when this is over, we need to talk.” Then she snatched the damned rifle and stormed into the house. “Wolf, Sheena, come on, let’s do this. Bell...will you come with us?”
She didn’t expect them to follow her, but something in her voice must’ve told them she had no intention of obeying her soulmate. Not in this. She wasn’t going to let a war break out on this island. Nor was she going to drag her mother into an underground cave to keep her safe. It would be too much like where she’d spent the past fifteen years.
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