The Return: (The Eternity Road Trilogy Book 2)

by Lana Melyan

  “I just need to pick up some stuff from my suitcase. It’s upstairs,” said Kizzy. She walked around the sofa, and passing Ruben, run her hand down his back. Ruben didn’t look at her, but his jaw tightened in frustration.

  Eleanor didn’t know if anybody else was paying attention, or if she was the only one who noticed this little game Kizzy had been playing from the moment Ruben entered the room.

  “Can I have a word with you?” she said to Ruben and beckoned toward the backyard.

  “Ruben, what’s going on? Do you know her?” asked Eleanor as he stopped in front of her, looking sour.

  “Yeah.” Ruben cursed soundlessly.

  “Brilliant. That’s exactly what we were missing right now.”

  “Don’t look at me like that,” said Ruben.

  “Like what?”

  “Judging. I have a past, and this is a blast from it.”

  “I’m not judging. I’m just saying that we’ve already drowned Kimberly in problems and she doesn’t need any more stress.”

  “It’s not my fault she’s here.” Ruben started pacing. “I didn’t invite her.”

  “How do you know her?”

  “About a year ago, when we were looking for Fray, Samson sent me to this coven in Chicago. She was the one who helped us.”

  “How long were you together? Was it serious?”

  “No. It was nothing like that. I was only there for a week, then I left, and that’s it.” Ruben stopped pacing and glanced toward the living room, at Kimberly talking to Hanna. “Do you think I should tell her? Kizzy is unpredictable, and they’re going to live under the same roof for a while.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Kimberly is barely keeping it together.” Eleanor sighed. “If there’s no big drama between you and Kizzy, then I think it’ll be fine. She’s here temporarily. Just keep your distance.”

  After having dinner with her father and shrugging and nodding to his bewildered questions and exclamations about Melinda—“How come she hasn’t called yet? There’s been enough time to buy a phone. How far did she go? I’m worried about her!”––Eleanor went to her room.

  She opened the window and looked at the few stars in the dark sky. Her longing for Craig was becoming stronger with each day. When he called earlier that night, she tried to assure him that she was fine, but the yearning in her voice gave her away, and it made it much more difficult for Craig to hang up. She didn’t tell him about Alec’s visit to the castle, thinking he was too far away to do anything about it, and it would only make him more anxious.

  Samson’s journals were on the nightstand. Eleanor sat comfortably on her bed and opened one of them, looking at the yellowed pages with the familiar handwriting.

  Right from the beginning Samson mentioned that trying to find the Book or the daggers would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. They were small and portable, and wherever Fray kept them, they would be well-guarded. Powerless Hunters wouldn’t be able to do much against vampires.

  However, it would be much more difficult to hide fifty bodies. All the Hunters needed was to find the place they were hidden. But after a while, Samson realized that wasn’t an easy task, either.

  So the journals mostly contained short descriptions of their attempts to find locations where Fray could have hidden the transitioning bodies. They followed him all over the world, and most times it ended dramatically.

  Ned was captured by vampires while tailing them to South America. After torturing him, they threw him off a cliff.

  They lost Fray for a long while, and the next time they found him, he was in India. The fact that he arrived there on a rented ship and stayed about a decade seemed suspicious. This time it was Ruben who followed him. One day he watched Fray and his vampires go down one of the abandoned giant subterranean stepwells. It was about five stories deep and had plenty of rooms—perfect place to hide fifty bodies. Ruben walked away and came back the next day, but after searching the first two stories, he was captured and trapped in one of the rooms. With the help of a witch, Samson and Riley found him a month later.

  “It took Ruben a long time to grow back the flesh on his bones,” read Eleanor, and a shiver ran through her body.

  “The thought that the bodies might be somewhere around never left me, so I decided to use Fray’s absence to search familiar areas, starting with the place where the vampires were turned. The barn wasn’t there anymore, but even decades later it wasn’t hard to find the spot. From there, I planned to check the entire path to the castle.

  “One day, when I was coming back from one of my trips, I was grabbed by his vampires. It was late evening and I was about three hours away from the castle. I was crossing a small field, and there was nothing special about that place. But something made me stop and look around. I dismounted from my horse and was walking towards the woods surrounding the field, when suddenly I saw the vampires coming out from behind the trees…”

  When Samson returned to the castle after being tortured for weeks, he wrote,

  “All this time I’ve been asking myself, what made me stop at that field, and why would the vampires be there? It didn’t look like they were there by accident.

  “I had the same feeling when I returned to the same place a few months later, but I never found anything. It was just a field surrounded by woods.”

  “Hmm.” Eleanor stared at the page for a few seconds, then put away the first journal and opened the second one.

  “I was now sure that the bodies were somewhere close and Fray, by going to mysterious places in different countries, was only trying to get us as far away from them as possible.

  “But when the witches located him in a ghost town in Connecticut, decades later, Craig—believing that Fray’s plan was to scare us off—chased him. Fray had a witch with him who detected Craig the moment he arrived in town. Luckily, Riley was in Virginia at that time. He found Craig three days later, tied to a tree with a stake in his stomach.”

  “Did you have to be that stubborn?” muttered Eleanor angrily.

  The more Eleanor read, the more she realized what a difficult task it was. There were only the six of them, and they didn’t have their Hunters’ powers or senses. Most of the time the Hunters were busy watching her descendants. Samson also had another important research to do in Egypt. It took him many years to find what he was looking for.

  Eleanor closed the journal. Everything she’d just read made her miserable. The pain that each and every one of them had gone through was so much worse than she had imagined.

  The day had been long and emotional. Eleanor was tired. She hadn’t slept much the night before while guarding her father, but now she had a protective spell around the house. As Kizzy explained, if someone with supernatural powers tried to cross the barrier, something like an electrical wave would go through her body. Eleanor put her head on the pillow and closed her eyes, hoping to sleep until morning without being electrocuted.

  Once again clutching the stake in her hand, Eleanor was chasing a vampire in the dark woods. It was the same woman in the black gown. Following her, Eleanor came out to the familiar field with a house at the other end. Halfway across the field, Eleanor caught up with the woman and grabbed her by the shoulder, only this time she didn’t vanish. Eleanor turned her around and, as she looked at the vampire’s face, she woke up.

  The sun was up. Eleanor sat in the bed, took her phone from the nightstand, and checked the time. It was seven twenty-five. She opened Alec’s photograph and looked at the drawing of the woman. It was her—the vampire from her dream. That was why her face looked so familiar. Even though Eleanor didn’t remember when, she was sure she had seen her before.

  The woman whose picture Fray had kept all those years was a vampire. With Fray’s lifestyle, it was no surprise. The question was—did Eleanor kill her?

  What if it was just a dream? No. Having the same dream over and over again meant something. So what was this dream trying to tell her? Maybe Hanna was right; it was som
e unfinished business. The woman escaped, she was still alive, and Eleanor had to find and kill her.

  Or maybe it had something to do with that field. She thought about the one Samson described in his journal. Could they be the same? No. That field was empty, there was nothing there. Samson went back and never found anything. The field from Eleanor’s dream had a whole house on its side.

  “Hi, Dad,” said Eleanor, walking into the kitchen.

  Lindsey didn’t reply. He sat at the table with a grim face, reading a newspaper. A few seconds later, he looked up at Eleanor. “Kimberly’s mother is dead?” he asked, putting down the coffee cup clutched in his hand.

  Eleanor nodded, then looked away from his piercing gaze.

  “And you didn’t tell me?” he asked, slowly taking off his glasses. “Why?”

  Her eyes now fixed at her feet, Eleanor shrugged. “I thought you knew.” She didn’t really know why. Probably because it had everything to do with her. Because she, as a Hunter, felt responsible for those deaths, and she was trying to avoid the tough conversation where she had to pretend all the killings were a shocking mystery to her. “It’s a big case, all over the news.”

  “I didn’t know it was Kimberly’s mother. And those students—did you know them?”

  Eleanor nodded again.

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.” Lindsey got on his feet. “Are you okay?” he asked, putting his hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m fine,” she muttered. Eleanor wished she could accept his comfort, hug him and tell him everything. Tell him who she was, who the killers were, tell him the truth about Melinda. But the truth would make him think that she was losing her mind, while the comfort would weaken her, and she couldn’t afford to be weak right now.

  “How’s Kimberly?”

  “It’s hard. We’re trying to help. She can’t stay at home, so she’s staying at Hanna’s. I’m going there now.”

  “Is there anything I can do for her?” said Lindsey, folding the newspaper. “Kimberly’s mother was there for us when––”

  “When Mom died. I remember, Dad. Don’t worry, we’re taking care of her.” Eleanor looked at the clock on the wall. “You’re going to be late,” she said, raising one brow, the way Melinda usually said it.

  Lindsey smiled weakly, recognizing the gesture. “Yeah, I have to go.”

  20

  Sitting alone at the kitchen table, Hanna was having breakfast. .

  “Where is everybody?” asked Eleanor. She noticed the stack of dirty plates sitting next to the sink.

  “Riley and Kizzy are having coffee in the backyard,” said Hanna, smearing blueberry jam on a piece of waffle. “Ruben and Kimberly are in the basement. I gave her my gun and Ruben is teaching her how to use it.”

  “Gun? What gun?”

  “I have a gun with wooden spikes.”

  “Really?” Eleanor pointed her thumb in the direction of the basement. “Whose idea was that?”

  “Hers. Do you want waffles? I kept some for you,” said Hanna, chewing.

  “I don’t eat breakfast, you know that,” said Eleanor.

  “I made them, and I kept them warm.” Hanna arched her lips, looking at Eleanor with puppy eyes.

  “And you’re eating alone, cause, let me guess, they all ate while you were making them?”

  Hanna nodded. “Yep.”

  “I see their manners are gone. All right.” Eleanor pulled up a chair next to Hanna’s and dropped down. “I’ll eat with you.”

  Hanna got up and grabbed a plate from the cupboard.

  “Gabriella wouldn’t like it,” said Eleanor as Hanna returned to the table and put the plate of waffles in front of her.

  “What do you mean?” asked Hanna.

  “I mean the manners, the traditions. She liked it when . . .” Eleanor pressed her lips together. “I know the times have changed, but when she was around . . .”

  “We were a real family?” Hanna sighed.

  “Sorry.” Eleanor glanced at her. “It’s just . . .” Eleanor hesitated.

  “I know,” said Hanna in a small voice. “I miss her, too.”

  Eleanor took a deep breath. “It’s good that Kimberly wants to learn,” she said, changing the subject.

  “Yeah. Ruben says she can’t sleep at night, that when she falls asleep, it takes only a few minutes before she jumps up, horrified. He thinks training will help her fight her fear, though she doesn’t want to admit that she’s scared.”

  “How’s Kizzy?” asked Eleanor. Hanna was very sensitive when it came to relationships, and Eleanor wondered if she’d already spotted Kizzy’s interest in Ruben. “Is she comfortable here?”

  “Too comfortable, I would say. Except I’m not sure she knows what to do with her hands, so she keeps putting them on Ruben. At those moments I just want to rip them off for her, and I would, if I was certain we wouldn’t need them in the near future.”

  “So, you noticed, too?” asked Eleanor, picking up a maple leaf-shaped bottle of Canadian syrup.

  “I know Ruben, and I can see what’s going on. It happened before, when someone from his past showed up. But it’s different now and he needs to stop it, before Kimberly finds out the truth the hard way.”

  “We all have a past and secrets,” said Eleanor quietly. “We lie to the people we love because we don’t want to hurt them.”

  Hanna turned to her. “Are you talking about your father?”

  “Hanna, I don’t know what to do. How long am I going to lie to him about Melinda? He keeps asking me all these questions, and every time I feel this unbearable guilt for hiding the truth from him.”

  “Eleanor, I know it’s hard, but right now the less he knows, the better it is for him.” Hanna poured orange juice into two glasses and put one of them in front of Eleanor. “Drink.”

  “I had that dream again.” Eleanor glanced at her. “This time I got to see the vampire's face.”

  “And?” asked Hanna, sipping from her glass.

  “It’s that woman from the drawing.”

  Hanna’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying Fray had a crush on a vampire?” She shook her head. “Isn’t that romantic.” Then she chuckled. “People love those stories. You should write a novel about him. Don’t lose your opportunity to become a bestselling author.”

  “Maybe it was just a dream. What if I saw that face because I was thinking about the drawing?”

  “Could be,” said Hanna.

  “Hi,” said Kizzy, walking into the kitchen. She wore a black T-shirt and jean shorts. “How was your night?” she asked Eleanor, opening the fridge and pulling out a bottle of water.

  “I slept better,” said Eleanor. To Eleanor the question sounded like Kizzy wanted credit for her work, and she added, “Thank you.”

  Kizzy nodded before putting the bottle to her lips.

  They heard voices coming from the living room, and in the next moment, one after another, Kimberly, Ruben, and Riley showed up in the kitchen doorway.

  “Hi,” said Kimberly, coming in first.

  “Hi. How did the training go?” asked Eleanor.

  “She made two holes in my shirt,” said Ruben.

  “It’s because you let me.” Kimberly glanced back at him. “Next time, no cheating.” There was a new energy in her voice.

  “Next time Riley will be the vampire,” said Ruben, punching Riley in the shoulder.

  “No way.” Riley stroked his chest. “I love all my shirts.”

  “Then, maybe, guys,” said Kizzy playfully, “you should take them off?”

  Ruben rolled his eyes. Eleanor was glad Kimberly didn’t see it.

  “My skin is just as precious to me,” Riley said.

  Kizzy grinned at him. She opened her mouth, but before she could say another word, Riley turned away from her and looked at Hanna and Eleanor. “So, everyone’s here,” he said, and his face grew serious. “Let’s see what we have for today. Hanna, any news from Ned?”

  “He called. But there isn’t much to tell. He
says the mansion is big and handsome and there’s nothing special about the people who live there. They’re definitely not vampires. He went to the historical society to check for records. Then, he wants to go back and see if he can sneak into the house.”

  “We’re going to the hotel,” said Ruben when Riley glanced at him. “Kimberly wants to see Luke before they leave.”

  “Make sure they leave safely,” said Riley. “If there’s anything, call me immediately.”

  “I will,” said Ruben.

  “That woman from the picture,” said Eleanor as Riley turned to her. “If we could do a locator spell, if we could find her. . . .”

  “Do a loc . . . Eleanor, that picture is from 1834.”

  “She was a vampire.”

  “A vampire? How do you know that?”

  “I’ve been seeing her in my dreams. Hunting her. She could still be alive. Or if she was that important to Fray, she might be transitioning right now, and if we find her, we might find all of them. Kizzy, would you be able to do the spell,” Eleanor asked in an unsure voice, “if we printed out the photograph?” She raised the phone in her hand.

  “You’re joking, right?” Kizzy sneered at her. “You want me to do a locator spell using some printed piece of paper?”

  “Eleanor, you know it doesn’t work like that,” said Ruben.

  “I know,” moaned Eleanor, dropping her hand back on the table. “I just thought that maybe, while I was dead, witches had come up with . . . I don’t know . . .” she shrugged. “New technology.”

  “Is there any way to get the original picture?” asked Kizzy.

  “Get it from where?” said Eleanor. “Even if it was in that mansion, the house is sold now.”

  Hanna got up and opened the dishwasher. “There is another way,” she said, cleaning the dirty plates from the table.

  “What way?” asked Eleanor, but then immediately shook her head. “No, it’s not going to work.”

  “You can try,” said Hanna.

  “Try what?” asked Kizzy.

  “Guys, I know that Alec has feelings for Eleanor,” said Kimberly, “but he already made it clear he’d never do anything that goes against Fray. Even for her.”