“What’s wrong?”
“I was right, this was my bike,” Andre said quietly. “Isaac Gillman helped me restore it and I gave it to him for his birthday about ten years ago.” He glanced down at his phone and frowned. “I’m not sure what to make of this, but the registration was renewed in Isaac’s name in 2008.”
I understood then why Andre was upset. According to Ida, the last time anyone had seen Isaac was in 2005, just before the hurricane hit. His house had been destroyed and it was assumed he along with it.
“It’s very likely he knew this place existed.” I pointed out.
Andre shrugged. “If what Ida reported wasn’t a coincidence, it’s possible. Isaac frequently left the city and didn’t tell anyone where he was going. He’d sometimes be gone for months and he’s been doing that since I was a kid.”
“But if he knew about Bluebeard wouldn’t he have told Evan?” I asked.
“Isaac didn’t keep a lot of secrets, but from my understanding no one ever knew where he went when he left. Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought.” Andre’s voice was tinged with a slight bitterness. “Are you still tracking that signal?”
“Yeah,” I said and quickly looked down at my screen. “Wait a minute!” The truth was that I had gotten distracted and hadn’t checked on it in a while. When I looked again, the green dot had changed to yellow. I hadn’t seen anyone else move into the area, so I went back a few minutes and checked the log. Sure enough, just seconds before I looked, the signature simply switched from human to mod. “Andre, check your hemograph.”
Andre confirmed my findings, but didn’t seem at all phased by this. Rather, he seemed angry all of the sudden. “Come on,” he said harshly and began walking back towards the boundary, making enough noise to draw attention to our position.
“Andre, wait! Are you crazy?” I hissed, but he ignored me.
“Stay behind me,” he commanded and started walking toward the invisible barrier between the wetlands and the farm. When we were within ten feet, he stopped and I breathed a sigh of relief. For a minute, I thought he was going to keep walking. I checked my phone again and nearly jumped when I saw that the signal was pulsing between green and yellow.
“How is this possible?” I tried to show Andre what I was looking at, but he waved me off and stepped dangerously close to the barrier. I slid myself behind the nearest tree, suddenly conscious of the fact that my bright pink tracksuit wasn’t the best idea for spying this close to the compound.
“What are you doing?” I whispered. “Whoever that is, they are right in front of us and you’re going to set off the alarms if you get any closer!”
“Stay right there and keep an eye on the other signals. If anything starts moving towards us, let me know,” Andre whispered then turned back to the barrier and said something that made me question his sanity.
“I wonder, can anyone tell me why Smurfs are blue?”
There was a loud rustle and a man swung suddenly from out of the trees. He was tall, with dark skin, and wore a t-shirt and khaki pants that were nearly as ragged as the clothes that Cynda had been wearing when I found her. His eyes, despite the now green signal on my hemograph, were the same pale gold as mine. I jumped, but managed to bite back the yelp of surprise. He looked at Andre with a wide smile and replied to Andre’s baffling question with an equally ridiculous answer.
“Because if they were green, they’d be boogers. Hello Andre.”
Chapter 8
“You have no idea how happy I am to see you, but please don’t come any closer. That would be dangerous to us both.”
So this was Isaac. His reading on the hemograph was still baffling me. From everything Ida had told me, Isaac was a modified vampire. His outward appearance certainly matched that of a mod, but at that moment, his signature was still holding steady and displaying green.
“I’m aware of the boundary and its dangers,” Andre said with an icy voice. “What I want to know, is what you are doing in there, Isaac?”
“I’m afraid that’s a long story that we don’t have time for at the moment,” Isaac replied with a defeated sigh, “but the abridged version? I made a foolish mistake and the bastard caught me. I don’t suppose your being out here is a fluke. Do you know what this place is?”
“Two nights ago, a young girl was brought in by the outreach and she claims to have escaped from this facility. I’ve yet to meet her, but I read the report,” Andre replied with a look towards where I was still hiding behind the tree. The hemograph showed we were still alone, and Isaac didn’t appear to be a threat, so I took a cautious step out into the open. When Isaac spotted me, he put his hand over his mouth and his eyes widened in fear.
“Oh my god, Lucy!” he said in a horrified whisper. “You need to get far away from here!”
“What?” I nearly fell over at the sound of my name. “How do you know my name?” I glanced at Andre and saw that he was just as shocked as I was.
Isaac’s facial expression softened, and to my surprise, a tear rolled down his cheek. “I’ve known you your whole life, Lucy,” he whispered gravely, “and you look more like her every day.”
Ida’s offhanded observation was suddenly at the forefront of my thoughts. “Like who?” I croaked.
“Julia,” Isaac barely breathed the name. My stomach felt like it dropped into my feet. Julia was my mother’s name. I swayed unsteadily against Andre, who caught me with a look of concern.
“Lucy, are you okay?”
“I’m…oh my god… Andre, he’s…” I glanced back at Isaac. “Are you saying?” I couldn’t bring myself to ask the question. I was overcome by so many different emotions that all I could do was stand there, on the verge of tears, with my mouth hanging open like an idiot.
Isaac nodded. “You are my daughter, Lucy.”
I didn’t know what to say. I had so many questions. I felt Andre’s hand squeeze my shoulder and I was at once grateful for his presence and selfishly mad at him for knowing more about the man than I did. I gave him a weak smile and gently removed his hand from my shoulder, taking a cautious step closer to the invisible border between Isaac and myself.
“I…” I took a shuddering breath, “I have a lot of questions I need answered.”
“I know you do,” Isaac said gently, smiling through watery eyes, “but you have to believe me that you’re not safe here, Lucy.”
“We can get you out of here.” I glanced back at Andre. “There’s a monitor that we have to remove.”
Isaac shook his head with a sad laugh. “No, that bastard didn’t make the same mistake twice. I don’t have the same chip that the children are implanted with. He’s got an implant in me, right here.” He tapped his chest over his heart. “If I so much as step one foot across that fence, they’ll be picking pieces of me out of the trees for years. Believe me,” he said with a stern, yet fiercely emotional stare, “the only thing that’s kept me from doing just that has been you, Lucy. I dedicated my life to your safety and that hasn’t stopped. I can’t do much from in here, but I at least know now that you’re in good hands.” He nodded to Andre with a look of deep admiration. “I’ve trusted my life to this man on more than one occasion.”
I shot a look of desperation at Andre. “Have you figured out how to bypass the security systems?”
“Not yet.” His voice was full of regret. “I don’t have the resources that I would need out here. I need to get onto the main system back at headquarters, but I’m confident we can do it.”
That at least gave me some hope, but it still angered me.
“I have every faith in you, Andre,” Isaac said with a genuine smile. “Go,” he said to me. “I’ve survived more than a year. As long as you are free, the bastard won’t kill me. I’ll be waiting right here, I’m not going to lose my family twice.”
“Wait a minute.” I checked the hemograph and saw that there were no other signals within a half mile. I turned to Andre. “Do you think you could give me a moment?”
&n
bsp; I could tell he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of standing there any longer than necessary, but he nodded. “I’ll be right over here, but if I tell you we have to go, then we have to go.”
I nodded and turned back to Isaac. My thoughts were an incoherent mess as I tried to speak. “I… I need to know how… my mother never talked about who my father was. I was a kid when she died and I never thought to ask, but I need to know now.”
“No, I don’t expect she would have, at least not after I told her what I was.”
“Did you love her?” The question came out with more accusation than I intended, but Abe’s revelation that my mother had gone missing was still fresh in my mind.
“I’ve never stopped loving her.” Isaac’s reply was so heavy with emotion that I felt terrible for even asking.
“Did she leave you because you were a… you are a vampire, right?” I asked. It did make sense. My mother was pretty open-minded, but I could see how she might have had a bit of a problem with her boyfriend revealing he was a vampire.
“Not exactly, I mean yes, I’m a vampire, but it was... well it’s a bit more complicated than that,” he said with a sad smile.
“How so? Tell me everything. How did you meet?” I was probably babbling, but after twenty-five years, I finally had the one person who could answer all of the questions I had about myself and I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity.
“Julia never got into the details of what transpired back in California, but a few weeks after her high school graduation, your mother decided to drive halfway across the country, alone, and somehow ended up here in New Orleans. She started hanging out at Gilly’s and that’s where she first caught my eye. I didn’t know that she was only seventeen, but I did know she was much too young. Though I didn’t look it, I was thirty-six at the time, so I resigned myself to nothing more than a few glances when I thought she wasn’t looking.”
The fact that my mother had run away from home didn’t surprise me much. I knew she had a strained relationship with my grandmother for a few years after my grandfather had died. But to go all the way from California to Louisiana? I’m surprised my grandmother didn’t send the entire army after her. The Emma Soriano I grew up with would have had kittens if I didn’t tell her I was staying late at a friend’s house.
“Then one night,” Isaac continued, “I was out combing the alleys for stray vampires and I disrupted a mugging. New Orleans was a far more dangerous place back then, and your mother, in a foolish move that I can only blame on age and inexperience, had gone for a late night walk because she couldn’t sleep. I pulled her attacker off of her and flashed my fangs, causing him to take off, and then I walked her back to her hotel. The next day I met her again, at Gilly’s, and asked her to spend the day with me. That day turned into two of the happiest weeks of my life. I was gearing up to ask her to marry me when everything fell apart. You see, I was a police officer at the time. I went in to work one day and your mother’s picture was all over the station as a missing minor from California. My involvement with your mother wasn’t exactly a secret and I had a lot of explaining to do just to keep my job, let alone stay out of jail.
“Julia offered to talk to her mother and come down to the station to defend my honor, but I convinced her to go back. I told her to start college as she had planned. I promised that I would come visit her every chance I had, and that as soon as things quieted down around here, I would transfer to a local police department in the Bay Area.”
“But you never came back.” My tone was, understandably, accusatory. “Why?”
Isaac smiled sadly. “I did come back, but several months had passed. I saw Julia working at a restaurant in Oakland and she was very pregnant at the time. I foolishly believed that she had met someone and moved on. My heart was broken, but I didn’t want to disrupt her life, so I left and told myself I’d get over her. I didn’t. Five years later, curiosity got the better of me and I went back. When I saw you, my heart broke so completely, I thought I had died. I didn’t think it was possible. It had been discovered that certain types of vampires were sterile and I believed that I was as well. I found Julia while she was working and confronted her. She confirmed that you were my daughter and, understandably, she was not happy, thinking that I had abandoned her. I revealed everything about myself and told her that you might… uh… exhibit some unusual traits.”
“Oh I did, but not until recently.” It was surreal to find out that my mother knew things about me that I had only learned in the last year. “Did she believe you?”
“No, of course not,” Isaac said with a sad laugh. “But fangs can be pretty convincing and well, Julia got a little upset and I couldn’t blame her for that.”
“No, I imagine not.”
“I explained that vampires, well most of us, aren’t like the myths and eventually she calmed down enough to take me seriously and even forgive me for abandoning her, but she wouldn’t leave. She told me you were starting school and that she didn’t want to disrupt your life. I told her I would wait. I gave her the ring that I had intended to put on her finger five years before and told her that I would come back every year on the same night, the night before your birthday. I told her that when she was ready to accept me back into her life, to wear the ring. Year after year, she had one excuse or another. I was beginning to get desperate. I’d suspected that the monster who calls himself my father had somehow found out about your existence and I was desperate to get you both back to New Orleans and under the protection of Evan Conroy’s organization. When I came back on the night before your tenth birthday, my plan was to stay in San Francisco whether Julia wanted me in her life or not. I had already scoped out available properties near your apartment and I was ready to protect the both of you on my own, if that was what it took. But I didn’t have to worry…” Isaac choked and a tear carved a line through the dust on his cheek. “She showed up for work early. She…she was wearing the ring.”
My own tears began to fall freely. Every injustice I’d ever suffered suddenly felt petty and inconsequential. “You saw her the night she… that night?” I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud. I’d had years to accept my mother’s death, but suddenly it seemed so unfair.
“Yes,” Isaac whispered. “I was so happy. I wanted her to quit on the spot, go home and get you, and take you both back to New Orleans on the first available flight. But Julia convinced me to wait. She wanted to have time to discuss it with you. I was to come over in the early evening, after your party. I sat at the restaurant until her shift was over, then I walked her to her car. I kissed her goodbye, told her that the next time she saw me we’d be a whole family again. And then…”
Isaac bowed his head in silent tears. I wiped my eyes and blinked, feeling completely awful. I couldn’t imagine how horrible he must have felt after ten years of waiting for my mother, only to have her ripped away forever.
“You don’t know how badly I wanted to go to you that night,” Isaac continued with tears in his eyes. “Losing Julia hurt so bad, I didn’t want to lose you as well. But I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” I was truly curious. “A paternity test would have proven who you were.”
“A paternity test would have frightened and confused the poor lab tech who analyzed it. I suspect Abe could explain to us the finer points, but let’s just say that my… unique characteristics are pronounced enough that I wouldn’t pass for human under even the most basic of tests. Aside from that, there was the fact that I was a complete stranger to you. You had just lost your mother. I didn’t want to add to your stress. Besides, I knew you would be well protected with your grandmother.”
“Protected from what?”
“I was right, you were being watched, but thanks to your grandmother’s position, the bastard couldn’t get to you. “
“So what did you do?” I asked. “Why didn’t you talk to my grandmother and tell her who you were?”
“I couldn’t,” Isaac said sadly, “for your safety and hers. They
were there, watching you, and I was watching them every step of the way, until they caught me.”
“When was this?” Knowing that I might have been stalked by vampires my whole life was terrifying enough to momentarily suspend my tears.
“Right after your grandmother died. It wasn’t until the semester ended and the next began that everyone realized you were no longer in Washington. I knew you had gone back to California, so I kept an eye on the bastard’s goons, but that proved to be a mistake. They realized what I was up to and laid a trap for me. When you showed up in the woods, I thought I was hallucinating. How you ended up in New Orleans, I don’t know, but I’m rather relieved to find that you have fallen in with Evan Conroy. I can’t think of anyone I would trust more to keep you safe.”
“I was looking for my father,” I said with a wry smile. I didn’t add that Evan’s definition of safe might be different from his.
“Lucy,” Andre called out in a suddenly tense voice, “we’re going to have company soon.”
“That’ll be my guard,” Isaac said warily. “They come looking for me if I stay in one place for too long. Go now, and don’t worry about me.”
“We’ll be back,” I said with determination.
“I trust you will,” Isaac replied with a watery smile. “And I’ll be here waiting. Be safe, Lucy, and you too Andre.”
“We will,” I promised before turning back to Andre, who took my hand and gently pulled me back toward the tree line. As we walked away, I turned back to look at Isaac one last time, but he had already disappeared into the dense forest.
Chapter 9
Somehow, I made it all the way back to the truck before having a complete emotional meltdown. For the last year, I had prepared myself for the possibility that Evan would one day call me into his office and tell me that the DNA of some vamp the hunters had killed was a match for mine. Yet learning that my father was not only alive, but sacrificed his own safety to insure mine, was so outside of the realm of possibility that my mind overloaded. I collapsed against the side of the truck and cried.
The Eyes of the Sun: The Complete Trilogy Page 39
