by HELEN HARDT
I sighed. “Great. All right. What do you suggest, then?”
“You’re not a medium, so I can’t speak to your mind.”
“You did before I could see you. Remember?”
“I was speaking directly to you. It only felt like it was in your mind because you couldn’t see or hear me yet. You weren’t letting yourself.”
“That is such a crock! Emilia and River saw you right away. Why the hell couldn’t I?”
“We’ve been through this. I don’t know.”
“Fuck. That doesn’t help, Dad.”
“I know it doesn’t. But you see and hear me now. Why does it matter?”
“It just does. It just fucking does.” But why did it?
He was right. I could see and hear him now.
“You have something your sister and your cousin don’t have. There’s something inside you, something that gave you the power to reverse your grandfather’s glamour and get what you wanted. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like that before. All the more reason why we need to decipher the Texts.”
“Bill took our only copy.”
“Then we’ll find another.”
I regarded my father. He looked as real as he ever had when he was alive. “How did you get so optimistic?”
“How can I not be? Anything is possible now. I’d always thought that death meant the end of uniqueness. Now I know it doesn’t. The body may perish, but the spirit lives on, Dante. The unique spirit lives on.”
I smiled. “It is pretty amazing. But that’s not what has you so enamored with life, no pun intended, right now.”
“True. We got some good news for your sister. I got to Jack’s right at the end of her appointment. Her illness is severe, but still in the range of normal for our kind, and both she and the baby are progressing well.”
“That’s great news.”
“River gave Jack the list of herbs Erin recalled from her dream. Jack’s going to look into it. He said it’s possible they could give Em some relief.”
“More great news, if it pans out.”
“Let’s be optimistic, son. It can’t hurt. Positivity is a powerful tool.”
I sighed. He was right, of course. “It’s difficult to be positive when with every step forward, we seem to take two steps backward. We finally got the money to take the time and figure out what’s going on, but now we don’t have the book.”
“We find another copy. And we try the website you found. They may have the translation, as they claim.”
I rubbed my forehead to keep an ache from springing up. It vibrated just on the surface. If I could ease the tension just a bit…
Climaxing would have helped, but I could hardly do that at the moment.
“Do you believe Bill?” I asked. “I mean, do you believe that a man can be led to darkness by a book?”
“I believe in the inherent virtue of all men. Can some be led astray? Of course. We have positive proof of that with the many criminals among us. But I feel very strongly that you will not be. You have an internal strength that most only hope to have, Dante. You survived your captivity, and you survived it intact, both physically and mentally.”
“I don’t always feel mentally intact, Dad.”
“No one does. But your inner strength, your good heart, got you through. You knew you were meant for something better, and you were determined not to let yourself be broken.”
My father had ingested rattlesnake venom for me. No one was more determined than the ghost before me. “I think I got that from you.”
He smiled. “Maybe you did. But I had a reason more powerful than you can yet imagine to get me through. You and your sister.”
“That’s not true. I wanted to get back for Em, for you, for River and Bill.”
“I’m sure you did, but one day you’ll know a much fiercer love. Think about how you feel for Erin, and then multiply that by the idea that you brought an individual into the world who is not yet self-aware—an individual who, but for you, would not exist. The bond a parent feels for a child is indescribable. It’s as intense as a love for your partner, yet in a wholly different way.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“You will someday. I feel very strongly that you and Erin will have children.”
Children.
A son.
A vampire son.
“Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“I had a… I’m not sure what it was. I wouldn’t call it a vision. Just a picture in my mind. Of Erin handing me a baby. A vampire baby, Dad.”
“That would be wonderful, but it’s not possible.”
“I know. And the weird thing is that she had the same vision earlier today.”
“In a dream?”
“No, not really.” I didn’t want to tell my father that she had it during an orgasm. TMI.
“It could mean absolutely nothing.”
“I know that. But what seems significant, to me at least, is that we both saw the same thing.”
“It’s puzzling. I won’t deny that. But physiology is physiology. A vampire and human always produce a human baby.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of genetic dominance on the human’s part, obviously.”
“But hasn’t anyone ever studied it?”
“I’m sure they have. We could ask Jack.”
Jack. My blood. My B positive blood.
“There’s something else,” I said.
“What?”
“I had some blood work done, to find out my blood type. I’m B positive.”
“And?”
“I’m your son, right? I look like you. And you watched me come out of Mom, right?”
“I did.”
“Jack says he did some genetic testing when I was born, and you two are definitely my parents. The problem is, both of you are Rh negative, and it’s genetically impossible for two Rh negative parents to produce an Rh positive child. Something happened to me while I was in captivity, Dad. Someone changed my physiology.”
“I’m no scientist, but that doesn’t seem likely.”
“I know. Jack couldn’t explain it, beyond calling it a spontaneous mutation.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
“Yeah, but unlikely.” I shoved my fingers through my hair. “I remember some things about my time in captivity. I remember some of the torture, the pain. I remember her feeding from me, and then forcing me to feed from her. We always learned that drinking vampire blood could cause unwanted side effects. Could spontaneous Rh factor change be one of them?”
“That’s hardly an unwanted side effect. It has no effect on your life at all.”
“I know, but— What about this strange ability I have for glamouring? I out-glamoured Bill, for God’s sake, and I have no idea how. I just knew what had to happen, and I made it happen. Could that be a side effect?”
“I don’t know. It’s been some time since you drank her blood.”
“True. I’m drinking Erin’s blood now. The blood bond…” My mind raced. “Maybe the bond. We’re taught not to drink from humans. Maybe there’s a reason beyond it being immoral. Maybe human blood gives us something…”
“Dante, despite what we’re taught, some vampires survive on human blood.”
“Not the blood of someone they’re bonded to.”
“True. Not that we know of, at least.”
I walked to the coffee table and picked up the counterfeit Vampyre Texts. “Damn you, stupid fake book. I want the secrets. I need the secrets.”
You will have them, Dante. You will have them all.
When you learn to ask.
Chapter Nineteen
Erin
I awoke with a start, sweat dripping down my cheeks. I sat up, and the perspiration poured from my forehead into my eyes. I squinted away the sting.
My heart hammered and my palms were clammy.
I’d dreamed something. Something big.
Something
I struggled now to recall.
A baby had been crying—alone and crying.
A vampire baby.
But not Dante’s and mine, like I’d seen before. This was a different baby. A baby I knew, somehow, I had some sort of connection to.
Emilia’s baby, maybe? I rubbed my brow.
I could call Julian, have him glamour me to remember the dream better like he had before.
No. For some reason that I couldn’t articulate, it was important that I remember this dream without any prompting.
It was necessary.
Vital, even.
I rose, went to the bathroom, and splashed some water on my face to get rid of the perspiration. Then I lay back down and closed my eyes.
I breathed in, out, back in again.
Relax. Relax. Relax.
The baby again. She was crying. Yes, it was a little girl. I just knew. She was crying.
Someone help her! She’s hungry! She needs her diaper changed.
Still she cried.
Still no one came.
Then a voice.
“I want my baby!”
A voice I recognized.
Who was it?
“Be quiet.”
A male voice. Another voice I recognized.
Logan.
Logan was keeping this mother from her baby.
My heart sped up and the images dispersed. No!
Easy, Erin. Just relax.
“Can’t move. Help me. Help me, please. I want my baby.”
The woman’s voice again. She was lying in a hospital bed. She couldn’t move. God, she was in pain. She’d had some kind of surgery.
Logan.
I think I might have done some surgeries.
He’d said that when I found him.
He’d performed surgery on this woman.
The baby still wailed.
Why wasn’t anyone taking care of the baby?
“Help me!” the woman cried. “Help me, please!”
I shot my eyes open.
The woman. I recognized her.
The young mother who had been transferred to a hospital in Baton Rouge.
“Help me,” she said again. “Please help me, Erin!”
Epilogue
The Queen
Your powers are emerging, Dante. You are more formidable than your father or uncle could hope to be. And your grandfather? He’s an old fool whose time is at an end. He won’t torment you for much longer.
The answers you seek are within you. You don’t need to decode a book to find them.
The darkness your grandfather fears is real.
You don’t need to fear it, Dante.
You must embrace it.
Continue the Blood Bond Saga
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Also By Helen Hardt
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The Sex and the Season Series:
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Lady Alexandra’s Lover
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The Cougar Chronicles:
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Collections:
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Non-Fiction:
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About Helen Hardt
#1 New York Times, #1 USA Today, and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author Helen Hardt’s passion for the written word began with the books her mother read to her at bedtime. She wrote her first story at age six and hasn’t stopped since. In addition to being an award-winning author of contemporary and historical romance and erotica, she’s a mother, an attorney, a black belt in Taekwondo, a grammar geek, an appreciator of fine red wine, and a lover of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. She writes from her home in Colorado, where she lives with her family. Helen loves to hear from readers.
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