“I guess the cat’s out of the bag,” she said, sadly.
I frowned and made my way over to her, taking a seat beside her on the paint smeared sheet. “You know Sam,” I said. It was more of a statement than a question.
She looked at me dejectedly, and breathed out a deep sigh. Then her eyes wandered away from mine and her attention focused on the odd patterns in the hardwood floor. “I met him for the first time earlier this year,” she began, slowly. “Although, I must confess, I’d noticed him around throughout the years. I didn’t know what he was at first, but I suspected. Your grandmother used to tell me a story about a daughter of Lilith who walked on both sides, never choosing one completely. She was believed to be always protected by a guardian and watched over by a soulless shadow. Even though the story is a myth, I couldn’t seem to miss the similarities between Sam and the guardian.”
Although my grandmother’s story intrigued me, I would not let it distract me from the serious matter at hand. Mum had known about Sam for years and hadn’t told me. It annoyed me that she had gone out of her way to avoid telling me anything that might help me now or in the future. I deserved to know the truth and I deserved to hear it from her before I had to go and discover things on my own. Deep inside I was furious that she had failed to tell me anything about everything. I was in the dark about my own life, my own reason for being and it seemed I always had been. Then I thought of Sam and it made me wonder if maybe there was more at stake than just a mother informing her daughter of her birthright.
“What made him come to see you,” I almost whispered.
Mum looked up at me in anxious surprise and frowned as she glanced away from me again. “He’d heard of my plans to come back here,” she sighed, “and he tried to talk me out of going. He told me that I was putting you in danger by bringing you back here and that I should be preparing you for the arrival of your birthday. But I didn’t listen to him. I told him to leave us alone. When we met him on our first day here, I hadn’t seen him for two months. Until that day, I’d been sure we would never see him again.”
Internal anger made me fold my arms tightly over my chest as I tried hard not to let the emotion show on my face. I couldn’t believe that Mum had dismissed Sam so easily and clearly without even giving him a chance to explain himself. Questions swirled around and around in my head. I had so many things I needed answered, so many things I needed to understand better. Why my mum had been so stupid and stubborn, was definitely one of them. It was beginning to become obvious that she had kept everything from me more for her own selfish reasons than to really protect me. So, I had to wonder, what did she get out of coming back here?
“Okay,” I said softly, trying to control the flow of questions in my mind. I stared at the evenly cut planks of wood that made up the studio’s floor and decided to follow the train of thought that led to my past. “I have to know,” I said, as I turned to look at Mum. “What happened when we were in Saint Jean before? Why does Max remember me and I don’t remember him? What happened to my father?”
Mum’s eyes connected with mine again for a moment, but she couldn’t hold them. She hugged her arms around her paint sprayed, jean covered knees and stared off grimly into space. “I was about nineteen when your grandmother dragged me here,” Mum said, coldly. “I didn’t want to come. I’d known since I was little what we were and what problems we had to face because of it. I never wanted any of it. I wanted to be normal. But Ninetta wouldn’t let me. She was a fighter. She told me that we had been given a gift to help erase the world of evil and that it was our duty to hunt or be hunted. She’d chosen to come to Saint Jean after hearing reports of its unusual patronage while we were travelling through France. Her plan was to infiltrate the community and kill the Tiennan family.”
Mum paused and looked at me with anger in her eyes. “What your grandmother didn’t realize at the time,” she continued, “was that the entire community belonged to the Tiennans. There were no humans in the community to save, no innocents. The whole town was evil.” Mum’s gaze drifted back to the floor and she began to stare a hole through it. I watched as she tried desperately to stop her pain from escaping onto her face and my heart ached to know what had happened.
“Of course, as soon as we entered the community the Tiennans knew who and what we were, while we were completely ignorant of their knowledge for weeks. Ninetta spent most of her time talking and bonding with the community members, trying to find out as much information on the Tiennans as she could, never realizing that she was just digging herself deeper and deeper into danger. While I timidly avoided everyone, still scared that everyone was out to get me, because of what I was.”
Suddenly, a small hint of a smile passed my mother’s lips, but it was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared. “It was the third week of our stay that a stranger came into the community,” she said. “Everyone inside the city walls shunned him, except for Ninetta and me. There was something immediately good about him—something pure and honest, something human—and before long he was all I could think about.”
She glanced over at me again and the small smile drifted over her lips once more. “His name was Marcus Gray,” Mum sighed sadly. “And he was your father.”
The grim smile disappeared and her eyes wandered back to the lacquered floorboards.
“The whole community knew that we were sleeping together before Ninetta even noticed. It was the day before she died that she finally realized. We fought over her stupid rules and that night, I left her to stay with Marcus. By the afternoon of the following day, she was gone. I thought she had left me, even though our belongings were still there. I just had this feeling. When I went back to Marcus, we decided to run away together. We packed up the small number of things we had and early in the evening we made a move to leave.”
A tear ran down my mum’s face and she quickly wiped it away. It hurt to see her like this. She had never told me much of her past and always seemed to avoid it if it came up in conversation. Strangely enough, I had never thought of the life or the struggles she had had to face before me and for that I felt a twinge of guilt stab me in the chest. She had never once opened up to me this much before and I was grateful that she had finally chosen to do so now. I placed a hand on her shoulder and wiggled closer to her. She glanced up at me with a weak smile, then bit her bottom lip and looked away as another tear streamed down her face.
“I’d only told Marcus about you that morning,” Mum sobbed. “I didn’t think anyone else knew, but somehow they did and they had no intention of letting us go. We had almost made it to the city gates, when they found us. Ninetta was with them, but she wasn’t Ninetta anymore. Although we screamed and fought to be together, they separated us. The wolves took your father and your grandmother took me. That was the last time I saw Marcus.”
Mum let out a deep sigh, fighting back a painful sob, and then continued. “On the way up to the Tiennan’s castle, your grandmother stopped me,” she said, miserably. “Although she was no longer who had been, she remembered being that person and she hated what she’d become. She told me how she had been tricked and that she blamed herself for trusting the woman who had turned her. Then she handed me a key.”
Mum wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and then crossed her arms across her chest. She glanced up at me with tear-filled eyes and blotchy, pink cheeks and frowned.
“It was the key to the small four-wheel drive that we’d hired to travel through France together,” she sighed. “We had left it parked down at the bottom of the hill since we arrived and hadn’t checked on it more than a couple of times. Ninetta told me that she would distract the others for as long as possible, while I tried to escape, but that I had to go immediately and leave her and Marcus behind. I tried to argue with her, but she ignored me and told me how much she loved me. Then she was gone, into the night, leaving me all alone in the dark.”
Mum let out an agonizing sob and bit her lip, forcefully trying to hold back another. Her hands c
ame up to her face and she gently fluttered her fingertips across her eyelids trying to remove the treacherous hot, wet tears. When she finally looked up at me again, her lips were quivering and her large eyes were glassy and dark. “I just left them here,” she said. “I didn’t try to help them. I just left.” Letting out another painful cry, she curled herself over her knees and wept.
My heart ached at the thought of how hard it must have been to lose a mother and a lover all in the one night. After that, my mum had had no one. She would have been all alone, until she had me. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and another around her knees, and hugged her tightly. Her back jumped aggressively with each whimpering breath, until finally her breathing started to ease.
Slowly, Mum lifted her head up and wiped away her tears. I only leaned out of the hug when all of her violent sobs had totally disappeared, but I still kept my arm gently around her back. I wasn’t brave enough to move away from her completely. I never wanted her to feel that alone ever again.
Mum’s eyes met mine and she smiled half-heartedly, and then frowned as though something suddenly wasn’t right. “What did you mean about Max Tiennan remembering you,” she asked quietly. “As far as I know he never met you until recently.”
I screwed up my face in confusion. I was sure Max had said that we’d met before. I shook my head. “Max said he remembered me,” I said. “He mentioned something about meeting me many years ago and since he seemed to know you, I just assumed he had. Do you think he might have been lying?” That thought had definitely crossed my mind. Max wasn’t exactly the most trustworthy of people.
Mum raised an eyebrow and looked away for a moment in thought. “If he is lying, I can’t be sure why,” Mum answered. “But that doesn’t mean that he isn’t. Promise me you’ll be careful around him, Kitty?”
Mum’s eyes connected with mine and worry filled her face. It made me wonder again why she had dragged me here, to this place of so many bad memories, if she was as worried about me as she appeared to be. It also made me curious once again as to the reason why she had avoided telling me the details about who I really was. Something just didn’t add up.
I leaned away from her a little more and narrowed my eyes. “Why did we come here,” I asked cautiously. “And for that matter, why didn’t you tell me who I am, who we are?”
With solemn eyes, Mum stared at me and sighed. “What can I say,” she breathed with a shrug. “I was trying to protect you. I’ve spent my whole life in fear, because of how your grandmother raised me. I just didn’t want you to have to live your life like that, too.”
“But why didn’t you prepare me,” I said, trying to keep the anger I felt inside out of my voice.
Mum reached a hand out to my face and stroked my cheek with her thumb. “I never wanted you to have to deal with the demons I’ve dealt with,” she whispered. “You’re my baby girl, my only baby girl and it is my job to protect you.” Her hand dropped from my face and she looked away from me again. Her eyes stared at the hardwood floor and I could feel that the truth was about to come out.
“I was looking for a cure,” she said, suddenly. “I never truly believed there was one, until Louis Tiennan came to see me in London. Of course, I didn’t believe him at first and after what had happened to Ninetta and Marcus, all I wanted was to see his head on a spike. But he wouldn’t leave until I’d listened to him.”
Mum raised her eyes and searched the open doorway that led out into the entryway and the kitchen. Then, she wrapped her arms around her chest and hugged them tightly to her body. “He told me that a man had joined his community,” Mum continued. “A sorcerer, and that he believed that there was a way to reverse the activation of Lilith’s blood in our bodies. When I asked Louis what benefit he got out of the situation, he told me that besides being able to gloat about killing the last true daughter of Lilith, your grandmother, it would finally erase the danger of one of Lilith’s daughters turning to good. Because once the reversal had been completed, there would be no more daughters of Lilith. We would be nothing more than human.”
Mum frowned sulkily and glanced at me. “That was about four years ago,” she said. “I was too scared back then to do anything or put my trust in someone so maliciously evil. But as time went by, I started to run out of options and the day of your eighteenth birthday was creeping closer and closer. I was beginning to dread telling you the truth. I just wanted you to live a normal life. So I arranged for us to come here. Although in truth, I wish we had come earlier. It scares me that Lilith’s blood is already calling to you.”
I ignored her last comment and sat back shocked. How could she have not even asked my opinion on all of this before arranging it for me? I was suddenly amazed at how scared I was at being made human again, at being given a chance of a normal life. Would that mean I would never get to see Sam again? Or what about Max? My heart rate sped up and fear wrapped suffocatingly around my heart.
“Why didn’t you tell me,” I asked, astonished and a little angry. “Didn’t I have a right to decide whether or not I want to put my life in the hands of a crazy vampire and his pet sorcerer?”
Mum’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth to answer, but I cut her off.
“How can you decide for me,” I asked, “when I don’t even know myself what it is that I want?” I paused for a second and stared at her angrily.
Her large eyes pleaded with me, while her mouth was forming silent apologies. Then another thought hit me.
“Was this what you and Sam were really fighting about,” I asked. “That you were putting us all in greater danger by doing this?” I shook my head and moved away from her, removing my arm from its supportive position around her shoulders. I glared at the wall across the room and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Please Kitty,” Mum whimpered. “Please at least hear Louis out. I was wrong to make the decision for both of us without asking you, but I love you and I couldn’t bear to think of you going through life the way I did. Please at least listen to him, Kitten. There’s a big community gathering, a ball or something up at the Tiennan’s home tomorrow night. Will you please come and meet him then? I promise I will not make you make the same choice I have made. I just want you to know your options, okay?”
Mum wiggled closer to me and put a hand on my shoulder, while her other hand stroked the loose locks of hair around my face back behind my ears. “Please Kitten,” she said again. “For me, please go.”
I looked up at her still angry at her controlling nature, but the truth shone in her eyes and I knew that she had never meant to hurt me. She had been over-protective of me from the time I was born and probably a long time before that, too. I was the only thing she had left in the entire world and she was only trying to do the right thing by me to always have me safely in her life.
I reached a hand out and snatched her hand away from my face, holding it tightly in mine. “Okay,” I said, a little uncertain. “For you.”
Eleven: Outside Enemies
The narrow, dirt path was filled with clothe-catching branches and vines. I dodged a couple on my left and ended up stumbling over another mischievous tree root. Luckily, I managed to catch myself before falling head first into the undergrowth. Then as I steadied my wobbly legs by gripping desperately onto a skinny pine tree, I wondered again why I’d decided to put myself through this.
After promising Mum that I would hear Louis Tiennan out about the cure, I’d run back upstairs to change. I just needed to get away from everything, my mother, my life and this town. So, I’d decided to go for a run. Once I’d donned some black shorts, a white singlet, tied my hair up and slipped on my sneakers, I was out the front door and sprinting for the city gates. Mum had told me to not to leave the town, but I’d been in no mood to be obedient and was sure that the further away I could get from Saint Jean, the happier and freer I’d feel.
The mid-morning sunlight had shone warmly on my bare shoulders and highlighted a large sign just outside the city walls, beside the
surrounding forest. A map and its colorful key, although in French, appeared to suggest the beginning of a wilderness trail. From what I could see it was circular and seemed to be about five kilometers in circumference which had suited me fine. Unfortunately, due to the fact that the French language completely eluded my linguistic skills, I did not foresee that the little wilderness trail would be no more than a tiny, animal track.
Back in the forest, once my balance had substantially returned I told myself internally to let go of the tree. It took a little extra coaxing, but soon my death-grip softened and I was able to stand straight by myself. Being a sucker for punishment and determined not to let this forest path beat me, I willed myself into a slow jog once more. I kept my eyes glued on the path in front of me, analyzing possible dangers or annoyances as they neared. Eventually, I started to get the hang of it with only the slightest stumble here and the odd scratch from an ambitious branch there. Soon, my mind began to wander and I couldn’t help but think back to my conversation with Mum.
I hadn’t wanted Mum to know the truth about why I was heading off for a run. It might have seemed obvious, but it was better than telling her outright that I needed to go away and sort things out, that I wasn’t sure if I could ever fully trust her again. I just couldn’t bear to see that familiar look in her eyes proclaiming her failure. Deep down, I knew she hadn’t failed me, she was only doing what she believed was right and I couldn’t hold that against her. But then again, that also meant that I didn’t have to follow her decisions blindly when they directly concerned my life.
What had worried me most about our little talk was how Louis Tiennan had convinced her to come back to Saint Jean, because knowing my mum, it wouldn’t have been an easy task. I had to wonder what he’d done to tempt her, besides offering her a cure for her problem. None of the thoughts that came to mind involved anything innocent. Louis Tiennan, like his son, was probably a professional when it came to manipulation. I still hadn’t even met the guy and already my mental little black book had many red crosses next to his name. All in all, that didn’t say a lot for Max, since I was so overly certain that the father was like the son.
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