by Maya DeLeina
Madeline pulled back from Ryan’s hold. “Wait, Ryan! Wait! Come with me. We need to talk and think this through. I have the evidence you need to formally present this to the entire family. Don’t you see? He broke the law. Even Steffan is not above the law.”
“I don’t care about the fucking law. I want what is rightfully mine. I want Anya!” Ryan took off again with Madeline in tow. She dug her heels into the ground and punched his arm relentlessly with her free hand.
“Listen to me! Be smart about this!” Madeleine screamed as Ryan continued his run down the hill. “Stop!”
Ryan released her, and she fell to the ground abruptly. Ryan continued toward his Mercedes.
“He’s too powerful. He will kill you, Ryan! He’ll stop you before you ever get to see her. You need the help of this entire family to conquer Steffan!” Madeline screamed as she sat on the ground, drenched by the rain.
Ryan didn’t stop. He had made it to the car and opened the driver’s door.
“I’m the only one who can break the spell of Steffan’s enthrallment on Anya!” she screamed.
Ryan was just about to start the car when he stopped. Madeleine’s words rang in his ear. She was right. If he just barged in to Steffan’s house, he would kill him. Steffan had already warned him of his protection instincts over Anya during the claim. And even if he got to Anya, she wouldn’t believe him. She was deep in Steffan’s enthrallment.
He needed Madeleine.
Madeline made her way to the car, opened the passenger door, and got in. “Drive. I’ll take you to my cabin. You can see the evidence for yourself,” she said softly as she caught her breath.
* * * *
Sheets of lightning burned through the sky, illuminating the deep-violet clouds above the darkened highway. Punctuated crackling fractured the silence between them in the vehicle. The relentless wind and rain made it difficult to see all of the twists and turns in the pavement. The sound of the raindrops slowly turned into a deafening staccato drumbeat against the metal and glass.
“Fuck! This hail is going to ruin my car! Where are we going? How much farther is it to your cabin?”
“Woodland Park. It’s not much farther.”
With Madeline’s directions, Ryan pulled off of the highway and turned onto a dirt-and-gravel road. The incline of the road was steep and narrow. “Swing a left right after you make it to the top of this hill.”
Ryan took a left into a tree-lined driveway. An A-frame cabin appeared in the distance. “Why do you live all the way out here? I thought Steffan said all of the families lived in Manitou?”
“I do live in Manitou. This is my weekend retreat.”
Ryan slowed the vehicle as he reached the cabin and looked around. “Great, no garage?”
“Nope.” Madeleine opened the passenger door and looked back at Ryan as he sulked in his seat. “Look, deal with it. You live in Colorado. You’re bound to get stuck in a hailstorm or two. Let’s go inside.”
Ryan sat on the faux bearskin rug, staring down at the contents that sat in a cardboard box. The crackling of the fire was the only sound in the room.
The cabin’s interior was cozy. Rustic accents filled the room. Above him, an antler chandelier washed the room with ambient lighting. Pine-and-cinnamon-scented candles perfumed the air.
“I just can’t believe this!” Ryan said, rummaging through the box full of photo albums, newspaper clippings, marriage certificates, and documents, anything and everything that linked Ryan and Anya together. “He erased my entire life, my entire existence. I don’t remember any of this. I’m looking at myself in these pictures, but it doesn’t feel like me.”
Madeline sat on the couch opposite Ryan.
“Steffan came to me after turning you. He wanted to know everything about you. I reported back to him about your wife. I told him how distraught and devastated she was after you disappeared. I told Steffan to release you so you could reunite with her immediately. He was about to do just that, until I did the wrong thing by mentioning how beautiful Anya was and that she was a cellist. His face lit up. ”
Ryan eyes began to burn with rage again. “Then what?”
“He seemed obsessed. He demanded that I collect all I could on Anya and bring it to him. I took things from your office, the music studio, and your home.”
“You took these things from my home? Why would you take things from Anya?
“I had to! Once I got these, I called him to arrange a meeting at his house, the normal protocol. Steffan instead asked to meet here. He was immediately enchanted with Anya. He then asked me to…” Madeline stopped as her eyes began to tear.
“What? What exactly did Steffan command you to do?”
“He told me to burn all of this evidence and to come up with a different background to provide the family. He wanted Anya for himself, so he created a story that he felt a connection to her with something that belonged to you. ”
Ryan stood and raised his voice in anger. “Why? Why did you just go along? This was my life and Anya’s life you guys were messing with here!”
Madeline sat up and moved to the edge of the sofa, pleading with Ryan to understand her position. “Ryan, I was a single parent and struggling to make ends meet in my human life. One night, Steffan found me badly beaten and slowly dying of my injuries in the park and he turned me. My daughter was only two years old at that time. She’s sixteen years old now. I promised myself that I would wait until she was old enough for the change, so we could always be together.”
“Wait a minute. Steffan turned you? A human?”
“Yes.” She responded quickly and plainly.
Then suddenly, her eyes went wide, as if she just recalled something. “Why do you ask?”
“Eilian and Rhys told me I was the first human Steffan ever turned. They made me feel sorry for him, that I was his first, and I ended up turning black. So they say.”
Madeline was quiet, assessing Ryan’s look of confusion as he formulated the answer on his own.
“Damn it! I knew it! They’re all in on it! Holy Shit! Rhys! The guy looks as if he’s ready to kill me at any second! But I don’t understand what the hell your daughter has to do with me and Anya anyway.”
“That night, Steffan threatened to take her life if I didn’t bury this evidence and alter the background report on you. Forgive me, but I couldn’t risk my daughter’s life. I had no other choice.” Tears streamed down Madeleine’s face.
Ryan’s face softened with the realization of what Madeline was facing at the hands of Steffan. “Why did you come to me now with this? Aren’t you still afraid?
Sniffling, Madeline explained. “Not anymore. You see, my daughter has severe peanut allergies. She was at the park with friends last week when they rushed her home. She was swollen. Her tongue swelled and her throat was closing. She couldn’t get any air. The kids didn’t even have the sense to call the ambulance. What’s worse, she didn’t have her epinephrine injector with her. I ran upstairs to get the one we store in the medicine cabinet and plunged it deep into her leg. It worked, but only for a brief second. She started convulsing. The kids were scared and finally confessed that they’d been experimenting with meth. That’s why they didn’t call the ambulance. So there was my daughter, laid out in front of me with a high dose of meth, and I’d just injected her full of concentrated epinephrine. The convulsing stopped, but she was unresponsive. Her breathing was shallow and her pulse faint. She was dying right in front of me. I sent the kids out of the house.” Madeline paused for a minute. “I had no choice but to change her before her heart stopped beating. So now, I have a vampire for a daughter who will never mature past the age of sixteen. At least Steffan can no longer hold her well-being over my head.”
“Anise. That’s what you came up with to alter the report?”
“Yes. Anise had already died in a car accident earlier, so it was a perfect cover-up.” Madeline started crying without restraint. “I’m sorry, Ryan, I had no choice. Forgive me.”
Ryan held Madeline in his arms to console her. “You did what you had to do. I understand what you were up against, and I forgive you. Now, you can make it up to me. Help me expose what he’s done so I can get my wife back.”
For a brief moment, Madeleine had quieted in his embrace. But soon after releasing her, she returned to her panic-stricken state.
“Ryan, he didn’t simply commit an offense to our written creed, he broke one of our highest laws. According to this, his actions will require death. Our kind cannot accept deception of that nature, especially one with his powers. Once a vampire is found to harbor deceit, they have to be destroyed. With all of our extraordinary abilities, we need ground rules to live by for civility. Otherwise, we’ll be right back where we started when our kind first roamed the earth. There’s nothing more deadly than a powerful vampire with no morals.” Madeline paused.
Even with all she’d revealed, Ryan was reluctant to accept a fate of death for Steffan.
With a devilish look in her eye, Madeline continued, “And with Steffan destroyed, our family will need a new leader. I can’t think of anyone but you, with all that you’ve gone through. You could uphold our creed and laws keep us all safe from rogues and from each other and build our family’s wealth by overseeing the sales and distribution of Defender and Consumption.”
Ryan felt a sudden spark of anticipation rush through his veins, “Well, my name translates to king. Yes, I think I would be a perfect!”
* * * *
Anya walked alongside Steffan.
He cradled Michelle in his arms as they made their way to one of the guest rooms in the house.
It was nine o’clock in the evening.
The day’s events and the wine had taken their toll on Michelle. She had been interested in trying Anya’s mysterious red wine during dinner. The label simply read, Private Reserve.
Steffan embellished, explaining it came from a winery he visited while in Italy, in the small town of Montalcino. It was a rare wine, a blend that was hand-crafted through a special aging process and could only be purchased from the winery itself. No matter how special the wine, Michelle was repulsed by the taste, commenting that it had a vinegar undertone and resorted instead to finishing the bottle of Moscato on her own.
Steffan and Anya quietly exchanged a smile.
Anya looked at Michelle, sound asleep in Steffan’s arms. “She’s out cold. She shouldn’t hear us, right?”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, cariad. You know I can’t control myself with you. I’ll do a boundary just in case.”
Steffan bent over, gently lay Michelle on the bed and pulled the covers over her body. Steffan walked over to Anya. He stood behind her, wrapping his arms tightly around her as they looked at Michelle’s peaceful state.
“Look at her. She finally looks at peace. She harbored that guilt for so long. I can’t believe after all these years we’ve known each other, she couldn’t find a way to tell me about Dominic. I’m open-minded. I could’ve handled it.”
“Really? This morning you were panic-stricken, not knowing how to tell her that about me and if she was going to be open-minded to accept the existence of vampires.”
“All right, I see your point.” Anya sighed and continued, “Maybe we shouldn’t have let her drink the entire bottle. I didn’t really intend for her to stay overnight, especially not tonight.”
“We do have another house, you know,” Steffan said as he started tracing his lips at her ear.
“Steffan, there’s no furniture in that house anymore. You know that. I can’t have her sleeping on the floor.”
“I could move the bed. It’s really no problem. I’ll have recreated this room for her over there in five minutes…tops.”
“Steffan!”
Steffan chuckled and continued his worship of her body, planting slow and delicious kisses at her ear and down her neck.
Anya leaned her head back into Steffan, relishing the way her body tingled at the slightest trace of his soft lips. “God, I wanted this to be our special night. I wanted everything to be perfect. I’m so sorry Steffan, but I couldn’t let her drive her in her condition.”
“I know, Anya. It will still be perfect. We’re completing the claim tonight,” Steffan whispered. He leaned in close to her ear. “But I have to admit, I was looking forward to spending the entire day locked away in the bedroom with my mate tomorrow. I’m interested in knowing what abilities you possess before you’re presented to the family in the midnight ceremony.”
Anya shook her head with the realization of how much attention Michelle would require tomorrow. “And she’ll have a massive hangover that I would probably have to nurse.” Anya paused as a thought crossed her mind. “Steffan?”
“Do I have the ability to cast any deep-sleep spells?” Steffan phrased her thought in a question before she could say the words.
Anya turned to face Steffan. “Damn, I keep forgetting you can do that. And by the way, did you know you have a weakness that no other man in my life had?”
“Weakness?” Steffan looked at Anya as she stood with her hand on her hip. “How do you mean?”
“If I ever catch an inappropriate thought of a woman in your mind or if I see your eyes burn in a red, passionate heat for another woman…” Anya trailed off. Her playfulness took a sudden turn. Her belly twitched and her heart ached. The thought of Ryan’s indiscretions traced through her memory. Quickly, she engaged her mental blocking, dismissing the thought completely and shook off the look of anger and sadness that she felt etched on her face.
Steffan didn’t appear to notice.
He reached for Anya and pulled her to his chest. “You are so damn sexy when you’re jealous.”
Anya fluttered her eyes. “So, sleep spells?”
“Well, I can enthrall, not to erase memory, but to command. Our creed dictates that if we’re not feeding, enthrallment can only be performed on a human to either protect our existence or to protect the human.”
“So it won’t hurt her or damage her?” Anya asked.
“No, not at all. In fact, I would be performing it to protect her technically, so she can sleep through the effects of the hangover. I won’t be breaking the creed. What about Chloe? ”
“Her ex has Chloe for the weekend. He’s taking her to the amusement park and the aquarium in Denver tomorrow morning. He wasn’t going to call to check in till they got back in the evening anyway.”
“Then let’s do it. I want her safe and comfortable, here with us. But let’s just have her wake late in the day.”
Anya nodded and watched Steffan make his way to the bed.
* * * *
Steffan sat at the edge of the bed and reached for Michelle. He lifted her hand to his lips and gently kissed her. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of Anya slapping Michelle’s hand away from his lips in her mind.
Steffan turned around to look at Anya. Her body jerked as Steffan eyes met hers.
Anya’s jealousy shot a tinge of excitement through this body.
“Sorry. I just want your lips to touch my skin,” she admitted sheepishly.
“It’s just a part of the spell enthrallment. Don’t fret, my love.”
Waves of confusion and uncertainty rolled in his mind. Minutes earlier, he had tried to slip into Anya’s mind but was unsuccessful.
Why could I see that image clearly when earlier, I could only see a bright light?
He determined that he may have had a null spot in picking up Anya’s thoughts as the claim still had to be fulfilled.
“Go on, please proceed.” Anya motioned toward Michelle, reassuring Steffan.
Steffan returned to Michelle’s hand. He kissed it gently once again and spoke in a low, methodical tone that almost seemed to have a melodic, singing quality.
“Michelle, listen to my voice. Trust in me. I am your protector. Open your eyes.”
Michelle opened her eyes and stared blankly at the ceiling.
“I am afraid that you are not feeling wel
l and will need some much-needed rest so your body and mind can fully cover. Do you trust in what I am saying?”
“I do.”
“You must remain asleep for twenty hours, uninterrupted, to fully regenerate. When you wake, your mind will remember talking with Anya and Steffan and drinking wine into the wee hours of the morning. When you wake, Anya and Steffan will be waiting for you, with a nice meal prepared to nourish your body. When you wake, Chloe will be waiting anxiously for your call. Will you do as I say and recall as I planned?”
“Yes.”
“Good, Michelle. It’s time to start your sleep. Good night. Sleep well.”
Michelle closed her eyes and immediately produced a deep snore that echoed through the room.
“So you can induce a sleep command, but you can do nothing for the snore?”
“I do what I can. Come, my love, we have twenty hours.” Steffan walked to the door and held out his hand.
Chapter Nineteen
They walked hand in hand down the hallway, leaving behind Michelle to rest peacefully.
With every step, their gaze deepened on one another. Their awareness heightened on the profound passage on which they were about to embark. The intensity of the moment engulfed Anya. The rhythm of her heart intensified, filling her chest with a vibrating sensation, as if the reverberation of a marching band bass drum had just crossed her path.
Steffan pulled Anya close into his chest and let the rhythm and inflection of his breath calm her.
They stood in the middle of the catwalk, hovering at the top of the grand staircase. Steffan rested his gaze at the wall of glass that flanked the great room below, cradling Anya in his embrace. The falling rain obscured the sharpness of the sparkling lights of the city. The golden illumination blurred, as if in a sensual and romantic dreamscape.
“I love you, Anya,” Steffan whispered. “I’ve waited more than a mortal man’s eternity to find you. What you are about to give to me…” Steffan paused to catch his breath. “…is the most selfless act imaginable. I will spend the rest of our eternity showing you my gratefulness for your love and your devotion in every conceivable way.”
