by S. J. Wright
Sarah pulled back the pearly satin curtain across the window and sat on the edge of her unmade bed. Her mind felt clogged with dark matter that couldn’t be rinsed away by rain or sunshine. She wanted to laugh at herself and the situation she was immersed in. Unfortunately, there was nothing really amusing about depression.
It was the first time in her life that Sarah had felt truly alone.
Nothing seemed to be right at all. The sun shining outside didn’t seem normal. The rain could have gone on and on and Sarah wouldn’t have cared. That made more sense. Nothing bright belonged there with her in that dark place where her soul felt small and wasted. Nothing hopeful could stay with the quiet storm of blackness penetrating every nerve of her body and the words he had whispered still stinging her ears.
She moved silently through the dark cabin, seeing nothing, doing nothing—and trying not to feel anything at all. There was a bottle of vodka over the kitchen sink. She refused to think back to the moment in which it was first placed in her hands. When she felt the glass bottle against her fingers, she gave an involuntary little shiver.
This was a treacherous path she was traveling. Despite her desire not to think about the days that had come before, she remembered the diary. Her grandfather’s journal, in which he had documented his descent into madness and alcoholism. Sarah didn’t want to recognize the familiar thread of events. Her grandfather was from a different time; a place removed from the reality that she’d faced with brash insolence and angry outbursts. Surely it wasn’t the same thing that was happening to her.
Still, the bottle felt right gripped between her fingers. Would it really take the pain away? Would her loneliness recede, fold back upon itself like a pretty paper fan when the vodka began to sing through her blood?
She got a short drinking glass from the cabinet and twisted the lid off the bottle. She watched her wrist turn the bottle, awkwardly pouring the clear liquid into the glass until it was half full. Only the dim light above the stovetop illuminated her hands, the bottle and the glass. It looked ordinary. Harmless.
Then she made a mistake. She looked at the curtains that hung over the kitchen sink. The memories pushed insistently through the numbness, drawing a short gasp from her. She shook it off, fighting it, wrestling with the emotions that caused her vision to blur and her throat to ache.
She drank.
“You should have told me, Teddy. I thought you wanted me to be totally prepared for this meeting.”
Sam had heard the violent edge in Michael’s voice before. She was sitting in the passenger seat of Teddy’s SUV with the door open, half listening to the conversation. The rest of her thoughts were focused on the strange things that had happened in the warehouse.
Outside the parked vehicle, Teddy and Michael were in the middle of an argument. They had pulled over under a bridge on Staten Island after having left the council meeting.
“I’m sorry, Michael. I didn’t think you would take it seriously unless you could witness for yourself how the elders view this problem.”
She crossed her arms.
“And I needed to know if you could handle unexpected obstacles.”
“That’s not how you evaluate someone’s ability to adapt!”
He had been pacing back and forth across the cracked concrete, shooting dark looks at the elder woman who had recruited him for this new position. “You and I should have discussed the Marrok issue before I left Indiana. If it’s not just a legend, then every vampire in the world is in danger right now.”
She nodded grimly.
“Yes. We are all in danger.”
“Did you know that Edinna planned to bring that shifter to the meeting?”
“No. I thought the tiger was a pet that Dumas had brought for his own protection, given that he was the only human there.”
His fingers curled into fists, frustration nearly boiling over.
“Does it occur to you that Edinna may have brought a spy into our very midst? We know that Luna is a shifter and she’s one of Marrok’s descendants. How can we trust her?”
Sam listened, but her mind was fixed on the tiger. Luna, the shifter, had spoken to Sam without words. Even after Edinna had left the warehouse, Luna was able to maintain the telepathic link, whispering impossibly inside Sam’s head. What did it mean? She had tried to alert Michael to what was happening with the tiger, but he was consumed with frustration over Marrok and trying to calm the elders, who were terribly frightened of the strange silver artifact lying on the table. So Michael still didn’t know about the telepathy.
“Teddy?”
“Yes, Sam?”
“Can shifters talk to each other in their heads? Without actually speaking?”
Michael turned slowly and gave Sam a carefully veiled look of inquiry.
“Sam, why are you asking that?”
The little girl hesitated. She wondered if she was right in saying anything about Luna. The things the tiger had told her were startling.
You need to remember that you and your sister are part of us. Why do you suppose Theodora took such an interest in you both? She knows exactly what you are.
The words had flown into Sam’s head like a series of bitter wind gusts.
Sam hadn’t wanted to believe such a thing. She also wondered if Anne had known all along about Marrok and their connection to that dangerous legacy.
“Sam?”
It was Teddy prodding her, standing there in front of her and looking down at her in something resembling a threatening stance. Her eyes were blazing with suspicion and warning.
Michael came to Sam and kneeled beside her, his face tense.
“Tell me, Sam.”
Her eyes went from Michael and back to Teddy in anxious confusion.
“I don’t think Teddy wants me to tell you.”
With a low growl, he rose to his feet and nodded towards the SUV.
“Get back into the car, Sam. We’ll talk about this later.”
She obeyed quickly, needing to escape the coming confrontation. It bothered her that Teddy wasn’t being completely honest with him, given the position of power he held. What other secret was the elderly vampire keeping?
Teddy’s head was high, her eyes gleaming with regal obstinacy.
“What are you hiding?” Michael said.
“I don’t know what you mean. It seems that Sam is confused.”
As always, her stoic elegance hid any trace of nervousness she might have been feeling. He didn’t believe her. His instincts had always served him well, and he knew that whatever had happened with the tiger was weighing on Sam. It was also quite clear that the elderly female vampire knew much more than she was willing to reveal.
“When you didn’t tell me upfront about Marrok’s curse, I lost some trust in you. Now you’re lying to me about the tiger.”
He stepped forward without caution, without a thought of preserving himself. “If any of your secrets bring harm to either of the girls, I will not hesitate to punish you for it, Teddy.”
With the same calm demeanor that she had shown thus far, Teddy raised one eyebrow and then turned away, walking back to the vehicle. Michael stared after her, seething. He swore that Teddy would feel his anger if the shifters were any kind of threat to the girls and she had kept that information from him. He had made the biggest sacrifice of his life when he had agreed to lead the council. If she was playing games with him, she would woefully regret it.
Before Michael climbed back into the vehicle, Teddy turned in her seat and spoke to Sam in a low menacing tone.
“Say nothing to him. Not yet. I don’t want him upset, Sam.”
The little girl just stared at Teddy. Did she really think that Michael wasn’t going to find out that she and her sister were shifters from the Marrok line? Sam didn’t want to believe it, of course. But, all the evidence seemed to point in that direction and Luna had been very convincing.
It wasn’t right to be keeping secrets from Michael. He was, for all practical purposes,
her father. She had no memory of her birth parents at all. Michael had done the best he could do, but when he was incarcerated, the girls had felt bereft. Teddy wasn’t much of a replacement. She couldn’t fill his shoes. Michael had taken them to vast, gorgeous landscapes that left them breathless. To Cairo, the Sudan, the jungles of Brazil, the white desolate plains of Antarctica. He encouraged them to explore these lands, test their powers of metamorphosis, and derive what joy they could from their surroundings. He took them to New York to see Broadway shows. The three of them travelled to New Orleans and toured the mosaic puzzle of graves that rose up out of the ground. They hiked into the Rockies, going so far above sea level that they were sometimes on level with the bright clouds that floated serenely by.
He had introduced them to the glory of the natural world, the arts and the idea of family. Then, when things got complicated with the council and enemies began conspiring against him, he decided that the girls would need to stay with Teddy for a little while until the situation was safe enough for them. Michael hated the idea of any rival taking action against the girls because of him. Teddy would keep them safe, if not completely happy.
Sam remembered vividly the night Teddy had told them about Michael’s transfer from New York to the Indiana detention zone. Neither of the girls could believe it. They had also never heard of a vampire being punished for creating another of its kind. All Teddy had revealed was that the human Michael had turned was supposed to be protected.
When Sam had finally met Alex, she recognized that there was something special about him. It wasn’t just his paranormal abilities, either. Even he couldn’t explain why the vampire council felt that he should be held above the usual standard for creating another of the undead. He only knew that being a vampire had brought out the worst in him.
Sam laid her blonde head back against the cool leather seat and looked out the window, observing the New York skyline morosely. She wanted to go back to the woods of Indiana, where things weren’t so complicated—where she felt safe and loved.
Chapter 8
The highway to hell was a long one. Victoria and Jones had been driving across Texas towards Arizona for eight hours and still had four to go before they reached the Arizona camp. Their unwilling passenger had to be bound and gagged, so flying wasn’t an option. Victoria looked in the rearview mirror to check on Jackson Bennett.
He looked quite different compared to the last time she’d seen him at Woodhaven Inn. His hair was cut much shorter than it had been before and there were dark circles under his eyes that she’d never before noticed. He hadn’t been taking very good care of himself. In fact, once they had him subdued, Jones pointed out needle marks on both of his arms.
“What a bloody waste,” Jones had said once they finally were able to get his unconscious body into Victoria’s black Cadillac sedan. The tall redheaded vampire shook his head and had settled back into the passenger seat.
“The lad will be useless, Vic. He needs to dry the hell out before we take him to that camp.”
“I disagree,” she replied as she started the car and pulled out of the motel parking lot. The sun was just rising in the eastern sky over San Antonio, coloring everything with a pink haze. She maneuvered the car onto a highway on-ramp heading west.
“Maybe seeing the place where his father died will sober up the inelegant Mr. Bennett. If not, then we’ve lost nothing. What matters is getting that Middle Eastern rogue under control. You still know a little Arabic?”
“Aye, but not much. I’m not sure I’ll be much help to ye, love.”
She turned a warm smile his way.
“Thank you for coming. I’m sure you hated leaving Michigan.”
“That old place? Who needs a big house on a lake when I can be traveling through the desert with you, dearie?”
She chuckled with him and playfully smacked at the large hand that had crossed the center console to rest on her thigh.
“Not now, Aiden!”
She rolled her eyes back towards Jackson who was glaring at them both in turn with malignant hatred shining in his dark eyes.
Jones grunted in dissatisfaction and glanced back at their passenger. He didn’t like Bennett any more than she did, but the capabilities he had could not be duplicated in any human being. Sarah and Katie were the only ones left besides Jackson who could claim the title of Warden. As Wardens, they had the power to keep the rogues trapped within the half-mile perimeter in the Arizona camp or the now vacant farm in Indiana. The Warden in Arizona was not in any danger himself unless he crossed over the circle line, indicated by a series of dusty black rocks that were placed about four feet apart in one of the driest places on earth. They imagined that was how Jackson’s father had died. The details about his death were still unknown.
With eight hours of driving done, Victoria asked Jones to take over. She needed a bag of blood from the cooler in the trunk and felt it would be a good time to give their passenger a drink of water. She pulled into the entrance of an abandoned roadside gas station about five minutes off the highway.
Jones got out and met her behind the car.
“So what’s your plan once we get to the camp?”
“I’m waiting on instructions from Michael.”
She was trying to get the trunk of the car open and having some trouble with the key fob.
“There’s only one way this is going to end, love.”
“What are you saying?”
His bright blue eyes rolled upward.
“Come now, Vic. We’ve got a blood-crazy rogue who doesn’t speak English, three rogue American vampires who will probably never be released back into the public and one bloody junkie who likes to kill vampires.”
“It’s not very promising, is it?” she said.
“No. But, I agree that Michael has to make the call on this one. The rogues will all have to die and he knows that.”
Victoria finally got the trunk open and took two bags of blood and a bottle of water out of the cooler. She handed one of the chilled blood bags to Jones and shut the trunk.
“He’ll make the right call.”
She kissed his cheek before heading to the passenger side of the car. When she touched the handle to open the rear passenger side door, her mind went blank and she felt the familiar sensation of chills racing up and down her neck. It was the prelude to hearing another’s thoughts.
Victoria’s greatest talent was reading minds, but sometimes the voices came with no invitation, like now. She preferred to have a choice in such matters. When they came uninvited, as they were doing there at the abandoned gas station, it tended to feel like an invasion.
“Just a little bump…” she heard. It was Jackson.
“Just one. That’s all. Just enough to get me through this trip… Has to be some H around somewhere…”
Victoria sighed, pushing his internal voice away as she opened the door.
Jackson stared at her as she twisted open the bottle of water and pulled the tape off his mouth. His hands were tied behind him. She held the bottle of water out for him and he drank deeply. When he’d had his fill, he turned and wiped his mouth on his shoulder.
“How are you feeling?”
“How the fuck do you think I’m feeling?”
Victoria put the cap back on the bottle.
“Probably desperate. Definitely sick. Undoubtedly bitter. Am I close?”
He took a shallow breath and leaned his forehead against the seat in front of him. He was sweating and the unpleasant aroma of perspiration wafted from the backseat. Ignoring the stench, Victoria slid into the backseat beside him.
“You’re taking me to that place in Arizona,” he said. “Why?”
She observed him without malice.
“We need your help.”
“What makes you think I have any interest in helping anyone? All I want is to be left alone and forget that vampires even exist.”
She heard the hopelessness in his voice and could feel the negative energy radiating
from him.
“What if I were to tell you that Sarah and Michael broke up?”
His red-rimmed hungry eyes searched her smooth face for any evidence that she might be lying. When he found nothing but honest inquiry in her gaze, he sighed and fell back against the seat.
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Nothing right now. Not as long as you’re throwing your life away. You could get clean, Jackson. Jones and I might be able to help you.”
That drew a bitter laugh from him.
“You two are in Michael’s inner circle. It’s no secret that the guy doesn’t like me. Why would he allow you to help me?”
“Because he would do anything for Sarah. She’s hurting right now and she’s lonely. He can’t help her. Maybe you can.”
“What is the point of me going to Arizona then?”
She smiled gently, her hazel eyes gleaming in the growing darkness.
“You need to mend some fences if Michael is ever going to trust you. And yes, you will need to earn that trust if you want to turn your life around. You don’t have any money for a decent treatment center. We can help with that.”
Jones leaned down and nodded.
“She’s right, lad. This is a chance to make things right. If you can prove to Michael that you can be trusted again, he may be willing to give you a permanent job.”
“As a Warden?”
“Perhaps,” Victoria said. “But right now you’re far from suitable.”
“Dry yourself out, Jackson. Get better and then we’ll see how the land lies,” Jones said.
The young man eyed them with disbelief for a few moments, then sank further back against the seat and closed his eyes.
“Let’s go. And take these fucking ropes off me.”
Victoria turned to Jones with a victorious smile and then released the bonds of their captive.
Michael was determined to get the truth out of Sam. A few nights after the council meeting, as he was tucking her into bed at the apartment in Manhattan, he decided to bring up the issue of the tiger.
