by Amy Richie
The downpour didn’t last long, just long enough to get everything soaking wet. My spirits were already low and now they were even lower. As soon as the rain stopped I went outside and sat on the front porch to wait for Nickolas.
I sat there waiting while the sun climbed higher into the sky. Often times the sun wasn’t visible through the clouds and I was chased inside by the rain several more times. But mostly I just sat, growing more anxious as time passed.
It was far into the afternoon when the clouds finally cleared. The sun, free of its dark guardian, shone down brilliantly. I couldn’t enjoy it though, Nickolas had not returned. I guess I knew that he wouldn’t but that had not stopped me from hoping.
He had told me within the hour, that time had long gone by. I cradled my head in my lap. I didn’t cry though, I hadn’t cried since he left. I felt a sharp pang of loss, but I wasn’t really surprised that he had left me here. I couldn’t blame him. Maybe he had someone else, a girlfriend — perhaps. I wanted to discard the notion, but it was certainly a possibility.
My head was still buried in my lap when I heard his voice. “Eva? Eva, where are you?” I heard him call.
I got up off the porch so fast that I tripped on the long dress. I landed on my hands and knees with a grunt. “Oph!”
“Hey,” I looked up and met his warm brown eyes, “What are you doing on the ground?” He smiled gently.
“I was…I was waiting…for you.” I choked out.
“Have you been on the ground long then?” He winked.
I smiled widely and let him help me to my feet. He held my hand in his and kissed my fingertips. “I…fell.”
He chuckled. “Clearly.” He glanced down at the palm of my hand which had a small cut in the center. “Does it hurt badly?”
“No.” I couldn’t stop staring at his face. He came back! My heart rejoiced. Without giving him time to react I flung my arms around his neck and pressed my body close to his. I couldn’t seem to get close enough to him. “You came back,” I whispered. Tears streamed down my face.
I heard him sigh before he pushed me away enough to talk to me. He kept a hold of my hands. “Of course I came back. I told you I would. Did you not trust me?”
“Yes, but it has been so much longer than an hour.” My bottom lip began to quiver. I was just so relieved to see him.
He pulled me back close to him and let me keep my head against his chest. “I am sorry that I ran late my dear, I realize now the error of my ways. I knew you were well and safe but you did not know if I was. I should have come back and told you. Will you forgive me?”
I laughed softly through my tears. “I suppose I could try.”
“I am sorry I made you worry.”
“What took you so long? Were the rivers bad?”
He was silent for so long that I thought he must have decided not to answer. “There was a wolf attack nearby,” he said at last.
“A what?” I pushed myself out of his embrace. “Are you hurt?” I began inspecting him, but he stopped my hands.
“Eva, of course I am ok. Do you remember that older couple I was telling you about?”
“Yes,” I nodded.
“They were attacked last night. Both of them were killed.”
My face blanched white with shock. Nickolas was out last night. What if he had run into the wolf? What if…?
“I just can’t understand it,” Nickolas’s voice cut into my frantic thoughts.
“The attack?” I asked stupidly.
“Yes. The wolves have been here for years. Never before has there been such an unprovoked attack. This was an elderly couple with no children. What could have been the reason for killing them?”
I stared at him blankly. I hoped he wouldn’t expect an answer from me. Men that turned to wolves? If it was real, then why wouldn’t they kill just to kill? Why else would they kill? Why had they attacked me and my angel? That is, if that was what had happened.
“Why don’t you go inside,” Nickolas said suddenly. I looked up at him to see if he was angry. It didn’t appear so.
“Are you coming?”
“I’ll be there in a moment. I have to tend to the horse first.” I nodded and started towards the house.
Chapter Thirteen
What in the world was he doing? I watched him through the small window as the sun was setting in the sky. He looked magnificent, like something from a dream. He ran his hands magically over the flanks of his horse. The last rays of the sun washed over his tanned skin. It was as if I were mesmerized, I couldn’t look away.
“Hmm,” I sighed lightly.
Then he turned my way. I gasped and dropped to all fours, below the window. I was so embarrassed that he had caught me staring. I stayed crouched on the floor, wondering if he was still looking.
Just when I had gathered enough courage to peek out the window I heard the door open. “Oh.” I crawled as fast as I could across the room.
“Please don’t let him see me, please don’t let him see me,” I silently pleaded.
“Eva?” I cringed. “Eva?”
“Yeah?” I tried to sound innocent.
“Why are you crawling around on the floor?” I peeked under my arm and saw his feet by the doorway. I grimaced. In a swift motion he was on the floor next to me; worried that I might be hurt. “Are you ok? Are you hurt?”
“What? Of course not.” I brushed his hands away. “I…um…I lost something.” Yeah, that was it.
“What are you looking for?”
“Um...uh...” What was I looking for? I couldn’t tell him the truth. “I was looking…for my contact.” I pretended to search for it.
“And what’s a contact?” He looked confused, but amusement twinkled in his eyes.
“It’s a,” I looked at him in irritation. “It’s a…it’s a contact!” I shrugged as if it was completely obvious. A contact? I knew that word but what did it mean?
He suddenly laughed. “Ok.” He scooped me up off the floor as if I weighed nothing and started towards the bed. My heart hammered loudly. “I think you need to rest.” I hoped my disappointment didn’t show. He placed me carefully in the middle of the bed and pulled a blanket over my legs. “You can find your contact later.” He tapped his finger against my nose.
“What were you doing out there anyway?”
His expression turned dark. “My horse,” he nodded towards the window, “I think he was bitten.”
“Bitten? By an animal you mean?”
“A werewolf.”
“Here?” I started to sit up.
“No, not here.”
I settled back against the pillow. “Then where? How?”
“This morning when I went out to check the river. I dismounted so I could get closer. I didn’t see or hear a wolf but,” he shrugged, “the bite marks along his flank look a little suspicious.”
“Will he become a werewolf?”
I was surprised when he laughed loudly but his expression changed when he realized I was serious. “No, Eva. You— or a horse,” he chuckled, “cannot become a werewolf by being bitten.”
“Then how? I mean I thought a bite from a werewolf meant…”
“No. Werewolves are bred.”
“Bred?”
He sat down on the bed beside me. “An adult werewolf,” he began patiently, “chooses a human mate. They choose a woman based on strength and size, then they kidnap her from her home. After the woman becomes pregnant he will hide her away with the other packs’ mates.”
“How many are there in a pack?”
“Seven to ten.” He stretched out beside me on the bed, getting comfortable for the rest of the story. Of course my heart reacted badly. “After sixteen weeks the woman will give birth. Always male.”
“Never female?”
“Never. As long as I’ve been around I have never heard of a female being born.” He looked at me briefly and then continued. “Now, for the first five years the offspring are predominantly human. The adult males do not hav
e any part of their young’s first five years. They watch and guard from a safe distance. These years are the most vulnerable for the pack. Since the offspring are mostly human at that point it would be very easy to kill them all off. And the adults only have time to breed and teach one offspring.”
“Only one? Why?”
“Well, from year five to year seven they go through a major growth spurt. The werewolf gene takes over. At this stage, the offspring join their fathers. Once the offspring join, the pack will split up into smaller groups and teach the young.”
“They are full grown by year thirteen. Then the young join back together to form a new pack. The older males that are left fade out — often times returning to their own mothers to die. They only live up to thirty years.”
“As soon as they are full grown, at year thirteen, they begin looking for a mate. Once their mate is pregnant they take her back to their mother’s to live. Then the cycle begins again.”
“Wait. Once they are pregnant? What do they do with them until then?”
“They travel with them, so that they are easily accessible.”
He said it so nonchalantly that it took me a minute to realize what he was talking about. “Oh.” I was embarrassed even if he wasn’t. “And how do they know, you know, when to take them to the village?”
“A pregnant woman smells different to them.”
“And how do you know all this?” I demanded.
“A werewolf was captured several years ago. Before we killed him we saw into his mind. Every thought he had. We just asked the right questions.”
We? I would let that slide for right now. “And how long did it take?”
“To read his mind?”
“No!”
“Um,” he grinned, “usually within three months of maturity the whole pack has offspring on the way.”
“And they go live with their mothers?”
“The bond between a wolf and his mother was unexpected.” I looked at him curiously. “It is very strong. They want their mother to help raise their young.”
“What happens to the mothers after their son dies?”
“There is a village here called Lelun. All the former wolf mothers live there. The pack supplies both villages.”
“Do they ever have more than one offspring?”
“When the pack’s numbers are down the dominant male will take several mates.”
“So pretty much their entire life is about having a child and raising it to take over the pack?”
“You shouldn’t say child,” he said quietly.
“Why not?”
“Do not think of them as human.”
“They are half human.”
“No,” he said firmly.
“Why do you hate them?” Had he been attacked? Or had someone he cared about been killed by a wolf?
“They are vile creatures. Evil.” He said it with such vehemence and hatred.
Something tugged at the edge of my memory. ‘Vile.’ ‘Evil.’ “What about vampires?” I blurted out.
He crinkled his nose at me. “What about them?”
“Are they real too?”
He was silent for so long that I almost forgot I’d asked him anything. “Something is different about you, Eva,” he finally said.
“What do you mean?” I tried to laugh him off.
“You’re not like other people here.”
“Yes, I am, I just don’t remember everything clearly yet.” I took a deep breath and held it in.
“No, it’s something else. I don’t know what it is. It’s almost as if you’re not from around here at all. Like you don’t belong.” I already knew I didn’t belong. “You remember some things,” he continued, “like chicken and fires and contacts,” he grinned, “but you had no idea what a horse was. And now you are asking me if vampires are real.”
“You don’t have to answer that.”
“Hmmm.” He patted my arm affectionately. “We’ll figure it out.” I only hoped that I would figure it out first. “Vampires are indeed real.” He raised one eyebrow dramatically my way, making me laugh. “They have lived in this area for the past six years.”
“They have?”
“Yes they have. The lady Neleh.”
“She’s a vampire?”
“The colony is in fact the Lady and her warriors and whoever decides to follow them. They go wherever she decides they need to go. The Lady is a self-proclaimed protector of human life. Wherever humans are in too much danger — she and her band of vampires goes to save them.”
“You don’t approve?”
He laughed shortly. “It just seems so…fake.”
“Fake?” Why was I repeating everything he said?
“They should just mind their own business. They don’t need to interfere.”
“So you don’t like Neleh but you will join her because you hate werewolves more?”
“Yep.”
“How can you join her anyways?” He waited with a smile as the pieces clicked together. “Are you a vampire?”
He laughed outright then, showing all his dazzling teeth. “Indeed I am.” He winked at my stunned expression.
“Oh.”
“So maybe,” he said twirling a strand of my hair in his fingers, “maybe the wolves wanted you as a mate.”
“Me?” I was shocked.
“You are ideal. Young, strong, beautiful.”
“And female,” I teased.
“Yes. And female. If your sister or anyone else stood between them and what they wanted.” He looked pointedly at me.
“Meaning me?”
“Yes, you. They would have killed anyone in their way.” I couldn’t say anything to that.
***
I lay awake for a long time after he left thinking of all he had told me. Nickolas being a vampire didn’t scare me or surprise me as much as it should have. Did the wolves really want to take me as a mate? No, my mind rejected that idea almost immediately.
There was a reason that I was here, it was no coincidence. And I knew I wasn’t from here. I had come here for a purpose. I thought of the angel in my dream, but pushed the thought away. She had said to kill someone, but I was no killer. Then why had I come here? In the middle of a werewolf/vampire battle. Why?
The answers must lie with the vampires — not the wolves. With a sudden certainty I knew that I had been raised with vampires my whole life. I was one of them! But no, I wasn’t a vampire. Nickolas would have known, and besides, human food sustained me. But I had lived with vampires, I was sure of it.
I closed my eyes and concentrated hard to remember something — anything. I gasped out loud when a face came to mind. The picture was so clear. It was a man with pale brown hair. His dark brown eyes were kind, but sad. He didn’t smile. He just looked at me with those sad eyes. He felt sorry for me. Why?
“Eva, are you ok?” Nickolas called from the doorway.
My eyes snapped open. “I’m fine,” I answered automatically. It made sense now that he could hear every noise I made. Irritation flooded my veins. Even if he could hear, why did he have to listen?
“Are you sure you’re ok?”
“Yes,” I snapped. “I’m just trying to sleep. Isn’t that what you ordered me to do?”
“Ordered?”
I heard the disbelief in his voice. I groaned inwardly. “I’m sorry. It’s just…” He didn’t say anything or move away from the doorway. “I saw someone, just now,” I admitted.
“In here?” He was at my side in an instant, crouching over me.
“No, not in here,” I pulled on his shirt, “in my head, like a memory.”
“You were remembering someone?” I nodded. He sank down next to me. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know. You interrupted me,” I playfully accused.
“Oh.” We both laughed at his sheepish expression. We both stared at each other for a long time after the laughter died away. “Will you tell me what he looks like? Maybe I can recognize him,” Nickolas
said softly.
“How can you be so sure it is a he?”
“Because of the guilty way you are looking at me.” His lips turned up in a sad smile.
I tried to laugh but it turned into a sigh. “So what now?” I couldn’t hide my desperation.
“Now? Now I will leave you alone so you can dream about your mystery man.”
“Nickolas.”
“Eva, I know you…” he seemed to be trying to choose his words carefully, “I know you care for me. But the truth is, you don’t know what your situation might be.”
“Meaning?” I crossed my arms across my chest.
“You might be married,” he pointed out.
“Ha!” I shoved his leg. “I’m not married.”
“How do you know?”
“I think I would remember.” He raised one eyebrow. “And you can look at me as proper as you want Mr. Nickolas Gant but I know the truth. You care for me too.” I sat back and glared at him, daring him to deny it.
“Even if that were true,” he said elusively, “it doesn’t matter.”
“And why not?”
“Because you and I come from two different worlds, Eva.” I opened my mouth to protest but he stopped me with two fingers against my mouth. “Has it truly escaped your attention that I am a vampire?”
“So?”
He twisted his expression into something I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or a grimace. “Eva, I am a,” he swallowed hard, “a monster. A murderer.”
I narrowed my eyes. Must have been a smile. “Humph…you’re no more a monster than I am.”
“You know, Eva,” he said leaning close to my face, “in all my life — and I’ve lived a very long time — I have never met anyone else like you. Male or female.”
I smiled. “Wait, that’s a good thing right?”
“Yes.” He laughed at the return of my smile. He was so close I could feel his breath against my face. My heart reacted, of course. He regarded me curiously for a moment and then stood up. “You sleep, Eva; I’ll be keeping guard tonight, so no worries.” I still couldn’t breathe properly enough to answer him. “Goodnight sweet Eva.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead lightly. I nearly hyperventilated.
