Aftermath

by Jenna-Lynne Duncan

  Luke nodded. “Won’t she say something when she wakes up?” I studied his expression, wondering if he meant we should just get “rid” of her. The thought of him still being so cold and calculating sent me reeling back.

  Rachel shook her head. “She won’t remember anything that happened after the demon took possession of her body, which, I am guessing, happened right before the parade. These types of spirits can only last a few hours inside a human before they have to feed on it and find a new host.” She spoke so informatively and coolly. I had known for a while that she knew more than she let on. I just didn’t know how much. And I never would have guessed she would be one of them.

  I swallowed at the picture Rachel had painted in my head. Essentially, Marie had saved Stephanie.

  “Thank you, Marie.” I turned toward her to find her looking ill.

  “Take Marie home, first. She needs to rest,” Rachel added to Luke’s duties.

  Marie and I nodded at each other as we walked away with Luke, who was carrying a still-limp Stephanie.

  I sadly watched them walk away. I felt horrible that people were getting hurt because of me. Hadn’t I caused enough trouble with Hayden and Luke? Now Rachel, Stephanie and Marie were involved.

  I felt a strong hand rest on the small of my back and turned to Hayden with a sigh, “Hayden.” I burrowed my face in his chest as he held me. The scent of him made it feel like I was home again.

  “I know,” he said, reading my thoughts.

  I pulled back from him. ”Where were you? I tried calling and leaving messages. You worried me so much.”

  “That was my fault.” Rachel came towards us; her demeanor had seemed to change since this whole incident. She was no longer the meek, kind teacher I knew. She was stronger, more intimidating, and more informal. “Hayden was tracking me, and I must say, I gave him a run for his money.”

  I shook my head, not understanding. “Why? What are you?” I remembered that she hadn’t been in class today and we'd had a substitute. Hayden was also missing during that time, so the facts checked out.

  She tilted her head with a warm smile, a smile that did not suggest she'd just helped kill a demon. A smile that was almost…

  “I’m your mother.”

  …motherly.

  Chapter Twenty One

  My eyes wouldn’t stop blinking. I looked at Hayden for confirmation. He nodded triumphantly with a hesitant smile. Hayden knew about my mother—or lack thereof. He was the only person to whom I'd admitted trying to find her. He knew how I felt about her and my lingering questions. Yet he still looked at me, waiting to gauge my reaction.

  My mother?

  He'd found my mother?

  I had a mother?

  Then, the biggest realization came to me. Rachel was my mother. I had known Rachel for almost two years. She was my teacher, she was my friend. We'd talked and emailed each other. I shared things with her that I couldn’t with Nikki or Marie. And she was my mother!

  “You’re my mother?” The words came out with disbelief and thinly concealed wrath.

  “Adriana…” She used my full name to scold me. Like a mother would. Had she expected me to be happy? To welcome her with open arms?

  Yes, of course there was a part of me that was excited, that couldn’t wait to pick up things where we'd left off. To make up for time lost. But that was a naïve, childish fantasy. The fact was, she had known me for two years and had never said anything. She had listened as I complained about the situation with my father. And my father! He had to have known she was my teacher, and he didn’t say anything?

  I gripped the sides of my head with my hands. “Oh my gosh.”

  “Ana,” Hayden wrapped his arms around me, but I pulled away.

  I looked at him apologetically. It wasn’t his fault. He was trying only to find out what I was, how could he have known it would lead to this? “Hayden, please just bring me home.”

  “Adriana, I know you must have a lot of questions.” Rachel held up her arms to stop us.

  “Heck yeah, I do!”

  “I will explain everything in time.”

  I snorted. Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy. No one could ever just tell you everything! Everyone had to be so dang cryptic! My chest heaved with rising anger. “Hayden, please.”

  He nodded and led me out of the warehouse. I heard Rachel click her tongue as if she was about to say something else but she didn’t.

  When we were in the luxurious confines of Hayden’s familiar black sports car, he started to speak. “Ana, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was doing.”

  “It’s okay. You couldn’t have known.”

  “When I first saw you again tonight, there was this look on your face. It was one of relief but with something else.”

  I let out a puff of breath. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

  “Adriana… you can’t be serious.”

  “I don’t know what was going through my head.” I lacked any emotion to my words. I was drained of everything: surprise, anger, fear, love.

  “Since the dive accident, I had been trailing the being that had come after you, when I noticed other beings were there as well. One of those was another of my kind. That’s when I started tracking your mother. I lost track of time and I never imagined that you would take my absence like this. I assumed you trusted me.”

  “I do.”

  He turned my chin to face him, and his gaze raked my body hungrily before pressing a punishing kiss to my lips. He pulled away just an inch, his beautiful bruised lips opened to speak. “Ana,” he whispered, “I’m trying to trust you, too.” I pulled his head back down to me to finish our kiss. We both suddenly got lost in each other. His kiss grew more demanding, and we were panting and gripping each other like we couldn’t get enough. My hands dug into his shoulders as I tried to urge him closer. He pulled back again, looking at me with dark eyes and lowered lashes. "I can’t share you, Ana. I can’t.” His lips brushed softly against mine. “I won’t.”

  I didn’t reply, too drunk on a kiss to form a coherent thought.

  He pulled back into the driver’s seat as a sobering thought occurred to him. “I know, I’m not being fair. I shouldn’t be bringing this up right now. Not with everything going on. I will take you home so you can rest. I’m sure you have a lot to think about.”

  I pressed the tips of my finger to my swollen lips. “I love you, Hayden.” I didn’t want him to feel guilty, thinking I was in a vulnerable state. I had wanted him just as much as he had wanted me.

  He nodded and drove away and we sat in comfortable silence for a while, each in our own thoughts.

  “What is she?” I asked suddenly.

  He paused, looking at me. He knew what ‘she’ I was referring to: my mother. He was watching me, preparing to gauge my expression again. “She’s one of us. A Hunter.”

  I exhaled a shaky breath. “She’s a hunter.” I wasn’t asking for confirmation, somehow I just knew. My mother was a Hunter. My dad was definitely human so that would make me, what, half-blooded? “So I’m half-Hunter?” Did that even exist? Did I have supernatural abilities, then? That wouldn’t explain the dreams. Even Hunters didn’t have those.

  “Ana…”

  “Oh, that’s right. I won’t get any answers from you about the supernatural. Gosh—“ I turned to look out the window. “Just don’t,” I cut him off as he tried to make excuses.

  “I don’t know everything. If I did, I would tell you. I didn’t get much out of your mother until we were called to the warehouse because of the demon.”

  “Wow.” I shook my head, feeling dangerously close to a nervous breakdown. I looked at the clock on Hayden’s car. It was just after four in the morning. I was exhausted and had less than twelve hours to get ready for the ball. The masquerade ball, I can’t believe I was thinking about it at a time like this. “My classmate was possessed, my best friend’s a voodoun, and I don’t know which is worse, that my mother is actually my history teacher or t
hat she is a Hunter.”

  Hayden pulled over and put the car in park. “Come here.” His voice was soothing, welcoming and promised comfort. I turned into him, sobbing quietly into his leather jacket.

  “Hayden?”

  “Yes?” He unstuck hair glued to my face from tears.

  “Why would a demon want me dead? Do demons and ghosts,” I was thinking about the ghost of Delphine Lalaurie who had tried to kill me earlier, “usually go after Hunters?”

  I looked up at him and his expression turned stony. His beautiful emerald eyes had hardened. “It’s always the other way around.”

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Somewhere on the drive home, I had fallen asleep. I stretched my arms out on either side of me, fighting the fog from sleep. I tried to kick off the tangle of covers that had entwined around my body when I noticed the familiar dark bedspread. I was in Hayden’s room. I smiled at the fact that he'd brought me to his own bed instead of mine. It was such a protective move that I couldn’t stop it from pulling at my heart strings.

  I looked over at the clock and shot out of bed at the time. I had been sleeping most of the day! I gave Hayden’s room one last smile and then slipped out into the hallway. I heard voices downstairs but I first ran into my bathroom. I could only imagine what an all-nighter, demons, and crying did to Nikki’s make-up job.

  After I washed up and thoroughly brushed my teeth, I headed back to Hayden’s room to get a shirt from his closet. After donning one of Hayden’s oversized — and very comfortable — shirts, I took a deep breath and headed downstairs.

  Even before I got to the bottom, I knew what I’d find: Hayden, Luke, my mother, and Hayden’s parents all sitting, waiting for me, in the living room. My heart beat rapidly, and I hated how everyone knew it.

  “Adriana,” Rachel was the first one to greet me.

  “It’s Ana…”

  “That’s not what I named you.”

  I snorted and was about to retort when I saw the faces of everyone else in the room. They had fallen silent, which was unusual, especially for Luke. And they all held the same grim expression. “What?” I asked Hayden. He just looked behind me at Rachel.

  “We need to talk. I know you must have so much you want answered.”

  My jaw slackened at her words. We need to talk. That sounded like a command and I, for one, didn’t like to bossed around. I know you must have so much you want answered. It was so assumptive, so egotistical. She was the one who had left me, so, yeah, I wanted answers. Hell, I deserved answers. “Let’s just get this straight right now: my curiosity for what I am is the only thing that’s keeping me here right now. Otherwise, I wouldn't give you one minute of my time.”

  “You’re angry.”

  Obviously!

  I didn’t reply but must have rolled my eyes or scoffed my answer because she took a pleading step towards me. “Adriana, please. I didn’t have a choice. I did what I did to protect you.”

  “Protect me? You have no idea how tired I am of everyone trying to protect me. In case you haven’t noticed, I have been just fine for the past seventeen, almost eighteen, years!”

  She looked down with a swallow. “If I had stayed, I would have lost you again.”

  “Again? What do you mean again?”

  She deflected my question. “You are almost eighteen, now. And that’s when we would have been reunited. Obviously, under present circumstances,” she looked at the Boudreauxes “that time had to come earlier. I am sorry you had to find out this way. It’s not how I thought it would happen, believe me.”

  I shook my head, too confused to make sense of anything she said.

  “But I do suppose Hayden and Luke served their purposes; you got to be introduced to Hunters and see what it’s like first-hand,” she added.

  A knot twisted in my gut at the way she talked about them in past tense. I cocked my head at her. “So I’m half-Hunter.”

  She laughed like what I said was humorous. It wasn’t funny in the least! “No, you are completely, 100% a full-blooded Hunter.”

  “My father is a Hunter, too?” How did I not know that? “And why didn’t he say anything to me about you? Y’all have to have seen each other on multiple occasions, and he never even batted an eye.”

  “Your father didn’t recognize me, because he’s not your father.”

  I heard a gasp from Elizabeth and sound from Hayden, even. It was becoming clear that they were just finding out this information as it was being revealed to me. I felt the air leave my lungs and then everything started to become dizzy. My skin tingled, especially the tips of my fingers, and I started seeing spots. That’s when I remembered to breathe. I felt Hayden behind me, keeping me upright like he always did.

  “I’m sorry, Adriana,” Rachel was even more pleading and even more sincere.

  “How?” I managed to choke out.

  “Your real father was a great man, he loved you very much.”

  There she went again, deflecting and speaking in past tense. Why would she tell me my real father loved me very much? Yes, my dad wasn’t perfect, but he did love me. All my childhood memories flashed before my eyes and I let out a whimper as the tears came. What made me cry harder, was when I realized that it explained why he had alienated me for his new family. Maybe he just realized what he had been missing when he had a child from his own blood? It could explain why we were so distant these days. I gripped my chest. It hurt so badly there, I thought the pain would overcome me, that I would just burst into a million pieces. That my heart would just stop beating from the pain. But it didn’t. And I was still there, in a room, with the mother I had wondered about my whole life, who just shattered my old life to pieces.

  I had basically been living a lie. I was a lie. I was not my father’s daughter. I touched my hair, as if a thought occurred to me. My father had a head full of straight, dark hair. My new mother, a mousy brown which she now wore down in a more stylish manner. She had also had ditched her glasses, which, of course, being a Hunter, she never needed in the first place. Hayden tightened his arms around me.

  “All right, let’s give her a break,” Hayden spoke resentfully from behind me. How was I even able to continue standing upright? Why hadn’t I just had a nervous breakdown and completely lost it yet?

  Rachel straightened her stance in defiance, and her chin titled up in an aristocratic manner. She looked at me, “Adriana, just think, you can get on with your real life this much sooner.”

  I came out of my reverie. “This is my life.”

  She shook her head, patronizing me. “No, it’s not. This is the life I created for you. So you would be safe until your eighteenth birthday.”

  “I meant my life now, here with the Boudreauxes.” I looked at Elizabeth, Christopher, even Luke. “They are my family now. Even my “fake” father is, despite what you say. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready for the dance.”

  I numbly looked away from her.

  “Adriana, you can come home now. You don’t need to worry about packing anything. I have everything you need on our plantation.”

  Plantation? Our plantation? A plantation was a mansion. Was she serious? I looked at her and her expectant eyes confirmed that she was merely waiting for me to go with her.

  “You can’t just come into my life and expect me to change everything!”

  “Adriana…” she said in that familiar, scolding tone only a mother could use.

  “I’m staying here,” I warned her.

  “You are just going to throw me out of your life?”

  I looked at her with a narrow gaze, wanting to say something to hurt her they way she had hurt me. But I couldn’t. “No, I really hope that we can have a relationship, but right now I have a lot of things I just can’t move past. And it’s not helping that you keep ignoring my questions. You won’t tell me what you're protecting me from, why my father took me in if he wasn’t really my father…”

  “I will explain everything, I promise. Right now I just w
ant to take you home where we can discuss this in private.” Her eyes darted briefly to Hayden, as I was still in his arms.

  “This is her home, too. I love Ana.” I looked behind me at Hayden whose expression was stormy.

  “I love her, too. And to hell if I’m going to let someone else try to take her from me, even if you are her mother, which I’m pretty damn suspicious of right about now. Pretty convenient, you just show up after people make two attempts on her life and try to whisk her away.”

  Luke. All of a sudden, no one was quiet. Even Christopher stood up protectively.

  Rachel clapped her hands together with a laugh. “Oh, boys. Of course you love her, she is your queen. But unfortunately for you, this queen already has a king.”

  I rolled my eyes. Why was everyone bringing that up? Why was everyone making a big deal about the school dance and being queen?

  I looked at Hayden questionably. His head was hung, his expression pained. “Hayden?”

  Then I knew Rachel wasn’t referring to the school dance.

  “Christopher? Elizabeth?” I looked at Hayden’s parents. They knew, too. And it became obvious by their faces that this wasn’t a good piece of information.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Luke was the only one who seemed to be as clueless as I was.

  Hayden backed away from me now until we were no longer touching. “How did I not know this?” He was talking to Rachel.

  “You didn’t know what she was because I did my job and made sure she remained well-hidden until the time came when all of her traits would return to her.”

  “Her eighteenth birthday.”

  “Right, but for some reason her relationship with other Hunters, i.e. the two of you,” Rachel pointed to Luke and Hayden spitefully, “caused some of those traits to surface sooner, like the dreams.”

  “How do her psychic dreams have anything to do with being a Hunter?” Luke questioned.

  Rachel gave a look to Christopher and Elizabeth. “Have you not taught your boys anything?” I kind of resented her for saying that. Elizabeth was a great mother. “While Hunters are only called during or after a supernatural creature upsets the balance, only members of the royal family are able to predict such a thing before the crime is actually committed. Thus preventing travesties before they’re too late.”