by Judy Teel
I'd seen a lot and done more since then and was fairly certain I wasn't going to puke. So I muscled past Cooper, crossed the main room and sprawled into the last overstuffed chair next to the sofa like I owned it. If the silent stares hadn't clued me in that today's little get together was going to be unpleasant, the lack of pie on the table did.
In her usual spot on the sofa, Mistress Raevinne folded her hands in her lap and gave me a hard look as Cooper and Mehk pulled up two more chairs, making our merry circle around the coffee table complete. From the chair across from me, Dr. Barrett leaned forward. "I commend you for keeping your secret," he said to me, his accent a little stronger than usual. "Well done."
Mistress Raevinne blasted him with a shot of her signature disapproval. "We shall see," she declared, lifting her nose in the air.
"While I agree that after our current difficulty is resolved it might be useful for her to learn more about her heritage," Dr. Barrett said, returning her frown with one of his own, "I do not condone dragging her off to face a coven tribunal like you want."
"Being properly assessed is hardly a tribunal," the older practitioner argued.
"That is a matter of opinion."
I cleared my throat. "I'm right here, you know."
"Another fact we're all painfully aware of," Rosalind said.
Cooper's cold gaze landed on her. "If she hadn't risked everything by shifting so that she could fight the Tor'nysoos, we wouldn't be alive to even argue the point."
"Were you aware, Aesei Siian, of what she was?" his new lieutenant countered. "And the danger she posed to this Clan as your mate?"
"None of this is moving us toward solving this crisis," Miller cut in. His gaze bore into mine. "But for the record, this was not the reveal I was expecting."
I made myself sit still under his scrutiny, a torture that reminded me of his grandmother and her ability to see through all levels of crap to the truth. The only one who seemed mild-mannered was Erika.
"There's only one way to stop the Tor'nysoos," Mehk said, the quiet note of command in his voice bringing everyone's focus to him.
I gripped the arms of my chair. "No. We just haven't thought of another one yet." Though it was true that I wasn't sure how I felt about Mehk's unexpected appearance in my life, somewhere along the way I'd realized that I wasn't ready to lose the chance to find out.
"If it works," Mehk continued, "it should suck the Suir aosar back into the Fourth World. The breach will seal and they'll be trapped."
The tension in the room rippled with a spike of excitement. "We agreed last night that it's a terrible plan," I protested.
"Tell us," Mistress Raevinne commanded him.
Mehk glanced at me, a fierce determination in his sapphire blue eyes. "If the Tor'nysoos is weakened, I can take it into the Fourth World to the village that was created there. Destroying the fountain and the spell it holds, will seal the monster in. It can never return."
"It's a bad plan," I said again.
"Sounds simple enough," Rosalind said.
"Except for that weakening the monster part," I cut in. "And then dimension hopping it into the village."
"What happens to you?" Cooper asked Mehk.
I scowled at Rosalind. "Also, let's not forget keeping the Tor in 4-D while the fountain gets busted up."
"Mehk," Cooper repeated, his tone equally commanding. "What of you?"
The Demon-Were met and held Cooper's gaze. "I'll be destroyed with the creature." Cooper's nostrils flared, but he said nothing.
"If this is so, why was it not done ten thousand years ago?" Mistress Raevinne huffed.
A self-depreciating smile touched Mehk's mouth. "We didn't think of it."
The practitioner blew out a sharp puff of air from between her pursed lips, clearly conveying her disgust over such incompetence.
"Why can't we repeat what they did then?" I turned to the practitioners. "You're strong. The barrier you created around the compound proves that. You could make a new trap."
"That kind of dimension weaving is beyond us," Erika said quietly. "It doesn't exist anymore."
"What did you mean by, 'dimension hopping'?" Miller asked, his scrutiny zeroing in on me.
"What? What's that you say?" his grandmother snapped. "Can the girl do this?"
Dr. Barrett and the practitioners passed a significant look between themselves that was as close to wordless conversation as any mortal could come. Miller turned back to me. "Can you?"
"I'm Demon-Were," Mehk interjected before I could answer. "A blending of races and a dash of ancient magic accomplishes what is needed."
"Cool magic tricks are the least of our worries." I reminded them. "We need other options."
Mehk's gaze softened. He studied me, as if trying to memorize every inch of my face. "Only when the fountain is destroyed and the village with it, will this world be safe."
His focus transferred to the others, meeting their gazes one by one. "We were made stronger, faster, and harder to kill for only one purpose. To protect you from this threat." He turned back to me. "Can we avoid our destiny?"
"I can't support a suicide mission," I growled.
"How do we destroy the fountain?" Cooper asked.
His words plummeted like a stone, sending ripples of silence out from it.
I stared at him, shocked. He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and stared at his clasped hands. "Thousands for one, Addie. We can't say no to that."
I surged to my feet, trembling with fury. "Then I'll carry the Tor'nysoos into the trap. And I'll find a way to escape the fate that you two so easily accept."
Mehk stood and walked toward me, his steps slow as if he carried a great burden. He stopped in front of me and cupped my face in his hands, startling me.
His gaze roamed over my hair and my face and then came back to my eyes as his own welled up with tears. "Only the blood of a direct descendant of the original Were and practitioner lines that first set the magic can unmake it."
"Then it can't be done. All of those blood lines have been diluted or have died out," Rosalind said.
Mehk stepped back and dropped his hands to his sides, pride and misery fighting for dominance in his expression. "No. As my daughter, Addison carries them both."
* * *
I sat at a corner table eating dinner, breakfast and an early lunch, take your pick. The mess hall was deserted, and told myself that it didn't bother me. The reaction of Bone Clan to my Were-Demon disclosure wasn't a surprise, and I had bigger problems to worry about.
After Mehk's public bombshell about my full heritage, he'd requested to speak with Mistress Raevinne alone. The combined adult super-stares of her and Dr. Barrett were enough to chase me out without a fight, topped off by Cooper avoiding looking at me as he and Rosalind stomped off for their own meeting. Based on the anger rolling off of him, I didn't think Rosalind was going to succeed in the dressing down she probably planned because of his relationship with me.
I wouldn't have minded the cheering up that witnessing their argument would have given me, but instead, I schlepped off to the kitchen to pile up a couple of plates with leftovers. True, I'd spent a lot of years going hungry, so I knew how to deal with it. And the number one rule was, don't, unless there isn't a choice.
Shoving another forkful of cold quiche into my mouth, I watched Mehk slip in through the front door. Since he couldn't miss me, being the only person in the room and all, he immediately strolled toward my table with that easy-going gait he had.
"May I?" he asked, gesturing toward my second plate, still overflowing with food.
"I can always get another." I focused on spearing a chunk of melon like it was the most important thing I had to do that day.
Mehk cut a piece off the gigantic meatball in the pile of spaghetti I'd pilfered. "There's a vampire in the compound," he said, after a moment.
"Is there?"
"You sound like your mother," he said, chuckling.
I abandoned the melon a
nd shoved a big forkful of baked apples into my mouth, glad to focus on the spicy warmth of the cinnamon instead of the guy who'd stirred up so many feelings in me. Usually, I had no problem deciding what I thought about someone. I didn't like that with him it was different.
Mehk ate quietly with the studied casualness of someone who needed a discussion to start, but had no clear way in. "He has the mark of the Bellmonte line," he said after a while.
I gave him a hard stare, my reflexive distrust rising to the surface. "What would you know about that?"
He scraped up the last of his pasta and slathered it on a bite of garlic toast. "They're an old family."
If Mehk had known them, that was probably the understatement of the millennium. "I'm guessing Bellmonte's from one of those original family lines that seem to be so important to you. Let me guess, our sworn enemies for all time?"
The bite of bread went into his mouth and he studied me as he chewed. "Occasionally."
"I sense some kind of fatherly warning coming."
He smiled, and the sadness in it cut straight to my heart before I could stop it. "A lifetime of knowledge in a single conversation?" He picked up my brownie from his plate and held it out to me. "All right. You're smart not to trust those with unfinished business."
I took the brownie and told the sadness to go to hell. "That doesn't take intelligence."
"And you love the Aesei Siian."
"Not ashamed of that." Breaking the large square in half, I held out one of the pieces.
"Someday you might have to choose," he said, taking it.
"No, I won't." I bit into the thick chocolatey wonder of Dr. Barrett's brownies. "Lord Bellmonte's head on a stake would make my day. If Danny was next to him, I'd have a party."
"All right. Last piece of advice." Mehk put his half of the brownie back on his plate. "Should the time ever come, don't be afraid to use them for your own purpose."
Should the time ever come, I'd take off Bellmonte's head myself. I finished my brownie and took back the other half. "Did Julia ever summon you after her sisters interfered?"
"No one could keep Julia where she didn't want to be." Heartache misted through Mehk's eyes. "We married at St. Paul's two weeks later."
Anger latched onto the desolation I'd fought so long to control, heating the space around my heart until it stung. "Where you abandoned me?"
"Sister Melody was the only person Julia trusted."
"And she was found floating in a lake the week after the date on my paperwork at the orphanage." One of many dead ends in the search for my parents. "After she was reported missing, the records office at the orphanage was broken into."
Mehk leaned back in his chair, his brows drawing down. "We took every precaution. The suppression spell Julia placed on you. The secrecy."
"But in the end, it was the orphanage's outdated policy of renaming abandoned babies that protected me." And made it impossible to find my family. I leaned forward, that hunger to know tightening my stomach. "Who was after us?"
"I..." He pulled in a deep breath, steadying his emotions. "We found a cabin in West Virginia, deep in the mountains. Your mother brought the garden back to life. The hunting was good. I delivered you there." Mehk stared at his plate.
"For a few weeks after you were born, we hoped... All I ever saw was a footprint, but that was enough. Julia concealed you in a bundle of old blankets and clothes and we escaped that night." He looked up. "We always thought it was her family that wanted you dead."
He held my gaze, regret seeping into his dark blue eyes. "We secretly made arrangements with Sister Melody and then split up. While I laid down a series of false trails, your mother doubled back. When she felt it was safe, she left you at the church."
I waited for a feeling of sympathy to soften through me, or a self-righteous rage that they hadn't fought harder, done more. My whole life I'd wanted to know why my parents hadn't kept me. And now that I did, I still didn't know what to think, what to feel.
I pushed away my plate. Hating my parents was all I'd ever known. It was clear and uncomplicated, the one thing that never changed. But now... "I spent my childhood planning how I was going to find my parents and make them pay for what they'd done. And hoping my mother would come to get me and take me somewhere safe."
I looked away, unable to face the tears tracking down his cheeks. "There are only a few people in my life that I care about," I said, my voice catching on the words. "I can't let one of them be you."
"Seeing Julia in you," he said, quietly, "it's more than I ever hoped to have. You're our daughter, Addison. You survived. It's enough."
Clenching my teeth, I made myself look at him. How many people in my life were glad just because I was alive, and not because of what I could do for them? Was Cooper? Falcon? Was I really so ready to throw away an opportunity that I'd searched and waited for my whole life because I wanted to pout over being abandoned?
I hadn't avoided facing reality since I was twelve. It was time to let go of a child's hurt feelings and create a new story for myself before it was too late.
I relaxed my jaw and swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. "What was she like?"
Mehk scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. "Spirited, like you," he said pulling a breath in on his words and then releasing it. "Smarter than any woman I'd ever known. Stubborn. If she had a problem to solve, she never gave up until she'd beaten it. She scared off a man three times her size once, by pretending to hex him after she caught him mistreating his dog."
"I get that," I said, some of my tension easing away.
"She was one of the most talented practitioners I've never seen," Mehk continued. "The guy had no way of knowing that she despised dark magic and would never have used it. He handed her the leash and took off running."
"I have a cat," I said, scraping up the last of the baked apples with my fork. "I named her Wizard."
His eyebrows arched upward. "She named the dog Merlin."
I stopped chewing, stunned. Comfort and loss tangled up in my chest and a person I could know suddenly came into focus in that deep, silent place inside me that had never been filled.
I had a mother. Not a child's fantasy pieced together before my world fell apart, when I still thought boys were gross and rock stars were hot. I...had a mother.
"How..." I swallowed, braced myself. "How did she die?"
"I never found out." He looked down at his hands. "I was at our rendezvous point for two days, when..." Lifting his head, his eyes met mine. "When her magic broke. Then I was trapped back in the village."
Nodding, I got up and collected our plates. I took them to the trashcan by the backdoor and scraped off the food, taking my time. I shouldn't feel the loss of someone I'd never known. But I did. All over again.
At the table, Mehk stared into space, his expression bleak, and I realized that he felt it too. We had more in common than I wanted to believe. Loving people did that to you.
As I dropped our plates into the bucket, the backdoor opened and Cooper was there, the afternoon light hitting his brindled hair in the way that made the threads of silver glisten like new dimes. My heart skipped a beat and I turned to go. His fingers brushing across my hand stopped me.
"The practitioners want to see you in my suite," he said, the timber of his voice skating over my skin and heightening my awareness of him until my soul ached.
"Has Rosalind ripped you a new one, yet?" I asked without turning around.
"No. I got there before her."
I held my breath, willing the hurt to stop, then pulled away from him. "I don't have regrets."
As I stepped out onto the porch that ran along the front of the dining hall, I paused, my gaze tracking up the tiers of the cliff and their massive columns to the top. I wondered if Cooper had smelled the lie on me.
* * *
As I approached Cooper's suite, Erika came out with a large basket over her arm. When she saw me, her eyes widened. She stuttered to a stop, and the guard that must ha
ve been waiting for her nearly ran into her.
For a minute, I thought that the curvy blonde was going to jump behind him and hide. Instead, she surprised me by lifting her chin and giving me a quick, shy smile. "We've finished the formula," she said, her voice clear and soothing like wind chimes in a light breeze. "We were even able to find enough whiskey."
"Is that why I've been summoned?" I asked, passing her and stopping in front of the elaborate Alpha door.
Her smooth brow dipped down. "Nana Rae wants another go at you, I'm afraid. But at least Luke is in there to help if it comes to blows."
With that, she traipsed off down the hall, her beefy, armed escort in tow. I watched her in amazement. Had Mistress Raevinne's quiet, unassuming granddaughter just teased me? Just what I needed. Another member of the Miller family with a dry sense of humor.
As Erika predicted, Miller and Mistress Raevinne were waiting for me inside the suite, the older practitioner's expression grave, even for her. As I settled down at the kitchen table with them, my gaze swept over the vials of the duplicated Were formula lined up neatly in a dozen rows, twenty vials deep.
"Plans have changed," Mistress Raevinne informed me imperiously.
"What we're proposing is completely experimental," Miller said, frowning at the vials.
"It always was. How is that a change?"
They exchanged a glance between them and I was beginning to think that practitioners were as secretive as vamps. Not a comforting thought.
"With the barrier up, there's no more danger to those that aren't infected," Mistress Raevinne said. "It is those that are sick that we must concern ourselves with."
"If Mehk is right, and the Suir aosar will be pulled back into the fourth dimension with the Tor'nysoos, then what they need is time. We think we can give them that."
I stared at the glittering amber liquid and the image of Travis screaming in agony flashed across my mind. "If you inoculate the sick, it could kill them."
"Dr. Barrett ran several experiments on blood samples," Miller said. "At full strength, your formula suppresses the Were DNA as it delivers a low dose of poison, causing the victim to lose consciousness. We've adjusted the amounts so that instead of suppressing the extra thread of DNA, the formula temporarily taints it. We think that will slow the feeding rate of the Suir aosar."
