The Vampire s Secret

by Raven Hart

  She pulled her hand from my touch and rubbed the spot I’d kissed as though it would bruise. “Protect me from what?” Then, before I could answer, she added, “You’re leaving?”

  “Yes. You’ll be safe here.” From everyone but me. If I stayed I’d be buffeted by Eleanor’s and Melaphia’s pain; I had to get clear, to shut all the doors of emotion and concentrate on survival. There was no time to comfort or to love. No reason to punish those around me, like Deylaud, with my raging despair.

  Eleanor pushed to her feet. “Are you going to her?”

  I thought of watching Diana in her bath and desire must’ve flared in my eyes or simmered from my mind to Eleanor’s because she drew in a swift breath. “No, not to her.” I opened my mind and presented her a brief vision of Hugo with his hands on Diana, accompanied by the blast of pain coiled inside me.

  Eleanor gasped and brought a hand up to cover her heart.

  “Not to her,” I said again, and walked away.

  Iban looked better than he had a right to, considering that he’d been literally rotting away mere hours before. Melaphia’s blood truly had worked magic. I had a difficult time finding any true elation since the giving of that magic had caused her such harm, but Iban seemed truly grateful and inquired about his savior almost immediately on seeing me.

  Sitting up and dressed in fresh clothes provided by Tilly, he seemed nearly his old self. His face still bore the occasional lump that moved under his skin but there were no open wounds, no egregious smells. “I owe her everything,” he said of Melaphia. “And you as well, my lady,” he said to Tilly.

  Tilly blushed like a schoolgirl, then collected herself. “Our lovely city may have lost a good bit of its civility in the last sixty years, but I wouldn’t hear of any visitor as charming as yourself being treated so abominably.”

  “Your servant, madame,” Iban said with a nod.

  As Gerard loaded his medical supplies into my Mercedes, Iban and I said our good-byes to Tilly. “I’ve come to relieve you of nursing duty,” I informed her. “You look done in.” I didn’t want to add Tilly’s name as one more person injured by their association with me.

  “To tell the truth, you’re right. This growing old business leaves a lot to be desired.” She patted my arm, most likely remembering a time when she’d had a choice about her fate. She sighed in satisfaction. “But it was nice being needed again. For a brief time it felt like the old days. It’s been too long a time since you and I were embroiled in life and death shenanigans.”

  “Yes, it has. And I hope to leave you well out of any further emergencies. But I thank you for your care in this one.”

  I moved to help Iban.

  “I can manage,” he said, once he was on his feet.

  We drove in silence, Iban in the front, Gerard in the backseat, until I turned onto the road to Isle of Hope. “Where are we headed?” Iban asked. He’d been to my home in town enough times to know the way.

  “To the house on Isle of Hope. We can spend the day there with Lucius.”

  “I sent Tobey and Travis back across country to track down the true source of the virus,” Gerard added.

  “Good,” Iban replied. “The better I feel, the angrier I become about this attack.”

  I used the rest of the drive to explain what had happened since Iban had fallen ill, beginning with Hugo, Diana, and Will. For my own reasons, I didn’t tell them about Will being my mortal son. I spent most of my time discussing Hugo. When we were settled in the living room of my house overlooking the Skidaway River, I was forced to fill in the last and most grievous news.

  “I have more bad news,” I warned.

  Iban gave me a surprised glance.

  “Sullivan is dead.”

  Gerard reacted before Iban. “What?”

  Turning to stare straight ahead out the front window, Iban said, “He had the virus, too.” A statement, not a question.

  “No—I mean, perhaps. But that’s not what killed him. He was murdered.”

  This time Iban reacted, his voice deadly. “By whom?”

  “By one of the newcomers—Will. I thought Sullivan would be safe at Jack’s shop. Now I regret my faith in Jack.” I didn’t mention my miscalculation in leaving Will there. I’d simply been obsessed with getting to the shells, and spying on Diana. Reaching for my own personal happiness had once again bloodied my nose, and in this case cost us a stalwart friend in Sullivan. How would I feel if it had been Melaphia or Renee?

  “I should have been there to protect him,” Iban said, meaning Sullivan. Then he looked at me. “Or you should have. Have you retaliated against this newcomer?”

  “That’s what we must discuss tonight, in the time we have left before dawn. There are no tunnels from this house or the plantation, where Will, Hugo, and Diana are. None of us will be able to move until sunset. By that time we must be ready.”

  The planning part of our meeting did not go as well as I’d hoped.

  “I think it’s time to choose a new leader,” Lucius said immediately. “Before William gets us all killed.”

  I didn’t make a sound, but I was sure the other three vampires in the room could feel my displeasure.

  “I mean, look what happened. We’re assured these new vamps are being controlled by a hostage. And what does the hostage do? He kills one of ours. What kind of plan was that?”

  “At the least, an ineffective one,” Iban said, looking at me with anger in his eyes for the first time in our acquaintance.

  “You’re blinded by your feelings for the past—your mortal wife,” Lucius said. “I understand, but—”

  “It will be the end of us,” Iban added, finishing Lucius’s thought.

  Why did everyone feel free to delve into my past? Then again, what did it matter? It’s not as if I had any defense to offer. I had been blinded by the need to ride the shells into a peek of Diana’s life with Hugo. I had stolen the ring from Will, then left him at Jack’s shop basically on his own recognizance. Fool. Fool. Three times a fool. When I didn’t answer quickly enough for Iban’s liking, he pushed to his feet, growing more agitated by the second. He’d been shocked to hear of Sullivan’s death, but now he was filling with good old-fashioned fury.

  I rose to my feet as well in response to the implied threat.

  “Sullivan was mine to protect,” Iban said. “Now he’s dead along with the rest of my clan. I say we tear this Hugo and everyone with him into pieces too small to resurrect.”

  I raised a placating hand. “Iban—”

  “Don’t talk to me of restraint! I no longer care for your version of peace.” Unable to contain his anger, he picked up the heavy mahogany coffee table and threw it across the room. As it crashed against the wall and sent shards of wood and plaster tumbling across the carpet, Gerard and Lucius jumped to their feet.

  “Please, Iban. I’m sorry about Sullivan—” He hit me square in the chest, his momentum pushing me backward. I didn’t want to fight him and did my best to hold him away. Suddenly Lucius grasped him from behind. Though Iban was only at three-quarter strength because of his illness, it took both of us to pin him against the wall and hold him still.

  “Fighting among ourselves won’t solve anything, old friend,” Lucius hissed into Iban’s ear. “Rather let’s pay a visit to their people left on the boat.” He pinned me with his angry gaze. “We’ll do better than kill them; we’ll use them as our tools.”

  All the fight seemed to go out of Iban. There were tears in his eyes. “I have no one now.” He stared at me and vowed, “The one who did this will not live.”

  Jack

  “Dammit!” William had blocked me. Well, just be that way. He could ride herd on his own whelp from now on, until I got the chance to kill that sonofabitch Will. I wasn’t taking the fall for what happened to Sullivan. And I didn’t want to have to face Iban until I’d sent that evil redheaded bloodsucker to hell where he belonged.

  Surely William would break the news to Iban—that is, if Iban still lived. I
felt guiltily glad that I wouldn’t have to do it.

  I hated to face Connie again, after the news I’d just given her. But there was no help for it. “We don’t know if humans can catch the virus or not,” I said. “Sullivan could’ve been exposed by Iban or another clan member, and since we aren’t sure how it’s passed, there’s a chance he might have exposed you.” I left unsaid what I didn’t want to think about: the more intimate contact Sullivan and Connie had, the more likely Connie might have been infected.

  Connie was as brave in the face of this news as she’d been facing down a vampire coming at her throat, but I could tell by the set of her brows that she was worried. Who wouldn’t be? “I see,” she finally said. “How will I know if I have it?”

  I thought about Iban’s face and shuddered. “Believe me. You’ll know.”

  “You’re scaring me. Do you have it?”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  “How will I know when I’m in the clear?”

  “We have somebody looking into it. He’s a very smart scientist and a member of our…community.”

  “Another vampire?”

  “Yeah. I have a lot of confidence in him. He can get to the bottom of this if anybody can. Since you’re on vacation this week anyway, why don’t you just lay low in your apartment?”

  “So I won’t spread it to anybody else, you mean,” she said, and blanched. She might not have been afraid for herself, but I could tell she was afraid for people she might have come in contact with since she met Sullivan.

  “Yeah. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything from Gerard. In the meantime, I guess we can at least be grateful that Sullivan didn’t show any signs of being sick before he was killed.”

  Connie propped her elbows on the table and clasped her head in her hands. “I feel like my head’s about to explode with all I’ve seen and everything you’ve told me tonight. I still have so many questions.”

  “And I’ll give you all the answers I can. I promise. But it has to wait for another night. The sun’s almost up.”

  “So you have to go to sleep,” she said. “In a coffin.”

  I nodded without saying anything about the coffin. I could tell by her guarded expression that for my sake she was trying to tamp down her revulsion. At least she was polite. “I’ll be sleeping on the couch in the office with the door locked since I don’t have time to get home before sunup. Light can’t get in there.”

  “Before I go, I have to know one more thing.”

  I took a deep breath, knowing exactly what she would ask, but not knowing what I should tell her.

  “What happened between us that night, Jack? What happened when we tried to make love?”

  “I don’t know. If I did, I’d tell you. Honest.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  So much for vampires being good liars.

  I licked my lips, which had gone completely dry. “I think it has to do with what I am…and what you are.”

  “What do you mean, what I am? Do you mean a human being and a vampire can’t make love? What about William and that friend of his—Eleanor?” she said.

  Eleanor—still another story for another night. “That’s not it. A human and a vampire can get it on. Usually.”

  “So why didn’t it work for us?”

  Her eyes searched mine. Any more attempts on my part to hide the truth were unthinkable.

  “You know how Melaphia thinks you’re special.”

  “Yes. She seems to think I’m a—a psychic or something, I don’t know. I can’t relate to all that voodoo stuff.”

  “She thinks you’re somehow more than human.”

  “More than human? What’s that supposed to mean? What am I, Jack?”

  “If I understand her right, she says you have certain…powers, or gifts, I guess you could call them.”

  Connie looked at me like she wanted to throw a vampire-size butterfly net over my head and haul me to the state mental hospital in Milledgeville. “Uh-huh?” she prompted.

  “And she also thinks whatever you are, well, it doesn’t mix with vampires. Kind of like oil and water.”

  Connie cast her gaze about the room, thinking back to what had happened. “There was some sort of a reaction, wasn’t there? It was almost chemical or electrical or something. Remember?”

  Hell yes, I remembered. I almost went up in flames because of the contact I’d had with her. If it hadn’t been for Melaphia’s healing voodoo charm I might have vaporized.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

  “So does Melaphia know what I am?”

  “Not exactly. She’s trying to figure it out.” That much was true. As far as I knew, Mel had not closed the book on her investigation. I figured there was no use in telling Connie that Mel’s working theory was that she might be a Mayan goddess. I mean, what did you do with information like that anyway? Traipse down to Belize to find your roots? Enroll in a Learning Annex “Get in Touch with Your Inner Goddess” course? Melaphia would be a lot better at explaining it than I would, so I decided to let it slide. “In any case, she doesn’t think you’re a hundred percent…well…human.”

  “Not human! Not human?” Disgusted, Connie got up from the table and stalked away to retrieve her purse.

  I hurried after her, realizing I’d stumbled across the line, the line between what she could handle and what she couldn’t, at least for one night. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I know you’ve been hit with a lot of stuff tonight. Stuff that’s hard to get used to.”

  Connie bit off a hysterical laugh. “That’s the understatement of the century. And you ought to know about not being human, right, Jack?”

  “Try not to let it upset you.” I started to tell her some of the nicest people I knew weren’t human—like Huey, for instance—but I had a feeling that claim might add insult to injury.

  “You tell me I’m some inhuman creature and I’m not supposed to be upset?” Connie slung the straps of her bag over one shoulder, pulled her coat close around her, and started toward the door. After a few steps, she turned around and pointed at me. “Why should I even believe you? You’re not human yourself.”

  “Because I care about you. If you don’t believe anything else I’ve told you tonight, believe that. Please.”

  She was shaking now, at the very end of her endurance. I wanted to hug her to my chest until she stopped trembling, but I knew that would be the wrong thing to do.

  She stared at me for what seemed like minutes, as if she was trying to reconcile what she’d learned about me tonight with her feelings about me—whatever they were. Then, finally, she said, “None of this is real. You’re…not…real.”

  Connie turned and walked out, leaving me and my unreal and undead self staring after her. Wondering if I would ever see her again and if I did, whether it would be at the business end of a wooden stake.

  Fourteen

  William

  The ringing of the telephone interrupted our meeting. Another modern invention I was sure caused more irritation than good.

  “What did you do to him?”

  Diana’s savage voice sent a shock of surprise through me, not only because she’d managed to find me at Isle of Hope through questioning my household, but also because I was convinced that she’d be at my throat if we’d been physically facing each other. I wasn’t in the mood for her anger. I had enough of my own.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Will,” she hissed. “Our son. I trusted you—”

  “Don’t speak to me of trust. Will has killed one of ours. I have a perfect right to do what I wish with him. Where is he?” I had no intention of revealing that I’d seen him return to the plantation with my invisible eyes. The shells would remain my secret. I told myself I’d brought them along when I left Houghton Square as a precaution. Yet I’m not really sure.

  “He’s here—” Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat to recover. “He’s injured. I’m not sure how. He can’t remembe
r. He’s weak and disoriented. I’ve never seen him like this.” She regained her anger. “What happened to him last night?”

  What happened, indeed? He’d killed Sullivan. Sullivan had come from California and had been the last remaining living human companion of the California clan. Could it be possible? Could Will have contracted the plague?

  I dredged up my coldest tone, both for my own protection and the benefit of my audience. “Perhaps you should be more concerned about the damage he’s done. I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Stay put, all of you, or face open war.” I hung up before she could reply.

  “What is this new emergency?” Lucius asked.

  “Our hostage seems to have sickened,” I said, keeping my face perfectly blank.

  “The one who killed Sullivan?” Iban asked, then continued without requiring an answer. “Let him rot.”

  A potent threat since Iban had so recently been doing that very thing. I faced him. “Unfortunately, I can’t.”

  Warily, Lucius took the bait. “And why not?”

  Without looking directly at Iban I admitted the truth. “Because he’s my son, my mortal son whom I lost in my making.”

  There was a deafening silence in answer to my pronouncement, then Iban jumped to his feet. “And what of my friend, one who was like a son to me? The last of my clan?” His hands fisted, he crossed the room in my direction. “Where is his justice?”

  Before I could answer, Gerard and Lucius had flanked Iban, each taking an arm to keep him from attacking me.

  “Come now, Iban,” Lucius said, in a voice one might use to calm a suicidal jumper balanced on the edge of a roof. “You’re not yourself. Don’t make William separate your newly healed head from your shoulders. It would hurt like the devil and ruin this lovely rug.”

  Iban’s expression crumpled into tired despair. He was one more being I’d disappointed in the last few tumultuous days, but I could not allow Will to rot without any effort to save him. I also could not divide the loyalties of my allies over my personal problems.

  I faced Lucius. “You’re right about my objectivity. So, with you two as my witnesses—” I gestured toward Iban and Gerard. “—I hand over the leadership of the New World vampires to you. Save as many as you can.” I turned to Gerard. “As a friend, I ask you to come and see to my son. None of them will harm you as long as I live.”