The Vampire's Warden

by S. J. Wright

  A cloud of rage slid over Michael’s features, “He was probably sent to kill you.”

  “Or you. If you can catch Luanna without killing her in the process, we might be able to get some information out of her. If they were sent here to kill me, they had several chances and didn’t take them. I think they were after you.”

  “Either way, the Council’s responsible for this.”

  “Yes.”

  He crossed his powerful arms, “And can you trust the doctor? If he’s working with the Council?”

  I bit my lip, and the pain helped me focus, “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “Come out here.” He insisted quietly.

  “No. I’m going to bed. We’ll talk again tomorrow night.” Without casting him another glance, I shut the door and locked it. I leaned against the door and wrapped my arms around myself, trying to hold in the maelstrom of emotions flying through me.

  I had forgotten to ask him about Victoria’s calling him a prince. I was not sure I even wanted to know. I grabbed my crutches, hopped to the front door, checked that it was locked, and did the same to the back door before heading very slowly up the stairs. Katie’s door was closed and the light was out. I hesitated beside it, wanting to see how she was doing. However, I truly was exhausted.

  Going into my own room, I leaned the crutches against the wall and tugged off my hoodie, leaving the short-sleeved t-shirt on. I closed the door as quietly as I could and turned to my bed.

  “Hello, Sarah.”

  My breath caught painfully in my chest and I wheezed with strain, trying to catch my breath upon seeing the person sitting so calmly on my bed. And I had thought the night could not possibly get any worse. Shows how wrong I was.

  “Mom?”

  Special Bonus Excerpt:

  THE VAMPIRE’S CURSE

  Chapter One

  October 5, 2010

  This is my first entry in the journal that has changed my life. I am not the first to write in it, but I very well may be the last. My name is Sarah Brightman. I am 23 years old and I have spent my whole life in a little town in Brown County, Indiana. My family (what is left of it) owns 22 acres outside of town. Most of the land is forest-covered hills, gorgeous and thick with white oak, beech, and dogwood trees. We have a large farmhouse that has been converted into a 5-bedroom Inn. We have a large family cabin and two smaller cabins on the property as well.

  We also have nine vampires. Yeah, I know. It sounds crazy. However, it is true and still blows my mind when I think about it. So many things have happened since I discovered the vampire curse that has been holding my family captive for generations. Bad things.

  I grew up believing that my mother had died in a car accident when I was just a little girl. I found out a few weeks ago that was a lie. Sort of. She really was dead, but not from a car accident. If it had only been that, then I would not be feeling like such a complete reject. Worse than that, I feel like everything I had always believed about myself was a fabrication. In addition, it may sound horrible for me to say that I wish she had died that way, but I do. I would rather know that she was truly dead rather than what she is now.

  My Mom is a vampire. It was her choice. She had not loved her family enough to stay with us. She wanted out so badly that she chose to be a vampire. When I found out the truth, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with her. Unfortunately, she thought she still had some say about what happened to my sister and me.

  Using a pair of crutches borrowed from our doctor, I hopped to the front door, checked that it was locked, and did the same to the back door before heading very slowly up the stairs. My right ankle had been sprained earlier that night. I guess I was lucky that I had gotten away with just a sprain, considering that there had been one hell of a battle and one of my friends, Alex, had nearly died. Technically, he was dead. Rather, undead.

  It had fallen on my shoulders to decide whether Alex should be turned into a vampire. He had sustained a horrific injury when a rogue vampire had attacked him. With his blood pooling beneath him in a crimson circle, I sent my friend back into a world that he had hated. And I hated myself for sending him there.

  I paused in the hallway by my sister’s room. Katie’s door was closed and the light was out. I hesitated beside it, wanting to see how she was doing. Raising my hand in preparation to knock gently on her door, I hesitated. She had been through a lot over the last few days. First, she had had to hear me tell the truth about our mother leaving us. Then she was kidnapped by a group of vampires who wanted to use her as bait to try to get me to release one of their kind that was in the containment field.

  That was another revelation that had shocked me to no end. As it turned out, my father and his father before him and five more generations of our family had been responsible for the vampires that were on our property. According to the journal that my grandfather had passed down to me, back in the early 1800’s, a Pawnee ancestor of my father’s conducted a tribal ceremony on our land that effectively sealed out supernatural creatures and could hold vampires within. Only the eldest sons of our direct family line had the power necessary to invite a vampire in or release one. It was intended to be a peaceful resting place where vampires could go and not be worried about being attacked while they enjoyed what they called “the long sleep.” However, when my father and mother failed to produce a son, the role fell to me. Hooray.

  I sighed and turned from Katie’s door. Disturbing her sleep would not be helpful. We could talk in the morning. My ankle was throbbing and I was completely exhausted after everything that had happened. All I wanted to do was climb into bed, throw the covers over myself, and sleep without interruption.

  I hobbled into my bedroom and closed the door as quietly as I could. Then I turned towards my bed.

  “Hello, Sarah.”

  My breath caught painfully in my chest and I wheezed with the strain when I saw the person sitting so calmly on my bed. And I had thought the night could not possibly get any worse. Shows how wrong I was.

  “Mom?”

  My heart fluttered like a trapped butterfly. Sitting before me on my own bed was a person I thought had died many years ago, looking like she had not aged a single minute in the sixteen years we had last seen her. She was dressed in a pair of stylish silk gauchos, three-inch glossy high heels, a gorgeous silk top the color of ripe peaches. Her matching earrings, flashing in the meager light coming in from hall, dangled nearly to her shoulders.

  There was a real difference in the set of her features that made her seem like something that did not belong here on earth. The perfection of her skin, the vibrant shine in her blue eyes and the glistening of her shapely pink mouth gave firm evidence that this was not the same person who had given birth to me. There was a spark in her gaze that was entirely inhuman, and it burned me.

  “What?” I stammered.

  She smiled, “It’s been a long time, sweetie.”

  Her voice was only subtly different and the memory of it squeezed my heart and made me feel like I could not draw a real breath of air. Only shallow little gulps of oxygen sustained me as I stared at her. That was when the edges of my vision began to go dark. Heavy warmth assailed my stomach and flowed upward into my chest. My pulse began racing madly. The last thing I saw before I blacked out was my mother’s face. I had one clear, concrete wish that I tried desperately to cling to as I fell into the darkness.

  I really, really hoped that she would not be there when I woke back up.

  “Sarah?” My sister, Katie, was hovering over me. I thought it was so pretty how the rays of sunlight played across the dark curls falling over her shoulders. Why did I have to end up inheriting my Dad’s mild wavy mouse-brown hair and she ended up with that? It was not fair. Katie had also ended up with the intelligence to take her to the top of her high school graduating class and get into Purdue University’s Veterinary Medicine program. However, given the ridiculously dramatic things happening in our home life, I doubted she would get a chance to finish school.
>
  I groaned and rolled my eyes, “Oh, Christ. Please tell me she wasn’t here. It was just a bad dream, right?”

  “Who?”

  I had ended up lying on the hard, polished wood of my bedroom floor. The sunlight from one window had fallen over me like a warm blanket, but my whole body was still stiff from lying on the floor all night. I gingerly propped myself up on my elbows and blinked.

  “What happened to you?” Katie asked, regarding me with a doubtful stare.

  “I think I fainted.” I reached out and gripped her hands violently, “You didn’t see anybody in the house last night, did you?”

  “No. Let me go.” She yanked her hands away, stood up and glared down at me. That look was like turning a page from the past. How many times had she flashed those dark eyes at me in irritated resentment? A hundred? A thousand?

  I slowly got to my feet and rubbed the back of my neck. It hurt like a bitch. I debated telling my sister about who I had seen the night before. I was supposed to be the strong one, and after all I had witnessed that night, seeing my mother had evidently pushed me past my emotional threshold. There was no way I was putting that on Katie.

  “Who did you see?” She asked, cocking her head to one side.

  “Nobody. I think I just had a bad dream after I passed out or something.” I shoved my hair out of my face and ground my teeth together. I just knew all this lying was going to end up biting me in the ass. She watched me for a few seconds, and I could see the questions flashing in her eyes.

  “You make any coffee?” I asked, trying to deflect her.

  She nodded, “I came in here to tell you it was ready.”

  “Thanks.”

  She hesitated in the doorway, her beautiful brown eyes somber, “We need to talk.”

  Using only one crutch, I managed to grab a clean pair of white cotton panties from my nightstand and my thick yellow robe from the hook inside my closet, “After my shower.” Stopping for a second beside her, I reached out with my free hand and squeezed her arm gently, “Try not to worry too much. We’ll get it worked out, Katie-bug.”

  She tore her gaze from me and turned her head indignantly, “Don’t call me that. I’m not a little kid, Sarah.”

  That hurt. I drew a little painful breath and watched as she walked away. What happened to the little sister who used to be my best friend? Was it only that she was growing up? Maybe the good memories she had had of home had begun to be tainted by all the crazy vampire stuff. It certainly made me want to run away sometimes. However, I did not want that to sever our bond and I needed to do something to make things better between us before it was too late.

  After my shower, I examined my ankle. It was bruised, but felt a little better than it had the previous night. I decided to try to get around with just the single crutch. I got dressed and made my way slowly downstairs to the kitchen. Katie was pouring coffee for me, and I noticed immediately the iron set of her shoulders and the flare of annoyance in her eyes. She handed the cup to me.

  “I can’t stay here.” She said. That was not surprising. She would become pretty good at running away lately.

  “What about your Jeep?”

  “I’ll need a ride to the gas station up at 135 and County Line. That’s where they…” Her voice cracked. Her eyes were darting around the room, vivid with fear, and she pressed her slender white fingers to her throat, “That’s where…” Then the dam broke.

  Shiny tears rolled from her eyes down her face and I folded her in my arms quickly. This was the kind of thing I had wanted to avoid. Luckily, her captors had not hurt her, but she was understandably traumatized after everything that had happened. She rested her head on my shoulder and I felt the wetness from her tears soaking through the fabric of my long-sleeved T-shirt. She sobbed quietly while I stroked the curls that draped down her back. There was a horribly warm ache in my chest as I tried to comfort her. I felt like I was partially responsible for her getting into all of this, and it chilled my blood to consider the possibility that she might have been killed.

  “We’re going to work it out.” I whispered, “None of this should have happened to you. You shouldn’t have ever been involved. I’m sorry, Katie.”

  She pulled away, tried to brush the tears from her face, and grabbed a tissue from the box of Kleenex sitting on the counter by the sink. I tried to think of anything I might do or say to make this whole thing less scary for her, but the words would not come. I was not about to lie and say that everything was going to be okay. The vampires were not going anywhere.

  With the sobs quieting and the tears slowly to a trickle, Katie’s face looked drained and pale as alabaster. She wiped her nose and set her gaze on my face.

  “What are we going to do, Sarah?”

  “Not we. Me. You’re going back to school.” I replied evenly.

  She rolled her eyes dramatically and dabbed at a few more tears, “How can I concentrate on classes when I know that all of this is going on here? Knowing how much danger you’re in? And what the hell are they doing here anyway?”

  “It’s a really long story. I’ve got a journal that Grandpa Brightman left for Dad.”

  Surprise flickered across her face, “That’s the journal that Fleming brought?”

  “Yes. And you can read it yourself. It explains a lot.”

  Her eyes narrowed, “Mom has something to do with all this, doesn’t she?”

  Hesitating, I poured the cream into my coffee and stirred it slowly, watching the colors mix as I tried to come up with some answer that would not send Katie into hysterics. I had no doubt that her reaction would be if I told her the truth.

  “Sarah?”

  I turned to her and spoke in a clipped tone, “I don’t want to talk about her. Yes, she has something to do with this, but the vampires were here before she married Dad. Let’s leave it at that. I seriously do not want to talk about her.”

  She was very quiet for a few minutes and then turned toward the door that led to the entryway, “So you’ll give me a ride?”

  “Yes. And you can take the journal with you.”

  Thirty minutes later, we were driving up towards Greenwood in silence. The sun had come out from behind some earlier clouds and I noticed for the first time that the leaves were beginning to change into the gorgeous yellow, crimson, and orange hues that signaled winter would soon be closing in. There was light traffic going north, but it seemed like the trip up there took forever with both of us being so unwilling to reveal what was going on in our heads. Only when we pulled up next to her Jeep at the gas station did she turn to me.

  “I’m going to be checking in a lot, Sarah.”

  I nodded, staring straight ahead, “That’s a good idea. I’ll keep my cell with me, no matter what I’m doing.”

  “Love you, sis.” With those words, she stepped out of my truck, got her bag from behind her seat, and shut the door.

  I waited until she had started the Jeep and pulled away before I hung my head and started crying. My Dad would have been ashamed to see me at that moment, broken and beat down, sobbing in the quiet confines of my truck. I was supposed to be strong all the time—a rock that everyone else could lean on. I missed him so much. Wanting to please him had meant everything to me not so long ago. However, an increasing sense of animosity had seeped into my head over the years as I saw my childhood friends grow up and move away from the town. I was expected to stay and continue at the Inn. And I had been doing just that, even though my soul raged against it. It was always Katie who was going to go off and do great things. Not me. I had a job already.

  No wonder I was so angry all the time, I thought suddenly. My head came up slowly as an odd sort of peace settled inside my gut. Maybe there was a way out of this. What if I could sell the Inn, the land and just move away and do my own thing? Hope, unfamiliar and sweet, swept through me. It was a lovely little gentle humming that moved through my veins very slowly, leaving me replenished and feeling a little stronger.

  If I could sell and
just get away, I might do anything. I could go to college. Maybe I could find a great guy, settle down somewhere, and have two and a half kids and a minivan. Shaking my head, I laughed a little at that thought and pulled away from the gas station. It was the idea of freedom that sparked my imagination. I did not really care what I ended up doing. I wanted to start my own life. Away from Woodhaven Inn. Away from Brown County. That last thought made me hesitate. Maybe not that far away. That little doubt stayed with me as I drove south.

  The rest of the way home, I tried not to think about any of it. I turned the volume up on the stereo, rolled the window down and sang along with John Mellencamp about Jack and Diane.

  Chapter Two

  When I pulled up by the front gate to open it, I saw Messenger. She was a gorgeous black Tennessee Walking horse and was one of only two horses that we kept on the property. After kicking down a gate the day before, she had been roaming the whole twenty-two acres at will because Alex and I had failed to catch her. I certainly was not about to try to mess with her while my ankle was still bothering me.

  She had been grazing along the edge of the driveway about a hundred feet from the gate. When I hopped out of the truck with my crutch, she raised her head and fixed her wide intelligent eyes on me. I shook my head at her, opened the gate, and half stumbled back to the truck. She must have sensed she had an opening, because she began prancing over with her long silky tail flowing along behind her. I left the driver’s door open and did not fasten my seatbelt, but drove right through, slammed it back into park and jumped out.