by Am Hudson
I jumped up from Jase’s chest and ran at the speed of a vampire to Hans, scooping her out of his arms and cradling her more lovingly than I ever had before in her short little life. I thought the crying would stop then, but almost as if she were mad at me for letting her scream, it grew louder, more insistent.
“Shhh, little one.” I held her upright, gently rubbing her back. “It’s okay. All the bad guys are gone.” I hoped.
But something hit me with a sinking feeling then.
With a layer of hesitation slowing my movements, I turned my head and looked out the window, only opening my eyes at the last second. I didn’t want to see the Army of Black Widows battling on out there. I didn’t want to see the many piles of fleshless bones. So when I finally looked and saw men reaching down to grasp the hands of their brothers, drawing them up from within the sea of dead spiders, I jolted forward, crying with joy. It was over. It was all finally over.
All but one problem I needed to deal with.
My head practically spun on my shoulders as the demon within me rose to the surface. I felt weak and shaky and hungry, and that vampire had picked the wrong person to mess with. He pawed over Jason, lifting him up and cradling him in like a dying child in his arms, and it just made me feel sick—knowing what he’d done to him. Knowing how Jase would have begged him to stop. Knowing Jase would have cried and I wasn’t here to save him.
But Hans was powerful, I knew that much from what I’d heard. However, his power may have been subject to Safia’s command, or even her life, who knew? One fact remained: he would die for what he did to Jason, and it would have to be quick in case he fought me.
To the mortal eye, it might have looked as if I bent to scratch my leg. To a distracted sicko, it would seem as though I was moving to the fire to warm my baby after, but to Hans’ surprise, I appeared behind him with a firm grip around Drake’s dagger and wedged it clean into his neck, cutting through his spinal cord.
His legs faltered completely and he slumped onto the ground atop Safia’s headless body, squashing out the remaining blood with a very sickening moist sound.
A clock ticked somewhere in the room, drowning out the new and sudden silence.
A soft wind swept the field below, bringing the smell of blood mixed with the dryness of snow.
I breathed deeply for a moment, centring myself, and then knelt beside the bodies. Hans had fallen face first, his nose pushed sideways into the stone floor, his arms bent awkwardly up like chicken wings.
I leaned just a little bit closer and opened my mouth around his elbow. A part of me wanted so badly to suck the blood out of him as my fangs popped his flesh, but I couldn’t live with myself if I’d been nourished by the blood of the man that molested Jason. It would make me sick to my core. So I drew my fangs out of his flesh quickly and listened carefully to the sound of the venom changing it, pleased to hear he wasn’t immune.
“I hope I find your lost soul on the other side,” I said, standing up, feeling the golden warmth of the fire on the backs of my legs. “I’ll be sure to guide you straight to Hell.”
“Ara!” David’s desperate voice echoed up the stairs before I heard his footsteps.
“In here!” I screamed, my voice a little hoarse and perhaps more distressed than I intended.
He stopped himself in the doorway, his eyes darting around quickly to take it all in before he swept over and gathered me up in his strong, loving arms.
“Oh, my love.” He kissed my head, wrapping his hand around the baby’s, arching out a little to look down at her. “She’s bleeding!”
“It’s not her blood. It’s from my hands.” I rolled the soiled blanket back to show him her perfect little body, still warm and safe in the blue jump-suit. I could feel the firm ball of the crux still fastened to the chain around her ankle, too, and sighed with relief.
David sighed, too. “I was so scared she had hurt you.”
“We’re okay,” I promised. “But—” I nodded to Jason, still unconscious. And it occurred to me then that I couldn’t hear David’s heart beating.
“What happened?” He lowered his ear to Jason’s chest. “Why does he have a heartbeat? What did she do to him!”
“She linked you,” I said, eyes wide as the shock set in. “She injected him with venom, and I… I had to re-humanise him.”
“Linked us?” He rubbed his chest with one hand, looking down as a memory filled his head.
“Yes. And when the venom entered his system, you should have—”
“I fell,” he assured me, laughing. “And my first thought was that the burn felt like venom. But then it… just went away.”
We both moved our eyes across the table to Safia’s separated head, turning a slightly off-blue colour on the floor.
His whole face beamed into a bright grin. “Damn, Ara! You did that?”
“I know, right? I’m awesome.”
He grabbed my head with both hands and dropped a big kiss between them. “Good girl!”
“You can thank me later,” I said. “We need to get those bodies hidden—somewhere no one will ever find them.”
“Why?”
“Because she used magic to link herself to Drake and his immortality. Who knows if she can be resurrected if he is.”
David’s eyes followed mine, taking on a circular shape when he saw my father, decapitated on the floor. “Aw, Ara.” He vanished from my side, showing up in a squat beside Drake’s head.
“Don’t!” I marched over and pushed his hand away as he went to move it. “His life was connected to Safia’s—we can’t put him back together, David. Ever!”
His hands froze near Drake’s black hair. “You’re serious?”
I nodded, biting my lip again so I wouldn’t cry. He clearly hadn’t understood what I just said about Safia linking herself to Drake. “If he lives, there’s a chance she will, too.”
David stood up, rubbing his chest again, considering the head. “Isn’t it possible her magic died when she did? It would explain why the spiders just dropped to the ground out there.”
“Yes. But like I said, we can’t take any chances,” I said, the tightness of grief shaking my throat and filling it with a boulder. “Drake can never be resurrected.”
He turned quickly and sheltered my face in his chest. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too, but I don’t have time to be sorry.” I moved out from his arms. “We need to get Jason to a hospital—”
“Why?” He looked back at his brother, obviously realising that re-humanising did not often render a person unconscious. “Wait, why hasn’t he woken up?”
“She did something,” I said, “to his brain.”
David walked closer, inspecting his brother, his eyes scanning the body, the table, and then stopped on the iron poker.
“Will he recover, do you think?” I asked.
“I don’t th—” His words ended in an almost whimper as his gaze moved down to the pile of bodies on the floor. His head rolled slowly up then, his hands balled into fists, and he took a very long breath, letting it out with, “Hans.”
“Yes.”
“Why did she need to damage his brain if she had Hans here to subdue him?” he asked, keeping his back to me, his tone suggesting he already knew.
“She said he was hysterical after Hans—”
David collapsed forward onto his knees, his elbows landing on the table to support his head. He sobbed so violently I was shocked into paralysis. I didn’t know what to say—or do. I wasn’t sure if he knew what Hans was capable of or if maybe he collapsed that way because he was exhausted. “David?” I said cautiously.
“He’s human now.” His voice was muffled in his crossed arms. “He won’t recover.”
“You can’t be sure of that—”
“I can, Ara.” He looked up at me, his eyes crystallised with tears. “If he ever even talks or walks again, he won’t recover from what I know Hans did to him.”
“You don’t know what Hans did, David,
” I said, making like he was being silly, moving over to put my hand on his shoulder. “He—”
“No! I know, Ara.” He jerked away, standing up, as if he was the one molested. “Hans had his eye on my brother for seventy years! He was powerful, twisted, and just dumb enough to take advantage if he got the chance. I warned him.” He bent his head and covered it with his arms, his voice breaking. “I warned Jason to stay away from Hans. How could Safia have just… handed him over like this?”
“She said she wanted his…” I raided my mind for a more appropriate word, but there wasn’t one. “Semen—to use on our daughter in thirteen years.”
David’s whole upper body moved as he tried to catch his breath, but he just couldn’t compose himself. He covered his mouth and turned away, moving to the window as if he might find oxygen there.
“Maybe it’s good that he won’t recover—his brain. Maybe he won’t remember what happened here—”
“He won’t remember.” He cut the air with one hand, not looking at me. “I’m going to make sure of it.”
I walked over and gently touched his arm, snuggling against him when he didn’t shrink away. “It’ll be okay, David. It’s over now—all of it.”
He let out a shaky breath and wiped his wrist under his nose.
“I know you don’t feel that way right now, but it is over,” I confirmed, finally letting it all sink in. “Safia is dead. We have nothing to fear from her—ever again.”
He glanced back at Jason. “I know that, but I just feel numb.”
“Give it time,” I offered.
He moved back from me, sighing out the remainder of his anguish. “I need to call Falcon and tell him I found you.”
“Okay.” I looked at his phone as he drew it from his pocket. “I need to go find the car Safia stole and get the diaper bag so I can feed the baby.”
“I’ll send Emily.” He looked down my body then. “And you can go to my old chambers and get cleaned up while we clear up all this mess.”
By mess, I knew he meant my father’s body—and Safia’s.
“Okay,” I said, “But only if you promise to hand Hans’ corpse over to some necrophiliac freak.”
David’s eyes turned dark. “I’ll do a lot worse to his corpse than that, you can stake your life on it.”
I smiled, knowing that was true, then looked up at him, trying to imagine this moment if he had actually turned human.
“What?” he asked defensively.
“I thought you’d be human.”
“And… would that be a bad thing?”
“I… I’m not sure.”
He laughed. “I know a girl who once would have jumped at the chance to make me human.”
“She left.” I motioned to the door, then thought better and jerked my head to the window. “I think she jumped off a lighthouse.”
“Good.” He slipped his hand under my hair to cup the back of my head. “Because I like this girl better.”
“Me too,” I said absently, looking down at the headless torso of my true father.
My David seemed to come back to me then, realising at the same time that I had a baby in my arms. “Look at you two.” He kissed the soft blonde fluff on the baby’s head. “I can’t even begin to describe how… it felt like my skin had fallen off my body,” he explained, touching his stomach, “like my insides had been drained of blood by a noxious gas when I saw the car drive away today.”
“You got here pretty quick,” I noted.
“Drake helped with that.”
“Hm,” I said, pressing my lips together, nodding. “And it looks like Public Relations will have a bit of a time explaining why a castle was bombed in a quiet suburb in the middle of the afternoon.”
“They’ll probably spin some story about an eccentric billionaire hosting a weapons demonstration for the Navy.”
I laughed, the end of it slipping away weakly when I thought about the damage to the castle—how mad Drake would be. If he were alive to celebrate this victory. I just couldn’t quite make myself believe he was actually gone—that all the worry and the stress Safia caused all these centuries was over. That we finally had no one to run from.
David’s face mirrored exactly what mine should have, and as the golden sun set on the bloody white field outside, the rays turned his skin orange, making his eyes almost transparent.
“It’s okay to be happy, Ara.”
“I know,” I said, burying my face in his bloody chest so I wouldn’t have to pretend. “I think I’ll just need some time to process.”
“All we have now is time, my love.”
***
When I left this castle, I never thought I’d see David’s room again.
Everything was exactly as I left it, even the spiders, all squished into the floor, and the flakes of webs around them from the secret safe. The only thing different in here now was that my baby lay in the middle of the bed, instead of in my belly, and Drake was gone—no longer a part of this world, this castle.
I left the baby asleep, swaddled tightly in her blood-stained blanket, and spent a few minutes in the bathroom, cleaning myself up with the cold water in the basin. It would take a long time to truly wash off the blood of this day, I knew that, but I could wash it off the surface of my skin for now, and hopefully, like everything else, eventually the deeper scars would fade.
By the time I finished cleaning up, the chamber door swung open and Falcon’s broad smile met my sad face. He held up the diaper bag and jerked his eyebrows toward it. “Figured a certain little princess might be pretty hungry by now.”
“She went beyond hungry a few hours ago,” I said, taking the bag. “She’s asleep now.”
“Mix it up and stick it in her mouth,” he said, closing himself in the room with me. “I’m sure she won’t mind.”
I sat down on the bench at the foot of the bed, feeling suddenly quite at home, and dug around in the bag for the powdered milk and the small bottle of boiled water.
“I was about to bring up one of the pink jumpsuits that were in the shopping bag in the trunk, but Em said you’d need to wash it before the baby could wear it—something about sensitive skin.”
I smiled, tipping the powder into the water. “She’s right. There’s chemicals on new clothes that can cause allergic reactions. Not all kids are sensitive. Harry was.”
“Right.” He nodded absently, looking around then as if he didn’t know what to say. Which was incredibly out of character for him.
“What is it?” I asked, letting my shoulders drop, my hands resting in my lap with the bottle half-shaken.
“What’s what?” he asked innocently.
“There’s something you don’t want to tell me. What is it?”
His shoulders dropped this time. “Are you… I told her no, but… are you up for a visitor?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes. Tell her she can come in.” I already knew exactly who he meant. Em must have been out of her mind worrying about the baby.
But when he opened the door and called into the hall, I felt the presence of someone else, and it confused me for a moment, because it wasn’t possible. At least, I didn’t think it was, until the small framed girl, who everyone had always said looked very much like me, but with darker features, stepped humbly into the room, averting her eyes from mine.
I nearly dropped the bottle as I stood. “Morg!”
“Ara. I’m so sorry for everything I—” she started, but I ran into her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, hugging tightly.
“I thought you were dead! I said. “Forever dead!”
“Drake… I mean… Dad, he didn’t give up on me,” she said.
I pulled back a little and looked into her eyes, comparing them now in a whole new light to mine. “So he told you—that he’s our father?”
She nodded sadly.
“Did David tell you that I had to ki—”
“That Drake’s dead?” She nodded again, her brow crinkling, I noticed, in the same way min
e did when I was sad. But the sadness turned to despair and she covered her face, sobbing into cupped palms.
“I’m sorry.” I reached around to rub her back. “But, in a way, you’re lucky, Morgana—because, even though you didn’t know he was your father, you spent more time with the real version of him than I ever did.”
“That doesn’t make me lucky, Ara,” she sobbed, “That just makes it hurt more.”
I looked away, not wanting to feel that pain too.
“He did warn me before we came,” she said, her voice shaking and odd-sounding under the weight of grief, “he told me that he may need to lock himself away with Safia forever—that he may not return in order to keep us all safe.”
“We owe him our freedom,” I said softly, one hand on her shoulder. “He will be celebrated as a hero—everyone will know what he sacrificed for us.”
“The whole story?”
“All of it.”
Her mouth quivered; she tried to hold it back, but a warm smile broke through and lit up her whole face. “I thought you’d turn me away—that you wouldn’t even see me.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Rightly, I should.
“I don’t know if I can ever make it up to you—all the trouble I caused. I—”
“It’s in the past,” I said, leading her into the room, shaking the bottle again as I walked around the bed. “You’re family, Morg. And I never wanted you dead.”
She gave me ‘a look’; so did Falcon from where he stood on the sidelines of this conversation.
“Okay, maybe I wanted to wring your neck. But not truly.” I slid my hands under the baby’s head and bottom, and lifted her into my lap as I sat up against David’s pillows. “I was mad at you—even hated you. But you didn’t deserve to die. And if you’re sorry,” I added, “then we can put it all behind us.”
“I’m not sure David can,” she said, climbing up to sit beside me, giving Falcon a questioning look as she settled on the pillows; he nodded to say it was okay. “He was there when I woke up, but he won’t talk to me.”
“Give him time,” I said in a softer voice as the baby took the bottle like a hungry lamb. “He doesn’t forgive as easy as I.”
“Drake warned me of the same,” she said, resting her head near my shoulder as she leaned in to look at her niece. “She is amazing, Ara.”
