“Why, you, baby doll. We want you and we’ve come a long way to get what we want. And before you get all worked up, don’t worry. We aren’t planning on hurting you. Nothing as crude as all of that. We’ve been looking for you for a long, long time and hurting you isn’t on our agenda.”
“Is that so?”
She wanted to stall, to do anything to keep herself from being moved to some alternate location. She remembered hearing somewhere that the most important thing when it came to possible abductions was not letting them take you to a second place. If you did that, you were screwed.
But her mouth was filling up with saliva and she was also having to expend a whole lot of energy to keep herself from puking all over her floor and she knew even while she was talking that she wasn’t going to be able to get away. She wasn’t going to be able to do it on her own and this time, there wasn’t going to be a Philip Smith to act as knight in shining armor.
“It is so, you’ll have to take my word for it. And you’re also going to have to come with us. You’re going to have to go to sleep. We’ll wake you up when you're where you need to be.”
She didn’t have time to speak. She opened her mouth but she couldn’t get out a word. The man who did the talking looked at his partner again, who in turn opened the palm of his hand and blew. Megan saw a haze of purple sand moving through the air towards her at impossible speed and then everything went dark.
CHAPTER SIX
“Philip! Philip, please, can you hear me? I’d like it if you’d answer me. Please, just answer me. You’re-well, to be perfectly honest, you’re frightening me. Just a little, but still. Philip?”
“Jesus, Caroline, I hear you! Just shut up a minute, will you?”
This line came out in a roar just as loud if not louder than the one he had uttered at his first glimpse of Megan making her exit and Caroline jumped again. On one level Philip was all animal at this point, completely consumed by the Id (if you went in for all of that Freud crap and, having met the man, Philip wasn’t sure he was) and couldn’t hear or care about the fact that he was upsetting her.
On a different level, the level that was always composed and maybe even just a little bit human still, he sensed that fear and knew that he needed to rein it in. He had only lost his temper completely one time in the whole of his lengthy existence, and that had almost been catastrophic for more individuals than himself.
That time it had also involved a girl (for a vampire who liked to think of himself as devoid of emotion, it really was starting to seem like a certain kind of woman was his kryptonite) and now that he thought about it, that girl and Megan --no. Not possible. He really was starting to lose his shit and when it was lost completely, along with his grip on reality, bad things would happen.
“Megan” he whispered in a strangled voice. He turned to Caroline then, feeling all rage and helplessness and wanting her to do something. Wanting her to fix it. Wasn’t that what big sisters were supposed to do? Fix things that went wrong, make the scary things go away?
He knew she couldn’t do that, not with the two of them being some of the scary things, but she had to do something because this was starting to feel like her all over again and he was much stronger than he had been way back then. The damage he might do could be more...permanent.
“I know. Believe me, I saw it, too. That’s what I needed you to hear, Philip. It’s part of why I came here.”
“I didn’t see it before, Caroline. I just knew that I was drawn to her, that I could feel her brokenness. I didn’t see it then … but now. She looks like her, doesn’t she? Doesn’t she? Am I crazy?”
“No, Brother, you’re not. You’re not wrong at all. She looks like Celia.”
His heart clenched at the mention of her name. It was one he had spoken inside of his head many, many times over the years but never out loud. None of his adopted family spoke her name either. All of them knew without having to have a conversation about it that the topic of Celia was off limits.
She had been the reason he had to be turned in the first place. She had led him to the people who had stuck a knife in his gut and had crowed in triumph when the blood rushed out. She had watched him lying in the street, had dipped her delicate little finger in his blood and stepped back to let her strange companions do with him what they would. He had passed out before he ever found out just what it was they wanted with him and he had considered it to be a mercy.
The next thing he remembered was waking up to Antoine (otherwise known as Papa) explaining to him that, from here on out, he was going to be living in a whole new world. That was when he had been forced into this life he was leading now and it had taken decades to get used to it.
In some ways, he was still getting used to it and that hadn’t left a lot of room for him to engage in self-discovery or understanding his past. God, he really was a brat, wasn’t he? Enough of a brat that he hadn’t seen that the girl he wanted more than anything looked like the sister of the one who had done him in.
“But how? Goddamnit, Caroline, what the hell is going on here?”
Now it was his turn to pace around the room and Caroline’s turn to watch. She watched silently. She knew her brother well and that meant knowing when to keep quiet. She knew that so well, in fact, that she kept her mouth shut when he tore behind his desk and took one of her cigarettes. All she did was offer up a light and wait. She was very good at waiting and Philip knew it.
It wasn’t like the two of them were running out of time. He paced circles around the room until he felt like he could have a conversation without turning into a monster and then he sat back behind his desk. He put the cigarette out in the already wasted glass of scotch and steepled his hands again, closing his eyes for (what, courage?) a moment and then looked at her, feeling very much like a little boy.
“Caroline?”
“Are you ready to listen now, Philip?”
He nodded. He didn’t like the weak, pleading sound of his voice when he had said her name and he didn’t trust himself to speak without sounding that way again and so he said nothing. If she had any doubt of his desperation to be in the know, however, she would only have needed to look at his eyes.
Those wide, confused and, yes, a little bit (more than a little bit?) frightened eyes would have told the whole story quite nicely. But she didn’t have any doubt, just like she didn’t have any desire to make him feel stupid for not having been willing to listen to her about anything before. “We all have our way of getting to a place and our own time frame in which to do it,” she thought.
Philip could see that she knew that and that there would be no “I told you sos” flung in his direction and he was grateful. A heaping helping of humble pie would have been more than he could bear on top of everything else. He was a man who was used to getting his way, for good or for ill, and the fact that everything had so suddenly gone fantastically the opposite of that had him shook up.
And of course, Celia. The thought, even the mention, of that girl from long, long ago made him feel like he was attempting to walk on water without the appropriate skill set. Caroline looked at him with eyes he could see really, actually cared, and then she started her tale. Even for Philip, who should have known full well that there were all kinds of real things that most would rather classify as make believe, it was a tough pill to swallow. Not that he didn’t want to believe her or anything like that, but it was a lot to wrap his head around.
“That girl, Philip.”
“Who?”
She gave him a patient, somewhat indulgent look one gave a child who hadn’t yet caught on to the most obvious part of a lesson and waited for the look of recognition that would tell her they were on the same page. When his face stayed confused, she smiled gently. She was prepared to walk him through the whole thing, if that was what was required.
She loved him, he realized. Not just because she was part of his adopted family and it was her job to love him, but because she really loved him. He was touched, didn’t know wha
t to say. Oh God, how unaccustomed he was to feeling these bleeding human emotions. He had shoved them down so deep, so deep that he didn’t realize they were still there as anything but an afterthought.
But shit, had he been wrong. He had drastically overestimated himself (or underestimated, depending on how you looked at it and what your priorities were) and now he was realizing by how wide of a margin. It was humbling, the most humbling thing he had lived through in any of the manifestations of his life.
“The girl, Philip. The girl you were with when I first got here. The girl you were playing around with up in your bedroom.”
“You heard that, did you? Well, I’d say I was sorry, but we both know I’m not. It’s not like I knew you were coming or anything like that.”
It was a flicker of his usual cockiness and Caroline rolled her eyes, waiting for it to pass so they could get back to having the conversation they needed to be having. He shut his mouth immediately.
Again there was that feeling of being a little boy in trouble with his mother. His own mother had never even given him that feeling! She had hardly interacted with him at all, and left it mostly to nannies who were too afraid of making him angry. They had allowed him to do pretty much as he pleased so as to avoid losing their jobs.
Caroline managed to give him that “I’m in trouble feeling” perfectly well on her own, though, no doubt about that one. She was a fucking pro and he reminded himself for the millionth time that it would probably be best if he just kept his mouth shut.
“You finished?”
“Yes, sorry. Old habits die hard and all that shit.”
“Sure, I bet they do. And you’re right, you didn’t know I was coming, although I’m surprised you didn’t guess that I would. You know I can be pretty persuasive when I want something done. I’ve been trying to get you to come around on this for decades. You had to know that one of these days I’d get tired of waiting and switch to a different tactic.”
“I guess I should have realized that. My mistake.”
“It is indeed, sir, but let’s not dwell on that.”
Now it was Philip’s turn to roll his eyes and for a second, it felt like things were back in balance. They were in their groove, the good one instead of the bad, which they were at least as practiced at. It was a feeling that was fleeting but it was enough to relieve Philip of some of his jitters. He felt a hell of a lot more confident that he was going to be able to do whatever might be required of him in the near future and he felt more able to hear the things Caroline had come to say.
It had taken a long, long time, but he really thought he was ready.
“So the girl. She must have struck you as special, right?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because, Philip, she was here. I know how you are about letting people inside of this place. Everyone knows. Christ, you’re notorious in this area. Or at least your house is.”
“Really?”
This one wasn’t a joke. Even though what she was saying was not only true but also a large part of why Megan had come back to him to begin with, he honestly hadn’t known about the reputation he had gained. He had been that removed from his life and from the humans he was living amongst.
“Yes, Brother, really. Leave it to you to gain the reputation for having the neighborhood haunted house on top of already being a vampire.”
“What can I say? I’m an overachiever.”
“Right,” she said dryly, “always the overachiever. That’s exactly what you’ve been. But the girl, Philip. You let her in. Why?”
“I don’t know. I mean I do, but it’s difficult. It’s difficult to put into words.”
“Try though, will you? I need you to try. It’s very important.”
He took a deep breath, trying to draw up all of the things that had made him feel something for her before they had ever met. What was it he had been doing? Was it the walk? Had it really been only on that evening walk that this had begun?
It seemed impossible. Even for a man whose concept of time was entirely different from most, it felt like that was impossible. He had been walking and saw a group of assholes trying to hurt somebody and instead of staying out of it as he usually would have, he had stepped in.
“She seemed broken,” he whispered, not even sure that he was speaking out loud, “she seemed broken and that was the thing she knew about herself but she also felt strong. She felt incredibly strong and that was the thing I’m not sure she really understood. OK? Does that explain it? Because it’s going to have to do. I don’t have any other way to tell you.”
“Is her name Megan? Megan Wright?”
He had the strangest disembodied feeling when she said that. Had she heard the name from him somehow? Had he spoken it while she was there? Had she been there to hear him speak it without knowing? No, he didn’t think so. In fact he knew that hadn’t been the case. She had told him her full name when they had still been in the alleyway and that had been the only time she had spoken it.
Nevertheless, Caroline knew. She knew, and that meant that there was something important Caroline knew about Megan and he did not. How that might be true, he had no idea.
“How? Caroline, I don’t understand.”
“Megan Wright. She’s not an ordinary girl, OK? Not even close. Clearly you knew that, sensed it. I’m not surprised you found her. Even in a city as crazy as New Orleans I’m still not surprised.”
“OK, she’s special, I get that. But why?”
“She’s a witch.”
“I’m sorry, what did you say? Did you just say she’s a witch? That’s not possible.”
“Really? We’re vampires, Philip. Are you really going to tell me you don’t think there are witches out there? Christ, you live in a house with ghosts. Don’t tell me you can believe in that, in shifters and vampires and all of the rest of this shit, but somehow witches are crossing the line? Please, you can’t tell me you think that makes sense.”
“OK, fine. She’s a witch. But what does that mean? Are we talking a ‘pull out your magic wands’ kind of a situation? Hop on your broomstick hocus pocus style?”
“No, we aren’t. It’s much more serious than that and you should really think twice before you make light of it. It has a hell of a lot more to do with you than you think.”
That sobered him right up, sapped him of whatever small amount of levity he had garnered. He didn’t yet understand what Megan supposedly being a witch could really have to do with him, but he knew that Caroline wasn’t playing around. She wasn’t much of a jokester on the best of days and there seemed to be very little about this that was humorous to her in any way.
“OK, Caroline. Tell me. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Megan Wright is a witch, just as I said. She’s a witch from a very long line of witches, probably the oldest, according to everything we know about them.”
“We? Who's we? And how do you know anything about them at all?”
“Please, Philip. Don’t you remember the order’s library? I know it’s been a while and you probably didn’t stop to really look at any of the things in there, but you should have seen that we had pretty much anything we needed. Those weren’t a bunch of first edition fiction novels, you know? Those books were there for a reason. Those were resources.”
“About these witches?”
“About all kinds of things, but yes, some of it was about them.”
“They’re dangerous, aren’t they?”
He asked it as a question but he didn’t really need to ask at all. She wouldn’t be talking to him about it, wouldn’t have been in New Orleans instead of her sprawling rooftop Paris flat. Paris was where everything she loved lived, everything aside from him. She was very unlike Philip in that respect.
Whereas he had never really lost that itch to travel from city to city looking for God only knew what, Caroline had long ago settled on Paris as her base. It made sense, after all. It had been her home before she was turned. It had been all of t
heir homes a long, long time ago.
She had come from a very different kind of a life than the one Philip had been stolen from. Philip had grown up a petit prince, living in the lap of luxury and taking it all for granted. Caroline had grown up with nothing.
At first she had what passed as a family, she had that much. But her father was more of a drunkard than a father, spending most of his time and all of their money in the tavern. Her mother had done everything she could to keep him at home and maybe even working from time to time, but instead of shaping up he had shipped out.
Allegedly, he had hopped a ship for the Americas and that was why he never came home again. It had to remain an “allegedly” sort of a situation because they never heard from him again. Caroline’s mother had done her best to keep her children fed and reasonably healthy but then she had gotten sick and the thing about being sick and poor (Philip would have loved to say that things changed, but in more than a century he didn’t think it had all that much) was that nobody much cared.
Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) Page 10
