Dakota

by Vicktor Alexander

  Nimo stared at his parents as a sliver of fear wormed its way inside of him, slowly winding itself around the shock that already flooded his system. He’d known that his parents were social piranhas and would do anything to climb the social ranks, but he’d never pegged them for being so completely stupid. They’d both graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard. His father from Harvard Law and his mother Harvard Business. Apparently all of their book knowledge had knocked out any capacity for common sense in their brains.

  Nimo shook his head and leaned forward. “Did you ever think that perhaps your friends were ostracizing you because you’d kicked out not only your only child but your grandchild because the mother was not from a good family? That perhaps they’d heard you’d attempted to give your only grandchild away to another family? Did you ever think it was possible that your white friends were a little upset that you could possibly think that your son, a black gay man, was too good for a white girl, no matter who her parents were?” he asked.

  Abraham and Georgia-Anne looked at each other, their eyes widening before shaking their heads. “No. Absolutely not. That’s preposterous. The Claytons disowned their daughter, Sarah, because she took up with that boy from Meridian,” Georgia-Anne stated before taking another sip of her drink.

  Nimo nodded, he remembered that. He and Sarah had gone to school together and he’d been invited to the wedding last year when Sarah and her boyfriend had finally gotten married after being together for five years. They had two kids and were now expecting their third one. “Ah yes, Sarah and her Hispanic boyfriend, Pedro Lopez,” Nimo pointed out.

  “What about the Albrights and their daughter, Eve?” Abraham said with a satisfied smirk as if he’d won the argument. “It was because of the child she had from a white man who came from an unacceptable family background.”

  Nimo shook his head, saddening instantly. “It was because Eve, who is a lesbian by the way, was raped and became pregnant and refused to get an abortion or put the baby up for adoption. Eve always wanted to be a mother and while she is a hugely pro-choice, she decided to keep the baby. Her parents didn’t agree. So she kept the baby. The man who raped her was her father’s business partner, whom he still works with, by the way. Eve and her partner, Kelly, are raising the baby.”

  Abraham stared at Nimo, his eyebrows furrowed. “How do you know all of this?” he asked.

  Nimo chuckled darkly. “Whenever you parents had your parties, which was every weekend, we kids got together and talked about how miserable and tedious our lives were. Those of us who wanted to leave or were planning to make a break out of what we called “The Bubble” all exchanged numbers. We’ve kept in touch. Everyone you named is a part of that list as well as a few others,” Nimo told them.

  Abraham waved his hand. “It makes no difference. Things have already been put into play and there is no turning back now. Your mother and I have made our decision. We are set on our course. We are going to practically be gods once we give our Master what he so desperately wants.”

  “And what does he want exactly?” Decebal asked.

  “Revenge,” Georgia-Anne replied.

  “But who is he?” Dakota asked, looking completely baffled and a little angry.

  “Why Dakota, your parents know and if they think really hard, they’ll figure it out. There’s only one person in their history that they’ve wronged as grievously as our Master. Only one person that would want revenge against them and would be justified in receiving it,” Abraham said.

  “No. It can’t be,” Decebal said, shaking his head. “He said he would never leave Romania.”

  Abraham grinned. “I think he’s figured it out, my dear.”

  “Why I do think you’re right,” Georgia-Anne retorted.

  Nimo glanced back and forth between his zombie parents and his vampire in-laws, completely confused but a feeling of unease made him nauseous.

  “Who is it?” Nimo asked, tension making him impatient and his question came out a lot sharper than he intended. Decebal stared first at Nimo and Dakota and then over at Adelina who looked back at him with fear shining in her eyes.

  “My brother, Razvan.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Dakota stared at his father in horror.

  “Razvan is your brother? My uncle?” he asked softly, shaking his head.

  Decebal looked back at him sadly as he nodded his head. “Yes, son, I’m sorry.”

  Dakota shook his head and ignored Abraham and Georgia-Anne as they started to laugh and chant Razvan’s name. How could he be related to the very man who had haunted his dreams as a child? How was that possible? And why was it that he was finding out his parents had been keeping all of these secrets from him and his brothers?

  “But how is that even possible?” Dakota asked.

  “Who is Razvan?” Nimo asked.

  Dakota looked at his mate and then down at Isaiah and felt fear, true, genuine, deep-down-in-his-bones-fear grip him and he lifted his blood-bonded son up into his arms and wrapped them around the little boy wanting to protect him from the vampire who was the stuff of nightmares.

  “Daddy Dakotuh, you awe shaking,” Isaiah pointed out.

  “Because Razvan is a very, very bad man, Zay,” Dakota stated.

  “That is just what your parents wanted you to believe. They are actually the bad people. They wronged our Master and everything that he did he was justified in doing,” Abraham stated angrily.

  Dakota shook his head again. “I don’t think there is anything that my parents could have done to Razvan that could have made it okay for him to do what he did.” He regarded Nimo. “Growing up we were told not only from our parents but from other, older vampires who lived here in America, all about Razvan, the crazed vampire who is the epitome of evil. He is the one that your movies are based off of, but he was so much worse. The stories say that one day, in a fit of rage he left the castle where he lived and stormed through the cities of Romania. He—” Dakota paused and stared down at Isaiah, he couldn’t say what he needed to say in front of the little boy.

  Nimo’s eyebrows lifted and he glanced at Isaiah and nodded. “Zay, prepare for liftoff,” he said.

  Dakota’s eyebrows lowered but then he noticed Zay pushing his fingers into his ears and humming. He looked back at Nimo and chuckled. Nimo merely shrugged.

  “We flew to Disney World once and you know how the engines are really loud? Well Zay was small and he couldn’t understand what was going on so he started to cry and some of the other passengers were getting annoyed so I told him to put his fingers in his ears and hum to prepare for liftoff. It was a way to help him block out the noise, and was a fun game for him, he laughed the entire time. It’s become our way of me letting him know that I need to say something without him hearing. Now, finish what you were saying,” Nimo said.

  Dakota nodded and swallowed. “Razvan went into the homes of the humans that lived in different cities and if there was a woman that lived within, he raped her and slit her throat while her husband or father or brother watched, then he drank her blood and smeared it all over his body. If the woman was married and had no children he would then drive a stake through her husband’s body and leave him to slowly melt to death. It was horrible.”

  Nimo shivered. “But they killed him, right?”

  Dakota shook his head. “They tried, repeatedly but it never worked. Finally, they did the only thing they could, they removed his fangs. It seemed to stop his crazed bloodlust and made him weak. Then they locked him up in the bowels of the Earth never to be heard from again.”

  “At least that’s what Razvan led them to believe,” Abraham said with a dark chuckle.

  Dakota heard his father’s sharp inhale and looked over at him. “What do you mean?”

  Georgia-Anne rose and began walking slowly down the length of the twelve-person table to the side door. “Our Master purposefully acted as if he were rehabilitated while he plotted and planned. He has spent centuries scheming and figuring out how best to get
his revenge on the two people who deserve it most. The two people who drove him to such madness.”

  Adelina shook her head. “We did no such thing!”

  “Silence!” Abraham yelled.

  Decebal jumped to his feet, hissing, his fangs dropping as he reached across the table and grabbed Abraham’s collar. “Don’t. You. Ever. Yell. At. My. Wife. Again,” he growled.

  Dakota handed Isaiah to Nimo quickly before he reached out for his father’s arm and grabbed it, worried about the rising tensions in the air and what Razvan could possibly have waiting in store for them if anything happened to Abraham and Georgia-Anne before the appointed time. Because he, of course, knew that their lives were forfeit to Dakota’s family and did not care about them either way, but they had to stay alive long enough to reveal his plan and to give them their instructions. So Dakota grabbed his father’s arm and tugged until Decebal released the other man’s collar and dropped him back into his chair.

  “You know they serve a purpose,” he whispered to his father. “You cannot kill them before they have served it.”

  Decebal nodded and cleared his throat.

  “What does Razvan think that Decebal and Adelina did to betray him?” Nimo asked, clutching Isaiah to his side, trembling and Dakota felt rage sweep through him that his mate would feel fear of any kind. It was Dakota’s job to protect his sufletul pereche from anything that would harm him and if Nimo was scared that meant he didn’t trust Dakota to keep him from harm, which meant that Dakota was failing in his role as protector. Guilt swamped him and Dakota felt nauseous and angered that Razvan had the power to bring doubt to his mating.

  “Decebal stole Adelina from Razvan after his own mate died tragically when he was a young man,” Georgia-Anne said, pointing a manicured finger at Decebal.

  Dakota and Nimo gasped and looked at Decebal. Dakota shook his head and glanced back and forth between his parents. It was impossible. There were no two people more in love and no two people who upheld the importance of true mates, of sufletul pereches than his own parents. Why would they be that way if they were guilty of not adhering to it themselves?

  “You lie,” Dakota said, growling slightly, clenching his fingers into fists.

  “But they don’t,” a deep, menacing voice said and the room was suddenly plunged in shadow. Being a creature of the night, Dakota should have been able to see, but this was not a regular blackness. This was an inky darkness, made by black magic, fueled by a black soul, anger, revenge, and hurt. Dakota couldn’t see and all he could hear was harsh breathing and Isaiah’s whimpers and Nimo’s soothing words.

  “Your father’s sufletul pereche was a beautiful young woman named, Camelia Funar. Her father was an advisor to the king and the two of them were madly in love, or so everyone thought. You see, Camelia and your father had an arrangement, they would put on an act before everyone and when no one was around Camelia would go off with her true lover, another woman, an Egyptian named Ekibe, who worked in the palace,” the disembodied voice spoke again, this time directly behind Dakota. He turned in his chair, swinging out towards Razvan, his hand colliding with air. He shivered when he heard the menacing laughter and turned back around in his chair, knowing that until Razvan was ready to reveal himself, there was nothing he could do.

  “When I found out, I supported your father at first. We all know that while a sufletul pereche is only the perfect match for you, it doesn’t guarantee you will love that person. But when I found out that he was spending time with my sufletul pereche and the two of them were falling in love with each other I knew I had to put an end to it. So I went to Decebal and asked him to stop. He said that he’d already fallen in love and he couldn’t help himself. We fought. Brutally. Your mother, my mate, came in and took Decebal’s side. It enraged me. She was my mate. Mine. It made me snap. And well, you know the rest.”

  Dakota’s eyebrows lowered, something wasn’t adding up, according to the stories he’d heard, by the time Razvan had gone on his rampage his parents had already mated and had Arizona.

  “My parents were already mated and had a child by the time you went on your rampage,” he said.

  “Dakota!” Decebal growled out.

  “WHAT?” Razvan’s roar shook the house and it was then that Dakota realized that Razvan’s story was true. He turned his head in his father’s direction as the room was flooded with light. He was aware of the dark figure standing on the other side of the table, but he paid Razvan no mind at that time, he was too busy staring at his father.

  “You stole another man’s mate?” he asked his father in amazement. “Your brother’s mate?”

  Decebal shook his head. “No. That’s not what happened.” He reached out to touch Dakota’s arm. Dakota jerked out of his father’s grip and stood from his chair. He was aware of Nimo gripping the back of his jacket.

  “Dakota, please, let us explain,” Adelina said. Dakota turned to his mother and wanted to snarl at her but centuries of deference and respect stopped him from doing so.

  “Dakota, please let us explain,” Razvan mocked Adelina and Dakota looked at his… uncle and snarled. It was easy for him to do it with this man, having only heard bad things about him growing up.

  “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

  “Watch your mouth, pup,” Razvan said, raising his hand and squeezing his fingers into a fist. Dakota expected to feel the breath in his lungs cut off but when nothing happened he smirked until he heard Nimo let out a cry of dismay. Turning his head, he looked at Isaiah and noticed the young boy was slumped against Nimo’s side. Dakota fell to his knees and ran his hands over Isaiah’s face, under his nose, feeling no air and over his chest, feeling no heartbeat.

  “I stopped his heart,” Razvan said.

  “Razvan! He is an innocent child!” Decebal yelled.

  “Please, Razvan,” Nimo cried.

  Dakota was ready to plead as well when he saw Razvan open his hand and Isaiah inhaled deeply, his eyes widening as he coughed. Nimo lifted his son up into his lap and Dakota wrapped his arms around the both of them, doing his best to protect them. He turned to look at Razvan and then at his parents.

  “Razvan was not my sufletul pereche,” Adelina said. “Your father always was. But the day we discovered that we were fated to be together was the day that Camelia and Razvan met as well. You see Camelia and I were twins, but in those days twins were killed. They were considered evil. My parents didn’t want to do that, so they separated us. And you know what happens with twins, it’s easy to get them confused during a mating, especially if your heart is not pure. Your father never got us confused, but Razvan was always confusing us. At first we had fun with him, and then one day he confessed to Camelia how much he wanted his brother’s mate as well as his own. It so upset Camelia that she had their mating bond dissolved.”

  “But how?” Nimo asked.

  Adelina sighed and wiped her eyes. “She was dead for ten minutes. Those ten minutes were all it took for Razvan’s bond with her to be dissolved. We just didn’t expect him to turn to me. They hadn’t completed the bond or else it would have been much worse, but regardless, with her gone, and off with the woman she’d been in love with for years, Razvan turned his attention to me. But by this time, Decebal and I had not only completed our bond but we’d gotten pregnant. It took Razvan a while before he finally confronted us. We don’t know why. We don’t know where he was or what he was doing. But when he showed up and realized that we’d completed the bond he lost it.” She shook her head and looked at Razvan whose eyes had gone completely red. “I’m sorry, Razvan, it was never you.”

  Dakota gradually rose from his chair and grabbed Nimo and Isaiah telling them to stand slowly as well. He kept one eye on Razvan as the man leisurely lowered the black hood from his head, his red eyes focused on Adelina, before they swung over towards Decebal, a smirk coming to his lean face. Dakota pressed Nimo and Isaiah against the wall and standing in front of them, walked them towards the large china cabinet in the corner. He pulled
it out just enough for them to hide behind and then he turned to rejoin his parents.

  He stopped as Razvan dropped the black hooded cloak onto the floor. Razvan’s black hair hung straight down to the middle of his back. His face was thin, his cheeks pronounced as if he hadn’t eaten in a very long time. His eyes were red, filled with anger and yet they appeared lifeless. He wore a white shirt and pair of black trousers and his feet were bare. His fingers were slim, his nails long and manicured and Dakota shivered as he stared at them because he could easily imagine Razvan using them to stab someone through the chest and ripping out their heart.