Dirty Blood

by Heather Hildenbrand

  Spending the night with Wes was almost enough to make me forget about the other half of Vera’s visions or Wes’s suspicions about my mixed blood. Almost. My mind kept wandering back to it but before I even had a chance to voice my worries, I would feel Wes’s eyes on me again, full of assurance and love, and my fears would fade.

  Unfortunately, morning came too soon, and I knew I had to get home. I turned my phone on and was glad to see I only had one missed message. It was a text from my mother, a reply to the alibi I’d given her. I scanned it with a sinking feeling. It read: “Come home immediately.” The weird thing was, the time stamp said it had been sent in the middle of the night.

  “What is it?” Wes asked, noticing my expression.

  “I don’t know, but I think I better get home.”

  “Give me a minute,” he said, before disappearing into the bathroom.

  I listened to water running in the sink and tried to figure out what was so important that my mother had been up in the middle of the night texting me to come home. Especially when she hadn’t left any other messages. If she’d somehow discovered I wasn’t with Angela, she would’ve freaked out and there definitely would’ve been more of an attempt to contact me. Like police. And a county-wide manhunt.

  I got dressed quickly, changing out of the oversized shirt Wes had given me to sleep in, and back into the clothes I’d worn last night. I wished I had something else to wear, but at least my mom hadn’t seen me leave in them yesterday, so hopefully she wouldn’t know I was doing some sort of walk of shame—not that anything had happened. There’d been a moment where I thought it might.

  It was after I’d texted my mother. We’d been kissing and Wes’s hand had found its way to my hip again, squeezing me there. My breath had caught a little and I waited but slowly his hand had inched back up to my face and hair and after a few more minutes, he’d pulled away to catch his breath, mumbling something about “protecting my virtue, as well as my life.”

  I’d snickered at that until I’d realized he was totally serious. I wasn’t sure if I found it completely outdated and ridiculous, or endearing. Maybe a little of both.

  “Do you think she knows I lied to her?” I asked worriedly once we were in the car. Wes was taking me to pick up my car from where we’d left it the night before.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think something’s wrong? What if Leo—”

  “Not possible,” he said, shaking his head. “The patrol schedule includes your house. I told Jack I’d found you, but I didn’t tell him you didn’t go home, so there would’ve been someone nearby all night.”

  “Okay, good.” I blew out a breath, trying to feel reassured by his explanation. But the closer we got, the worse I felt.

  By the time we got to my car, I was jittery and all nerves. “Can you come with me?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. I’ll follow you back and be nearby. Just call me when you’re done.”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  I got out and walked to my car, digging for my keys. I could hear Wes following me over. I unlocked my door and told myself it was no big deal, just my mother being her normal, OCD self. Wes put a hand on my arm, and I turned back to him. Without a word, he wrapped his arms around me and pressed his lips to my forehead, holding me that way until I relaxed. Finally, he pulled away to look at me. “See you in a bit.”

  I nodded and got in.

  Wes followed me home, and I felt better seeing his car in my rearview the entire way. The text was probably no big deal, I told myself. My mom probably couldn’t sleep and had seen how messy my room was and gotten ticked off. Or maybe she hadn’t gotten my text before falling asleep and had woken up wondering where I was. Whatever it was, it was easily explained, and I felt better knowing that even if she was mad at me, she was safe.

  I turned onto my street, parting ways with Wes as he continued farther down to park in his usual hiding place. I’d almost reached my driveway when I noticed a black Mercedes parked at the curb directly in front of my house. It looked strangely familiar. Probably some friend of a neighbor or something.

  “Mom?” I called out, closing the door behind me and dropping my bag in the entryway. “I’m home.”

  No answer came and I wandered through the empty rooms, searching. My mother’s muffled voice came from the den, and I hurried toward the sound.

  “… still doesn’t mean your visions are true,” she said, her voice hard.

  I stopped short in the doorway, spotting my mother, and feeling the impact of her words, at the same time. In the chair across from her sat Vera. Surprise and dread and panic coursed through me as they both rose to face me.

  “Tara, come in here, please. We need to talk.” My mother’s eyes were puffy and glassy.

  All the blood drained away from my face and I turned to glare at Vera. I couldn’t believe this. Did she think her visions of me gave her the right to come here and dump it all on my mom, expecting her to accept it, just like that? Obviously, my mom was … well, there was no telling what my mom was …

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded, my hands balling into fists at my sides.

  “Tara,” my mother said.

  I ignored her and stared at Vera. “You had no right to come here,” I said, through clenched teeth. “Or to tell her like this.” I looked back at my mother again. “Mom, whatever she told you, I can explain. It’s—”

  “Tara, I called her,” my mother said.

  “What?” I took a step back and, for the first time since I’d walked in, really looked at my mother. She watched me with a strained expression; she almost seemed to be hugging herself, her hands cupped around each shoulder, her knuckles white with tension.

  “You need to come in here and sit down,” she said.

  I complied, mainly because I was completely lost now, and tried to understand what was really going on. Vera still hadn’t said anything, but she sat when I did. My mother remained standing, looking down at me with a tight frown.

  “I was straightening up last night, after I got your text,” she paused and her expression grew darker. “But we’ll come back to that in a minute. Anyway, I was cleaning and putting things away, and I guess you forgot to hide it again before you left.”

  She gestured to the coffee table in front of me and I looked down. The Draven sat on top of the pile of magazines my mom usually kept there. Well, crap. Had I left it out? I couldn’t remember.

  “Where did you find this?” I blurted, without thinking.

  My mother’s eyes widened. “That’s your response? No explanation, just wondering how I found out? Oh my goodness, I can’t do this.” She threw her hands up and wandered a few paces away, pressing her fingertips to her forehead.

  Vera cleared her throat. “Elizabeth, may I?”

  My mother waved a hand, without turning, in a gesture to go ahead.

  Vera turned back to me and I purposely hardened my expression, still not convinced she wasn’t to blame for all of this. “Tara, your mother found the Draven by accident. She wasn’t snooping, from what I understand, if that makes any difference. And when she realized what it was, she called me.”

  “She called you?” I repeated, skeptical.

  Vera nodded. “She and I knew each other many years ago. I didn’t even know she lived here until last night when she called. It’s no wonder I couldn’t get a clear sense about you. Then again, it finally made sense, when I realized what you were …” She trailed off, lost in her own thoughts and I tensed, sure she was going to go into something about a vision of destiny. I could NOT handle that right now. After a few seconds, she blinked and gave a forced smile. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. The point is, your mother called me. Not the other way around, and she already had a pretty good idea of what was going on before I got here. I was actually able to reassure her that you were not alone in all this and, in fact, being made quite safe.”

  “The Cause is not safe, Vera,” my mother said, dry
ly. She was still standing across the room, arms folded, watching my expression with scrutiny.

  The thing was, she was calm. In any other situation, my mother would’ve been flipping—

  pacing the house, gulping coffee, cleaning out cupboards, yelling. But no, with this, she just stood there, like it was inconvenient but not unexpected news of epic proportions. That was my first clue.

  “Okay, wait a minute,” I said, putting up a hand when Vera tried to go on. I turned to my mother. “You mean to tell me, you knew that I was a Hunter?”

  My mother and Vera shared a look, and then my mother wandered back toward where I sat, resignation heavy on her face. She stopped just behind the empty chair across from me. Her eyes met mine, her jaw set. “Yes. I knew.”

  “And you kept it from me, all this time?”

  She sighed heavily, but her gaze didn’t waver. “Yes.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe this,” I said, to no one in particular. Partly because I couldn’t believe she’d been keeping it from me and partly because I felt like I should’ve seen it. It felt so obvious now, in this moment, with Vera sitting beside her, and the calmness with which she admitted it. Images flashed in my mind, bits and pieces really, but they all clicked into place for me—pieces of the puzzle. Her incessant worrying and annoying overprotectiveness, the elaborate locks and security systems … Even her OCD cleaning habits made sense, a product of the stress of living on the run. I felt like an idiot. It made me angry at myself, which, in turn, made me angry at her.

  “I think I deserve an explanation,” I said.

  She shot Vera a look. Vera nodded, and my mother’s shoulders drooped slightly. I got the impression she was hoping for a way out of telling me the truth—again.

  She came around and perched on the edge of the chair, back stiff, fingers fidgeting with each other. “All right, Tara. You do deserve the truth, so here it is.” I watched in stony silence as she smoothed out an invisible wrinkle in her pants. “You should know that my life was a lot different before you came along. I was young, not much older than you, actually, and idealistic. Believe it or not, I was an activist for The Cause.”

  “You worked for The Cause?” I asked, eyebrows raised. Somehow I just couldn’t picture my scaredy-cat mother as an outspoken politician.

  She nodded. “It was something I believed in very strongly. And I wasn’t afraid to speak out about it. But then, some things happened, right after you were born. It became more and more dangerous for your father and me—”

  “Wait, so Dad knew? Does that mean he was a Hunter?”

  “Yes, your father knew, but, Tara, I’m the Hunter,” she said, giving me a meaningful look.

  At her words, I felt the first trickle of unease over the thoughts I’d been pushing away since last night. “Then Dad was human?”

  She didn’t really answer, except to continue her story. It reminded me of when Wes had told me about his parents and the script he seemed to have to follow, just to get the words out. “When I met your father, he was already involved with The Cause. Their mission and the danger were exciting to me, and it pulled me in.”

  I tried to picture my mother being the type to welcome danger, to rush at it. The image wouldn’t come. I kept listening.

  “It wasn’t until after you were born,” she went on, “that the danger became real to me. Especially after word got out about you.” She teared up, and I could see her struggling to keep herself composed, but I refused to give her a reprieve. I needed to hear what was next too badly to let her off the hook just yet.

  “What do you mean, especially after word about me? Does that mean Dad knew what you were? What I was?”

  She nodded. Her eyes were watery and threatened to spill over. “He knew because he was part of that world, too. He was a Werewolf, Tay.”