Chapter 19 #2
“I feared some of the more fanatical members of my hunting club might hurt Greta if they knew the sort of child she was carrying,” he said.
“Exposing him would also expose your daughter.”
“Correct. I couldn’t have cared less about the mutant fetus—”
“Who was my mother.”
“Right,” Richard said, smiling thinly. “The boy also said that any harm to the fetus or him would also harm Greta, because they were all connected. Of course, it did cross my mind that he was lying, but I couldn’t prove otherwise. I refused to gamble with Greta’s life.”
“So, you sent her away.”
Richard nodded. “But it was only a last resort. Greta refused to give up the baby.”
“Did she know what the father was—supernatural, I mean?”
“No,” Richard answered. “Which is why he and I made a deal. We agreed that he’d stay away from Greta to keep her safe. I vowed not to reveal his identity to the club, ever, if he left and didn’t come back. After our conversation, he vanished like a ghost.”
“What was his name? My grandfather?”
“I have no idea,” Richard said.
“We figured it was safer to remain in the dark,” Maxine added.
It was a lot to process. “Did he love Greta? The boy?”
Richard shrugged to show exactly how irrelevant he thought love was. “He said he did, though everything bad that’s happened is because of him.”
“You mean Greta getting pregnant?”
Richard brought his fist down on his thigh heavily. “I mean all of it, Olivia! Don’t you see how vampires destroy everything?”
“But you said he wasn’t a vamp—”
“Quibbles,” Richard sputtered with a wave of his hand. “Close enough.”
So, in a nutshell, my great-grandfather hated anyone who wasn’t classified as a full human—excluding the various types of humans he hated as well.
“Did it ever occur to you that your daughter wouldn’t have been in danger had it not been for your association with vampire hunters?” I asked, sounding as furious as I felt.
“And why had I joined forces with the hunters to begin with, hmm?” Richard countered. “Because one of their vile kind attacked me. It is they who are culpable, Olivia, not I.”
“We kept tabs on Greta,” said Maxine, trying to diffuse the tension. “And your mother. And you. We may not have always known where you were and what you were doing, but we did know about your life.”
“Why didn’t you make contact, then? All these years and you never even called.” I swept my hand out. “And here you were the whole time, a short drive away from me in Napa.”
“This isn’t our house, dear,” clarified Maxine. “This belongs to a friend of ours.”
A friend with a functioning prison cell in their back yard. Because nothing weird about that.
Maxine said, “Again, we didn’t make contact because we were worried about the link you have to your grandfather. We didn’t want to put you in harm’s way.”
How magnanimous, I thought bitterly.
I didn’t believe her. What I thought was closer to the truth was that Richard’s demented hunting club would be pissed if they learned Richard had been hiding such a huge secret from them. If they were as merciless as Richard was making them out to be, they’d probably kill him for his disloyalty.
I asked, “So then why did you suddenly contact me, if you were so afraid of putting me in danger? Because you need my blood?”
“Our reunion has not gone as planned,” said Maxine, delivering the understatement of the century.
“We employ several human spies,” Richard said. “Some of them work at blood banks, but there are also a few like you—humans who appear to be friendly with vampires. When we discovered that you’d started decoying at Dignitary, we just couldn’t believe it.”
“Then we heard that you’d been involved in the murder of that vampire Michael Graves at Dignitary, so we thought you were in support of our cause,” Maxine said, looking me over with disappointment. “Clearly, we were mistaken.”
Richard said, “You must bear in mind, Olivia, that much of the information we received was secondhand. We don’t know the full story about your involvement with Dignitary.
No matter what we heard, we could never figure out why you were living with a vampire.
We thought you were perhaps gathering intel. ”
“Why on earth would you think that?” I asked, floored by their thought process. Did they think bigotry was a genetic trait?
“Well, you were involved with making the anti-vampire serum,” Maxine said.
I shook my head, frustrated. “As I’ve already told you, I didn’t volunteer for—”
“We didn’t know that until you told us!” Maxine snapped, as if that had been my plan all along, to trick them. These people were out of their ever-loving minds.
I’d reached my limit. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? You obviously want to use my blood to start making the serum again. Why?”
Richard smiled cruelly. “We’re going to introduce the serum to vampires on a grand scale.”
“How do you plan on doing that?”
“You let us worry about the details, dear,” Maxine said.
The odds were not great that Richard and Maxine were going to let me leave their prison. Ever. Still, I had to try. “You were gracious enough to make a deal with my grandfather, so would you maybe consider making a deal with me?”
Richard leaned forward. “What kind of deal?”
“If I give you my blood willingly, will you let me go?” I felt gross bargaining with them, but I figured they were going to get my blood regardless.
At least I could alert the VGO of their plans if they let me leave.
I added, “And of course I won’t tell anyone about what happened.
I would never turn my family in. I’m sure we’re only having a misunderstanding, right? ”
“Goodness, Olivia, I can see Greta has had quite an influence on you. You’re just as devious as she was,” Maxine said with a chuckle, as if I’d told a joke. “And you also lie as badly as she did. I’m afraid we have no deal.”
Richard reached inside his coat pocket and extracted an empty syringe. “Now, be a good girl and give me your arm.”