14. Cormac
Cormac
I stepped toward Aurora, anger flaring in my veins as I saw the unmistakable leather covering of the lineage stashed in the side of her bag. How dare she leave when she promised we would do this as one?
A low growl rumbled in my throat, filling the air between us. My heart felt like it was going to tear in two, rendering me immobile. Something had felt off on our trip here, but I had trusted her word. Faith in someone’s word was all I had after my family had left. But to get them back, I needed the Cure, and she threatened to run off with my only clue. I gestured toward her. “Is this how it is to be? Have you decided that you will proceed on your own?”
She gasped. “Mac, I’m so sorry. There’s no way.”
I dropped my hands to my side. “What do you mean, there’s no way? You gave your word, and that means we must find a way. I brought you out of the cave to face this challenge together. And here you are, betraying me.”
She shifted uneasily on her crutches. “You must have known—witches and vampires—we can’t.” Her eyes pleaded for an understanding I refused to give her.
“And why not, Rory? Who declared that we cannot work united?” I gestured toward the sky. “What higher power will descend from the heavens and prevent us from becoming who we choose to be?”
Her eyes followed my hand to the clear azure sky before she dropped them to the ground. Finally, she looked at me. “You know the goddess doesn’t work that way, but this is how it has always been. We’ve never been on the same side.”
I took a step toward her, the ground crunching under my foot. My eyes narrowed as I looked at her. “Are you certain of that?” I asked, knowing she was mistaken. Her coven and I had once worked shoulder to shoulder. “Isn’t the coven supposed to remain neutral? Aren’t the hunters the ones who counterbalance vampiric evil?”
“One hunter for every vampire,” she muttered. The oft-repeated phrase wasn’t quite right, but it sounded convincing. Yes, my uncles were all hunters, but only some of their descendants. At this point, I wasn’t even sure who anymore. No one understood the exact magic that created a hunter, but there were far fewer of them than us.
“And are you prepared to fully commit to aiding them?”
She swayed, struggling under the weight of her bag and the injury, her voice pleading. “How am I aiding them?”
“Quite easily. If you take that lineage, the vampires will never find the Cure. And what if we wish to find him to find a way away from this cursed life and not to destroy him?”
She looked at me from the corner of her eyes. “That would never happen.”
“Are you sure about that? Some of us have lived for nearly a thousand years. Such an existence can become tiresome.”
“You could have allowed yourself to die,” she countered.
“Perhaps,” I said, taking half a step back and glancing around before resting my gaze on her again. “But it would have been a painful, gruesome end. And what of the vampire you seek? What if our intent is to contain him as well? Aren’t you hindering your own cause then?”
Confusion clouded her eyes as she slumped forward even more onto the crutches.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Evangeline wants me to come home, and she wants the lineage when I do.”
I stood my ground—with caution—not wanting my blood to boil in my veins again. “And I’m telling you, you’re not leaving here. You promised we would find the Cure together. Besides, how do you know you can learn enough to locate this person?”
She bit her lip before she shrugged. “I don’t. I can only hope the coven’s magic is sufficient.”
Lifting my hands in front of my chest with my palms facing her, I took a few steps toward her. The muscles in her leg trembled as she struggled to remain standing. I crossed the space between us with vampiric speed and grasped her bag by the top loop, steadying it so she could shrug it off. She looked into my eyes before accepting my silent offer, although her look screamed she did not want to. “At least we can go to the steps, can we not?”
She nodded.
“Rory, there’s an entire world in which the Cure could live, and your coven didn’t even know he existed. Do you truly believe you are powerful enough?”
She barely lifted her eyes as I guided her to the steps.
I furrowed my brow when she didn’t answer. “And all because you refuse to work with a vampire?”
“Cannot.” She glared at me as though there was a commandment behind the words.
I held out a hand and helped her to sit before I turned my back to her, hesitating, my head hanging forward. Would the truth be enough to convince her? I pressed my teeth together, willing my heart to stop racing. This was something my family didn’t speak of often. I turned my chin to my shoulder, my eyes to the ground, not wanting to see her face or her to see mine as I uttered the words. “What if I told you…” My words hitched in my throat before dying.
“Told me what?” Her voice held a mixture of curiosity and concern. The concern gave me hope. Would she accept me for what I was?
I spun around to face her, to see her eyes. I needed to know how my words affected her. I pulled a quick, deep breath into my lungs, trying to steady myself before the truth tumbled from my lips. “What if I told you I’m not a vampire?”
I closed my eyes, a tightness in my chest at the acknowledgment my family almost denied. I knitted my brows together and willed my body to relax, then opened my eyes.
Her face twisted in confusion. “What?”
I folded my hands in front of me to hide the tremble in them, forcing myself to spread my legs wide as I shifted my stance into a relaxed posture I didn’t feel, falling back on my instinct to project a calm control in every situation. “You told me we can’t work together because I’m a vampire.”
She pulled her brows together, her gaze falling to my clasped hands before raising back to my eyes. “If you’re not a vampire, how—”
“Vampire blood runs through my veins, but so does human blood. You see, my mother is human—the oldest vampire mate. She drinks my father’s blood daily to live. But that makes me a dhampir.”
Her mouth twitched as she tried to process my words, trying to put together the puzzle pieces in a way that made sense in our cursed world. I sat on the step next to her, wanting to take her hand, but I suppressed the desire and dropped my voice. “Surely you can work with half of me?”
She narrowed her green eyes but didn’t shift away from me. “If you are over eight hundred years old, shouldn’t your human half have died already?”
I nodded. “My parents started giving us blood-laced wine when we were young. If I ever stop feeding on human blood, then I’ll die. But I assure you, while I have all the characteristics of a vampire, part of me remains human.”
She bit her lip, causing my heart to flutter, the move equally endearing and erotic. “How many of you are there?”
I tilted my head, unsure what she was asking, so she continued, “Dhampirs?”
“Including my brothers and me, probably not even a hundred throughout the entire world.”
“How does it happen?”
I chuckled and drew in a deep breath. “Well, when a vampire loves a woman very much...”
Aurora’s eyes lit up as her laughter rang like birdsong through the air. “Oh my God.” She playfully swatted at my arm. “Ass.”
I smiled, my eyes connecting with hers. I searched them for any hint of fear and found only her pure soul. My gaze dropped to her lips, focused there, wondering if I would ever dare to touch them with mine, if I could hope to be given a taste. I twisted to look into the woods in front of the house. “A vampire can impregnate a living woman. Most of the mothers die in childbirth. My mother survived. I often wonder if I’m part witch because I don’t understand how she didn’t suffer the usual fate after multiple births.”
“You weren’t made?” I could tell from her voice that she was searching for answers, a search that lightened my heart. Could I keep her with me?
I shook my head. “I was born just like a human. My brothers and I aged until we were thirty, and then we stopped.”
Her eyes searched around us like she was trying to figure something out before lowering her voice. It was tinged with sadness. “Being a witch wouldn’t have stopped her from dying in childbirth.”
I nodded and swallowed my fear that I would say something that revealed my identity and shattered the fragile trust I sensed between us. “The curse on your coven has been spoken of over the years but not in detail. I only know the fate of the High Priestess is to die in childbirth.” I lifted the lynx pendant, pulling it out of her shirt from between her breasts, my fingers grazing her milk-white skin as I did. She drew in a sharp breath, and her legs twitched. “But then, you are to be High Priestess...”
She gazed into my eyes, removing the pendant from my fingers as she spoke, her voice soft and strained. “There is a saying that the curse will be broken by the witch who is sustained by blood, but no one understands because a witch loses her powers if she turns.”
I stitched my brows together. Why was it every curse that damned us had a cryptic answer? An anger burned in my stomach for her, a desire to free her and allow her to love freely, without fear that it would end in her death. “It seems like we both have questions surrounding our family. Please, Aurora, let’s confront them in unity.”
A silence fell between us as her eyes searched my face. She pulled in a sudden breath and hit the wooden steps, shaking her head. “We should go back into the house and figure out what to do.”
I smiled at her, my gaze moving this way and that as she tried to look away from me. “Does that mean you think we can work together?”
She finally returned my smile with a chuckle. “I think there might be a way we can locate the Cure using the lineage. But it would be much more comfortable inside.”
I attempted to stifle the tingle running through my chest, afraid to hope, but thankful she was returning to the house.