4. The Man I Call Father
While the moment was inevitable, confronting my father was not exactly first on my list while being hunted by demons, having just been turned into a vampire, and hiding from everyone but Julian the inexplicable fact that my psychic powers were somehow intact. I hadn’t even seen or spoken to Daphne or Em since saving them from the fairy queen, the woman to whom I owed allegiance in exchange for saving Julian’s life. Not that I had shared that information either, even with the man I loved. He’d been through so much already, and I couldn’t bear to add another worry, especially one so ambiguous.
I hated secrets. And my father was the king of them. I blamed him for my being in this position in the first place. He’d experimented on my sister and me as kids, injecting us with demon DNA, claiming he was gifting us. I didn’t care that he thought they were gods, what type of father does that? Then he was turned and took off, abandoning the rest of the family. And if that wasn’t enough, he’d apparently turned Julian in to SHADE for killing his sire, Silas, AKA the most evil being I’d ever encountered. The things he’d done to torture Julian, even the psychic glimpses I’d seen… I shuddered as the tumble of painful memories played through my mind. If Julian hadn’t killed Silas, I would have, after he’d tried to turn and torture me as well.
By the time I made the walk to the basement laboratory, my vision was tinted red again, and my nails dug so hard into my palms that if I’d been human, I’d be dripping blood. I knocked on the door and sucked in a breath I no longer needed. I hadn’t considered that the last time I’d been in this space, I’d almost suffered a fate worse than death and had allowed Julian to kill Silas.
Without waiting for a response, I threw the door open and marched inside, head held high as my heels clicked against the cement floor. Seeing Dad, bent over a contraption, ash blonde hair stuck in the air from his goggles pulled over his head and sparks flying from a soldering iron, my chest nearly caved in. No matter how angry I was, that nine-year-old girl inside of me wanted nothing more than to run to her father’s arms.
Not that he noticed I was there. Typical. I strode forward and tapped his shoulder, making him jump and nearly turn the narrow blue flame on me. My vamp reflexes kicked in, and I grabbed his wrist before he could cause any harm. He smiled at me before flipping off the tool and raising his goggles.
When he’d been human, pink marks would’ve been cut into his skin around his eyes and nose from wearing his protective gear. But he, too, was a vampire, turned unwillingly by a man now dead, so his complexion remained smooth and perfect.
“You came!” He tossed the tool on the metal table beside him and opened his arms.
I stayed still but nodded. “I was told if I didn’t, you wouldn’t let us use the lab.”
Arms dropping to his sides, he sighed for dramatic effect. “I needed you to hear my side of things.”
“Which side is that?” I asked with fake cheer. “The side where you explain trying to get my fiancé convicted of murder? Or the side where you justify injecting your daughters with unknown DNA, resulting in an interdimensional war between fae and demons with us caught in between?” I raised an eyebrow, a movement much easier now that I was a vamp.
Dad scowled, and I recognized the set of his jaw when he was trying to hold his temper.
“Do tell?” I prompted, pulling a stool over and sitting.
“They were gods, Charlotte.” The words were a whisper, possibly inaudible to a human, as he looked off toward the corner of the room. “You can call them demons, but they showed me their power. They offered it freely, so how could I say no to that? To giving my children that kind of gift? The abilities it provided you—you can’t tell me you haven’t benefited from them.”
I ignored his last statement. “Turning them down would have been easy. You say, ‘No’ or ‘No, thank you,’ then go on with your life. Or at least discuss it with your partner.”
His lips drew into a thin line as his gaze snapped to the ring on my finger. “So you’re engaged? I suppose you want congratulations? He took your life and made you his. You do realize that, even if you decide to a year or ten or a thousand from now, you’ll never be able to leave him.”
My fangs extended. “I won’t want to, but if I did, he’d let me go.”
Dad’s harsh laugh grated on my ear drums, and I clutched the edge of the table so hard, I made finger-shaped dents in the metal.
“I didn’t raise you to be so na?ve.”
“You didn’t raise me at all. You left Mama to do that, and thank goodness since she understood what love was. You didn’t even come to her funeral.”
Dark veins rose on his neck and face for a moment before settling back beneath his skin as he examined the electronics and hardware he’d been working on.
“I only want to protect you,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I don’t want your protection. Frankly, I don’t want you in my life any more at all. But apparently, I will have to share this lab with you, so I don’t get what I want. What I can promise you is that if you ever endanger Julian or anyone I care about again, you will regret it. Understood?”
“You’ll forgive me one day,” he said, nodding with a smile. “And you’ll apologize when you see the truth.”
“What truth is that?” I challenged, standing so fast the top of the stool spun.
“The rest can’t be trusted. Not even your Julian. It’s us against them, and when you realize that, we can be the team we were always meant to be.”
“If by ‘them’ you are referring to vampires, then maybe you should take a look in the mirror,” I suggested, folding my arms over my chest. “We are them, Dad. And if we are still us, then they can still be who they were too.”
“You haven’t lived among them like I have,” he bellowed, eyes wide—almost mad.
“You’ve been working for some pretty shady individuals since before I was born by your own admission. Vampire or not, you have a skewed sample to judge by.”
Maybe speaking in scientific terms helped, but he snapped his mouth closed audibly and stared hard for a moment.
“Shady indeed. The woman I’ve been running from—trying to keep away from my family for decades—finally caught up with me after all these years, and here you are, openly agreeing to work for her.” He shook his head.
“Who are you talking about? Elsa?” Confusion battled with the anger I’d let guide me so far in this discussion. Then I remembered Elsa’s mention of my father’s character the previous night. They knew each other. And he had told me there was a woman funding his research that he’d run from. Could it really be the woman who’d helped us?
My father let out a harsh laugh. “She’s why Carmichael turned me. The reason I’m a godsdamned vampire. And here you are, offering yourself up on an altar so to speak.”
If that were the truth, it meant that Elsa was also Carmichael’s sire. I shook off the cold feeling that threatened to engulf me when I pictured his attempt to turn me and his subsequent death that may have been my own doing.
It didn’t matter. I would trust Julian. I would trust my own instincts.
My father was a disturbed man and desperate to convince me to forgive him for some reason that I was pretty sure wasn’t related to love. And I couldn’t judge Elsa based on someone she may have wrongly chosen to turn for reasons unknown. For all I knew , Carmichael may have twisted her instructions when he remade my father.
“If she’s so dangerous that you felt you had to hide from your family, why are you here working for her again? You seem perfectly safe and happy. And she’s funding your research once more. Wasn’t that your only qualification when Silas paid you to build him a machine to change me into a psychic vampire and a torture device to keep me locked in for all eternity?”
His face fell, shoulders drooping in defeat. “I was glamoured. I never would have endangered you otherwise.”
I bristled and crossed my arms before letting out a huff. What was the point in arguing if he refused to take personal responsibility?
“I suppose sometimes children can only learn through experience, even when you offer to spare them. Have your meeting, Charlie. But know you can always count on me because, whether you agree with my decisions or not, I’m on your side.”
Charlie. It was a name only he’d ever used for me, and it made me wince. Instead of the warmth it used to bring, now I felt only nausea and hurt.
With no retort from me, he set his goggles down and left the room. Without him in it, the lab felt enormous, daunting. I’d avoided looking at the corner where the battle with Silas had gone down. Where my power had risen to overpower his. The machine he’d glamoured Dad and Lydia into building—basically a casket with a hole on either side to both extract and infuse blood—still sat in pieces on the floor. I shivered, hugged myself, and swiped my hand through the air, sending the pieces into the farthest shadows, out of sight.
The moment it was done, I whipped around, terrified I’d had a witness and already blown my big secret by using my telekinesis without thinking. But the lab remained empty and silent aside from the soft whirring of some machinery busy analyzing materials and computers running simulations.
With several minutes before anyone was likely to show, I sat on the stool behind the station Dad had been occupying when I’d arrived. Swiveling back and forth, I drummed my nails on the metal countertop. Settling down wasn’t easy when I had so much energy combined with everything on my mind. I started tidying his area. Dad had always been messy, so engrossed in his mental calculations that he barely noticed the ice-cold coffee in his mug or the stains on his scattered papers. Even as a child, I’d instinctually cleaned up after him, just like Mama.
Sighing heavily out of habit rather than need, I pulled all the loose printouts and graph papers toward me. It was a wonder he still used so much old-fashioned paper when most of what we did involved computers. I supposed old habits died hard.
I began sorting into piles, calculations, notes, and graphs scratched out in pen on one side, printouts with simulation results on the other. I was about to toss a ripped half-sheet with fold marks when I zeroed in on the chicken scratch scribbled across it.
Fae blood
The words were circled with several exclamation points. I smoothed it out on the table. There was more but the sentence was cut off where it had been torn.
Why it transfers when we?—
And that was it. Who was “we” and what transferred? I bit my cheek, this time able to contract my fangs all the way, and dove into the rest of the papers at super speed, searching for the missing half. But it wasn’t among the torrent on the table.
I was about to go through the trash when the doors opened, and a group of familiar faces stormed the lab. The tightness in my chest unwound, and a smile curled my lips at the sight of all my friends and sister. Zoe, Sam, Lydia, Tabitha, Daphne, Hazel, and even her familiar Karma in raven form who perched on her shoulder. But it was the last two to enter that made my heart leap. Julian, arm circling Em’s small shoulders, met my gaze as he swung the door closed behind him.
Before I could run to her, the rest of the group had ascended, pulling me into bone crushing hugs that no longer hurt. Instead, I returned them with fervor, careful not to break any humans.
When I got to Daphne, I breathed in her floral scent, ignoring the sharp spike of anxiety that came with the lavender in the mix. My heightened senses immediately isolated the tell tale sign I’d come to associate with changelings. The fae had created several human-like doubles to murder the demon board members and one to capture me. The queen had kidnapped the real nymph and replaced her with a monster that killed my mother and almost did the same to Julian. I had to remind myself the changeling who’d impersonated Daphne was dead now, and this was my true friend that gripped me like a lifeline.
“Thank you,” she said in her breathy voice as she released me. Tears swam in her eyes. “I knew you’d figure out how to free those of us captured by the queen.”
“I’m sorry it took so long to find you and figure it out,” I admitted, but she smiled, alleviating some of my guilt.
“Char!”
I turned just in time to catch Em, who’d leaped into my arms. I swung her around, feet flying out behind her as she giggled. She smelled of gingerbread, and I pressed my cheek to her head where her unruly dark hair had been pulled back into a ponytail. Then she tilted her face up to me, russet eyes filled with a mixture of innocence and unsettling wisdom beyond her years. She’d been through so much already, having been used by others just because she was psychic. I’d been shielded by my family until I was an adult, but she hadn’t had that privilege.
“Are you okay?” I asked, setting her on her feet and squatting down to her level, gripping her arms.
“I’m good now,” she promised with a sweet grin. “Uncle Sammy gave me chocolate cake for breakfast.”
“That was supposed to be our secret,” Sam teased from the sidelines.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.
“That’s okay. You deserve it,” I agreed, suppressing a laugh at the nickname Sammy used for a fierce alpha werewolf.
“She’s staying at the coven house with us,” Zoe said.
I looked up to find her and Hazel gripping each other’s hands tightly.
“I’m so sorry about your cottage,” I told the latter, standing.
“It will grow back,” Hazel said with a sad smile.
Sam spun around, clearly confused, but before he could ask, Hazel held up a hand and said, “It’s spelled to do that.”
“Nice.” Sam whistled and stuck his hands in his ripped jean pockets.
“Let’s get down to business,” Daphne said, hopping onto a counter and crossing her long, leather-clad legs.
“Before we start,” I said, averting my eyes to the floor. “I want you to know how much you all mean to me. You’ve sacrificed—continue to sacrifice—a lot to help us. And I want you to know that there’d be no hard feelings if you decided?—”
“Shut up already, Doc,” Lydia interrupted. “We are here because we want to be. It’s the right thing, and you’d do the same for any one of us. You have done the same.”
“We think it’s time to act first, like we did the night at the base,” Sam interrupted, stepping up beside my once-assistant turned vampire.
Instantly, I thought back to the battle between us, the demon board members, and the fae. So much blood and pain that night, and far too many close calls for my loved ones. I recalled with acid clarity the moment the demon Grival pulled his black sword, and how he tried to bring the entire building down on everyone.
I’d stopped him on instinct with my power. But he was still out there, with that weapon that digested auras. I shook my head. “No. I don’t want to risk it.”
“I get that you’re scared, Char, but we did some real damage that night,” Sam said, “There are only two board members left. We can do this if we start attacking instead defending.” His eyes flashed silver as his hand squeezed Lydia’s shoulder, biceps straining against the short sleeves of his T-shirt.
“Let’s say we agree. How do we get them here?” Daphne asked, slipping off her perch.
“We don’t,” Sam answered.
“We surprise them in their own dimension.” Lydia crossed her arms and widened her stance. “The doc did it, and if you’re about to argue that Zoe could be detected somehow if she uses her powers, Binx said he knows where there’s a portal.”
Binx, the incubus, knew about the same portal as Julian and me since he was with us when we’d discovered it in Paris and been captured by MorningStar’s Major Marcia Honeywell. The black ops organization’s goal may have been to collect psychics like me, but the major’s pentiant for torture was what caused Julian’s silver poisoning, and almost cost his life. Their operation was destroyed by a changeling, but Marcia and her leftenant Tomas were still out there somewhere.
Binx was taken along with us and tortured as well. He wasn’t here now for our meeting, couldn’t be in our dimension unless it was night, but as soon as the sun fell, I was going to have words with him about encouraging such risks when he knew full well the potential consequences.
The feel of Julian’s body brushing up against my back shouldn’t have aroused me like it did in that moment. But his purpose was clear when he spoke in my mind through our secret connection. I’d assumed it was no longer possible along with my psychic abilities when he turned me, but somehow all of my abilities had remained when other psychics like Silas had lost theirs.
Stop trying to protect everyone,he cautioned.
He was right. It was a lesson that continued to be difficult when I’d lost so many people I loved. But they had a right to choose their actions, just like I did.
Out loud he said, “This plan has merit.”
Sam grinned appreciatively, and it appeared his and Julian’s rivalry was almost a thing of the past. Maybe it had to do with Sam’s apparent affection for Lydia replacing his pursuit of me. Or maybe werewolf and vampire could overcome instinctual animosity. Either way, I was glad.
“What do you propose?” I asked, still fighting down the burning desire to stop them from trying something.
Lydia beamed, relaxing her shoulders, and Sam put an arm around her, which she promptly shrugged off. She followed it with a look that clearly said no PDA’s, wolf. But when I squinted, I saw the rosy, pink color in her aura and suppressed a smile.
“We send Tabitha in through the fae machine first, to spy on the demon lords and make sure they’re unprepared for our attack. We can’t afford mistakes,” Sam said, entering the center of our little circle.
“Hold on,” I interrupted, glancing over at the other psychic in the room. “That’s dangerous. What if you can’t get out like I did? We don’t have another psychic handy.”
Eye’s narrowed, Tabitha frowned. “You said it enhanced your abilities when you used it. Besides we do have another psychic.”
All gazes turned toward Em, currently sitting cross-legged on the floor, blowing up a plastic glove like a balloon.
“No. She’s not going anywhere near the base,” I said. Maybe I couldn’t stop them, but I wasn’t about to let a child, who’d already been through hell, participate in their dangerous plan.
“It’s abandoned,” Hazel argued.
“And probably ready to collapse from all the damage our battle caused.” My voice came out shrill, but I couldn’t help it. “Not to mention if they happen to go searching for anything…”
“We’ll move the machine down to my basement. My territory is magically reinforced no matter the condition of the structure above. I can protect her there,” Daphne said. “Since I can’t leave this dimension to fight anyway.”
Swallowing hard, I prevented myself from blurting out the wrong thing by questioning her abilities. Daphne was fierce, but that hadn’t stopped her from being captured and replaced with a changeling.
It was only fae royalty able to overpower Daphne, Julian murmured in my mind, understanding my train of thought. She is powerful, capable, and highly trained in combat, he reminded me.
I relaxed a bit. There was little danger in staying with Daphne since the queen already had my obesciance. “Fine. So Tabitha gives the all clear, then what?”
“Then Zoe steps through to us, and we enter, knowing where to go,” Lydia finished, wiping her hands like it was a done deal.
“So…we go to the demon dimension to hit the remaining board members where they least expect it and assassinate two people?” It wasn’t that they didn’t deserve to die for all they’d done and wanted to still do. It was just such a…villain move.
The room grew silent at my words, but the determination on most of the faces told me all I needed to know.
“What about the sword?” I asked suddenly.
“What sword?” Zoe hugged herself, searching my face for answers.
“Soul Eater. I heard the name from my guide, Pythia,” I revealed. “The demon—Grival— has it. It returned to him after Daph— I mean the changeling used it. And aside from obviously enhancing magic, from what I saw energetically, that thing might actually do what it’s named for.”
Sam’s muscles rippled beneath his shirt, showing he was fighting the wolf that wanted to rise within him. Lydia’s palm on his back seemed to calm it back down. Still, the tendons in his neck strained against his skin.
“You should steal the sword when he can’t take it back,” Em said from the floor where she sat with a surgical mask strapped to her head like a headband. “That’s what I see as the best choice. Don’t go try to kill them, or it goes badly.”
A chill swept down my spine. Multiple times, she’d demonstrated that she knew the outcome of things. Perhaps that’s why I hadn’t seen her manifest either mind-bending or telekinesis—few psychics possessed more than one special ability. Em could read future pathways. The implications of that were both enticing and frightening.
“If we replace it with a fake, he won’t call it back because he won’t realize it’s missing,” Zoe said.
“But if we take it, why not kill them while we’re there?” Sam argued.
“Two people will die if you try.” Em wagged a small finger at him.
“Yes, the demons,” Lydia said, hand on hip.
“Nope.” Em shook her head and turned her attention back to the boxes of supplies she’d pulled down at some point. “You’ll have to wait for the horse to steal it, though.”
Mouths dropped open all around as we gaped at the child in silence. She continued playing with lab supplies, oblivious to our shock. With Em’s ability, despite the strangeness of her words, it would be foolish to ignore them.
“We should listen to her,” Tabitha said out loud what I’d been thinking. “The kid’s the real deal, though I have no idea what she means by wait for the horse.”
We all stared at Em for a good few seconds, but it was clear she’d gone back to playing and was done offering insights.
“Okay, so we go for Soul Eater when a horse shows up,” I say. “The only problem is, last I saw Grival use Soul Eater, he pulled it out of nowhere. So finding and replacing it might be a challenge.”