CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He blinked, leaning back.
“Today after the café?”
“Don’t play fucking stupid with me, Uncle Henry,” I said, his name dripping with the venom I kept fighting back. “When Declan and I were growing up. When Jacob died. When new vampires took over, and my mother died. When I died,” I hissed at the end. “Where the fuck were you?”
Henry’s openness, the appearance of his friendliness and love for me, shuttered. I watched as his entire body language turned inward, no longer looking me in the eye.
“After Liam died… I was heartbroken and had to leave,” Henry said softly.
“And I realized I was putting myself through the pain. Every generation, watching you all grow up and getting attached and then watching you die. Liam… hit harder. I thought he and I would have decades more together to watch you and Declan keep growing up.” Henry swallowed.
He blinked several times, the pain of memories on his face so clear, I recognized it for the moments I felt the same.
“With Jacob… Since I had left, I intentionally didn’t keep up with the mundane news.
It wasn’t my home anymore. I didn’t need the gossip, who worked for who.
All of that. But everyone heard when Jacob died.
The vampire world mourned… but the transition was being handled, and it was Jacob’s nest. It would be handled well.
Everyone thought that. I didn’t see a possibility that…
that it would go wrong. No one saw what happened coming.
If they had, it wouldn’t have happened. Alexius and Isaiah should have been more on top of it.
From there, all I heard was that humans, including staff, had died, but…
it’s not like we were given a list of names for humans. ”
“And in all of it, you didn’t hear that I had become a vampire? I work for one of the vampires you just mentioned.”
“I’d heard,” Henry admitted, closing his eyes. “Yes, I had heard about that.”
“And? Not even an attempt at a call? You must be in Maria’s nest. You could have stepped forward about who you were to me.”
“You grew up. You became a vampire traumatically. That much I had heard. And with Alexius…” Henry shook his head.
“There aren’t many vampires who will try to inquire about his household, and you are now part of it.
” Henry fiddled with something. “Being part of Maria’s nest, I had also heard some of the things you had been up to since waking up to the eternal night.
” Henry looked at me once again, up from what he was messing with on his shirt or something.
“And the Everly I knew wouldn’t do those types of things.
I wasn’t sure who I would find after so many years, and you were busy becoming something even more different than I had ever thought.
Years I spent letting go and making something new for myself.
I didn’t expect to see you at the café, looking exactly how I had tried to never imagine, staring at me from a past I tried not to think about.
In Los Angeles of all places. I came here to get away from the history, and it followed me. ”
My heart hurt. I was still mad, but damn if he didn’t do the same thing so many other vampires had to do when they needed to.
Move on from the mortality of it all. Face the reality that watching your family die was painful.
I wasn’t ready yet. That was why I was even in Los Angeles to visit Declan. I wasn’t ready yet.
“You wanted a clean break, and me showing up fucked that up,” I said, nodding.
“I hate to say it, but it’s typically the best decision for a vampire. To properly move on and let the humans go means…” He didn’t finish, so I would for him.
“Letting them die,” I whispered, no longer looking at him.
“I’m so sorry about everything that happened to you. I am. It’s never what I would have wanted for you or your mother or anyone from Jacob’s nest… I understand the anger, Everly. But perhaps, now that we’re both on the same side of this… we can make something new?”
“I’ll need time to think about that,” I answered.
“Honestly. I… I understand. It’s something I’m facing right now.
But the wounds of my human life don’t go away just because I’m a vampire now.
I won’t forget the hours and days I raged that you weren’t there to help, and I was alone.
” I blinked, trying to dismiss the full wet feeling in my eyes.
Ignore it, conquer it. I didn’t feel like crying a second night in a row.
“And of course I would join Alexius’s household.
When I reached out for help, he answered.
I’m only here because of him. He made sure I got out that night.
He’s the one who’s taught me how to be a vampire.
He’s the reason I know the names Isaiah and Maria, and I’ve spent far more time with Isaiah than I’d ever want. He’s something else.”
“That would be treasonous from me, so you need to count your blessings that you can get away with it,” Henry said, chuckling.
“Someone so young, though… you’ve been rubbing elbows with ancients.
I’ve always preferred staying in my lane around vampires my own age.
Being friends with the Master or Mistress of a nest…
I actually like being here with Maria more than being in Jacob’s nest. She allows us to exist on our own more.
We have lives outside of the small world around her.
Whereas Jacob was always so nosy, wanted to know what everyone was doing all the time.
The world he crafted was the only world, and if we wanted anything else, it had to be in his world. ”
“He probably did that for the vampires who needed help.”
“Oh certainly, but I never needed the help. I was just Turned by a vampire who did. I was a second-generation vampire in that place. It felt like too much sometimes. I think he always knew that too. When it was time for me to go, he was certainly okay with it. He knew it was time. Probably his age and experience in those matters.” Henry shrugged.
“Alexius had to tell me how old Jacob had actually been, you know. He just never came off as an ancient.”
“He was good at that. Jacob wanted to be everyone’s friendly older brother, and to those who didn’t really know…
they fell into it. They believed it. The rest of us, we vampires, we needed him as Master of the nest. He was stricter with us.
We could see his age better. He had to train a lot of the ones with control issues, and we witnessed it. ”
“Must have been really obvious when Isaiah or Alexius stopped by.” I could only imagine. In all the time I had been there, I never saw either of them.
“No one liked when your boss showed up,” Henry said, something dark coming over his face.
“Isaiah almost never showed up at the nest, and when he did, he tried to hide that he was even there. But Alexius… he came with a storm. He wasn’t the sign or the portent of things to come.
He was a thing.” Henry seemed lost in a memory, looking into space.
“Someone was bitten. Someone died. A human’s scream had pierced the night, and by the next time the sun fell, he came.
Jacob finally admitting defeat, and so came his father, death itself.
And at the next meeting, there would be one fewer…
” Henry blinked and shook his head. “It didn’t happen often, but it happened enough. ”
“Yeah… I could see how that would be terrifying,” I conceded.
“Jacob’s age showed when his father was there.
Not so much Isaiah. In fact, they could have been college boys together if you witnessed them, both pulled back to youthful days in whatever complicated relationship they had.
But Alexius made both of them centuries older in a moment.
Faces changed, postures shifted. And when the two most powerful vampires you’d ever meet sit up straight for the man who walked in, you realize they aren’t the two most powerful vampires.
He was. And he was there to kill someone. ”
“Yeah. I saw how the other ancients look at him. At least those who decide to show up to Isaiah’s parties.”
“Exactly. And you live with him. How do you relax?” Henry made a face. “I would never. I’d feel like I had to perform all the time.”
“He gave me my own space. An entire suite. I have nearly free rein over my own work. Knowing his humans helps. And since I got done with all the control training and how to move in human spaces safely by myself again, I take walks in the city when being home becomes suffocating, and he doesn’t stop me.
” I didn’t tell Henry the real humanizing parts of life with Alexius.
Watching vampire movies and laughing at the inaccuracies or chuckling at movie werewolves.
Arguing about how he breaks his phone too often.
The way we had to stop training because our hearts were beating too hard.
How he escorted me by the arm, wanting to stand on pomp and circumstance and keep things professional when something in his expression told me he didn’t want that at all.
Knowing he paced endlessly alone in his office thinking no one knew he did it, overthinking things the way so many other people did.
I barely knew the vampire in front of me anymore, and those pieces of Alexius were for me. Only me. If he had ever wanted the world to see those parts of himself, he would have taken more chances to show the world them.
“Well, at least he’s respectful of you in the basic, bare minimum way,” Henry said, sighing. “Why don’t we order? I know you’re getting the bill, so if we’re not going to feed, that’s okay. Just something to do with our hands.”
“No, you’re right. Getting restless with nothing to mess with on the table,” I admitted, looking down at how I was tying my fingers together. “I assume you’ve ordered at a place like this before? I haven’t. Nothing like this in Savannah, so…”