Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
IAN CALLED THAT NIGHT AND said he wouldn’t be back. Not for a while. He had his family to deal with.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. His family was always Ian’s biggest concern before, and the reason he did everything he did—to protect them. But it still left me feeling empty.
So instead of obsessing over him, I concentrated on what needed to be taken care of in my House.
If I am going to run a successful House, I need every member of it to feel as if they are needed and vital.
Anna has a job: to find the spy and work with Rath to maintain our security.
I task Samuel with finding other Born in our area that are not associated with a House.
His ties run deep and old. Lillian is in charge of PR with the town.
I need her to come up with ways to continue making the town less afraid of me.
I spend a lot of time in my office, staring at my board of names.
Micah.
Markov.
Christian.
Trinity.
Cameron.
I know I will never win over Micah. He will remain loyal to Jasmine to the end. And, he may be my biggest threat because of that fact. He could be a complication I will have to deal with.
Markov. I once thought that if I could sway him to my side that I could do this. I’m already halfway there and yet I don’t have his loyalty. But he constantly seems intrigued by my tactics. I need him on my side, but I’m not sure how to win his loyalty.
I don’t think I understand Christian enough to know how to handle him. His father once ran the House, after my uncle was killed. The King publicly shamed his family. Will he stay with Jasmine out of habit and nostalgia? I feel I’m going to have to enlist Samuel to gain his brother’s loyalty.
Trinity hates me. I don’t understand why.
I’ve never done anything to her personally.
I’m quite sure she will have no desire to come to my House.
But I am not sure I can get Cameron to join my ranks without Trinity.
They are both young, him in blind love with the girl who thinks of him as nothing more than a friend.
I’m going to have to think back in the ways of high school hormones to handle this situation.
Who do I go after first? Markov, Christian, or Cameron?
The air around me is cold and the night dark outside. I’ve yet to die and resurrect, but the more vampires that come to inhabit my home, the more nocturnal my schedule has become.
A small voice in the back of my head says it would make my life easier to simply get my death over with and embrace the inevitable. But there is something else, something basic and so very, very human that says not yet.
And I know. I just know, that Ian will never look at me the same once I’ve resurrected. I hate feeling this way.
There is also the fact that as soon as I am a vampire, I will have to find another way to keep my subjects fed.
Every other day. That’s how often I let one of them feed on me. First Samuel. Second Lillian. And then Anna, just a few hours ago.
It’s a problem I will have to deal with soon. The more House members I gain, the less blood left for me. I will die eventually just trying to take care of them.
A commotion downstairs draws my attention. Hushed voices float my way and I strain my ears to hear them. I walk toward the door to hear what is being spoken.
“This will shift everything,” Rath whispers. “This will destroy her.”
“I will not keep this silent,” Anna says quietly, but with determination. “How would I even begin to hide it, anyway?”
“I will take care of it,” Rath responds. Because he can take care of anything.
“She needs to know,” Anna breathes.
I step out of the office and walk to the balcony that looks over the foyer. I rest my hands on the railing and look down on them. They stand close, the tension a physical thing between them.
“I need to know what?” I ask calmly.
Both their eyes dart up to my face. There is a darkness in Rath’s that says if I hear what needs to be said, there is no going back. But Anna is determined. And, in her face I see the first seedlings of loyalty.
“There’s something you need to see,” she says. “But be prepared, it’s bad.”
For the first time in a while, my heart leaps a little higher in my chest. A slight sweat breaks out on my palms.
I descend down the stairs and just before I’m about to follow Anna out the front door, Rath catches me by my wrist.
“Just remember who you are, Alivia Ryan,” he warns.
But his warning, his reaction, just hurries my departure outside.
It’s still early, or rather, late, depending on how you look at it. It’s just after ten o’clock, so the sky is dark and damp. I cannot see much as I walk with Anna down my front steps and out onto the grounds.
There, between the steps and the fountain, in the middle of the circular driveway, is a large cement box. I squint against the dark, trying to make out details.
Details like the dirt that clings to most of its surfaces. Details like the marble headstone sitting directly in front of the box.
Marlane Ryan. Beloved mother.
The world grows very quiet as reality falls away. Tunnel vision takes over, and the only thing I can see is my mother’s name. My fingers and toes go numb and I’m not really sure I’m anchored to this earth any more.
Something garbled and far away sounds in my ears, but I can’t process it.
I fall to my knees before the headstone. My fingers brush over its polished surface.
Mom.
Here.
That cement box is what she was lowered into. Inside it is her decomposing body.
I laid her to rest three and a half years ago. In Colorado.
But here she is, in Mississippi.
Finally, my body leaps back to life. I vomit, barely turning my head before the sick arrives. Dry heaves then take me over. The violent tremors start.
And the hatred burns in my veins.
“Did Jasmine do this?” I hiss as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Did Jasmine dig up my dead mother and deliver her to my front steps as revenge?” My voice quakes with rage.
“I would assume so,” Anna answers. She isn’t wary or afraid of my emotional reaction. She’s prepared for orders. “No one else would have reason to do something so vile.”
I climb to my feet and place my hands on the lid of the box, taking slow, deep breaths. I remember having to go down to the coroner’s office and identify her mangled, broken body. The deep gash on her forehead. The breaks in her legs and one of her arms.
For three days straight, I sobbed until I had no strength in me.
Inside this box is the woman who was too young, too unprepared for my arrival, but she kept me anyway. Did everything she could to make me happy and safe.
A young, stupid girl with a cell phone and a car ended her life.
And, here she is.
Dead.
Decomposed.
Across the country because of my enemy.
Rath was right. This will break me. This will change everything.
I’ve tried being civil. I’ve tried doing this without devilish tactics. But when my enemy insists upon becoming the devil, I have to fight back with horns.
“This will not go unanswered,” I promise my mother.
I CAN ALWAYS TRUST RATH to take care of things.
He has a new above ground tomb built in the tiny family cemetery the next morning. Right next to my father. After all these years, after only one night spent together, they are here again, side by side. It’s a beautiful and peculiar thing.
I cannot be present when they remove her body from her burial vault and the coffin I scraped every penny I had together to pay for. I want to remember my mother as human, soft, and motherly, and whole, not the decomposing nightmare she surely must look like now.
Rath takes care of it. I’ve never been so grateful for him.
I tried calling Ian. I needed him here by my side as I stood at her new grave. I needed him to hold my hand and talk me down, to say that everything would turn out okay.
But he never answered any of my calls.
So instead, I have Lillian holding my hand.
I have Samuel standing behind me, one of his hands gently on my shoulder.
I have Anna beside me, glaring darkly at my mother’s headstone in front of her tomb.
And Rath, standing so close beside me that I can feel the heat of his body radiating to warm my side.
I may be alone, not a single family member to my name, but I have my new family, there to support me in what is my third darkest hour. They stand here with me, for as long as I stand there.
Until the sky lightens. I know the pain they must be feeling as with every minute, the sky grows brighter. But they do not leave my side.
So finally, I have to think of someone’s unease other than my own. I hug every one of them. Take Lillian’s hand once again. Take Anna’s. And together, as a family, we walk back into our home.