Chapter 7 Obsession #2
I hear an audible inhale. “Is she one of us?” she asks, her tone changing from sarcasm to genuine curiosity.
“No, she isn’t. There’s no way. She’s mortal, human, I think.”
“Have you tasted her blood?” The question ignites a longing in my teeth, a pain in my gums I’ve denied for so long. I don’t feed like my father, even though I can. The blood is stronger than sex, but I despise that part of myself. I embraced the Lilu instead of the vampire long ago.
“Of course not,” I tell her.
“Then you can’t be sure she isn’t one of us.
You know our people have bred with mortals.
She could have dormant genes that are activated by the presence of other Lilu.
Happens to the vampires all the time.” The word Lilu is one of the oldest for Incubi, while Lilitu means Succubus.
However, every supernatural calls our species Lilu as a whole, favoring the male form.
“Is it possible you’ve found your mate? She must be special to have captured your attention in such an all-consuming way.” No longer worried, she now sounds amused by my predicament.
“She’s special,” I whisper, thinking about her smile, her tears, and my own strange reaction to them.
“You’re in love,” she says, and I can feel the smile in her tone.
“Of course not. It’s more of an obsession. I think.” The truth is its denial. Just because I’ve never been in love doesn't mean I couldn’t one day love Vale. It’s just unlikely. I don’t love, or that’s what I tell myself at any rate.
“Don’t act like your father. He denies his own nature, always.
He continues to deny his love for me. He fights it because he believes love breeds weakness.
Maybe it did then, but he’s no longer the warlord.
This world is different, Ash. Love isn’t a weakness in this time.
It’s strength. So if you love this girl, don't deny it. Embrace it.”
“I can’t. If I embrace this thing between us, it could change her.
I could hurt her. I could take her will, her freedom, a freedom she’s yet to experience.
She needs to live first,” I explain and my chest aches.
I don’t want to repeat my father’s mistakes of course, but I also know myself, the hunger that burrows through my resolve. “I have to let her go for now.”
“Then you’re a fool. If you give her up, if you let her go, you may sever the cord tied between your hearts.
Son, you can’t mess with the fates. They get pissed off and they change your destiny.
You don’t understand how bad it is when your mate won’t accept you.
It feels like your father is systematically removing my organs without anesthetic, slow torture over years and years.
You don’t know the hell she’ll go through if you deny her. ”
“She’s not my mate! It’s impossible,” I yell into the phone, my breathing harsh and uneven. She can’t be.
Mother laughs and it angers me. “I realize she’s young and you don’t want to taint her.
I understand you’re worried, but if you cut ties with her, her heart may harden, and you could lose a mate forever.
The timing is unfortunate, I admit that.
But children are coddled too long in this age, if you ask me.
Don’t give up on her. Believe me when I say it’s unendurable pain to be denied the bond. ”
I don’t want to hurt Vale, but there’s something inside me, some part that tells me to break her so she’ll leave me behind, but then the beast screams in pain needing her light, her touch. It needs her love.
“I’ll be there soon, son. I need to meet this girl. I need to know who’s gotten your heart fluttering for the first time. I’m surprised you've been able to protect your heart this long.”
I roll my eyes. “Speaking of Vale, her grandfather is cataloguing your library. He wants to meet you. He has a lot to say about the Byron manuscripts. Did you have any idea that when we came back here Nicholas Dalton would be our neighbor?”
Silver Springs isn’t large, and I don’t understand why this library has to be in this specific town.
The library had been my mother and Asmodeus’s bright idea.
They thought knowledge would be the only thing that brought all supernatural people together, so they’d collected our histories over the years.
Vampires, Lilu, Witches, and even more species would be able to benefit from it.
The collection had been protected in Hell for thousands of years, but now I’m its keeper. It’s my responsibility to protect it.
She lets out a huff of laughter. “Yeah, I'm sure he has a lot to say. I’m surprised you showed them to him. I don’t think he’d enjoy learning that his theories were a whole bunch of bullshit and Byron was in love with a lust demon.
Don’t give away all our secrets because you’re in love with his granddaughter. Not all mortals can handle knowing us.”
“He found them himself. The collection’s too large. I need help, and he knew exactly what we needed. Nick zoned in on those papers. My name didn’t help things, Mother.”
If ever my mother had loved a mortal, it had been George Gordon. He’d come, all swagger like a Lilu, unashamed of his perversions. He’d been one of her greatest friends, and she’d been one of his many muses. He’d known our secrets. They spent the rest of his very human life together.
I was there when he was on his deathbed, still with so much faith that Mother would find a vampire capable of turning him.
There aren’t a ton of vampires capable of transforming a mortal, it’s a gift only provided to the ancients, closer to Lilith’s original line.
In the end, she’d found a vampire to turn him, but he was gone by the time she returned.
That’s when she left the old world for the new, unable to face a future that George wasn’t a part of.
I think she mourned his loss, even now. Though I will say, she’d driven him half mad by the time he passed over into Hell, for surely that’s where the infamous Lord Byron is now. Probably hanging out with Grandad.
“Oliver, you’re my child most like George.” Her words make me scoff. “It was time for you to wear his name. Also, I don’t like having mortals in the library,” she explains. She doesn’t trust them with our histories, and she especially doesn’t want them to turn on me when I’m here alone.
“I believe Nick and Vale can be trusted with our secrets. You know how it is, mortals explain away what we are. I’m afraid Nicholas Dalton will never believe in Lilu, but he’ll still be fascinated with our history.”
“That’s too bad. I’ll be there within the week.
I need to tie up some loose ends in France before I come to the US.
” I know why she’s going to France. My father lives there with my sister Gabby and her spouse, a young, idealistic vampire named Frederick, who are expecting their first child after two hundred years of marriage.
They aren’t mated but forever is a long time to be alone.
My egotistical father thinks of himself as the rightful king of vampires.
He’s an extremely old vampire who should have been happy to be mated to the first and most powerful Lilu, but he’s fought it, convinced Lilu are weak.
But there’s nothing weak about my mother.
She could bring a thousand men to their knees with a bat of her eyelashes.
She’s the daughter of the demon king, Asmodeus, and therefore more powerful than Asher.
In thousands of years, Asher had never marked my mother as his or completed their mating bond.
He’s refused to share blood with her, which is only one part of how vampires seal the bond.
Even though they’d had children and been together off and on, he still wouldn’t give her the one thing she needed—the thing they both needed—the completion of that bond.
Asher is an angry, vile being who admires strength above all.
He’s fought. He’s destroyed whole cities.
He’s conquered because he could. He’s fought for more and more power.
But he’s also struggled in the modern world.
He can no longer fight in secrecy and being a warlord is his entire identity.
It’s who he is; he’s a vampire who wants to rule all the others.
On the other hand, my mother has blended in seamlessly, accepting that time changes all.
Vampires and Lilu don’t breed like mortals.
The births are rare and, in vampiric society, the females are often protected, even after turning.
It doesn’t matter that Gabby was half Lilu and half vampire, Asher would guard her till their child was born, then guard that child till its turning.
He would kill any who came near the child, whether friend or foe.
Mother would go to France, if she wasn’t already there, to calm Asher for Gabby’s sake, then she’d escape and flee across the Atlantic before he could trap her, which he still tried to do on occasion.
As much as Mother loved him, she couldn’t stay with him. His stubbornness—denying himself, denying her peace—hurt her too much. I couldn’t imagine hurting Vale like that, and I didn’t even know if she could be my mate.
Could Vale be my mate?