Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
TALULLA
The unbearable buzzing is what tells me I’m still alive. My head pounds as if it has its own pulse, each throb a reminder that I’m conscious, breathing, trapped.
Fuck, it hurts.
“Great,” I manage to say as I attempt opening my eyes. No light comes from anywhere, but there’s a soft glow that makes me believe an opening is close by. My vision swims, the edges blurry and distorted.
I’m laying in a bed, a floor-to-ceiling window right in front of me. Heavy burgundy curtains block the light from coming in, casting the room in a dim, blood-red haze. I finally look at my body and realize I’m covered by gold blankets.
How original.
A sharp sting on my neck makes me gasp, my hand flying to my skin.
Ouch. I can literally feel the tiny bump from the injection, tender and swollen beneath my fingertips.
“The motherfucker put me to sleep,” I swear under my breath, rubbing the sore spot.
The tranquilizer is still working through my system, making my limbs feel heavy and uncoordinated.
I force myself to sit up, then attempt getting out of bed. My legs wobble beneath me, but I push through it.
The sound of a car engine catches my attention. I stumble and run toward the window, pulling back the curtain just in time to see an older version of me getting into a black SUV.
My father.
Emil is leaving the building, which means this is the time to get out of here and find out what the fuck is going on.
I run to the door, and, not surprisingly, it’s locked. Because an easy escape is definitely not something Emil Popescu would let anyone have. “Great,” I mutter, yanking on the handle. “Just fucking fantastic.”
Still feeling unsteady from the tranquilizer, I try to crack my neck and stretch my muscles, forcing blood flow back into my limbs. “There has to be something I can use to break the lock,” I think out loud as I start browsing the room.
My hands move quickly, searching drawers, checking under the bed, looking for anything that could serve as a weapon or a lockpick.
I freeze as footsteps from the hallway alert me someone is coming my way.
Shit.
I go into alert mode, my training kicking in despite the fog in my head. I quickly look around for anything I can use as a weapon. I open the drawers of the antique dresser as the door to the bedroom slowly opens.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Talulla?” a soft female voice that sounds very familiar says.
I turn, my eyes widening as they meet my mother’s. “Mom?”
Whatever I have in my hand drops to the floor and I run toward the person I’ve missed the most. “What’s happening?” I ask as I wrap my arms around her, holding her tight as I try to contain the tears from falling.
But I can’t.
I can taste salt on my lips as my tears fall onto my mom’s auburn silky hair. Gods, she always had incredible hair.
I always saw my mother as the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen—the most centered, the most controlled, the most powerful one. That’s what my father said as well, and the reason why he broke tradition and married someone his parents didn’t approve of.
How ironic.
Her Irish roots always made my grandparents treat my mom very poorly. They wanted him to marry a Romanian girl, but then they met, and things went very differently. Apparently they changed their minds when my father informed them of the unique talent my mom has. One that she shares with me.
Just like me, she can’t be compelled.
Having a child with their genes would create a very powerful vampire hunter, the ultimate weapon.
Me.
But I’m not an experiment anymore, or at least, I’m not the kind that Emil Popescu likes. I’m a failed trial, because there’s one thing my father didn’t plan for.
He didn’t think that I would have a conscience.
“Your father thinks he’s doing you a favor, Talulla, but he’s the one going mad right now,” my mom says, grabbing my head in her hands and forcing me to look at her.
“Mom, what do you mean? Do you know where Flynn is?”
Her lips turn into a thin line. “Yes.”
“I know I’m clearly a disappointment to you, but I need to talk to him. I deserve an explanation at least.”
She brushes a chunk of my hair from my face and smiles. “The vampire loves you, Talulla.”
“How—what?”
“I know what your father said, and I know Flynn might have omitted things, but I saw him. He can’t fake what I saw.”
I know Flynn loves me. I’m not denying that. I feel it in every fiber of my body, in the way my soul reaches for his even now. But what shocks me is my mother acknowledging it as well.
“You believe him.”
“Don’t you, my child?”
I do, don’t I?
The question surprises me because even if I know he didn’t share everything with me, I still believe him just like my mother does. I want to believe him. I need to believe him.
My soul pulled toward his own when we met, and it continues to do so. He accepts me for who I am—the broken parts, the violent parts, the parts that don’t fit into anyone’s neat little boxes.
But how can I erase every single part of my past and rewrite it?
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Flynn would never ask me to rip my past to shreds. He would tell me to own it, and then he would probably go on a murder spree and erase my past on his own.
I love him. I can’t deny that, and he loves me. He never made me question his intentions. He would burn the world for me, and if I said I wanted to do it myself, he would stand aside and give me the match.
“He told me he was turned during the war, that he was dying, and a stranger took pity on him. But how can he be the first turned if he was turned during the war?”
“He might have omitted things but he was turned during a war, he just didn’t specify which one.”
“I don’t think I’m following.”
“He told me he was turned during one of the battles of the Wars of Roses. Now you have a master in history so I am su—”
“Oh my god.”
Flynn’s last name was Lancaster.
Lancaster.
How could I be so oblivious? How could I not ask more?
The realization hits me like a physical blow. Over five hundred years. Almost six hundred years of life, of death, of existing in the shadows while the world changed around him.
I wanted him to open up, and he was going to, wasn’t he? He did want to tell me something before we got into this mess. The timing might have been wrong, but I know he would have told me. Today. Or whenever it was this morning for me.
He might be good at keeping things to himself but he can’t fake his love, not to me, not to my mother. My father might think I’m too naive and manipulable, but that’s the thing, isn’t it? Flynn doesn’t like that. In fact, he hates manipulation with a passion.
Monica toyed so much with him that he just completely rejected the idea of treating someone else that way. To take away their free will.
He might be the first turned, but he hates being it. This is why it’s too hard for him to drink from me—he just can’t possibly imagine a world where I don’t have a choice.
What I feel, what he feels, what we are is—very real.
I think about the words my mother just told me and tilt my head to the side in confusion. “He’s almost six hundred years old,” I state.
My mother just nods.
Six centuries. Six hundred years of watching people he loved grow old and die. Five hundred years of being alone.
Until me.
“Okay, but what about Bunica?”
Because it makes no sense. Dad is so upset with Flynn because of my grandmother and what happened that day.
“I will let him tell you that story,” she says, her hand caressing my cheek. “Just know that I, your mother, believe every word and you know he can’t compel me either.”
“Why does Dad want to know where the Original is?”
“Emil wants his blood. It’s all he has been thinking about.”
“Dad wants vampire blood? The man who told me every day of my life that he would prefer to drink bleach and die than touch vampire blood? What does he need it for?” I almost yell from the shock that my mother’s words bring me.
The hypocrisy is staggering. All those years of training, of drilling into my head that vampires were monsters, that their blood was poison—
And now he wants it for himself.
“He needs Flynn’s blood, not just any vampire’s blood.”
My eyes widen. “And that is because—?”
“Because if he can’t have the Original, the only other vampire that would give him what he wants is Flynn, the First Turned.”
“Mom, cut to the chase. I have a rescue and escape to think about.”
“Vampire blood enhances human abilities.”
There was no way.
My jaw drops. “Dad would be willing to give vampire blood to hunters?”
Even saying those words out loud makes no sense in my brain. My father spent his life making sure I would hate vampires, and now he wants to fucking drink from them?
What the actual fuck?
“Imagine what you could become if you were fed the Original’s blood every day.”
“That’s inhuman.” My brows draw together. This can’t be happening. My own father is willing to drink the thing he hated the most in this life. He is willing to go insane for his absolutely moronic cause.
Then my mother adds what I was thinking but was too shocked to say out loud, “You could be a vampire without turning into one.”
“That would cause addiction, and that amount of blood would—it would bring Flynn’s death…and hunters to madness.”
Flynn’s death.
The words echo in my head, cold and final.
My father wants to drain Flynn dry. To use him as a blood bank until there’s nothing left.
“Eventually it would. Your dad has been going mad since you decided to quit. I knew you didn’t want this life, you never did, even before Flynn showed up.
” She sighs. “He thought he created the most powerful hunter by having you. Your dad never truly cared about me, not like I cared for him at least. Emil just wanted to make the perfect weapon. A weapon that I need to protect at all costs. You deserve the life you want, my child. Not this. I never wanted you to be mixed in all this,” my mother says with watery eyes.
The truth of it settles over me like a shroud.
I was never his daughter. Not really.
I was always just a tool. An experiment. A weapon he could wield against the monsters he hated.
“I just want to live a normal life, Mom,” I reply, looking straight into my mother’s eyes. “As normal as it can be in our particular situation.”
“I know, baby, I know.” The corner of Nora’s lips lift as tears start to stream down her face.
“Your dad has been dealing with dark witches, and he has been taking vampire blood for a while now.” Her lips turn into a thin line.
“Serj warned him, but your dad took him out of the equation. He killed him in cold blood.”
“Holy shit.”
Serj. My father’s right hand, a scientist and his most trusted ally.
If Emil took him out, then he’s truly lost.
“He wants to create an army of invincible hunters so that he can end vampirism for good.”
“This is not why we became hunters. We hunt the vampires that kill. We don’t attack for the pleasure of taking lives. This is going to be a slaughter.”
A massacre. A genocide.
And my father will be at the center of it, drunk on vampire blood and power, convinced he’s doing the right thing.
“And this is why you need to go to Flynn, listen to him, and then take him away. He wants to stay so that you can run away but I can’t let him sacrifice himself when his death means an even bigger massacre.”
“No, I can’t let him give up his life for this. I can’t let him become a blood bank.”
I won’t.
“He’s in the basement. In a cell. Unarm the guards and find a way to get him out. Your dad is probably back now. I’ll distract him for as long as I can.”
“Thank you, Mom.”
My mother takes my hands in hers and lets a ring fall into my palms.
Flynn’s daylight ring.
I stare at the piece of metal, the ruby glinting in the dim light, and understand that after this moment, I will cut any possible connection with my father.
After this, I know I’ll be his enemy as well.
And my mother knows it.
The weight of that realization settles in my chest, heavy and final. There’s no going back from this. No reconciliation, no forgiveness, no chance to fix what’s broken between us.
Emil Popescu will become my enemy the moment I walk out of this room.
And I’m choosing Flynn anyway.
“You need to be careful,” I tell her, still staring at the ring in my hands.
“Of course, just like you will,” she replies, kissing my cheeks. “Now go.”