Authors: Marissa Farrar
“No. I guess you could say she hasn’t been around much.”
She gave a rueful smile. “Bit like my dad, then. Must come with the territory.”
They drove do
wntown, the woman negotiating the storm, the car occasionally losing traction and skidding across water on the asphalt. Yet she managed to keep control of the vehicle, despite a couple of moments where Elizabeth felt as though she’d left her stomach behind.
They pulled up at a motel and the woman parked the car in front of one of the rooms. Lights were on, a soft orange glow. Elizabeth could just make out the darker shadows of people moving behind the closed drapes.
Her stomach roiled with nerves.
Who would be waiting for her?
The impact of Elizabeth’s words
seemed to echo in the girl’s wake.
I wish you’d never come home.
Serenity glanced at Sebastian’s stony face. She put out a hand
and rubbed his arm, wanting to ease the sting of their daughter’s words, but he jerked away.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I
realize she’s just angry. She must have a lot of conflicting emotions she’s trying to figure out.”
Serenity risked a small smile. “She’s a teenager now, right? I guess we need to get used to that kind of thing.”
Vincent stepped forward. “I think she has a point, though.”
Sebastian’s head snapped in the other vampire’s direction, glaring at him. “It’s no surprise that you’d agree with her wishing I’d never come back.”
Vincent scowled back. “I wasn’t talking about her not wanting you to come home. I meant that I agree with her not wanting to go and see an elder vampire. Too many years walking this earth tends to make elder vampires insane with power.” He shot a knowing glance at Sebastian as if trying to prove a point. Sebastian was almost two hundred years older than him. “You can’t trust them.”
Sebastian cocked an eyebrow. “I’ve found younger vampires aren’t exactly trustworthy either.”
“We’re just trying to find our way in the world, figure out what’s important to us.” Vincent gaze shifted over to Serenity and she felt herself shrink under his intensity. She never wanted to be in the middle of this, though she guessed she’d brought it upon herself by not being strong enough to tell Vincent to leave them alone. Except she had never wanted him to. In some strange way, having him in her life all this time made her feel even more connected to Sebastian. It was as if she’d not been able to give up the paranormal world of vampires as much as she’d not been able to give up either man completely.
“So what would you suggest?” she asked Vincent, aware that Sebastian’s stare was now directed at her for daring to listen to the other vampire.
“We should take Elizabeth somewhere remote until all this passes. Somewhere she isn’t going to get herself noticed or in trouble.”
“And what if this doesn’t pass?” asked Serenity.
Vincent shrugged. “I guess then will be the time to consult elders.”
“So you propose we basically wait this out,” said Sebastian, his voice heated. “We sit around and wait for Elizabeth to turn into one of us.”
“If that’s what she is destined to be, I don’t see how any elder vampires are going to be able to stop it.”
“I won’t have my daughter as a vampire if there is anything I can do to try to prevent it. She deserves better.”
Vincent’s face remained impassive. “What we are has its benefits. Elizabeth might come to find she even embraces what she is.”
Sebastian snarled. “What she is, is a little girl. And what do you care anyway?
This isn’t your business.”
“Serenity and Elizabeth have been my business ever since you left. You just abandoned them. Someone needed to watch over them.
”
“I still watched over them, but from afar.”
This was news to Serenity. “What? What do you mean?”
He turned to her. “
I saw you a couple of times. I came to the house to make sure you were all right.”
Her mouth dropped open in amazement. “And you didn’t think to come in and say hi?”
Sebastian scowled at Vincent. “I guess you could say you were busy.”
Her eyes flicked between the two vampires. “You have got to be kidding me!”
she said to Sebastian. “You didn’t come and speak to us because Vincent was around? Haven’t we been through enough for that to not even be a complication?”
“Vincent wasn’t the only reason,” he admitted. “I wanted you to get on with your life. I couldn’t risk my being around to put you or Elizabeth in harm’s way.”
“He can’t even trust himself,” Vincent said in a low tone. “I’ve been warning you about him, Serenity.”
“This isn’t your place
, Vincent!” She tried to keep the emotion out of her voice.
But Vincent seemed to think this was his time to not hold back. “I don’t know what you see in this guy anyway,” he said. “He’s nothing but a goddamned murderer. He doesn’t know how to control himself.”
That did it. With a growl, his upper lip curling in a snarl, Sebastian launched himself at Vincent. He grabbed the other vampire by his shirt and, as though Vincent weighed no more than a child, lifted him and flung him across to the other side of the room. Vincent landed on his back, skidding across the floor. Instantly, he sprang back to his feet, his shoulders rounded, his neck hunched like bull about to charge. But Sebastian didn’t give him the chance. He leaped for Vincent. The two vampires collided, Sebastian shoving Vincent back until he smashed into the living room wall. A framed picture bounced off the wall and fell the ground, the glass shattering, shards scattering across the rug. Vincent outweighed Sebastian by about eighty pounds of solid vampire muscle and had him by a least a couple of inches of height, but Sebastian was two hundred years older, and in vampire terms that made all the difference. He pinned him up against the wall and made no attempt to let go.
“Would you two quit
it!” Serenity hissed at them, not wanting Elizabeth to come downstairs and catch them like this. It was bad enough the girl had to deal with her own problems without seeing two grown vampires acting like a couple of testosterone-filled college kids.
“They’re
my
family,” Sebastian growled, his face pushed up in Vincent’s. “I get to say what happens to them.”
“Actually,
I
get to say what happens to us,” said Serenity. “So you two either sort out your differences or you can both leave.”
She wanted to put herself between the two fighting vampires, but knew if either of them lost control, they could crush her like a moth between two slabs of marble. Even so, she got a
s close as she dared, standing to one side of them, close enough to reach out with both hands and go through the motions of pushing them away from each other. She tried not to let the sight of them frighten her, though any human would have been a fool not to experience even a frission of fear.
Both the vampires’ eyes were glowing yellow, their jaws thickened with corded muscle. Their faces were deathly white, fangs showing from beneath curled lips. But despite maintaining eye contact with each, Sebastian let go of Vincent and they slowly stepped apart.
“Good,” she said, her shoulders relaxing. “And if I see any more of that bullshit, you’ll only have each other for company.”
Suddenly Sebastian froze, his line of sight shifting to the ceiling. “You hear that?”
She shook her head. “What?”
He looked to Vincent. For once the two males were in agreement, Vincent nodding, his lips thin. Sebastian turned, and in a blur of movement, too fast for Serenity’s eyes to see, vanished from the room.
“What?” she demanded of Vincent. “Hear what?”
“Nothing.
I can’t hear Elizabeth’s heartbeat or her breathing.”
“Oh, my God.”
The room seemed to spin around her, her legs going weak. Only Vincent’s strong hand stopped her from falling.
Serenity broke her paralysis and ran up the stairs two at a time to burst into Elizabeth’s room. Sebastian already stood by the window. A shot of irrational horror hit her. Had she jumped from the window because she couldn’t handle what was happening to her? Oh, no, surely her baby wouldn’t do such a thing?
Wind and rain gusted into the room; the drapes lifted and whipped wildly in the storm. Sebastian stepped back from the window and she sagged with relief. His expression was concerned, but not devastated as she’d expected.
“She’s gone,” he said.
Serenity managed to shake her initial fear, but another quickly replaced it. “What?
Where?”
“I have no idea.”
Vincent stood in the doorway. “Maybe she’s gone out to feed again.”
Serenity thought back to what Vincent had said earlier about Elizabeth exposing their kind and the dangers that might bring. Never mind the dangers of any thirteen-year-old girl wandering around the streets in the middle of the night. But Elizabeth was hardly a normal girl. If the change had taken hold of her again, the person she came across would be the one in the most danger.
Still, Serenity was a mom—even if she was the mother of a thirteen-year-old half-vampire—and it was her job to worry. She couldn’t leave Elizabeth out there on her own.
“We need to go and search for her.”
Sebastian turned to her. “Stay in the house,” he instructed, and the next moment he’d vanished from the window. Serenity ran up to the empty window, leaning out into the storm. The wind snatched the air from her lungs.
“Sebastian!” she yelled, but a rumble of thunder above her head drowned her voice. “
Dammit.”
“I’ll go after them,” said Vincent. In the next moment, he’d also disappeared from the room.
Serenity yelled in frustration, her voice torn from her by the wind and rain.
If they thought she’d just sit around and wait, they
could think again.
Sebastian jumped from the
window, leaped the tall wall and raced out into city. He tried to catch Elizabeth’s scent, but the downpour had washed away any trace of her. He noticed something else. The storm had a strange smell to it, a flat, dead odor of nothingness. Of something unnatural. He was used to storms having the opposite effect and making the atmosphere feel more alive and filled with energy. The change was strange and did nothing to help him track his daughter.
But right now, he didn’t have time to give the abnormality any more thought. The pounding rain around his ears and the almost constant crack and rumble of thunder above his head masked his hearing.
He lifted his head and yelled, “Elizabeth!”
Intent, trying to focus all his senses, he strained his ears for any response. None came.
He ran, quickly covering the streets of their neighborhood before heading downtown. In the distance, he heard Vincent’s voice, also calling for his daughter. The knowledge that the other vampire was out here stirred mixed emotions. While he felt thankful for another pair of eyes searching for her, Vincent clearly hadn’t forgiven him for his mother’s death.
The lack of trust between them went two ways. A vampire couldn’t directly harm another vampire—something written into the oldest, darkest laws of his kind—but, if such a thing were possible, it wouldn’t surprise Sebastian if he found a stake in his back with Vincent holding the other end.
The wind increased and slates pinged off the roof of a house across the street, picked off as though they were no more than tiles of Lego. They hit the sidewalk below, shattering into pieces. Fronds of torn palms skittered and danced, caught up in invisible hands to race down the road.
He stopped to think. She was just a kid, she couldn’t have go
ne far. But then he corrected himself. She wasn’t a child anymore, and certainly not a regular one. He had no idea about the limits of her strengths, but he assumed by the fact that she hadn’t been harmed by the jump from her window and had run off silently into the night without him hearing that they were greater than he’d given her credit for. Besides, he also had absolutely no idea where a teenage girl would go in this city, never mind a half-vampire teenage girl on the verge of her change.
He could only cover as much of the city as possible and hope he came upon her.
Sebastian took off at a run again, wishing he could split himself into two or three, or even four. That way he’d cover more of the city. The storm continued to rage around him, but he was absorbed in his search, keeping every sense alive for any trace of Elizabeth.
She has to be in the city
, he told himself.
Why would she go any farther?
Though engrossed in the hunt, something in the street ahead made him draw to a stop once more. A tall, black figure in the shape of a man crossed the road. Though it looked human from a distance, Sebastian could tell the thing was cloaked in shadows and recognized the truth of what it was immediately.
The sight made him stagger back, his eyes wide. Surely he wasn’t seeing what his eyes were registering. A creature like this had no right being in this world!
The demon paid him no attention, instead seeming to focus its attention on a house across the street, as though something inside drew it.
A vampire wasn’t capable of suffering from nightmares, but if he had of been, these things would have been haunting his dreams. What the hell was it doing here? He glanced up into the terrible storm, the clouds swirling as though around an inner cell, lightning flashing at its midst. Did the storm have something to do with this? He had to admit that when he’d first seen the storm hovering over the city of Los Angeles, it had made him think of something paranormal, but surely it didn’t also have something to do with the demon he now saw.
The creature slunk across the road and vanished through the wall of the property opposite. Sebastian hesitated for a moment. Should he follow? Find out what it was up to? But then he had to refocus himself. He was out here trying to find Elizabeth, not chase demons around in the middle of the night.