“Sara?”
I can’t do this.
I wasn’t sure what
this
was but I suddenly knew I didn’t want to hear anything else he had to say. “I have to go,” I uttered, moving to go around him.
“Running away won’t change anything, Sara.”
I didn’t answer, just kept walking.
“I didn’t take you for a coward.”
His taunt brought me to a halt but I didn’t turn around. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I think we both know that’s not true.”
I spun back to him because there
was
one thing I wanted to know. “What about my parents?” I demanded. “Did you know them?”
“Not your father. But I knew Madeline Croix for many years.”
I shook my head. “You’re only a few years older than me.”
His face was unreadable. “I’m older than I look.”
“So what are you trying to tell me?” I asked weakly. “How do you know Madeline?”
There was no softness in his voice, only truth. “I watched her grow up.”
I stared at him mutely and his words hung in the air between us. No, it wasn’t possible. Madeline Croix was a terrible wife and mother but she was not… one of them. Because if she was then that would make me…
“No!” I spun
away from him and this time I did not stop when he called my name. I bolted for the waterfront, afraid to hear whatever he started to say next. It wasn’t true – it couldn’t be true. There had to be more than one woman named Madeline Croix and for Nikolas to make such an assertion after our one encounter was insane.
He appeared in front of me, feet apart, blocking my only means of escape and I skidded to a stop inches from him. My hands flew up to brace me from slamming into his hard chest.
“How –?” I panted.
“Demon speed, remember.”
I winced and backed away. “Someone could have seen you.”
He gave a small shrug. “You and I both know that people see only what they want to see and believe what they want to believe.” He took a step toward me, forcing me to take another step back. “But just because a person chooses to not believe something, that doesn’t mean it’s not real.”
I hugged my arms to my chest. “How can you be so sure?” I asked, hearing the desperation in my voice. “There must be more than one Madeline Croix.”
Nikolas’s sigh sounded almost regretful. “I was sure of what you are before I heard her name. As soon as I saw you the other night, I knew.” He averted his gaze as if he knew I would not like his next words. “My Mori recognized yours.”
The air left my body. “What?”
“Mori can sense each other when they are near. It is how one Mohiri always recognizes another.” He glanced at me and he must have seen the denial forming on my lips because he added, “They are never wrong.”
“I…” I had no idea how to respond.
Nikolas’s dark eyes swept over my face as if he was searching for something. “You felt it, didn’t you?”
I thought about that night and the weird sense of déjà vu that hit me when I first looked into his eyes. There had been an instant where it felt like I knew him somehow even though I was sure we had never met. The same feeling I had when I saw him waiting for me by the coffee shop.
My nod was almost imperceptible. “This can’t be happening.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “There are worse fates, you know.”
“You’re telling me I have a demon parasite inside me and I’m supposed to be okay with that?”
“It’s not as bad as you make it sound.”
“No, it’s worse.” All these years I’d fought with the beast in my head and now I discovered it was something far worse than I could ever have imagined. Nausea curled in my stomach.
He made no move toward me but I heard a softening in his voice. “I know this is strange and frightening, but you are not the first orphan we’ve found. You will adjust as they have.”
“Orphan?”
“It’s just a term we use for young Mohiri who were not born to our way of life. They have no idea who they really are until we find them.”
“Then there are others like me?” The thought that someone else had gone through this gave me a small measure of comfort.
“Not exactly like you.” His brow furrowed. “The others have been much younger.”
“What does that matter?”
He looked away briefly and his expression was serious when his gaze returned to me. “Our Mori need us to survive as much as we need them but they are still demons and they have certain impulses and a will of their own. We learn from a very early age to control those urges and to balance our human and demon sides. Otherwise, the Mori will try to become dominant. Orphans who are not found young enough to be trained, grow up with deep mental and emotional problems, tormented by their demon side. The worst cases become severely schizophrenic and end up in institutions… or they kill themselves.”
I inhaled sharply as I thought about the thing in my head and the dark elation I’d felt as I punched Scott. It had always felt like another consciousness lived in my head, one that would take over my mind if I let it. A shudder passed through me when I thought of where I’d be if I hadn’t learned to control it. I would have ended up just like those kids Nikolas was talking about. Maybe I still would.
“How old was the oldest orphan you ever brought in?”
“The oldest reclaimed was ten and she was the exception. The others were no more than seven.”
“Ten,” I squeaked. If what he was saying was right, I should be insane or dead by now. Maybe he was wrong about me. Maybe I wasn’t one of his orphans after all.
“I know what you are thinking; I see it in your face. You are Mohiri. I know that with one hundred percent certainty.” He took another step toward me, his eyes searching mine. “What I don’t know is how you learned to subdue your demon without training. I’ve never seen control like yours. Your Mori is practically dormant.”
Warmth spread through my belly at his nearness and something fired in my brain. I backed up a step to keep several feet between us. I knew it was that
demon
inside me reacting to another of its kind but that didn’t make me feel any better about it.
“Is that why I’m not fast or strong like you?” I asked to cover my discomfort.
“That and we reach maturity around eighteen or nineteen, which is also when our Mori reaches full strength. You should already have noticed some of your abilities starting to show by now but you’ll have to learn how to use your demon side to enhance your physical abilities.”
My demon side. A shudder went through me. I didn’t want this.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” I told him honestly. “It’s just so much to take in.”
He nodded in understanding. “It will take time.”
My throat was dry when I tried to swallow. “So what else can you do besides move really fast and catch people falling off buildings? What other powers do you have?”
“Powers?”
“You know: can you compel people like vampires do or read minds or heal things. Stuff like that.”
He chuckled. “No special powers or compulsion or anything else. We have the speed and strength to fight vampires. That is all we need.”
“Oh.” Not the answer I expected. If my healing ability did not come from the Mori, where did it come from?
“You sound disappointed.”
“No, I’m just trying to understand it all.” The sun was low in the sky now and it suddenly bathed his perfect face in golden hues. “How old are you? And I don’t mean how old you look.”
I thought he wasn’t going to answer until he said, “I was born in eighteen twenty.”
My jaw fell open but I did not care. It wasn’t hard to do the math; he was almost two hundred years old. And he looked twenty, twenty-one at the most. Then the impact of his answer hit me. “Am I…?”
“Yes. Once you reach maturity, aging will stop for you too.”
“Oh,” I said faintly. People are always searching for the fountain of youth. Even I had wondered what it would be like to live many lifetimes and see how the world changed. But suddenly being faced with the prospect of never aging while Nate and everyone else I loved grew old and died filled me with a sense of loss so great it almost sent me to my knees.
“That upsets you?” His voice held a note of surprise and I guessed most orphans were happy to learn they would live forever.
I nodded mutely. A cool breeze came up and I rubbed my arms, thinking that fall was just around the corner. I almost laughed hysterically at my thoughts. Here I had just discovered I was immortal and I was thinking about the weather.
“You’re cold.” He started to remove his jacket but I waved it away, not sure I could deal with kindness from him.
“I’m fine thanks.” I stared down at the worn boards of the wharf then back at him. “What if I don’t want to join the Mohiri?”
His brow furrowed. “You don’t join. You
are
Mohiri.”
“What if I don’t want to live with them and I just want to stay here? You said yourself that I can control this demon thing better than anyone you’ve ever seen so I don’t need your training.” I’d gotten by okay so far and I didn’t want to leave Nate, Remy or Roland and Peter. I was grateful to Nikolas for saving me and I couldn’t deny I felt some strange attraction for him, but it wasn’t enough for me to turn away from the only life I knew.
“You don’t belong here anymore. What will you tell people when you stop aging? What will you do when everyone you know here grows old and dies? You need to be with your own people.”
Nikolas’s words hurt even though I’d had the same thoughts a few minutes ago. “These are my people.”
“That is because they are all you’ve ever known. Once you get to know the Mohiri –”
“No! I knew a Mohiri, remember, and all she did for me was to abandon me and my father.” He opened his mouth to speak but I blazed on. “My
loving
Mohiri mother deserted us and my dad was murdered by vampires. Where were my people then?”
His face registered his shock. “Vampires killed your father?”
I laughed bitterly. “Pathetic isn’t it? You’d think someone like me would be a lot less likely to be taken in by a vampire, considering my past and my genes. Some warrior.”
I pushed past him and he didn’t try to stop me. Instead he kept pace beside me. “That vampire, Eli, knows what you are now. He’ll be looking for you. Vampires love nothing more than draining Mohiri orphans. We deprived him of that pleasure and he will not forget it.”
My step faltered but I kept going. “I thought you said he wouldn’t get away.”
“He was more resourceful than most.”
“Well if he does come back, he’ll think I’m in Portland, right? There is no way he’d know to look for me here. Besides, this is werewolf territory and the werewolves are doing sweeps of Portland to find the vampires.”
“The werewolves might not catch him either.”
I shot him an angry look. “Are you
trying
to scare me?”
“No but I will not lie to you either.” Nikolas sounded sincere and for some reason that annoyed me even more. I wanted to go home and put him and the Mohiri behind me, to go back to the life I knew and understood.
We reached his motorcycle and I stopped and faced him. “I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful for you saving my life because I am, more than I can say. But your way of life, your people – I don’t belong with them.”
He did not look happy. Obviously most orphans were willing to give up everything they knew for the Mohiri. I was not one of them.
He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a white card containing only a phone number. “This is my number. Call me if you need me or when you reconsider your options.”
I took the card and stuck it in my back pocket knowing that it would end up in a drawer somewhere and I’d never use it. “I won’t reconsider.”
“One more thing.” Nikolas put his hand inside his jacket again and withdrew a sheathed dagger. He turned the knife over in his hand and thrust it toward me handle first. “You may feel safe here now but as you found out Friday night, danger can find you when you least expect it.”
I tried to refuse the weapon but he pressed it into my hand and my fingers closed around the handle of their own accord. When I pulled the knife free of its sheath the silver blade gave off an almost ghostly gleam in the fading light. It looked like the one I had stabbed Eli with, only smaller, and the intricately carved handle was made of a dark polished wood. It fit my hand like it was made for me.
He donned his helmet and swung a leg over his motorcycle. “I’ll be seeing you, Sara,” he drawled before the Ducati purred to life.
“No you won’t,” I replied, but it was drowned by the roar of the engine as he sped away.
I moved like a sleepwalker as I made dinner. It was a good thing Nate was too busy working on a big scene to eat with me because I was incapable of making normal conversation. After I finished my tasteless meal, I escaped to my room where I watched TV, read a book, even did homework; anything to avoid thinking about the weapon hidden in the back of my closet and the train wreck that was my life. No matter what I did, the truth hovered over me like a wave of misery about to crash down and suffocate me and there was nowhere to hide and no way to outrun it.
I paced the floor of my room like a lion in a cage, except I could not roar out my anguish with Nate downstairs. How could I tell him what was going on and who or what I really was? I pictured the revulsion on his face if he learned that I was part demon. My skin tightened and my stomach rebelled whenever I dwelled on the fact that a demon parasite was burrowed inside me. I wanted to scream and rip the ugliness from me so I could go back to feeling human again.
But I never was human, was I? My whole life was a lie. Did my dad know what Madeline was? Did he die knowing his daughter had a monster living inside her?
I stared at my face in the bathroom mirror, looking for signs, anything that would give my horrible secret away to the world. But all I saw was a normal, seventeen year old girl. I’d always scoffed at the kids at school for not being themselves, for trying to be something else to fit in. Jock, cheerleader, bully; they were all masks that hid the real people. But now I knew that I wore the biggest mask of all. I was a demon wearing a human face.
How could I live like this, to endure this knowledge for the rest of my life – my immortal life? I put a hand over my mouth to smother the sob torn from my throat. Nate, Roland, Peter, even Remy; everyone I loved would die someday but I would live on. I could never have a normal relationship because everyone around me would eventually grow old and die. The thought of such a dismal existence brought on a swell of loneliness so fierce I almost doubled over from the pain in my chest.