That sounded incredibly ominous. “What measures?”
The familiar stranger seemed hesitant, making a steeple of his fingertips, his elbows spread wide to rest on the arms of the chair. “You and David were destined, and logically there would never have been anything I could do to stop you falling in love with him. But.”
“Dad?” I sat forward, so did David. “I don’t like hanging ‘buts’.”
“I never intended for it to get out of hand. In fact, I couldn’t have known what would come of it.” He looked once over at the door then back at David, his shoulders high, head hung low. “I used to my advantage the skills and the unquenched need for vengeance of your brother, David.”
David wet his lips, his brows digging a ditch down the middle of his forehead. “How?”
“After Ara came to live with me, I thought long and hard about taking her away—far away. But she’d just lost her mom and Harry, and I knew running away—learning about what she was—would be the death of her.” He looked at me. “You weren't strong enough then to have coped with that. And I would rather you brought Anandene back into the world than to see you lose the will to live again. So I stayed put, let you go to school, even meet David in the hopes he’d trigger immortality for you, but I wasn't going to leave it at that. Jason will have no memory of this, but I…” Dad swallowed hard, cupping his fist loosely in front of his lips. “I do not ask your forgiveness, Ara, nor do I want it. I was protecting my little girl from entering a world I’d fought for centuries to keep her ancestors from, and I will never be sorry for that.”
“Dad, what did you do?”
“The masquerade,” was all he could choke out, taking a minute to swallow down his obvious grief. “Everything that happened to you that night, Ara, was my fault.”
“How?”
“I was the one who told Jason of your existence in the first place. Not that you were Lilithian, but that you were the love of David’s life.”
“Why would you do that?” My voice pitched to just below yelling. “He only came after me to hurt David!”
“It was simply a means to an end that escalated, and—”
“You asked him to kidnap me?”
David sat further forward.
“No.” Dad put both hands up. “But I planted a seed that allowed the vengeance to fester more than it would in that boy. He’s not capable of such heinous actions on his own, you know that, and had I not interfered before that night, he would never have come after you that way.”
“Dad, none of this is making any sense.”
“As the twins will know,” he explained, “there are consequences for messing with one’s mind—after-effects that can remove a great deal of free will.”
David nodded, his dark eyes thoughtful, fixed angrily on my father.
“I used Jason’s hatred for David to make him act against you—compelled him to bind you in a dream—bind you to Mike, so that when he came to visit from Australia, it would incite enough confusion of your heart that, perhaps, David would leave.”
The energy in the room drained away, taking the warmth with it.
“I knew David was a stubborn, proud boy, and that if you indicated any confusion of the heart, he wouldn't stand for it. It was my hope that he would leave, you would marry Mike, and have a child.”
“A soulless child!”
“Yes. And she would have died. And this contract would be void.”
“You would have watched me bury my own child—not ever knowing why she died? One after the other, Dad. Every baby we had would have died!”
“Yes.”
“That’s inhuman!”
“Not as inhuman as subjecting the world to Anandene and her insanity.”
I cupped my innocent baby. “She is only a child—”
“Now. But she will grow. And you will have little control over her.”
“And what then? Are you gonna kill her, Dad? Are you gonna—”
“I will do nothing to hurt her. You have my word.” He exhaled. “I gave up that fight a long time ago—had to accept that there was nothing I could do to keep you and David apart. And since then, Ara, I have done nothing but fight to keep you both safe. Do you know what Drake planned for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“The day you were arrested.”
“No. I mean, yes. I…” I closed my eyes softly. “I’m starting to wonder now if my own conclusions were right.”
“He planned to kill you, Ara—cut you up in pieces and offer you back to David in secret on the condition that he fathered a child with you—under Drake’s roof, in darkness from the world—where no one would ever have found you.”
I froze from core to flesh.
“It was by the grace of God that you’d turned Mike and that he would not give up on you. Drake makes this noble claim to sending Morgana to rescue you, but that was not his intention, Ara.
Morgana was there purely to save David so that Drake could squirrel you both away and the world would be none the wiser that you survived.”
The room fell silent while images of that possible future played out in both David’s and my mind.
“I expect that kind of malevolence from him,” I said, my eyes watery. “But for my own father to have taken steps to ensure I bore a soulless child…” I shook my head. “That hurts, Dad.”
“I do only what is best.”
“For who?” I said loudly. “Drake would have come after
me
if I’d had a soulless baby—made me have another child so he could insert Lilith’s soul into it and start all over again.”
“No, he could not insert her soul into another childless vessel without my help.”
“Why?”
“It’s not a power any vampire can possess, steal or recreate—not even with magic. It is my power, and I choose when to use it.”
“So … but he can resurrect her?”
“If he has all the pieces to her body. But without the key to her tomb, he has no access to her bones.”
“I thought there were two keys—that he had one and the other was lost.”
“Yes. A key to the tomb and a key to the sarcophagus she lies in. But the key to the tomb was lost many centuries ago.”
I clutched the Celtic key resting on my sternum.
“Look, this entire affair is my fault, because I agreed to go along with Lilith’s attempts to right the wrongs between herself and her brother,” Dad said. “And since that day, your mother and hers before her and so on have paid the price—choosing to
give up
their soul. I would happily have let their children die to stop Drake, but the girls had too kind a hearts and couldn't live with that decision. And it is only by their will to see their daughters go on that I even considered moving the soul of Lilith again.”
“So, you would've let
me
die when I was born?” I touched my chest.
“Had Rose not begged me to save you, yes.” Dad nodded. “However, Ara, not a day goes by that I regret the death of Rose to bring you into this world. Nor Amara before her, and so on and so on.” He smiled so warmly at me that I believed him. “But it has always been my intention that
you
would be the last carrier of Lilith—no matter the consequence.”
“That’s why you left me this?” I drew the talisman out to show him.
His eyes flicked quickly to a picture on the wall across the room—one I’d never really noticed before, but as I looked at it, I saw a young girl with a man beside her. His face was hidden, but I could tell from the perfectly captured set of his shoulders that it was the same man sitting before me now. “It was my mother’s before it was Lilith’s and, eventually, yours. But the significance of the charm is not in the age or the heirloom. It’s in the connection.”
“The connection?”
He nodded again. “Every soul that is born is connected deeply to the blood of the body it occupies. It owns that body. It cannot be untethered except in death. But when a soul is taken from a dead body and transferred into another, it will never completely connect. It needs to be bound by an object—tethered to the earth by a trinket, so that the bearer may keep the soul in place.”
I looked down at the silver circle, closing my eyes around that strong, connected feeling I’d had since I first put it on.
“Your soul is bound to this charm, Ara. I’ve guarded it—protected it all these years so it would never fall into the wrong hands. But I know, from what I’ve seen, that you are now strong enough to protect it yourself. And you must do so with your last breath, because no threat Drake makes against me can force me to transfer your soul back into the body of Lilith without that charm.”
“Why?”
“Your soul is trained, you might say, that when it untethers from your body, it goes to the point of origin—to the thing it feels most connected to.”
“And it’s connected to this?” I asked.
Dad nodded.
“Then how come…?” I started but stopped, biting my tongue.
“How come what?” Dad asked, one brow moving slightly down in interest.
What I was about to say would surely hurt David, I knew that. And it was something I’d never told him before. To find out this way might force that gap between us even wider. But it was time to let it out. “How come, when I leave my body while I’m sleeping, I’ve never ended up with the necklace?”
Dad frowned. “Where do you go?”
“
I end up … with Jason.” I looked timidly toward David.
Dad looked for a split second, too. “You do?”
I nodded.
He scratched his head then rubbed his chin, and as he pinched his lips, making a circle of them, his eyes smiled, lips following a second later. “So that’s what she meant.”
“What who meant?”
He sat back, his ‘thinking vein’ popping up on the side of his head, disappearing as his distant gaze flicked to my belly. “Perhaps you needn't worry for her as much as you do.”
I touched my belly, quietly letting everything over the last ten minutes sink in. “I tell myself not to worry, but Anandene sounds evil. I mean, everyone makes such a big deal out of this—like she’ll reign terror on the world or—”
Dad laughed.
“I have a feeling that, perhaps, she may not turn out quite so bad.”
“I
know
she won’t. But even if I raise her right, she’ll want to be with
Drake
. Her own uncle, and…”
“She won’t,” he said, and he was so sure of himself I had to stop the protest I had lined up and ask what he meant.
“I can’t go into detail right now, honey, for your safety and for the baby’s, but I can tell you that you can trust me when I say you needn’t worry at all. She will have
no
desire for that son of mine.”
“Really?”
He nodded once. “And
I
will deal with Drake—and his intention to take your life in eighteen years. Don’t you worry about him, either.”
I quietly wondered how he knew about that, but also knew he knew more than I knew he knew, so didn't worry too much about it after that initial moment of confusion. “What are
you
going to do about it?”
“He’s my firstborn son. And because of that, I never thought to rid the world of him. But he went too far this time. I cannot allow him to exist any longer. Having you arrested,” he said, rubbing a very firm hand over his mouth after, his eyes glassing over, taking position on a distant object across the room while he composed himself. My heart broke a little bit then, not for the pain I suffered during those dark days, but for the pain Dad clearly suffered too in
knowing
who had me and how he’d hurt me. “Doing what he did to you was the final straw,” he added, “and if I thought you could have handled it at the time, I’d have seen to my own human death back
then
to be in your life and help you through that. But I knew the initial shock of my passing would kill you, and I couldn't risk that.”
“You couldn’t have just told me what you were?”
He shook his head. “No. I had to have regained my full vampire strength and youth before anyone could know. Without that, I am vulnerable and would have been in no position to protect you. It would have taken weeks before the ageing was reversed. And, in that time…” He shook his head, letting us all imagine what might have happened had I been tortured, lost David and lost my dad all in one week. And I understood why he wasn’t there—even though he clearly knew exactly what his son had done to me—but it still hurt.
“I
was
there, Ara,” he said, and I drew back in shock.
“Did you just read my mind?” I asked.
His grin gleamed.
“Oh God!” I covered my face with both hands. “That is going to take some getting used to.”
“Didn’t take you long with me,” David said, a cheeky glint sparkling in his eye.
I ignored that and looked at Dad. “So, I guess I know now how you always knew when I was lying.”
He laughed. “No, your face gives you away. And I very rarely used my ability to figure you out, Ara. I wouldn't do that.”
“Rarely? But you did use it?”
“After your mom died, yes. I needed to be sure you weren't planning to kill yourself.”