The Vampires' Birthright (26 page)

Before long, we reached the exit from Nashville International Airport, and the military checkpoint described by Mitch. A pair of Humvees sat nearby, and a dozen soldiers guarded the area. All were carrying the same assault rifles I saw on TV a short while earlier.

I feared being detained. The thought of having my daughter taken away from me while I went to jail for having a false I.D. was enough to make small beads of sweat form along my forehead and my back, despite the limousine’s air conditioning. It didn’t help matters when the guard gruffly demanded to see my passport. He looked at the picture and then back at me suspiciously.

“Make sure you abide by the seven o’clock curfew, ma’am.” He handed my passport back. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do,” I said, adding an exaggerated nod to emphasize my agreement.

He waved us through, and we were soon on the highway heading for the hotel. The Opryland Hotel apparently is among the most celebrated hotels in Nashville, and once had an amusement park attached to it. Tyreen had told me about the place last fall. She and her beau, Johnny Ayers wanted to spend a weekend together there, but found the price too exorbitant for their college allowances.

I’m sure she wished they had splurged and ponied up the cash for a stay at the five star resort. Johnny is now crippled for life after one of Ralu’s warriors threw him down a stairwell at Massey Hall. Not to mention she’ll forever be a vampire incapable of sustaining a passionate relationship with a mortal. I’m sure those memories were part of what had her so upset when our plane arrived in Nashville.

Once the limousine arrived at the hotel, I went through the same verification process as I did at the airport. Mitch advised he’d return for me by 5:30 p.m. unless I called earlier, and handed me a card with a phone number, which I slipped into my purse. His tone lost all of its previous warmness as he reiterated he would not wait for me beyond 5:45. That would give him plenty of time to return me to the hangar in the airport. It would also allow him time to drop off the limousine, and return to his home in nearby Antioch before curfew time.

After I got directions on how to find the Cascades Restaurant from the hotel’s front desk, I moved through what looked like a sprawling botanical garden, complete with ponds and fountains galore. The restaurant was located in the midst of this enchanting place.

I saw him just as I got to the hostess station. I had no idea how I’d react or respond to this moment. He was in a conversation with an older gentleman at the bar and didn’t see me at first, so I had the opportunity to watch him unnoticed. He was beautiful. Perfect. Dressed in a casual navy blue business suit sans a tie, he looked like a movie star. I watched him for a couple of moments. His deep brown eyes had that magical twinkle and his smile was flawless. He always had this ability to make you feel like you were the complete center of his attention, like you were the only thing that mattered at that moment. It was one of the things that made him a good boyfriend and would have made him a good father. Even when he was talking with a stranger, it helped him connect with them quickly. Combined with his Hollywood good looks, he could have been a hell of politician if he wanted.

As my heart beat faster, I started to wonder, how did I let this one get away and more importantly, had I? Here he was, merely a human with a single short lifetime of experience, and yet for a moment, I felt as I had when I had first seen Racco or Garvan. They each had their own supernatural pull on my heart, so how could poor Peter compete? Yet here he was, the father of my child. It’s complicated, and who’s to say that it truly was over between us? Chance and circumstance had pushed us apart, but, depending on what happened right then―in the few hours before I was forced to return to the plane where my guardians slept… Perhaps the glowing embers of a love light that had grown dim could be fully rekindled.

Anything is possible, as they say.

“T-Txema?” he stammered when he finally noticed me by the hostess stand. “You’re really here―
oh, my God!”

Peter quietly excused himself from the older gentleman’s presence and rushed over to me. He was about to throw his arms around me when he noticed the baby girl I carried.

“Is she…” he couldn’t finish, and I watched his eyes tear up.

“Yes, Peter, this is our daughter, Alaia,” I said, feeling my own eyes become misty. I had hoped he would love her as much as I do.

“Alaia,” he repeated, tenderly. “She’s so,
so
beautiful.”

“She’s got your eyes, your hair.” I giggled nervously.

He gently lifted her from her basket, and the smile she already had on her face grew brighter.

“Alaia… you are amazing!” he said, matching the brightness of her countenance with his own. “Just like your mother is amazing!”

He looked at me, longing in his eyes. Yet, there was also incredible sadness, along with profound pain of some sort.

I didn’t like that combination, and wanted desperately to steel my heart against the onslaught of emotions flooding my entire being. But I couldn’t close the gate fast enough. In that instant, I realized without a doubt I still loved him. Whether that meant ‘in love’ or some other level of desire would remain to be seen. But, chills went throughout my body.

I believe our thoughts followed the same line, and it got a tad awkward for a moment.

“I’m Peter Worley, and my guest has arrived,” he said to the hostess. As she moved to seat us at a small table close to one of the pond fountains, he asked if he would be able to also order something for his infant daughter, if that were possible. The hostess smiled at both of us and said she’d talk to the kitchen staff and see what they could come up with.

“I still can’t get over this. You’re really in Nashville!” he gushed, once we were comfortably seated with Alaia in a high chair. “I have to admit, I almost didn’t come. I just couldn’t believe it was true. Then this morning I got a call from a woman named Nora, and she convinced me I needed to come. She reminded me of…” He swallowed before continuing. “Some things that happened last November that nobody else could possibly have known. She was very convincing and very insistent that I wouldn’t want to miss this.”

“Nora’s pretty amazing,” I said, wondering what exactly she said in order to convince the boyfriend whom I hadn’t spoken to for six months to pique enough interest to meet with me. “I wonder how she got your cell?”

I thought back to when I was on Racco’s yacht speeding across the Atlantic last year. I no longer had my iPhone, which for all I knew still sat in my dorm room at UT. Maybe I had written Peter’s number down somewhere to where it was in a pocket at the time. Or, perhaps when Peter was brought to France against his wishes, he either told them the number or they confiscated his handset and got it that way. Really, she probably just read his mind, but he had been violated in so many ways, I didn’t want to add that to the list.

“That’s the craziest thing about this, Txema,” he said, shaking his head. “Nora called me at my parents’ place. That’s where I’ve been living since they closed UT to freshmen and sophomore students until next fall. Classes are only in session right now for juniors and seniors, and they’re handling those online. There’s literally no one on campus in Knoxville. Nearly four hundred people died there. And all the other colleges and Universities in Tennessee have shut down for the summer, until this Chupacabra thing gets resolved.”

“Did you ever tell any of the vampires in France that you’re from Nashville?” Definitely mind reading.

“No, not that I know of. They kept me in that fucking dungeon…” His hands trembled atop the white tablecloth. I reached across and held his hands. “Right up until the night I saw you, I thought they were going to kill me.” He frowned as if he had been unexpectedly forced to relive the worst aspects of that experience. The waiter arrived with a beer that Peter must’ve ordered while waiting for me, and he took a long drink from the bottle.

The waiter turned to me. “Would you like anything madam? Perhaps a glass of wine or a cocktail?” I said a silent thanks to whichever one of my companions had ensured my fake passport said I was twenty-two years old, just in case it came up.

“I’ll take a glass of chardonnay, please and also, do you mind if we go ahead and order our food, too?”

I had only glanced at the menu, but was beginning to feel quite weak since we sat. I also hoped this would help move us away from what happened in France and back to the here and now.

“I’ll take the filet,” said Peter, when the waiter told us he didn’t mind waiting a moment for me to decide what I wanted. The stuffed crab sounded the best to me, and after Peter finished the rest of his order, I went ahead and completed mine.

And then changed the subject.

“I’ve really missed you!” I said, once the waiter left us alone to ourselves again. “I can’t believe how much, it’s been so crazy with everything going on.”

I couldn’t believe how hard it was to talk to him, and part of that was because I felt unsure of how our shared ceremony of vampire sex had affected him. Granted, he didn’t have to physically touch anyone other than me during that event, and no one touched him. But, nearly two hundred undead souls watched Peter achieve orgasm with me. I only hoped the fruit of that forced union, Alaia, was enough to rekindle a new connection between us. A bond that above all else would be a good thing for our daughter.

“I’ve really missed you, too, Txema,” he said, smiling sadly until he looked over at Alaia, who played with a teething toy. His face lit up again in a genuine smile.

I had the distinct feeling something had changed since we last were together as a couple. Something that went far beyond the fateful events of last November.

“How are your parents?” I said, looking for a distraction until I could get a handle on what had changed. “And how are they taking all of this current craziness going on in the world?”

“They’re good… well at least as good as can be expected,” he said, bringing his attention back to me. “Dad’s still the flexible one, dropping his caseload to share with other law firms in the city. Mom worries more than she used to, since my folks’ retirement plans to move to Key West in a few years have been hindered by their 401k accounts taking a severe hit from what’s happened lately on Wall Street.” The conversation continued in this vein for a while, with him filling in some major gaps in my knowledge about the “Chupacalypse” as some of the seedier news stations were calling it. The homonym with chew was apparently too tasty of a ratings boost to resist. When a lull hit the conversation I jumped in with the real question that had been eating at me.

“Are you seeing anyone these days?”

His smile dipped ever so slightly, which was all I needed to know that indeed there was someone else.

“What’s her name?”

I tried to sound cheerful, despite the knife I felt going through my heart. We always love the ones beyond our reach the most, or so I’ve heard. In this case, I fully expected someone new to be in Peter’s life, even before Alaia’s birth. But I didn’t expect to feel the massive tug on my heart when I saw him in person again. Truly, some things are better where they’ve been left, so both people can move on with their lives. Now that I realized what I’d lost in this fantastic man, my hunch was he could happily move on with his new life―even with the knowledge he was now a papa. As for me, I wasn’t sure whether I felt sad or guilty or relieved. Probably some mix of all three.

“Her name is Sara,” he said, and then our food arrived. I had to wait through several agonizing minutes for him to go on and tell me more.

It almost destroyed my appetite, despite the excellent cuisine. The waiter even managed to produce a small bottle of milk for Alaia that I carefully monitored, since it meant something a little different than she was used to drinking or eating.

“I have a picture of her I can show you after lunch, if you’d like to see it,” he said, picking up where he left off when halfway finished with his filet. His smile was hopeful, as if he desperately wanted my approval of his new love. Despite all of his intelligence and charm, I remembered then that he often missed the subtleties that an older, or at least more mature man would notice. Like how I had hardly made a dent in the stuffed crab upon my plate. “Have you been seeing anyone lately?”

Sure, Petee-boy. I’ve been dating up a storm. In fact, I’m a real hit with Chinese dragons and Nepalese Buddhists.

“Not right now,” I said, trying hard to keep my smile from fading. “Alaia is all I can handle in my life right now,” I lied. Still it helped draw enough energy to boost my smile back up.

“Hmmmm,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. He went back to work on the filet and sautéed mushrooms.

“So, what’s she like?” I asked. “Did you meet her at school or here in Nashville?”

“We met at a spring music festival in Franklin, not far from where my parents live,” he said. “Her mom and my mom grew up together, and when they introduced us, we sort of hit it off. Sara’s a great gal, and a lot of fun to be with. She’s studying voice at Belmont College here in town, and should have her degree finished in the next couple of years. I’d bet you two would hit it off, if ever you’re back in town again.”

“She sounds wonderful, Peter,” I said, holding the smile while thinking to myself that this ‘great gal’ Sara and I might not have so much in common, other than competition for Peter’s affections. “That’s great. I’m happy for you both.”

It was a white lie designed to ease his conscience and make him feel better about how things had turned out with us. It also closed the conversation off enough for me to finish my meal, which I did with gusto. I ate everything in arms reach. I mean
everything
. Dinner rolls, the green garnish stuff. Desert mints. You name it. I hadn’t eaten anything in sixteen hours and before that, nearly thirty-six hours ago. Peter watched me with an odd look.

“I guess you were really hungry, huh?” he said, after the waiter came by to tell us that the tab for lunch had been paid for in advance by Nora Sterling. I pulled out a couple of twenties from my purse and left them for the waiter before Peter could pay for the tip. I also asked the waiter to offer a special thanks to the hostess for getting a bottle of milk for Alaia, since her shift had ended and she had left for the day.