Xenides cursed angrily before asking Angelo for details. Angelo gave them. Xenides had new respect for his little princess, now. He couldn't wait to have her under his command.
* * *
Roff waited up for us and he shouldn't have. He fretted over the wounds we'd gotten, although they were already closing. The healing sleep would finish them up for us. Gavin was feeling gun shy, I think; he insisted that Roff sleep downstairs. Roff hauled a pillow and blanket down and slept on the sofa in the underground living area.
"Tell us about these shapeshifters," René asked as we helped ourselves to a unit of blood in the safe house kitchen. Gavin finished mine after drinking a full unit himself.
"I don't know much; Kifirin told me that some of the Elemaiya have the gift of shapeshifting." I sat down at the small kitchen table with a sigh. "The other gifts include mindspeech, misting, foresight, that sort of thing," I said. "Saxom was able to tell who had what gift, maybe. He could sure sort out the Dark Elemaiya. I wonder if he wasn't of that race himself, at least in part."
"No way to tell unless your true sire is more forthcoming," Gavin grumbled. I'd been doing some thinking about my true sire. And about Merrill's statement that he couldn't lie and that everything he'd told me was the truth. The first part of his statement was bothering me more and more. His words were, I knew the vampire and werewolf races were dying on this world. And that statement was followed by You are the answer to so many things that were troubling me. I had to go Looking for your mother. He knew the vampire and werewolf races were in trouble. I was the answer. He'd had to search for my mother. I'd been created as the solution to a problem. Yeah, it bothered me. I wasn't a love child conceived in some fling my mother had; it was calculated. And if I were the answer to the problem he saw—the problem of the vampire and werewolf races that were dying, then I would have to belong to one race or the other.
My parents hadn't been werewolves, so that had been out of the question. Griffin had known I'd become vampire eventually. He'd known. If he hadn't planned it, he'd seen it. He admitted that one of his talents was foresight. I didn't know at the moment how I truly felt about my mother's part in this. Griffin said that her ability to mindspeak with him encouraged her to come to him and have a child with him. Did she regret that after Howard Graham started beating her?
"Fuck," I muttered, rubbing my forehead with shaky fingers. "I want to go out for a while, Gavin." He frowned at me—was about to tell me no, but something in my expression must have stopped him. He shrugged and said nothing as I misted away.
There aren't many tall buildings in downtown Oklahoma City, and most of the lights are turned off during this portion of the night. I looked out over the downtown skyline anyway. Dawn was close, but hadn't I gotten up during daylight before? It wouldn't kill me if I chose to sleep on the roof of the safe house. I hugged myself tightly, my knees drawn up to my chest. What did my father want from me? I wasn't naïve enough to think it was love.
* * *
"My baby has already discovered the flaw in the tapestry," Griffin sighed. Amara sat at the kitchen island in the guesthouse, sipping a cup of tea in the early afternoon light shining across the English countryside.
"What do you think she'll do, Brenten?"
"What she should; think she was born as a matter of convenience for others. It won't stop her from doing what's right, love. She'll just hate me while she's doing it."
"Her life has been filled with pitfalls," Amara sighed. Griffin shrugged. "Tell me you don't love your daughter," Amara gazed at Griffin.
"I can't tell you that," he said and folded space. Amara didn't know where he went; she only knew he'd be back. Eventually.
* * *
"Tony, you shouldn't be up here, dawn is coming." He'd used his newly acquired vampire strength to climb to the roof of the safe house and now settled lightly and noiselessly beside me. I looked at him for a moment, hoping the tear stains weren't showing on my face. That hope was short-lived.
"Lissy, why are you crying?" He put an arm around me. I wondered if René and Gavin knew he was here with me.
"Tony, if I tell you, then René will know. And then Gavin and Merrill and Wlodek and anybody else they choose to tell." I wiped my cheeks with fingers that trembled slightly. We'd be forced to go inside soon so Tony's skin wouldn't blister.
"Baby, you have to tell somebody, don't you?" He tightened his arm around me.
"I don't think so," I said, betraying myself by sniffling.
"It has to do with dead relatives. And your father. I heard his words, too, baby. It didn't sound like you were a love child. He said he went looking for your mother because the vampires and werewolves were in trouble." If Tony was putting two and two together, then the others probably were, too. Why didn't I just stand on a rooftop somewhere and blubber out my misery for the entire universe to hear? They were going to find out anyway.
"How did you manage to get away from Gavin and René?" I asked instead.
"They asked me to come," he said softly.
"Gavin's not afraid you'll jump me while we're alone together?"
"He was. That's why he asked René to place compulsion. I can hug and kiss you a little, Lissy. I can't go farther than that." The regret for that was thick in his voice.
"Compulsion," I muttered. "The most damning word in the vampire language."
"I'm happy to be vampire and I know you're not," Tony tucked my hair behind an ear. My strawberry blonde curls were long enough to do that, now.
"My husband's grave is that way," I pointed to my left, which was north of where we were. "Now I can't go there because the image of his brother's body lying on top of it will be in my mind. Dead because of me, Tony. Tell me how I'm supposed to live with that. Sara's dead too, whether they killed her or she died of a heart attack or whatever. Who else is going to die because of what I am? My father made me because of what I would become. He knew I'd be turned, Tony. That was the plan, don't you think?"
"I think he might have wanted to save the world, that's what I think." Tony nuzzled my cheek gently.
"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" I rose abruptly. "How was your childhood, Tony?" I looked down at him; he was still sitting. I reached for his arm and pulled him up easily, turning us both to mist. My mental sigh was passed to him as we sank through the roof and then through the upper floor and down to the basement, minutes before the sun rose. René was waiting patiently and Tony was ushered into his bedroom by his sire. I was jealous of that, even.