Eternal Changes (Mikah) (15 page)

Lucy broke away from the woman and stepped back. “Who are
you
and where’s here?”

“My name’s Caoilainn,” the woman said, “And you’re in your home.”

Lucy’s blood froze as she stared at Caoilainn. Caoilainn’s golden hair glimmered and her amethyst eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve waited to hold you in my arms and to look upon your face once again for the past seventeen years,” Caoilainn said as a tear slipped down her cheek. “The day you arrived in this world, my heart rejoiced and was saddened at the same time.

Lucy sat down as her knees started buckle. She looked up into Caoilainn’s beautiful face. “Are you telling me that you’re my
mother
?”

Caoilainn nodded as a single tear slipped down her cheek.

Lucy laid her head on her knee as an image of her father flashed through her mind. “It’s not possible.”

Caoilainn touched Lucy’s head. “I wanted to keep you, but I couldn’t. It was too dangerous.”

Lucy jerked her head away and glared at Caoilainn. “
Don’t
touch me. How do I even know you’re telling me the truth?”

“Let me show you,” Caoilainn said as she walked over and touched the wall.

Lucy stared at the wall as the image wavered and changed. There was Caoilainn lying on a large bed, holding a baby. The baby was wrapped in a furry pink blanket. Tears were streaming down Caoilainn’s face as she looked over at a dark headed man. Caoilainn kissed the baby’s blonde head before handing it over to the man. Caoilainn’s hands covered her face as her body shook.

The image changed again and again as images of Lucy at different ages flashed on the wall.

“How do you have those?” Lucy asked.

Caoilainn stared at Lucy. “I’ve always had someone watching over you. You’re my only child and you’re so
very
special.”

“I
know
,” Lucy said. “I’m part vampire and part human.”

 “No, Lucy,” Caoilainn said. “You’re not part human. You’re a Mikah. Part vampire and part shifter.”

Lucy’s heart skipped a beat. “Shifter? What do you mean by shifter?”

“Shifters can change into an animal at an early age, but it’s been repressed since you’re part vampire,” Caoilainn explained,  “I’ve had Malachi check on you to see if there were any signs of the change early on. There was nothing. You were a normal, vulnerable child. This past year, Malachi’s noticed small changes in your scent. The scent of the cougar is stronger now. Soon you’ll be able to shift.”

Lucy shook her head in denial. “That’s impossible.”

“We have a very powerful bloodline, Lucy. Since I’m queen of the Daroch, you’re in line to succeed me as my only child,” Caoilainn said as she walked over to Lucy. “I
had
to protect you at all costs from those who would take your life. You were too vulnerable until you went through the change. The Haemon have a personal vendetta against your biological father. As his only offspring, you were at an even greater risk. They would’ve used you to destroy him.”

“I feel sick,” Lucy said as the room started to spin. Her vision dimmed as she succumbed to the sweet oblivion of the darkness.

Chapter 12

Ashton stormed into the caves not caring who he awakened. It was a few hours before the sun would set, but the Dragomir were just going to have to deal with it. He needed answers and he was going to
get
answers. Ashton pounded on Talmadge’s door and walked in as he waved his hand and lit up the room.

Talmadge immediately sat up in his bed with a stern frown upon his face. “What’s the meaning of this, Ashton?”

“Malachi’s taken Lucy. He said to tell you the pact’s broken,” Ashton said as he walked up to Talmadge. “You need to tell me
exactly
what is going on.”

“Just give me a minute,” Talmadge said as he ran his hand through his hair. “It’s a long story.”

The bedroom door swung open as Jayde entered. “You must’ve
completely
lost your mind, Ashton. What’s the need for all the noise?”

Talmadge sighed. “Close the door, Jayde and have a seat.”

Jayde looked from Talmadge to Ashton as she shut the door and sat down in one of the chairs.

“For over a hundred years, I loved a woman I never thought could be mine,” Talmadge said as he thought about his life. “Our paths would cross now and then and I would fall a little deeper every time, but I knew we could never be.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “I pushed my feelings to the side until that fateful night eighteen years ago. I couldn’t ignore them anymore and I kissed her. Everything around us faded away as our emotions got the best of us.” He looked over at Ashton. “That one night of passion led to the most beautiful creation. My daughter, Lucy.”

Ashton stopped breathing as the news hit him like a freight train.

“So, you fell in love with a human and had a child. It happens all the time,” Jayde said as she walked over to Talmadge and placed her hand on his shoulder. “It isn’t worth beating yourself up over it.”

Talmadge shook his head in denial. “Her mother and I are from two different worlds. When we found out she was expecting, we knew we couldn’t keep the child. Our people hate each other. To have a child that was part shifter and part vampire was considered taboo among the Daroch. We vowed that we would put Lucy with a human family and not see her again until the change was complete.”

Jayde stopped dead in her tracks and looked over at Ashton. “Did I hear him correctly?”

“It’s true,” Ashton said. “I spoke to Caoilainn and she told me Lucy was her daughter. I just didn’t realize our great leader was the vampire who fathered her.”

“You love who you love, Ashton,” Talmadge said.

Ashton stared at Talmadge as he thought about his feelings for Lucy. If he’d been in Talmadge’s situation, he would’ve done the exact same thing. “I can understand that.”

“How could you possibly understand it when you’ve never loved another?” Talmadge asked.

Jayde agreed with Talmadge. “He has a point, Ashton.”

Ashton looked from Jayde to Talmadge. “I understand because I’m
in
love with your daughter.”

Jayde’s mouth popped open as she stared at Ashton. “You’re in
love
with Lucy?”

Ashton inclined his head. “Yes.”

Tears filled Jayde’s eyes. “And here I was, thinking you were going to announce you love
me
as I love you,” she whispered as a single tear slid down her cheek. “How stupid is that?”

Ashton eyes widened as looked at Jayde “I had
no
idea,” he said as he walked towards her.

“Just stop right there, Ashton,” Jayde said as she shook her head. “I really don’t want you to touch me right now.”

“We’d never have worked out, Jayde.
Never,”
Ashton vehemently denied
. “
The difference between the love you feel for me and the love you’ll feel for your true love is eons apart. I’m so sorry, Jayde. I
never
meant to hurt you.”

Jayde ran from the room before Ashton could stop her. He hung his head in shame. How did he miss the fact that his friend was in love with him? He was such an idiot.

“Jayde will be ok in time, Ashton,” Talmadge said as he walked over and put his hand on Ashton’s shoulder. “So…you fell in love with my little girl.”

Ashton looked at his mentor. “I didn’t have much of a choice, sir.”

“That’s how it always happens, my boy,” Talmadge said. “You just get blindsided by it and everything changes.”

“Why did Malachi say that the pact was broken if neither you nor Caoilainn have seen her?” Ashton asked.

“That’s only part of the pact,” Talmadge said. “Did you feed from her?”

Ashton stiffened as he looked at Talmadge. “We kind of got caught up in, um, well, she wanted to know what it felt like, and um…yeah.”

“Then the pact has indeed been broken,” Talmadge confirmed as he let out a long sigh. “I should’ve told you everything before I sent you to look after her. If anyone from my clan drank a drop of her blood while she was still human, the pact would become null and void.”

“Why would that be part of the pact?” Ashton asked.

“That’s one thing that Caoilainn had trouble
accepting,” Talmadge explained. “The shifters don’t harm anything on the Earth unless they’re left with no choice. She never liked the idea of a vampire taking blood from any human, let alone her only child.”

“We need to get Lucy back,” Ashton said as he paced the room. “Do you how to get to where the Daroch live?”

Talmadge sat down on a nearby chair. “Yes, but I can’t go until the sun sets.”

Ashton’s heart thumped in his chest. “Then tell me how to get to their world and I’ll go get her.”

“You’ll never find the way,” Talmadge disagreed. “Plus, Caoilainn won’t let Lucy leave just because you go barging into her home demanding that she releases the one person she’d do anything to protect. I’ll speak to her and try to put the pieces of the pact back together until Lucy goes through the change. She can’t be kept prisoner there nor here. It’s too dangerous. She needs to stay with the family we picked for her until her birthday.”

Ashton wanted to scream in frustration. “So, we just sit here and wait?”

 “That’s all we can do right now,” Talmadge said. “We’ll leave in a few hours.”

Lucy eyes fluttered open. She turned her head and the eyes of a wooden cougar gazed back at her. Its head turned the other way as it stalked its way around the wooden bed post. Lucy jumped up and scrambled off the bed.

Lucy’s eyes widened as she glanced over at Caoilainn. Caoilainn’s hands were sitting in her lap as she sat in a wooden rocking chair by the fireplace. “It moved!”

“You’re in the land of the shifters,” Caoilainn said. “Most things shift or move. It’s part of our world.”

“World?” Lucy asked as she sat back down on the bed. “Like, not on planet Earth?”

Caoilainn nodded. “You’re on the planet Euphranor and you’re in the city of Othniel. This is where you were born.”

Lucy’s voice lowered to a whisper as she hugged herself. “I just want everything to go back to the way it used to be.”

 “I’m not going to harm you,” Caoilainn said as she stood up and walked over to Lucy. She took Lucy’s chin in her hand and gazed into Lucy’s brown eyes. “I’d
never
harm you. You’re flesh of my flesh. I love you more than
anything
in this world.”

Lucy tore her chin from Caoilainn’s soft hands. “You don’t know what
love
is,” she spat. “You pawned me off and let someone else raise me. They took care of me. They wiped away my tears.
They
were there when I needed them.”

Tears welled up in Caoilainn’s eyes. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Lucy shook her head, her hair slinging back and forth before pinning Caoilainn with a scowl. “There’s
always
a choice. Do you have any
idea
how you’ve messed with
my
life?

Caoilainn’s head bowed down as her gaze fell to the floor. “I’m so sorry, Lucy. I just wanted you to be safe.”

The anger welled up and flowed through Lucy’s veins. “I spent my whole life thinking I was a freak and that I was living with my biological parents. In one day, I’ve gone from the happiest time in my life to the absolute worst. I found someone that makes everything around me fade away into nothing and I
finally
realized what it was like to belong. As I start to adjust, something else happens. Everything in my life that I thought was real was one big lie.”

Caoilann’s voice shook. “We wanted you to
live.
Can you not understand that?” She took a deep breath as she looked up at Lucy. “We loved you so much, but we had so many fears. You were so tiny, so vulnerable. You weren’t safe here and you weren’t safe with your father. It’s a cruel world that we live in Luce. It’s survival of the fittest and some would use any weakness to cripple me or your father.
Any.
You were and are our Achilles heel.”

Lucy stared at the beautiful woman in front of her as her emotions rolled through her. “I need some time...alone. Let me go back home.”

 A sigh escaped Caoilainn’s lips as she nodded. “I will grant you your request. You’ll have a year after you change until you have to come back to Euphranor.”

“Why a year?” Lucy asked.

“You’ll need to spend a year with the Dragomir,” Caoilainn explained. “One of them will teach you how to control your urges. The blood lust will rule over every rational thought you have for the first year. It’s not something I can help you through.”

Lucy stared around the room as she tried to contain her emotions. She wanted to cry, scream, and hit something all at the same time. She wiped a shaky hand over her face and then looked back at  Caoilainn. “I’m ready to leave.”

“As you wish,” Caoilainn said as she gently took a hold of Lucy’s hand.

The room faded away and Lucy’s bedroom took its place. She glanced around expecting to see Caoilainn, but she was gone. A sigh of relief left her lips as she took in the familiar surroundings. Her clothes were still strewn across the floor and the sheets on her bed were still rumpled and twisted.

Lucy walked over to her bed and sat down. She glanced over at the night stand and looked at the picture in the oak frame sitting on her nightstand. Her dad’s smiling face stared back at her. She grabbed the frame and pulled it to her. Lucy lovingly outlined her father’s face with her fingers. She touched her blonde hair. Both her parents had brown hair.

Lucy sat the picture back down as she stood up, walked over and looked in the dresser mirror. She touched her face as images of her parents flashed through her mind. She didn’t look anything like them. They both had a darker complexion than her and lighter eyes. How did she not notice the differences before? Was she that blind?

Tears filled her eyes as she rubbed her arms and walked over to the bay window. She closed her eyes.
“Ashton? Are you there?”

Ashton’s voice whispered through her mind. “
Yes.”

“
I wanted to let you know that she let me come back home,”
Lucy said. “
I’m ok. I just need to be alone right now.”

“I understand,”
Ashton said.
“I’m here if you need me.”

Lucy stared outside her window. The urge to run flowed through her. She looked up at the sun that was slowly making its descent in the blue sky. She only had an hour before sunset.

She changed her clothes, put her hair in a ponytail, and ran downstairs. Lucy ran out the front door and jumped off the porch steps. Her heart thudded in her chest as her feet pounded against the gravel driveway. Her leg muscles stretched and loosed with each step she took. It didn’t matter which way she ran or where she ended up. Her feet hit the solid ground of the paved road at the end of the driveway as she propelled herself forward. All thoughts left her mind as her feet continued to pound against the pavement, putting distance between her and her house. Power whirled in her body as she ran. Her nerve endings popped with electricity.

A sigh escaped Lucy’s lips as she unleashed it. Her body felt like it was on fire as she sprung forward. The trees around her blurred as she stared straight ahead.

Forty-five minutes later, Lucy finally reined the power back and stopped. She bent over her with her hands on her knees as her breathing came in short, hard gasps. She glanced over at the building next to her. The small wooden building was the size of a small kitchen. The wood boards had holes in it where the wood had rotted out and fallen to the ground. There was a hint of white paint above the front door. The only word she could make out from the white paint was the word grocery.

 Lucy walked over in the grass and fell to her knees as the emotions from the day poured out of her.  Tears slid down her cheeks. She lay down on the downy soft grass as sobs wracked her body. A frustrated scream left her lips as she pounded the ground.

Strong arms wrapped around her and Lucy stared up into Ashton’s sweet face.

“Shhh…it’s going to be ok, baby,” Ashton soothed as he stroked her hair.

She leaned into him and took the solace he offered.