The Vampire's Release, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #4) (9 page)

“I’m sorry.  How are the girls?”

She sighed.  “They’re anxious to see you.  Are you coming to the hearing?”

“That’s part of why I was calling.  I’m worried about Sarah being so far away from the farm.  I understand that Alex has been assigned as a guard, but we’ve had some issues come up that may cause some serious complications.”  I explained to her about Amanda as well as Meekah’s betrayal.  “We’ve also met the original vampire who necessitated the need for the containment zone.”

“
What
?”  The strain in her voice was startling to hear.  Teddy was almost always completely in control of herself and unemotional. 

“
Teddy, how do you know him?”  I asked.

There were several moments of complete silence before she answered.  In a shaky tone, she finally replied to my question.  “He’s my son.”

I looked over at Victoria, w
ho was as surprised as I was.  Then
I realized
h
er hazel eyes were
clouded with alarm and beside her, Jones went entirely still.  She was reading someone and whatever she was seeing inside that head of hers was really getting to her.

“Teddy, I’ll call you back.”  I pushed the end button and approached Victoria.

Grasping her by her narrow shoulders, I peered down into her face.  “What is it?  What do you see?”

Her lips trembled when she answered in a whisper, “Jackson.  He’s…  Oh, God.”

I shook her lightly.  “What?”

Tears shimmered in her eyes.  “He’s staked a vampire in the caves.”

CHAPTER 12 – Sarah

When I woke up, I was still wrapped up in the comforter.  I could see the clock over the kitchen sink from where I was.  It was a quarter after one in the morning.  The fire had died down to only glowing embers.
  Gingerly, I sat up and put my feet on the cold floor.  I wondered where Michael had gone.
 

There was a real chill in the room that caused me to tuck the comforter around myself tightly.
  Something felt off.  The hairs along the back of my neck were tingling persistently.
  Attempting to ignore it
, I walked into the small bathroom by the kitchen and put my wine
-stained jeans back on.  But that odd feeling of danger stayed with me as I pulled the sweater over my head.
 

My heart rate began to speed up and I felt a rise of adrenalin in my body. 
There was a distinct creak from above me, as if someone were w
alking around in the bedroom upstairs.  It was probably just Michael, I told myself.
  I ran my fingers through my tangled hair and viewed myself critically in the small mirror above the sink.

There was another sound from upstairs.
  It sounded like a moan.  I froze in front of the mirror.  That wasn’t Michael.  Still barefoot, I moved to the open door as quietly as I could and peeked around the door frame.  The family room was just as I had left it.  The glowing embers of the fire didn’t do much to illuminate the stairway.

“Hello?” I said softly.

The dark silence increased my trepidation.
  I
listened for any further movement and hearing nothing,
too
k a step out of the bathroom.  The only
sounds seemed to come from me.  My breathing
was
incredibly lou
d in the stillness of the
cabin, as if I were recovering from a long run in the woods
. 

“I don’t know who you are, but this is private property.”
  I waited in vain for a response.

A few more hesitant steps led me to the bottom of the stairs.  I looked up, but could see nothing in the blackness.
  I reached out a hand to
wards
the banister and felt the wood under my fingers
, but the moment I made contact with it, a growl rose up from behind me.

Whirling towards the sound, I pressed back against the wall. 

It hit me like a truck, that spongy, dusty thing that was alive but not living.  I had only a few seconds of absolutely naked fear before the sharp teeth sank into the flesh of my neck.  There was a familiar hard pull that left me very weak almost at once. 

The front door splintered inward with a shrieking crash.

“Elizabeth!  No.” 
There was a stranger standing there in the doorway.  A man I had never seen before.  Correction:  A vampire I had never seen before. 
Like the thing that had attacked me, he was dusty as well.  Tall, wearing outdated clothing, he could be nothing but a remnant of the past. 
Dashing past
the stranger
with a burst of unreal speed, Michael hauled the dead biting thing off of me without much effort and examined the wound in my neck.

He was frantic at seeing my blood.
  But I kept my eyes on the thing that had bitten me, who had landed in a strange looking heap on the wood floor.  I watched the stranger approach the thing
, lean down and stroke what might have been a head of hair.

“Oh, Lizzie.  Try not to worry.  We’ll have you right as rain in a few moments.”

“She’ll have to wait, Truman,” Michael said roughly.  “Sarah’s hurt.”

Victoria entered, followed by Alex.  They both looked very worried.  But when Alex saw my blood, he turned away quickly.  “How is she, Michael?”

Michael’s eyes were silver in the low light as he examined me.  “One bite.  Not at the jugular, thank God.”
  He turned his head towards Alex.  “You should probably wait outside.”

Victoria turned on several lamps in the family room and the overhead lights in the kitchen.  “Bring her in here and we’ll see what can be done.”

He would have carried me, but I insisted on walking.  “What the hell is going on?”  The
adrenalin
was still pumping, but the pressure of it had eased with Michael’s presence.  Victoria found the first aid kit under the kitchen sink and opened it on the shiny countertop.

Michael stepped back once she found what she needed, but his eyes never left my face.

“A lot has happened,
love.”  He explained the altercation between Alex, Meekah, Amanda and someone named William.  William, the original vampire who mad
e the deal that left
my family embroiled in a situation that would change us all.

“He’s alive?  How is that possible?”  I squeaked.  Victoria was trying to be gentle, but the pressure she was exerting was painful against the raised
bite marks
.  “
Ouch
.”

“
Careful, Victoria,
” Michael
said.

“I’
m doing the best I can
.  I don’t have a great deal of practice healing humans, you know.”

“It’s okay,” I told her gently.  She offered me a small smile of thanks and swabbed some kind of antibiotic cream over the wound.  Michael squeezed one of my hands and
left me to go
over to the new vampire called Truman.

“Will she be cooperative?”
Michael inquired quietly.

“Of course.  Just please help her.”

A grimace went over Michael’s face, but then he raised his wrist to his mouth and bit down.

“What the fuck?”  I shrieked.

Victoria put a hand on my shoulder.  “Relax.  He brought Captain Jones back this way.”

My mouth fell open. 
“He’s bringing her
back
?  Why?
  That thing just attacked me!”

Michael hesitated, looking doubtfully from me back to the stranger.  “We should probably do this outside.”

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing or hearing.  What had I missed?
  Truman lifted the
limp
vampire from the floor and followed Michael outside quickly. 

“Victoria, please tell me what’s going on.”

She finished with the bandage and sighed.  “I’m not sure where to start.”

“Michael said that Amanda and the others had Katie.  How did that happen?”

She carefully replaced the unused bandages into the first aid kit and snapped it closed.  Whatever had happened, she wasn’t happy about it either.  It was good to know I had an ally in her.  She put the kit back under the sink and turned to face me.

“William is being used by Amanda and Meekah.  Meekah has been keeping track of him for a very long time.  She must have known about his power from the very beginning, although she had me convinced it was a true love match.  Amanda and Meekah knew they could never gain an advantage over Michael as long as he had Alex on his side.  Only one other creature on earth possesses the same kind of gifts as Alex.”

“William,” I said softly, thinking of the implications of Alex trying to hold onto Katie when faced with that kind of challenge.

“Exactly.  Alex wasn’t happy about it, but Michael let them take your sister.
” 

Alex had likely been thinking about the effect it would have on me.  But why hadn’t Michael? 

“He let them take her?” I whispered.

She nodded and drew a breath.  “He pointed out that she was probably safer with them than in the hands of the Council.  And you are certainly better off not having her here.  For now.”

“But where did these other vampires come into it?”

“Shortly after they took Katie, I sensed something happening in the caves.”

“What?”

She approached me with a pained expression on her lovely oval face
and took both my hands
.
  Her skin was cool and dry.
  “Jackson killed one of the vampires
sleeping
in the caves.”

“Oh
,
no.”  I shook my head, wanting to deny it—needing to know that it wasn’t true.  Jackson wasn’t a killer.  He didn’t like vampires, but I couldn’t imagine him going into the caves specifically to attack a vampire who didn’t have the power to defend itself.  It couldn’t have happened that way, I told myself.  He was a car
ing person. 
How
could he have done such a thing?

“It’s true.” Victoria read my mind, heard the doubts flashing across my brain and confirmed my fear.

“Where is he?”
I asked.

“Captain Jones is keeping him at the house.  The other problem is that when Jackson killed the first sleeping vampire he came across, the others began waking up.”
  She pursed her lips and glanced towards the front doorway, where the remains of the door were hanging on one hinge and the winter
chill was pouring through the cabin like a flood.
  “There are more than we thought.  Seventeen were asleep.”

I stared at her in disbelief. 
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No.  And they are not all buried in the caves.  So we need to get you out of here.  There’s no way we can protect you from that many hungry vampires.”
  She grabbed an afghan lying over one of the chairs and wrapped it around me.  “
They are
taking you to Chicago. 
Michael won’t
let anything happen to you.  Jones and I will stay here to keep Jackson from
making a bigger mess of things.  If we take him off the property, we risk losing him to Isaiah.  None of us wants a repeat of that.”

“What about Nelly?”

“Alex has already talked to her.  She has gone to Greenwood.”

I nibbled on my right thumb and thought about getting a psychotherapist.  How was a normal human supposed to handle all this information?  Not that I was necessarily normal compared to other women, but it still seemed like a lot of stress for one person to handle.

A few moments later, Michael came striding through the door.  His face was hard with concern and that gorgeous mouth of his was pressed into a firm line of determination.  He reached my side and slid both hands over my shoulders, looking intently into my eyes.

“How are you doing?”

I waved a useless gesture towards the broken door.  “Oh, you know.  Just an ordinary evening at the Vampire Hotel.”

“Very funny
.”  He kissed my forehead and urged me towards the door.  “We have to leave.”

“Michael…”  I restrained him with one hand on his powerful chest.

He nodded towards Victoria, who
preceded
us through the broken door. 
I waited a
few moments until I thought we were alone
and then pulled his dark head down to mine for a deep kiss.  The slow purr I felt
rumble through his chest
confirmed that our night together was still fresh in his mind, as it was in mine.  He edged away to grace me with a lazy smile.

“
I love you, Michael,” I whispered.

“I know you do, my love.  Just remember that, okay?”