Sleeping With The Vampire (Immortal Vampire #2)

Chapter 13

Izzy

I woke up early, feeling refreshed and energized. I must have slept for fourteen hours in the same bed where I had grown up. Our home, a simple clay and adobe hut had been rebuilt after the attack in which my father and brother were killed. Then men working on it had built extra rooms and a court yard, where my mother had put big pots with flowers.

My father told me they had chosen to stay in the desert as it was too hot and sunny for vampires and the climate was so harsh that most people stayed away. Even though it wasn’t the first choice for my mother either, she had planted some trees and watered them from one of the wells that had been dug around our property.

She made it home.

Even after everything that had happened here, it was still the place where I felt safest. After everything that had happened over the past few days, it felt surreal to wake up here, to hear the silence and know that in this part of the world, at least, all was well.

For now.

I got up and went looking for my mother, finding her outside, sitting under a tree, her eyes closed. She wore a big white dress, her hair was loose and wild and there seemed to be so much peace around her.

She opened her eyes and smiled at me.

“Rested?” I nodded.

“There is food in the ice box,” she said.

“How long are you staying?” she asked. I shrugged.

“Not long, I think,” There was sadness in her voice.

I wanted to hold on to her for as long as I could.

“Tell me about Dad?” I asked her.

She smiled again and said, “Come, I’ll make us tea.”

We went into the house and she poured us some iced tea, sweetened with cactus flower. We sat on cushions near the open door, where a draft provided cool air.

“Your father hated people,” my mother said and laughed. “He said they were too noisy, too needy, too stupid.”

I remembered that. He was so impatient. When he wasn’t working, he was fixing things around the house, building things, working. A man of action.

“His family was killed in the Great War. He grew up an orphan. When I met him, he was looking after the horses on the farm where we lived. The moment I saw him, I knew were meant to be together.”

“How did you know?” I asked her.

She was quiet, deep in thought. “I couldn’t stop looking at him. He was still only a boy, but he had a presence about him. He wasn’t silly, like the other boys on the farm. The farmer grew medicinal herbs, which were used for medicine. There were fields of lavender. In summer, we would harvest them. Then all of us would smell of lavender.”

I knew this story already, but I loved listening to it.

“My father was the manager on the farm and we had our own house and land. He wanted me to marry well but I had already lost my heart to your father.”

Her voice faded away. I knew that my father eventually left to become a soldier. Then he went on to become a bounty hunter. Many years later he came looking for my mother. She was the only one of her sisters still living at home. She had refused to leave, saying she was waiting for my father.

“I want to go to him, he’s waiting for me,” she said, her voice filled with longing.

“Not yet,” I begged her. “Stay for me, I need you.”

She closed her eyes, a tear rolled down her cheek.

“Yes,” she said. She got up and went to fetch something. She handed me a small glass bottle. “This is a special potion I have made for you.”

I looked at the vial with the clear liquid.

“It is essence of the Elkana flower. It grows deep in the desert, and once every ten years, it produces a single flower. Its nectar is the sweetest thing you will ever smell,” she sighed deeply. “When you pick the petals, they must be unblemished and young and boiled in clean, distilled water. I used the water from a new well, coming deep from inside the mountains. I made it stronger than usual, left it in the dark for longer.”

She folded my hand around the bottle. “Keep it safe, a few drops will heal almost any injury.”

I gave her a hug, feeling her thin bones in my arms.

“Thank you,” I felt tears in my eyes because it seemed she would not be around much longer. I didn’t know how much time I had.

“Your father was so proud of you, he said you were going to be a great bounty hunter.”

I snorted. “I have made so many mistakes already.”

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t a great bounty hunter,” she said. “It means you made mistakes. He did too.”

“Not many,” I retorted, quickly.

She shook her head. “Many, he made many mistakes.”

I wanted to defend him, but she put a cool hand on my arm.

“You adored him, and that’s wonderful, but…” She shook her head. “Not everything he did was right, not everything he believed was good.”

We didn’t talk anymore and later in the day, I went to town to look in on Costello. He was sitting at a table, oiling some parts and wanted to hear everything that I had learnt at Grey Castle. When I told him about my conversation with Lucca, he frowned, then shook his head.

“News from the Capital is bad,” he said. “There is talk of a revolt. People have been coming here to get to safety.”

I had seen tents outside of our town, Costello told me that they were building shelters in the mountains. “I’ve been seeing vampires at night,” he said, darkly. “But we’ve had no attacks.”

“You think it will come?”

He nodded. “There is a shortage of product. That means they will come looking for food. People are collecting silver, they’re getting stakes ready.”

“Really?”

“I’ve heard one of the blood banks was blown up near the city, so people can’t donate anymore. So people are losing money too. This is bad for everyone.”

I fell quiet.

“What about the demons, what Dominic said about the Council?”

Costello told me of a conversation he’d had with his friend Joe, the next day.

“He said word on the street was that the war was already here.”

We were quiet for a while and didn’t speak. He fetched us some beer and we listened to the music on the radio. It was hard to think that elsewhere, people were fleeing for their lives, being attacked and killed.

“You’d better lock your door at night,” Costello warned. “Don’t be inviting any strangers in. You don’t see people around at night on the street at the moment.”

I went past the graveyard on my way home. I found my father’s headstone and stood for a while, composing myself. Then I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, emptying my mind as I tried to establish a connection with him. I had almost given up hope when his face floated towards me, lit up by sunshine.

“Father!” I was so happy to see him.

But he was angry with me, I could tell.

“What are you doing with vampires!” he said. “They are scum, they are killers!”

I shook my head, not wanting to argue with my father.

“They are all the same, all of them. Sooner or later, they kill us, they feed on us!

Tears were running down my face.

“Promise me you will stop seeing him!”

I nodded but didn’t say the words. I didn’t know if I would see Lucca again. Our last conversation had been so fraught, he had been so angry with me. I had not expected him to be so harsh, so brutal.

Stupid, I know.

Of course, he would take his son’s side over me, choosing not to believe me. I was just a girl, someone he liked and had slept with. But I wasn’t family. And I knew how important family was, if you were actually biologically related or not. Once a family tie was established, the bond went beyond blood. The name was like a spell, it was cast upon you and nothing could tear you apart.

I stopped by the store on the way back.

But the shelves were empty, I could find no bread or eggs. Even the fridges were bare.

I went up to the counter, where a listless woman barely greeted me.

“What’s with the empty shelves?” I asked.

“There’s been no milk delivery,” she said, shrugging. “Cows have been dying, all around the countryside.”

“What?”

Behind me, a man with a basket full of canned food said, “Been happening all over the county. Chickens stopped laying eggs, many dying. People say there’s something in the river water, they’re only watering from their own taps.”

“What’s going on?”

The man was unshaven with a long, unkempt beard. “End of times, I reckon. Time to head for the hills. Before the vampires come,” he said darkly.

“They said there was a delivery coming from Springfield later,” the shop girl said, disinterestedly. “There will be fruit on it, probably, eggs, I think.”

“Springfield is southeast,” the man mumbled, pushing past me to pay for his goods. “May be safer out there. I have a cousin somewhere there. Should maybe take the wife out there.”

He suddenly dumped his basket filled with goods on the floor and rushed out to his truck, taking off with screaming tires.

“Seein’ that all the time now,” the girl drawled.

I went back to get the last few bags of flour and sugar, thinking if nothing else, I could bake some bread. My mother had a few chickens around the yard and there had been eggs in the henhouse that morning.

“You’re not scared?”

She looked at me and there was something in her eyes that filled me with dread.

“Nah-ah,” she shrugged. “I like change,” she said in a dreamy voice. “Things need to change around here.”

I noticed she was very skinny, like someone who perhaps didn’t worry too much about food anyway. Her pupils were big and I realized she was high, barely aware of what was going on around her.

But I was worried.

We were far from the capital and the Grey Mountains but if a war were too break out, it would affect us too. I thought of my mother and worried about her on her own. I called one of my mother’s friends, who was living alone in town and asked if she’d come out to stay with my mother for a bit.

The woman, Frieda, had two dogs that would at least bark and scare off intruders.

“I’m glad you called,” Frieda said. “I guess you’ve been hearing the rumors too? My neighbors have said they’re going to stay over in the hills for a bit. But I don’t know about that.”

Frieda said she knew of another family that might also be looking for a safe place to say. A young family with a baby. I told her there would be space at our house. My mother wouldn’t mind, I knew. She’d stay in her greenhouse, tending to her orchids as whatever foul winds blew overhead.

But I was feeling very uneasy.

Despite myself, I worried about Lucca and whether he would be safe in the castle. He didn’t want to face the truth and I hoped it wouldn’t be the end of him. Even though I couldn’t admit it to anyone, I cared about him.

More than I had cared about anyone before.