Divine Blood (Vampire Love Story #6) (11 page)

“
You tell them for me. It
was hard enough coming here to talk to you face to
face!”

With that, Atticai got up
and left my castle. I walked him downstairs and to the big door. As
soon as the door opened, he transitioned into his black raven form.
It was not until many years later that I even saw him
again.

Chapter
Fourteen

I stacked the pancakes. A stack of a
dozen usually did the trick unless Joshua decided to pound down six
pancakes again. If that happened, then I’d have to make some more.
So, I needed a few more. I poured the batter in the pan and
continued to think about the days that followed our family visit to
the Deity.

Just like Atticai had
said, Brock Houston eventually rose up and, with my blessing,
became the governor of Attica Island. Mainly, it happened because
there were no other viable candidates for the position. I couldn’t
get a read on Brock Houston, other than he seemed to be one of the
nicest people I’d ever met. I had no idea what his temperament was
about, and how he came to be that way. But I know vicious men.
Sometimes, the cruelest had the calmest, presumably coolest
blood.

Brock Houston ruled Attica
Island with an iron fist and the island turned itself around and
became very prosperous. It was pretty impressive to see what he had
done with the mess that Atticai had left. I didn’t blame Atticai
for the governing mess he had left Brock Houston with, because
Atticai had been preoccupied with his wife’s illness. As in my
life, family and loved ones came first.

I was excited that Atticai
had picked a good replacement. The first time I became suspicious
of Brock was one spring day. Back in 2025, my boys had been 13
years old. And, it was then that Jason had come to me and just said
four words to me about Brock Houston. That was all I needed to
know. Jason had said to me, “I don’t trust him.”

I was stunned because
Jason loved and cared for everyone. For him to make that type of a
statement sent a shiver down my spine. What was Jason seeing that I
wasn’t?

I decided to find out. If
you want to know about someone, get yourself invited to dinner, so
that is what I did. Under the guise of asking him to show me the
improvements to his island, I wrangled a dinner invitation out of
him for my entire family to meet his entire family.

Brock and I were breaking
bread at his new deluxe refurnished revamped castle that looked
like something out of a fairy tale. While my own castle was
old-school sixteenth century, his looked like something out of a
Disney animated feature, right down to the hedges trimmed in the
topiary shapes of animals.

My family and his family
were finally having dinner, governor to governor. Brock had one
son. He had had him when he was human, right before he became a
Mani. No mother was in the picture. I never quite knew what had
happened to the boy’s mother, I just knew that it was Brock and his
son, Pierce, hanging on to a semblance of family.

Pierce was one tough four
year old. I heard he had some medical problems early on, but seemed
to be doing okay.

Brock and I broke off from
the rest and I could tell he wanted to have a talk with me, man to
man. I didn’t know him that well and I took it as an opportunity to
get to be more comfortable with my decision of allowing this man to
govern my other island.

We entered the billiards
room, passing by the ballroom, the conservatory, the library, and
so on. This house was laid out like a regular Clue board game. I
kept my amusement of the architecture to myself.

“
Do you play?” Brock
asked.

“
Pool?” I
asked.

“
Billiards,” he said
correcting me, as if I was a three year old.

“
No, it’s not my kind of
sport. I’m more man versus man and see who is the baddest between
them, not play a game where I hit balls with sticks in
holes.”

“
Not even
golf?”

“
Golf’s not bad-ass enough
for me, sorry.”

“
I learned my lesson. I
will never correct you again,” Brock laughed.

I laughed, too. I guessed
Brock wasn’t trying to be a total douchebag. Guys like him just had
it oozing out of their pores: class consciousness. I could see that
he was a nice guy, but he played the room like Donald Trump. Why
did he play the room? What was he trying to gain? Was he just that
much of a cocky ass who acted that way without having another
agenda? At this point, I wasn’t certain what I believed, but I’m
leaning to the latter. I think he was just born cocky.

“
You have to admit it,”
Brock said to me.

“
Admit what?” I
asked.

“
You and I are alike. In
fact, a lot alike.”

“
How so?” I asked,
thinking there wasn’t much of a similarity between us, beyond that
we each governed an island for Mani people, but I was curious
enough to see what he might say.

He filled me in. “We
understand the people around us. We understand how to impose our
will onto others, so they believe it’s their own will. You and I
are a lot alike. I want you to never forget that.”

“
Interesting perspective.
I never thought of myself that way, that I was imposing my will on
others. I think it’s time for us to go, but thanks for the lovely
talk,” I said. “I think we learned a lot about each other
tonight.”

“
Don’t be afraid, Josiah,”
Brock said.

“
Afraid? Nothing makes me
afraid,” I said indignantly.

“
Oh, that’s where you’re
wrong, my friend. Each of us has at least one thing that terrifies
us to tears and deep, deep inside, we all know what it is that
scares the hell out of us. It’s different for each of us, but we
each have at least one thing that keeps us from thinking we’re
gods.”

“
Speak for yourself.
Without fear, we could not have courage,” I said.

“
That’s profound,” he
said.

“
And with that, I’ll say
good night, Brock.” I was beginning to understand that he was still
a nice guy, but had a bit of a kook mentality to go with that
nice-guy exterior.

After dinner, Lena, the
boys and I were flying back by helicopter to Helena, our island.
Jason looked me straight in the eye and said: “I don’t trust
him.”

“
Why?” I asked my
thirteen-year-old son. Foreboding flooded me, even making the tips
of my fingers hurt.

“
I don’t trust that
family. Something isn’t right.” Jason would say no more on the
topic.

Chapter
Fifteen

I knew I was going to have to reheat
the pancakes in the oven.

Neither the boys nor Lena would want
to get up yet. I’d let them sleep and work on another aspect of my
lumberjack breakfast. I got out the bacon and sausage. It was also
potato time. Time to dice up those babies and put the necessary
oils on them to make them delicious. My boys ate a lot these days.
Growing like weeds, it started happening about three years ago when
they were thirteen. There was a sudden influx of quadrupled
groceries into the house and they devoured just about everything in
their paths, turning the copious amounts of food into muscles and
energy. If they weren’t in their rooms, they were usually in the
kitchen, making tall, thick sandwiches between meals to stave off
their constant hunger.

When they were thirteen,
they seemed to scare me most. That was when Jason wanted to become
the mystery healer, and the old superhero save-the-day gene that
was deep in my soul was being fulfilled in helping him do this. The
Deity had said no more Vampire superhero—she had said that I was to
focus on my family. I did so, every single day, trying to be a
super parent instead of a superhero. But the Deity had said nothing
about the super dad who took his son to do some of the most amazing
miracles, of all time. Well, since Biblical times.

Now that my sons knew way
too much for any two thirteen year olds to deal with, I decided
that the only way Jason would feel good about his gift was to
practice it and feel the gratification that came from healing the
sick or injured. Plus, he was begging me every day to be able to do
it. He was passionate about helping others with his healing gift,
from the four-footed furry friends on the island to the two-legged
beings, Jason wanted to touch and heal everyone.

I let it be known in my
smaller, private circles that if someone needed some miraculous
healing, they were to contact me. I might or might not have my son
try to heal the person. I wanted him to develop his skills, but I
also wanted him to get experience helping others and discerning who
to help. I wanted to keep things on the down low about his healing
abilities, while his powers developed and he learned to use them
properly.

The next couple of years,
we took in applications, basically from our friends, and we would
determine who needed healing the most and prioritize his visits to
them. When we made a schedule that would not interfere with
studies, Jason and I traveled the islands in the Tasman Sea and to
the States, healing those who managed to find us and express a need
for healing.

Jason was a natural at
healing, and at communicating compassionately. He loved helping
others. It gave him a sense of fulfillment that I had never before
seen in him. With each healing, Jason rose up taller and stronger,
and quieter...

Every time was the same.
We would meet the person who needed healing and when Jason was
ready, he laid his hand directly over the chest of the individual.
It didn’t matter where the injury was. That was my son’s style. He
would put his hands on the person’s chest, and close his eyes. He
would take the person into his heart, and read their needs and
fears. He told me that he saw visions of the past, present and
future when he trusted his heart and allowed the healing to flow
through him and into the person who was sick or injured.

Chapter
Sixteen

I looked at the clock on the kitchen
wall. We were going to meet in eight hours. Unfortunately, I had
planned on both boys stumbling out of bed around noon. Joshua was
sleeping in after playing video games all night and Jason from
reading, and from being in deep thought. If there was one thing I
did know, inside and out, it was my boys.

I grew to know those who lived on my
island and even some of the residents of Attica, as well. As a
matter of fact, around these parts, the only person I didn’t know
well was my next-door-island neighbor Brock Houston...and that made
me feel uneasy. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? I guess, it
all depended on the kind of person that Brock Houston was. As the
seconds ticked closer, I was reminded of why we were having a
meeting later on today.

After that first dinner
meeting where we bonded, governor to governor, and then Jason’s
expressed mistrust of the Mani governor afterward, Brock Houston
didn’t invite me over often. He especially didn’t invite me to a
one-on-one discreet meeting. I sent a reciprocal invitation to him
to bring his son and come to my castle for dinner, but he declined
the invitation due to a schedule conflict and let me know that he
would tell me when he had a free night. He did not accept my dinner
invitation.

Though Jason did not trust
Brock, I was of the opinion that in order to know thy enemy, one
should engage in social events and figure out how they tick.
Perhaps, it was the ex-superhero in me who wanted to face him, mano
a mano. I was itching to test his mettle.

Brock had now fully taken
over for Atticai. The island had flourished in ways Atticai
couldn’t even comprehend and the prosperity of the island even got
me to take notice. He seemed to be quite a successful governor,
despite coming from old money as a human and transferring those
skills to his life as a Mani for the past five years. He seemed to
be an excellent manager and I heard no criticism from those he
governed, not a peep of dissonance. He seemed to be a squeaky-clean
governor, without opposition. Strangely, instead of reassuring me,
that lack of dissent from his island worried me. It wasn’t normal
for citizens not to have one complaint.

To his credit, the guy
wasn’t doing anything bad that I could see. Jason avoided all of my
queries about Brock, and I finally realized that Jason saw what
Brock would become, not who he was today, and was put off by
it.

In a weird way, if I would
only trust my son’s intuition, I could probably save myself a lot
of grief down the road, but the father in me was too stubborn to
believe that my son’s instincts were better than mine. Jason was
young and had not ever experienced battle, an adult adversary, or
even a serious conflict in his young life. I knew my boys were
sheltered by our living situation and by having two full-time
parents who lived to raise their kids and knew where they were at
all times and what they were doing.

Regardless, if Jason was
the prophesied Messiah of the Mani or not, I’d seen the kid pee his
pants at the park. So excuse me if I wasn’t on board when he wanted
to overrule one of my ideas. Even if he was the Messiah of the
Mani, first and foremost, he was my child.