The Vampire's Redemption, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #3) (2 page)

The children would yawn and lean against each other, as their Grandpa would tell the Indian story. Having heard it a hundred times, they would each drift off into dreams, as the campfire grew lower. A mother would have to tap Grandpa on the shoulder and point to the little ones to remind him that it was too late for such stuff. The Grandpa would nod as his grandchildren, warm and exhausted, were lifted and taken up to the house to be laid down in sweet-smelling white sheets.

There was always a little yellow note on each child’s pillow (done in Nelly’s handwriting) along with a chocolate square wrapped in silver paper.

Hope you had a great day, Riley! We’ll have your

favorite pancakes ready for you in the morning!

It really was a comfortable little place to stay. Although I spent most of my evenings outdoors or in the caverns, I’d been in the house many times. I’d touched the fading family portraits in the upstairs hallway. I’d smelled the delicious scent of Nelly’s homemade banana bread cooking in the old-fashioned kitchen. However, the one place inside that was most familiar to me was Sarah’s bedroom.

If she’d known exactly how often I had visited her while she slept, she would have been furious. Sarah treasured her privacy. Perhaps it was due to the public nature of the business and how much time she was required to spend with her guests. Her bedroom was a place she could be herself. Much of the time, Sarah’s fiery temper was hidden behind the polite smile of a professional hostess. She was very good at her job and had spent her life training for it. It was a vocation she enjoyed, even though her basic inner character traits did not particularly make her a natural fit for that occupation.

It was all tied together. She loved the land and the house. She also knew from the time she was a tiny girl, she knew that the business and the house were one in the same. In order to be a part of the everyday workings of the house and enjoy the land it was on, she had to assume the role of hostess. I often sensed it was an inner conflict that might someday become bigger than she ever could have foreseen. But before that problem arose, she lost her father to cancer and discovered the truth about her mother and the vampires living on her land.

It would have been shocking to anyone; to find out that the mother you thought had died in a car accident had actually abandoned the entire family and was still alive somewhere, to discover that the land you’d always called home was both a safe haven and a prison for the undead. And she had been close to her father. She hadn’t had much time to prepare herself emotionally for the loss. Only a few months or so. Then he was gone.

I knew Robert well. He was a good man and an admirable father to his daughters. It was unfortunate that he’d gotten mixed up with Selena. There were indications early on that his association with that woman would not bring him happiness, but love blinds us all at times. And although Robert was intelligent, he was a fool when it came to women. Perhaps it was a simple lack of experience. Growing up on a farm in a town as small as Nashville, Indiana isn’t the best way to turn a young man into a suave lady killer.

So when Selena Watson bumped into him as he was paying for gas one afternoon and shot him a smile, he fell in love rather quickly. She was looking for a steady young man who could provide her with a home and money. Living with her parents, three cousins and two aunts in a tiny bungalow on the outskirts of Indianapolis had left her with a desperate need to escape. She flirted shamelessly with the young farmer out in front of the gas station that sunny April day. Within two months, they were married and she was firmly established in the big farmhouse down in Brown County.

Perhaps if Robert had known more about her, he would have hesitated. When her family discovered she’d married a Protestant boy with Pawnee roots, they disowned her. On the inside, Selena had been devastated by the rejection. But what was done was done. And it wasn’t long before she discovered she was pregnant. Robert was thrilled, of course.

Selena found out about me four years after Katie was born. In her calculating, self-serving way, she convinced me that making her into a vampire would be the only way she might escape the life that she claimed had destroyed her ability to be a loving mother. By then, Robert and I had become friends and I knew what agony awaited him if he continued to be married to Selena. She would resort to anything in order to abandon the detestable existence her life had become since she’d married Robert. She was also quite capable of harming the girls and Robert. That wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.

So I did give her the gift of my blood. As soon as her powers of speed and strength made themselves apparent, she disappeared. I didn’t really care where she went, as long as it was far enough away from Robert and the girls to keep them from harm. I never did regret that decision. Not even when I saw how desperately forlorn my human friend became once he realized she had left.

Shaking my head, I climbed up the steps at the front of the house and knocked lightly on the wooden frame of the screen door. I had to stop thinking about the past. It certainly did me no favors to recall all that had brought us to that point.

I smelled the familiar homey essence of Nelly before she unlocked the door and invited me in. She’d worked for the family for decades and had essentially been the mother that both girls lacked once Selena had left. I smiled and took another short breath of her scent. Another of my gifts, that relentless sense of smell.

“You can go on in, Michael. Sarah’s in the library.” She touched my arm briefly when I turned away. “How is Katie?”

“She’s doing quite well. Victoria is with her now. The transformation was completely pain free.”

Relief spread across her weathered face. “Thank goodness. I was so worried. When do you think it will be safe to see her?”

“A few days at least. She needs time.”

“Of course.” She patted me gently on the shoulder and headed back upstairs towards her room.

I watched her for a moment, perplexed by the capacity of some humans to maintain such a fierce loyalty to each other. Her relationship with Katie would never be the same. But perhaps it didn’t matter. Nelly was an entirely giving type of person. Her earlier jealousy and anger towards Selena had mellowed. The years she’d spent with the girls had been a great gift to her, and it was likely that nothing would change the love she felt for either Sarah or Katie.

Turning from the staircase, I moved towards the library.

CHAPTER TWO – Sarah

I was reading in the window seat of the library, feeling like a somewhat normal person again. I had put on my favorite pair of flannel pajamas, pulled my hair back into a ponytail and wandered downstairs. Nelly was finishing up a few things in the kitchen. The stranger staying in one of the guest rooms had already turned out his light. I was glad I wouldn’t have to see him that evening. Jackson Bennett could wait. I just wanted to lose myself in something totally normal and feel like a real person again.

I was deep into the first half of Gone With the Wind when a familiar deep voice startled me.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

Only one light was on in the study, and its muted golden tones contrasted sharply with the shape of Michael’s body in the dimness. It was too dark to determine the expression on his face. I put the book face down on top of the chenille throw in my lap and leaned back against the cushions behind me.

“Would it matter much if I said you were?”

He remained where he was. Only his low voice moved across the room, like a soft tendril of smoke in the air, “Are we feeling a little snippy this evening?”

Sighing, I looked out the window. “Not snippy. Just…”

“Tired of the drama?”

“Exactly.”

He shifted slightly, the movement as graceful and cautious as always. He seemed to do everything so carefully. Like he had a plan for everything. It made me nervous as a cat.

“So I hear that Alex left while I was in the caves. I didn’t get a chance to give him a goodbye hug.”

There was the sarcasm I knew. I looked at him and rolled my eyes. “I’m pretty sure the whole world understands that you’re not quite heartbroken about him leaving.”

“Are you overly devastated at his loss?”

“I’m not. But I do hope that he finds what he wants.”

“Ah, yes. The blessed Breath-Giver. You honestly believe he’d give up all his sparkly new powers to fall down into the dirty
real
world again as a human?” There was a hint of jealousy in his tone.

“Michael, you brought that exact same proposition up not too long ago,” I reminded him, turning my book back over and flipping through the pages to find where I’d left off. “It’s understandable that a vampire would want one last shot at humanity and the opportunity to die a real death. I wouldn’t trade being human for anything else if I had a choice.”

He was unusually quiet for several minutes before he finally replied in a dry tone, “You have no urge for power over others. That makes sense for you. Your mother was different.”

“Hmm…” I frowned when he mentioned my mother but wasn’t in the mood to reprimand him for it. All I wanted was to be firmly planted in the world of Scarlett O’Hara.

“All you’ve ever really wanted was to live on this place and work here. To possibly raise a family here. Am I correct?”

He stepped closer, bringing himself halfway into the circle of light beneath the floor lamp beside me. I could see then that there was an emotional transition occurring in his eyes. The clear steely blue of his eyes had become a cold shot of icy sea water.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’ve got a bit of a dilemma here, Sarah.”

“Really? What might that be?” I was pretty much ready to reschedule my reading time and beat it up to bed just to get away from him for a little while. He was not being a good friend. He hadn’t asked how I was feeling or anything. He’d said a few hours before that he had things that he needed to attend to. Phone calls. Why wasn’t he back in the meadow then? Why was he here to harass me?

“Alex is still dangerous. He can move into and out of the containment field at will. If Isaiah wanted to, he could find that out. Have you thought about what might happen if Alex decides to align himself with Isaiah?”

That was a rather sobering thought. I put my book back down and looked back up at him, noticing for the first time that his hair had been cut. Probably Victoria, I guessed. She did almost everything for him. It was a new look for him. He looked clean cut and a little conservative for the first time since I met him. I began to wonder about this change in attitude.

“What’s going on with you, anyway? What’s with the crew cut?” I asked.

“I need you to release me so that I can track Alex.”

I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bench and onto the floor. “Why would you want to do that? You’re in enough danger already.”

When I saw the expression on his face, I shook my head. He was out to try to protect me again, and I was getting pretty sick of the whole knight-in-shining-armor bullshit. “You can’t save me from everything, Michael.”

He reached out a hand and gently traced a finger over my cheek. It was enough to cool my anger for the moment. Especially when he was looking at me like that with his cool blue eyes so filled with intense emotions that somehow never took the form of spoken words. It all just gathered there in his expression, in the curve of his strong jaw and the luminosity of his gorgeous eyes.

Although Michael and I only shared just a kiss or two and an embrace, the fire between the two of us had always been there. I tended to think that we each had our own valid reasons for holding back our desires. My reasons were based on two perfectly logical facts. I’d been hurt badly before by someone who had used me for sex and then had quickly turned back to someone else. The other reason of mine was very simple. Michael was a vampire, and I knew that there was no future with him because of that.

There had been emotional moments when I had looked on the situation differently. He had earned my trust in certain ways, to be sure. There were moments when I felt very much alone and knew that I could depend on Michael. But he was from a different world than mine.

There in the study, he did lean down to press his smooth lips against my forehead and fold me into his strong arms for a moment or two. It was reassuring to have that powerful body against me and more than just a little arousing. When his hands slid down to my hips and his fingers tightened slightly against the fabric of my pajama pants, I felt his mood begin to change.

We both leaned back an inch or two and our eyes met.

“I should go,” he said.

“Probably,” I replied.

I couldn’t seem to stop staring at him. He had this certain way of making me feel like a little kid at one moment and then like a passionate woman the next. It was disturbing for me to feel so off balance. It wasn’t like I was a teenager or a virgin. It wasn’t as if I’d never been in love. But that’s exactly how it felt sometimes when he was around. Almost as if everything were happening to me for the very first time.

“You never answered my question,” he murmured.

“Question?” I couldn’t seem to remember a question, but that could be because he was so distracting, standing there with his arms draped loosely around me and his face so close to mine.

“I need to go track down Alex.”

I took a little breath and stepped back. He certainly knew how to kill a lady’s mood. He let his arms drop away from me and squared his shoulders.

“No. I can’t let you do that. Send Victoria and Jones.”

“Between the three of us, we may be able to take him down. But not those two on their own. They would need my help.”

I shook my head firmly. “No way.”

Picking up my book, I turned away from him. But he reached out and touched my arm.

“Please.”

“Goodnight, Michael.”

When I got into my room and had the door shut, I leaned against it and clenched my jaw in frustration. He had to have known that I wasn’t about to just let him leave. He had proved in the past that he would come back. It wasn’t about whether or not he would run off permanently. It was the thought of something happening to him while he was away. I couldn’t let him put himself in jeopardy for me anymore. He had done too much already.