Vampire Most Wanted (22 page)

“How many of you were there?” Marcus asked with a frown. “I mean, I’ve heard the stories, a hundred women kept locked up in cages, released only to rape, torture, or feed on, but I always thought it an exaggeration.”

“It wasn’t,” Divine said quietly. “I would guess when the immortals attacked, he had about fifty mortal women for feeding on; twenty or so no-fangers he’d turned and was raping and torturing; along with four immortal women, all of whom he was hoping to breed with; and another twenty-four no-fangers plus myself who were pregnant or breast-feeding.”

Marcus breathed out slowly and then asked, “Which were you? Pregnant or breast-feeding?”

“I gave birth the morning of the attack,” she said quietly. “Actually, looking back I think it was an induced labor.”

“Induced?” Marcus asked.

Divine nodded. “We received word the night before that the immortals had formed an army under my grandfather, as well as Uncle Lucian and some others, and that they were marching on Leonius’s camp. The women were all aflutter, half hoping for rescue, half terrified of it.”

“And you?” Marcus asked. “Were you hoping or terrified?”

“I was just confused,” Divine said unhappily. “They were saying all sorts of things. Some thought that the immortals would rescue the women, but purge the pregnancies rather than risk bringing another Leonius into the world. Others thought they might just slaughter everyone, Leonius, his men and the women—”

“Why the women?” Marcus asked with a frown. “They were victims in all of this.”

“We’d been tainted,” she said simply. “A lot of women thought we would be considered damaged goods.”

“What did you think?” Marcus asked with a frown.

Divine shook her head. “I didn’t know what to think.”

They were both silent for a minute, and then Divine continued, “Anyway, I didn’t think I’d sleep that night I was so distressed by everything, but I must have because I remember that Abaddon had to shake me to get me to wake up. It was the middle of the night and I was confused at his waking me, and even more confused when he gave me a tincture to drink. When I asked what it was he simply took control of me and made me drink it. Shortly afterward I went into labor.”

Divine closed her eyes briefly and grimaced. “Damian was born quickly. It all happened much faster than anyone expected. Dima, the mortal who acted as my midwife, said if I had been mortal, I wouldn’t have survived. I was torn up pretty badly.”

“But you survived, and so did the baby?” he asked.

Divine nodded. “Yes. He was fine. He had no fangs but he was a strong healthy baby.”

“Wait, what?” Marcus said with confusion.

“He was strong and healthy,” Divine repeated, and then said wryly, “I wish the same could have been said for me. As I mentioned, I was ripped up pretty badly during the birth and I wasn’t allowed the time to heal afterward. Leonius ordered Abaddon to smuggle my baby and me out of camp through a secret tunnel before the immortals breached the camp, and he did so minutes after Damian was born.”

“Were other mothers and their babies smuggled out too?” Marcus asked at once.

“No,” Divine said quietly. “At least, Abaddon said I was the only one and they were all there when he hustled me out of—”

“Why did he want you smuggled out?” Marcus asked.

Divine hesitated, a little startled by his sharp tone and his interrupting her, but after a minute she sighed and said, “Abaddon said that Leonius thought my uncle might let the others live, but felt sure he’d cut me down where I stood and kill Damian as well when he learned that I’d dishonored my family like that.”

“Like what?” he asked with confusion. “How did you dishonor your family?”

“By having Leonius’s child,” she pointed out softly.

Marcus shook his head. “Divine, you were a child yourself, raped and tortured. Lucian would hardly have held you responsible for the resulting child, and he wouldn’t have killed an innocent baby.”

“He killed all the other women and children they found in the camp,” she pointed out sadly, recalling the women she’d lived and suffered with.

“The immortals did not kill those women and children,” Marcus said firmly. “When Leonius realized he was going to lose the battle, he retreated to camp with six of his eldest sons. They rounded up all the women and children and killed them. The few immortals were tied up with the no-fanger females and set on fire, and while they screamed and burned, he and his oldest sons visited an orgy of blood on the remaining mortals, drinking every last mortal woman dry.”

“But Abaddon said . . .” Her voice trailed off. She’d known all her life that Abaddon could not be trusted. She should have held everything he’d ever told her suspect. But he’d been her only source of news back then, and he’d pretended that she was important, given into his care to be looked after and protected. His lord’s dying wish.

“What happened after this Abaddon smuggled you out of camp?” Marcus asked. “Where did you go?”

Divine shrugged wearily. “The first part of the journey after leaving is something of a blur in my memory. I was weak and in pain from the labor, never given a chance to heal, or even to feed. We had to run and hide and run again.”

“Why?” Marcus demanded. “To keep you and your son safe from your uncle?”

Divine nodded.

He stared at her for a minute, and then said, “You mean to tell me that your whole life has been spent hiding and running from your family because you believed they would kill your son?”

“And me,” she added solemnly.

“Divine,” he said slowly. “Lucian wouldn’t have done that. He would not kill an innocent child.”

“But he was no-fanger like his father,” she pointed out. “And my grandfather and uncle were out to destroy all no-fangers.”

“Your son can’t be—” He shook his head and muttered something about dealing with that later, then said, “Yes, the immortals were determined to put down no-fangers back then. But not edentates.”

“Edentates?” she echoed uncertainly.

“That is an immortal without fangs. They are called edentate. Any child born fangless is considered edentate unless and until they go crazy and show the tendencies of no-fangers, a liking for torturing and killing, etc. But not all edentates turn no-fanger. Your son would not have been killed. And you certainly wouldn’t have been.”

“But I didn’t kill myself,” Divine pointed out.

“What?” he asked with bewilderment.

“The reason there were so few immortal women in the camp was because they usually killed themselves rather than suffer Leonius’s raping and impregnating them. I saw two of them do it during the year I was there. One got free and when the guard pulled his sword, she just threw her head over it, decapitating herself. Another threw herself in the fire and burned to death. Abaddon said they had honor and their families would have been shamed had they not done it. That their families probably would have cut them down themselves had they found them in Leo’s camp alive and well, never having tried to escape or kill themselves. He said Uncle Lucian was the same, arrogant, cold, hard . . .”

“Abaddon again,” Marcus interrupted angrily. “Divine, he was lying to you. He lied to you about what happened to the women in the camp, and he lied to you about this. How long did he pound those tales into your head?”

“I don’t know. Ten years, I guess,” Divine said, staring at him wide-eyed. It was the first time she’d seen him really angry.

“You were with him for ten years after he smuggled you out of camp?”

She nodded. “At first I needed him. I had Damian, I was breast-feeding, I—”

“You were a child,” he added grimly. “You needed someone to find you hosts to feed on while you breast-fed, and you needed someone who could provide a roof over both your heads.”

“Yes,” she said, bowing her head.

“There is no shame in that,” Marcus said, his tone less angry. “Besides, as I said, I suspect he was using mind control on you. You seem to see Lucian as some kind of bogeyman, and for him to go from a substitute father to bogeyman like that, mind control must definitely have been involved.”

Divine rubbed her eyes wearily. She suspected Marcus was right and wondered how she hadn’t seen that for herself centuries ago.

“How did you eventually get away from him?”

“He was away looking for hosts to bring back one night and I . . .” She shrugged helplessly. “I just packed up Damian and ran with him.”

“Just like that?” Marcus asked with a frown.

Divine nodded.

“What happened to bring it about?” he asked after a pause.

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” she said slowly.

“You thought you needed him to survive. Why suddenly did it seem better to be away from him?”

Divine bit her lip and then reluctantly admitted, “I caught him calling Damian by the name Leonius.”

Twenty-one

M
arcus dropped his head back against the headboard and closed his eyes. Divine might have named her son Damian and taught him the rules about not harming mortals, but Abaddon had busily been undoing all her good work from the boy’s birth. It was obvious to him that Damian and Leonius were one and the same son of Leonius Livius I.

“It infuriated me,” Divine admitted, drawing his attention again. “And scared me. I was suddenly desperate to get Damian away from him.”

“He called him Leonius,” Marcus murmured, and then lifted his head to peer at her and simply asked, “Did you take Leonius from that hotel in Toronto two years ago?”

“No,” Divine said firmly, and he felt a moment’s relief, until she added, “I took my son, Damian, from it.”

“Ah crap,” Marcus muttered, closing his eyes again.

“He is not like his father,” Divine said quickly. “My uncle has been hounding and hunting him ever since the immortal/no-fanger war just because he carries his father’s blood, but Damian’s not like Leonius. I brought him up with the same rules my grandfather taught me. He knows not to harm or kill mortals. Yet Uncle Lucian has hunted him, killing Damian’s sons in the process, innocent little boys, most of them under ten.”

“What?” Marcus asked, shocked at the very suggestion. When Divine nodded her head, he stared at her blankly for a minute and then said, “Divine, I don’t know what happened to your grandsons, but I guarantee you that Lucian would not kill little boys. At least not unless they were no-fanger and killing mortals willy-nilly.”

“They weren’t no-fangers. Most of them hadn’t turned yet and were mortal still,” she responded.

“Mortal still?” he queried blankly.

Divine shrugged. “Some of the boys seemed to be mortal and then turned when they were somewhere between five or ten.”

“That’s not possible,” Marcus said at once. “What’s more, if Damian is no-fanger, he is not your son.”

She blinked in surprise at that comment, and gave a short laugh. “I’m sorry, Marcus, but you’re the one mistaken this time. Damian
is
no-fanger and he is
definitely
my son. I gave birth to him.”

“You couldn’t have,” Marcus said firmly. “Divine, I explained about nanos. They are carried in the blood. A mother passes them down to her child.”

“Or the father does,” she said with certainty.

“No,” Marcus said stoutly. “He doesn’t. He can’t. It’s in the blood, not in the sperm.”

“Well, that still doesn’t mean an immortal mother can’t have a no-fang— edentate child,” she corrected herself. “No-fangers and edentates are immortal too, aren’t they? We all have the same nanos.”

“Ah, damn,” he whispered suddenly with realization. “I didn’t explain that part to you in the RV.”

“What part?” Divine asked uncertainly.

Marcus breathed out a sigh and then explained, “No-fangers and edentates don’t carry the same nanos as immortals. The first no-fangers and their prodigy carry the nanos from the first batch the scientists came up with. But those nanos turned out to be somehow flawed. A third of the subjects died when given them, and a third went crazy. The other third were fine. And then when Atlantis fell, none of them produced fangs and they had to cut to feed. The crazy immortals without fangs were called no-fangers. The noncrazy immortals without fangs were called edentates to differentiate them.

“Immortals,” he continued, “are the result of the scientists going back and tweaking the nanos. I don’t know what they did, or how they changed the programming, but the second batch of nanos produced the immortals that simply go by the name immortal. None of them died or went crazy when the nanos were introduced to their bodies. And when Atlantis fell, it was only in the immortals with the second batch of nanos that the fangs developed.”

“Oh,” Divine said with a frown.

Marcus sighed and then continued, “Because the nanos are carried in the blood, the child becomes what his mother is. A mortal mother will have a mortal child every time no matter what the father is, and the same is true of an immortal. An immortal mother with the second batch of nanos can only produce an immortal child. But both a no-fanger and edentate mother with the first batch of nanos will pass those on to her child and produce an edentate who has a thirty-three percent chance of remaining edentate, a thirty-three percent chance of turning no-fanger, and a thirty-three percent chance of dying.

“You carry the second batch of nanos, Divine. The child you gave birth to in that camp, and any children you produce in the future, can only be immortal. If Damian isn’t an Immortal, with fangs, then he is not your birth child.”

“But . . .” She shook her head, confusion rife on her face. “I gave birth to him.”

“Is it possible your child was switched for Damian?” he asked gently. That seemed the only explanation. “Was the baby you gave birth to ever out of your sight?”

“No, I . . .” Divine paused and frowned. “Well, Abaddon did take him out of the room briefly to clean him up, but . . . he was only gone moments before returning with him bundled up in swaddling.”

“This Abaddon must have switched Damian for your child then. Damian must have been the child of Leonius and a no-fanger woman.” He raised his eyebrows in question. “Were there any no-fanger women who gave birth around that time too?”

“Yes,” Divine murmured, looking defeated. “One of them had a child the day before.”

Marcus nodded. “Damian is probably her child.”

“Yes,” Divine agreed, and then she suddenly straightened. “But he is still my son, Marcus. I raised him, I breast-fed him, I cared for him, taught him, kissed his scraped knees and boo-boos. I
raised
Damian. He
is
my son.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said sadly, and she glanced to him with surprise.

“Why?”

“Because if Damian is the man who was shot several times, including an arrow through the heart, and was picked up outside the hotel room in Toronto, then he’s a stone-cold killer, and a no-fanger, not edentate.”

Divine was shaking her head before he’d even finished. “No. He’s not a killer. I taught him—”

“If the man you whisked away from the hotel is Damian, then Damian
is
a killer,” Marcus said firmly. “He and a handful of his sons killed several women in northern Ontario, and then kidnapped a doctor and her sister. The doctor was rescued right away, but one of the sons, Twenty-one I believe he was called, got away with the sister. The man you whisked away was captured at the site where the dead women were found, but he too got away.”

He saw Divine close her eyes at this news, but continued, “The sister, who was a teenage girl by the way, was rescued, along with a couple of other victims, from the hotel room you whisked your son away from as well as from the room next door to it. And he was going by the name Leonius.”

“You said that earlier,” she muttered unhappily, and then said, “But Damian said he was only there because a couple of the boys got up to some risky business and he had to go get them out of trouble.”

“Risky business?” he interrupted with amazement. “They cut those women up like kindling . . . and he bragged about at least one of his kills to the doctor they took. And,” he added heavily, “one of their victims, a young woman named Dee, told us how Leonius and his boys slaughtered her family. He wasn’t there to get them out of trouble. He was leading them into it.”

Marcus gave her a moment to digest that, and then said, “Everything I’ve said is true, Divine. I wouldn’t lie to you. You’re my life mate . . . and believe me I wish this wasn’t true. Because this
does
mean you’re rogue and we are going to spend the rest of our lives running and hiding.”

Divine stared at him blankly for a minute, and then suddenly turned and headed for the door.

“Wait! Where are you going?” he called, struggling with the ties on his wrists.

Divine didn’t answer, simply slipped out of the room and let the door close behind her. Cursing, Marcus gave up trying to tug his hands free of the ties at his wrists and began to jerk at them, trying to snap the cloth. Instead, on the fourth pull, he snapped the bed headboard clean off the bed. That was good enough. Marcus tugged the ties off of the snapped wood, and quickly removed the cloth from his wrists as he slid off the bed. He then rushed for the door, but when he hurried out into the hall and looked both ways, it was empty.

Marcus cursed and turned back to the room, intending to dress and go after her, only to find that the door had closed behind him . . . and locked.

“Brilliant,” he muttered, slamming one fist on the wooden panel with fury.

D
ivine kept expecting Marcus to rush up behind her and stop her as she made her way out to the hotel parking lot where the SUV was parked. She didn’t know if she was relieved or disappointed when that didn’t happen. A little of both, Divine supposed as she slipped into the driver’s seat and started the vehicle. However, it was probably for the best. She knew it was. That didn’t make it any easier. But then there was very little in her life that had seemed to be easy.

While Marcus had wanted to learn more about her from their talk, in the end she’d learned more from him than he had from her. All he’d learned was that she was indeed the rogue he’d been sent to find. She’d learned that her son wasn’t her son, that he was a killer, and that Abaddon had probably been using mind control on her from the get-go to get his way.

Divine really couldn’t believe that she hadn’t picked up on it before this. Now that Marcus had said it, it seemed so obvious. Her fear of her uncle had been so solid and deep with little in the way of doubt . . . and so constant. Abaddon must have been feeding that into her thoughts day in and day out for those first ten years and then reinforcing it every time she’d encountered him.

Of course, the fact that he’d played on her own fears had probably helped. She’d admired and envied those two immortal women who had chosen death over Leonius’s abuse. She’d even wondered if that wasn’t the more honorable choice. They had escaped, after all, if only into death. They needn’t suffer the pain and humiliation he’d visited on her and the others. They were free. Their family honor safe . . . While she had quavered and wept and screamed in pain and terror, begging him not to hurt her, groveling at his feet like a pathetic—

Divine gave her head an angry shake as she started the SUV engine. She might have done all of that for nearly four months, but then she’d become pregnant and life had been more bearable . . . and she had survived. She had lived more than two thousand years since then. She’d met millions of people over the years, some shining stars of brilliance, others individuals in need of a little guidance to find that brilliance.

Divine had spent her life helping others. Surely that made up for any shame her family might have suffered? And surely that made what she’d suffered, if not worthwhile, at least bearable?

Her life had been long, with many quiet joys, moments of satisfaction, or peace. They might have been quiet, hidden moments in comparison to the bright and fiery moments she’d shared with Marcus these last days, but they were moments nonetheless and every single one of them had taken place away from Abaddon. She hadn’t enjoyed even a second of peace or enjoyment in Abaddon’s presence. It was part of the reason she’d finally taken Damian and run from the man, and why she’d spent so little time with her son after learning he’d welcomed the man back into his life.

Now Divine wondered if all of this was her fault. Damian might not be her child by blood, but she had raised him, he
was
her son. And he had been a sweet child growing up. Always smiling, always eager to please. It was after they’d left Abaddon that Damian had changed, becoming secretive and moody.

At first Divine had thought he just missed the man and would get over it, and then she’d blamed it on puberty. All teenagers were like that, weren’t they?

At twelve he’d started wandering the woods or cities depending on where they lived, taking off for hours at a time despite her haranguing him to stay close to home. At sixteen he’d begun disappearing for days at a time. On returning he’d always been manic with happiness; laughing, chatting a mile a minute, telling her tales of his adventures while away. She’d allowed it at the time because he was considered a man in that time period.

Damian was eighteen when he’d been gone a week rather than the usual day or two. Worried that Lucian—who Abaddon had assured her was still looking for them—had finally found her son, Divine had gone looking for him and found him holed up in an abandoned hut. He’d been outside, laughing and chatting by a fire with, of all people, Abaddon. And Abaddon had been calling him Leo, she recalled now. She’d been so furious to find him with the man she’d kind of let that slip her mind at the time.

Divine had tried to send Abaddon away, but Damian had protested. Abaddon was his friend.

“Abaddon is no friend of ours,” she’d said furiously. “He was Leonius Livius’s lapdog.”

“You mean my father?” Damian had asked.

Divine had simply gaped at him. She had never told him about his father. How could she tell her son that he was a child of rape? That his father was a man she loathed who had tortured and raped her for months before he’d been conceived? She hadn’t told him before that, and couldn’t tell him then. Instead, she had drawn herself up and said, “You are old enough to do what you wish and live where you want now. But I will have nothing to do with this man. Never bring him to my home when you visit.”

She had turned and left then. Damian hadn’t followed. And Divine had simply continued with her life. He had visited often during the first fifty years or so, relatively speaking. It had been only a year after that when Damian had come to her with her first grandson. When she’d asked his name, he’d said the mother hadn’t given him one and didn’t want the boy. She’d offered to raise him, which she suspected he’d counted on at the time.

Divine had named the boy Luc and had loved him like her own. She’d been heartbroken when Damian had come to visit on the boy’s tenth birthday and decided he needed a father and should go with him. She’d been absolutely devastated, though, when she’d gone to visit Damian and the boy some months later only to learn that their camp had been raided by Lucian’s scouts and the boy hadn’t got away. He was dead.