Were-Devils' Revenge [Were-Devils of Tasmania 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (13 page)

Gabriella, acutely conscious she was naked except for a sheet, looked at her grandmother. “Yes, I do. How did you know to come?”

Angel smiled. “You called me yesterday. Fortunately you had a boat on the mainland coming back this morning.”

Gabriella stared. She remembered the moment, when she had felt so lost and uncertain, unsure whether she was destined to be Larissa or solve this feud and feeling she couldn’t do it by herself.

“Get dressed, child,” said Angel kindly. “Don’t waste your time wondering how I heard. I might not be as sharp as I once was,
but since the day I buried my sister this is all I have focused my talents on.”

Gabriella looked to Mac who nodded. She grabbed some clothes and ducked into the bathroom. When she returned, Angel had ushered Zachary and Wilson out onto the porch. They stood glowering as Mac kissed her and whispered in her ear that Mitch would not hurt Lena.

“Sit,” Angel told everyone. She turned to Mac. “I want Lena here.”

Mac shifted uneasily in his chair, eyeing the other two men.

Angel said to them, “You two will promise that whatever issues you need to pursue no battle will happen on this island.”

Gabriella didn’t like her grandmother’s chances judging from Wilson and Zachary’s expressions.

“If you don’t,” Angel said evenly, “then she will most likely die.”

Gabriella gasped. Whatever did her grandmother mean?

“Actually,” said Angel, “we all may.”

Zachary scowled. “This is more of your rubbish,” he said.

“I think,” said Angel, “the time has come to tell the truth. But Lena must be here.”

Wilson and Zachary looked at each other. “All right,” they finally agreed. But Gabriella caught their thoughts before they blocked them. They didn’t consider one inch off the island as part of the agreement.

Mac closed his eyes and called his brother. Mitch, arms firmly around Lena, appeared on the edge of the rainforest behind them.

“Lena,” said Angel. “We have a promise to talk only. Will you abide by this?”

Lena hesitated then nodded, and with Mac also inclining his head, Mitch let her go. She slipped onto the bench between Wilson and Zachary, looking curiously to Gabriella who was next to Mac and soon joined by Mitch. The men were tense and the truce tentative at best.

“During the war,” said Angel. “My sister Larissa fell in love with a were-devil, your grandfather Edmund.” She indicated Mac and Mitch. “But a prophecy was misread by anxious parents who thought they would lose their sons. As a result, the bloodshed they feared happened.”

They all knew this.

“But the bloodshed was not just on the battlefield with the loss of Edmund,” said Angel. “It came in the form of a poison from the north, brought by my brother, Adam, to repay the were-devils.”

“Repay for what?” asked Mitch coolly. “I would have thought your lot wouldn’t have exactly wanted us as part of the family.”

Angel nodded. “This is true. But it was not so much because your grandfather spurned his true love and married instead another whom he impregnated before he left, or even that Larissa died of a broken heart that enraged my family.”

The ghosts frowned. Gabriella wasn’t at all sure where her grandmother was going with this.

“You see, Edmund had another child,” said Angel sadly. “One Larissa never had a chance to tell him about.”

Gabriella’s eyes widened. As her mind raced, she heard her grandmother’s words.
Her girls.
She looked at Lena, but if she had realized the significance of what Angel was saying, she wasn’t showing it.

Mac and Mitch looked at each other then Gabriella. She knew what they were thinking, and she shook her head. Her mother had been the younger sister. They weren’t related.

“Larissa named her Rose,” said Angel. “Because of the rose-covered arbor she was conceived in. She was every bit as much my daughter as Lily was.”

“No!” Lena jumped up. “I don’t believe you!”

“I’m sorry, Lena,” said Angel. “I always thought your mother should have told you. But she thought by marrying a ghost and giving you three-quarters ghost blood that would be good enough. She always hated her own half-blood status.”

“I
am
a ghost,” said Lena, in her anger the transformation starting to happen.

Angel raised her hand and clasped it onto Lena. “Not now,” she ordered. “There is more.” She turned to Zachary, and the force of her glare was enough to have him pull Lena to him, though he was clearly taken back by this news.

“The poison had an antidote,” Angel continued. “It may or may not be true, but Adam led me to believe he brought only just enough for his family members. Part of the deal was they would move north where the hot weather would help their immunity, and in return for the poison that would wipe out the were-devils by producing a facial tumor, Adam introduced another similar poison here in the north, to rid the vampires of a breakaway group.”

“But,” said Gabriella suddenly, “Lena, Zachary, Wilson, and I weren’t born then.”

“I know,” said Angel. “So you were never given the antidote. I have no idea if the immunity reliably passes from mother to child, but if it does not, this would explain the second generation issue. But even if it does…Adam only gave me enough antidote for one child.”

“And you gave it to your child, not my mother!” Lena cried out.

“No!” Angel was clearly tormented. Gabriella had never seen her so torn by emotion. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I knew already that Rose could transform and Lily could not, but both had the same amount of ghost blood in them. So”—she sighed—“I gave them half each.”

Gabriella wondered at the choice and what she would have done. Her anger turned toward her uncle. How could he give his own sister such a choice, when both girls were his nieces? It made a lot of sense of the decades of tensions, however, and why they had seen so little of the extended family.

“Zelda, Kate’s mother, gave me a spell to help protect them, but I came north to be sure,” Angel continued. “But if they had already less immunity then their daughters would fare even worse.”

“But Adam would have given his wife Marianne the antidote,” said Zachary suddenly.

“True,” said Angel. “There may be two poisons. The were-devil curse, and the other that Adam wiped out the vampires here in Queensland with. We know we were immune to that, but there is a theory it has changed, and so we are perhaps no longer immune. We know it has changed because it is now killing humans. The vampires said it was for two generations only and there was no love lost between the vampires and us, I assure you.”

“The
Hendra
,” whispered Lena.

“Yes,” said Angel. She walked over to Lena and leant down in front of her, hand on her knee. “Child,” she said gently. “You are sick. I can feel it.”

Gabriella let out a cry. “No!”

“I am not a physician nor a scientist,” Angel said. “But my guess is that it is one of these two poisons.” She took Lena’s arm and pushed back her long sleeve. Everyone stared. There was a long, red claw mark, but around it the arm was festering, swollen, and blistering. “You were in the laboratory where the virus was when you went to the Tremains. It would only have taken the smallest amount on your skin, and then when the were-devil attacked you…”

Lena had tears rolling down her face. “The antibiotics don’t work,” she whispered.

“That was them,” snarled Zachary, looking at Mac.

“It wasn’t,” said Gabriella quickly. “Only their kind. You bit their sister, and she’s dying.”

Feeling Mitch and Mac stiffen, Gabriella realized this hadn’t been a good time to bring this up. But her grandmother’s words startled them all.

“No, she is not.” Angel stood up and looked at the were-devil brothers. “I spoke to Kate yesterday.”

“Our Kate?” asked Mitch, bewildered.

“Kate is neutral,” said Angel. “So she is mine, too. She tells me that there is a woman in Tasmania who has been able to help Tilman Tremain. She thinks they will be able to cure Melody.”

“Becc,” said Mac. “She was in love with the Tremain boys.”

“Yes,” Angel agreed.

“So they can cure Lena, too?” asked Gabriella.

Angel took both her granddaughters’ hands in hers, clearly happy for Gabriella but seeming more reserved about Lena. “I hope so, I sincerely hope so.”

Gabriella kissed her grandmother’s cheeks and hugged Lena. “Maybe,” she said. “It’s going to take both your granddaughters to finally put the curse to rest.”

She went to stand with her men.

“We’ll take her to Tasmania,” she said, realizing with delight that she had read this thought in both of their minds. With Mitch and Mac with her, she dared to believe that finally the curse had been laid to rest and the viruses—both if there were two—would be halted from affecting either group. The prophecy talked of instincts. Love denied a half century or more earlier would now be neutralized with Becc’s love enabling the discovery of the cure, and Gabriella’s love of both her were-devil men and her cousin meant she would be able to access the cure for Lena. They would leave the next day, together.

* * * *

Tarrabah, Present Day

It wasn’t as easy as Gabriella had hoped. Lena had been reluctant to leave and Zac even more reluctant to let her anywhere near Mac and Mitch.

“My grandfather will cure her,” Zac had said with a good deal more confidence than Gabriella felt. “Or at least he’ll know what to do.”

In the end they had agreed that Lena would go first to see Adam and then come to Tasmania if she was still sick. Mac and Mitch after speaking with their sister didn’t want to wait to return and convinced Gabriella to go with them.

“This Tilman Tremain is a distant cousin,” Mac told her. “Same great-great-grandfathers.”

The Mortimers it seemed had as long a memory for their heritage as her family did.

“We’re not as sure as your grandmother,” Mitch added. “Tilman is a bit mad.”

“And his lab was destroyed.”

By my cousin.
Gabriella knew Lena was not malicious, but she figured neither of them was going to be greeted with open arms by the were-devil clan. But she wanted to be there to support her men if the news wasn’t as good as they hoped.

Tasmania, as promised, was cold. But spring was in the air, and when they arrived at the airport, the sun made a half-hearted attempt to shine. They had flown into Launceston in the north of the island rather than Hobart, because it was closer to Tarrabah, where Melody was. Tilman and his sons, Jesse and Jarrod, as well as the girl, Becc, that Angel had referred to, were staying with Mortimer seniors. Launceston was looking on the edge of bursting out of its winter confines, green tinges on the trees and the locals wearing shorts and T-shirts even if the temperature didn’t justify it.

Gabriella liked Becc immediately. Jesse and Jarrod were too moody and introverted for her tastes, but Becc with her honey-blonde hair had an open pleasant face and was clearly very much in love with the Tremain men. She hugged Gabriella.

“Tilman has given Melody her two doses but so far nothing.” Becc was clearly upset and trying not to show it. “Tilman’s blood count had changed by this time.”

“But,” said Mac. “You got to him before he was showing symptoms.”

Gabriella squeezed his hand. Both Mac and Mitch had barely spoken since seeing Melody, who judging from family photos had never been particularly overweight, but now was little more than skin and bones. She had Mitch and Mac’s eyes, but in her elfin face they looked enormous. Her fiancé—a human who had only just found out the more unusual aspects of Melody and her family in the last weeks—was looking shell-shocked but never left Melody’s side.

“I’m afraid I know nothing about science,” Gabriella confessed to Becc. The two of them were taking a walk along the river behind the Mortimers’ house. The path snaked through dense undergrowth, the sun filtering through surrounding gum trees so they could just make it out.

“I know more about vet science than humans,” said Becc. “It seems I have immunity to the virus that causes the devil’s curse.” She smiled when she saw Gabriella’s frown, adding, “It’s a long story.”

“So you aren’t part were-devil?”

Becc laughed. “With this hair and eyes? Hardly.”

Gabriella tried to make sense of this. “So you have a human type immunity?”

“I guess,” said Becc. “Though it killed my mother.”

An idea started to form, and for the first time Gabriella wished she’d paid more attention in science classes. She stopped. “I need to see Tilman.”

Tilman, a tall, gaunt, and serious man with mostly gray hair listened to Gabriella in silence. She was speaking so fast it was clear that neither Mac and Mitch understood a word she’d said. But then they had studied at best sport’s science, not infectious diseases.

Tilman rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He’d been a little remote, and Gabriella was pretty sure it was because of her ghost blood. She felt, under the circumstances, it was understandable, and if she wanted him to help Lena, she needed to help him overcome the aversion.

“You say your grandmother thinks there are two viruses? And that your mother got a half dose of the vaccine as a child?”

“Yes,” said Gabriella.

“How old?”

Gabriella did a quick calculation. “She would have been about three I guess.”