Rashel glanced at Quinn trying to gauge exactly what he was thinking or feeling. He was deep in thought, looking as if he were accepting what he was hearing. And he finally broke the silence. "You made a promise you couldn't keep? Imagine that." His tone was accusing and cold.
"I've always kept my word." Hunter almost shouted, "Damnit I can't be everywhere t once."
"You let him kill my mother!"
"I didn't know she was in danger." He looked a Beth, hoping she would back him up. Instead she looked like she was in shock.
"I guess that's right." Quinn hissed. "You were too busy making me into a vampire to notice my father was killing your soulmate."
"I was concentrating on Dove's cry and trying to figure out where you were. I arrived too late to help anyone." Hunter said, wondering why he was bothering to explain himself to Quinn in the first place.
The room remained silent as the two men squared off. No one wanted to get in between them. Only Ash remained close, apparently unworried that they could start throwing punches.
"Too late, sums it up nicely doesn't it?"
"Don't try making me feel guilty over this."
"Guilty? You have no conscience!" Quinn shouted pointing his finger in Hunter's face.
"For three hundred years, I've lived with the knowledge that I, a damned vampire with a witch for a wife, had absolutely no power to save the woman I loved. How do you think I felt?" He raked his hands through his hair. "I couldn't do anything except pray that Maeve was merciful and gave her something that would keep her out of pain."
"I don't believe you." Quinn said, "I don't believe this whole situation. Why would you even care that she died. You hate humans."
"All humans except for one tiny defiant human who would just as soon get killed than let me help her. " His hands wrapped over Beth's shoulders, "I would have gladly traded places with Sarah."
Rashel abruptly stalked out of the room and Quinn suddenly knew how helpless Hunter felt. Soon Rashel would be too old to change. If she were mortally injured . . . Quinn shut the thought out of his head. It hurt too much to think about.
Beth started to speak but Aradia grabbed her hand. Beth stared at her. For a blind woman she was terribly accurate.
"Let them work it out." Aradia said under her breath.
Thierry interrupted, determined to get back to business as usual before another word could be said, "We'll sort this out later. Right now, we have a shipment of teens who need to be returned to their homes." Thierry said. "Lupe, James, and Poppy, you start contacting the appropriate agencies and make sure everyone gets to where they're going safely. Quinn, you and Rashel take the yacht back to Boston. We'll meet back at the mansion in three days."
As soon as they left, Thierry began issuing more orders. "Thea, Hunter is in need of a healer, I trust you are up to the task?" He eyed the large black bruise on Hunter's chin and actually felt kind of sorry for him. Wood was the only substance on earth that could hurt a vampire. Judging by the size of the bruise and the way his chin had swollen, it had to really hurt.
***
Warm ocean water lapped at Beth's bare feet as she watched the yacht carrying Quinn and Rashel back to sea. It was a tiny dot on the horizon. Two minutes later it was gone. Without understanding why, Beth felt lost. John hadn't even said goodbye. Rashel never reappeared after John and Hunter's shouting match. Perhaps it was just as well no one said anything.
Morning sun beat down on her head as she walked along the shore. Seagulls fluttered overhead begging for scraps. Last night, Hunter had been a dream, a figment of her imagination. Now he was real and her whole world had crashed into a shattered heap at her feet.
She looked out at the horizon one more time hoping the yacht would come back. She could accept reincarnation. She didn't have a choice. But the world looked very different to her now.
There were witches, werewolves, and vampires. There had been at least one of each in her kitchen this morning. Despite the warm morning, Beth felt chilled. She looked at her watch. 10:30 am.
Three hours had passed since Hunter somehow exploded on her beach. In a few minutes, he had attacked her, she had attacked someone who, for all practical purposes, was technically her daughter-in-law, and found a boy who was her son from a previous life. Worst of all, she couldn't keep from calling him her son despite his being a year older.
She picked up some shells and threw them one by one into the ocean. Folding her arms over her chest, Beth shivered. She sensed Hunter before he wrapped his arms around her from behind.
He couldn't seem to help himself. Beth was human; vermin, but he didn't care. She was meant to be his. Someone somewhere had chosen her for him and there was nothing he could do to change that decision, not that he wanted to anyway.
Beth leaned back against him, resting her head on his shoulder. He was tall and solid and warm. She knew he would try to get her to become a vampire. Had she been young enough three hundred years earlier, she would have but now things were different. Or were they? She wasn't so sure she could find the fine line that separated her present self from Sarah. The line blurred more and more by the minute.
"You don't have to decide now." Hunter whispered in her hair.
Beth shifted, startled that he could read her thoughts. "You can read minds?"
"Unfortunate gift from my mother. Most vampires can sort of read minds, kind of a premonition thing more than actually hearing someone's thoughts. But I can hear your thoughts."
"A soulmate thing maybe?"
She felt him smile against her head, "Yeah, but also a strong hereditary trait in the Redfern line." He kissed her ear. "I know this is confusing, you're not Sarah but you are. And I'm not the same person you remember. I've done horrible things that I'm ashamed of when I see you."
"Horrible things?" She bit her lip, knowing he was going to confess things to her that she wasn't so sure she wanted to know about.
"I'm not your regular garden variety vampire. I'm an elder on the Night Council and because of that position, I've had to pass sentence on my own people and on humans."
Beth had that sinking feeling again. "Pass sentence?" She felt Hunter tensing. He didn't want to have this discussion right now, but he was going to be honest and she knew it. "You've killed people?"
Rashel came to mind.
"Not by choice but by law." He said, knowing that he was trying to use it as an excuse. A miserable, weak, unmerited, prejudiced excuse. He felt cheap and guilty over it. Everything that had brought him to this point had all been one big lie one that he was tired of carrying on. There are no app'eals courts in my world. There is a trial, a sentence, and an immediate execution of that sentence."
"Did this law exist three hundred years ago?"
"No." One simple word. He knew she already had the feeling of what had happened in the aftermath of her death.
That sinking nauseating sensation was spreading through her now. It was like molten lava pouring over her skin, burning and searing through to her soul.
"Who made the law?" Her voice was almost a whisper. She already knew and she knew why. If Hunter would only admit it.
"I did, to protect my people from yours."
"To protect your people!" She swung around; "You can kill us like snapping twigs off of trees. We're the ones who need protecting!"
"Is that why witches were burned at the stake or hanged, drowned, pressed to death? How about vampires? You ever see a vampire who hasn't been staked properly?" He started to walk away then turned on his heel facing Beth. "Wood is like arsenic or cyanide to a vampire. If the stake isn't properly used, it is a slow agonizing death. One that your people discovered. That's why we don't rule the world. Humans breed quickly and kill everything they fear or can't make into something that they can accept."
Beth rubbed her temples. In that light, the human race looked like barbarians.
"But your ancestors were human weren't they?" Hunter nodded, knowing exactly where she was going with this argument. He'd heard it before, in another lifetime. "Then your people and mine are kinda like housecats and mountain lions. Both are cats just different types."
"Don't ever tell a night person that they're related to humans, you'll never live to take another breath." Hunter said with a grim smile on his mouth.
"What about Rashel's mother?"
Hunter paled. He had regretted that night for many years. It was humiliating to admit to himself, let alone anyone else. He had killed out of pure bloodlust, not out of justice or self defense, but pure rage and hunger.
"I had been held in a cell by the night council for not killing a human toddler I had been ordered to kill. They kept me there for a month without feeding me and then released me into the carnival crowd. I was told to tell them how sympathetic I felt after feeding on vermin all night."
He looked distant, lost in his own tormented past.
"You just can't imagine what bloodlust feels like. It's like an animal trying to claw its way out of your gut. You feel raw inside almost on fire." Those demons had tortured him all these years and now he had to face them in front of someone who wasn't a stranger but was. "Timmy was an easy target. Alone and in the dark. I didn't want to take much, just enough to make the pain go away. I couldn't stop myself and took too much. I didn't want him to die so I changed him. Rashel's mother walked in on us. I didn't mean to kill her and Rashel was in danger because she saw the whole thing. I wasn't really going to kill her, just scare her away, far away."
"Was she truly in danger?"
Hunter nodded, "The council had her aunt's house torched. Her aunt died in the fire. Some vampire hunters I was friendly with agreed to take her in so she would be protected. The rest, as they say, is history."
Beth's mind whirled with the information. "You never told her the truth?"
"She wouldn't have listened or believed me, besides it's for the best that she does hate me. She's safer this way."
"You should tell her what really happened." As an after-thought she asked, "What happened to the toddler?"
"She's one of the wildpowers."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
