Shackled to the Night, page 14
But no one came.
Then one day, about a month after they had arrived in their little slice of paradise, Nat announced that she was pregnant. Aiden remembered the way his heart had surged at the news, and how she glowed as she told him. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. A woman he loved with his every breath, and now they had created a life together. His existence was perfect. He felt as though the greatest gifts in the universe were being bestowed on him, and he marveled at his luck, fortune, and blessings—whatever was responsible for giving him the gifts he was receiving. When he was alone with his thoughts, it scared the piss out of him. He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, the one thing to bring it all crashing down around him.
To keep the thoughts at bay, he concentrated fully on Natalie. He marveled at the way her belly grew, and with every pound she groused about, she became more beautiful in his eyes.
A week before she was due, she insisted on going out for a walk in the late afternoon sun, about an hour before sunset. Aiden felt crazy thinking of her and their child out there unprotected, but she had complained that he was being overbearing, and he supposed he was. He armed her with a stun gun, a cell phone, and a lecture on taking safety precautions, such as avoiding alleys and strange men walking on the street. He then asked for a detailed route on where she planned on going. She had rolled her eyes, told him, kissed him lovingly and left.
An hour later, Aiden’s dial had flipped into full panic mode. As soon as the sun set, he ran outside, the remaining light burning his eyes. He followed the route Nat said she would be taking, down the small hill, past the bakery and flower shop, and then through the park where she would loop around through the town center and make her way home. As he ran, he could smell her. When he passed the flower shop he caught the scent of her blood, and he traced it into the alley. His heart ached as he saw the puddle of blood, and he became paralyzed in fear. What had happened to Nat? Their baby?
As he stood over the puddle, he was vaguely aware that his cell phone was ringing. He held it up to his ear, unable to even manage a hello.
“Hello? Is this Aiden?” the female voice thick with a Spanish accent asked.
He stood silent, knowing what the call was about. “Is she dead?” he croaked, feeling his knees go into Jello mode.
“Sir,” the voice said quietly, “I am so sorry. Um, yes. She is gone.”
Aiden’s knees totally gave out and he folded to the ground. As he kneeled next to the puddle of Nat’s blood, he thought about the baby.
“The baby is fine,” the woman on the other end said. He hadn’t realized he had spoken the words out loud. “We were able to save the baby, but your wife … she was hurt too badly.”
Aiden wanted to go on a killing rampage and rip apart anyone who crossed his path. He felt his soul shred, just come apart. As a roar of rage and pain raced up from his gut, he realized he needed to keep it together for a little longer. He needed to get the baby, to take care of it, to be a father. Even though Nat was gone, he still had a piece of her in their child.
“Where?” he asked, standing up.
“Hospital de Santo Maria,” the woman had said.
Aiden turned from the alley, and somehow put one foot in front of the other and made his way to the hospital.
The first time he saw his son, his own whiskey-colored eyes looked up at him, but the rest of the babe’s features were all Natalie. The nurse had told him that the boy wasn’t taking to the bottle, and Aiden immediately knew why. Even though he was looking at a carbon copy of Nat, the boy would be like his father. The kid didn’t want any milk; he wanted blood. Aiden checked the boy out of the hospital against the doctor’s wishes, and took him back to the empty house. He scored his wrist and gave the boy the blood he craved and needed to survive.
A few days later, Aiden hired a babysitter for a couple of hours and took off on his Harley with Natalie’s ashes. He drove out of town to a small road that led to a lake. Nat had always liked going there, and they had spent many romantic nights on the shore snuggled together on a blanket watching the moon reflect off the lake, talking softly, making love. He scattered the ashes at the shore of the lake, and watched as they sunk to the bottom. His eyes were dry, his body heavy. He seriously considered sitting on the shore, waiting for the sun. Once it broke over the horizon, he would be ash as well, joining Natalie. His need for revenge and the baby waiting at home were the only things that made him able to put one foot in front of the other and leave the lake.
He spent the next ten years caring for the boy, raising him, and loving him. There wasn’t a day that he woke up when the area behind his sternum didn’t feel like someone had rubbed him raw with a cheese grater. He thought maybe over time the pain would diminish, but it never did. It settled in his chest, a constant reminder of what was, and what never could be again. In those ten years, the pain had been his only emotional companion.
Aiden got up from the couch and looked around the bar for some whiskey. As he poured, he remembered the day he had decided on a name for his son. Nat had wanted to name the boy Robert, but Aiden didn’t like the name. He had wanted something more eclectic, something different. As he watched his unnamed son sleep one day, he realized just how different his son was, regardless of the name. His son was a babe born with his vampire gene more prevalent that his human genes. He didn’t know of one child who had survived with the DNA tilting on the vampire side. Aiden decided he would call the boy Robert to help honor his Natalie. Yes, it was a simple name, but the boy was extraordinary.
As he shot down the whiskey and felt the burn hit his stomach, he remembered when he had found out what had happened to Nat. A mugging gone wrong. She had fought back, and the mugger had stabbed her three times, miraculously never hitting the baby. Aiden had asked around, and eventually got a bead on the mugger. Aiden had paid the guy a visit, a very long visit, and ended up throwing his body parts in different dumpsters around the town. He then took Robert and left the quaint house in the small town.
That kid was the only thing that kept him grounded. Robert was the one tether to sanity that Aiden had left, the only ray of light in his dark, dead heart. He loved that kid with every fiber in his being, and he loved being with the boy and being a father. Yet, he knew without a doubt that when Robert was big enough to care for himself and didn’t need, nor want old pops around, Aiden was going to check out. Buy the farm. Say goodnight one last time. Because without Robert, there wasn’t a fucking thing worth living for, and he was so tired of the pain.
Aiden wondered where Thaddeus was. He heard a door in the hallway shut, and guessed Thaddeus would be making an appearance in minutes. Aiden thought about what he would tell his brother, and decided on a really short version of the long truth. Just hit the bullet points. He could barely think about the memories, so talking about them was simply out of the question.
Thaddeus strode in and closed the door. He stood there without moving and stared at Aiden. “Almost eleven years, asshole, and I don’t hear a word from you. You disappear, no one knows if you’re dead or alive. And then you show up here unannounced with your son? Cute kid by the way, but how did you get a kid? What the hell, Aiden? What did you do to get a kid?”
Aiden poured another shot and silently offered Thaddeus one. Thaddeus nodded and sat down on a stool at the bar. Aiden poured for them both, they clinked glasses and shot the amber liquid down.
“I left a message on your phone,” Aiden said dryly.
Thaddeus thought of the message he had neglected to listen to for, oh, probably twenty-four hours. He should have listened to it and then everyone could have been more prepared. He could have told Emily about Aiden, and she wouldn’t have been so scared.
“Glad you didn’t change the code to get in here,” Aiden said, looking around the room.
Thaddeus eyed Aiden as he slammed back his whiskey.
He set the glass down and said. “Spill it, fucker.”
Chapter 20
Emily sat on the edge of her bed thinking about everything that Thaddeus had told her. vampires. And now, her son had fangs and needed blood to live.
Her head was swimming with questions, so many it was hard to form a coherent thought. She thought about what she had seen about vampires in the movies. Thaddeus didn’t sleep in a coffin, but on silk sheets. He ate food. He drank wine. She had heard his heart beating. He was warm and kind, and God knew if he wanted to kill her, he had ample opportunity. He wasn’t a monster of Hollywood movies or scary books. Except for his fangs, he appeared wholly human.
She marveled at the way time, life, and circumstances could change your reality in the blink of an eye, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad, or the really, really fucked up.
But she knew what was required when you were dealt a hand that had bad news written all over it. Only a short amount of time could be allotted for taking a swim in the self-pity pool. If you did too many laps in there, the chances rose that you wouldn’t be able to claw your way out and find the strength to help yourself deal with the situation.
No, what was required was a gathering of energy and strength from the inside. Like the gathering weather components that made up a tornado, she felt her inner energy begin to churn, collecting in speed and harnessing the power she had always counted on before.
She recalled the day at thirteen years of age when she had been told her parents had been killed in a car wreck. Her world had shattered, leaving her afraid and feeling helpless. She could deal with the fear, but the helpless feeling even at that tender age really pissed her off. Helplessness and her just didn’t mix well. Within that anger she found the energy and strength to go on.
Then there was the time two years after she had married her college sweetheart, Jonathan. They had met at the University of San Diego in their senior year, where she studied Early Childhood Education, and it had been a wonderful romance. She felt she had truly found her soul mate—the ying to her yang. They had married shortly after graduation and began what she thought was an idyllic life. Ready to make their family grow, Emily and Jonathan tried to get pregnant. Scratch that. He said he was interested in getting the family going, but then actions spoke louder than words, and all that. She peed on sticks, checked her cervix and charted her cycle relentlessly. When she would announce ovulation, he would announce a headache. Or a business trip. It all went on for a year.
Feeling like a failure in the baby-making department, Emily slid into a depression. Her husband did little to help pull her out. In fact, he seemed perfectly content to go out or lose himself in online Solitaire instead of talking to her about how she was feeling. After a few months, she felt the power within her begin to gather strength and came to the conclusion that if a child were to happen, it would be a great blessing. If not, it was the way things were supposed to be.
She took the plunge back into life. She felt herself smiling more, heard herself laughing again. Her husband declared he liked to be around her again, and she thought things were going well. And they were for almost a year.
Then one day she went off to her teaching job with a sore throat. By lunchtime, she became certain that the flu had moved in and taken up residence in her bones and a jackhammer was doing its thing on her skull. She left for home, looking forward to curling up in her bed, every sneeze and cough making her rattle from the inside out.
When she arrived home, her skull was pounding so hard she didn’t even notice her husband’s car parked at the curb. She unlocked the door, near tears at the way her body hurt. She dragged herself upstairs, and had a brief thought that she hadn’t closed the door leading to the guest bedroom. As she passed the closed door, she heard noises. They were muffled, but sounded like heavy breathing. Then a woman groaned. Emily silently opened the door and found her husband in bed with the couple from next door. She had the thought that the jackhammer doing its thing on her brain was causing hallucinations. Her next door neighbor, the woman who had brought them chocolate chip cookies the day they had moved in, the woman who threw such wonderful Christmas parties, the woman who attended church every Sunday, rain or shine, was straddling her own husband, and well, lookie there. Emily’s husband was giving it to her from behind.
Besides the shattering of her body from the flu, her soul splintered that day as well. She couldn’t believe it when she found out that the threesomes had been going on for a year. She had wondered how she could have lived under the same roof as her husband and not known of his extracurricular activities.
After the divorce, she put her dating life in park and set the emergency break for good measure. She wanted nothing to do with anything of the male species, and slowly but surely she felt herself harness the power within and begin to heal. And she was doing fine until she met Victor three years later.
He had been the one to get the key to her ignition, and turn her engine on. His boyish good looks, his relentless charm, and his ability to make her laugh landed her in his bed for a weekend. And what a weekend it had been. Sex, food, laughter and fun. It had been exactly what she needed, and she left on that Monday morning to head to work with a smile on her face. She had a small hope that there was a possibility that her and Victor could have a future together, but that hope faded when she didn’t hear from him, and he didn’t return her phone calls. The fact that she never saw him again hurt a little, but sometimes the best things in life came in small packages, or short time spans in this case.
Six weeks later she had found out she was pregnant. She desperately tried to locate Victor, but it was as if he had vanished into thin air. His phone was disconnected, his apartment vacated. She even visited the place he told her he worked, and they looked at her like she had nine eyes when she asked for him. No one by that name had ever worked at the place. And that was just great. She was about to become a single parent. At first, she was terrified, and wondered if the pregnancy hormones had done a number on her judgment. Single parenthood would not be an easy road to travel. But over the months as she watched her belly grow and felt the baby within her, she really felt that she could make a home for her and her baby. That inner power gained momentum into an intense excitement as her due date approached.
Everything had been fine for ten years. She had focused on raising her son into a good person and making a home for both of them.
Then one night, Brandon had disappeared walking home from a friend’s house just after dusk. It was if he was smoke and had blown away without a trace.
Again, she had gone through the shattering of her soul, of her heart. She had cried for days, paralyzed in the fear and anxiety that engulfed her. She watched as her nightmare played out on the nightly news. She stayed in touch with the police detective who had been assigned to the case, who, in her eyes, was doing next to nothing.
After a week of total immobility, she felt her inner tornado beginning to swirl, her mind began to clear, and her spine turned into a steel rod. If that detective was going to sit around with his thumb up his ass, then she would have to take charge of finding her son herself.
And she had. Diving into the cesspool of humanity, she had gone on the Internet and monitored the pedophile websites. She began to notice two men in the Reno area that were actually posting on the best ways to grab kids off the street. That was when her inner strength had exploded, and she bought a gun and decided to pay a visit to one of them who lived across town.
Enter Thaddeus, and this whole new world that had crashed down on her own reality, shredding it and leaving it in a pile at her feet, leaving her confused, hurt and afraid.
Thaddeus had made it clear that her son was the same kid—he just now needed something besides 2% milk and a daily vitamin to grow. Thaddeus had also made it clear that he wanted to help Brandon assimilate into his new life, and also help her to become a mother to a vampire. She shook her head. Really? vampire? Her kid looked the same, felt the same in her arms and smelled the same. He was still her beautiful boy. He wasn’t one of the evil creatures she had seen Hollywood cough up. To prove it to herself, she went to the door and peeked her head out into the hallway. She heard Robert and Brandon hooting and hollering at their game on Wii. Yep, he sounded like the same kid. She moved down the hall silently and peeked through the slit in the doorway. Looked like the same kid. She smiled as she watched them. Brandon took the Wii wand, wound up, and threw the imaginary bowling ball down the lane on the TV, yelling at the ball to go right, while Robert jumped up and down yelling at the ball to head on its current trajectory.
She snickered, and both boys turned around at the same time. Thaddeus had mentioned that Brandon’s hearing was far more sensitive now, so she guessed her days of watching him undetected were over.
His smile faded, and the look on his face broke her heart. Pain moved across his features, as well as the question that sat in the room like a large pink elephant. Would she accept him as he was now?
She fully opened the door and went to him. Both boys watched her as she crossed the room. She went to Brandon, her reason for living, and put her hands on each side of his face. Her eyes stung as she looked down at him. God, in a few years he would be taller than her. She wrapped her arms around him. She felt the tension in his body drain away as his arms curled around her waist. She held him for a moment and then released him. He looked at her with a smile.
“Fangs, huh?” she said.
He nodded.
“Can I see them?”
He looked as though he was concentrating for a moment, and then he smiled at her. Wow. There they were. Her son’s fangs.
“Can I touch?”
He nodded and she brought her finger up and felt the tip of the fang. It was sharp, and her son inhaled sharply. She quickly pulled her hand away.
“I’m sorry honey, did I hurt you?”
He shook his head. “Just sensitive.”
They stood there a moment looking at each other.
