Deadly Encounters (Raina Kirkland Book 4) Read online

  He looked past me to Katie. “Do you want me to take you home, Katie?”

  “No, I can have Everett pick me up,” she said, and she stood up and started gathering her things.

  Damon turned back to the dishes. “You two have some making up to do,” he said with his eyes on the coffee mugs in the soapy water.

  “We have some serious things to discuss. Making up will depend entirely on what he does next,” she said, and there was a strong undertone in her voice that made me smile. She had some strength in her yet. There was drive behind her eyes, ambition and confidence. She hid it well with her shy smiles and gentle comments, but she couldn’t deny it. She was my sister. Soft hearts, soft hands, soft voice; cold hard grit.

  “Sounds like fun,” I said. “On the subject of familiars, I’m with you, actually.”

  “Really, I thought being a witch, you’d side with Everett,” Katie said.

  “As an elf, I can’t condone any harm to any animal,” I said with a shrug.

  “Everett’s not elf kin, he’s just a plain old wizard.” Katie stuck her bottom lip out in a pout. “We’ve always had tons of animals; cats, dogs, mice, hamsters and more. Anything we could sneak into our apartment without our landlords knowing about it. We’re only allowed two animals,” she explained. “I thought he just loved animals, and that our animals had bad luck or something, because they were always ill or hurt. But now I find out about this whole familiar business, and not from him! I was complaining about our vet bills to Fauna, and she told me that Everett was behind it all. He’s been feeding the poor things his blood all these years without me knowing it, so that he can make potions for Fauna’s shop.”

  “He lied to you?” I asked.

  “By omission. He says it’s not the same thing as being a deceitful prick. He knew I wouldn’t agree to it. He knew I’d tell him to quit working at The Natural Kitchen with Fauna if that’s what it took, so he just left me in the dark. The nerve!”

  “Yikes,” I said.

  “Are you sure you want to go home right now?” asked Alistair. “The normal guest rooms are all full due to the holidays, but I have some older apartments. They’ll need some cleaning, but it’s about time I renovate them anyhow.”

  “Nah, I want to talk to him while I’m good and angry,” Katie smiled devilishly.

  HE’S CHANGED

  ALISTAIR LEFT SHORTLY after Katie, and then Thomas put himself to bed. It was close to midnight and it was just Isobel, Damon and I, sitting in awkward quiet. Damon was mashing buttons on his cell phone, while I sat quietly watching our daughter draw. Isobel was sitting in front of the coffee table, dragging a red crayon up and down the paper like mad.

  “What is that?” I asked her.

  “She doesn’t talk,” Damon reminded me before I finished the sentence.

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t talk to her.” I looked at him and found him staring at me from over his phone. “What’s bothering you?”

  Damon smiled as he sat his phone down on the coffee table. “Nothing. I’m fine. I’m great.”

  “Was that sarcasm? Who have you been texting all night?” I felt stupid for even asking. Our relationship, if we still had one at all, was up in the air. I’d been gone for years, and I had no right badgering him about who he was talking to. But still, it hurt when he admitted that he was talking to the woman he’d made dinner plans with.

  “I cancelled our plans. You’re more important to me,” he smiled, I didn’t. “Actually, I am a little bothered by something.”

  “You are?”

  “Let me put Bella to sleep first,” he said, and he picked her up without an ounce of fight from her and took her away down the hall. I followed him and saw that Thomas and Isobel were being made to share a tiny room that was once Damon’s home office, but now it held only a narrow pair of bunk beds and two tall dressers. There was little room for anything else. Again, I was reminded of my beautiful empty house with more than enough room for everyone and then some. I frowned, but held my tongue.

  Once we were back in the living room, we sat down on the couch and Damon held my hands as he began to explain what was bothering him.

  “I once told you that when you’ve lived as long as I have, you have many chances to remake yourself; go back to school, change your career, marry a new sort of woman, stay single for a good long while, date around. I’ve lived several lives in my two-hundred and twelve years. I’ve only ever regretted one. In the mid 1800’s I migrated to America with unrealistic expectations of the land of the free. I expected social equality. I expected a chance to thrive. But America was no better than Europe. I was still a monster, a freak of nature. From the moment I stepped off that boat, to the moment Adia found me half-starved on the streets of Seattle, I was treated with nothing but hate and discrimination. It made me an angry man.” He turned his face from me.

  “Adia found you?”

  “Yes, and she took me into her newly forming collective. She said she loved barguests. She grew up with one that lived in the woods near her childhood home in ancient Britannia. It was he who taught her how very evil men could be.”

  “Through stories?”

  Damon shook his head and let go of my hands. “No, their friendship grew into love as she grew into a woman, and her parents found them together one night. Her father dragged him through the town behind his horse. He hung him from a tree, whipped him, castrated him and burned him alive. And he made her watch all of it. That’s how her hate for humanity began, and I reveled in it because I, too, hated them.” Damon stood up and walked away from me.

  I followed him. “Damon,” I said softly, and I reached out to him, but he shrugged away from me, as if he could feel my hand approaching his shoulder from behind.

  “She was the master of Mort Villa, one of the first vampire collectives. She was powerful, beautiful, and—evil to the core, and so was I. We were lovers and more. She gave me a home and I helped her with her experiments.”

  He fell quiet and I wanted to ask him what sort of experiments he helped her with, but I was in a state of numbness. He and Adia had been lovers? Wow. That, I was not expecting.

  “She never told me what the goal of the experiments were, or maybe I just didn’t care at the time. I got to hurt humans, and that was enough for me.”

  “Hurt them how? What sort of experiments were you two performing?” I finally managed to ask.

  “We were infecting men with vampirism under varying circumstances, exposing them to toxins, testing their limits, seeing how much damage they could handle and still function. Other barguests and I did all of the grunt work; tracking men down and bringing them to her. And when she was done with them, we got to tear them apart, or do whatever we liked to them. All that mattered was that they disappeared.”

  He was still giving me his back, but he didn’t fight my touch as I approached him again. “You changed, Damon.”

  “Adia hasn’t. That was her in Alistair, wasn’t it? She was making him do all those horrible things for years, and I didn’t recognize it. I didn’t believe it, not ever. And now that monster is in Isobel. I can’t help but wonder if she’s the reason Isobel is different?”

  The thought had occurred to me as well, but it seemed useless speculating on it. “You loved Adia,” I said kindly. “You thought she was gone forever, but now you know she wasn’t, not completely. Her soul was hiding someplace, waiting for Alistair to possess or something like that.” I didn’t quite understand that part myself. There was more than a century long gap between the time Adia died in the late 1800’s and when she possessed her brother just ten years ago. Another question for the puzzling.

  “Raina,” he began, but I could tell by his tone that he was going to dismiss my statement, so I stopped him.

  “Damon, you did love her. You thought she was gone and you moved on. You let go of her and you changed. Now she’s back, and maybe your feelings for her are coming back, too.” I bit my lip. “Along with some strong regrets and self-hate…
”

  “I lost both of you, and now you’re both back in my life. You, an undead demigoddess, her, an evil spirit inhabiting my baby girl,” he brooded. “I know we’ll find a way to separate the two, Adia and Isobel.”

  “Are you afraid of what that will mean for Adia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too.” Love is a weird thing. Through hurt, hate and time, love stays.

  THE DEMON OF MY DREAMS

  DAMON WENT TO bed shortly after our conversation ended. He, after all, needed his sleep. I stayed up until dawn, reading books, catching up on current events and staring at my sleeping children. If Adia was indeed in Isobel, you wouldn’t know it by the look of her; so sweet, so delicate. She was a silent angel, living in her own little world. But eventually day came, and I went to bed, too.

  For as long as I could recall, I always had such vivid dreams. When I was first infected with Adia’s blood, she would mentor me through my dreams using the strong psychic connection all vampires have with their maker. She was there for me when most people weren’t. Even my own mother had abandoned me, but not Adia. To be honest, I couldn’t really wrap my mind around the idea of a malicious Adia. Strong, enduring, self-sacrificing, beautiful; those were the traits I associated with my maker. Now, she’s supposed to be this down right baddy; experimenting on men with vampirism, taking over Alistair’s body, using it to torture and rape and manipulate, and then possessing my baby girl in the same fashion. Damn it.

  In my dream I was standing on a grassy sort of rocky terrain overlooking the ocean. The sky was a greenish blue, and the surrounding trees were tall far into a mountainous horizon. I half expected to see Adia’s golden curls dancing in the heavy breeze that sent my red locks flying into my face. But no, not Adia. I had Raphael for company instead.

  “Looks like Hell,” Raphael said. He was standing to my left, and he was right. I’d been to Hell, and it looked a bit like this. Lush greenery, crisp air, green sky with two suns.

  “It wasn’t what I expected,” I said to him. “No lakes of fire, no torture. Who do I write my complaints to?”

  “It’s not some mystical place inside Earth or on another plane of existence,” he laughed. “It’s just some planet out there among the stars.”

  I nodded. “The goddess who made me this way, she’s stuck there?”

  “Yup, along with other gods, angels and humans. All locked away on a beautiful rock with a younger sun, an older sun and three moons, one the size of Earth,” he said, seemingly reflecting back on Hell with fondness.

  “You sound like you enjoyed your time there. That’s where you met your wife, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, Hell is a magnificent place.”

  “Full of murderers and rapists?”

  He laughed. “No. Most murderers and rapists don’t end up there. Hell is more a prisoner of war sort of place. Violent humans, when they die, they just haunt around until they fade into oblivion. They’re so self-destructive that whatever part of them that would be everlasting just rots away into the ether. It’s not a punishment, it’s just science.”

  I gave him one raised eyebrow, “Science?”

  He waved away my comment with his hand, “Magic is what you call something you don’t understand. Science is what you call things you do. To me, the natural breakdown and redistribution of one’s life energy is science.”

  “But good people. Their life energies don’t break down?”

  “What good people?” he scoffed.

  “Oh, right. You think all humans are evil, like Apollo and Adia…” Me thinks, I see a theme? “Apollo, and his end-times scenario. Adia, and her vampire experiments.” A thought came to mind that made my brows pinch just then. “Admetus was experimenting on vampires, too. That’s how I got infected-with Adia’s blood. And he was a devout worshipper of Apollo—Apollo gave him everlasting life, until you smuggled his wife back from Hell to marry. That’s when he began to die—three years before I stopped him, three years before—that’s when Adia possessed Alistair. That means something, but what? What does that mean?” I said more to myself than the demon.

  Raphael laughed so loud it startled me and I hit him. “You’re so close, Raina. I can see you trying to understand, but you just can’t quite make that jump, can you?”

  I huffed out a breath of air and turned to the ocean. “Adia said she died with her entire collective while they were fleeing the U.S. after being sentenced to death. But what if she didn’t die then. What if she had her empty coffin loaded onto the boat with all the rest of her people, knowing they’d never escape the Puget Sound, and she alone ran into hiding instead?”

  “Well, that sounds like something a scoundrel would do. Put her people out there in the water to die, while she escaped with her life. Why hadn’t that occurred to you before?”

  I turned on him with a mean face. “Because, I never questioned her before! Because, I never considered that she’d lie to me. Now, I’m questioning everything. Alistair was never crazy. She was crazy. Alistair didn’t torture my brother, she did.”

  “What do you think she was doing for all those years before she possessed her brother?”

  I looked to the grass, “If she was alive all that time, she was probably still experimenting on humans with vampirism. But to what end? And how did she die if not with her people? Why did she die the same year you smuggled Admetus’ wife from Hell and took her as your own?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and looked at me with a grin that made me feel sick.

  “Raphael,” I began with narrowed eyes on him. “The men you hired to kill me said that angels invented vampirism as a way to kill off humanity, but something went wrong with it.”

  Raphael took a few steps away from me and I looked at his appearance. I hadn’t noticed the change until then, but he looked older now. I’d guess mid-forties. Short mousy brown hair, a striped suit and a long trench coat that waved in the breeze.

  “Vampirism was created a little over two-thousand years ago by angels at the behest of Apollo,” he began. “The thing you have to understand is that gods as a species aren’t very civilized. They have tons of rituals and rules for other life forms, but they don’t have many rules for themselves. They wonder from planet to planet in huge mobs, playing like children. They cause devastation. They kill each other and other life forms without much forethought or afterthought. But Earth changed them, some of them. Those who didn’t change just left. Kept on their merry way. Those that changed, those that stayed were of three schools of thought. Humans are the result of gods at play.” He held up his thumb. “Gods like Trivia, believe humans need a leash at all times, like dogs. They should be managed. They should be regulated.” He held up his index finger. “Gods like your Mel, believe humans should be our companions; that gods and angels should intermingle with humans as relative equals living in harmony with one another.” And then he raised his middle finger. “Then there’s Apollo, who says fuck the humans. Kill them all. Undo this huge mistake, and give this world back to nature. Kill off this diseased, nasty, tumor you call the human race and bring this little blue planet some peace.”

  “Okay. So, Apollo has angels create a disease. Doesn’t work quite right. He has his henchmen, Admetus and probably others, work on it in the meantime. And, I suppose Adia is one of his henchmen as well. What I don’t get is why humans would help in their own destruction.”

  “They fear death.” Raphael looked out over the ocean. “And they want heaven everlasting. These humans are led to believe that if they agree to forsake their race they’ll live forever in paradise.”

  I nodded. “But why do you say it like that, ‘forever’. Is it not forever?”

  Raphael blew a raspberry. “Nobody really want’s forever. They’re scared of not existing, that’s all. They’ll get over it. Even gods let themselves die eventually.”

  “Gods just let themselves die?”

  Raphael turned sharply and waved his hand in my face. “You know, I don’t feel like talking
philosophy with you. Or, explaining all the mysteries of the universe!” he snapped abruptly.

  I put my hands up and backed away. “Nobody is forcing you to.”

  He gave me a mean grin and waved his finger at me like I’d been naughty. “No, you are. I can feel you all around me. Your thoughts and feelings are penetrating me, taunting me with your bull shit. I will NOT BY UNMADE BY YOU!”

  I gave him a silent raised eyebrow. He mimicked my expression, but with more anger. I shook my head.

  “Whatever. I don’t suspect I’ll ever understand you. Apollo’s henchmen kills your lady love and you hate me. Adia works for Apollo and you help her.”

  Raphael stepped away from me with downcast eyes. “I don’t have to justify myself to you. Just wake the fuck up already.”

  “No!” I yelled. “You had me killed. You’ve endangered my daughter. I think you do owe me that much!” I advanced on him, grabbing him by his trench coat and pulling him down to my level, but when I looked into his eyes I saw anger turn to grief, and I felt my eyes soften, too. I could feel his pain, his misery, like a burning rash tearing up his insides.

  “No,” Raphael turned his face from me.

  “You’re hurting. I can feel your pain, Raphael.”

  He was looking anywhere but at me. “What do you want from me?”

  “An explanation.”

  “No, I won’t give you that.”

  I closed my eyes, my hands still holding his coat tight…Not that he could have gotten away from me. This was my dream, my head, and he was stuck in both.

  “Apollo,” I began with my eyes closed. “He has a new human-ending disease?” I opened my eyes to Raphael’s blank expression. “He’s releasing it in Washington.” I sighed. “I should warn people then, huh? I’ll make some calls when I wake—thank you for the warning.”