A Dark Inheritance

Mother Knows Best

Chapter 3 - Mother Knows Best 

Jenine’s heart raced. She knew she should tell him no. She knew she should call for help. She knew that he was almost certainly going to kill her if she couldn’t get her wits about her. Her throat was still cold and sore from where he’d held her. But she found herself nodding. She wanted to go with him. This might be her last night on earth, but it was definitely going to be interesting. He released her stake and offered her his hand. She tucked the stake into the back of her jeans and took his hand. It was cold, but somehow electric in hers. She could feel the burn from the stake on his hand and wondered if she was hurting him as their fingers laced together. He looked down at her, something unnameable in his eyes, before the world faded around them, their bodies dissolving into a haze of gray smoke. The feeling of it was giddy and weightless. In spite of herself, she felt a wide grin spreading over her face. She darted a look over at him and noticed him unabashedly smiling too. In that moment he looked to her like any handsome young man. Her mind raced. Almost as if he could feel her considering him, he looked over at her, not trying to hide his smile. “It’s fun, isn’t it?” There was a laugh on his voice. It was infectious, and she let out a giggle as she nodded, apparently unable to find her voice. The world began to reform around them, only they were in s completely different place. Waves crashed against a rocky shoreline leading to hills of brilliantly green grass. The beauty of it was startling. Even more startling was the fact that they were surrounded by vampires. Dozens of vampires were gathered around an unnatural blue fire. . . roasting marshmallows? And listening to a young female vampire tell what Jenine thought must be a ghost story? What? She instinctively started to reach for her stake, but her hand dropped to her side uselessly when she noticed the children running around. She turned to Caspian. “What is this?” She asked, unable to keep the shock out of her voice. He met her eyes and pulled a face. “This is home.” He said, holding her hand a bit more tightly as he started to stride toward the group. “Wait!” She said, more sharply than she wanted to. “Relax, Jenine, I just want you to meet someone. I promise you’re safe here.” Jenine swallowed her fear and followed him into the throng of vampires ahead of them.  Beyond the bonfire, there was a town in the distance. As they moved toward the town, the sounds of the frolicking children and gasps from the crowd listening to the story faded away. In the growing quiet, she turned to look at him again, realizing that he was still holding her hand. She also realized she could no longer feel the burn on his hand, so she pulled it up to her eye line, where she could see the smooth, unblemished skin. If she made it home alive after this, she’d have so much intel for her father and the rest of the hunters. They finally arrived at the door of a long, low-slung house, where he knocked before turning the knob and pulling her inside with him. A tall, slender woman with the same jet black hair and striking purple eyes was striding acrosss the room toward them. She didn’t even seem to see Jenine as she swept Caspian into an embrace. Jenine thought she saw him flush a bit as he disentangled himself. “I’m so glad you’re alright.” The woman said, stepping back to regard him. She finally seemed to notice Jenine. Caspian cleared his throat. “Jenine, I’d like you to meet my mother.” 

Liv sat in her car outside of her house, dreading the inevitable fight that waited for her inside. She had spent the majority of the weekend at Luke’s, but now it was Sunday night and she needed clean clothes and to really wash her hair. Plus Luke’s parents were coming home and probably wouldn’t be pleased that the two of them had been using the place as their personal s*x pad. Luke had offered to come home with her, but she had declined. She’d have to face her mother, and the truth, eventually. She took a deep breath, and pushed out of her car, hurrying into the house. 

She felt more than saw her mom wrap her in a tight hug. “Oh my god, I was so worried. Where have you been?” Her mother hissed when she pulled away, hands clamped firmly around her shoulders holding her at arm's length. 

“I was at Luke’s. I just didn’t have anything to say to you. How do you expect me to just keep acting like everything is normal? You literally told me I’m not even a person.” She could hear a note of shrillness in her voice, but as she felt her mother’s grip slacken in surprise, she shrugged her off and snaked past her into the kitchen. 

“You don’t just get to start staying the night with boys! You’re still a child!” Her mother cane charging after her. 

“No, I’m not. I’m a monster.” Liv’s voice was soft, cold. 

Her mom flinched as if Liv had slapped her. She took a ragged breath. “Olivia, you are many things, but you are most certainly not a monster. Will you please let me explain?” 

Liv opened the refrigerator, shielding her face from her mother’s searching gaze, and considered its contents before pulling out a bottle of Gatorade. She really wanted a glass of the Sancerre chilling on the bottom rack, but she didn’t want to push her luck too far. “You have 5 minutes. I’ve got homework and homecoming stuff.” She sat stiffly on one of the barstools, cracking open the Gatorade and taking a long pull in an attempt to steady herself. 

Her mother crossed the room and pulled out the Sancerre. She poured one huge glass and one small glass and pushed the smaller glass toward Liv before taking hers in both hands and settling across the bar from her daughter. A peace offering. Liv thought, accepting the glass with a small smile. Her mother cleared her throat and began: 

“I was raised to believe that vampires were bloodthirsty monsters who needed to be hunted down and eradicated. I was told that they murdered and turned humans with no remorse or consideration. And I trained every single day from the time I could hold a stake until I was 16 to hunt and kill vampires. My dad was a renowned hunter, and I worshipped the ground he walked on. I wanted to be just like him. I killed my first vampire when I was 13 years old. I’d been on hundreds of hunts by the time I met your father. Your real father.” Her voice shook, but she took a large, steadying sip of her wine. “I thought he was going to kill me.” She took another, bigger sip. “But he just wanted to show me the truth. There were whole communities of vampires that never hurt anyone. They were living on donor blood and animal blood. Living right alongside humans. Having children with humans. Loving them. I learned that the bloodthirsty vampires I had known all my life were just a small, sick subset. Almost like terrorist cells. Everything I thought I knew about them was wrong. Well, except how to kill them.” She closed her eyes, bracing herself against a memory Liv couldn’t begin to guess at, before continuing. “And your father was unlike any man I’d ever met. He was kind and brave and smart and of course handsome. I snuck away to see him whenever I could, but my father was hunting him. Your father had killed a hunter who had been stalking a family of peaceful vampires, and the hunters wouldn’t rest until he was dead. The night I found out about you, I was supposed to meet your father, but I knew you would never be safe with the hunters and that my father would never stop looking for me and that he’d kill any vampire who stood in the way. I couldn’t let them find your father’s home. I couldn’t lead them straight to a whole town of innocent vampires. I knew I had to run away. So I was packing some things when your father, the man I said was your father I mean, found me. I told him everything and he helped me escape. Helped me hide. Helped me start to build a life. And I’m sorry you found out this way. I’ve wanted to tell you, but I just didn’t know how and I didn’t want to ruin your nice, normal childhood and this life you’ve built for yourself. You’ve worked so hard.” Her eyes are welling up with tears now, and Liv has to press her palms onto her own to prevent herself from following suit. 

Liv shook her head and downed her wine in one gulp. “Where is he now?” She asked. 

“Your father?” Her mother’s voice was strained. She took another long sip. 

“Yes.” It was barely a whisper. 

Tears fell from her mother’s eyes, tracing shiny paths down her blotchy pink cheeks. “I don’t know.” She breathed. 

“He doesn’t even know I exist?” Her mother shook her head and reached across the bar for Liv’s hand. Liv jerked back as if she’d been burned. “I need to do my homework.” She said, her voice sounding foreign in her own ears. She didn’t look back at her mother as she raced up the stairs two at a time, but she could hear her sniffling as she cried. 

Upstairs in her room, Liv curled up in the window seat and put her head in her hands. A flicker of light outside caught her eye - she lifted her head to see Robbie flicking his bedroom light on and off. He came to the window holding up a notebook. “You ok?” was scrawled in his surprisingly neat, blocky handwriting. The gesture made her smile. They’d been “passing notes” like this since they were kids, long before Taylor Swift made it look cool. She stood and grabbed a notebook and a sharpie from her desk. “Kind of” she scribbled back and held it up to the window. He frowned reading her message and flipped the page in his notebook to write “ice cream or Jack Daniels?” He grinned, looking like the little boy he used to be for just a moment. She paused to think. “Both.” He laughed and nodded. “Treehouse in 10.” He disappeared, turning off the light in his room. 

She pushed the window open and popped out the screen, placing it gently on the floor beside the seat. With practiced ease, she slid out the window and onto the porch roof. She followed its slope down toward the red maple branch that hung over their property line from Robbie’s side of the fence, and climbed up to the treehouse. She had to duck to get inside and it was a tight squeeze as she tucked herself into the far corner of the little playroom. She ran her fingers across the spot in the wall where she and all the boys had carved their names in first grade with the same knife they’d used to do “blood brothers”, slicing into their palms and pressing their hands together. In hindsight, it turned her stomach. Briefly she wondered if she’d been a little too interested in the blood back then. How many of her memories would be tainted like this? 

“Hayes! I’ve got your goods.” Robbie’s head appeared first in the trapdoor, then a backpack held aloft. She grabbed the backpack and then took his hand to help him up. They put in the trapdoor a few years ago when the boys stopped fitting through the door. He gave her a hug once he was in the room. 

She wrinkled her nose. “You have got to lay off the Axe body spray.” She pushes him away gently and sits cross legged on the floor. 

He grins impishly and sits down opposite her. “I thought you’d like it better than Mandy Beale’s perfume.” He tugged the collar of his tshirt to the side to reveal a string of purple hickeys. 

She rolled her eyes. “Eww. Robbie, why do you waste your time with girls like Mandy?” Mandy was as empty headed as she was pretty. And boy, was she pretty. 

“We can’t all fall in love in elementary school, Hayes. Somebody’s got to have all the fun. And think of it like this, with the Mandy Beales of the world distracted by me, none of them is trying to sink her manicure into your man.” 

She rolled her eyes again and opened the backpack. Inside she found red solo cups, a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey, a quart of rocky road ice cream, and two spoons. For all his talk, Robbie was the kind of guy who made sure his mom bought Liv’s favorite flavor of ice cream just in case. “Just know that you can do better. That’s all.” 

“We’re not here to talk about me anyway. What’s up?” He let his shirt hide the hickeys again and took the bottle from her, pouring a long time into each of the cups before handing her one. 

She handed him a spoon, and they toasted. She took a quick sip to steel herself before she spoke. “You have to swear you’ll never tell anyone. Not even Sam. Not even Luke.” 

He met her eyes. His were warm hazel, unwavering. “I swear.” For a long moment, neither of them breathed or blinked. They just stared in the stillness. 

“And you have to swear not to think I’ve lost my f*****g mind.” She took another drink. 

“You lost your f*****g mind a long time ago, Hayes.” He jokes, but his voice is soft, serious, gentle. This is the version of him that only she sees. It makes her feel safe, but her heart races all the same. 

“My dad’s not really my dad.” She starts with the safest part, takes another swig of whiskey and chases it with a bite of ice cream. 

He watches her face carefully, but he doesn’t speak. He knows there’s more, so he just sips his whiskey slowly. 

She sighs and continues. She tells him everything. He occasionally makes small sounds of surprise or takes particularly large gulls of his drink, but he’s silent until she’s finished. After a long pause, he finally said “So vampires are real then.” 

She laughed and pointed her spoon, half full of ice cream, at him. “Apparently.” 

“Can I ask you something without you getting mad?” He titled his head so that he was looking up through his eyelashes at her. She nods, draining her whiskey and feeling pleasantly warm and tingly from the liquor. He takes a quick breath. “Do you need to, you know, start drinking blood? Have you ever-“ The look on her face must stop him from finishing the question. “Sorry.” He says softly. “We don’t have to talk about that yet. I guess I just wanted to volunteer. If you need blood, you know where to find me. I trust you not to, you know, kill me or whatever.” 

She found herself strangely moved by this extremely strange kindness. She pressed her hands to her eyes to keep from crying. He closed the small distance between them quickly and held her in his arms. At first it’s awkward. They haven’t been this close often since she and Luke really got together a few years ago. He stroked  her hair, his touch surprisingly gentle. Without really thinking about it, she was suddenly wondering what his touch might feel like elsewhere. She shook her head to clear the unbidden image off his hands inching up her thighs. What the hell? I must be really drunk. She had never thought about Robbie like that. And she knew he basically saw her as a kid sister. She blushed, embarrassed by the train of thought. As if he could read her mind, he asks “What’re you thinking about, Hayes?” She couldn’t tell if she was imagining the ragged hoarseness in his voice. 

“Honestly,” she said, thinking of something true that wasn’t exactly the truth. “I’m wondering when or I guess if I’ll ever need to do that. My mom doesn’t know if there are others like me. Half vampires I guess? This is so surreal. I just keep waiting to wake up.” 

“You know that no matter what I’ve got your back, right?” He took her chin in one hand, forcing her to look him in the eyes. She felt dizzy for a beat, understanding the effect he must’ve had on poor Mandy Beale. 

“Yes.” It was just a whisper, but he’s so close she knew he heard. She didn’t know how long they stay there before she climbed back into her bedroom window, replacing the screen. Something like guilt gnawed at her stomach when she saw a couple of texts from Luke asking how she’s doing. She’d tell him she fell asleep early tomorrow when she responded. As she drifted off to sleep, she saw strangers with her own piercing purple eyes and jet black hair.