Sore Truth

‘December 26th, 2017’

‘Lumen’

Eve

It was three in the morning, but there wasn’t any time to sleep.

Killian was downstairs in the infirmary, unconscious.

Reyna was in her bedroom, maybe safe, maybe under some new threat that I hadn’t even sensed coming.

And Snow, she was still held captive by Barron.

Where? I didn’t know.

But I knew that Raphael Fernandez wouldn’t live another day in the dark.

I had to tell him about Snow. I had to make him feel as bad as I felt. Since I couldn’t kill him, it was only fair.

“It’s time I tell you the truth,” I told him, looking up at him from his bedroom floor.

He nodded, taking a seat across from me. “Snow.”

My face paled. “You know…?”

“No, no. But you said the word twice—screamed it, actually, before I shifted and ran you out to the forest. After the pyromancer fight. And then before I left for Texas, that night, you were whimpering ~Snow~ in your sleep. I have no idea what it means. But I know it’s important to you.”

“~She’s my daughter.~” I said.

“You have… a daughter?” he asked, his eyes wide.

I nodded.

I was about to say all the words on the tip of my tongue.

~And you’re her dad. And you’re the reason she was born in a place far from where she was conceived. And you’re the reason she was stolen at all.~

But I… couldn’t.

Instead, I just echoed his words. “I have a daughter. And she was stolen from me a month after she was born.”

“By who?” he thundered.

“Barron Von Logia.”

“The Deity?”

I nodded.

“That… that ~piece of shit.~”

I nodded again. “That was why… that was why I tried to kill you,” I explained. But Raphael just squinted back at me.

“Barron offered me a deal. He said… he said if I killed you, he’d give me Snow back. But I had to kill you by the first day of 2018.”

“That’s six days away.”

“I know. But it doesn’t matter. I can’t kill you. I tried and I just… I can’t.”

Raphael reached for my hand, but I pulled it away. I didn’t want to be consoled, and I sure as fuck didn’t want to be pitied.

“Stop it!” I ordered him.

“Why would he want me dead?” Raphael asked.

“You’re making this ~about you?!~” I snapped.

“My daughter has been held captive for over four hundred years and you have the audacity to ask why ~you’re being threatened?~”

“Stop it. Stop yelling. Think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“It was a bogus deal, Eve. He knew you wouldn’t be able to kill me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s a Deity. Deities can sense the mating connection.”

“But we’re not mated. We haven’t secured our mating lock.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re my mate, and I’m yours. We’ve both known it for decades now. Barron would’ve sensed it. He would’ve known it too.”

“So you’re saying… he was never going to give me Snow.”

Raphael looked at me, nodding slowly.

I couldn’t believe it.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Barron had been using me as his entertainment.

He had never planned on releasing my daughter.

“I’m going to help you. I’m going to help you get her back,” Raphael vowed, reaching for my hand again. This time I didn’t pull away.

***

The next morning, as soon as I saw the sun rise, I bolted down the stairs to the infirmary. Raphael was already there, waiting outside the door.

“Daisy won’t let me in yet. She says she’ll come out when he’s awake.”

I nodded.

“You never told me how you came to be his guardian, you know,” Raphael said.

I thought back to it, to the day I thought was going to be my last day killing vampires.

It was in Moscow, in the year two thousand four.

The day my life changed forever.

^March first, two thousand four^

^Moscow^

Eve

I was still on Llinos’ mission, still traveling the world and hunting down each and every remaining vampire.

It had taken me decades on decades, but I’d finally gotten them all. Well, almost.

I was walking up a dark road just outside of Moscow, squinting my eyes against the harsh wind that blew into my face.

The house was supposed to be at the end of the street, and inside the house was supposed to be the last two born vampires.

A married couple.

I walked up to the door and knocked. A few moments later, a man opened it. He looked to be in his thirties, with a kind face.

“Hello. My name is Eve. May I come in?”

By now, vampires around the world had come to know my name. I was the Grim Reaper as far as they were concerned, and when they met me, they knew their time had come.

“Of course,” he said, his Russian accent thick.

He opened the door wider and motioned for me to enter.

“I am Costa. Costa Romanov. But you already knew that,” he said, guiding me into the living room.

“I’m sorry to come so late,” I responded, taking a seat in the leather armchair.

“I’ll call my wife,” he said with a nod, walking back into the hallway.

I heard him shout, “Anne!” Then, a few seconds later, I heard her footsteps coming down the stairs.

When she entered the living room, with him in tow, my breath caught in my throat.

“I’m Anne Romanov,” she introduced as she and her husband sat down on the sofa across from me.

But I couldn’t respond. I was frozen.

Because the woman sitting across from me... Her face, I’d seen it before.

She was the spitting image of my brother.

“May I ask what your maiden name is?” I asked her once I’d finally regained my composure.

“Knox,” she replied. “My family comes from England.”

I swallowed. Not only was I here to kill the last living vampires in the world, but I was here to kill my brother’s descendant.

“Well,” I began. “You both know why I’m here?”

They nodded.

“I’m really… I’m really sorry I have to do this,” I told them.

“It’s okay,” Costa said.

“We’ve lived a long life,” his wife chimed in. “We’ve been alive for centuries, Eve. If this is what’s best for the world…”

“We’re okay with it. We’ve made our peace,” Costa finished.

“There’s just one thing, one favor, if we could ask of you,” Anne said, her voice flowing right through my pores.

“What is it?”

Anne looked to her husband. Then they both turned back to me. “We have a child,” he said. “A son. He’s just a year old.”

I looked at the Romanovs’ pleading eyes. At the tight grips they had on each other’s hands. And then slowly and deliberately, I nodded.

“Thank you. Thank ~you~,” Anne whispered, reaching to hold my hand in hers.

“His name is Killian,” Costa added, wiping a tear from his eye.

^December 26th, 2017^

^Lumen^

Eve

Raphael looked back at me, mesmerized. “So you just took care of him every day after that?”

I nodded. “Killian was an easy kid.”

“So all you’ve been doing your whole life is taking care of other people,” Raphael surmised, shaking his head at me in wonderment.

Before I could respond, the infirmary door opened.

“He’s up,” Daisy announced, and I bounded inside.

“Killian,” I said, running over to him.

I started scanning his face, taking in the bruises, the swelling, the cuts that were slowly beginning to heal.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Been better,” he responded, and he smiled, the same smile I’d seen since he was a little kid.

“I need something from you, Kil,” I said, pulling a chair up to his bed.

I took a seat, looking right into his eyes. “I need you to tell me everything you remember. Every detail of what happened.”

He nodded. “A few weeks ago I got an anonymous tip that Snow was alive… that she was hidden somewhere in the North Pole. I didn’t want to get you excited without checking it out first. So I took the first flight out.”

“The North Pole,” I heard Raphael say from behind me. “Why there?”

“It’s the most dangerous region in the world,” I said, remembering what Ganda had taught me before my vampire ritual all those years ago. “It’s the only region where magic can’t be controlled. Only the most powerful species even dare to step foot there.”

“Makes sense now,” Killian replied with another chuckle, but I saw him wince from the movement.

“So you went to the North Pole.”

“I did. I was there for a few days, in a small village. Just looking around, asking around. Then I was at a pub one night. A man came up to me, asked who I was. What I was doing there. I told him, I asked if he’d heard of Snow...”

~“Killian.”~

“I know, I know. But I thought, the North Pole, Snow... If he didn’t know who I was talking about, he would’ve just assumed I was some drunk trying to make a joke about the weather.”

“Who was the man? Barron?”

Killian shook his head. “Brett Whitethorn. He knocked me out, I guess. I don’t really remember. I woke up, and I was somewhere else entirely. Some dark cell, with metal bars all around us.”

~“Us,”~ I repeated. “She was there?”

“She was there,” he echoed, looking right at me. “She looked like you, Eve. But blonde. I didn’t have time to talk to her much because Barron… he came and pulled me from the cell. Whitethorn beat me for a while, and Barron watched. And then I woke up here.”

His voice was getting hoarser by the second, and when he finished speaking, he started to cough. His whole body shook with the coughs, and I watched as Daisy scurried over to him.

“He needs to rest,” she told us, and we nodded, getting up.

When we were outside the infirmary, I turned to Raphael. “I’m going. I have to go now.”

“Where?”

“The North Pole.”

“Are you crazy? You can’t just go there without a plan, Eve.”

“Don’t you ~dare~ call me crazy. Whitethorn is there, and Barron is there. ~My daughter~ is there. We know she’s there! I can’t stay here knowing that she’s in some cell.”

“Hello, remember me?” I turned to see Llinos across the hall, filing one of her long black fingernails.

“You!” I said, stepping closer to her. “You’re gonna take me to the North Pole ~now~.”

“Sure, let’s go.”

~Well, that was easy.~

I nodded, but then I heard Reyna’s voice from behind me. “Eve?”

I turned to see her, looking between Llinos, Raphael, and me. We probably looked like the strangest trio she’d ever seen.

“What is it?” I asked, walking toward her.

“Are there more… are there more Whitethorns coming for us?” she asked.

“There’s one more. But I’m going to finish him right now.”

“You’re leaving us here alone?”

I sighed. “Okay, Reyna. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to create a channel between us so we can speak to each other telepathically when we need to. All right? Any sign of danger, you call to me. I’ll get it wherever I am. Now look into my eyes,” I told her.

I put my hands on her shoulders, locking eyes with her, and then I entered her mind.

Opening telepathic channels was sometimes easy and sometimes far more complicated. It depended on the type of mind I was entering.

Human minds were the easiest to access. They didn’t possess any magic, so there were no complex psychic patterns to worry about.

I was expecting to be in and out of her psyche within seconds.

But as soon as I entered Reyna’s mind, I noticed something was off.

She didn’t have the wide-open cylinders I was expecting. The pattern of her framework was far more detailed.

It was a mess of different shapes and wires, indicating she was a hybrid.

As in, a hybrid of two species.

As in, not a human.

~What?~

That couldn’t be. Killian had gone through the bloodline diligently. The Morgans were all human.

But as I passed through Reyna’s psyche, using more energy than I’d anticipated, I knew what I was seeing was right.

The girl wasn’t a human. She was something else entirely. And I was reminded of the reason I came to protect these girls – the reason their bloodline was so important to me.

I was learning more about that connection every day. But I didn’t have time to mull it over now.

“There,” I said, breathing hard as I let go of her shoulders. The channel was made.

Reyna nodded. “But what about Anya?”

“Stay together while I’m gone, okay? Keep an eye on each other.”

Reyna nodded.

“You’ll do fine.”

She nodded again. Without saying goodbye—I hated saying goodbyes—I strode back over to Llinos and Raphael. “Ready?” I asked.

“Whenever you are,” Llinos responded.

“Ready,” Raphael confirmed.

“Oh, the pretty boy’s coming with?” Llinos asked, looking right at Raphael. I couldn’t help but laugh as Raphael nodded.

“The pretty boy’s coming with,” he said, grabbing my hand.

“Well then,” Llinos started, taking both of our hands, “let’s go to the North Pole.”