Page 29 of Taken By the Vampires
“I got used to hiding from him. I managed to evade him for months, which was some mean feat, given how small Conway is, until I came back that night after dropping Mom off at a friend’s house and saw him on my front porch.” With my Grimoire clutched in his meaty hands. “He’d been inside. Going through my things.”
I hadn’t stopped to really let that settle in. I shuddered, feeing the full force of his invasion. There was no knowing what he went through. My computer. My clothes. Myunderwear. “What a pervert,” I muttered. I really did wish I’d kneed him in the balls.
“If he ever comes here, he will not be able to walk again for a year,” Cassius said.
I started a little. I’d been caught up with my bitter feelings. I hated living in Conway for so many reasons. I managed a chuckle that wasn’t born of lightness. “You’re the last in a long line, believe me. You’ll just need to get past his father, the bank manager and the minister.”
“Is that why you were running in the middle of the wilderness? In the middle of a storm? In the middle of the night?” Davon asked, his voice rumbling in my ear.
“If they’d have caught me with the Grimoire, I don’t know what would have happened to me. Willstillhappen to me.” Gary knew it existed. Even if I did hide it, he still knew. I couldn’t lie. His father would take his word against mine.
Hiding the Grimoire. Hiding here. It would change nothing. The longer I hid, the bigger the retribution would be when I returned to Conway.
And I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do.
Chapter Twenty
“How much of a problem is it?” Davon asked.
I relaxed into his body. It might very well be the last chance I had to do it, so I made the most of the opportunity. “A huge problem. The town is run by Minister Jeremiah and anything that’s not in the bible is considered heresy. Let’s just say there will be enormous consequences when they find out I have this Grimore.” I shuddered. Minister Jeremiah was becoming more and more unstable. His sermons preached eternal damnation. There had always been a little mad glint in his eyes, but lately it was more than a glint. It was a floodlight.
“What are the consequences?’ Xander’s voice was steel. I glanced at him, and his eyes were frosted with a pain I couldn’t quite identify.
“Archaic consequences.” I licked my dry lips, distraught in my thoughts that I could be caught up in the middle of something like this. That he was just insane enough to go through with what he’d preached about and the townspeople would stand by and let it happen. “Things that haven’t happened in over three hundred years.”
It was the original reason Conway had become a Bible town, led by larger-than-life preachers in an attempt to keep the devil away. They saw the devil in anything that wasn’t in the Bible and the last time I looked, the Bible didn’t mention a Grimoire.
I’d attended a sermon in an attempt to bring me closer to the townspeople. I didn’t realise what a mistake it had been. My grandmother had been marked. Mom was marked, and so I was I. My whole family had been through the ages. “The last sermon I attended, Minister Jeremiah looked me straight in the face and said anyone owning contraband would face eternal damnation and the only way to exorcize those demons was to burn. The next day they erected a huge pole in the town square. They used to do that type of thing in the town, you know. Minister Jeremiah is intent on bringing it back.”
If I couldn’t collect Mom and get out of town in time, I really didn’t know what they all would be capable of. People I went to school with, that I drank coffee with, even Mom’s few friends, would all turn on us for fear of their own form of retribution.
It was, after all, a member of my family who had been burned alive all those centuries ago.
Xander stood abruptly. He ran rough fingers through his hair and turned to stare out of the darkened window. I sat up, unable to draw comfort even from Davon anymore. A chill had settled in my bones. I drew my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms about my legs.
“How could they still do this type of thing? Haven’t they learned from past mistakes?’ Cassius asked, looking equally as stressed as Xander.
“It’s why, even though you’ve all been so nice to me, I have to get back to Mom. She’s sick, but more than that, I don’t know how safe she is. They could be doing anything to her and while I’m here, I can’t protect her.”
I bent my forward to my knees, dread filing me at what she just might be experiencing. We’d both been on the vicious end of Minister Jeremiah and the brunt of the anger of the townspeople. Somehow, we’d pulled through, but we’d never been able to leave the town despite everything.
It sounded simple. Get the hell out of a town that didn’t want you there, but it had also proven equally impossible throughout the ages. For one reason or another, my family, distant grandmothers, had been trapped there because of a history I had no control over.
“If only I could get away.” The words shuddered out on a breath created more of hopeless desire and desperation than air. The breath left my lungs, leaving me hollow. I was desperate to leave, desperate for a life I’d never been able to reach. It was more than a mere wish. Every cell in my body fought with a frantic need to justgo. Leave and never look back. I’d make sure nobody else from my family would ever step foot there, either. That was not difficult, as I was the last of the line.
In my book, the town was cursed.
“If we could help you, Ella, we would,” Cassius said.
I sent him a wan smile. “Sure. If you could wave your magic wand, find a buyer for the farm, get me to a city and cure my mother, I’d take you up on that offer, but so far it’s proven to be impossible.” My frown pulled my brow. “It seems simple enough. Stupid, even. But it’s been one thing after another. Something always happens to keep us there.”
“We know how you feel. More than you think we do.” Davon leveled a look at me. One that said he knew all too well that he did know something about how trapped I was.
“That’s why, when this storm finally passes. I’ll have to go.” I glanced at all three. Davon, his shirt parted to reveal a stunning physique, Cassius, whose normal easy smile was missing and Xander, his body as stiff and unyielding as ever.
I didn’t want to leave them. Hated to think I may never see them again after this, but I had no choice. If I could be a carefree woman, someone in charge of my own destiny, then I’d most probably stay and explore that strange connection between all of us, as unorthodox as it was.
But I wasn’t.
