Page 55 of Taken By the Vampires
I think hewouldmind if I asked him to forget about me and wait for their true mate, but I didn’t think he meant that. I nestled against him, content to hear his story.
I had to have something more to remember them by.
Chapter Thirty Eight
“I was Moroccan born and raised. We were poor, but happy. I had five brothers and two sisters.”
“A big family.” I had no siblings. Dad had run off when I was a baby and I think Mom lost faith in anything male after that. She’d never had another relationship. I didn’t blame her, with Conway being led by the sexist ruling of the Trinity. She always said I was enough for her, but I wanted something more for her as well. She deserved the love of a good man.
“Yes, a very big, loud, rambunctious family. My father was a soldier. A general, in fact. We traveled the world over with him and reached the shores of Massachusetts when I was fifteen.
“We loved the life here. It was wild. Filled with potential. Uncivilized. It appealed to my father’s sense of wildness. He was through with the strictness of the army and sought another, freer life. It just happened to involve us. But I loved it. When I turned eighteen, I decided to start out on my own.”
“Eighteen. That was so young!” I said.
“You have to remember this was three and a half centuries ago. At eighteen, I was considered a man, and being a man, I wanted my own life. It was good for a while. I hunted, sold furs, built a good name in the trade and was able to return money to my parents. When I was thirty, I decided I needed to explore further afield. Seek more exotic animals. I wanted to higher prices rare furs would bring. That was my downfall.
“I made a stupid mistake. I should have known better. I was too confident. I set a trap that wasn’t strong enough and I should have known better. In the end I was taken on by a bear. In the end, the bear won.”
I sucked in a breath. I’d once seen a body after a bear attack. I’d had nightmares for weeks afterwards.
People did die in bear attacks. It was only on the rare occasion anyone survived. Over the years, the reports of hunters coming into the region and being attacked through stupidity or accident were numerous. It was just never advertised. I hated to think that Davon had been attacked. Hated to think he’d been hurt that much.
His arm tightened around me, his fingertips swirling. A soothing feeling rushed into me, calming the tears that threatened to spill. “Hey, it’s all right, Ella. Xander, Cassius and Michael found me. Michael, our sire, changed me so that I could survive. I joined their coven.”
That was a name I hadn’t heard before. “Michael?”
“Our Sire. Our vampire Father. He gave life to all of us,” Cassius said.
But, there were only the three of them now. I’d never seen a fourth. Oh, hell, what if there was a fourth and they were going to tell me he was also my mate? Davon must have felt me tense because his hand spread on my shoulder, keeping me locked against him.
“Michael is dead. He sacrificed himself so that we could go free,” Xander said.
“We could have fought harder than we did. Surely there was something more we could have done,” Casisus said, his voice filled with a bitterness that I could taste myself.
“We’ve been over this a million times. He offered the ultimate sacrifice as a Sire and a father so that we may live. And we have,” Davon said.
“If you call it that.” Cassius’ voice was filled with so much pain, I felt it reverberate around my heart, infusing me with extreme grief.
“That’s enough, Cassius,” Xander said and no one else spoke.
I felt the depth of their emotions but I didn’t know what to do with it. If I should accept it or ignore it. If our bond was finalized and I already felt them inside me like this, how much more intense would it be? “He was your father?”
“He turned me first. I was near dead with fever when Michael changed me. I’d known him for years. I had no idea he was a Vampire. He owned an Apothecary and he trained me in the ways of medicines. We used to treat the sick in their homes if they were too weak to come in for treatment. I picked up my illness from one of the people we treated. That year was a bad one. Half the townspeople died by the sickness and when I didn’t die with the same, we roused suspicion. We fled the town with the barest of supplies and made our way to the new country,” Xander said.
“Where were you born?” I asked.
The sorrow I felt hardened and Xander became lost in thought. “Venice. Italy. The center of art and culture and dogged Catholicism. Anything that deviated from the Church at that time was evil, and hence we were deemed the most evil of all, even though throughout many years, we had saved countless lives.”
They had all suffered at the hand of naïve people. My distant grandmother had been no different – cursing them for years upon years upon years. Shame washed over me, and sadness at the way they’d been treated. Xander had been a young man who had only wanted to help people. Davon, a shy youth set out on a journey to make a name for himself and help his parents.
“It was just Michael and me treating people in a small town called New York before we found Cassius a century later,” Xander said.
I looked to Cassius expectantly. Unwrapping their story was an exercise in wonder and heartache. He spoke of it with a cavalier style. “At least my near-death experience was a little more exciting…”
“Stupid,” Davon murmured as he rolled his eyes.
Cassius cleared his throat. “As I said, moreexciting, than my brothers, here. I was an up and coming constable under the British rule, working hard against theft, gambling and prostitution. A good part of my job was to keep our Sire and Xander safe. The amount of people at that stage who would steal herbs and medicines to make drugs was unparalleled. Little did I know that Michael and Xander were more than capable of defending themselves than I could ever propose to be. It would have been nice if they’d told me before I leapt into the path of that bullet and put my life on the line to save theirs.”
