Page 22 of Burn Falls
I needed to talk to him more and find out why. “Leave. I’ll change, and then we can be on our way.”
Athan and I went to a club that we knew had no other vampires around because most of the vampires stayed in Chicago. This club was closer to Rockford, and soon it would be overtaken by Renzo, but for the night, it was a place that Athan and I could drink and not have to worry about anyone listening to us.
The bartender poured us each two fingers of the amber whiskey we ordered, and I spoke to Athan telepathically as we both sipped our drinks.
“Why did you do it?”
It took him a second to understand my question.“If I didn’t, Samuel wouldn’t have given them a peaceful death.”
“Why does he care if my parents are alive?”
“If we have ties, then they will recognize us, and the bull would come looking for us, which would lead back to Capone and Cavalli and cause another war.”
A little over ten years prior, the Great War in Europe had ended. I was only nine when it started, and thirteen when it ended, so I didn’t know much about it. Now, being twenty-four and under the control of a madman, I might be sent into a new war if Renzo didn’t get his way. If that were the case, what would a world full of vampires be like? What would it be like to never feel the warm, naked body of a woman beneath me again? What would it feel like to never taste human blood again?
“At this rate, all of Chicago will become one of us,”I stated.“Or dead.”
Athan shook his head.“Then the scratch would be gone.”
Of course it came down to money. Everything came down to rubes, and that was why we were bootlegging whiskey, running brothels, and having underground card games.
“Look at it this way, Draven. We don’t know what the future holds, and it’s better if our family doesn’t see it. Do you want to see the look on your mother’s face as she watches you reach into a man’s chest and pull out his heart? To know you’re a murderer now?”
I’d only killed in the beginning when I couldn’t control the hunger. Now I could, and when I fed, I knew when to stop.“That would never happen.”
“It might. Renzo would make it happen. He killed your pregnant—”
“I’d compel my ma to forget if that were to ever happen,”I said, cutting him off because I didn’t want to think about Mary.
“Or the look on her face when Renzo pulls your heart from your chest,”he countered.“You know he’d just kill them after you were dead.”
“You like living this life?”I asked instead of answering his questions. He knew my answer. Of course, I wouldn’t want to see the pain on my mother’s face. It broke me to hear her silent cries when I told her I was moving to Chicago and away from Peoria.
“Is it really living?”
I shook my head and took another sip of my whiskey. It wasn’t living. We were no longer breathing, but we weren’t six feet under either.“No, but I can’t kill my family.”
“It’s either you give them a peaceful death where they feel no pain, or Samuel rips their hearts out one by one while your father looks on before doing the same to him.”
Present Day – Anchorage
The moment I turned off the machines that were keeping Miles alive was the first time I’d ever wished, since my turning, that I didn’t have super hearing. Calla’s sobs were like an ice pick stabbing my un-beating heart. It was all I could focus on in the tiny hospital room, and I had to fight everything inside of me not to dart to her and hold her tight—to take all of her hurt away.
I needed to figure out who the fucking vamp was that killed her father. Usually, vampires didn’t go around killing people because it led to questions, but that was what Renzo made us do in Chicago and why he turned almost four hundred of us. To this day, people assume Capone ran Chicago, but the truth was, Renzo Cavalli was the one making the orders, and Al Capone was just the face. Athan and I had escaped before Capone died, and while people assumed he had a heart attack, I knew Renzo had killed him. I just didn’t know why.
I hadn’t seen Renzo in eighty-six years.
When Athan and I were traveling city to city, town to town, after escaping Renzo and his mob, I stopped in Seattle before moving onto Alaska. That was where I met my human friend, Lieutenant Martin Ellwood, in Seattle. Over the course of the past fifteen years, we’d formed a bond and an understanding. I never thought being a vampire would turn into something useful, but I had a monthly commitment to him, and I wasn’t going to let the one human who truly knew who I was down.
My gaze met Calla’s, and I smiled tightly then turned and left the room so she and her family could grieve in privacy. I knew what it was like to lose a parent. I’d killed my entire family in their sleep to spare them, but it was that day, eighty-six years ago, when I vowed I’d never kill aninnocentperson again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
On the way home from the hospital, my family and I rode in silence. Numb. I never imagined having to say goodbye to my father, and I wasn’t prepared for it.
Minutes from the house, I took out my cell and texted Valencia.
We took my dad off of life support this afternoon. I’ll call you in a couple of days once I can function.
