The Vampire Hunter's Daughter: Complete Collection(71)

I didn’t even slow when I passed through the tall iron gates that surrounded the small cemetery in the woods. I ran between, and probably over, some of the graves, trying to remember where my mother’s plot was located.

Finally, as the sun began to rise, I arrived at the spot under the huge maple trees, which now had golden leaves, and I dropped to my knees before her headstone. With a yank, I ripped the earbuds out and let them fall to the ground. My fingers dug into the grass surrounding her plot.

I had been holding back tears since I’d left the house, but as soon as I looked up and my eyes met her name on the headstone, the dam broke.

“Why are you gone?” I screamed at her. “You should be here to help me!”

I fell back onto my butt, wrapped my arms around my knees and rocked back and forth until the tears diminished.

“I need you,” I whispered to her, hoarsely. “I need you.”

No one spoke back to me. Her ghost did not appear. The sounds of nature were all that could be heard around me. My mother’s headstone, where Sostrate had first appeared, remained the same. No demi-goddess appearances for me today, I guess. It was just me, talking to my dead mother.

I’d half expected… no, I had hoped and wanted Drew to come after me. But he hadn’t. So I sat there until the need to pee drove me back home.

Back at the house, I entered quietly. Finding no one, I removed my shoes and headed back up the stairs to my room.

Alice was in bed, awake, staring up at the ceiling. She turned her head toward me when she heard the door open. The moment she saw me, her eyes widened. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing, I just went for a run.” I waved her off and headed for the bathroom to pee. When I came back out, I fell down onto the bed beside her.

“It looks like you’ve been crying.” She turned onto her side to face me.

For a moment, I didn’t say anything.

Finally, I decided to go ahead and let it out. I told her all of it… Drew, Gavin, my mother…all of it.

When I’d finally exhausted the whole story to her, she lay there for a moment, taking it all in, and then she said, “Well, except for the part about your mom not being here, none of that really sounds so bad.”

I sighed. “Really? Because it feels crappy to me.”

“I’m sorry it does, but what can I say? I would love to have two guys after me.”

“But that’s the problem. Drew acts like he likes me one minute, and the next he ignores me.”

She shrugged like it was nothing. “Confront him, then. Tell him it’s either one way or the other.”

“He told me that he doesn’t ever want to be second to anyone,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows. “So he has already told you. See, what’s happening here is that he is telling you to make the choice. You have to tell him now.”

I rolled back over to stare at the ceiling again. “I’m waiting until Gavin is better so I can tell him first. I need to make it clear to Gavin that I have feelings for Drew.”

“Oh, I see.”

We both lay there in silence, staring at the ceiling. I decided to change the subject. “Alice?”

“Hmm?”

“When we found Oscar, he had all those bite marks.”

“Yeah.”

“How come I have never seen you with any bite marks? I know you gave Trevor your blood.”

She released a long sigh and closed her eyes as if she were blocking out a memory.

“Because they aren’t where you can see them.”

I must have given her a confused expression, because she suddenly flung back the purple comforter, and her eyes filled with sadness. She gently pulled up her shorts just enough to show me that her inner thighs were thick with the scars of vampire bites.

“Oh, Alice,” I breathed.

She let her shorts fall back down and covered up with the comforter again.

I decided that since I’d shared, Alice needed to share something, too. “Did you love my father?” I asked her.

She nodded. “I did. I don’t know what kind of love, but he was all I knew.”

I could understand that; I had all along. “How could you love someone who was so cruel?”

She shrugged. “I don’t really know. I think…” she thought a moment, “I think that it’s easy to love someone when they take care of you, give you everything you need, and give you such a grand home.” She smiled, and I saw her eyes sparkle. “Chloe, he was never horrible. Not to me.”

I just couldn’t believe that. I wanted to believe that he was horrible to her on a daily basis, but I knew that wasn’t true because, somehow, this psycho freak had made my mother love him enough to live with him and create a child with him.

“How could you have betrayed me like that, Alice? I understand you would do whatever Trevor asked of you, but he was going to kill me.”

“You think I never thought of that?” Her voice took on an edge. “Do you really think I had the power to defy him? I wouldn’t dare, not over something like what he had been planning for you. This plan of his had been in place since before you were born. I wasn’t about to go there. I never told him no. Why would I? He saved me.”

I guess I could understand that, but her betrayal was hard for me to swallow. I just couldn’t trust her.