Warrior (Relentless #4)(16)

“And your parents don’t mind?” I already knew she lived with her uncle, who was her legal guardian, but I wanted to get her talking about her parents.

She tensed up beside me. “It’s just me and my uncle, and he likes my friends, but he doesn’t know what they are. He doesn’t know about any of this.”

“Do you mind if I ask about your parents? How did you come to live with your uncle?”

“My parents are gone. My mother left when I was two, so I don’t remember her.” Her voice held an edge of anger, but I sensed deep pain in her too. “My dad died when I was eight. Uncle Nate is his brother.”

Her answer confused me. Orphans were always the offspring of a male warrior and a human female, but according to her, her father was human. It was conceivable for a female warrior to be away from a stronghold long enough to have a child, but our mothers were very protective of their young. I couldn’t see one of them leaving her child unprotected with a human, even if he was the father.

“Do you know your mother’s maiden name?”

She stopped walking and stared at me suspiciously. “Why do you want to know about my parents? What do they have to do with anything?”

“Answer my question, and I will answer yours.”

She walked away, and there was no mistaking the bitterness in her voice this time. “Her name was Madeline. I think her maiden name was Cross or something like that. She abandoned us. I don’t really care who she was.”

I stared after Sara as the meaning of her words hit me full-on like a freight train. It can’t be. Madeline had always been selfish, but even she would not abandon her own daughter.

Sara stopped walking and faced me. “What’s wrong?”

It hit me then why Sara had looked familiar to Chris and me. She bore a resemblance, not to her mother, but to her grandmother, Josephine.

Khristu! She’s Tristan’s granddaughter.

I struggled to keep my expression and voice neutral even though I was reeling inside. “Madeline Croix? That was her name?”

“It could be. I’m not sure.” She frowned nervously. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

I glanced away from her, trying to think of how to proceed. I’d known I was going to have to explain certain things to her, but the bombshell she’d dropped on me had thrown me for a loop. Madeline was alive and she’d had a daughter.

“I just haven’t heard that name in a while,” I said. “If she is the Madeline I knew, it explains a lot to me.”

“Well, it doesn’t tell me anything, so why don’t you fill me in? You said you would answer my question if I answered yours.”

“I will.” I started forward, waving at some overturned wooden crates. “Let’s sit. This is a good place to talk.”

We sat, and I turned to look at her. The move brought me close to her, and my eyes were drawn to her mouth. My body grew warm, and my Mori shifted excitedly at her nearness.

Khristu, get a grip.

I raised my gaze to hers. “You didn’t know who the Mohiri were before the other night. How much do you know about us now?” I figured the werewolves had told her what they knew, which wasn’t a lot.

“I know you guys are vampire hunters, and you and the werewolves don’t like each other. That’s pretty much it.” She shrugged, but the interest in her eyes told me she was more curious than she let on.

“I imagine your friends don’t talk about us any more than we do about them. Would you like to know more about the Mohiri?”

“Yes,” she replied without hesitation.

Her answer pleased me more than I wanted to admit. “You seem very familiar with the real world, but how much do you know about demons?”

“Nothing, except to stay as far away from them as possible.”

“What if I told you there are thousands of types of demons, and that vampires are one of them?”

She frowned, and there was a note of fear in her voice when she spoke. “I’d ask you if you are deliberately trying to scare the hell out of me.”

I rested my elbows on my legs. “I am not here to frighten you.” I didn’t want to upset her either, but she had to hear this if she was to understand the rest of what I had to tell her. I could already tell from her reaction to my question about demons that this wasn’t going to go well.

She looked down, and I followed her gaze to the hands clenched in her lap.

“Do you still want to hear about the Mohiri?”

Green eyes met mine again. “Go ahead.”

“You sure?”

She smiled, and it was like the sun breaking through the clouds. I had to look away so she couldn’t see what I was feeling. Hell, I didn’t know what I was feeling.

I began to recite the story I had learned from my sire when I was young. “It all started two millennia ago when demons learned how to leave their dimension and walk the Earth in corporeal form. Most of them were lesser demons, and they were dangerous, but not a major threat to humanity. But then a middle demon called a Vamhir appeared. It took a human host and gave the human immortality…and the thirst for human blood.”

“The first vampire,” she said in a hushed voice.

I nodded. “The demon soon learned how to make more like him, and before long there were thousands of vampires. The Earth’s population was small back then, and ancient civilizations were virtually defenseless against the vampires’ strength and bloodlust. If left unchecked, the vampires would have eventually overrun the earth and wiped out humanity.