Virgins and Vampires: Blood Falls (The Blood Falls Book 3)

“I’m good, princess.”

“Yes, but—”

“Stop.” He put his hand on my biceps and turned me to face him. “I’ve seen your mother’s dramatics. I get that you’re used to managing her and the people around her because of that. But I don’t need to be managed. I can stand on my own two feet.”

He certainly held his own earlier. And I genuinely believed Kris was more than capable of handling any situation. It was just that Malynda had a way of putting me on the defensive and I wasn’t used to having anyone in my corner.

“I will stop managing things.”

‘Good.” He dropped a kiss on my lips and we finished walking down the hallway to the dining room.

My mother stood by the fire with a glass of wine. “Ah, there you are. Alan isn’t here yet. Would you like a glass of wine?” She moved to the buffet before we answered, doling out small glasses for each of us.

“Thank you.”

She gave me a tight smile. “So this is real? You are Fated?”

“Yes. And it will make our Shield bond extremely powerful with a little practice.” I said it in a rush, grateful to have it out.

My mother’s eyes turned sad. “May I show you something?”

I felt Kris stiffen beside me. He heard something in her voice too. We moved to the end of the dining table where my mother had her tarot cards out. Humans have tried to see and interpret the Plane ever since they saw us using them, only we’re actually in touch with the Plane and reading the cards for us is like reading a newspaper.

“I’m concerned,” she said with a sigh. “Your power and the power of your bond seems to be in direct response to the darkness.” She pointed at the cards. “It is absolutely critical that you two stay close.”

I looked over the cards and their arrangement. The cards had been my great-grandmothers and held a large amount of psychic energy. “One of our theories is that Rhysa, Dray, and I are signs the war is inevitable and soon.”

“I tend to agree.” My mother didn’t want to acknowledge the coming war most days, so it struck me how resigned she was to it now.

“It’s part of why I started to practice today. We think Marhysa may be part of all this too.”

My mother became very still, her finger resting on the table. “Your gift, tying the power of Rhysa and Dray to the Plane where her mother resides. A conduit.”

I shrugged. “All we really have are theories based on the obvious. It’s obvious that Rhysa being hidden and Awakened when she did was purposeful. It’s obvious she’s very powerful. Even more so with Dray. It’s obvious that my extraordinary gifts happen to have manifested at the exact same time.”

“And now a Fated Shield bond,” she murmured. “I guess I can’t bury my head in the sand any longer.”

“You all make it sound like you’ve been seeing these signs a long time,” Kris murmured.

I knew he didn’t mean it accusatorily, but my mother didn’t. “Every House has their gifts and their secrets.”

“And we’re working damn hard to eliminate those secrets for the good of all of us,” Kris shot back.

“You’re showing your youth and naivety if you think every House is going to spill all their secrets and work together.”

“Then we’re all dead,” he replied with a shrug.

“Just because—” her sentence was cut off when my father entered the room the way he entered every room: loudly and with style.

“There’s my girl!” His voice boomed off the walls as he stood in the doorway, arms wide.

I never understood how my parents got together. They were complete opposites in every way. Malynda dressed to perfection each and every day, wearing a style that was something between 1890’s and modern-day fashion. She’d probably wear a corset and bustle if she thought she wouldn’t get teased.

She was quiet and reserved and loved her rules.

While Alan was…well he didn’t follow anything. Not rules or fashion or time. His favorite outfit was his worn-in blue flannel and threadbare jeans. His hair was always a little wild and he had a beard that currently fell down to his chest. He had bright blue eyes and a constant smile.

Malynda lived upstairs with me in our formal family quarters. Dad lived down near the kitchens in a little room with nothing but a bed, dresser, a book, and two pictures. He liked it down there because it was near the main house fires. The only job he was consistently good at was keeping the fires tended around the House. He loved fire so much that he got a little depressed in the summer. When he got particularly moody he’d hike out somewhere he could camp in peace, build a fire, and sleep beside it for a few nights until he felt better.

Day and night. Fire and ice. They were doomed from the start.

I let my father hug me for a while because he seemed to need it. To be fair, with all my work I hadn’t seen him much in a few weeks and that was unusual. And now…

“Well it’s clear as fucking day that your mother isn’t lying,” he said as he set me down. “The Fates don’t mess around do they?”

That it was that obvious to everyone but me was fascinating. Even after accepting it I still didn’t see what everyone else saw. Kris came over and shook Alan’s hand.

“It’s good to see you again. Been a long time.”

Dad pulled him into a bear hug. “I think the last time I picked Rain up from Blood Falls was damn near twenty years ago and you were a scrawny little thing.” He saw the cards on the table and set his jaw. “And what do the cards profess my dear Malynda.”

Mother shot daggers at him with her eyes. Dad still called her a variety of affectionate names that he actually seemed to mean as much as meant them to rile her up. While my mother…just glared a lot.

“Why do you care? You’ll just tell us that we can still affect the timeline.”

He sighed, sounding tired. “The cards, Malynda?”

“The Shield-bond is the only chance they have to survive the war.”

For as laid back as my father was as a general rule, he was every bit a powerful male. I saw it time and time again when he protected me growing up and into my powers. I saw it again now.

“I thought you didn’t believe in the war?” He seemed to grow three sizes and he snarled.

“Believing there are too many variables to be sure is different than seeing your own daughter’s life aligning with a timeline that leads directly into a dark void.”

Kris took my hand.

“You want to lock her in her room and throw away the key again, don’t you?”

I stiffened. This was…news to me.

Malynda threw her hands in the air. “Of course I do! I want to protect her! But I can’t!”

“You’ve never been able to protect her! Hiding her away only made her different and sad! It was all to make yourself feel better, not to help her!”

“How dare you!” Malynda screeched.

Kris and I took a step back. They were so focused on each other they didn’t see us anyway. I tugged on his hand, drawing his wide, surprised eyes down to me. “Our house?”

He nodded and we slid away.

“We can’t live here. Not yet,” Kris said as he built the fire back up. Snow fell again and the chill in the air went straight to the bone. “There’s no running water. No heat other than this fireplace. No working kitchen.”

He stood and raked his hand through his hair. “I can get the water turned on tomorrow but the kitchen will take time.”

“I don’t know how much we really need. We spend all day every day in the Wren library. We eat dinner there.” I didn’t mind our house being a glorified campsite for a while.

As long as it meant we had someplace that was ours.

“How long have you known the war was coming?” His mood shifted from anxious and worried to upset in the blink of an eye as he stood across the room from me, eyes on the floor.

“I don’t have secret knowledge, Kris.”

I almost gasped when he turned that glare on me. “That’s not what I just heard in the dining room.”

My stomach grumbled. We didn’t eat before we left and I was hungry. “We read the timeline constantly. We’ve been aware of an aligning for years. An aligning that has been gaining traction at a breathless rate this last year. That’s it.”

He stared so hard he could burn a whole through the side of our old, dilapidated house. “Aligning?”

These were Gatlin terms that a Wren wouldn’t necessarily know. “There are always variables. Multiple possibilities for the future based on the actions we all take each moment of each day. As the possibilities diminish, only a few futures remain. These possibilities align until they merge with the cosmic timeline. For many years the signs of a great aligning, something very major and important, has been manifesting in all our readings of the Plane and the Timeline. What that potential future is, remained a mystery until very recently when the darkness appeared.”

“So you’re saying it could have been anything from peace on earth to a portal to hell opening?”

“Yes.” We could see the timeline, but only what it allowed us to see. We weren’t all knowing.

“And then an actual portal to hell opened.”

For a moment we both slipped into our memories. “It’s a rather obvious way for the Timeline to reveal itself. Much more than usual,” I teased.

“Can the salishan be saved?”

The abrupt question caught me off guard because of the tone of his voice. “The Doctor thinks it’s possible, but we don’t know for sure.”

“But you were able to communicate with them?”

The journey through their twisted minds was the most unusual experience of my life. A mind, but changed. It was like walking through a maze that looked familiar but had walls where there should be doors, and doors where there should be walls. “Not exactly. I was able to read their memories and piece together what happened. Communication the way you and I think of it was very minimal. In order to do that we’d have to untangle their minds the same way their bodies need to be untangled.” The rifts trapped ordinary Heida in a space between our Plane and another. Their bodies and minds split and reshaped. “Why?”

His gaze dropped back to the floor and his emotions morphed to fear.

I went to him on instinct, pressing my body into his and taking his face in my hands. “What is it?”

His arms came around me, crushing us together. He held me for a long time while his emotions shifted between that original fear I felt, love, anxiety, and a fierce protectiveness.

Finally, he took a deep breath and spoke. “Doesn’t it overwhelm you to hear your power, our bond, are being drawn to this inevitable future? That our only chance of survival is together?”

I relaxed into his embrace, needing his strength. “Of course it does. But I boxed it up immediately to deal with later.”

“I don’t like this boxing thing you do.”

“It’s the only way I know how to survive.” I pulled back enough to look into his eyes. “If I didn’t, it would overwhelm me so much I wouldn’t be able to function.” Even thinking about it right now took my breath away. “It would crush me.”

His eyes darkened as they darted between mine. “That’s why you have me,” he whispered. “Box it up. I’ll take care of the rest.”