Ageless (10 page)

“Jeremiah, I hate to be the one to
tell you this, but Nicholas and Riveka were quite distressed to
find out that their only granddaughter had been spirited away by
the Montrose Coven. Seems to me that regardless of what you say,
relations have not been quite so friendly between the Wards and
Montroses as you would lead everyone to believe. So I kindly
offered my services to help them retrieve her.”

“She has already told you that she
is staying,” Jeremiah growled.

Elysa wagged a finger under his
nose. “She had also admitted that she is still a minor, subject to
the will of her guardians. It would be bad for everyone here if the
Swansons decided to call the police and some of your
other…unmentionables…come to light during an investigation, now
wouldn’t it?”

The bombs just kept dropping.
Violet realized that her grandparents knew much more about her past
and lineage than they had ever let on. She wondered if her parents
knew, and then she wondered if they knew about the glowing symbol
and her supposed role in uncovering the Fountain of
Youth.

Jonah looked stricken and as Violet
swung to face Jeremiah, she saw that he wore a look of thunderous
anger. But Violet understood that Elysa had tied up the loose ends
neatly. He couldn’t do or say anything without jeopardizing his
coven. Riveka took the opportunity to pull her across the floor so
that she stood between her grandparents. Violet looked back and
forth between the brothers. They looked helpless. She didn’t know
what to do.

“Well now, isn’t this wonderful. A
family reunited. I am sure I can speak for Nicholas and Riveka when
I say... stay away from Violet.” Elysa’s voice had gone hard. Then
her face broke into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Always a
pleasure, Jeremiah. Nice to see you too, Jonah.” Elysa winked at
Jonah.

As her grandmother dragged her out
the door, Violet looked over her shoulder. Margo had moved to
Jonah’s side and put her hand on his arm. She looked like she was
going to cry. But it was the alarm in Jeremiah’s eyes that made her
wonder if she was being saved, or going straight to
hell.

They had a limousine all to themselves. When they
walked down the massive stone steps out of the Montrose mansion,
there were two limousines waiting for them. Elysa commandeered the
first one, and Violet climbed into the second one after her
grandparents and watched the massive house disappear into the
darkness as they pulled away down the long driveway.

She sat facing her grandparents,
wondering what else could possibly happen to throw a wrench into
the carefully crafted visage that she thought was her life. She was
still trying to figure out exactly what had happened over the last
thirty minutes. She kept seeing Jeremiah’s face in her mind, and
found she wanted to cry. But she held all of that inside and sat
silent.

Riveka had pulled out a compact
mirror and was powdering her nose. Her grandfather was staring out
the window. Neither one seemed to be at all fazed that they had
intruded on a vampire party and swiped Violet out from under the
vampires’ noses.

They hadn’t spoken to her since
getting in the car. Violet crossed her arms. The more she thought
about it the madder she got, but she knew that she had to play the
next few minutes closely. She was out of practice in dealing with
Riveka.

Finally, her grandmother looked at
her over the top of her compact. “I thought we’d raised you with
better sense, Violet. Really.” Her grandmother pursed her lips and
then put on a bit of lipstick. Riveka was in her sixties but could
easily have passed for fifty. She was always concerned about how
she looked.

Violet’s mouth fell open. “You
think I had anything to do with this?” she sputtered. “I was
kidnapped and woke up in the middle of a bunch of
vampires.”

Her grandmother snapped the compact
closed, causing Violet to jump. “Your innocent tone doesn’t fool
me, Violet. Did I not just witness you throwing yourself at the
feet of Jeremiah Montrose? Our family has been plagued for years by
their kind; always sniffing around looking for some clue about that
silly legend. Every generation that bears a female in the
bloodline, he tries to worm himself into her affections. That’s why
I was so thankful to have a son, and so unhappy when he had a
daughter. Thank goodness that we were able to get there before
anything really untoward could have happened.”

Violet’s face flushed and she was
thankful that the car’s interior was dimly lit. She digested her
grandmother’s words. She was mortified that Riveka had finally
admitted what Violet knew all along when it came to her
grandmother: she hadn’t been wanted. Violet knew her family was
small, and that she came from a long line of sons. Riveka’s words
made her suddenly doubt what Jeremiah told her. She had let him
completely charm her. She wanted to kick herself for not being more
careful.

“They told me crazy things,” Violet
said.

“Oh, I’m sure they told you just
enough of the truth to make you believe them. Vampires are crafty
that way, especially ones that have been around as long as Jeremiah
and Jonah Montrose,” her grandmother said. She looked at Violet
with pity in her eyes.

After Violet’s parents were killed
in the car accident when she was fourteen, she had been sent to
live with her father’s parents, her only living relatives. Violet
had only met Nicholas and Riveka a handful of times in her entire
life before that and each time had been awkward and strange. Riveka
always looked at Violet like she was a little bug that she needed
to examine. There was no warmth in the relationship. Nicholas
always treated Violet kindly, at least until Riveka found
out.

Violet had cried for days after
arriving in their home, but only behind closed doors. Her
grandmother ruled the household with an iron first, and signs of
weakness like grief simply weren’t tolerated. She had been sent to
three different prep schools before Bayersfield, and the
explanation had always been vague and offhanded. Violet started to
put the pieces together now.

“You knew,” she said warily. “You
knew that they were looking for me, and that’s why you kept moving
me around to different schools.”

Her grandmother sighed heavily and
looked at her grandfather, who appeared to have nodded off. Violet
wasn’t surprised. Her grandfather did everything her grandmother
said without question. As much as Violet adored him, she hated that
he had no backbone.

“This isn’t a responsibility I
signed up for, you know. But regardless, as a member of what was
the Ward family, by marriage or by blood, it is my duty to protect
you from forces that you don’t understand that will try to sway you
to an evil path.”

“You appear to be pretty cozy with
one of those forces of evil,” Violet retorted.

Her grandmother’s face darkened.
“Elysa has sworn to protect our family from harm at the hands of
the Montrose Coven. Thank goodness she reached out to me or we
would never have known where to find you. She hasn’t tried to use
or compel us to her side. Unlike that man that you seem to have
developed an affection for.”

“She said that you’ve met Jeremiah
before?” Violet was angry but curious. There was so much about her
past and her family history that she didn’t know. “Don’t you think
that you could have told me something about this before
now?”

“You were on a need-to-know basis,
Violet, and you didn’t need to know. And yes, I have met Jeremiah
before. Shortly after your grandfather and I got married, a
handsome man appeared on our doorstep asking to speak to Nicholas.
Nicholas never told me about his family’s sordid history,
believing, rightly so, that I would think that he was crazy.
Vampires, warlocks, hmmf!” her grandmother scoffed. Then she
continued. “While we waited in the foyer for Nicholas to come
downstairs, the man congratulated me on my pregnancy. I was
shocked! I hadn’t even told Nicholas yet, and I had no idea how the
stranger knew. He was utterly charming. When Nicholas came
downstairs, he turned so pale. Then he commanded that the man
leave. The man tried to convince Nicholas to talk to him, but
Nicholas was adamant. He pulled me away from the man, which scared
me even more. I didn’t know how much danger I was in.”

Violet had rocked forward in her seat. It was
strange to hear of someone meeting Jeremiah so many years before
she had been born.

“The man finally left, but Nicholas
was beside himself when he realized that I had so naively invited
him inside our house. He told me everything about the Ward family
history, and how that man, Jeremiah, continued to stalk them even
after all of those years. Nicholas was terrified thinking that
Jeremiah would could back and try to harm me to get him to
cooperate. We moved to another town hoping to hide from
him.”

“Did he come back?” Violet asked,
deeply entrenched in the story.

“Not for many years,” Riveka said.
“It was right before your father’s eighteenth birthday. He was over
at a friend’s house and Nicholas was out of town on business. I was
arriving home just after dusk, and there he was, standing on the
sidewalk in front of our house. He looked exactly the same, and
even though I knew now what he was, I still couldn’t believe my
eyes. I wanted to turn and run away, but I was going to be damned
if I was going to let anyone, even a vampire, make me flee from my
own home.”

Violet had no doubt that her
grandmother was fearless. Riveka could give any vampire, including
Jeremiah, a run for his money. “What did you do?”

“I ignored him. Walked right past
him. Then he did one of those vampire moves.” At this, Riveka
scowled. “And then he was in front of me again, blocking the
doorway.”

“What did he want?” Violet said.
Her heart had started to thump against her chest.

“He told me that he just wanted to
talk to me, but I told him I had nothing to say to him. Then he
asked me a silly question.”

“What?”

“He asked me if I had noticed
anything strange about Brandon. Anything that might mark him as
peculiar, or different.”

Violet felt warm. She had a feeling that she knew
what Jeremiah had been asking. He wanted to know if her father had
any of the same signs that she herself was exhibiting.

“Of course I told him that my son
was a normal, breathing, human being and that my family would have
nothing to do with him and his schemes.”

“And then what?” Violet
asked.

Riveka sniffed. “Then, nothing. I
never saw him again until I found him standing next to my
granddaughter.”

Violet shifted in her seat. Her
grandmother had never approved of anything that she had done. She
had gotten straight A’s in school, never misbehaved, never gave
them any pause that she was trying to do everything right, and
still she disappointed her. She thought that she should be used to
the feeling of failing in Riveka’s eyes, but it stung just the
same.

“How was I supposed to know any of
this?” Violet demanded. She was tired of shrinking beneath Riveka’s
glares. She wasn’t going to accept the blame for what happened. “If
you knew that it was possible that a strange vampire would approach
me some day and feed me some wild story about how I could help cure
the legendary vampire blood thirst that may have been something
that you would have mentioned to me.”

“I thought I had more time,” Riveka
said. It wasn’t an apology, but Violet thought she heard a bit of
remorse in her grandmother’s voice.

“Why? Why did you think you had
more time?”

“Violet, really. Lower your voice,
please, you’ll wake your grandfather,” Riveka said with a shake of
her head. “You may not believe this, Violet, but my family is the
most important thing to me. I wanted you to grow up without the
knowledge that such dark things existed in the world, at least for
as long as possible. So I moved you around to different schools and
tried to keep you out of their line of sight.”

“You did a bang-up job with that,”
Violet muttered.

Riveka’s eyebrow shot up, but she
didn’t reply to Violet’s comment. “I’ve spent a great deal of time
studying Nicholas’s family journals. I think that I know as much as
is possible to know about the Montroses and the Wards. Regardless
of what Jeremiah believes, the Wards never formed anything other
than an uneasy truce with the Montrose Coven after Jeremiah killed
Bruckhart Ward, and that was only in an attempt to finally get away
from them. Betrayal like murder isn’t forgotten so easily,
especially when it involves blood. I think it’s quite possible that
this whole story about a cure was a way to appease them, although
all it seemed to do was ensure Jeremiah’s continued interest in our
family. Over the years, a very peculiar thing emerged, though, as I
studied them.”

“What?” Violet asked.

Riveka sighed. “Not long after
their eighteenth birthday, every Ward female that survived over the
years met with an unfortunate end.”

Violet felt her stomach drop. “An
unfortunate end? How?”

“I believe that they kill them,
Violet. Whatever it is that the Montroses are trying to draw you
into is deadly. It will kill you.”