No Shelter from Darkness (41 page)

“She's as the nurse described; young, dark and beautiful. She's staring right at me.”

“But how does she know who you are?”

“I'm thinking me staring back isn't helping my situation.”

“What does she look like, Jorge?”

“Like her, I imagine.”

“Elizabeth?”

“Yes.”

“Jorge,” said Bill, unsure of what to say next.

“Take care, old friend,” said Jorge in his Spanish inflected English. “And take care of the girl.”

The connection was cut before Bill could protest.

He slowly replaced the headpiece while things began to click into place. If he was correct, Beth's biological parents
were
vampires. And they were traitors. They didn't want their daughter to become what Bill had interrogated in that warehouse on the eve of the war: a slave.

So they left her with humans.

It was a lot to take in, but it made sense. Only her parents would know of her abandonment; where it happened and what was left with her. Bill glanced at the phone and felt sick for his endangered friend who had been but a few words away from saving—he was sure this gypsy woman meant Beth no harm. But her fury would be immeasurable if she discovered that her daughter was in the hands of the Ministry. Without knowing what Bill suspected, Jorge would keep all he knew to himself and most likely die because of it. He brought his fist down on his desk, making everything on it rattle. There was nothing he could do.

And now, added to his list of woes was a vengeful vampire searching for his daughter. Bill thought of the revenant that had died by chance in its own basement, but one street away from Bill's own house. He couldn't shake the suspicion that it wasn't a coincidence a vampire was living so close, as if others were already searching for her and were closing in. Then the words that had always sent a shiver down Bill's spine made him flinch again, the words of the bloodied vampire in the warehouse that Bill was sure had managed to relay to his kin.

“Did you take her?”

 

THE END

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