Redemption (Jane #4) (5 page)

Next to me, I felt Felipe
tense during Albertini's speech and I reached a hand over to grip
his. He relaxed noticeably and smiled at me--a weak smile, but
still a smile. Albertini talked at us for another hour or so,
explaining the situation in detail, going over possible
solutions--one of which involved destroying the town completely.
That was shot down immediately by Father Bellini and the rest of
the vampires. We were not above killing when necessary, but wiping
out an entire town full of families was simply not an option.

By the time Albertini reached
the end, the humans were starting to fidget. Bellini convinced him
to dismiss us for a meal and ordered us to meet back there in a
hour. We led our guests to the dining room and laughed as they
gaped at the elaborate menu. Several ordered lobster or other
typically high-priced items--all free at the sanctuary--then
proceeded to stuff themselves until they were sick. The two women,
both of whom sat near Felipe and I, laughed at their male
counterparts and ordered sensible steaks with side salads and baked
potatoes.

Some of the men were quite
entertaining, a complete change from our initial encounter, and
despite the stress of the meeting, even Felipe was able to relax.
His little friend with the machine gun sat on the other side of
him.

"Jane, this is Robby. He's
nineteen."

The boy gave me a shy smile
and kept his eyes trained on his plate. It was a huge change from
the rude kid I saw in the garage.

"Nineteen? How'd you end up in
this group?"

He shrugged and inhaled
sharply. As if trying to decide where to start, he opened his mouth
and shut it a couple times. He looked so much like a fish, I had to
bite my tongue to keep from laughing.

"When I was in the academy, my
family was attacked by vampires. At first, the police didn't tell
me it was vampires. But they were all dead. My mama, papa, and
little sister. I have a couple friends at the station and they
showed me the pictures. I wasn't supposed to see them, and now I
wish I never did. They were... Since then, I've been in several
battles. Nothing compares to the carnage I saw. I couldn't even
tell who they were."

He stopped talking, his voice
breaking. Tears welled in his baby-blue eyes and I reached behind
Felipe to put a hand on the young man's shoulder. He shied away at
first, shooting a suspicious glance my way before letting my
fingers touch him. I gave a quick, gentle squeeze and released. He
visibly relaxed once I stopped touching him, but the mood at the
table had grown solemn.

After that, the conversation
took a turn from lighthearted joking to storytelling. The entire
squad was made up of volunteers who knew what they were going up
against before they even sewed the special badge of their unit on
their gear. Of the ten soldiers who had joined us in our battle
against the plague of vampires, not including Albertini and his
lieutenant, six had been affected personally in some way by some
baddy in the world and had signed up because of it. Aside from
Robby, two of the other men had had family members taken.

Rossi revealed to us that
before her encounter with the werewolf left her sterile, she had
indeed had a child while she was in her teens. The boy was only
three when he was stolen from her parents' house in the middle of
the night while Rossi was out at a party. When she returned home,
she followed a blood trail to a clearing in the woods nearby. In
the middle of the clearing, she found her son tied to a tree, his
skin flayed into strips on his little body. Two creatures were
chanting as they danced in circles. As Rossi watched in silent
horror, one of the beings, a horrific version of what my new
teammate referred to as Baba Yaga, reached out and pulled a chunk
of flesh from the child, shoving the bloody mess into her
mouth.

Rossi ran back to her house
and called the police. By the time they made it to the scene, the
child was gone and his blood was the only indication that he had
ever been there. Rossi was arrested for murder, but acquitted after
an excruciatingly long trial in which no evidence of her crime
could be brought forth. As an escape, she joined the military and
was recruited shortly after her graduation into the squad. She had
encountered those creatures multiple times since that horrible
night, but they kept escaping her grasp.

As Rossi was telling her
story, I reached over and slipped my fingers into Felipe's. I had
never had a child. I had always held out hope in the back of my
mind that I would someday raise a family, even after I married a
vampire. But after Steven turned me, sacrificing himself for me, my
last hope died. When I woke up from the disastrous night, I knew
any chance at a normal, suburban housewife-life was gone. Damn
Russians, anyway.

Felipe squeezed my fingers,
throwing a brief, but comforting smile my way as another of the
soldiers shared his story. His smile remained firmly planted on his
lips, but his eyebrows knitted and he cocked his head when he saw
the faint tinge of pink coming to my eyes. I forced the corners of
my mouth upward and looked at him bravely, not wanting to share
such a ridiculous complaint with him, especially after hearing
Rossi's tale of woe.

I turned my attention back to
the storyteller and he took the hint, though he refused to release
my hand until we made it back to the conference room. At that
point, he wasn't given a choice as Bellini pulled him to the side
for a brief discussion with the captain. I found my way to the
ladies and settled down beside them.

The meeting dragged on for
hours after that, with battle plans being drawn up and discarded,
much like most of our pre-assault sessions. Finally, with the
vampires mentally fatigued and cranky and the humans both mentally
and physically exhausted, Bellini and Albertini agreed on an attack
strategy and released us. Most of the humans headed to the dining
room to eat before crashing, but Felipe grabbed my hand as I made
to follow and dragged me in the opposite direction.

Felipe took a round-about way
through the labyrinthine halls but we eventually came out to his
room. He pulled me in and shut the door behind us. As I glanced
around, I realized I'd never actually been in his room. He always
met me or dropped me off at mine. It was cozy, and unlike me, he
had made it his own. My room had a bed in one corner, a nightstand,
a dresser, a desk, a bookcase, a picture, and a mirror. Somehow,
Felipe crammed not only those items, but a La-Z-Boy, couch, and
flat-screen television into it.

He settled onto the couch and
dragged me down onto his lap, wrapping his arms tightly around me
as I snuggled into his chest. I buried my face into his neck and
inhaled deeply. He smelled wonderful--a combination of aftershave
(yes, vampires have to shave), soap, sweat, and this odd musty
scent like you'd find in a library full of old books. I could hear
his heart pounding rhythmically the barest of microseconds before
the blood rushed through his veins under my cheek.

We sat just like that for
awhile, neither of us moving aside from involuntary functions such
as breathing. I drifted into a state of relaxation I had never
known. Nothing existed outside of us, two beings tied together by
circumstances and love, clinging to each other in the whirlwind
that is life and death. We melted together in a way that was very
strange to me, but amazing nonetheless. It was if our souls left
our individual bodies and did a crazy dance that tangled them
together with no hope of being parted. When they returned to their
hosts, they returned together, somehow bridging the physical divide
no matter how large it grew.

"Are you ready to tell me
what's troubling you?"

I gasped as Felipe's breath
warmed my ear. He spoke softly, gently, but it broke the trance I
was in, much to my disappointment. I frowned and squirmed on his
lap, avoiding his eyes. Inhaling deeply, I climbed off and settled
onto the couch a half a foot away from him. He took my hand and
held it tight, but did not move any closer. His eyes bore into me,
wanting an answer but not wanting to force it.

I opened my mouth to speak
several times, but could not find the right words to share my
feelings. Finally, I gave up and shrugged. "It's stupid."

Now he turned to me, cupping
my cheek in his hand. "Jane, darling, nothing you feel is stupid.
Talk to me. Let me help."

I laughed and it came out
bitter and resentful. "You can't help with this, Felipe."

"Why not?"

The look of determination in
his eyes made me smile. He really, truly thought he could fix
anything, be my knight in shining armor, make the world right
again. I felt the corner of my smile turn down as reality set in.
He may be able to fix a lot of things, but he couldn't fix this. I
shook my head and looked at our hands, tears springing to my eyes
once more.

"Jane, please." His voice was
no longer strong and determined. He was begging. I looked up and
met his eyes. I was hurting him by refusing to share my feelings
with him. I cocked my head at him, perplexed. No one, not even
Steven, had shown such a desire, a need to share even my deepest
darkest secrets.

I waited a few more minutes,
keeping my eyes locked on his, studying him. Sighing, I turned away
to stare at the floor and mumbled, "I want a child."

I could tell by his silence
that he was shocked. That definitely wasn't what he was expecting.
I continued quickly, afraid of what he would say. "I know it's not
possible, and I didn't mean that I wanted
us
to have one
together, but it's something I always dreamed about growing up. I
had a plan that by the age of twenty-five I'd be married with two
kids and I'd be the perfect little housewife, baking cupcakes for
the school bake sale, driving my kids to soccer in a mini-van, all
the trappings of the ideal suburban life."

I realized I was babbling and
probably scaring the crap out of him, but once it all started
flowing, I couldn't shut up. "Somehow, that just never happened. I
never found the right guy, and when I finally did find someone who
could stand me, he turned out to be a vampire and couldn't give me
children. I was happy with him, though, and it was ok. I knew deep
down that later on, I'd remember that dream of being a mother, but
I figured there were ways to make it happen. Then Russia... and,
well, I guess now it's all over. I knew it was over when I found
out Steven turned me, but it never really sank in. Not until today,
when we were listening to Rossi. She had a child and lost him; now
she can't have another. I never could have a child in the first
place. It seems like a whole other sort of loss."

I was trembling and the tears
were streaming. I didn't know why I was crying. It was a simple
fact of life. Some people never had children and that was just the
way of it. Felipe leaned over and kissed my cheek, his lips
brushing away some of the salty, pink droplets flowing down my
cheek. He nuzzled my neck and pulled me close to him, stroking my
hair.

"I'm so sorry, Jane. I had no
idea."

I could feel him struggling to
find some words of comfort, something to make it all better. But
there was nothing he could say, nothing he could do. This was a
wound that would never fully heal. We snuggled close and sat in
silence for awhile longer before he reached over and grabbed the
remote off a side table that sat between the chair and the couch.
He flipped through the channels until he found a decent movie and I
pulled my feet up to curl up next to him.

A good half hour had passed
before either of us spoke again. "Jane..."

I glanced up at him. His
eyebrows were creased in thought, his lips pursed. "Hmm?"

He took a deep breath and
opened his mouth to talk, then closed it again. His eyes darted
back and forth, though he wasn't looking at anything in particular.
I waited for him to continue.

"There are ways."

"Ways?"

"To have children as a
vampire."

"What?" I sat up, my interest
piqued beyond belief. "What do you mean 'ways'? I didn't think
vampires could have children."

"I didn't mean
have
children, as in conceive. But there are vampires who have raised
children."

"Why didn't you tell me this
before?" I could feel the heat rising in my face and my blood
beginning to boil.

"Because it is not common and
is frowned upon in most situations. It has to be approved by the
Head Council and that has only ever happened half a dozen times in
the history of the world, two of them in the last fifty years."

"Well, tell me how."

He frowned, clearly irritated
at himself for saying anything, but he shut off the television and
turned to face me. "The first is to turn the child. That has only
been done once, and the details surrounding it are very vague. The
child was supposedly the daughter of a member of some royal family
and she was very ill. Her father pleaded, begged, and promised and
eventually the Head Council agreed. She was turned, but removed
from his care and raised by a pair of vampires. Reports say she
lived to be six hundred, though her body never grew beyond that of
a five-year-old. She was caught out during a witch hunt in the
early fifteenth century and burned alive."

My mouth dropped open in
horror. "That's awful. They burned a child?"

He smiled a sad smile. "You
have to remember that she wasn't really a child. She was a
six-hundred-year-old vampire and it was the middle ages."

I didn't see that as a reason
to kill her, but I let him move on.

"The second way is to adopt.
That is the most common. As you know, vampires and humans can
become very close. A few times, a human child has been left to a
vampire couple upon the death of his or her parents. That is
pre-approved by the council and only in situations where the humans
are valuable allies to the vampire race. That was one of the cases
I mentioned before. The other that happened in the last
half-century was when a vampire, a male, found a two-year-old child
in the basement of a house he had been sent to cleanse. He brought
the kid back to his sanctuary and after much arguing and begging,
he and his wife, another vampire at the sanctuary, were allowed to
raise the child. The girl grew up in the sanctuary and joined a
team that counsels those who have encountered vampires and need
psychological help. On her thirtieth birthday, she was granted her
request to be turned. She helps run one of the sanctuaries in
America now."