The Vampire's Redemption, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #3) (3 page)

Without turning on the light on my nightstand, I slipped in between the sheets on my bed and struggled to clear my head. It took me another three hours to fall asleep. The last thought before I finally drifted off into dreamland was that Michael might find a way to get out without my consent. Maybe my opinion didn’t matter much in the way of things.

I knew enough about him to realize that when he was determined, he would find a way. It didn’t really matter who was trying to convince him not to make a move he might regret. He was a vampire who was hundreds of years old. He thought he knew what he was doing.

He was wrong.

CHAPTER 3 – Michael

“She’s right, mate.”

Jones and I were in the meadow. We’d been discussing Sarah’s refusal to let me leave. Katie and Victoria were searching the woods, double checking for signs that Alex had been back. I’d been through the same forest three times and found nothing. I still found it hard to believe that he would not return.

“She’s not right. Not in this particular case.”

He took a deep breath and his russet eyebrows rose marginally. “She’s looking out for you. She also knows that Alex can take you down.”

“There has to be a way to stop him.”

“Have you considered the possibility that he might actually have good intentions?”

My answer came out in a low hiss, “Not after he nearly killed her, no.”

Jones pursed his lips, looking uncharacteristically somber. “Many of us were impulsive when we first began to experience our true natures. I recall one particular night in Hong Kong a few days after Amanda turned me… It was rather brutal.”

Shifting uncomfortably, I shook my head. “Different situation. And Alex’s powers are unequaled as far as I know. I’ve never seen any vampire extend that kind of energy from their body.”

The crackle of leaves and dead branches nearby alerted us to the return of the ladies. Both of them glided towards us across the meadow with neutral expressions evident on their pale, perfect faces.

“Nothing. He hasn’t been back, Michael,” Victoria said, sliding up to Jones’ side.

Katie looked pensive. “I really don’t think he’s coming back right away. We know he’s hunting for my mother and the Breath-Giver. I doubt he’s changed his mind on that point already. Did Meekah say something about him coming back? You seem very sure of yourself.”

“No. She didn’t say anything about him.” I refused to give any further details. I didn’t like the instinctual distrust growing inside me about Katie. There was definitely something she was trying to hide.

I’d been having visions during my resting time in the caves. They had started shortly after Isaiah and his guards had come to the farm. The source of the change was a mystery to me, but I trusted what I saw. The last one had been a bit hazy. What was clear was that Alex, Sarah, Isaiah and I would all come face-to-face again. I just wasn’t sure about the where and when of the matter. The young man who had come to the farm under Isaiah’s compulsion had also been in that vision. That was another unusual situation altogether.

Victoria followed when I left the meadow and headed back towards the house. I was hoping one more check around the place would ease my mind. She trailed behind me a few yards and then paused. When I turned to look at her, I saw an expression that I knew well. Her cool hazel eyes were vacant and her mouth was half open. She was reading someone nearby.

“Who?” I asked lowly.

“Sarah.” she nodded quickly to herself and looked up at me solemnly.

“Anything I should know?”

She didn’t answer me. I stepped closer and looked down on her, trying to imply that I required the answer without actually saying the words. She knew me well enough to understand that any inside knowledge regarding Sarah was important to me. Not just important, but vital.

“Vic?”

Slowly, she raised her head and met my eyes. “It’s an emotional thing that doesn’t really have anything to do with you. She’s not in danger though.”

“Her mother?”

“No. I really can’t say, Michael. I feel guilty for tuning it in.”

I watched her carefully. There were some thoughts that Victoria had picked up in the past from humans or vampires that had been shared between us and caused problems. Realizing that she wanted to protect Sarah’s privacy, I let it go and turned away.

“Have you heard anything from Meekah?”

She fell into step beside me, her long dark coat billowing out behind her. “I spoke to her a few hours ago. She’s in Paris.”

“Paris? Is she still trying to track down that witch friend of hers?” I asked.

“He’s more than just a friend, Michael.”

I chuckled. “They were living together for maybe three days before he took off, Vic.”

“Well, she loves him still. I believe she’d follow William anywhere. That’s love, Michael.”

“That’s stalking, not love. Look it up.”

“You’re rather grumpy this evening.”

She paused. We were only fifty feet or so from the house. I could hear the dryer running in the laundry room. The furnace had also kicked on in the basement. I also heard the scratching of a pencil on paper as well as steps in the parlor. The one in the parlor was Jackson.

Cowboy from Wyoming. Both of his parents were full Pawnee. He was a rarity, to be sure. I didn’t know much more about him. What I did know was that Isaiah wouldn’t hesitate to use him again if he got the chance.

I listened to him flip through the old albums in Robert’s collection and heard him sigh.

“Something significant is about to change, Michael. You need to prepare yourself.”

Startled by Victoria’s cool statement, I turned and stared at her.

CHAPTER 4 – Sarah

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.
-
Zelda Fitzgerald

Writing in my Dad’s journal was always difficult. I sort of felt like I was treading on sacred ground when my pencil began moving across those yellow pages near the back. He wasn’t the kind of guy to put words down on paper easily. But he knew his job. He was the Warden before I was.

I tucked a length of my loose light brown hair behind my ear and nibbled a little on the eraser at the end of the pencil. It was pretty difficult to accurately describe everything that had happened over the last week without revealing my personal feelings. I didn’t know who would end up reading this stuff. Maybe it would end up at the bottom of a landfill or something one day.

When I had gathered a few thoughts and begun writing, I heard something from downstairs that stopped my breath. It was the beginning of one of my Dad’s favorite songs. The soul-stirring vocals of Etta James drifted upstairs from the parlor, and I dropped the pencil.

Inside me, the strangest thing began happening. I felt separate from everything around me, like it was all just some hazy dream that I wasn’t actually a part of. Pushing the journal aside, I slipped out of bed and approached the bedroom door. My heart was hammering inside my chest painfully. I kept seeing my father’s sad eyes and the melancholy smile that he used to wear whenever he began playing those songs. I used to stand outside the doorway of the parlor during those dark nights, listening to the music and always wondering how life might have been better if my Mom had been there. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so sad most of the time. Maybe he would feel whole and happy.

That was all that was in my head when I made my way down there. I didn’t think about what I was wearing at the time. Before bed, I had pulled on a pretty white nightgown that Nelly had given me for my birthday that year. I wouldn’t usually go downstairs wearing something like that, but my mind was firmly set on Dad and I was wondering if he was still there somewhere.

I hoped that when I turned the corner and looked through that doorway that I would see him sitting in that old rocking chair by the window, the albums stacked next to him on the surface of the old sewing table that also held the record player. I wanted him to be there.

The wood floor was cold under my bare feet. Almost icy. When I saw the figure standing over the sewing table, I stopped in the doorway. His dark head was bent, studying the cover of an old Ella Fitzgerald album. The disappointment wasn’t there inside me when I realized it wasn’t my father. Something else was going on.

He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, taking a deep breath. The song was getting to him, and I understood it. His profile was lit from behind, softening each dark line--his proud jaw, his high cheekbones, and the tender curve of his generously shaped mouth. The dark ponytail that I’d seen before was gone. The color of his hair reminded me of how dark the trees outside became in the middle of the night. It was the blackest hair I’d ever seen. The sides were tucked back around his ears and the length of it was left to drift around his shoulders.

He was only wearing a pair of jeans and a white sleeveless undershirt. I couldn’t get over how muscular his shoulders and arms were. The color of his skin was golden brown. I knew his heritage, but the tone of his skin was so beautiful. He was the best looking man I’d ever laid eyes on. I felt a familiar tingling and warmth in my nether regions that embarrassed me.

I must have made some slight sound. He looked over at me.

Time stopped. I couldn’t hear the ticking of my father’s old clock. Maybe it was just the voice of Etta James singing “Sunday Kind of Love”. That song had never failed to move me into an emotional frame of mind. Maybe it was just the stress of everything that had happened over the past weeks. Maybe it was his confusion about his circumstances combined with finding out about vampires for the first time.

Whatever the reason, when we both looked at each other in that single moment, everything changed. It’s difficult now for me to look back on that moment without tears in my eyes. It’s hard to think about Jackson and the way he was back then. But that night in the parlor, with Dad’s favorite old scratched-up Etta James album playing in the background… That’s when it happened.

That moment was probably only a minute or so in real time, I guess. But there was a connection born there between us. Something neither had expected nor even wanted. The expression on his face was strange, almost as if he had never seen me before that moment. There was an enchanting amber light in his gaze as he looked me over.

He broke the eye contact first.

Gesturing haltingly towards the record player, he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep.”

His long fingers traced over the short stack of album covers on the table. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard any of these.”

I continued to stare as he talked.

“I lived with my grandparents for awhile when I was little. My grandmother was really into jazz. She was crazy about Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, Etta James…”

He picked up the Etta James cover on the stack and smiled. “I had forgotten how gorgeous it sounds on vinyl. It feels like I’m back home.”

The warm pitch in his voice was pacifying. Padding over to the loveseat, I sat and curled my legs up under me. Still I didn’t speak. After a few moments, he took the tan afghan from the back of the sofa, unfolded it and spread it over me without making any physical contact. It was done without words by hands that were steady with quiet strength. It was a gesture that resonated with me, that made it clear in my mind that this man cared for the comfort of others.

I said nothing.

He chose another album, set the needle against the track and drifted around the room, looking at the pictures on the walls. “I used to sit in my grandmother’s kitchen and eat oatmeal cookies while she wrote long letters to my aunts. She always had some jazz playing in the den.”

The music filled the room, sending piano notes and intimate vocals into every corner. My chest ached with the heavy emotion that seemed to seep through me, but I couldn’t define whether it was me mourning the loss of my Dad or the new feelings invoked by the stranger before me.

“Why did you live with your grandparents?” I asked suddenly.

His gaze swept over me shortly and he lowered himself onto the floor in front of the sofa. He stretched his long legs out in front of him and sighed. “My mom had some trouble with depression when I was little. My father never really stepped up to the plate, and Mom took it pretty hard.”

“You never knew your father?”

“I’ve met him.”

A hard look came over his face that made me realize it was a difficult thing for him to talk about.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. Here was a man who had been abandoned by a parent, who probably knew better than anyone how devastating it felt to have been left behind. The connection I had sensed when I first walked into the room became a solid, bright thing that made me want to tell him everything. And I knew he would understand.

I studied his face for a few moments while he had his eyes closed, his dark head resting against the sofa cushion. It wasn’t just honesty displayed there for the world to see. He was complex, but perhaps he was a puzzle that would be worth putting together. I felt like I wanted to do exactly that.

“My mother left our family when I was young,” I said.

It felt like a release, as if something dark had burst out from the place in my heart where it had been churning for months. I waited for a sign of pity from the man sitting so close to me, some indication that he would see the issue the same way that everyone else had.

His head turned on the cushion and he watched me quietly for a few minutes without saying a word.

I fixed my eyes on the window across the room and studied the shapes of the trees outside. I felt an overwhelming urge to flee, to run through the door and lose myself in the forest out there. The trees didn’t care about whether or not I’d been left behind by my mother. Maybe the beautiful man sitting so close didn’t care about it either.

Then he crawled over to where I sat on the loveseat. He remained on the floor beside me, the angles of his face soft with empathy, his eyes trained on my face in a way that made me catch my breath.