Warrior

Chapter 5-1

Chapter 5

Riding away from Sara, I wasn’t prepared for the mixed feelings that assailed me. I’d expected my Mori to be upset, but it surprised me to realize I didn’t want to leave either. When I’d decided to come here today, I had only wanted to make sense of what I was feeling and to clear my head. If it wasn’t for the bond, she’d be just another orphan.

I laughed at my pathetic attempts at denial. There was nothing average about Sara Grey. I could blame all of this on my demon, but the truth was, I’d noticed the girl before I’d touched her and felt the bond. And the more I got to know her, the more intrigued I was by her. She looked so small and defenseless, yet she possessed inner strength and courage. She’d had no idea what she was, but she had not only survived her demon, she had somehow mastered it. In my whole life, I had never met anyone like her. Her vulnerability and fear made the warrior in me want to protect her, while her soft curves and sweet voice stirred me more than I wanted to admit.

I swore harshly. How the hell had this girl managed to get under my skin so effortlessly? She didn’t want anything to do with me, yet I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I tried to recall some of the beautiful women I’d been with, but all I could see was her face.

I’d convinced myself I had to come here to get answers, and that I should be the one to tell her what she was. After all, it was part of my job to protect our people, and she needed my protection even after I broke the bond.

But seeing her today… The bond was too new for me to be having such a strong reaction to her. And yet, I was a thought away from turning this bike around and going back to her.

Exhaling loudly, I focused on other things, such as the fact that I had to tell Tristan about Sara. He was going to be beside himself when he learned he had a granddaughter. My mind was still trying to grasp that Sara was Madeline’s daughter. Madeline was a lot of things, but I never would have believed her capable of deserting her child and leaving her unprotected in a world so dangerous to our kind.

Before I told Tristan about Sara, I needed proof of her identity. By the time I made it to the town limits, I’d called Dax and put him to work looking into Sara’s background, particularly her parents’ marriage and her father’s death. If there was anything to uncover, Dax would find it.

That left me with one job to do. If Sara would not leave Maine, I’d make Maine safe for her. I would scour Portland until I was confident there wasn’t a vampire in the city and Eli was no longer a threat to her.

Saturday night, we had cleaned out the house the vampire had sent us to, capturing two vampires and disposing of another three. If our informant had been honest with us, there were at least two more vampires running around Portland along with Eli, unless the three of them had turned tail and run.

But I’d seen Eli’s hunger when he had to let Sara go. His was not the face of someone who was going to give up easily. I’d seen it before, a vampire fixating on a human to the point of obsession. And Eli had to know Sara was Mohiri after being that close to her. Vampires loved the taste of our blood, and the younger the Mohiri, the purer the blood.

* * *I spent the rest of the evening helping Erik and his team set up the new safe house we had established in Portland. The discovery of so many vampires in the city had necessitated a Mohiri presence for the time being. We still had no clue what had drawn Eli and his brethren here in the first place. We had the two vampires from Saturday night on lockdown, and a few days without feeding would make them talk if they knew anything.

The next morning, there was a voice mail from Dax by the time I got out of the shower. I returned his call, and he confirmed what I’d already known. Daniel Grey had been married to a Madeline Croix until his death ten years ago. There was even a black and white photo of the couple that had accompanied an article in the Portland Press Herald about his grisly murder. Strangely though, Sara was not mentioned in the article.

After I hung up, I sat on the bed, thinking about the conversation I’d be having with Tristan soon. My thoughts inevitably turned to Sara, and I wondered how she was faring after our talk yesterday. Would she be less resistant to the Mohiri if she knew she had family among them? She’d been very defensive when I’d mentioned her leaving and adamant that her family was here. I was afraid any more revelations might be too much for her.

Chris was in the kitchen making breakfast when I went downstairs. We lived mostly off restaurant and bar food on the road, and both of us enjoyed a home-cooked meal when we could get one. Luckily for me, Chris liked to cook and he was good at it.

He shot me a questioning look when I walked into the kitchen, and I knew he was waiting for me to tell him where I’d disappeared to yesterday. We’d been friends a long time, and there wasn’t much we kept from each other. But I found myself reluctant to talk about Sara.

“Did you call Paulette to take care of your orphan?” He slid scrambled eggs and sausage onto a plate and held it out to me.

I took the plate and sat at the counter. “No. I decided to take care of it myself.”

He spun around, sending bits of egg flying off the spatula in his hand. “You did?”

I dug into my eggs, ignoring his stare. “It was your idea.”

“Yes, but I didn’t think you’d take me seriously.” He glanced up at the ceiling as if he suspected I had her locked away upstairs. “What happened?”

I gave him a wry smile. “She wasn’t exactly happy to see me or to discover what she is. And she was more than clear that she is not leaving Maine.”

“What did she –?”

I pointed at the stove. “Your eggs are burning.”

“s**t!” He grabbed his smoking pan of eggs and started scraping them into the garbage disposal. He filled the pan with soapy water and turned back to me. “We’ll have to send Paulette to talk to her. She’s the best with orphans. We can’t leave the girl here unprotected.”

“I have no intention of leaving her.” I carried my plate to the sink and washed it.

Chris’s brows drew together. “What aren’t you telling me?”

I dried the plate and put it away, listening for other people in the house. “Where are the others?”

“They went to Boston early this morning to grab the rest of their stuff. Why?”

I picked up my cell phone and walked into the living room. “Because I’d rather keep this conversation between the three of us.”

“The three of us?”

I sat on the couch, and he sat across from me. “You, me, and Tristan,” I said before I dialed the number.

Tristan picked up on the second ring. “What did you find?” he asked when he realized who was calling.

“More than we expected.” I looked at Chris, who was watching me with open curiosity. “It was vampires who took those girls. There were ten of them holed up in a house, and we took care of five of them. We have two locked up, and we’re looking for the last three.”

“Ten. That’s an unusually large number. Did you find out why they were in Portland?”

“Not yet, but we will,” Chris answered.

There was a short silence on the other end of the line. “Why do I get the feeling there is more to this than you’re telling me?” Tristan said.

“There is.” I took a breath. “We found an orphan. We saved her from the vampire we’re hunting now.”

“Is she okay?” Concern flooded Tristan’s voice. “Have you called Paulette? What about the girl’s mother? Did she survive the attack?”

I waited for the barrage of questions to end. “She is unhurt, and her parent was not involved in the attack. We ran into the girl at a bar on Friday night.”

“A bar?” Tristan echoed incredulously. “What on Earth was a child doing at a bar?”

“That’s the thing.” Chris leaned forward with his arms resting on his knees. “She’s not a child, at least not a young one. She’s seventeen.”

Tristan inhaled sharply. “How is that possible? You’re sure she is Mohiri?”

“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life,” I replied, drawing Chris’s scrutiny again. “I’ve been around her several times, and I was able to sense her Mori each time. I went to visit her yesterday, and I learned some things about her that, frankly, shocked the hell out of me. I had Dax look into her background to confirm what I suspected before I told you.”

I took a deep breath. “Her name is Sara Grey, and her father was human. Her mother is Mohiri.”

Tristan and Chris inhaled sharply at the same time.

I continued before either of them could speak. “Her father was killed by vampires ten years ago. Her mother left them when Sara was very young, and Sara had no idea what she was until I told her.”

Chris frowned. “How do you and Dax know her mother is Mohiri if Sara didn’t even know?”

“I knew when I heard her mother’s name.” I stared at the phone. “Tristan…Sara is Madeline’s daughter.”

“Madeline?” Tristan said in disbelief. “How…how do you know this?”

“Sara told me her mother’s name was Madeline, and Dax found a picture of your Madeline with Daniel Grey.” I looked at Chris, who still stared at me with his mouth hanging open. “And Sara bears a resemblance to Josephine.”

Chris found his voice again. “That’s it! I knew she looked familiar. Madeline’s daughter? Damn.”

“Nikolas, you’re positive about this?” Tristan’s voice shook, and I could only imagine what he was feeling. I was there when he’d found the note Madeline had left him before she took off. I’d helped him search for her for over a year, and I’d seen his fear and worry for his only child. Madeline was a trained warrior when she left, but she’d never been out in the world alone. I’d watched as the years passed and the hope of her coming home slowly faded from his eyes.

After several decades went by without a word from her, he had accepted that she could be dead, and he’d resigned himself to being the last of his line. Now to discover his daughter was still alive – or had been seventeen years ago – and she had married and given birth to a child…

“Without a doubt, she is Madeline’s daughter, your granddaughter,” I said.

“Oh dear God,” Tristan whispered hoarsely. “Madeline.”

Chris and I said nothing for several minutes while Tristan recovered from learning Madeline could still be alive, and that he had a granddaughter.

Tristan cleared his throat. “Is Sara with you? May I speak to her?”

“She’s not here. She refused to leave her home.”

I could hear Tristan’s footsteps as he paced around his office.

“We can’t leave her unprotected. Did you explain how dangerous it is for her?”

“Yes, but she is determined to stay. She has no warm feelings for her mother, and I think she blames Madeline in part for her father’s death. She wants nothing to do with us.”

Tristan stopped pacing. “I’ll come there and talk to her. Maybe if she knew she had family here, she would be less frightened of us.”

A laugh escaped me. “She’s not afraid of us. Trust me. I’d say it’s closer to contempt.”

There was a brief silence before Tristan spoke again. “You said she’s seventeen and she had no idea she was Mohiri. How has she survived this long without training?”

“I don’t know, but her control over her Mori is unlike anything I’ve seen. If I hadn’t sensed it, I would have thought she was human.”

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d think that was admiration I hear in your voice,” Tristan said.

I didn’t try to deny it. “It’s hard not to admire someone with that kind of strength. She is surprisingly composed, considering all she’s been through. In some ways, she reminds me of you.”

“My granddaughter,” he said in wonder. “I’m going to call for the jet. I’ll be there this afternoon.”