Enemy Within (Vampire Born Trilogy, #2) (30 page)

Only it has, and it seems to be all around me.

He looks at me apologetically. “I regret missing so much of your life.”

“Me too,” I say. “I used to be so mad at you. I hated you. I would play out in my head all the hateful things I’d say to you once I met you. But when you pulled up at the hotel, I was excited to see you for the first time. I didn’t want to hate you.”

He cups the uninjured side of my face tenderly. “I didn’t abandon you or your mother. She left me.” His eyes tighten.

“Did you love my mom?”

“I still do,” he says.

I’m shocked by his honesty and figure it’s a good time for some answers. “But you’re willing to risk everything for me. Why not for her?” Everything about their relationship is still a mystery to me. He’s still a mystery to me. I want to spend time with him, to get to know him, but I find myself hiding or withdrawing from him when I have the chance.

I don’t want to risk him seeing something in me that will reveal my love for Mirko. So I risk not having a real relationship with him instead. Maybe I can have both.

His brows dip. “I needed more time. I was going to turn her, but she left. I believed she changed her mind about us, about our future, about turning. I suffered when she left, but I thought I understood. Then seventeen years later, I find out she left because she was with child. I am not certain I can ever forgive her for that.” He shakes his head.

I feel the same way. Not only did she take me away from him, she took him away from me. I can’t help but allow some of my past hatred toward him to be transferred to her.

Yet, she’s my mom. My instinct is to protect her, even over something as simple as my dad’s frustration with her. “She told me she loved you.”

He looks away. “She should’ve told me. I would’ve fought for you. For both of you.”

My throat tightens. I went from thinking he abandoned me, to him wanting to kill me, to him wanting to save me from Jelena, then back to him wanting to kill me. And now he’s saying he would’ve fought for me. I want to believe he would have. He banished Emerik—his best friend for centuries—in defense of me. And risked confidential secrets in the process.

“I’m conflicted. I’m so mad at her, but at the same time, I’ve never seen her unafraid.” I look down and fold the fabric of my long sweater between my fingers. “I used to think her rules and craziness were because she was uptight and a control freak. But now I see it was because she was terrified. I know she thought she was protecting me. She probably thought she was protecting you too.”

I unwind the fabric from my finger and smooth it out. “Sometimes I wish I never had to be protected in the first place.”

Silence fills the room, making the air uncomfortably thick. His penetrating blue eyes hold me still when I want to look away. Maybe I shouldn’t have told the ruler of all vampires that I sometimes wish I weren’t one.

Finally, he speaks. “We all need protection. Actually, I am indebted to your mother, not for taking you away from me but for protecting you when I was not there. I am indebted to Garwin and Mirko as well.”

It must be hard for him to say he’s indebted to a human and a Zao Duh. But I’m finding out my dad really isn’t like all the other Pijawikas I’ve met. I relax, even though the topic is on Mirko. “They’ve done well protecting me.”

“What happened between you and Jaren? I gather he used to be your boyfriend?”

“Yeah. Uh … a lot of things, I guess.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Was Mirko one of those things?”

I laugh nervously as my heart quickens.

Okay, I really don’t want to talk about Mirko with him anymore. It’s getting too close for comfort. And he can probably hear how my thumping heartbeat changes. I should say something to explain it away. “It’s kind of weird talking about boys with you. I mean, you’re my dad.”

He gives me a lighthearted chuckle. “That’s fine. But I do need to know this: is something still going on with you two?”

Crap. This is not good. “What makes you think that?” I’m flustered and fumbling. I shouldn’t be stalling. I need to lie through my teeth and tell him the furthest thing from the truth, but I’m still a terrible liar and he’s probably really good at seeing through people.

I’m freaking out.

“He’s very loyal to you,” he presses.

“He is.” I can’t help but smile. There’s no way I can lie and make him believe I don’t still feel something for Mirko. Tiptoeing across the truth will throw him off better. “Well, I wanted to be with him. But he told me we couldn’t, and that was that.” I let all the sadness over that truth wash over me in hopes he’ll see it.

“He is right,” my dad states. He says the words so nonchalantly, but they weigh heavily on me.

Mirko and I knew my dad would feel this way. But it doesn’t spare me the pain from his confirming it. I should be mad all over again, but all I have is overwhelming sadness.

I drop my head and pick at my cuticles to hide my pain. It’s one thing to let my dad see me sad when it benefits me, but this makes me feel too exposed.

“I’m sorry, Brooke. It’s the way things are. And also why it didn’t work with your mother and me,” he says in a soft, soothing tone.

But it doesn’t soothe me. It doesn’t change anything because he doesn’t say I am free to love Mirko.

I roll my tongue on the roof of my mouth to calm the ache in my throat from holding back tears. “Yeah, but it didn’t have to be.” I look up at him. “There’s just never been anyone with enough power and sway who’s fought for it.” I guess it’s still unfair for me to blame him for the way all Pijawikas think, but he has the influence and motivation to change things, and he hasn’t.

“It’s not that easy,” he says.

“Nothing worth fighting for ever is.”

He nods. “You’re right. And wise.”

“Lijepa told me that.”

“Ah, Lijepa.” My dad smiles, a glint in his eyes, before they dull again. “David isn’t the first person you’ve lost, is he?”

I shake my head. “No. Lijepa was.” I hadn’t known her long at all, but my chest aches every time I think of her. And it aches enough right now—over David, over Kaitlynn, my hidden love for Mirko, and over Lijepa—that my eyes sting with the threat of tears. My emotions are so erratic lately, I can’t control them.

“How long did she train you?”

“Not very long. Jelena came before we got very far.” When I asked Mirko shortly after about Lijepa’s funeral, he told me she wouldn’t have one. Pijawikas don’t mourn in public. It’s a sign of weakness. People would grieve for her in private while she was taken to a crematory and burned to ash.

I’d fought Mirko to get her body. I couldn’t stand the thought of another flame touching her skin, but he said it was for the best. With technology nowadays, Pijawikas, and the rest of us, can’t risk for our loved ones to be buried only to be dug up and examined later.

It made sense, but I still didn’t talk to Mirko for a full twenty-four hours.

I’m grateful when my dad pulls me from the memory. “What did you and Lijepa focus on and how far did you get?”

I tilt my head. Why is he so interested in my training with Lijepa?

“I only ask because I intend to begin where she left off. Training with me may not go as smoothly as it did with her. I don’t have that special sense about powers like she did, but I’m better equipped to train you than most.”

Wow. My dad is willing to train me? I’d love for him to pick up where Lijepa left off. “Well, I didn’t know anything before I went to her. Mirko took me to her after I breached a Pijawika’s mind to torture him.”

“Are you saying you were unaware of how to use Sanjam before that?”

“Yeah. Mirko had barely taught me how to extend my fangs, so I guess you could say I was a late bloomer. Anyway, I pushed too hard and out too far. By the time I was done, my nose was bleeding.”

My dad regards me in a similar way Lijepa did when I surprised her. Except his is reserved pride.

My goal is to get him to drop that wall around me.

“Yes, you pushed too hard.” He stands and pulls something out of his pocket. A gold chain hangs between his fingers. He opens his hand and places the object on the bed, straightening out the necklace with delicate pinches of his fingers. It’s his znak.

My initial reaction is distress, and I flinch at the sight of it. I’ve feared what I thought was his znak for so long that I can’t help it.

He picks up the two black pieces that resemble charcoal, and then walks over and closes the door before coming back to sit down. “I’m going to share a secret of mine with you. It’s a big secret, and crucial to our safety. I’ve never told anyone about this. Not even Emerik, so I can’t have you telling anyone about it.” He eyes me sharply. “Do you agree?”

I’m not sure what I’m agreeing to, but how can I say no? “I promise.”

“Then I shall proceed. When it comes to Sanjam, I am considered the strongest living Pijawika in the world. However, technically, I am not.”

My jaw drops. “But even Lijepa told me you were.” And Lijepa knew everything.

“She didn’t know any different because it is not a power. It is a technique, but using it stirs something within me that gave Lijepa a taste of it.” His smile turns jaunty. Whatever he’s about to tell me, it excites him.

I can’t help but be excited with him. I’m sharing secrets with my dad—a secret he’s only ever shared with me. It’s like a rite of passage, and one I never knew existed or that I was missing out on. I tuck my feet underneath me and lean in attentively. “So how do you do it?”

“When you think of using Sanjam, your approach is to overpower the other person, yes?”

“Most of the time. But Lijepa showed me another way.”

He ticks his head to the side in almost an avian way. I’m still getting used to having people move in unnaturally swift ways.

“She suggested instead of pushing that I take my time to find a weak spot and then move in gently so I’m not noticed.”

“That is a good alternative,” he agrees, “but that takes extreme concentration, time, and you’re limited to only one person at a time.”

He holds his hands up with a black piece in each one. “Magnets. Now, most of the time, your instinct is to push,” he says as he brings his hands together. The magnets repel, but he forces them together and holds them there. “In your first attempt at this, you pushed so hard against the resisting energy, your nose bled.”

I nod, waiting for the punch line.

“My technique is to not push at all.”

He turns one of the magnets around and then brings them together again.

The metal claps together with the force of their attraction.

My eyes bulge when I realize what this could mean for me. “You pull!”

“Not exactly. I reverse my mind’s polarity, and they pull me in.”

My jaw drops.

This is even easier. But … “How do you reverse it?”

“That,” my dad says, pointing a magnet at me, “is where the training comes in. If it were simple enough to stumble across by accident, more people would be able to do it. But it is not.”

“How did you learn about it?”

“I am the exception. I stumbled. Even though this is a technique and not a power, our line is special and can do things naturally that others cannot. Never forget that. Because no matter how we go about it, it garners us power.”

I nod, and for the first time since finding out I was a vampire, I want that power. I crave it, needing to possess and wield it.

That’s when an idea strikes. “Well, you say the reverse Sanjam thing … it’s not a power. So if I knew how to use it, would I have been able to get Emerik to release me? Or would he have been able to block that too?”

“I’m sorry, Brooke.” My dad’s features turn down and shadow his face. It’s the most transparent he’s been with me. “I trusted him with my life and never thought he would try to harm you.”

Mirko did.

I can’t tell him that, though. It seems insensitive of me after he’s finally dropping some of his guard. “It’s not your fault.” And it isn’t. “Nobody can protect me all the time.”

“You’re right. Emerik’s Ukinuti managed to be a closely held secret, but I should have told you. I should have empowered you against it a long time ago.”