Fallen Tears: A Blood Crave Novella (Blood Crave Series) (8 page)

“Felix? As in the cat?” She grinned at the thought of a golden cat with Remy’s smile. A cat familiar fitted him perfectly.

“Yes,” he said rather dryly. “I’m highly original. Sage has one, too. Also a cat named Sunny.”

“That’s cute.” She thought back to the blonde girl earlier who had helped her. She seemed really maternal. Although, she had been wearing those childish pajamas. Rowan then thought of the other woman who was with her. “Does your mom have one?”

He nodded. “She does. Wendy. The three like to play in Sage’s room upstairs.”

“Your mom looks so young.” She turned her head so she could get a better look at Remy. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Sage and I are eighteen. Twins. Faith’s a lot older—she’d kill me if I told her true age. She looks so young because that’s how we age, fortunately.” He rubbed his hand against his forehead as if nervous by her persistent stare.

“How’s that even possible?” Although now that she thought about it, Rowan realized she herself would never age anymore.

It slightly ruffled her feathers even though turning was something she had wanted for so long. Her dark hair would never have strands of gray threaded through it. Nor would her skin wrinkle up or form age spots. She really wouldn’t have children now, even if she wanted to.

She shook her head and tried focusing on Remy, giving him a disapproving look. “Why do you keep calling her Faith? She’s your mom!”

He gave a bright smile. “That she is. She’s got such a wonderful name, I thought it’d go to waste if I called her Mom. Besides, Sage calls her Mom and I know deep down inside Faith enjoys me calling her by her name. It keeps her young. And to answer your other question, the angel blood is what keeps us immortal to an extent. At least, living a lot longer than the average human.”

“How do vampires fit into all of this, anyway?” The question had been on her mind for some time.

Remy’s eyes opened in shock at her question. “Wait, Kaji never told you?”

He saw Rowan shake her head, “No. Like I said before, he’s never really told me anything about himself, or vampires in general. I’ve kind of been blindly following him all these years.”

“Wow,” Remy stayed quiet for a moment. “Well, although lapsus and lamia are deemed polar opposites and enemies, I like to believe we’re more similar than everyone thinks.”

“What do you mean by that?” She turned her head around to catch his eyes.

Remy gave a small smile at her intense interest. “See, our history has been intertwined since the beginning. Faith actually has a bunch of books from the past that discusses it all. From the perspectives of both lapsus and lamia.”

“I’d like to read them sometime.” It’d be interesting to finally find out where Kaji came from. This was now her history, too.

“Absolutely. Anyway, vampires were created by a fallen angel.” Remy paused. “Let me rephrase that—
Kaji
was created by
the
fallen angel.”

“What?” Rowan sat up in bed, staring back in shock.

He nodded. “Yup, Kaji was the first lamia to ever be created. He in turn created all other lamia by turning humans into what he is. He’s the demon vampire created by the fallen angel who fell straight into hell.”

“Hell? You mean like, Satan?”
The devil?

This was way too much information.

“Affirmative, Rowan.”

She gave her head a rub as if pained. “No wonder he never wanted to tell me anything about his past. He probably thought I’d run away or something.”

Remy didn’t say anything, just stared at Rowan, who suddenly had a pained expression on her face he noticed she got whenever Kaji’s name was mentioned.

He didn’t like seeing her look that way.

He glanced over at the stairs. “You probably need some rest. I should head up so you can sleep.” Remy moved to slide out of bed but was stopped by a hand. Rowan looked pleadingly up at him, grasping his wrist almost painfully.

“Don’t go. I like hearing your voice and you really do make me feel calm.” She pointed toward her mouth. “See, even my fangs have disappeared.”

She gave a little smile up at him. “Do you think you could stay and talk some more?”

Remy looked down at his clasped wrist encircled by her hand. He liked the feeling although she felt cool. He gave a curt nod and smiled in return. “Yeah, sure.

“I’ll stay.”

CHAPTER 10

And so he talked for hours, Rowan asking him question after question. She learned many things from that one night alone such as the troubling relationship that existed between lamia and lapsus. She would have to be careful from now on. Going outside would be dangerous now since the city of Fallon was flocked with lapsus, unbeknownst to the majority of humans who migrated their way into the city. It was the lapsus who named the city Fallon, after themselves. The name being so similar to the English translation of lapsus, fallen.

All but two lamia—Kaji and Adam—had been killed many centuries ago. If Rowan’s presence was to be discovered, both she and the Cross’ lives would be in danger. This house inhabited by lapsus, the ones she feared for so long for no reason at all, would now be her safe haven.

Both Rowan’s own questioning voice and Remy’s honest responses went on and on, as if to drive away the night with their endless chatter. She truly feared the visions that would take root in her mind if they didn’t.

She now knew that the lapsus could speak to each other with their minds, conversing without anybody else knowing. Lamia were unable to do so but both could influence a human’s thought. Since the power of the lamia came from their strength and speed, a lapsus would be no match for them. It was what made the lamia a demon warrior, vampires ready to make the kill. For the lapsus to battle fairly, they had to use their individual
Magic
, as Remy liked to call it, to fight against the powerful lamia. These special abilities the lapsus possessed include calling upon one of the four elements that each had an affinity toward, whether earth, air, fire, or water.

Remy was fire, Sage was water, and Faith was air.

Kaji and Adam were the only lamia left after that horrible fateful night, managing to escape. The fallen angels deceived them, staked them all in the chest while they slept. An ancestor of Remy’s had helped them flee the town and since then, the family still aided Kaji, unbeknownst to the other lapsus.

Rowan felt nothing but sadness when Remy told her all this. To think that so many of them were murdered strictly for being lamia. She wondered what Kaji and Adam had been feeling for all these years. It explained why Adam also seemed so closed off and angry at the world.

It explained why Kaji sometimes looked so
broken
.

She didn’t remember falling asleep in Remy’s arms but when she woke up, she was alone. The power must have been restored because the lights were on, lighting up the once dim room, the lamp now extinguished. Rowan looked around to see some of her things from the apartment, clothes and personal items, littered on the floor. None of it was of any interest to her, but what caught her eye was the bow-and-arrow set she got from Adam. Looking at it more closely, she wondered if the set had been used by another female vampire from the past. She absentmindedly picked up one of the arrows with her hand as she fingered the tip, seeing a note attached to its body. Releasing the slip of paper from it, she read the message:

The tips are dipped with poison that will weaken a lapsus or its familiar in an instant. Hopefully they can protect you.

-K

Hmm. Adam must have given her these for this reason. He must have known she would someday be turned, despite Kaji’s protest. Her memory went back to a conversation she had with the pair long ago. Adam had been adamant about teaching her the art of weaponry. It was one of the few times they had opened her up to their lives.

“The lamia were created out of evil. That was our only purpose. It was our instincts that told us how to fight. While the lapsus used their powers and called upon the elements during battle, we ourselves were the weapons.”

Kaji stopped talking and gave a sly glance at Adam then continued, “That was until Adam was turned and decided man’s creations were the way to go.”

Adam looked up at Kaji’s comment with a bored expression on his face then glanced over at Rowan. “I don’t like to get my hands dirty. Brute force is,” he paused, his gaze flicking briefly over at Kaji and nodded, “Kaji’s preference. I prefer the clean cut of a blade as it slits my opponent’s neck.” He stared unblinking as he said the words.

“But who are we fighting now?” Rowan voiced, taking everything in. “There’s no longer a problem—the lapsus don’t know about us.”

“Yet,” Kaji murmured quietly. “The lapsus don’t know about us yet.”

“And when they do,” Adam got up, holding the bow and arrow out to her, “you’ll need to know how to fight.” 

Rowan flashed out of the memory quickly as she clutched the arrow tightly in her hand. She had been confused at the time but now knew what they had been referring to.

Fallen angels.

This piece of paper was apparently going to be the last words Kaji had to say to her. Still infuriated with him, Rowan shook her head in anger and set the arrow aside as she tossed the note away with the flick of a hand. Glimpsing toward the foot of her bed, she was shocked to see the koto that Kaji always played in the apartment just lying on the floor, looking almost abandoned. She rushed to kneel beside it and gently touched the strings as it made a slight hum. She closed her eyes softly, imagining his fingers playing that beautiful sound.

Rowan wondered if somewhere he would hear the music and come rushing back to her. And as she closed her eyes and let out a long breath, she of course knew that was an impossible request.

Damn you, Kaji.

CHAPTER 11

She was no longer Rowan Miller. To the world, Rowan Miller had disappeared one rainy night. The only inkling of her ever being around was the sketch drawing of a missing person’s report. Located in and around the area where she was last seen at her place of work, the page got older and grimier as the months passed.

She was just Rowan now, trying to figure out how to function in a world that had always been the same, yet she herself had changed drastically. At times she felt like a foal would as she struggled to get her footing, a bit unstable on her own two feet. It was an adjustment she had to get used to. It was times like this where she asked herself why she had once wanted this life in the first place. Although, in her mind, Kaji was supposed to have been with her.

Instead he was gone, just like her parents.

However bleak life seemed, she continually learned things about her new self that she found quite fascinating. Like whenever she craved blood—which seemed to be twenty-four/seven—her normally brown eyes would become as dark as her pupils, like Kaji’s and Adam’s. She learned that contrary to popular belief, vampires did not fly, or need permission to be invited into a house. She would always have to be aware of her own strength or else there would be a lot of broken things in her vicinity. The sunlight was no longer her friend and that big, bright ball of light was now nothing more than a potentially deadly encounter.

But everything else was fair game. She still loved eating garlic in her lasagna and still wore the cross that her father gave her underneath her shirt sans burnt flesh. It was a habit for Rowan to keep it hidden because she had done so for many years while living with Kaji, fearing that she would have harmed him in some way if he had seen it. Although so not typical Kaji style, she’d always pictured him covering up his face in protest as he’d yell, “My eye, my eye!”

Guess she had been wrong.

She spent an entire year living with Remy, Sage, and Faith. They quickly became her new family as she furiously tried to drive the memory of Kaji out of her mind.

Or more like stomp on it with her leather boots.

They didn’t hate her for the fact that she preferred to call them witch, something Rowan felt more comfortable saying, as opposed to
lapsus, which seemed like some foreign thing beyond her comprehension. Yeah, yeah, yeah—she knew the history lesson and that they were fallen angels, blah, blah, blah. But the witchy things that they always did made her think of nothing else but … witch. And Rowan understood why humans had labeled them as such.

Sage was like a little sister with a mother’s instinct. Rowan loved the pure innocence that seemed to radiate from her soul, like this bright light that was just so … good. Something that Rowan felt she wasn’t. At least, not anymore. Sage always had this smile on her face and Rowan couldn’t help but smile back, no matter her mood.

Faith became the mother she never had, someone who she could always talk to without any worry or fear of being judged. She made Rowan forget she ever missed having a real mom.

And Remy?

Remy became her best friend, the one who held her whenever she got scared. They always talked about soul mates in books and movies. She would roll her eyes at all that lovey-dovey crap; the idea of that one and only person who you were meant to spend the rest of your life with. She personally liked making her own decisions and didn’t want to leave her life (and her relationships) up to fate.

But knowing Remy, her concept of a soul mate was so much more than that—so much deeper and significant. He was that one person that completely got who she was, that someone whom she could share anything with and who would never leave.

Her anchor.

Although her first impression of him was completely wiped away as she got to know him more. He was still the kind, gentle boy who was always there for her. But he had a spirit in him that was not unlike her own. They fought hard, neither giving up because they were both willful. But it was with him that she learned to become herself again. Get over the heartbreak that was Kaji.