Passion And Fire (Passion #4) (40 page)

“Who is it babe?” Damien stepped alongside of me and turned to the couple who were looking at me. “Hang on, she….” His voice trailed off and I turned to him, tension making my body rigid.

I could see the question in his eyes but I simply turned back to the couple before me. “What do you want Mum and Dad?” I asked and heard the harshly drawn breath from Damien.

“These are your parents?” His tone was incredulous. “The people who abandoned you?”

I couldn’t seem to articulate the words so I nodded. Why? Why the fuck did they have to show up now? I never expected to see them again. I was finally happy. I had a man who loved me and a family in these vampires.

“Why are you here? What do you want?” I asked them again. “I have nothing to say to either of you. You abandoned me. You packed up and left me all alone. I’ve not seen you or heard from you in all these years, and now you show up? Why?”

“We need your help Flame. We lost everything. We’re broke. You look like you’re doing ok, so please, we need you to help us.”

Damien snorted. “She’s not going to help you. You can piss off back to whatever rock you crawled out from under. Flame owes you nothing. You left her all alone. You don’t even know the kind of damage you’ve done to her by abandoning her, do you? You’re both fools if you think she owes you anything; if you think she’s going to help you.” He turned towards the car, taking my elbow to make me follow him.

“You’re wrong young man. Our daughter will help us or you will all pay the ultimate price. We are used to speculation, the media, the damage that can be done. Don’t dismiss us or we will go to the papers. Is that what you want?”

Damien turned back around, his expression questioning but I already knew. I could see it in their faces. They were going to blow our very existence sky high and expose us to the world. “You can’t do that.” I said.

“When everything is lost and we have nothing more; we do what we have to do, even if that means throwing our daughter under a bus and taking you all with her.” My father said. “You see, we saw you; we saw you doing things with that man which should not be done in public. You bit each other; you had fangs, like vampires. It seems almost unreal to imagine it but we saw. We don’t want to expose you. My guess is no one knows what you are, and if we hadn’t seen with our own eyes, we wouldn’t believe either. I don’t know how this has happened but you were always different Flame, a freak, odd, possessed, a demon, I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care. I need you to help us and if you don’t, well, you know what will happen. We need money. Give us some and we’ll go again. Your secret will be safe with us, I promise.”

I heard Damien make a noise, a sound of disbelief. I met Fabian’s eyes. I knew he would be furious. We had caused this. We had inadvertently put our very existence in jeopardy by fucking and feeding in an open area. He’d probably kill us for that but that didn’t change the immediate problem we had with my parents.

“Very well, if you would come with us, we can discuss this in a more comfortable setting.” Fabian shocked me by saying.  I stared at him surprised at how quickly he gave in, simply backed down. He was making no attempt at all to fight, and here was I thinking he was supposed to be one badass vampire.

“Badass; my ass.” I whispered under my breath, drawing Damien’s eyes to mine.

“I’m not sure that would be a good idea for us to come with you.” My father’s words drew my attention to him.

“I can assure you that you are quite safe.” Fabian said quietly. “We live in a very normal suburban residence, surrounded by humans. We wish to live as privately as possible, we have human friends. You do not have to worry about whether you can trust us or not Mr?” He gave them a questioning look.

“Phillip Jackson and my wife Laura.”

Fabian’s eyes widened. “You’re not Phillip L Jackson who was involved in that political scandal about a year or so ago?”

I gaped at Fabian. A vampire who read newspapers? Well of course he did. I’d seen him but I didn’t realise he was so well read. Suddenly I found myself looking at him through different eyes. He really did want to just live a life that was mostly human. The enormity of what Damien and I had done, leading to the exposure of our kind was just starting to sink in. Fabian seemed so calm but I bet underneath he was furious.

“So you’ve heard of us?” My father said. “Very well, we shall come with you but I’m just going to make a call to someone who will alert the authorities if we don’t show up in less than twenty four hours.”

I silently groaned. My father was such a ruthless bastard and a shrewd one too. He wouldn’t risk his life by coming with a bunch of vampires unless he was sure he had all his bases covered.

We waited while he placed the call and spoke to the person he had on the line. Whoever it was, it seemed like a quite heated conversation going by the anger I could see on my father’s face. Once he was off the phone again he and my mother climbed into the large 4WD and we headed for home. I found myself constantly looking at my parents. Why now? Why did they have to show up now and how the hell could this problem be fixed? They knew what we were. Why hadn’t Fabian just mind controlled them to make them forget?  It couldn’t be good for them to suddenly show up after all these years. I don’t know what had happened to make them lose everything. All I knew was the bubble of happiness that had surrounded me when Damien had told me he still loved me, was suddenly in jeopardy, and I worried it might be about to burst, destroying everything I now had. I just had to hope that there was a way for all this to work out, and that Fabian could fix it, preferably without being so pissed at Damien and I that he wanted us dead. Suddenly fearful of what was to come, I reached for Damien’s hand and for the rest of the drive; I held it tightly in mine.

Chapter Twenty Four

Damien

Damien knew that the sudden appearance of her parents had shaken Flame enormously. She was so quiet on the drive home and although her expression gave nothing away, he knew by the death grip she had on his hand that she was far from calm.

He continued to glare at the people who had cared so little for their child that they had abandoned her. He couldn’t believe the balls her father had to show up after all these years demanding money. He had so much he wanted to say to him, to both her parents, but it was so quiet in the car; no one spoke.

Damien suspected Flame wasn’t saying anything due to shock. It had to be a hell of a shock for her, to have them to turn up nearly eleven years after they’d run off and left her all alone. She’d done well but emotionally she had suffered and he blamed these people for him nearly losing her.

It was a relief when Fabian turned the car into the driveway of their home and everyone climbed out and headed inside. Damien watched Flame’s parents’ as they took in the neighbourhood they were in and the sheer impressive size of Fabian’s home. His lip curled up sardonically as he watched them. If they were looking at his sire as a potential meal ticket, they could get fucked.

Fabian and Sirene led the way down the long imposing corridor until they got to the living room that was unusual because it was almost circular. He indicated for their guests to sit and offered them refreshments which they both declined. They seemed overly keen to get on with negotiating a deal for the money they wanted, and not too concerned with anything else. That would probably be their downfall if Damien knew his sire. He could be calm, peaceful, quite fair and decent, especially now he had Sirene, but he had a dark side too and most knew not to bring it out in him. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on a person’s take on it, Flame’s parents wouldn’t know that. Right now, Fabian seemed the optimum of cool, calm and collected but that could and probably would change in a split second depending on how this meeting went.

As he studied them it angered Damien to see how little regard they had for their daughter. They really didn’t give a shit about her, they were only after money. The way they were eyeing off the home, it seemed interest in their own daughter was waning. If her father’s expression was any indication, he had just come to the realisation that Fabian might be the better meal ticket, a more profitable source of money.

“So perhaps you can tell us why you’ve turned up in your daughter’s life again after so many years absent?” Fabian was the first to break the silence. “I have heard the story of how she came home one day to find you’d up and left, totally abandoning her. Perhaps you can try and make not only myself but your daughter understand why that was justified in your opinion.”

Damien had to fight to hide his grin at his sire’s words. If Flame’s father thought he held the upper hand, then he’d never met anyone like Fabian. He sounded so calm, but he wouldn’t be. He would more than likely lull them into a false sense of security and then at the right moment, strike.

Flame

My father made some muffled noise, like a cough and his expression was filled with disbelief. “How on earth can you ask something like that? Look at her, have you seen what she is, what she can do? Now she’s a what, a vampire too? Or can’t she do those things with her thoughts any more now she’s a blood sucking creature?”

I felt pain lance through me at my father’s thoughtless, callous words. He still didn’t get it; he still thought I was bad, unworthy, whatever the hell he thought about me. The most painful thing was knowing that he didn’t care, that he felt no shame, remorse, no sense of guilt for what he and my mother had done. That was blatantly obvious by the way he was talking now. Fuck, he had absolutely no regard for my feelings or he would be trying to be less hurtful about it surely. If he and my mother were after money, my father wasn’t exactly going about it the right way. If he wanted to win me over or any of us for that matter, insulting not only myself but any of us for being vampire, wasn’t going to work.

“How the fuck can you talk about your own child that way you cold hearted bastard?” Damien leapt to his feet, anger radiating off him.

“Sit my son.” Fabian didn’t even look away from my father’s eyes, as he ordered Damien back and I reached out to take his hand and pull him down alongside of me again.

“You punished me for being born with something I could not control Father. God, you aren’t even worthy of that title. I didn’t ask to be born like this.” My voice broke slightly and I felt Damien squeeze my hand before I pulled myself together again. “One of you had to make me the way I was. There has to be some history of this sort of thing in our family, somewhere.”

“That’s possible.” My mother suddenly spoke up in a soft voice. “Look at Fa…” She broke off when my father shot her a warning look, and I was suddenly curious as to what they were hiding and what my mother had been about to say. Obviously he didn’t want her saying anything, going by the way he’d shot her down.

“I don’t know if there’s a history of this in the family and I don’t personally care.” My father ground out, obviously growing tired of this conversation now. “I used to hold a position of power, a position that put us in the spotlight a lot. Can you imagine what it could have done for my career to have a daughter who was…well…different? I managed to keep her hidden as long as I could, or what she is capable of anyway.” He snorted. “Just as well we left her too after seeing the career path she’s chosen. A pole dancer who shows her breasts to a room full of men? Oh yes, a father can be proud, can’t he?” He said sarcastically, his eyes filled with contempt when he looked over at me.

“Shut…the…fuck…up.” Damien ground out alongside of me and I could feel the tremors through his body. It wouldn’t take much for him to spring up and choke the life right out of my father, I could tell.

I patted his arm in an effort to calm him before turning back to my father. “I can’t tell you how warm and fuzzy you’re making me feel. It’s so fucking heart-warming to know just how much I’m loved.“ I poured as much sarcasm into my tone as possible, pushing the hurt down so he wouldn’t see. “Still, I have to ask, why come to me? Why the fuck would you think I’d help you?”

My father laughed softly. “Well, I didn’t know did I? I do now though. I’m sure you aren’t looking to become the next attraction at the local fair, any of you, but you know what happened, you read the paper.” He turned to Fabian.  “I’m man enough to admit my own greed got us where we are today, broke, nearly homeless. I may have been set back, reduced to a shadow of my former self but I’m no fool. An opportunity has presented itself and I intend to take good advantage of it. My needs are simple. Help me, and what you are will remain a secret.”

“How much do you want?” Fabian asked and my eyes shot to him in surprise. He wasn’t seriously thinking of giving my father what he wanted was he? I had money but not enough. The strip club paid well but not enough to finance my father’s return to whatever the fuck he was looking to return to.

“Not much, $50,000 should help us get back on our feet. I’m working on some ideas for our future. This.” He waved to himself and my mother. “This is not us. We had everything, just about everything money could buy.”

“You lost it all because you stole money Mr Jackson. You were embezzling money. Strangely companies frown upon that. You were lucky you only served a very short sentence due to an excellent lawyer. Still, I don’t know why you would think your daughter owes you anything, why she should help you. You turned your back on her; you abandoned her, and yet you come here expecting her to help you?” Fabian’s strange pale eyes were the coldest I’d ever seen them. “Do you not have any other family you can call upon for assistance? Or did you drive them all away too?”