To Kill An Angel (10 page)

“But just like before, I lost him.  He can just vanish.  It is incredible,” Annika exclaimed, her voice saturated with admiration.  When she saw that no one else shared her fascination, she cleared her throat again and continued.  “Luckily, after a few days of sniffing around, I saw your picture in the local paper in an article related to missing persons.  That is when I knew without a doubt that Sebastian had something to do with your disappearance. 

“I have traveled around America for nearly five years, seeing the sights and looking for signs of you.  I found nothing so I ended up going back to Texas to try to catch up with Sebastian again.  I had a feeling he would return to visit the woman and the boy eventually, so I hung around there until he visited them again a couple of months ago.  When he left, I followed him as far as Virginia before I lost him again.  That’s where I was when I saw the newspaper article about a rash of missing kids in South Carolina.  There were a few pictures.  Two of them were really blurry, but I still recognized you. I’d know your face anywhere.”

The smile that Annika aimed toward Bo made me distinctly uncomfortable.  It hinted at a history that made me feel queasy.  Bo seemed not to notice.  He was too wrapped up in her story.

When it became clear that Bo wasn’t going to respond, Annika’s smile faded and a ghost-of-a-frown appeared. It looked like a tiny dent between her tawny brows. 

Though it didn’t seem that he really saw me, Bo glanced toward me before he turned back to Annika and prompted, “And then?”

“Well, the rest is pretty much history.  I came down here and asked around until I found out where Sebastian lived and…well, here we are.”

Narrowing his eyes first on Annika and then on Cade, Bo asked sharply, “And how did he get to be a part in all this?”

“Uh, I saw him in town a couple of days later and he recognized me from the first time I visited his mother.  He’d heard that I was asking around about a man named Sebastian and mentioned that he was looking for him as well.  We sort of hit it off and decided we might make good travel companions.”

Something about her vague answer made me suspicious of what she
wasn’t
saying, but I thought it best to keep that to myself for the time being.

“This all sounds very…convenient, but none of it explains how you came to the conclusion that he’s my brother.”

Annika snorted.  “Look at him!  You two could be twins.”

Both Bo and I turned to Cade.  His eyes shifted lazily between us, not the least bit ruffled by our examination.

Annika was right, though.  Bo and Cade were amazingly similar, right down to the intensity that shrouded them like a thick cloak.  Bo began to scowl as he inspected Cade.

I was wondering about their physical characteristics just as Annika voiced a thought that explained away the doubts I was having.

“Your mothers must have looked a lot alike, because other than your swagger and your smile, neither of you look like Sebastian.”

“Swagger?  I don’t have a swagger,” Bo snapped defensively.

Annika smiled.  “Then that is another thing that has changed because you used to dominate any room you walked into.  You certainly got
my
attention.”

Although Bo ignored her flagrant flirtation, I found that I could not and it was not doing good things for my temperament.  I was becoming more and more irritated by her references to their past.  It was obvious that they’d shared a relationship that was more than simple friendship and even though Bo didn’t remember it, I felt increasingly threatened by it.

I reminded myself that Bo was a different person now, that he was mine and that we were divinely destined for one another.  No old flame could change that.  But tiny termites of doubt and insecurity began to eat away at the foundation of my confidence, eroding the faith I had in our union.

Bo’s voice brought me back to the conversation at hand.

“That still doesn’t explain how you know he’s my brother.”

“He told me that you were his brother.”

All eyes turned back to Cade. 

“And how do
you
know you’re my brother?”

He shrugged offhandedly before he spoke.

“My mother used to talk a lot about my father, Sebastian.  He was basically absent for almost my entire life.  He would drop in every few years and stay for a day or two and then leave.”  Cade’s upper lip curled in bitterness.  “Of course she didn’t mind.  He made sure of that.  Even though she had no memory of it, I knew what he was doing to her.  I saw him do it a couple of times.  He would feed her his blood and tell her all sorts of things, things that would erase all that had happened, all that they’d talked about.  But
I
heard him. 
I
knew.”

“What did he say?  Exactly,” Bo said evenly.

“One night I heard them talking in her bedroom.  She was asking questions about his life and he was telling her about a son he had with another woman, a boy that he called Boaz, and how that boy was trying to kill him.  Of course, my mother was devastated.  But me?  I only wished that I could be the one to kill him. 

“I hated him for what he’d done to her.  It’s like he drained more and more of her life away with each visit.  She got worse over time, like she was slowly going insane, and I knew it had something to do with what he was doing to her.  The last time he came, I heard him tell her that he had hoped that their child…me…would give him the blood that he needed, but that I hadn’t.  He said he’d had to inject an unborn child.  Said that he’d found one even better, one that might be linked to the Chosen One.  He said that he had no further need of us.”  Cade’s nostrils flared as he tried to contain his hatred of Sebastian.  “She was dead the next morning.  That’s when I found Annika.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

A hush fell over the room, as though we all mourned the death of Cade’s mother.  Annika was the first to break the silence.

“So, now you know our story.  Your turn.  What happened?”

After a long pause, Bo sighed deeply and dropped down onto the couch beside me.  Tiredly, he rubbed a hand across his face.  Before I could stop myself, I reached out and pushed a stray piece of sable hair away from his cheek.  He leaned back against the cushions and, without glancing in my direction, took my hand and laid it on his thigh, covering it with his own.

“Honestly, I have no idea.”

A smile flickered across Annika’s face before she realized that he was serious.

“What do you mean you have no idea?”

“Exactly that.  I have no memory of my life before three years ago.”

“What?” she asked in disbelief.

“It’s true.”

Annika frowned.  “Then how did you remember me?”

A pregnant silence stretched across the room as Bo struggled to find an answer.  I scanned the faces, taking in Cade’s eyes, narrowed in suspicion, and Annika’s eyes as they sparked with the light of hope.  When Bo glanced at me, I saw that his were filled with regret.  My only question was:  regret for what?

When Bo answered, his voice was low, uncertain.  “I have no idea.”

A satisfied grin twitched at the corners of Annika’s pouty mouth before she brought it under control, carefully schooling her features into a politely blank mask. 

It was when her gaze darted to me that I knew my fears were very real.  Our eyes met for only a fraction of a second, but that’s all it took for me to see that Annika had come to find Bo for one reason and one reason alone—to get him back.  She was in love with him.

“Well, what do you remember?” she prompted.

“Just my life as it has been since a little over three years ago.  Other than that, occasionally I have dreams that feel so real they’re
like
memories, but I have no real memories.”

“And yet you recognized me,” she added meaningfully.

“I might remember a lot more if I could see the places I’ve been, people I’ve known, things I’ve seen.  Where did you say you’re from?”

“Lindersberg, Sweden.”

That’s when I realized the origin of the lilt in her voice.   She was Swedish. 

“Sweden.  Sweden,” Bo said, nodding slowly and repeating the word as if testing the feel of it on his tongue.  “Tell me about it.”

“About what?”

“Where I’m from.”

It was easy to see that Annika relished having all eyes on her, but more than that, she basked in Bo’s undivided attention.  She reveled in the opportunity to paint the picture of their life together—their life before me.

Annika spoke in great detail about Lindersberg, several times eliciting a response from Bo.  He was able to recall the orphanage where they met, though not in as much detail as she. 

“Yes, you walked in like a confident rogue and I thought I must have died and gone to heaven.  Even after you told me of your thirst, I knew that there was no other life for me.  I was so glad when you agreed to turn me.”

Shocked, Bo sat forward in his seat just as the bottom dropped out of my world. 

“Turned you?  What?”

Annika smiled widely.

“The day you agreed to make me a vampire was the greatest day of my life.  I’m just sorry you don’t remember it.  It was...”

Annika trailed off, casting her eyes toward the floor and glancing up at Bo from beneath her lashes.  She was so coy I wanted to drop kick her.

"It was what?” Bo asked in that completely oblivious, masculine way.

“It was incredible,” she said quietly, her voice a husky whisper.

“Oh,” Bo murmured, almost dazed.  He slid his fathomless eyes to me, the misery on his face reflected in their endless depths.  “What kind of a person was I?”

“It doesn’t matter.  You’re not that person anymore.  You don’t know how much of an influence Sebastian had on you back then.”

Although Bo looked marginally encouraged by my words, the worry carved into his features was plain to see, much like drawings of great burden etched into ancient stone.

“Do you remember Scabs?” Annika asked.  She seemed as anxious as everyone else to move past the sudden tension.

Bo’s head jerked up and a smile drifted slowly into place.  It was like a fog lifting gently from the moors.

“Ohmigod, yeah!  Scabs.  Whatever happened to him?”

“It turns out that he was an English duke.  He was kidnapped as a child.  His parents finally found him years later.  They identified him by a birthmark on his right cheek.”

“With all those scabs and acne scars, how could they even see a birthmark?”

“Not that right cheek,” Annika replied.

“Ah,” Bo breathed, chuckling.  “So he was royalty?  Scabs?”

“Yes.  He ended up marrying the beautiful daughter of some other royal family.”

“Scabs?” Bo repeated disbelievingly.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

Bo just shook his head, mystified.  “Tell me what happened to everyone else?”

And so Annika launched into an animated history of all the orphaned and vagrant friends they’d once shared.  As they laughed and reminisced, quite a few facts returned to Bo.  All it took was Annika reminding him of certain details. 

Bo tried to include me by explaining little tidbits that he could remember about each person they discussed, but his efforts were for naught.  Cade and I were outsiders to their reunion and I had a feeling that that was exactly how Annika wanted it.