Until the Sun Falls from the Sky (43 page)

“How long has she been like this?” I heard him ask tersely.

“Since you talked with her on the phone but trust me, this is better. Before that, I swear, Lucien, it looked and sounded like she was dying,” Stephanie replied.

“
Christ!
” Lucien’s word was a subdued explosion. His arms got tight, painfully so. It hurt and at the same time it felt beautiful.

“Has this happened before?” Stephanie asked.

“She has bad dreams,” Lucien answered, his hand beginning to stroke my back.

“Bad dreams? Luce, that wasn’t a bad dream. That was completely
fucked up
. I’m seven hundred and fifty years old and I’ve seen some serious shit in my life but that was
fucked up!
”

Stephanie was in a state.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” Lucien demanded.

Stephanie didn’t hesitate.

“I heard her scream. It was intense. I came running just in time to catch her leaping out of bed. She was choking, crying. I thought she was just upset about what happened earlier,” Stephanie explained. “Then I realized it was something more. The crying stopped, the choking continued. She fought me like no mortal has fought me before. I almost couldn’t hold her. It was like she was being strangled by something invisible. She was fighting it and she was losing. Then you called and talked to her, the strangling stopped but she went limp and unresponsive. Honest to God, for a minute, I thought she was dead but I heard her heart beating and her breathing. I put her in bed and she just curled up, eyes open and staring at nothing. I think it’s safe to say she
freaked me out!
”

Lucien said nothing but he stopped stroking my back, his hand went under my hair and curled warmly around my neck.

“She’s still messed up. We need to call a doctor,” Stephanie announced.

“I’m fine,” I whispered and wished I didn’t.

My voice scared me. It scared me because it sounded like I’d just survived being
strangled
.

At the sound of my voice, Lucien’s body went solid.

“See!” Stephanie cried.

“Leah, sweetheart, can you look at me?” Lucien’s tone was gentle, his hand moving from my neck to grip my hair and carefully pull my head back.

I nodded, the effort at that simple movement felt like running a race but my eyes caught his.

“Do you remember anything?” he asked and I nodded again.

“All of it.” My voice still sounded painfully abrasive because it
was
painful
and
abrasive.

Lucien flinched when I spoke.

“Ow,” I whispered.

His face went hard before he commanded, “No more talking.”

I nodded again. I was happy with that. Way happy.

He let go of my hair but his fingers cupped the back of my head and pressed my face to his throat.

“We need to call a doctor,” Stephanie repeated.

“She’s fine now,” Lucien replied.

“I… do… not…
think
… so. She sounds like she’s been strangled!”

“Teffie, I’m here. She’s fine.”

The air in the room got thick. I tensed before Stephanie spoke angrily.

“I know pretty much everyone thinks you’re all that, including me most of the time. But as far as I know, you don’t have magical healing powers.”

“Teffie, leave us. Get some sleep,” Lucien ordered.

“You heard her voice!” Stephanie yelled and my body twitched at her anger.

I felt Lucien’s frame turn to stone.

His voice was ominous when he demanded, “Get the fuck out of here,
now
. You’re upsetting Leah.”

“I –”

“
Now!
” he barked and I jumped.

She must have left because the next second I was on the bed alone, bereft of Lucien. The second after that I felt his warm, naked body the length of mine, his arms tight around me, his heavy legs tangled with mine.

I felt the numbness go, my strength and wits returning but the exhaustion stayed heavy upon me.

I melted into his heat and he gathered me closer.

Sleep was coming and I hoped it was the good kind because I needed it. I was battling real and invisible demons and I’d need all the rest I could get to endure.

I was nearly to dreamland when I heard his soft voice make a vow.

“That won’t ever fucking happen again, Leah. You have my promise.”

Tears slid up my throat but silently I swallowed them down and burrowed closer.

He couldn’t promise that. Even though I had no freaking clue what happened, there was one thing I knew through an intuition the source of which escaped me. Coming straight from the core of me, I knew the only way he could make good that promise was never to leave me.

Never.

And that was not going to happen.

I had more than one menace (the gentle one, Lucien) and more than two menaces (the frightening one, personified by Marcello but also Rudolf and Cristiano), now I had three (my own mind, which freaked me out most of all).

I was dead woman walking one way or another.

And I was terrified out of my skull.

* * * * *

“I don’t want Leah to overhear.” Lucien’s voice was low but angry. I shifted out of sleep and my eyes opened, seeing nothing but Lucien’s vacant pillow.

“I’m thinking Leah should be in on this conversation,” Stephanie snapped back.

“Teffie.” Another voice, male, vaguely familiar. Cosmo.

“I don’t understand.” That was Edwina.

“Can we move to the kitchen?” Lucien asked a question which wasn’t a question as much as a politely formed demand.

Silence.

“I just went in there. She’s sleeping. She sleeps very soundly,” Edwina offered in a voice that said she was playing peacemaker.

I guessed Stephanie was digging in and Edwina was hoping she wouldn’t have to repair plaster in the upstairs hallway.

Lucien must have thought that slamming Stephanie into the upstairs wall would likely wake me anyway and probably upset me, so he spoke.

And what he said freaked me out.

“She has a dream. It’s recurring and it’s connected to me. I know this because I hear her words in my head while she’s dreaming.” Lucien’s voice was low, curt and impatient. “I spoke to her mother and these intense dreams have been happening her whole life.”

I was totally freaked about me talking to Lucien’s head when I was dreaming, about what I might have said and about the dream being about him
at all
considering what that dream did to me, both before my near death experience and during it.

But what he said after that took precedence.

He spoke to my mother?

Now that made me angry.

For the last three weeks I’d been calling all my family, even Aunt Kate. But not Myrna as I had enough of channeling Myrna in daily life, I didn’t want to have to actually speak to her.

Desperate for advice, guidance and the lessons Lucien stopped giving me until last night; I was willing to talk to anyone. I’d even called Aunt Fiona twice.

Problem was, when they answered the phone, and I was suspecting they were avoiding that chore when they saw my name come up on their displays, they were busy.

Busy, busy, busy.

Even Lana, who could talk to a corpse until it reanimated, sat up and told her to shut the hell up.

This hurt.

I mean, I’d never moved away from home and I missed them a lot.

But it seemed like they were getting on with life without me just fine.

When Lana had been selected, she’d been lucky enough to move not that far away, a three hour drive. She was home all the time. My move was a two hour
plane ride
.

I thought they’d feel my absence but the whirlwind of “I have a lunch date…”, “We’re about to catch a movie…”, “I have a facial in twenty minutes…”, “If I don’t get to that sale, that pair of shoes is going to be gone and I’ll just
die
if I don’t own them…” (that was Aunt Nadia, she liked shoes nearly as much as me) was all I heard.

Not a single, “So, Leah, how are you getting on with the Mighty Vampire Lucien who you so desperately did not want to be separated from your adored family and pack of friends to go and service? Are you okay? Do you need, per chance, to talk to a beloved, trusted family member?”

Silly, mean, awful Buchanan bitches.

Now I find my mother,
my mother
, was chatting with
Lucien
.

I was going to disown her. As soon as she talked to me long enough for me to share that morsel that was.

Stephanie’s amazed words brought me back to my chore of just woken up eavesdropping.

“Like last night?”

“No, I talked to Lydia this morning and she said that never happened to Leah,” Cosmo put in. “She said often her dreams would be frightening and she’d be nearly inconsolable afterwards but she only cried or screamed, sometimes fought. Nothing like what you described last night.”

So, Mom was also not too busy to have a natter with Cosmo either.

Totally disowned.

“She’s very concerned,” Cosmo continued.

Yeah right,
I seethed.

“She should be concerned,” Stephanie clipped. “It was fucking scary.”

“I’m concerned,” Edwina said quietly and I knew she meant it.

I liked Edwina and at that moment I liked her even more. Maybe I’d ask her to be my new Mom.

“She has abilities,” Lucien shared and you could tell he didn’t much like it.

My body tensed and my ears perked up.

“Abilities?” Cosmo prompted.

I imagined Lucien nodding before he spoke. “She can fight mesmerization. Not long, seconds, but longer than anyone else. She can talk back when you’re communicating with her, hold entire conversations, like you.” I didn’t know who he meant but I guessed it was either Stephanie or Cosmo. “She can also get into my head, speak to me without me calling to her. She can do it on her own, again, like you.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not everyone could do that?

Lucien continued, “Her senses are advanced, particularly her sense of danger. Either that or she has the reciprocal ability to mark
me
, making me attune to her in a way that I don’t feel it and she doesn’t know she’s doing it. Either way, when there’s danger or a situation is uncertain, she senses it.”

“Fucking hell,” Cosmo muttered.

“You’re joking,” Stephanie whispered.

“I knew she was special,” Edwina stated.

Edwina was
so… totally… my new Mom
.

“I think it’s marking,” Lucien decreed and my heart started tripping. “I’ve never been marked. I do the marking but twice I’ve felt her trying to attune herself to me, sense my thoughts, my mood. It took effort to hold her back.”

Oh my God.

That whole pulsating thing. I remembered wanting to know his mood. I thought he was trying to probe mine but I was probing his!

And he was blocking me out which must have been why I was pulsating.

“How bizarre,” Stephanie mumbled.

She could say that again!

“I have a theory,” Lucien declared and I stopped breathing like this would help me hear better. “Her bloodline has been absorbing vampire essence for a long time. Each respective generation taking in more than any other concubine line. I think it’s affected her line and mutated, giving her powers other mortals don’t have.”

I started breathing again.

Wow.

I was maybe mutated. Vampire powers spliced in my genes.

That was
huge!
And cool!

I know you’re awake, my pet.

My body jerked.

Holy heck!

Lucien was so, freaking
annoying
. I couldn’t even eavesdrop without him cottoning on.

“I wouldn’t share that with The Council,” Cosmo warned, tearing me away from my thoughts.

“I’ve no intention to,” Lucien replied, his voice closer, coming my way and I assessed my options.

I didn’t know if he was angry but eavesdropping was never nice. Of course, in my defense, they
were
standing outside the door and the door
was
open.

I considered throwing myself out the window but I didn’t think my mutant vampire abilities translated to not breaking my leg upon such a feat. And I hadn’t been servicing Lucien long enough to get my super-healing vampire mojo going yet so I figured I should just face the consequences.

“Lucien, we’re not done talking,” Stephanie called.

“Leah’s awake,” Lucien informed her, sounding like he was right at the door.

Silence then, “Shit, she is. I wasn’t paying attention.”

Boy, vampires hearing heartbeats and breathing really sucked sometimes.