Building From Ashes (2 page)

December 995 AD

“Please.” He grasped her cold hand. “Don’t.”

She only squeezed his fingers and turned back to the fire.

“It is a sin,” Carwyn said quietly. “A grave one. To give in to despair—”

“You are my son,” Maelona said with a soft smile, “not my priest.”

“Mother.” Carwyn, son of Bryn, knelt before her, the wind whipping outside the door of the old cottage that fronted the cozy home. Maelona had dug her shelter into the mountain centuries before, forming and twisting the earth to her will as all of her immortal kind did. The elemental energy had sustained her life and protected her for over three hundred years. And the same mountain had sheltered her only child when he had woken twenty-seven years before, transformed by Maelona’s immortal blood as the young priest lay on the edge of death.

She had saved him. Loved him as a son. Trained him as a vampire to survive in the harsh world he had entered. Now, the powerful immortal whose energy commanded the very earth beneath him sat hunched in front of the fire, pleading with his sire to live.

“Please, I beg you, do not leave me. Your sister’s loss—”

“You know nothing of my loss.” Her voice was sharp, but softened when he raised his red-rimmed eyes to meet her gaze. “You are so young. You know only the faint mortal echo of it. Perhaps, one day, you will understand. For three hundred years she was my companion. The only immortal who knew me from my human life. The only one who understood. I told her not to leave. For her to go to the island and be killed by those Northern heathens…” Maelona’s eyes tightened in grief. “She was surrounded by water when she died, Carwyn. Her ashes drift alone in the ocean.”

Carwyn rose from his knees and sat next to her in front of the crackling fire. “Your sister’s death does not have to mean your own.”

She closed her eyes and gave him a soft smile. “I am tired of this life. You never abandoned your faith, Carwyn. Do you not believe that my soul will fly to meet hers? Don’t you tell me that God does not abandon those touched by our peculiar curse?”

“To willingly meet the day is not a natural death.”

She squeezed his hand. “There is nothing natural about this life.”

“Perhaps not. But there is much to look forward to.” His voice faltered, betraying his own fear. “Many reasons to hope.”

“There are for you.” She smiled and he remembered her joy from his early years with her. “Do not make my mistake, Carwyn. Do not fear the attachments of family and kin.” She reached up and touched his face. “Making you my son has been my greatest joy. I should have had many more children to share my life. Do not make my mistake.”

“Mother—”

“You have more love to give than any vampire I have ever known. You should surround yourself with family,” she said softly. “You had a wife once. Children. Find a new family in this life as you did in your human one.”

He frowned and looked away. “My wife is dead. My children are grown. I am only a faint memory to them. I want no other family.”

“No.” Maelona grasped his hands in her own. She was slender but tall. Unusually so for a woman of her age, and Carwyn had often wondered whether the Northern blood of the raiders who had killed her sister had not touched her own family as well. His sire was a strong woman but had been melancholy for too long. “Do not abandon love. Love is the foundation of strength. What we build on and hold to. Find a new family to share your love. Find them from those who need healing. The weak who need help. Find a mate and surround yourself with joy. This life is too lonely to travel alone.”

He shook his head. “I desire no mate. Perhaps—”

“Then return to the church.” He shook his head, but Maelona continued. “Surely there are those who would understand. You have so much to give.”

“The church I knew has changed. Perhaps… I will consider it.” He knew there were other priests who knew about his kind. He knew he could be of use, but Maelona’s despair haunted his thoughts. “If you would only stay—”

“I’m leaving tomorrow evening.” A dreamy look fell over her face. “I will walk toward the West, I think.”

Cold fear gripped his gut and his blood surged hot. “Do not let your ashes fly to the sea. At least stay in the mountains. I beg you.”

A trace of her old humor returned. “I do not think I will get as far as the water. The sun will take me before then.”

Carwyn choked back a cry and embraced her. “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?” He knew, even as he asked, there was not. For seven years, she had mourned her sister’s death. She was weary of the constant struggle against bloodlust. Tired of hiding from the sun. Burdened by the loneliness of centuries. He knew Maelona would meet her end gladly.

“I have had over three hundred years of life, Carwyn. Three hundred years. Who could ask for more?”

I can
.

Even as his heart broke at the thought of her death, Carwyn recognized the burning fire of survival had not lessened in him. Lost in the storm, he had dragged himself toward the smoke of Maelona’s fire twenty-seven years before, broken, freezing, and weak from days of wandering in the mountains. He had only one thought that urged him on.

He had wanted to live.

Carwyn had struggled for years over his desire. To live. To thrive. To drink up earthly life in all its rich majesty and splendor.

“Is it my own failing,” he asked, “that I do not want to join you?”

Maelona looked horrified. “No! This end is not for you.”

He blinked back tears and looked into her eyes. “Is it my own fear? Do I not have faith in God’s love? I would see Efa again. My two children taken to heaven as babes. Is it a failing that I am greedy for life?”

She stroked a hand through the shaggy auburn hair that covered his head before she rose to walk to her day chamber. She turned back at the dark hall. “You have many years to live. You possess a rare kind of joy, Carwyn. Treasure it and know that there are many paths to take. Someday, long in the future, we will meet again.”

Carwyn stared at her, knowing that by the time he rose the next night, she would be gone. It would be the last time he saw her in this world. He straightened his shoulders and stood, his presence filling the small room. Giving her, in her last moments, the confidence of his strength.

“I love you,
Mam
.”

Maelona closed her eyes, and a peaceful smile spread over her face. “I love you, too.”

County Wicklow, Ireland

December 1996

She rarely slept lying down. There was a shivering kind of weakness that enveloped her bones at the idea of being prone. She was indulged in her aunt’s home, surrounded by strange beings who never grew older; Brigid had come to understand the pleasant-faced monsters were both frightening and kind. Her Aunt Sinead, after whisking her away from her childhood home, never spoke of her mother or stepfather again.

Brigid had only faint memories of her aunt from her younger years. A visit for tea. A stuffed rabbit that had been put on a shelf out of her reach. Promises of visits in the country that Brigid knew her stepfather would never allow. After Brigid was taken from Dublin, no one mentioned her past life again. And Brigid did not ask. It was as if she had been reborn in the mountains the morning she woke curled into her aunt’s side.

But still, she could not rest peacefully.

So, the small girl with the dark hair and the haunted eyes took refuge in the library where the doctor worked. She curled into a corner by the fire, and the kind monster, whom she came to know as her protector, smiled at her and turned back to his books. He never approached her when she drifted in the warm room; he brushed away those who tried to take her to the bed she would not sleep in.

For the first year, she lived at Ioan and Deirdre’s home in the mountains. Brigid slept in a corner of the library couch, leaning upright in the small alcove, ready to wake at the slightest sense of alarm.

“What do you like to read?”

She looked up, blinking. The doctor was kneeling in front of her by the fire, and she wondered how he had managed to approach her without her senses alerting her to his presence.

“What am I allowed to read?”

Ioan, son of Carwyn, sat back on his heels and frowned a little. “Well, that’s an excellent question. I suppose I have things in the library that are not suitable for a child, so—”

“Like what?” She sat up straighter, not realizing she had interrupted one of the most powerful earth vampires in the Western world.

Ioan’s eyes twinkled with delight. “Oh, I have… dangerous books here.”

“What kind of dangerous books?” Brigid bit her lip and leaned forward.

“Well, there are tales of gods and rebellions. Nothing suitable for a little girl, I don’t suppose. There are some fairy tales—”

“I don’t like princess stories.”

He shrugged. “I’m not a fan of them, either. But I’m not talking about princesses.”

She scooted forward. “Well, I want to read them.”

Ioan sighed. “I don’t know. They’re quite dangerous.”

Brigid straightened her back and looked at him. “I’m very brave, you know. I never cry.”

Ioan looked down into the face of the wounded child who never knew she was a child. She only understood years later the shadow that fell over his eyes.

“I know, Brigid. I know you’re very brave.”

So Brigid Connor was introduced to myths and legends, dark fairytales and stories of fantasy. While her aunt might have clucked at the Grimm, Carroll, and MacDonald he gave her, the Poe and Tolkien she devoured, Ioan brushed them away. Ever her protector, the doctor understood the slim girl needed the dark and twisted stories that made her feel not quite as alone when she read them. And it was into these stories that Brigid would fall, over and over again, as she grew into a young woman in the house dug into the mountains of Wicklow.

And yet, despite the loving acceptance she found in her protector’s library, despite the warm embrace of her aunt and the gentle guidance of the immortal family she grew to love, Brigid came to understand the shadow in Ioan’s eyes that never seemed to leave. Brigid understood, because it mirrored her own.

Wicklow, Ireland

October 1999

Ioan stared at the doorway. “The child is so troubled, Carwyn. I don’t know what to do about it.”

They spoke in Welsh, seeking what anonymity they could in the crowded house while Ioan’s wife, Deirdre, Sinead, and the girl had a shouting match down the hall.

Carwyn shrugged. “Part of your problem is calling her a child. She isn’t one. She hasn’t been in a long time.”

“She is a child. Just a wounded one.”

“Surely you’ve had experience with victims of abuse? You’ve practiced medicine for over three hundred years, Ioan.”

Carwyn watched his son in the library of his home. Ioan was troubled and, for the first time in many years, Carwyn was at a loss to help him. With eleven immortal children of his own, he knew the pain of seeing a family member struggle. The girl, as a member of Ioan’s household, had fallen under vampire aegis as soon as she had entered. In the immortal world, that meant Ioan was responsible for her, both for her actions and her safety. But Carwyn knew the girl was also precious to his oldest son, and there was no greater challenge than to see a loved one struggle with no way to help.

Just then, he heard her, the girl’s voice dripping with adolescent condescension. Ioan winced and Carwyn tried not to laugh. “Behavior problems?”

“Well, obviously. But she’s anxious. She hardly sleeps. Doesn’t like to be touched by anyone.”

A low, burning rage filled his chest. Carwyn would never forget seeing the monster hovering over the girl in her bedroom. His fingers dug into the oak chair at the memories even years later. He could feel the energy of the mountain humming around him. The library sat at the back of the farmhouse, dug into the side of the hill and sheltered completely from the dangerous sun.

“What ever happened to the mother?”

“You’re generous to use that title, considering.”

When Sinead had learned of the abuse from the girl’s mother, drunk and desperate, Ioan and his mate, Deirdre, had taken immediate action. Carwyn had only happened to be visiting at the time from his home in Wales. They had taken the girl and tried to take the mother.

“Sinead tried to convince her, but she wouldn’t leave. I used amnis to alter her memories. She’s never come looking for the girl.”

Carwyn shook his head, disgusted with those who foolishly threw away the treasure of kin. The shouting between the women grew as the argument moved through the farmhouse. Apparently, the choice of paint in the girl’s bedroom was at issue.

Ioan sighed. “The problem is not in her body. There is no sickness I can cure. Her wounds are emotional, not physical.” He paused. “What would the church say?”

“Not enough,” Carwyn murmured bitterly, well aware of the failings of his hierarchy in dealing with its own demons.

“Would you talk with her? Father Jacob is a fine man, but his wisdom is limited.”

“I don’t think she needs a priest, Ioan. To tell the truth, I’d not be able to minister to her anyway.”

“Why not?”

A crashing came from overhead, along with an impressive string of insults about the color yellow. Carwyn stifled a smile. “I killed her stepfather in front of her, Ioan. Hardly the one to help her when I was partly the cause of her trauma. Even now when I visit, I see the guarded way she looks at me. I don’t blame the girl, but it’s not my place to be her confessor.”

“I think you mistake her feelings. Brigid knows that we protected her. She has no regret for Richard Kelly’s death. She’s—”

Ioan broke off when Deirdre’s voice rose from the kitchen. Carwyn snorted. It sounded like Deirdre may have met her match in the young human.