Foreshadowed (10 page)

CHAPTER 20

            My jaw dropped and with it, my stomach. Was this some kind of sick joke?

            Demetrie cleared his throat and then continued on in his thickly accented voice. “I’ve had my doubts about her dying in a car accident since I was first told about it. Right before her supposed death, I’d been pressuring her to move to Romania so that I might be able to have a relationship with you, but she was adamantly against it. She told me she felt like it was introducing you into the vampire society, and she wanted you as far away from it as possible. I’ve had my suspicions for awhile now that she may have faked her death in order to prevent me from forcing her to move here with you. And it seems that I might have been right.”

            I glanced up to see Alex standing in front of me. He must have felt my distress from across the building. He was watching me closely, and I know, reading every bit of what I was hearing straight from my mind.

            I’d had a feeling that this phone call from Demetrie was going to be bad news. Why did I have to be right?

            “Brooke. I know this comes as a shock. And I haven’t seen her for myself yet, but the investigator I’ve had looking for your mother is certain that it’s her. I just wanted you to be aware of the possibility.”

            I’d heard all I wanted to hear. I clicked the phone off without saying goodbye. As if it wasn’t bad enough that my father had ditched me, now he was telling me that he’d basically threatened my mother until she felt the only way to keep me out of his lifestyle, was to fake her own death. With her gone, he’d had no choice but to leave me with my aunt and uncle. Bringing a warm blooded child to live in the Regency palace full of vampires hadn‘t been a possibility.

            One minute I was staring at my phone, brewing over the latest shocking revelation, and the next I was inundated with the all too familiar aura that preceded my now dreaded visions. Sure, I'd had some visions that had foretold good things happening, such as Ethan and Anna getting together; but the fear of seeing something bad, like the one of Anna covered in blood, was enough to make me wish I'd not been "gifted" with such a power. This time, though, the images were just one big blur and I wasn’t able to make out even one. The feelings and emotions that came with them were all over place, so I wasn't able to grasp whether the visions were of good things or bad. It left me feeling frustrated and wanting to go back and slow them down enough to tell what they were. And when the veil of the visions was lifted, I was staring at the ceiling of the bar with a sea of worried faces staring down at me. Within seconds Alex had me in his arms and outside of the bar and the masses of people inside. He stopped just outside of the large wooden doors, looking down at me with concern. "Visions?" he asked.

            I nodded. I was feeling really off kilter. Something that I wouldn't have thought twice about as a human. But since my change, I'd felt perfect, with none of the everyday maladies humans experienced. "Yeah, I guess. I couldn't really make out what any of them were."

            "I figured. I just tried to rake your mind for what you saw and came back with nothing."

            I managed a small smile, knowing he was trying to tease away the tension and worry. It just wasn't working. I felt awful. I drew my eyebrows together, looking at Alex. "Why do I feel bad? I thought vampires weren’t supposed to get sick."

            And that's when I started to really worry, because the look on Alex's face could only be described as terrified. "We don't. What do you mean when you say you feel bad?"

            He was studying my face intently with his features a mask of concern.

            I swallowed. This was making me nervous that something was really wrong with me. I'd been hoping for him to say he‘d heard of it happening before. "Um, well, I can't really explain it. I just feel...wrong. Flu like, I guess, would be the only way I could describe it. But even that doesn't really explain how I feel."

            He shook his head in vexation and had me in the car and driving down the road in two seconds flat. "We're going home. We need to figure out what's going on with you."

            I was resting my head on the back of the passenger's seat and could only nod slightly. Ever since I'd been smacked with that last vision, it was like I'd been hit by a train. I felt weak and exhausted. Ugh. I'd forgotten so quickly how much it could suck to be human and deal with all the ailments that came with it. I'd grown accustomed to feeling perfectly well every single day. Bummer.

            I could tell out of the corner of my eye that Alex was internally freaking out. If I hadn't felt so weak, I probably would have taken a peak inside his head to see what he thought might be wrong with me. As it stood, I barely wanted to see what was in my own head, it was pounding so hard.

            Less than ten minutes from the time we'd left The Crimson Tide, I was tucked into our bed with Alex hovering nearby. This was a guy who liked to be in control, and since we were in uncharted territory, that was pretty much impossibility.

            I laid in bed waiting for whatever it was that was causing me to feel so awful to go away. Man, what I wouldn't give to sleep it off. Perhaps I'd found a downfall to the not needing sleep thing. But then again, having to sleep off illness was not a problem a vampire normally dealt with. At least I thought it wasn’t.

            Alex ran a hand through his hair. "That's it. I can't sit here and not do anything. I'm going to go call around and see if I can find out what might be going on. This just isn't something I've ever had to deal with." He leaned over me, smoothing my hair off of my forehead and gazing down into my eyes. I saw the worry deep in his blue ones. "Do you need anything before I go downstairs?"

            I shook my head, closing my eyes to shut the light out. I listened as his footsteps faded away. My sensitive ears picked up on Ethan and Anna coming in through the front door downstairs. Probably checking up on me.

            I was trying to clear my mind in an attempt to abate the ferocious headache I had, when a flash of light behind my closed eyelids had my stomach tying in knots. By now, I recognized the start of a vision well. I put all of my effort into not fighting it-- hoping that this time I could at least make out the images.

            And that's all it took. It was like watching someone flip through television channels. The images were all laid out before me-- crystal clear. Almost immediately the scent of baby powder filled my nose and then I saw something that made me gasp. Two identical toddler girls dressed in pink with blonde curls. Well... they were almost identical. One little girl had big hypnotic, blue eyes that left little doubt to her paternity. The other little girl's eyes were the same myriad of colors mine were. But what really caused me to suck in my breath were the shiny, matching vampire teeth that gleamed from their cute little smiles. They were ours-- mine and Alex's. I felt it in my soul. That vision was quickly replaced with another one of the same little girls. I watched as the blue eyed girl, a little older now, stooped down to picked up a rubber toy ball off of a grassy lawn. She tossed it in the air and then fixed it with a pointed stare...poof... it burst into a little ball of flames and disintegrated. She smiled and skipped along, seeming not to give it a second thought.

            And then the next vision flipped to Demetrie kneeled down, intently talking to one of the little girls and off in the distance I could barely make out the figure of a woman. I could sense neither Demetrie nor the little girl were aware of her presence. I barely had time to ponder this before the following vision. It was Ethan and Brad, and the tension between them could have been cut with a knife. And then I saw it. A titanium knife tucked in the back of Brad's waistband. I could sense his intentions-- and he intended on using it... on Ethan. I'm pretty sure the next image strangled a scream from me. This time it was of Lucien. And I was seeing it from my point of view. He was so close I could feel his breath on my face. And I could taste my fear.

            The next thing I knew, I was staring at the ceiling of our bedroom, thanking my lucky stars to be free from the images I was now terrified would become a reality.

            I sat up in bed, my hair falling around my shoulders in thick waves. And then it hit me why I was feeling like crap all of the sudden. I just had to look to where my visions were leading me. It was apparent that children were in store for Alex and I. They'd been foreshadowed in my visions a couple of times. My mind rebelled at confronting the more concerning aspects that I'd seen. Ones of vampire teeth on toddler girls and objects bursting into flames with a single look. And I'd sensed a power from within them that rivaled that of the strongest vampires I knew of. I shook the images free from my head. I looked down at my stomach, which didn't look any different, but now I knew what was lying beneath it's flat appearance.

            I started to freak out a little. Yeah, I wanted children...in theory. But now that the reality was presenting itself; I was terrified.

            Evidently sensing my terror from where he was downstairs, Alex was standing in front of me before I even knew he was on his way. He fixed me with a look that said, basically, spit-it-out. Now. "What is it," he demanded.

            I'm sure I looked like a deer in headlights when he came into the room. Having just come to such a life changing realization, I was still sitting on the bed frozen and wide eyed. Now I had a new worry. How would Alex take this? I threw up a mind barrier, making sure that he didn't read my thoughts before I had a chance to tell him that I was pregnant... with twins...that were vampires...that could do very disturbing things like cause objects to burst into flames. Yeah, I needed some more time before I dropped that huge bomb.

            So I told him the truth, but left out the pregnancy part. "I had some more visions. They had Demetrie in them and some other woman watching him in the background. She was familiar, but I couldn't place who she was. And then I had a vision of Ethan and Brad looking like they were about to murder each other. And Brad was hiding a titanium knife behind his back. I'm not really sure what
that
was all about, but obviously something happened to make them want to kill each other." 

            Alex smirked at me. "Ethan and Brad wanting to kill each other? Sounds pretty normal to me. I wouldn't worry about Brad taking Ethan out. Neither one of us would consider Brad a true threat. It wouldn't even be a challenge killing him. It'd be entirely too easy."

            I nodded. "Yeah, you're probably right." I tried to smooth the worry off of my face that had nothing to do with Ethan and Brad and everything to do with the pregnancy I hadn't told him about yet. "Are Anna and Ethan downstairs still?"

            Alex stood up from where he was sitting on the bed next to me. "Yep. They are. I think I'll go tell Ethan what had you freaking out up here. I'm sure he'll find the idea of you being worried about Brad destroying him entertaining. I'll send Anna up, unless you'd rather come down?"

            I shook my head. "Umm, no. If you'll just send her up here." I needed privacy for what I was about to tell her.

            A few minutes later, Anna walked in closing the door soundly behind her. From the looks of it, she meant business. "Alright, spill. What's got you freaking out? That crap you fed Alex doesn't have me fooled for a minute."

            Darn. I'd completely forgotten about Anna's extreme sensitivity to emotions. It had been the power she'd acquired after being turned. And it kind of sucked for anyone trying to hide something.

            I wasted no time getting to the point. "I'm pregnant."

            Her eyes were practically bugging out of her head, but I hadn't even gotten to the good part yet. I continued on without giving her a chance to respond to the first revelation. "With twin girls. Vampire twins. And one of them can make things burst into flames and I don't even know what the other one's power is yet. That's all the vision showed me."

            She gulped. Slow seconds passed where she just stared at me in shock before finally saying, "Alex doesn't know." She said this as a statement. Alex had left this room completely calm and we both knew that wouldn't have been the case if I'd have revealed to him what I just did to Anna.

            "No. You should have seen his reaction the first time I had a vision about our future children. I don’t think he was too excited about the prospect."