The BlackBurne Legacy (The Bloodlines Legacy Series Book 1) (16 page)

Jason’s expression morphs from outrage to consternation, to confusion. It’s hard to swallow, I know. I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t seen what I’d seen. “Are you sure that’s what you saw, Alex, that it wasn’t just another hallucination? You’ve been having the nightmares again.”

“I wish it was a nightmare, Jase, but it’s not.” I almost tell him Luka was there, but Micah said not to tell Sabien and I keep my mouth shut. I’ll tell Jase later.

“So our blood is chocked full of…power,” Jason’s words come out strangled. He’s going to try to do this for me.

“Yes,” Sabien says. “More than in almost all the lines put together.”

“You said you and Mom were the last of the bloodline. Your parents died?”

“No, but they are so old they can no longer procreate. Last I heard, they were in New Orleans. Alesha and I stay as far from them as possible. We make sure they never know where we are.”

“Could it be them who are tracking us down?” I ask. I hadn’t thought of that.

“I don’t think so.” He stands and starts to pace. Clearly, that hadn’t occurred to him. “I’ve got people watching him, but that means nothing if he truly wanted to find you. I don’t think he knows about the two of you, but if he does, that changes everything.”

“How?” Jason sits back, his anger cooling.

“Because with your blood, he can gain what he’s lost.” Sabien turns to look at us. “He’ll get back everything. His youth, his power, his influence. Dear God, why did this not occur to me? If he enlists others of our kind to help him…” He stops and runs a hand through his hair. “We might be in serious trouble.”

I keep going back to the dreams of being chased, of jumping, of watching my mother leap off a cliff and the suffocation squeezes my chest. What if it wasn’t just a dream?

“You keep saying our kind. What exactly are we?” Jason asks hesitantly.

“Witches.” Sabien smiles at him. “Not the kind of witches you read about or see on TV, but real witches with magical abilities. Our family also carries the lupine gene. No one else in the magical community knows this. It is a well-guarded secret. One that you both must promise to keep.”

“How did she die?” I have to know how my mother died. It’s a burning need that has melted the hysteria away for a moment.

Startled, Sabien answers. “She jumped from a cliff to keep them from gaining her blood.”

Sweet Jesus…
no…
I saw…

Blue, you’re fine!

Jason and Uncle Sabien stare at me.

Calm down. I’m here, Blue. You’re fine.

No, I’m not.

“Do you know why she left us?” Jason keeps his eyes on my face.

“She called me, hysterical because she’d almost lost Alex. They found the two of you that day in the park, the trackers. She had to shift to save you, but she knew if one group found you, it wouldn’t be long before others came. The only scent they had to track was hers, so she left to pull her scent away from her family. She didn’t want to go, but she had to. By leaving, she kept all of you safe. They would have killed you.”

“She could have taken us with her,” Jason argues.

“No, she couldn’t have.”

“Why not?” he demands.

“It wouldn’t have been fair. You would always be running. You and Alex were just children and she loved you too much to do that to you. Alesha wanted you to have a normal home with family and friends, something she’d never had until she met John.”

“Do you honestly think any of that ever mattered to us?” Jason asks quietly. “All we ever wanted was our mother. When she left, it broke us in more ways than we can ever possibly tell you. Do you know what it’s like to pick your baby sister up off the ground, crying, trying to find a way to make it better when you feel the same way yourself?”

“Jason…”

“No, Uncle.” His voice is hard. “She made a choice, and it was the wrong choice.”

I squeeze my brother’s hand. Mine is still shaking from shock, his from years of anger and rage. I understand his rage. I feel it, but we have each other. We will always have each other.

“I’m sorry,” Sabien tells us, “so sorry.”

“It would seem they have found us anyway.” I change the subject. Best to leave some hurts good and buried. I will deal with my dreams later. Sweet Jesus, but I’d seen her die…

Blue!

“They’ll keep coming?” I push down the mad giggles once more.

“Yes.”

“What do we do, then?” Jason leans back, troubled.

“You haven’t come into your powers yet.” Sabien starts to pace again. “The lupine gene can take up to a hundred years or so to mature enough to allow you to shift. The two of you shouldn’t be showing any signs of the gene for at least another fifty or sixty years.”

  “Wait, you said the children were murdered who didn’t have the gene. How could they tell if they didn’t show any signs?” Jason questions.

“On the inside of your left wrist there should be a birthmark. It’s very faint, but it is a bite mark.”

We both look at our wrists. Sure enough, if we look closely, there it is.

Well, crap. It’s true, all of it.

This majorly sucks.

“You are showing signs of the gene now, both of you.” Sabien laughs harshly. “Jason, you’re faster and stronger than anyone you know. I’ve seen you play football. You have an agility that defies logic. It’s amazing. I had thought the gene was dormant in you, Alex, but I’m not so sure now.”

We both look at the broken mug on the floor.

Freak show, coming soon to theaters near you.

“Does that explain why I’m hungry all the time?” My stomach has never been a bottomless pit before.

A laugh bursts out of Jason. “She eats more than I do.” It’s odd in the severity and seriousness of the conversation, but he’s always been able to see the lighter side of anything.

“You eat just as much as I do.”

“That’s perfectly normal. Right before you mother shifted, her appetite became ravenous. She was never full and had to have lots of protein. Your body is beginning to ready itself for the shift from human to animal. It needs to be strong, vital. You’ll find not only your appetite increasing, but you’ll feel the need to run, sometimes a little wildly. Your mother would wake up in the middle of the night and run for hours. The first time she did it, she never even remembered it. She woke up with dirty feet, and her loss of memory terrified her.”

“Is that normal?” Jason glances toward me, both of us remembering his own dirty feet.

“It can be. The wolf is waking up inside of you both, and sometimes your wolf will take over, until you learn to be at peace with each other. Has this happened to either of you?”

I explain to him Jason’s episode as well as my own crazy run through the woods. Jason is none too pleased I hadn’t told him, but I ignore his baleful expression.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” Sabien assures us. “For awakening pups, you’re both fine.”

Pups? That’s what Luka called Micah this morning. Does he know what Micah is? Fear rumbles through me at the thought of Luka. I hope he’s alive.

“So if what you are saying is true and we are…
shifters
, does that help us?” He makes the word sound filthy. Maybe it is, but it keeps me from feeling like I’m crazy. If I believe in this, it means I shouldn’t have been locked up and I’m not going to freak out and hurt anyone now. At least I hope so.

“I don’t know, Jason.”

“What do we do now?” I reach down to pick up the broken pieces of the mug, much like I’m trying to pick up and fit together the broken pieces of my life. I hadn’t realized until now how symbolic that mug on the floor is. I was broken and now I’m putting myself back together again, truth in hand.

“The immediate threat is gone. I took care of it. There won’t be a scent for whomever comes looking for them to find.”

“But more will come?” My voice shakes. I already know the answer.

“They always do, Alexandria, especially if my father is involved, but I promise you, I will find a way to keep you safe.”

“You won’t leave us?”

Sabien takes my face in his hands. “I swear to you upon my own life, I will never leave you.”

Why should I believe him? Mom left us.

“Believe me, honey,” he tells me, reading my face.

I try to nod, to say something, but another bout of giggles strikes me.

“
Maintenant sommeil,
” he whispers and catches me as I fall forward.

“What did you do to her?” I hear Jason bite out.

“I put her to sleep…”

My mind goes dark. Blessed, silent sleep.

Chapter

Sixteen

I wake up to the sound of a whispered argument and…
growling
.

Growling?

Images flood my mind, and the sounds of shifting, breaking bones haunt me.
Please, no more
. I try to push the memories away.

“Shh, Blue, everything is fine. You’re safe.” He strokes the back of my hand in slow, soothing circles.

Micah’s here. He’s one of…them. It has to be him growling, but at what?

Light blinds me as a bedside lamp flares to life. Once my eyes refocus, I see Luka is the culprit. So that’s who Micah has been arguing with and growling at. I should have guessed it, but I’m so tired. Wait…Luka? He should be in the hospital. There’s no way he could have managed to escape injuries.

“Luka?” I rub the sleep out of my eyes. “What…how?”

“I am fine,
munya
,” Luka tries to calm me.

“You can’t be fine, Luka.” I push myself up into a sitting position, fighting the dizziness that threatens. “I saw the cat sink claws into you. You should be in a hospital.”

“Go ahead, Luka.” Micah’s voice is grim. “Tell her why you don’t have a scratch on you.”

“Do you not think she has been through enough already?” Luka asks through clenched teeth.

I am so over this bickering. It’s making my head pound worse.

“Both of you will stop fighting right now. I’m sick to death of it.” I look from one to the other. “I need you both, so please, just please stop arguing.”

“You don’t know…”

“Leave it be,” Luka interrupts him, his voice low and hard.

“Why don’t you just tell me, Luka?” My voice sounds tired. “I don’t think there’s anything else that could shock me today.”

“Tell her,” Micah taunts.

Luka snarls at him.

Whoa
.

“Are you a shifter too, Luka?”

“No.”

“But you
are
something?”

He nods, looking down at clenched fists.

“Well?”

“I do no wish to frighten you, Alexandria.”

I’m already so scared, he’s lucky I’m not screaming. Really, how bad can it be?

He lifts his head and meets my gaze.

Red ringed onyx eyes stare into my own.

My mind shudders back from what I see, and I pull my hand away from Micah.

“I told you was too soon,” Luka snaps at Micah.

I feel the force of my fear, coupled with the pain and anger I’d felt all day, course through me, looking for an outlet. A buzzing starts in my ears. It won’t stop. My skin begins to crawl like thousands of tiny insects are covering me.

“Blue?” Micah’s voice is wary.

Luka glares at him, accusation in his glowing black eyes.

“Alex?” Micah reaches out a hand to me.

“Don’t.” I flinch away from him, my eyes never leaving Luka. What is he? The buzzing grows louder, demanding a release.

“What…are…you?” I manage to ask.

He shoots a concerned look at Micah before answering. “Is complicated. Even I am no quite sure what I am. I was cursed.”

“Cursed?”

“Your uncle, he tell you of the families of power?” At my nod, he continues. “Gypsies’ magic is strong, powerful. The families, they own some of the strongest Gypsy bloodlines. We do their bidding. My mother’s family, they refuse to keep doing this. For many years, there were no…bad things to happen to us. Then one day, someone come to our home in Bucharest. My mother is summoned and she goes. My grandmother begged her not to. Mama is not afraid, she say. She go with them. When she returns, she tell us they want her to capture the magic of a girl, that the magic belongs to them. My mother, she say no.”

Luka goes to stand by the fireplace, his eyes haunted. “Three days later, they come. They kill my father and my sister with dark magic. They die hard, painful. The woman who came, she say if we want to keep the rest of our family alive, my mother must do as she was told. Mama say no. She refuse to take life just to give them power. I beg them to stop, to leave her alone.”

Micah has a strange expression on his face, like he’s seeing Luka for the first time as he continues his story. “They tell my mother if she will no kill for them, then they will curse us all until she do what they say. They give my brother to an unholy thing. I had to watch as he died. Then they cursed me. They turned me into a monster, a monster with a blood thirst.”

“A vampire?” Micah asks, more confused than I’ve ever seen him.

“Is no that simple.” Luka’s eyes have gone back to normal. “I do not know what I am. I can walk around in the light of day. I can enter a church or holy place. Religious items no affect me. I can still use my Gypsy magic, but I need to hunt, to kill. It has strip me of my humanity. Is only with you I see glimmers of it.”

“The girl they wanted your mother to kill?” I know the answer before he says it, but I need to hear it.

“You.”

“The day at the waterfall? You did try to kill me.”

“Yes,
munya
, but I could no. If I had done what I set out to do, come here to kill you, my family would be safe.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, Alexandria, I didn’t. The thought of hurting you causes me physical pain. I cannot hurt you. I will not.”

“What happens to your family?”

A deep and abiding sadness creeps into his eyes. “Is impossible to save you both. I had to make a choice. My heart, it chose you. My mother will understand. She would tell me is the right choice.”

Why would he choose me over his family? He barely knows me. My brain stutters as I try to make sense of it, and something happens. A buzzing starts in my ears and then vibrates through every cell in my body. It overwhelms me and I snap, just like that day in junior high school, only this time I have nowhere to run. My vision blurs, heat blazes to life inside of me, and I see a tinge of red. The scream comes out of nowhere. I can’t hold it back. The force that has been running wildly under my skin escapes with that scream. I feel it flow out of me. The windows in the room shatter, spilling glass outward.

Micah and Luka dive out the broken windows. Seconds later, the door slams open. Jason scrambles in, baseball bat in hand, looking over every inch of the room. Sabien is right behind him.

“What?” The fear and concern make his voice almost hard. “What happened?”

“Make it stop, please make it stop.” My hands clutch at my ears. Oh God, it’s so loud. My head aches from the intensity of the noise. Blood drips onto my lip. I can feel it trickle out of my nose. This buzzing is killing me.

“Make what stop, Alexandria?”

“The buzzing.”

“Buzzing?” Sabien is instantly beside me. “Do you hear it or feel it?”

“Both. It feels like my skin is crawling.”

Sabien smiles. “It’s all right, little one. It’s normal. You’re waking up. I know it’s scary, but the buzzing will go away soon.”

“Normal?” Jason snaps. “There’s nothing normal about hearing a buzzing noise.”

“This is how our magic awakens,” Sabien explains. I can barely focus on his words. “Soon, the noise will lesson and then disappear. Her gifts will begin to manifest themselves. She’s much younger than anyone in our family who has ever awoken. Our family, our magic, is as old as time itself. The fact she has awoken so soon tells me everyone has a right to fear her, to fear you. We must keep her safe. I wasn’t counting on this…I need help.”

“Well, right now I think the windows need help.” Leave it to my brother to be practical.

Sabien frowns and closes his eyes. The glass begins to flow back into place and becomes whole once again. He repairs both windows before arching a brow at his nephew. Jason’s mouth hangs open.

“Alexandria.” His voice is soft and soothing. “I’m going to put you back to sleep. You need to rest. Your body needs to adjust to the changes taking place. Okay?”

Changes? My skin is crawling like thousands of insects are running through an all-expense paid trip to Walt Disney bug land. My body aches. My head throbs and the buzzing swarms through my ears. Changes? It feels more like I’m being ripped apart by gale force hurricane winds.

“
Maintenant sommeil.
”

I barely feel the pillow under my head before I black out. Again.

Bright sunlight assaults my eyes when I open them hours later. I snap them shut. I do not like waking up to the sun. My eyes are very sensitive to bright sunlight. It actually hurts, especially with the early morning sun. Dad had special curtains made years ago to block out the light for my room. Even at Compton, I’d had the black-out shades because of my eyes.

Cracking my eyelids, I look around. I don’t recognize the room. It’s old, the furniture antiques. I’m in a massive king sized bed, and the sheer white drapes hanging from the top of the canopy are a gauzy material. The delicate white and blue tones of the room is meant to be comforting, and it is. They are my favorite colors. We must still be at Uncle Sabien’s.

My brother is asleep on the floor, a baseball bat clutched in one hand and his old stuffed dog, Pup-Pup, in the other. He told me he got rid of the toy years ago. Such a liar. My bear is beside me, too. Jase must have made a run to the apartment.

The next thing I notice is the massive headache. It feels like my head is going to crack open. Yesterday comes flooding back and I am wracked by a bad case of the shakes. Memories hound my mind, tormenting me.

My head feels like it’s imploding as image after image rushes back and I remember, not just yesterday, but all of it. Dear God, please, I don’t want to remember, but either God isn’t listening or doesn’t care that I can’t take much more.

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout, I hum to myself as I run to the swings. I love the swings. The air is cool as it bathes my legs, and I shout for Mommy to swing me. We are in matching blue dresses, and Mommy laughs as I tell her to swing me higher, and I scream when I go up higher than ever before.

I see it when I am up in the air. It is a big, black cat. I tell Mommy to look at the kitty. I hear her breath catch in her throat and she pulls me off the swing. Then she puts me in the yellow bubble slide and tells me not to come out until she comes to get me.

Mommy looks scared. I’ve never seen her scared before, and I start to cry when she leaves me. The big cat walks toward her, growling and snarling, its teeth gleaming in the sunlight. I don’t hear what Mommy says, but then she lets out a big roar and then she…she…she changes. My mommy is gone, her clothes on the ground, and where she was now stands a big wolf. It growls at the cat and snaps its teeth.

The big cat launches itself at the wolf, and the wolf jumps to meet it. They clash mid-air and fall, their bodies twisting and rolling as they fight. I see their teeth tearing into each other, see them snap and snarl as they try to kill each other. I cry louder. Where did my mommy go?

The cat lets out a cry and I hear something snap. The wolf has the cat pinned down and is tearing its throat out. Then the wolf looks up at me and I shrink back. Is it going to eat me too? It turns and grabs the big cat and pulls it into the woods.

I don’t know how long I wait in the slide, but I can hear Mommy call my name. I peek out of the slide and see her tugging at her clothes as she limps toward me. It takes her a long time to get me to come out of the slide. I am so scared, but she promises me it will be okay. The big dogs are gone, even the dead ones. Where did they go? I cry harder, and then I stop. The fear goes away and I can’t remember anything. Everything is okay.

My mother must have caused me to forget. I’d been hysterical, crying, and unable to move out of fear. She’d done the only thing she could to calm me down. She must have used some kind of magic. In doing so, she’d relieved the fear in that moment, but those memories have haunted me all my life. They’ve made me think I’m insane, that I was destined to be committed to a mental hospital. All these years, I’ve thought I was crazy, but I’m not. Everything I’ve ever dreamed about is real. Those vague memories that have haunted me day and night are awful, and they’re as real as the sunlight pouring into my brother’s window. I’m not crazy. I’m just really, really messed up.

How can this have happened? It isn’t fair. Everything about me has been lies. Even now I feel it, this alien force running through me, laughing at me. I don’t want to be a freak of nature. Isn’t it enough that I’ve grown up feeling out of place, like I don’t belong, thinking I’m crazy? HA! I guess I’ve been right all along. I don’t belong. I am different. A freak show.

I should have known what little happiness I’ve found over the last few weeks wouldn’t last. How could it? Eventually, everything I love is always taken from me. Why? Why can’t I just be a normal person with a normal life and normal friends?