“THE BAGS ARE PACKED,” BETH, one of the housekeepers, interrupts the all too quiet dining room. I turn to see her not quite looking at any of us, holding a packed suitcase in her hands.
“Thank you,” Rath says. She gives an uncomfortable smile, leaves the bag on the floor, and leaves.
I turn questioning eyes on Rath, who stares at me for a bit longer than he should to be innocent.
“Mr. Ward and I talked last night while you slept and came to a decision,” Rath starts. He places his elbows on the table and laces his fingers together. “As he mentioned last night, there is no way the House won’t hear about your attack. They will come for you and while I don’t believe it will be to the extreme that Ian does, they will sway you with you being so uninformed, and I know your father wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“What do you mean by house?” I ask, every survival instinct in me perking up. I don’t like where this is heading.
“Ian will educate you as you start training,” Rath says. He snaps his fingers and attendants flood into the room to begin clearing breakfast. “But for now, we both feel it best that you stay away from the Conrath Estate until you are ready. You will be going to stay with Ian.”
My head whips to look at him, and I’m sure a sour expression dominates my face. “You’re kidding, right? We’ve already established how he tried to kill me, and you want to send me off to live with him?”
“Mr. Ward will bring you no harm,” Rath says as he stands. Ian and I do at the same time, as well. “He didn’t know the circumstances at the time, and he did what he thought best. Trust me, no one will be more skilled in keeping you safe until you are ready to make your own decisions.”
“Decisions about what?” I demand. I back toward the door. I don’t know what I’m going to do: run, hide, head back to Colorado—but I don’t like feeling like I do.
“The decision about whether you want to join the House or not,” Ian says impatiently. He walks around the table and grabs the bag from the floor. “Can you just take my promise that I won’t hurt you and get going? We really don’t have a whole lot of time. It’s already uncomfortably far into the afternoon.”
I look at the clock hanging on the far wall and realize that despite having just eaten “breakfast,” it is four in the afternoon. Rath really was going to let me sleep all day.
My eyes flick between Ian and Rath and back again.
I don’t know what to do.
I barely know these men. I don’t know whom to trust.
But there’s an echo in the back of my head saying that this is what my father would have wanted. And even though I didn’t know him at all, I feel like I would have wanted to.
“You’re not really giving me a choice, are you?” I ask, feeling the fight seep out of me.
“Not when you don’t understand the big picture yet.” Ian’s eyes are begging me to trust him. And there’s something there in the purse of his lips, in the tenseness of his shoulders, in the readiness of his stance that makes me think I can.
“Let me go get dressed,” I say resentfully.
Stranger danger is screaming at me the whole time I’m getting ready. But it’s a tiny thing pushed into the corner by an attack last night and a very big story told over breakfast. So I slide into shorts and a t-shirt, and knot my hair on top of my head. Lastly, I slide the unopened letter from my father into my back pocket.
“We should get going,” Ian says as I come down the stairs. He’s already waiting by the front door, keys in hand, my bag in the other.
I nod and turn to Rath.
“I’m putting a lot of trust in you,” I say. My eyes are begging for him to say I can stay, to take everything from the past twenty-four hours back. Somehow I feel like he should have that power. Even though that’s stupid.
“I know,” he says. And to my surprise, he wraps his arms around me in a brief hug. “This is for the best.”
When I let go of him, I don’t meet his eyes. I turn for the door, open it, and walk straight out.
Ian’s van is one of those utility kinds with no windows in the back. It’s black and covered in mud and grime. I’d wager it’s got traces of blood on it somewhere—likely some of my own.
I open the passenger door and climb in.
Ian throws my bag into the back where, only last night, I had lain bloody and muddy and climbs into the driver’s seat. Without a word, he turns around and starts down the drive.
When we pop out onto the main road, we take a left instead of a right into town. Ian slips out his phone and dials someone.
“Hey, Phil, it’s Ian,” he says as he takes a right and we’re heading south. “Yeah, I’m not feeling so hot today so I’m going to need someone to cover my shift tonight. Yeah, I know this is the second time this month, but what can I say? You get around a lot of sickness, you tend to get sick. Yeah. Gotcha. ‘K, thanks.”
He hangs up and slides the phone back into his pocket.
“You have a job outside of vampire hunting?” I ask skeptically.
“Of course I have a job,” he says, giving me an offended look. “You think it pays the bills to keep vamps off the streets of Silent Bend? I gotta’ eat, just like all the other ignorant people.”
“Sorry,” I say, holding my hands up in surrender. “It’s just…mundane, hearing that someone like you has a job. What do you do?”
“I’m an EMT,” he says as he looks out the front window. The trees get thicker and heavier around the road. I have the feeling we’re not too far from the swamps I so pleasantly got to visit last night.
“Also surprising,” I say with a nod. “Though I have to say, knowing you’re tangled up with vampires kind of makes me wonder if you’re some kind of supplier of blood to them.”
Ian cuts me an ice-cold look. “I’d never.”
“Sorry,” I immediately apologize. It’s going to take me some time to learn my boundaries with Ian Ward.
He doesn’t say anything else as we continue our drive.
I was right. This seems like swampland, and I’m sure that at any minute, we’ll be sloshing through water and have alligators jump out at us from the stagnant swamps.
But we stay on the road and turn off onto an even scarier-looking one.
The trees with endless amounts of moss hanging from them threaten to swallow us for a minute, almost totally blocking out the sun. But suddenly, we break out into a clearing. No swamp, just well-trimmed grass and a little yellow house with flower gardens out front.
It’s picturesque.
“This is your house?” I ask in shock.
“It’s my grandmother’s house,” Ian says as he continues on the little dirt road stretching to the side of it. We continue on for a while longer, back into more trees, and stop in front of what looks like a tiny cabin or a shed. It’s rustic, and looks like it’s been put together in stages, but it has a certain manly charm to it. “This is my house.”
Ian turns off the engine and climbs out. He grabs my bag from the back as I climb out and marvel at the complex beauty around me.
Massive trees dot the landscape here and there, blocking out the sun with their giant leaves. Spanish moss hangs long and thick from the branches. Undergrowth hides unknown trails. The sun trickles through to dot the tin roof of Ian’s house. I look back at the yellow house. It’s so charming and bathed in sunlight. Like something out of a fairytale.
The two houses are polar opposites.
“Alivia?” Ian calls from his front porch. “You coming?”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. I turn and follow him inside.
The walls are all wood and everything looks used or salvaged. I’d honestly be kind of shocked if Ian didn’t build this place with his own hands. A small living room with a worn-out couch and a rocking chair occupy the right side of the space. To the left is a small simple kitchen. Straight ahead I can see into a bedroom and there’s a bathroom.
This is almost exactly the same size as my apartment in Colorado, and I find it oddly comforting.
“It’s not much to look at, but it’s my own space,” Ian says as he walks back from the bedroom where he’s just set my bag on the bed. “Started building it when I was only fifteen. Finished it a few years back.”
I was right.
“It’s a far cry from Conrath Estate, but the House will never come looking for you here.”
“Right,” I say as I wander to the bedroom. There’s a queen-sized bed with a worn-out blue comforter on it. A dresser is pushed up next to the closet and that’s all that occupies the space. The bathroom isn’t any bigger than necessary to cram in a shower, toilet, and sink.
“Don’t worry,” Ian says as he stuffs his hands in his pockets and observes me. “I’ll take the couch.”
My polite instinct is to say that he doesn’t have to. It’s his house and his bed, not mine. But then again, this was his idea, and Rath’s, and if not for that idea, I’d be sleeping in my suite and not putting anyone out.
“Okay,” I say simply.
I jump pretty violently when there’s a knock on the closed front door before it opens.
I turn to find a pretty, young blonde girl staring at me with startled eyes. “Oh,” she says. “I’m sorry, I uh…didn’t realize Ian had company.” The shocked and confused tone to her voice tells me how rare of an occasion this truly is.
“Elle, this is Alivia Ryan,” Ian says, waving a hand in my direction. “Alivia, this is my little sister, Elle Ward.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised once again by this vamp hunter. “I…uh, it’s nice to meet you.”
“I love your name,” Elle says shyly with a smile that looks so much like Ian’s. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “Ian, Lula told me to tell you it’s time for dinner.”
“’K,” he says. “We’ll be right in.”
Elle looks at me one more time and offers a fluttering little smile before she heads outside again.
“I should have figured you were a big brother,” I say with a small smile when I meet his eyes. “You do have that whole protective quality going on.”
Ian fights off a smile and opens the door wider for me. “Shut up,” he laughs. “Come on. Don’t make my grandmother wait for us.”
The house is as warm and inviting inside as it looks from the outside. Crisp white walls, a light, sky blue ceiling. Old, well worn, but taken care of furniture. It smells like a grandma, but in all the right ways. It makes me wish I’d had a grandmother. My own died when I was only six years old.
We round the corner of the living room into the dining room and kitchen. Elle is helping a woman set things on the table.
“Lula, I hope you don’t mind that I have a guest tonight,” Ian says as he places his hands on the back of a chair. I stand there uncomfortably.
The woman turns, and I see her face for the first time.
It’s impossible not to notice the wrinkles first. Folds and canyons and ravines cover her entire body. Dark eyes are hooded and shadowed by her features. Her earlobes are long and dangly. And unlike the kind, motherly woman I was expecting from the house, this woman’s eyes are fierce and dark.
“You got a girlfriend?” she asks, somehow managing to raise an eyebrow as she shuffles across the kitchen to the table with a casserole dish in her weathered hands. Her Southern drawl is strong, and I can barely understand her.
“Uh,” Ian says uncomfortably, scratching the back of his neck. “No. This is Alivia Ryan. She just got into town.”
The woman looks at me, staring me down like she can see into my soul.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say without squirming.
Finally, she gives a grunt and a nod before turning back to retrieve something from the kitchen.
“Don’t worry about her,” Ian whispers in my ear. His closeness makes something in my stomach do a backflip. “She’s pretty crazy and won’t even remember you were here in the morning.”
“She really won’t,” Elle says quietly as she finishes setting the table.
“Oh,” is all I can say in this super awkward situation.
After saying grace, everyone digs into their dinner.
“School starts on Monday, right Elle?” Ian asks around a mouthful of some kind of food that’s so Southern I don’t have a name for it. Since we ate only an hour ago, I’m having a hard time fitting anything else in my stomach.
She nods. “Sophomore year,” she says with a cringe. “Do you think you could drive me into town to get the rest of my stuff tomorrow?”
“I’ll take ‘ya, child,” Lula says. “Been takin’ care of ‘ya fo’ the last how many years? I’ll keep on keepin’ on.”
“Yes, Lula,” Elle says, looking down at her plate with a knowing little smile.
I glance over at Ian. His eyes flit over to mine. “She can’t drive anymore, and hasn’t been able to for quite a few years. Thankfully, her hearing isn’t what it used to be either.”
I look back at her, and she’s staring at her food, munching slowly and deliberately.
We finish our meal and Lula shuffles off to bed, even though it’s barely seven o’clock. Elle clears the table as Ian and I do the dishes.
“How old is your grandmother?” I ask when we’re nearly finished and Elle has said goodnight to go read a book.
“She’s eighty-seven,” Ian says as he dries the last plate and puts it away. I drain the dishwater and dry my hands. Together we walk out to the back porch and sit on the top stair.
“She’s Elle’s caretaker, isn’t she?” I ask quietly as the sun starts to slip toward the trees.
Ian nods. His eyes drop to the steps we sit on. His forearms rest on his knees, his fingers tightly knitted together.
“What happened to your parents, Ian?”
He chews the inside of his lip for a second, and I can feel the gears turning in his head. He picks at a hangnail before finally answering me.
“We lived in this little, crappy house closer to town when I was a kid. It always smelled like swamp, even though we were miles from it. One night when I was ten, I was lying awake, listening to my parents fight for the thousandth time. They fought all the time. Elle was sleeping on the bottom bunk, even though she probably should have been in a crib—she was only two, snoring like a wolf.” He chuckles, his eyes rising to the horizon, and shakes his head.
“There was a loud shatter, like the door being busted down. My mom screamed and dad yelled. There were gunshots.” He swallows and his eyes fall back down again. “I was scared, scared to death. But I climbed out of bed and cracked open the door. It looked right out into the living room. What I saw…there wasn’t any logical explanation for it to a ten year old.”
I know what’s coming and imagining the scene? It’s horrific. I fight the urge to reach out and rub a hand over Ian’s back.
“There was this man there,” he says, his voice hardening, but showing the slightest emotion. “Eyes glowing red, face covered in these horrible black veins. His face was covered in blood. Dad was already dead, drained dry. The vampire was holding Mom. She was stone white.”
A shiver runs up my back. As horrible as my own mother’s death had been, at least I hadn’t witnessed her murder. In such a brutal and unnatural way.
“The vamp looked up at me, and I thought for sure I was dead. Elle, too. I should have screamed, but I could only stare at my dead mom.” His voice cracks just slightly, but overpowering it is anger. “The thing just stared at me…for a long time. Finally, sense came back to my brain. I slammed the door shut, locked it. I grabbed Elle from her bed. She started crying. I crawled out the window with her and started running.” Ian takes a deep breath, his eyes rising back up. “I ran here. To my grandmother’s house. I told her what I’d seen. The crazy thing was that she believed me.”
Finally, hesitantly, I reach out and place a hand on his back. His body is warm through his t-shirt. I rub my hand back and forth lightly just twice.
Ian had been just a kid. He was so young and so innocent. And in an instant, he’d become an orphan. But instead of crying, instead of breaking down like pretty much anyone else would have, he grabbed his baby sister and saved both of their lives.
Ian looks back at me, his eyes serious and heavy. “You hear that ignorance is bliss all the time. I had no idea as a kid how bad Silent Bend’s vampire problem was. And is. And the thing is, half the town is fully aware of it.”
“Whatever this House is that you keep saying is going to come after me, they’re all vampires, aren’t they?” I ask, taking my hand back.
Ian nods and then stands. He reaches out a hand and pulls me to my feet. “Yeah. And I’ll tell you about them, but first we have to lock the house down.”
When we walk back inside, Ian makes his way to Elle’s bedroom. “You need to go anywhere else tonight?” he asks.
She looks up from her book, lying on her bed, and shakes her head.
“’K,” Ian says. “I’m going to lock up now. We’re going to bed.”
“Alright,” she says, glancing over at me. But it isn’t suggestive, considering what Ian just said. This girl knows her brother. It comforts me that she knows Ian isn’t like that. “Goodnight.”
“Night,” he says as he pulls her door closed.
I wait in the living room as Ian tells his grandmother goodnight. And as I wait, I then realize how there are bars on all the windows in the house.
Ian reemerges and heads straight for the front door. He sets a series of locks that are intense. He does the same for the side door that goes out the laundry room. “Come on,” he says with the tip of his head for the back door. We walk out and he pulls out keys and locks no less than four locks. Finally, he pulls out his phone and taps something. I hear three beeps from inside. A green light flashes on one of the locks.
“That’s one intense security system,” I say as he slips his phone back into his pocket. “I’m guessing that doesn’t alert the authorities if it’s tripped.”
Ian shakes his head. “You’d guess right.”
Poor Elle. Considering all of this, it’s hard to imagine she’s capable of having much of a social life. Or any chance at any form of a normal life at all.
We walk across the lawn and back in to the cabin. I flip a light on and turn to watch Ian lock up six locks, sliding a solid iron bar over the door.
“Will all that stuff really keep out a vampire if they’re determined to get in?” I ask.
Ian turns to look at me. “Not if they really want to get in. But it’ll slow them down. Take a look.”
Ian walks over to his couch and pulls the cushions off of it. Beneath them is a long box, the entire length of the couch. He pulls off the lid.
Inside is a huge stack of wooden stakes. Some of them stained with blood.
“You take being a vigilante seriously,” I say, raising an eyebrow.
He actually laughs. He gets small crinkle lines around his eyes and mouth when he does. It’s kind of ridiculously charming. “You have no idea, baby doll.”
He’s called me that twice now…
He crosses to the kitchen and opens the oven. But instead of delicious baked goods, this one reveals a stash of guns and knives. Ian looks back at me and gives a smug look. He goes on to reveal a mirror in the bathroom that opens to show off more guns. From beneath his bed he pulls out a crossbow and three shotguns.
“Okay, I realize now why Rath sent me off to stay here,” I say. There’s genuine concern in my voice. I’m suddenly very intimidated.
“I’m not letting another vamp touch my family again,” Ian says seriously as he slides the shotguns back under the bed. “It’s been pretty safe in this town the last two years or so, but your attack? Henry’s? They were both out of place.”
“How so?” I ask, settling onto the bed. It’s well worn out. I can feel the springs.
“Look, Liv,” he says, rubbing his eyes with a thumb and a finger. “There’s a lot to educate you on and not a whole ton of time to do it. But I’m exhausted and have been up for the last two nights straight. I’ll make more sense in the morning.”
I glance outside. There’s still plenty of light on the horizon, I’d guess it’s not even nine o’clock. But he does look exhausted.
“Okay,” I say. “We can talk in the morning.”
He rubs his eyes again and doesn’t even look at me before peeling off the wall and disappearing into the bathroom. I lie back on the bed and stare at the wooden ceiling, listening to him preparing for bed. A few minutes later, he walks out and back into the bedroom.
“I may be a Southern gentleman and offered my bed, but you’ve got to share the pillows,” he says with an attempt of a smile. But it’s tired.
I grab one and throw it at him.
He catches it, reflexes quick and agile. He offers an appreciative smile and heads for the couch in the living room. Not five minutes later, I hear a faint snore drifting in through the door.
This all seems so overkill. Having to leave the home I just learned I had. Hiding in a cabin in the woods with a guy who has an obsession with weapons and bloodsuckers.
But my hand reaches up to where I was bitten. I’d wandered out of the house once and was almost immediately attacked.
There’s so much more to Silent Bend than meets the eye.
I roll onto my side and feel something hard press into my rear end. Remembering the letter in my back pocket, I pull it out.
My name is written in elegant script, curving and bending in ways that isn’t often seen in this century.
Thinking back to what that book said about Henry Conrath building the plantation house in 1799, I know now that it wasn’t his great-something-grandfather. It was my father.
I slide my finger under the wax seal and break the raven crest. I pull two sheets of paper from inside it, and an ornate, old fashioned key with a raven set in the middle of the handle falls out into my hand.
Setting the key on my chest, my eyes turn to the letter.
My dear Alivia,
I’ve thought about the contents of this letter for over a month now. In my grand perspective of time, it’s really nothing more than the blink of an eye, but still, it’s been on my mind every waking second.
Your mother tracked me down and told me of your existence. I must admit that I couldn’t really believe her at first. You see, it isn’t an easy thing for someone like me to create offspring. And it’s been a long time since I last saw Marlene Ryan. But she sent me your picture and I knew. I see it with my own eyes. I am your father.
And that knowledge fills me with both great elation and solemn regret. I’ve lived a life of isolation for a very long time because losing my only family member has destroyed me in ways I never could have imagined. So knowing that for the past nineteen years I have in fact had family makes me so happy. I wish I had known sooner. I wish we could have had time together. I wish I could have been there for you.
I don’t realize that I’m crying, just a few paragraphs in, until a strangled breath catches in my throat and a tear rolls down my cheek and drips back into my ear. All my insides are shaking, quivering. My chest feels tight and constricted.
I have many wishes for what might have been.
But I am also sorry.
Knowing that I am your father, I know the fate that I have put upon your shoulders. Eventually, you will know the truth about what I am. It may take years, hopefully many, many of them. But what I have is yours, and someday, I suppose, you will learn everything.
I am sorry I have thrust you into this immortal life. My own has been a long one, and the vast majority of it has been unhappy. It’s been full of politics and manipulation and distrust. I never want that for you.
So I ask you this: stay away from the House. Stay away from the King. Stay away from our kind.
I know this is asking for a life of isolation, but I only found peace when I removed myself from everything I’ve just listed out for you. They can bring you nothing but pain.
Should you ever come to Silent Bend and I am no longer alive, I’ve asked Rath to give you this letter. I had hoped that we could meet some day, face to face. But I am a coward. If you’re reading this, it means I never found the courage to seek you out myself and do it the right way. There are not enough sorrys that I can put on these pages for that.
But if you come, trust Rath. He will never lead you astray. His loyalty is unprecedented, and he will take care of you.
I wish I could have gotten the same opportunity.
I know we’ve never met, but I do love you, Alivia.
Until we meet, all my love,
Henry.
I will do my best, Henry. I promise.