“Of course there was, and there will be ever after,” he said with a sinister smirk. “She carries my child. I kept her long enough to be sure there was nothing you could do to change the outcome. She will birth the pitiful whelp, and you will raise it, ever aware that you can’t kill it. It’s part of the granddaughter you loved so well, and protected so poorly. Each and every time you look on the child, you’ll see me. You will have a part of me with you, carrying your name for eternity. Perhaps there is even enough of me in the little bastard that it will be your downfall.”
Adrienne screamed and grasped her stomach, her fingernails digging into the skin there hard enough to draw blood. “All is well, you are home. I will take care of everything,” Marceline cooed while waving several of her coven-sisters toward her. They hesitated, eying Alastair as they clearly wanted to help, but were afraid of exposure to him.
“Yes, Grandmama, do take care of everything now. I am on to my next adventure. This one has lost its taste of… yumminess,” he said, licking his lips and tapping his chin with a ghostly white, sharp nailed finger as he searched for just the right word.
Several females, all members of the coven, had finally come to Marceline’s aid. Together they managed to get Adrienne up and moving toward the house. Every single one of them saw her turn her head as it bobbed weakly on her neck and search him out with her eyes. Was she glad for a reprieve from him, or was she already mourning his loss? No one knew, but not one of them felt safe as they assisted the woman who used to be a friend and coven-sister into the home they all shared.
Adrienne turned her eyes on each of them, looking for her grandmother, and each pulled away as her glowing red eyes focused on them, leaving her weight solely on Marceline.
“She is vampire!” one whispered, a horrified look in her eyes.
“He’s kept her all this time, impregnated her! How could she be anything but?” one of the younger coven-sisters said.
“Do not speak of her as though she isn’t here!” Marceline ordered. “She is our Adrienne. And she is home now. We will solve this.”
As they crossed the threshold into the old, grand mansion that was once a church, Alastair cleared his throat to gain their attention.
Marceline stopped, glanced over her shoulder and saw the master vampire, the antithesis of her life, glaring at her as he levitated just inches above the ground, his arms crossed over his chest, his thin, elegant eyebrows raised as he regarded her.
“I’ve banished you. You cannot enter here! I’ve added my own protections to the hallowed ground beneath your feet. Begone!” she screamed, her voice quaking, her very nature shaken from the condition her granddaughter had been returned in.
Alastair looked down at the ground inches below his feet. “I am not entering. And I am not standing on your ground, oh great Marceline. I am hovering. Should I explain the difference to you?”
“What do you want from us? Just go!” she shrieked, realizing Alastair had grown much stronger than she’d ever anticipated over the decades.
“What I wanted I lost any need for many years ago. Perhaps you should have helped me when you had the chance,” he said, a cruel lilt to his voice. “Enjoy my poor, little mate,” he said, raising an eyebrow before adding, “I did.” As they all watched, he faded away while the thunder rattled the windows and the lightning flashed around him.
Adrienne whimpered as she watched Alastair fade away. The conflict of pain from separating from her bonded mate, as well as the relief of separating from her tormentor, were warring inside her. She despised him. She feared him. Yet she was pulled toward him. She needed him.
She screamed suddenly, as her baby moved further into position, readying itself to be born. She slammed her hand to the bottom of her stomach to support its weight.
“You will be fine, my darling. You will see, trust Grandmama,” Marceline promised as she and her strongest ally, her most powerful coven-sister, Pauline, each slipped a hand behind Adrienne’s waist and hurried her toward the third floor of the mansion and her own room.
~~~
Alastair entered the dark, dank, musty basement he’d used as a home base for the last nine months. It was actually a large storage room, long ago forgotten beneath the condemned remains of a once majestic mansion sitting in the famed Garden District of New Orleans. In it he’d assembled a cluttered mismatch of old furniture and furnishings. The only window in the large room, tiny and painted black, gave no indication of anything or anyone living inside. He perched on the edge of the bed and looked down at the stained, mussed bedsheets before he allowed his body to fall back onto them. He huffed out a low pitched growl as he clenched and unclenched his fists, and curled his toes in his boots. He’d forced himself to endure the pain brought on by Marceline’s magics. He wanted her to believe he was more powerful than he really was. He tried to relax and turned his face to the side, placing his hands palm down on either side of his body on the bed.
His nostrils flared as he inhaled. The bedsheets still smelled of his Mouse. And didn’t that just anger him more than the stinging and buzzing of his body. He rose to his feet in a flurry of activity, snatching the sheets from the stained mattress and shredding them to pieces before screaming his frustration into the now empty space. He didn’t want to think of the little female he’d called Mouse. She wasn’t actually his mate. In fact, he’d gone out of his way to be especially cruel to her, treating her like a caged animal rather than a treasured mate, just to ensure that he didn’t grow attached to the wretched creature.
How one could hold the possibility of so much power, and shy away from even wielding more than a little bit of it, he’d never understand. She was weak, and weakness was something he could never abide. He lifted his hand and rubbed at his heart, then his temples. Still, she’d managed to worm her way into his psyche. The prickling at the edges of his brain, and the burning at the center of his long cold heart were enough to let him know that he’d begun to get attached to her. The problem with that was if mated vampires were separated for any longer than a few days, they would begin to lose whatever grip they held on their sanity. Once bound, they needed each other to maintain their place in the world.
“I am not bound to that sniveling, weak female!” he snarled. Alastair dropped to his knees in the middle of the clutter that had become his home. “I am not,” he declared fiercely. But he knew the truth — he was bound to her. He lifted his lip in disgust until another thought occurred to him. Alastair smiled. “I shall hunt. I shall feed. I shall find another, and I shall forget her and all her weaknesses. I shall prevail.” Alastair rose to his feet and stalked out of the dirty, dingy basement.
Once outside, he lifted his head into the air, the winds and rain still pelting him from the hurricane that just wouldn’t leave this city. He didn’t look back at the place he’d sheltered in for the last nine months, he didn’t acknowledge the stinging pain still coursing through his body from refusing to back down from Marceline’s magic, and he refused to think of the weak, worthless female he’d called Mouse — she was a means to an end, nothing more. He was now focused on the hunt. The taste of new blood already a desperately needed thing in his psyche. He imagined a place far away from here, a place that was warm and balmy, and then, he was away, soon to be there as he moved through the air as easily as though he was no more than air himself. There was no trace of him left behind, nothing to indicate he’d ever been there, other than a shredded sheet lying in tatters on the floor of the cluttered basement.