“I told you I’d be fine.” Curtis grinned, a completely endearing look. “But it’s not like I’m going to turn down the opportunity when a pretty woman wraps her arms around me. Mawmaw didn’t raise no fool.”
Maura laughed. “Easy Casanova. Let’s try to stay on subject. We both seem to have the gift of straying off-topic. How did the ghost army stories go?”
“There are variations. Most agree that the ghosts march backward in an attempt to rewind time away from their deaths on the battlefield. Some people considered it an omen—change your ways, or you’ll spend eternity running from your sins, or some such nonsense. Others say if they march past you, they’ll pull you back in time to suffer with them.”
At that, he frowned and lowered his arms to his sides.
“Time travel?” Maura felt sick to her stomach as a new worry took root. “That takes some fucked up, seriously dangerous magick. Warlocks won’t mess with that kind of trouble. There are too many variables. Ya change the past, ya change the future. Ya die in the past, ya could have never lived in the future—depending on the spell and whether or not ya went back to inhabit your old body or came back as a second body. And all that is if ya can even pull the spell off.”
Maura rubbed her arms, wishing someone from her family would just appear and help them. She’d even take drunk Uncle Raibeart sprinting across the field.
“No. No. Time travel isn’t easy, and those recipes are guarded by the elders with more boobytraps than an ‘80s movie.” She shook her head. “We’d be more likely to stumble into a fairy ring.”
“Kind of feels like you’re protesting the idea a little too much,” Curtis observed.
“I’ll admit, I don’t want it to be true, but I think sideway travel is more likely than backward travel.” She motioned for him to resume walking with her as they made their way toward where her magick indicated people. “Let’s find out who’s here with us. I don’t think a smell and moonlit prairie are going to reveal the answers.”
After centuries of living, the unknown normally didn’t scare Maura. If anything, she knew that there was no point in working herself up until she had facts. However, currently, that wasn’t holding true. The sense of foreboding she’d felt outside the motel tried to return.
Maura told herself that there was no foreseeable danger coming at them, no dire choice to be made or worry over. All they could do was walk, so that is what they needed to do. Walk.
“Your great grandad was the family vampire, then?” Maura prompted after they’d gone in silence for several minutes. They were still several yards from the woods.
“He is. Mawmaw Abigail’s father.” Curtis nodded. “It’s not something anyone in the family speaks of with pride.”
“Have ya met him?”
Curtis didn’t answer.
“Curtis?”
He sighed. “I’ve spent a lifetime not talking about him, even denying knowing him.”
“Is that the vampire ya…that died tonight?”
He shook his head. “No.”
Maura gently touched his arm. The energy that continually followed between them became more substantial when they made contact. She felt herself gravitating closer to him. “I promise, I’m not judging ya. We can’t help the circumstance of our birth.”
“I’ve met my great grandfather a handful of times and would be happy never to meet him again. He visited my father a couple of times before he died and didn’t seem to have much interest in me. I didn’t realize it until tonight, but apparently, he does keep tabs on what I do. He wasn’t happy that I moved to Wisconsin.”
Maura sensed that he was maybe holding back. “Who is it?”
“His name’s Buford.”
She didn’t recognize the name.
“He owned a plantation back in the Antebellum South and ate his way up and down the Delta,” he continued. “Slavery and the atrocities of war were his nirvana. To hear my mawmaw tell it, a vampire seduced a house slave, and so our genetic line of the family tree was born. I think she comes from an era where Southerners sugar-coated things a little too much. From what I have pieced together, the truth is Buford tortured and raped my great grandmother. There was no seduction about it. She died giving birth to my mawmaw. Human women pregnant with a dhampir child never come to a good end. That’s how my mother died, giving birth to me. My mawmaw faired all right because she was also a dhampir. I decided a long time ago that this family line is going to end with me. I’m not putting this curse on another child, and I’m not killing a woman to do it.”
Maura didn’t try to comfort him. What could she say? It was an awful story. “Then who was in the woods tonight?”
“Virgile. One of Buford’s lackeys. Like I was saying earlier, I just found out I’m in a little bit of trouble with my great grandpa. I didn’t get his permission before moving out of state and living my life.”
“I—” Before Maura could finish the thought, the sound of horse hooves thundered in the distance.
Curtis threw his arm around her and dragged her to the ground. Maura’s chest pressed down into the tall grasses—not exactly in the most comfortable of positions. He leaned over her to act as a human shield while he watched for the intruder.
“This is chivalrous and all, but I can handle myself,” Maura whispered.
Curtis slowly moved from shielding her and tugged at her arm. When she looked at him, he nodded his head in the direction of his stare.
Maura slowly pushed up from the tall grass to see a man wearing a slouch hat and a Confederate jacket riding a horse. He traveled with purpose, not paying attention to the landscape as he focused his full attention on the path ahead.
Curtis didn’t move.
“Please tell me that’s a reenactor,” Maura said softly.
At her voice, the rider’s attention turned toward them, and the horse reacted. His eyes glimmered with an unnatural light. The animal kicked its back legs a little higher.
“Hey!” the rider yelled. His arm moved as if reaching for a gun.
Maura hesitated before she pointed at the man. A blast of magick shot from her hand to strike him from the horse. The man cried out in surprise before landing on the ground.
“What did you do?” Curtis scrambled to his feet.
Maura shot up and ran to see who she’d attacked. Curtis joined her, pushing ahead of her to block her with his shoulder.
“We’re in no danger.” Maura patted his arm as she sidestepped him. She kicked the rider lightly on the leg. “He’ll be fine. My magick padded his landing. He’ll wake up by morning thinking he’s hungover.”
“What is he?” Curtis leaned down to examine the man’s face.
Maura tapped his hat with her foot to get a better look. Green-tinted skin and deep pockmarks gave a hint to the identity. “Some kind of troll hybrid, maybe.”
Maura whistled and waved her hand to call back the horse magickally. “Come on. We’ll make better time with a ride.”
“What if someone saw you do that?”
“Calculated risk.” Maura greeted the horse, stroking its face gently. “There’s a good boy.”