Dawn Of Hope: Charity Anthology Page 6

  “Mother?”

  The woman looked over her shoulder with a smile, but continued on her path.

  Ophelia was compelled to chase. Dread, fear, warning—all these things washed through her, but a small flicker of hope with a mind all its own pushed her onward. Twenty meters into the woods, she caught up with the woman and found her leaning against a tree, crying.

  “Why didn’t ye wait for me?”

  As Ophelia approached, her mother sobbed harder. With her heart in her throat, Ophelia gently rested her hand on her mother’s back. The woman turned around, grinning, laughing, and Ophelia stepped back. Her heart sank into her stomach, cold as ice and heavy with dread.

  A man’s voice cackled from her mother’s mouth.

  The woman’s thin nose stretched, and her lips peeled back to reveal pink gums and blocky teeth. Every feature contorted until there was no trace of her mother’s face remaining in the man’s features. His shoulders broadened, and Ophelia gaze locked on his as his height stretched to tower a good head above her own.

  “Robert.” Ophelia could barely choke out his name. In the shadows, his strawberry-blond hair was more auburn, but she was certain it was him.

  “Lovely to see you, too,” Lady Katrina’s brother replied. He grabbed her hand and kissed it roughly. “You’re just as foolish as your father.”

  Ophelia snapped her hand back. “What do ye know about my father?”

  Robert laughed. “Come now. Isn’t the ‘what’ the whole reason you came to work for my sister in the first place? I’ll save you the effort, fair Ophelia. There’s nothing more to find.”

  “Ye killed ‘er.”

  “The honor was not mine.” Robert’s grin stretched tighter. “Your father, however, proved to be quite the problem following her death. You really should have learned something from him. It’s best to mind your own business.”

  “And what business is my family to ye?”

  “Your mother was an abomination,” said the man who had traveled all the way here in the time only an Ankou could have. A man who then shifted before Ophelia’s very eyes. Did that not make him a dual-breed himself?

  “Curious choice of words,” Ophelia said, her voice shaking. “Ye are every bit a mutt as she.”

  His lips pursed. His brow furled over glowering eyes. “I agree with the Maltorim’s orders. The impure are the real danger, to the humans and to the elemental races.”

  The boiling in her stomach rose to her chest. She chewed on her cheek and swallowed hard to hold her anger down.

  “If there is blame to place, it’s with the man who brought you here.” Robert flicked a blade from its sheath in his pocket. The sun glinted off the steel as he shuffled toward her. “I would have liked to keep you, of course, but I must honor my duties.”

  “And she must honor hers.” The voice came from behind Ophelia, sharp and yet feminine.

  Lenore.

  In one swift blurring arch of color, Lenore lunged at Robert and pinned him to the ground, digging her nails into his wrists until he dropped the blade. But Robert shifted again, his form growing too large for Lenore to keep a good grip. His clothes tore and fell from his body. Stripes ripped across his back, arms, and legs, and hair burst through the skin on his face. His skull and jaw distorted, his features more feline than man.

  A tiger now stood before Ophelia and Lenore, teeth bared. A low growl rumbled from his chest as he backed away, fear flickering in his eyes before he turned and bounded off through the woods.

  Gone. Just like that. She peered around, expecting to see a flash of him the underbrush or bounding toward them once again.

  Lenore turned toward Ophelia, her fangs still fully extended, puffing out her mouth. “You all right?”

  “Yes.” Ophelia couldn’t stop shaking. A heavy breeze rushed a fresh waft of lemon and olive toward her, and she nearly gagged on the scent as she tried to fight back her tears. “No. I—I don’t know.”

  The young Cruor’s fangs retracted with a snap. “He’s been injured. He won’t fight me like that, not unless he’s a damn fool.”

  “Sure is,” Ophelia muttered, and Lenore laughed.

  The humor didn’t reach Ophelia though. She couldn’t shake the feeling he was still watching, waiting for an opportunity to attack. Lenore, however, seemed at ease.

  “He hates himself, you know.” Her expression relaxed into something more human. “He couldn’t control his shifting. He couldn’t fight becoming something he didn’t wish to be.”

  “That’s why ‘e ran off?” Ophelia asked. “Instead of . . . of . . . ”

  “Are you disappointed?” Lenore arched her eyebrow, smirking. How could she be so candid at a time like this? She nodded toward the path. “Come. Let’s get you back to the cabin.”

  Once Ophelia was certain they were safe, new concerns tumbled into her mind. Ethan has been right. It hadn’t been her mother. How had Ophelia been fooled, but Ethan had known? And if Robert was one of the Strigoi, how many secrets had her mother kept?

  Her mother had always said that the Strigoi were honorable, but clearly Robert was not. Had her mother told her those stories in hopes of preparing Ophelia, should she ever be pulled into this world? If so, why hadn’t she been completely forthright?

  Perhaps Mother had hoped it would never really come to this.

  Now she would never know, and she needed to accept it was no longer safe for her to entertain her childish fantasies of reuniting with her mother. Her mother gone. Truly and forever.

  Ophelia had always thought accepting her mother’s death would end all purpose in her life. That, without her mother, there would be nothing worth living for. Ethan changed all that. Ophelia would go through with the transformation and live her life with this new purpose of helping some girl she didn’t know. She would do it in memory of those she had loved—those who had been stolen from this world far too soon.

  Damascus, 1808

  After promising to return in the evening to prepare for Ophelia’s transformation, Lenore left for the day. When the cabin door fell shut behind the Cruor, Ophelia turned to Ethan, her hurt and anger rushing through her in a violent upsurge.

  “Why?” She lunged toward him and pounded her fist against his chest. “Why didn’t ye tell me it was him?”

  He grabbed her wrist and pulled her closer. Ophelia still pushed, wishing to get away from him and to hurt him at the same time.

  “Please, Ophelia,” Ethan whispered, and she froze at the pained tone in his voice. His eyes were moist and his expressed strained. “I wanted to come for you.”

  Wanted to? She shook her head. No words were worthy of the moment. All she could do was stand there, searching his eyes for answers to the questions that swarmed through her mind.

  Ophelia swallowed around the tightness in her throat. The hurt and anger threatened to rush back. “Go on.”

  “I told you not to go,” he said. “If I’d stopped you from going, would you have ever forgiven me? Would you have ever trusted me enough to continue with what needed to be done?”

  She bit her lip, but there was nothing she could say. She couldn’t trust him any more for allowing her to leave than she would have if he’d stopped her from leaving. And she couldn’t trust herself. She’d known, somewhere deep down, that her mother was dead. She’d known, yet she’d allowed herself to be fooled, all because of her childish desire to believe her mother was still alive.

  Her heart longed to forgive him, but she could not push aside the feelings of abandonment. Her parents had kept the truth from her, and it left her helpless. How could Ethan do the same? Why hadn’t he warned her of these things sooner?

  “Ye could have tried ‘arder to stop me.”

  “How?” His fists clenched at his side. “By grabbing you and dragging you back inside?”

  She shook her head, and unease twisted in her stomach. Was he right—that she would not have listened to him anyway?

  “It would have been worth it,” Ethan said, his vo
ice dropping into tones of defeat. “The exposure to the sun. But our world is one of power and deceit. You needed to see for yourself. I allowed it this time, knowing I could soon have Lenore ready to come to your rescue. Or you could have learned that another time, in a more life-threatening situation where no one would have been around to help you.”

  The words, a sharp reminder of what her future held, cut into her heart. She leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. Ethan joined her.

  “The Strigoi,” Ethan continued, “can track scents easily. Robert knew yours well because you two have met. He did not know the other scent was mine. If I’d been seen, too much would have been revealed. All of our efforts would have been for naught.”

  “Robert . . . followed my scent?” Ophelia asked. “All this way? But—”

  “He appeared as your mother . . . something else he shouldn’t be able to do. Clearly he has more ties than the average Strigoi. Maltorim ties.”

  She stared at the floor, trying to absorb all the implications.

  Ethan lifted her chin, turning her face toward him. He swept away a dark lock of hair away from her cheek.

  “If I don’t do as I’m called, everyone will die. Including you . . . the woman I . . . the one . . . ” He sighed and closed his eyes. “I don’t deserve your forgi—”

  She pressed her fingers to his lips, silencing him. A new depth reflected in his brown eyes, a darkness along the edges of his pupils. The golden flecks brightened them. “It’s mine to give.”

  He kissed her then, his hand slipping along her jaw to cup her face.

  “I’m glad you weren’t harmed,” he mumbled against her lips before closing his mouth over hers again.

  Ethan’s lips tasted of sugar and cloves, and Ophelia inhaled his heady aroma as she kissed him. Her stomach flopped and her mind clouded. In that moment, there was only Ethan, the gentle caress of his tongue, and the sense of all being right as she kissed him back, tentatively at first, and then with more abandon.

  When he pulled back, Ophelia kept her eyes closed. She wasn’t sure she could look at him.

  “I love you, Ophelia. I should not, but I do. Though we can never be together, I cannot live out the rest of my eternity without you knowing that. I am sorry, truly, that I did not stop you from going after Robert.”

  God help her, she loved him, too, but their time together would soon end. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words.

  “Ye could have come after me,” Ophelia said, though she knew that wasn’t true.

  “I needed to stay with Lenore while she finished her transformation. That opportunity might not have presented itself again. Perhaps . . . perhaps if I didn’t think I could help Lenore quickly enough, I would have gone after you myself.”

  When Ophelia said nothing, he stepped away from her. “Being around you—this has challenged everything I believed I was confident in. If only you realized how easily you could break my resolve . . . .”

  “I wouldn’t,” she replied quietly.

  “I know,” Ethan said. “That only makes this harder.”

  Ophelia couldn’t take any more of the conversation. She excused herself to wash up and prepare dinner, and, after a quiet meal, she joined Ethan by the fire.

  He sat in his chair; she, on the floor by his feet. She rested her head against his thigh to stare at the crackle of the fireplace flames. His fingers swirled along her scalp, and she closed her eyes, breathing in the cabin air that had filled with the warmth of charred wood despite the draft of the chill night breeze.

  “How could Robert have looked just like my mother?”

  “There is something happening within the Maltorim. As my guardian told me, it could be years—centuries perhaps—before anything comes of it. What that is, exactly, is part of your calling, not mine.”

  “The ritual with Lenore . . . Something went wrong, didn’t it?”

  “The ritual went as planned.”

  “And the raven?”

  “There was no raven, Ophelia. There are Morts in the area. They won’t come near you when you are with me, but they can still disillusion you. Further, Robert had you under his influence. That was the main source of your confusion, the main reason your actions defied your better senses. Now that you understand, it should not happen again.”

  Ophelia swallowed. “So now what?”

  “Lenore will return. My worry is whether you are ready for what comes next. You need to be, and yet, we cannot change that you are not.”

  Kneeling up, Ophelia cupped her hands on the either side of Ethan’s face. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”

  He grasped one of her wrists. “The problem is you don’t trust yourself.”

  How could she? She’d been right about Robert, but how many things had she been wrong about? Hadn’t she believed her mother’s stories were only fairytales? Or was there some deeper part of her that had always known better? And yet, the night her father had died, she’d not sensed anything. Shouldn’t she have felt something—known somehow that he was in danger?

  Ethan stood and pulled Ophelia to her feet. With his hands resting on her hips, he took in a deep breath and closed his eyes for a long moment.

  When he opened them, he dropped his hands away and walked over to sit on the cot. Ophelia waited, hoping for him to say something more, to make sense of the storm raging within her.

  “My entire family was murdered,” he said. He stared down at his hands. “I was too quick to trust the wrong person. To trust them instead of my own instincts.”

  Her heart thumped at the sentiment. She wanted to ask more, yet she could not bear to carry his heartache with her own. “Am I wrong to trust ye?”

  “What would it mean for me to say no? If I am not worthy of trust, my answer is meaningless.”

  Ophelia padded closer. She touched his hair and smiled softly. “Not to me.”

  Ethan looked up. His hand found hers, and the warmth of his fingers against her palm, his fingertips against her wrist, sent a tingling sensation through her entire body. He eased her closer until she stood between his knees, and with his other hand, he pulled her body down to his.

  In the past, she would have stopped. She would not have allowed herself to have these feelings in the first place. She’d already lost everyone who ever meant anything to her, and she didn’t need to set herself up for that kind of pain again. But Ethan’s touch comforted her in this new, strange life.

  “It is an insult to your worth for me to love you,” he said, “but I cannot change the feelings you’ve ignited in me.”

  She leaned forward, toppling him back against the cot, and pressed her lips to his. He wrapped his arms around her and rolled her onto her back, tracing his kisses from her lips, down her jaw line, and to her collarbone.

  As he shifted his weight up to kiss her again, his pelvis pressed closer to her own, and the heat between her thighs pulsed. He closed his lips over hers, and his tongue explored her mouth, touched her teeth, slid against her own tongue. His hand glided soothingly over the serpent’s mark, and his fingers wrapped around the hair at the nape of her neck. Ophelia kissed him back heatedly, her hands moving along the strong planes of his back.

  Ethan broke the kiss. He stared into her eyes, searching, tension forming in his jaw and a line creasing between his eyebrows. He pulled away and sat on the edge of the bed, and the mattress shifted, the wool blanket hushing as it rubbed against the sheets.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  Ophelia sat up and touched his shoulder. “Ye ‘ave no reason to be.”

  He walked over to the fire, leaving Ophelia alone on the bed with an aching worry in her chest.

  “Are ye all right?”

  He chuckled sadly, shaking his head. “More than all right. But once you are inside the Maltorim, that will be our end.”

  Ophelia took a steadying breath and stared down at her hands. “Say I don’t join the Maltorim?”

  “That mark will kill you if you don’t turn
. And if you stay with me, we’ll be hunted by other Guardians until you are captured and set right on your path. If I fail to see you to your calling, they will only move me to start fresh. Another girl, another place.”

  “So this is it? I can’t ‘ave a life of my own?”

  “You are free to do as you wish, but I cannot be the reason you deny your calling. I won’t.”

  “I understand—”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “They can make their orders, but the decision would still belong to ye.”

  The corner of Ethan’s lips turned up, as though to smile, but the expression was more of a grimace. “Everything isn’t a choice. I accepted my calling long ago, and now I must go where they send me.”

  “Ye can’t just say no?”

  “It is for life. I have always gone willingly, but should they choose, they can move me where they need me, and there will be nothing I can do to stop it.”

  “That’s not right. Ye should always have a choice.”

  “Sometimes we meet challenges. Other times we dodge consequences.”

  “We’re being forced into this. There is nothing ye can say to change that.”

  “Then you plan to go through with your calling?”

  Ophelia sighed, though it didn’t release the weight on her chest; the confusion just kept crashing through her.

  “What choice do I ‘ave?” she asked wearily.

  She wasn’t sure where she stood anymore. What kind of ‘choice’ was this? Either she would sacrifice her own life to save humanity, or she would hold selfishly to the things she wanted in exchange for a life on the run. A life knowing her selfish choices had doomed herself and everyone else. Yes, her father had been right when he’d said she could never make up her mind . . . but this was more than that.

  That night, as Ophelia closed her eyes and began to drift to sleep, she heard Ethan whisper, “I tried to go after you, Ophelia. I tried.”

  But she had not been meant to hear, and so she said nothing, kept her eyes closed, and pretended she was already asleep.

  Damascus, 1808