Part 25 (1/2)
Mama jerked forward, her eyes suddenly intense. ”And what did you say?”
”No, of course.”
Mama's hyper-focused gaze continued unabated, as if she suspected Ellie of holding back details. ”Was that the end of it?”
Ellie shrugged. ”More or less. Oh, and he talked about some estate burning to the ground. A castle ... Foulis, I believe.”
”What? No. It can't be!” Mother clutched the armrests with trembling hands and stared at Ellie with too-wide eyes. ”Why would they ... When? How? Are there survivors?”
”You ...” Unsettled, Ellie's stomach began to churn with a sick feeling that had nothing to do with stale tea. ”You've been to Scotland, haven't you?”
Mama's eyes glazed. ”I-”
Ellie put down her cup hard enough to crack the china saucer. ”You've been to Castle Foulis. Haven't you?!”
Mama gave her head a violent shake. ”I-”
Ellie's eyes narrowed. ”If you lie to me, Mother, I shall never forgive you.”
Mama's chin lifted in her customary hauteur, then her face crumbled into a wholly unfamiliar expression of guilt and despair. Nothing could have frightened Ellie worse.
”I certainly hope that is untrue,” Mama said quietly, ”for I have told you many lies in order to keep you safe.”
Frowning, Ellie leaned forward. ”Safe from what?”
”You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”
The tips of Ellie's fingers traced the twin welts beneath the lace of her bodice. ”Try me.”
Her mother slumped against her armrest, the sorrow in her eyes now tempered by a faraway look of remembrance. ”Scotland... is very beautiful and very old. Memories are pa.s.sed down through the generations, and magic is considered commonplace.” She s.h.i.+fted her gaze to the thick curtains covering the window. ”There are even those who still believe the legends of the vampires of yore... .”
”It's no myth,” Ellie muttered behind her teacup. Her mother shot up from the chaise. Out of surprise, Ellie did the same.
”Then you know?” Her mother's voice cracked on the final word.
More confused than ever, Ellie ran the tip of her tongue over her sore gums before replying. ”I am irrevocably convinced, although I admit to not understanding this conversation in the least.”
”Oh, Elspeth.” With the tea tray still on the table between them, Mama reached over to briefly lay a hand on Ellie's cheek. ”I owe you an apology. And an answer to all your questions. I had no idea you suspected ... that you knew ...”
Ellie stopped ma.s.saging her sore gums as trepidation set in. Whatever she thought she knew was merely the tip of an iceberg she hadn't even known existed. The sick feeling in her stomach increased sevenfold. ”Perhaps you should start at the beginning?”
”The beginning?” Mama's laugh was high-pitched and humorless. ”A few hundred years are far too many to recount in one sitting. Suffice it to say, I barely recall who I was before I became what I am now. I lived ... if not happily, then at least contentedly under clan rule until early last century, when I met your father. He was so sweet, so-”
Ellie shook her head to clear the cobwebs from her ears. ”Beg pardon, I thought you said ... early last century?”
Mother nodded abstractedly. ”It was forbidden, of course, under penalty of death ... but a woman in love cannot refuse the call, even if she has the ill fortune of being in love with a human. And an Englishman, at that. He was-”
”You're saying ... you're a vampire?” Ellie blurted as the pieces fell into place. Her flesh grew cold at the obviousness of the truth, now that her empirical mind could no longer disbelieve the signs. Her legs suddenly unsteady, she fell back to the chaise as if awakening from a stupor. ”You are!”
Mother perched back on the edge of her seat, her gestures nervous, her eyes guilty. ”Was that not what we were discussing?”
Ellie's sudden laugh bordered on hysteria. ”No, not at all, but pray continue. It seems I need to know your story in order to better understand mine.”
Watching her daughter uncertainly, Mama stammered at first, then let loose with a torrent of words as if a dam had broken free.
Ellie, on the other hand, could only listen and stare, unable to make a sound. Anger, disbelief, and wonder all crashed together as she tried to a.s.similate the flood of unforeseeable information and unbelievable twists to what she thought she knew about her own life.
Her mother was a vampire.
She'd been reborn in Castle Foulis, centuries ago, where she'd lived amongst dozens more of her kind. There was a clan. A family. A government.
Her mother was a runaway.
Outside of master-and-servant or hunter-and-prey, relations.h.i.+ps with humans were verboten. s.e.xual relations were forbidden above all things, even though mixed-blood procreation was believed to be a myth. A mixed-blood relations.h.i.+p was repulsive and offensive in and of itself. Therefore, the only way for her mother to be with the human man she loved was to denounce everything that she knew and run.
They were being hunted.
If breaking the cultural mores of her brethren weren't bad enough, Mama had also broken a betrothal contract. The vampires of Foulis Castle had agreed to sacrifice their most beloved maiden to the leader of the Pitreavie as a token of peace to end centuries of territorial disputes. Mama had been commanded to submit to the Elders' bidding. But her heart was not theirs to rule.
They were in danger.
Searchers had been sent after Mama to bring her to justice over her transgression, but Ellie was the greater reason her parents had stayed hidden. Even in legends, half-human offspring were considered an abomination. Mama would be sent to the Pitreavie clan or to the castle dungeon. But discovery of the secret behind her daughter's existence would be Ellie's death warrant.
They were rich-but it did not help.
Mama had once been a high-ranking member of her society. She had a hidden cache of precious jewels that had been given to her by family and suitors. But despite its value, the jewelry could neither be worn nor sold because its very singularity meant it could be easily traced. Therefore, every time Mama had been forced to sell a piece for survival money, they'd had to quit town that night and travel as far as they could, before news of the sale had an opportunity to spread.
Ellie's father hadn't died before her birth, after all.
His name was Nigel. He'd been married to her mother for thirty years before Ellie was born, and died of old age decades later ... while his daughter was barely out of leading strings.
”We thought you were human,” Mama explained softly. ”He knew what I was, and still we dared to hope. You weren't developing like other children, and I talked myself into believing you were a late bloomer ... until even I couldn't deny the truth. You didn't grow at the normal pace and ceased aging altogether by the time you gained your current appearance.”
Ellie stared at her mother in both hurt and horror. ”You knew I was a vampire and didn't think it important enough to mention?”
”It came up,” her mother admitted. ”Frequently. But as long as you were more human than not, you were still susceptible to a thought obfuscation technique we refer to as Compulsion. Whenever you asked dangerous questions, I simply Compelled you to forget.”
”You 'simply'-”
”For your own safety, Elspeth! What would you have had me do?”
”Tell the truth, for starters!” The teacup tumbled from Ellie's fingers as the full impact of her mother's words. .h.i.t her. No wonder she had so many holes in her memory! Ellie's head swam as an ugly suspicion sucked the air from the room. ”Did you Compel me to forget my own father?”
Her mother reached out a hand. ”You would never have believed you were human if you could remember decades pa.s.sing whilst you were still a tot. I had no choice but to-”
”No choice?” Ellie repeated, choking on the words. She sprang to her feet. ”You gave me no choice!”