“Tell me what happened to your leg, then.” His voice softened.
“It’s the same story. And it’s ugly.” She tapped her fingers on top of the mattress. “If I tell you, I want your word you won’t harm the Emersons, ever.”
“I said I’ll spare their lives, that’s all I’ll promise.”
“William, I—”
“This is already a concession, Raven. I hate the man.”
William’s tone indicated his intractability.
“Fine.” She sighed.
Raven closed her eyes, paused, and began her tale.
Chapter Thirty-nine
William was conscious of the tension in Raven’s body, but she accepted his touch. He tried not to be distracted by the warmth and softness of her form, or the delight he had in wrapping himself around her.
He’d never held a woman this way before. He’d never asked a woman to tell him her secrets or share her hidden pain.
Raven was different.
He tried very hard to focus on her words and not be distracted by her scent, which had almost cleared of the vampyre blood he’d given her.
“I am not a victim.” Her voice was low but steely. “I’m not telling you this story to inspire pity. I don’t want that.”
“Agreed.” He spoke near her ear.
She mumbled a curse and he almost regretted demanding her history from her. Almost, but not quite.
“Everything began when my father died. I was eleven and we were living in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. My father was a construction worker. One day, he had an accident and fell off a roof.”
Raven shuddered. “It was sudden, obviously. My mother went to pieces. We didn’t have extended family so it was just my mother, me, and my sister, Carolyn. We called her Cara. She was four.
“My mother didn’t function well without my father. He’d kept the house repaired and paid the bills and looked after the car. She didn’t know how to do any of those things. Or if she did, she was too depressed to do them.
“We were going to lose our house. We didn’t have money for food. So my mother got a job as a hostess in a local restaurant. That’s where she met him.” Raven shivered and William moved closer, wrapping himself around her like a shield.
“He was a real estate developer from Florida. He took a shine to my mother and asked her out. He didn’t mind that she had kids. In fact, he told us he loved kids.” Raven spat out the words.
“They started dating. Soon she was pregnant and they decided to get married and move us to Orlando, Florida, to live with him.
“Things were fine at the beginning. Mom was happy and pregnant. Cara was happy to have a new daddy.”
“And you, Cassita”—William’s voice was low—“were you happy?”
“I was relieved. When Dad died, I was left having to do things—buy food, try to cook, and remind my mother to pay the bills.
“After the first month or two in Orlando, I started noticing things about our stepfather. He barely spoke to me and when I tried to talk to him, he brushed me off.
“But he talked to Cara. And he stared at her, a lot. I didn’t like the way he looked at her.
“One night I came out of my room to go to the bathroom and I saw him going into her room. I followed.
“He gave me some bullshit excuse of checking on her and tried to send me back to bed. I wouldn’t go. I said I was scared of the dark and was going to sleep in her room.
“He argued with me but I wouldn’t move. He was angry with me but eventually he left. That’s when I realized something was very, very wrong.
“I tried to tell my mother, but she wouldn’t listen. She was in a happy haze preparing for the baby and she didn’t want to hear what I had to say. She didn’t want to admit that something was wrong with her new husband.
“I started sleeping on Cara’s floor every night. That made him furious.”
“Did he try to hurt you?”
“Not directly. He’d ground me for no reason or try to convince my mother I was stealing from him. They tried to lock me in my room a couple of times but I figured out how to pick the lock with a bobby pin.”
“What’s a bobby pin?”
“A metal thing women use in their hair sometimes,” Raven answered before forcing herself to continue. “I couldn’t sleep at night because I was worried about my sister. I’d go to bed early, but set my alarm so I could wake up after my mom went to bed.
“I started having trouble in school because I was falling asleep. The teachers wanted to know what was going on at home but my stepfather just told them I was sneaking out at night with my friends.
“One night, I fell asleep and didn’t hear my alarm. Or maybe he’d turned it off, I don’t know. I ran to Cara’s room and the door was locked from the inside. He’d switched the doorknob around.
“I went to my room and found a bobby pin and picked the lock. I opened the door and saw him sitting on her bed. He’d pulled Cara’s nightgown up around her neck. She wasn’t wearing any underwear.
“I started screaming. I picked up things and threw them at him. He pulled Cara’s nightgown down and came at me, telling me to shut up or I’d wake my mother.”
“Where was your mother?” William interrupted.
“In bed. Her door was closed but I know she heard me. She knew exactly what was going on but she was too fucking weak to stand up to him.”
William felt Raven’s arms tense as she balled her hands into fists.
“What happened next?”
“He hit me. I didn’t even feel it, I was just trying to get to my sister. I started crawling on the ground toward her but he grabbed me.
“I was kicking and screaming and he was yelling at me to shut up.
“My mother chose that moment to open her door and come down the hall. I was struggling with my stepfather and shouting at my mother about what he’d done to Cara. I wouldn’t shut up, so he pushed me down the stairs.”
William’s body went rigid.
She moved her head in his direction.
“Are you okay?”
“No.” He tried to keep his voice calm, for her sake. “What happened next?”
“I don’t remember. Actually, I don’t remember him pushing me down the stairs. I just remember fighting with him and then I remember falling.
“When I woke up, I was in the hospital. The doctors said I broke my leg and ankle. A social worker came to see me, and after I told her what happened, my sister was put in temporary foster care.”
William squeezed her lightly. “What’s foster care?”
“Um, when children are in danger, sometimes the state steps in and takes them away from their family. Foster families look after the children until they can be placed somewhere safe.”
“So they believed you.”
“They believed the evidence—Cara was hysterical and she wouldn’t talk about what happened. I was in the hospital and my stepfather was at the police station lying his ass off. He said he’d been drinking and it was a misunderstanding—that I tripped and fell.
“My mother knew. She knew and she did nothing,” Raven whispered. “I told her something was happening with Cara. She said I was lying because I was jealous of my stepfather’s attention; that I was trying to break up her marriage. To this day, she sides with him.”
Raven inhaled deeply.
“Just once, I wanted someone to defend me. By the time we were placed in foster care, it was too late.”
William’s hand moved to her injured leg, ghosting over her scar.
“This happened because you were protecting your sister?”
Raven flinched. “I didn’t protect her. He got to her while I was asleep. And I don’t think that was the first time.”
She stopped abruptly and William smelled the tang of salt. She was crying.
He buried his face in her hair, not knowing what to do.
“I failed her,” she cried. “She was only five. She was just a baby. And it’s my fault.”
> He grimaced. “How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
William withdrew so he could look at her. “What twelve-year-old girl would have the courage to physically confront a man? Precious few.”
Raven swiped at her eyes.
“I don’t see how it is your fault that a pedophile went after your sister. You’re the hero in this tale, Cassita.”
“It’s why I changed my name. I couldn’t hear the word Jane without hearing his voice.”
“So you chose Raven?”
“I wanted to prove to myself that I could be someone else. That I could be brave.”
William brought his lips to her ear. “You are brave, Raven. You are very brave. A slip of a girl, fighting to protect her sister. That’s heroic.”
“Hardly.”
“Joan of Arc had that kind of courage.”
Raven shifted to look up at him. “Did you know her?”
“No. I came to Florence in the late thirteenth century. I’ve been here since then.”
“You never leave?”
“Rarely. Vampyres in my position are expected to ask for permission before they travel across another prince’s territory. I find the process tiresome.”
He brushed a kiss against her hair. “What about your leg? Couldn’t they repair it?”
Raven turned on her side once again. “They tried but it didn’t heal properly. We were wards of the state at that point. I suppose if we’d had enough money for expensive surgeons and multiple surgeries they could have fixed it. But my stepfather was under a restraining order and he was the one with all the money. My mother was told she had to stay away from him.”
“And did she?”
“Long enough to get us back. When I was released from the hospital, Cara and I were placed with a foster family for several months. My stepfather was brought up on charges but he plea-bargained and received a suspended sentence.”
Raven exhaled loudly. “My mother lost the baby—probably because of the stress. I don’t know. Eventually she was settled in an apartment and started working. We went to live with her.
“We were there only a week when my stepfather showed up. They said that we were moving to California. She said we were going to be a family again.”
William growled, low, near her ear.
“That night, when we went to bed I grabbed my sister and we left. I stole my stepfather’s wallet and used the money to try to get back to our old foster home. But I wasn’t sure how to get there. We hopped a bus and ended up in a bad section of Orlando.
“We were at a bus stop trying to figure out how to get where we needed to go. My sister was crying and I was on crutches because my leg was still healing.
“A guy came up and started talking to us. He was creepy but we had nowhere else to go, we had to wait for the bus. He tried to persuade us to go with him, that he could help us. When I said no, he grabbed me. I fought him, hitting him with one of my crutches. He took my crutch and threw it away. I thought he was going to knock me out and kidnap us.
“Out of nowhere, a man and a woman appeared. They’d heard me yelling and came to see what was going on. The man who’d grabbed me ran off.
“The guy who came to our rescue was a priest. He asked me what had happened and I told him everything—about my stepfather, about my leg, about Cara . . .”
Raven cleared her throat. “He was the director of Covenant House, which is a shelter for teenagers. The woman was one of the shelter workers. They were making the rounds handing out food and trying to convince homeless kids to come to the shelter.
“They took us in and gave us a safe place to sleep. And they didn’t call my mother.”
William was puzzled. “Why would they?”
“Normally, you’d report missing children to their parents. But Father Kavanaugh kept us at Covenant House until he could figure out how to help us. In the morning, he called a friend of his who was a police officer and he came over.
“They called our social worker and we went back into foster care. It was over a year before we were returned to my mother. She gave up on my stepfather permanently and moved to St. Petersburg. Um, that’s a different city in Florida.”
“What happened to him?” William’s hand curled into a fist.
“I don’t know. He was in trouble with the police because he’d violated the terms of his sentence and the restraining order. He may have been sent to jail, I’m not sure. We didn’t talk about him after that.”
“And your mother?”
“I lived with her until I was old enough to go to college. I kept in touch with Father Kavanaugh. He paid for me to take art lessons when I was in high school. He helped me get a scholarship to Barry University. I left home and never went back.”
“What about your sister?”
Raven squirmed in his arms. “She stayed with my mom. When she was a teenager, she got mixed up with the wrong crowd. She was promiscuous. I worried it was because of what had happened to her.”
“And now?”
“She dropped out of high school for a while, but I persuaded her to go back. I was living in New York by then and going to graduate school. I think she realized that education was her ticket to a better kind of life.
“Father Kavanaugh helped her pay for college, and when she graduated she became a real estate agent. She’s successful now and has a nice boyfriend. They’re coming to visit me this summer.”
“Is she all right?”
“She doesn’t remember anything about that night and has basically accepted my mother’s version of events.” Raven shifted on the bed. “Maybe that’s better than being tormented by the past.”
“Are you tormented?”
“Every day.”
William was quiet for a very long time.
“A priest came to save you, yet you don’t believe in God?”
“What kind of God lets children be abused?” Raven’s voice was low and very fierce.
“You don’t need to tell me about the injustice of God. I agree. But his injustice doesn’t entail his nonexistence.”
“Maybe for you.”
William stroked her hair softly.
“You cried for your sister but not for yourself.”
Now he could smell the salt from fresh tears.
“She was a baby,” Raven managed to say. “It was my job to protect her.”
“It was your mother’s responsibility to protect you both. And she didn’t.” William tightened his arm across Raven’s middle. He sighed deeply, his tone tinged with regret. “I would not have asked you to talk about this if I’d known.”
“A lot of kids had it worse than me. That’s why I volunteer at the orphanage.”
William swore, the muscles of his body tensing.
“I blame my father,” she whispered. “I love him and I miss him, but if he’d been more careful, he wouldn’t have died. None of this would have happened.”
“Put the blame where it belongs, on your mother and stepfather.”
“I blame her, William, believe me. We don’t have a relationship because of this.”
“I have considerable power, Cassita, and more than a considerable fortune. I will use both to have your leg repaired medically, if that’s what you want. If you’d rather use alchemy, the best vintages of my cellar are yours.”
She curled into herself. “William, I don’t—I can’t—”
“Take time to consider it,” he interrupted. “You don’t need to decide tonight. But more than that, I will give you justice.”
“Justice?”
“You said no one defended you. I will.” His tone grew frightening.
“It’s too late.”
He rolled her to her back and leaned over her.
“It’s never too late for justice.”
Raven looked away.
“I will deal with everyone who ever harmed you. All you need to do is name them.”
“It won’t change the past.”
He placed his hand
on her cheek. “It will stop the torment.”
“Your justice involves death.”
“I don’t see why a death sentence for your mother and stepfather is problematic.”
“I don’t want you to kill my mother. Do you hear me?” She rolled away from him, exasperated. “Don’t you get tired of death?”
His gazed burned into her back. “I get tired of evil triumphing over goodness. I get tired of the injustice inherent in the universe and beings, human and otherwise, standing aside and doing nothing.”
Raven sighed.
“It must be sad to live forever,” she said after a while. “Everyone you cared about is dead.”
William shifted beside her. “I haven’t loved anyone since I was human.”
“Then I feel sorry for you. Love—even the love for family and friends—is a light that shines in the darkness. Without that light, I would have killed myself.”
William frowned. “This is a morbid conversation.”
Raven stifled a laugh. “Coming from a vampyre, that’s funny.”
She sobered and looked up at the canopy. “But it’s true, William. I feel sorry for you. I wouldn’t want to live forever—to carry this pain for eternity. I just want peace.
“No matter the justice you think you can get, I will always have this weight on my shoulders. I’m glad that someday I’ll go to sleep and never wake up.”
Raven curled her body into a ball, lying on her side, and tucked her hands under her pillow. Soon her breathing grew even and he knew she was asleep.
William was in desperate need of a few hours of meditation, simply to clear his mind and allow him to relax. But all he could think about was a twelve-year-old girl fighting a grown man to protect her sister and being thrown down a flight of stairs.
He could see her, the young girl with the black hair, lying at the foot of the staircase, her body battered and broken.
Cassita vulneratus.
Defensa.
He reached into his pocket and retrieved the gold bracelet that featured the symbol of Florence. He slipped it over her right wrist.
Everyone you cared about is dead.
“Not everyone,” he whispered, pulling her against his chest.