Destiny Calls

  “Whoa,” Vito said as he stood beside her. Then, in a more serious voice, he pointed and said, “Destiny, we don’t belong here. Look.”

  Like little specks of blue, green, and mauve, she watched as a gaggle of Amish children chased one another around a maypole just outside of a small schoolhouse with a tiny copper bell on top. Each little soul was cloaked in black, and the boys wore wide brimmed hats, looking like little men with the cheeks of cherubs.

  Destiny took a breath and moved to step over the invisible boundary protecting this land just as Vito stopped her. “Destiny, wait. You can’t trespass here. It’s private. It isn’t right.”

  She felt the same reluctance he spoke of. This land was isolated, private. There was something sacred about this place. She didn’t know much about the Amish, although she had pretty much grown up less than a hundred miles from the Dutch parts of Pennsylvania.

  What she did know was that they were somehow protected by law in a way that honored their privacy and kept them apart from the modern world, and their existence was entrenched in strong religious values, one of those fundamentally valued elements being their isolated privacy. She didn’t know if they could vote, but she knew they lived somehow outside of the bounds of normal society in almost all matters. It made her feel tainted and inferior as if her proximity to their simplicity showed how pure they were and how damaged the rest of the world was becoming.

  Amish didn’t use electricity and never mingled with modern-day people. She had seen some around some of the older towns of Lancaster, but they were merely picking up supplies to take back to their farms. They didn’t drive cars and dressed uniformly in stiff fabrics and approved colors. They were devout in their beliefs, and Destiny wasn’t exactly sure what their beliefs were, but they believed they deserved their privacy and people had no right to impose on their way of living, but still, she couldn’t deny herself this.

  “I need to do this, Vito.”

  “Why?”

  She sighed. Today had been nothing but peculiar, and she really didn’t want to get him all riled up again. “Something happened to me,” she confessed. “I’m not sure what, but I know something happened when I was gone. I feel it. I can’t remember things, and I know I should.”

  She shook her head. She didn’t understand how to explain this without sounding crazy. “I remember being at some sort of convent or whatever it was, but I don’t remember getting home or what the officer who escorted me looked like. Why? That doesn’t make sense. I can’t even really remember what Sister Larissa looked like other than the impression that she was too beautiful to be a nun. I know I was somewhat recovered when I was in the company of the nun, so why wouldn’t I remember things that happened after that?”

  “Are you saying you think you were drugged or something?”

  “I don’t know. And if I hit my head so hard that I lost some of my memory, then why don’t I’ve a bump? I didn’t want to tell you this, but there were other things I noticed since getting home that weren’t right.”

  “Other things like what?”

  She felt the blood rush to her face. “I woke up in a man’s shirt, and my panties were missing.”

  “What?”

  “And my back is all scratched up.”

  “What the fuck, D! Why didn’t you tell that to the cops?”

  “Because I don’t think anything…bad happened, I just think it’s weird that my clothes were different. I don’t know. Something doesn’t make sense, and I need to figure it out. Jim Thorpe’s only about twenty or thirty miles from here, and for some reason this place seems really familiar. I don’t want to offend anyone, but I need to find someone and ask them if there’s a convent around here or at least see if anything else triggers a memory. I mean, they’re just people under those Amish clothes.”

  He sighed. “I really don’t feel right about this. The Amish aren’t like us. They won’t like two strangers coming onto their land.”

  “How do you know? They’re supposed to be Christians.”

  “Fine, but we’re in and out. I don’t want to get ourselves hauled off in some horse-drawn paddy wagon because we broke some sort of sacred Mennonite law.”

  She grinned. “Mennonites are different. These look like old school Amish. Just stick with me and don’t say anything, and we shouldn’t have any trouble.”

  They walked mostly in silence. The novelty of being so close to certain antiquated things rendered them speechless. Destiny was aware that they had been spotted. The closer they drew to Amish men, women, and children, the more they disappeared. It reminded her of the first time Dorothy arrived in Oz and all the munchkins slipped into the gardens and shut up the shutters upon the tiny houses.

  Vito pointed out an impressive home that was grander than all the rest and suggested they knock there. They climbed the great stairs of the porch, and before they could knock on the two tall wooden doors, one of them opened. They had definitely been spotted.

  A man in a blue shirt with black suspenders greeted them. He was gorgeous and didn’t have a beard. Destiny wondered if that meant he was single. “Goedemiddag,” he said. “May I help you?”

  Destiny cleared her throat. The man was looking at Vito and not at her, but she didn’t want Vito to do any talking. “Hi. We’re from out of town, and were wondering if there was someone here we could speak with. I’ve some questions about your farm.”

  “Are you merchants? If you’re looking for goods, they’re delivered into town weekly.”

  “Uh, no, we aren’t buying or selling anything. I just have some questions. Is there someone in charge we could speak to?”

  The man opened his mouth to say something, but paused as a soft feminine voice spoke behind him. “David, who is there?”

  A beautiful Amish woman in a simple pale green dress came to the door. As soon as they saw her, both Destiny and her brother let out a hiss. Excruciating pain exploded in her skull as though someone had tied a vise on her brain and was cranking it tighter and tighter. Vito grabbed hold of the doorframe, and Destiny’s hands gripped her aching head as she doubled over.

  The woman gasped and then instructed the man to go get someone. Destiny couldn’t see as her eyes squeezed shut at the pain stabbing through her head. Gentle hands guided her to the ground and helped her rest on her side. The woman was distraught and oddly, in all her concerned chattering, Destiny thought she heard her call her brother by name.

  A deep gruff voice sounded in the distance and then heavy footfalls. A sharp stabbing sound filled her head, and she was unable to focus on words anymore as the pain became too great. She called for her brother just as everything went dark.

  Chapter 11

  Cain took the pliers Cybil handed him and tightened the last wire on the bull pen. That should keep the beast in for a while. Of all their bulls, this one was the least tame. He had plowed into practically every foot of fencing along the corral tangling the lines into a sure mess over the past few months. There were certain animals that were just too angry to domesticate or be remotely gentle with, and this bull that they called Clive was such a beast.

  The elders were considering putting the brute down, but Cain shared a sort of kinship to the old bull, a sort of sympathy for his life set apart from the more gentle creatures of the farm. The animal huffed and stomped at the ground angrily as if he were contemplating ramming into them for trespassing too close to his domain.

  “Prickly old fellow. There, that should hold him,” he said as he handed the pliers back to his little helper.

  Cybil admired his work and signed to him. He had spent the morning reading up on sign language and understood the basics, but was nowhere near as fluent as she. When he shrugged she pointed to a scrape on his hand. He looked at the wound. It would be gone in a matter of minutes. He hid his hand in his pocket until then, hoping she would forget about it.

  “Come on. Let’s head back to the house and see if Gracie is finished making those pies she was working on.”


  As they gathered their items, a dog barked in the distance. Cain remembered the sign for dog. He pointed to himself then his ear then clicked his fingers and patted his hip. “I hear a dog.”

  Cybil smiled at his progress then clicked her fingers and made the sign for S.

  “Is that how you say Shimmers?” he asked, and she nodded. Shimmers, the mangy old dog that had come to the farm with Dane and Cybil, raced up the hill toward them. Cain spotted Dane, Cybil’s older brother following quickly in the dog’s wake.

  “Cain,” he shouted, jogging toward them. “David delivered a message from the bishop. He wants you to go to the safe house immediately.”

  Bishop King was the last man Cain wanted to see. He had wondered how the dynamic of their family would change with Larissa’s new marriage. Essentially, his quiet wallflower of a sister was now married to the most powerful immortal on the farm. He thought the marriage might endear the bishop to the family, which it indeed seemed to be doing, yet Cain still felt the strain of past conflicts weighing on his and Eleazar’s acquaintance.

  The bishop didn’t much like him, which was fine. Cain didn’t much care for the bishop. It was hard to forgive a man who once held your life in his hands with clear disregard for its value. Softer sides of Bishop King showed when Larissa was near, but when Cain dealt with him all those signs of kindness disappeared to make room for his overbearing male ego.

  They were each strong-willed males, both stubborn and committed to their own sense of rightness. The problem was, there was the Bishop’s way and the wrong way. Apparently Cain’s way wasn’t in accordance with Eleazar’s. So many of The Order’s laws grated on Cain. The fact that Larissa, before her calling to the bishop, had spent a year of her life trapped under the control of a man who held more respect for his horse than his wife was only one example of how stilted things on the farm could become.

  Cain didn’t want to marry a female who could someday be called to another. He had given Anna to Adam. That only left the mortal population for him to choose from, yet if he found a mortal bride, he would never be permitted to bring her back to the farm because their laws clearly stated that that type of exposure with the mortal world was forbidden. These were the same laws that declared there was only one mate for every immortal, yet Cain’s link to Anna had proven that longstanding belief wrong. However, no one wanted to hear his opinion. He was only one exception to an otherwise universal law. It was easier for the elders to simply ignore his pleas for amending certain outdated standards.

  He followed Dane and Cybil back to his grandparents’ house and saw them safely inside before dropping his tools in the barn and heading toward the safe house to find out what his pompous brother-in-law wanted.

  His mind continued to focus on his future, an issue he had tried to avoid thinking on since his brother’s marriage to Annalise. He had found the task of hunting for his uncle a good distraction, but he could no longer do that without endangering those he loved. So now he was trapped back on this oppressive farm where he had no purpose but to fix fences and shovel dung.

  He should just leave once and for all. He could live among the English. There were plenty of appeals. Technology didn’t intimidate him like it did many of the others. However, there was the complication of survival.

  On a farm there were plenty of animals to feed from and acres of privacy to do so. In the outside world he would be forced to feed from humans, which was frowned upon and sometimes risky. Mortals carried invisible ailments that could weaken an immortal. During the plague many immortals had died from feeding off the hoof of failing donors. A source should be healthy and thriving, but mortal infections were sometimes invisible and deadly.

  Cain usually drank from his lovers, but if he were to someday take a wife, he would no longer be able to do so. He could feed from her, but the human body was weak and could only take so much. And then there was the idea of outliving his spouse. He sometimes wondered if Adam truly understood how much Cain had sacrificed for him.

  Did Adam ever consider how easy his life was in contrast to his twin’s? Just as the day before, Cain had no answers for where he was meant to be or what kind of destiny God had planned for him. Too often he felt as if he were the butt of some cruel, twisted joke.

  He climbed the pretentious steps to the Bishop’s front door, and David greeted him.

  “Is he in his office?”

  “Yes. He is expecting you,” the man said as Cain passed.

  Cain walked down the long corridor that led to the Council Hall and the bishop’s office. As he knocked and let himself into the bishop’s chambers, he recognized his sister’s willowy form perched on the chair across from her husband’s desk.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  The bishop looked up at him, tension riding his features and waved to a chair. “No, please take a seat.”

  Cain sat beside his sister and stilled when he noticed the stiff set of her spine and the trails of tears upon her cheeks. He gave the bishop a hard look, “What is this about?”

  “There seems to have been a problem.”

  “I can see that,” he said curtly. “Mind telling me why my sister is distraught?”

  “She isn’t distraught. She’s merely upset with me.”

  “Do not pretend I do not kenn my sister. She’s distraught.” Ignoring the bishop, he turned and took Larissa’s hand. “What is it? What’s happened? Is the baby okay?”

  She didn’t answer. A tear slipped past her lashes, and she lowered her chin. The bishop continued. “Your friend, the reporter, it seems she knew more than she led you to believe.”

  “What are you speaking of?”

  “She is acquainted with an old friend of your sister’s.”

  Cain looked at Larissa who still wouldn’t look at him and then scowled back at the bishop. “What have you done?”

  “I have done nothing outside of protecting our order. Larissa is just upset, and she will recover once she understands that my actions are necessary and this is a perfect example of why it isn’t safe to leave the farm. When Larissa was away this winter, she held an English job. I didn’t, nor will I ever, approve of such a position, but that’s beside the point. While working there she became acquainted”—he practically spat the word as if it tasted bitter on his tongue—“with a male by the name of Vito.”

  Cain’s head perked up. Vito was the name of Destiny’s brother.

  “I see you know of this male.”

  “He’s the brother she was trying to reach,” Cain said.

  “Yes, well, apparently this Vito is aware that what’s in the woods isn’t human.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I read the thought right from his mind. The mortal is certain the beast in the woods is”—he paused, jaw ticking with irritation—“vampyre.”

  “Are you saying Destiny faked having her memories covered and told her brother what she saw? And how did you learn this?”

  “I do not believe the girl faked her ignorance. She still seems to be confused about her time here.”

  “Still?”

  “Yes. She’s back.”

  “What? How?”

  “That, Brother Cain, is what I would like to know. You told me she was unconscious when you brought her here. She was under compulsion on her way out. Yet somehow, after sending her home last night, she has returned today.”

  “Where is she?”

  “That isn’t the issue at the moment.”

  The hell it wasn’t. Cain stood, and Larissa’s head jerked up. She looked at him through pleading, glassy eyes. “Where are they?” Cain barked.

  “Sit down, you fool,” the bishop growled. “You and your bleeding heart have caused enough trouble—”

  “Either you tell me where they are or I tear this place apart brick by brick.”

  The bishop growled at him in challenge, and then Larissa softly said, “They’re in the den under compulsion.”

  “Larissa!”

  “That’s enough,
Eleazar,” his sister snapped back with the fierceness of a small dog that had been teased too far. “Vito was good to me. He was my friend. You may have had your way before, but I refuse to sit here while you treat him like nothing more than chattel. I’m sorry if you cannot abide the thought of another man kissing me. It was before we were mated, and I needed to feed. Now stop this nonsense right now or so help me I will bring you to your knees with my wrath. Do not push me further than my pride can tolerate.”

  Cain stood immobile, his eyes darting from the stern set of his sister’s jaw to the rage sparking in the bishop’s eyes. Was that caution he saw in the old boy’s face? Fear of Larissa? Interesting.

  “How do you expect to protect him when the moment you speak to him you will only be planting more memories that need to be removed, Larissa?” the bishop asked calmly, but Cain could scent his territorial essence surrounding his sister. The bishop was jealous.

  “If he already knows of our existence, you cannot possibly remove all of his memories.”

  “I didn’t say he knows what we are. I said he believes Isaiah to be one of us.”

  “Exactly. He isn’t stupid. It isn’t right to tamper with his mind.”

  “It is for the protection of The Order.”

  “Well, he’s my friend, and I plan to protect him. You had better figure out how far you intend to take your loyalties because if you unnecessarily harm him, I won’t forgive you and you will find yourself with nothing but those stubborn loyalties to keep you warm at night.”

  Having heard enough, Cain announced, “While you two sort this out, I’m going to check on our guests.” With that he turned to leave.

  As he pushed the pocket doors to the den aside, he prepared for the onslaught of Destiny’s questions. He was actually a little excited to see the little viper again. She had a way of making common situations a bit more entertaining. The image that greeted him, however, was not at all what he expected. Nor was the impact it had on him.