Tempt

  “I need information. I need to hear about my mother, the lies, why you treated me the way you did. I need it all. Bad things keep happening when people keep secrets. I need it to stop.”

  Tears fell from her eyes, shining droplets that ran down her chin and were left to air dry. Anger surged through my body whenever I looked her in the eyes, but as she talked, I had to keep on checking her expression to make sure she was telling the truth. Her heartbeat was already all over the place, which meant listening to it wouldn’t give me an accurate reading of how true her words were. I’d been learning a lot about lies lately.

  “I should start at the beginning,” she said, nodding again. “Yes, it’s easier that way. Please don’t get angry with me. I can’t take it anymore.”

  I didn’t say a word, but I noticed how much frailer she had become since the trial. Seeing me seemed to add a decade to her life. I steeled myself against the pity that kept trying to poke through my armour.

  “I loved my son. He was perfectly normal. He had a good heart, and he was my only child. So it probably won’t surprise you to learn that I hated your mother, Sarah, on sight. They moved away because I couldn’t find it in myself to be nice to her. I know you think I’m an awful person, but there was always something in her I detested. I just knew there was something… wrong about her.”

  My fingernails dug into my palm in an effort to keep in the torrent of abuse I wanted to hurl at her.

  “She was very beautiful, so people loved her, and I was convinced she was going to cheat on David. That and she turned up with nothing, I mean, obvious gold-digger. Except I was wrong. So very, very wrong. I knew she was pregnant, but I fully intended on having nothing to do with her child. Then, she turned up in the middle of the night, covered in blood, and told me David was dead, and the baby was coming.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked to and fro. “You can’t understand the shock of that, of your child dying horrifically when you weren’t there to take care of him. It was so much to take in. Sarah told me she had walked halfway across the country, and she was bleeding heavily. There was a gaping hole in her neck, and the skin around it had turned black. I still don’t know how she managed to get to me.” She shivered, and I couldn’t help mimicking her.

  “I said I was going to ring an ambulance, and she went hysterical, started screaming about vampires and demons and a dead baby. She smashed the phone against the wall to stop me. I had no idea what was wrong with her, but then she did something. She showed me her true face, and I fell to my knees.

  “I prayed every Sunday, but I never truly had faith, Ava. It’s not something that comes easy. People put on a show, but true belief, true faith, that takes a lot. But I believed Sarah. I couldn’t deny her that night. She was having contractions, and her neck just wouldn’t stop bleeding no matter what I did, but she kept breathing. She said her baby just needed to be born, and then she could sleep. The blood was black by then, thick, I had never seen anything like it.”

  I gasped. “Then what?”

  “Then… then he appeared. The angel. Oh, he was beautiful and terrifying, and I would have agreed to anything right then. She cried when she saw him, begged him to help you. He took her hands and told her everything would be okay, that he had come for her and her alone. He said you had a role to play, that he would protect you until the right time. She… she asked me to raise you, to love you, and make sure you knew she loved you.” She shook her head and wiped her eyes.

  “When you were born, she held you for a couple of seconds. She smiled as though death wasn’t coming. She kissed you, stared at you, and then she just faded away. Her skin lit up like the sun, and suddenly, the light flew into you. The angel looked shocked. He refused to touch you, so I had to pick you up, and you were burning. It was like you stole her light. You didn’t. That’s just what it looked like.”

  She grew very still on her chair. “And then he spoke to me, warned me, really. He told me Sarah was wrong, that you would be impure—tainted—and that a lot of demons wanted you, that they could influence you. He made me promise to hide you, to keep you safe, and to make you afraid. He said your path was clear, and I had to make sure you stayed on it or terrible things would happen.” She gripped the arms of the chair, her knuckles turning white. “He made me promise not to tell you about your power, but to instil a sense of fear and subordination in you. He swore that was the only way to ensure you wouldn’t end the world. I was so afraid. So very, very afraid, Ava.” She gazed at me with red-rimmed eyes, silently pleading.

  “And then what?” I asked as harshly as possible.

  “See? That’s it. That’s what went wrong. You were stubborn deep down, never born to be that submissive. It took more pain than necessary to quieten you. There were times when I was terrified of you. Once, after I tried to… teach you, you curled up on the ground in a ball, and the light appeared again. It surrounded you so that I couldn’t get near you.

  “Afterward, he came to see me sometimes, usually in the dead of night while I prayed for help. His words never changed. And I never stopped listening to him. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I could make you pure again, but nothing worked. I didn’t understand it, and I didn’t do one thing right by you in the end.”

  I let her words sink in. My first instinct was to feel sorry for her. Going from thinking the other world wasn’t real to being saddled with a killer-baby. Or whatever. But I couldn’t see myself doing the same thing. No matter what some celestial being told me.

  “Did he tell you to bring me to nutjobs for a beating? Did he tell you to freeze, burn, or starve the evil out of me? I just… I just can’t find a way to understand any of this.”

  “Don’t you see it? That was the point of it all, I think. He wanted you to hate evil.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re just saying that to make yourself feel better.”

  She leaned forward, her hands reaching toward me. “I changed. Don’t you remember? When that man… when the last thing happened, I did try. Helena and Wesley both helped me see I was wrong, that he was wrong. He kept coming to see me, and I didn’t obey him, so he punished me, too. In your teens, I finally understood that maybe he was wrong, and I tried to be better.”

  “Until I rang you after I bit Wesley. Until I really needed you. The way you spoke to me, it was like the good years never happened. You killed it all in one sentence. Even when I called you about Carl, your first assumption was that I’d killed someone.”

  “Please, Ava. I need you to forgive me. I am sorry! I made mistakes, but I raised you. I protected you, I broke the law for you. And when you really did need me, I was there. When the vampires wanted you, I was there. At the trial, I was there. I’ll always be there in the end. I’m the only one who really cares what happens to you. Your only family. I’m the only one who doesn’t need you for something.”

  “Except forgiveness,” I whispered. “I get that you took things to extremes because of the vampires and angels and all of that crazy stuff. But strip that away, and we’re left with a bitter old woman who didn’t want her precious son taken away. Did you see her when you looked at me? Because I know I don’t look a thing like you or my father.”

  I paced, my fists clenched, memories flooding my mind. “You never even kept a photo of her for me. You could have given me something huge to hold on to if you had just told me about her. The real her, not just her death. All you did was give me a memory of a dying woman, when she was so much more than that. That’s what you should be the most ashamed of. That’s what should keep you awake at night.”

  I made it to the door before turning around. “I’ve wasted so much time on you. I really wanted you to love me. I really wanted you to see me, not the thing you thought I could be. I could have used a family instead of having to turn to strangers for comfort. I was going to run away with Wesley. Did you know that? But I didn’t want to leave you on your own. How pitifully stupid of me.”
br />   I walked out the front door with one weight lifted and another weighing heavier than ever. I’d finally had my say, but the reminders of the love I’d lost cut deep. The truth had come far too late to make much of a difference to our relationship. Closing her door was like closing a door on my past. She might be family, but she had a deep-bred distaste for me, and somehow hearing how much she had hated my mother solidified all of the hurt I felt toward Nancy.

  A normal person would have loved a child, not abused them. I couldn’t accept that her behaviour was explainable or completely understandable. But for the first time in my life, I felt a connection to the mother I had never known. The one who had walked for miles in labour, slowly bleeding to death. The one who had begged for someone to protect me. That idea sparked a warmth in my chest that had never been there before, filling some of the emptiness I carried.

  The only time I’d felt that kind of warmth had been with Wesley, until I’d ruined it. I still savoured the taste of pure happiness, and with Nancy’s revelations, I had another to keep alongside it.

  I had no idea who the angel was, or why he had felt the need to keep reminding my grandmother to basically dominate me like a dodgy animal trainer, but if I ever got the chance to face him, I would have plenty to say.

  I wandered the city for a couple of hours, not wanting to go home and feed a succubus with my pain. I had no place of my own, nowhere that I really fit in, but the more I learned about myself, the more comfortable I was in my own skin. The important thing wasn’t what they said about me, it was the choices I made. Foolish or not, I cared about people other than myself, and I did my best with the little experience I had. I’d tried to close myself off, but it never worked. I wasn’t meant to grow up hating. That realisation was powerful.

  I didn’t feel particularly inclined to kill anyone, except maybe a certain succubus, and my thirst was pretty much controllable for the most part. Until that certain succubus ramped up the feelings between Peter and me. Empathy didn’t come in handy on those occasions. But I hadn’t hurt him. I hadn’t even bitten him. I could control myself, even when I wasn’t so sure.

  I found myself heading towards Peter’s home. I had no one else I wanted to turn to, and he was always the first person I wanted, no matter what the circumstance. In some ways, he was exceptionally unreliable and cold, but I felt as though he would back me up if I needed him, and that made me feel safe around him. I couldn’t remember the last time he had looked disgusted at the mention of my more vampiric side.

  He wasn’t home, so I sat on his doorstep and watched his neighbours go about their business. So normal and ordinary. Children playing like there were no bad guys. Parents feeling safe enough to let their little ones out on their own, despite murders and a kidnapping happening right in their neighbour’s home. If they knew, they no longer cared. People got over the past so easily, why couldn’t I?

  Peter pulled up and didn’t notice me until he was a couple of feet away. He stopped and stared at me for a couple of seconds. I gave a little shrug, and he nodded. He opened the weirdly-secure front door and hauled me to my feet.

  “In, before I lose my antisocial recluse reputation,” he said.

  I laughed, but by the time I sat down in his living room, tears rolled down my cheeks. He didn’t say a word, just handed me a tissue and sat next to me. He stayed quiet, and I just sat there crushing tissues in my fists.

  “Okay, I’m done being a girl,” I said after a while.

  “Nothing wrong with girls. Need a coffee or something?”

  “If you’re having one.”

  He patted my shoulder and left me alone. I often wondered how he could live in that house. Knowing he had lost everyone who meant anything to him within those very walls was strange to me. I always felt as if there were ghosts in the room, watching my every move.

  Peter seemed to do okay, despite suffering through the kind of heartbreak I couldn’t even imagine. I wanted to talk to him, to spill everything out, to beg him to tell me how to deal. But his past had affected him, too. That was obvious in everything he did. Even the supernatural beings of the world were wary of him, for those very same reasons.

  When he came back with coffee, he sat next to me again and hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure what to do.

  “Is it time yet?” he asked at last.

  “For what?” I whispered, confused by his expression.

  “Carl kept telling me you need to stop holding everything in. He reckons you need to talk about stuff, to get your head together. I said you just needed to punch something. I’m guessing I was wrong.”

  I smiled. “Not wrong, but the same things don’t work forever, right? Never mind me. I’m being a wimp today. I’ve been trying to find out more about myself, and it’s a bit… overwhelming sometimes. I’ve spent so long thinking I was something, and then I find out there’s a whole other mess in there, and I don’t know where to start really.”

  “I can listen. I’m pretty good at it.” For an instant, the soft Peter came through, the one who cared about living or dying, the one he was before the real world came knocking.

  “I just don’t know where to go from here. Everything I’ve ever believed has been thrown upside down. Between vampires and angels and succubi and humans, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.”

  “What happened today?”

  “I went to see Eddie, my grandmother, and that succubus. That’s why I came here. I didn’t want to give Alannah a filling dessert on top of what she’s taking from Carl.”

  Peter shook his head. “If there was anything we could do…”

  “There has to be something. She’s been feeding off everything I’ve felt for years. And I had no idea. My grandmother’s been lying to me my whole life. And I had no idea. Eddie’s had plans for me since before he met me. And I had no freaking idea. Everything’s messed up, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Deal with one thing at a time. That’s all anyone can do. What happened when you talked to Nancy? Anything good?”

  “Nope. She’s like a stranger to me. Her excuse for everything is ‘An angel made me do it.’” I burst out laughing. “I mean, come on!”

  “An angel? Think that’s true?”

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t even care what the angels want with me. The thing that got me the most was how she talked about my mother. She hated her, and she definitely didn’t want to be burdened with me. She kept saying she tried to change, she tried to do better, but who needs to try to treat a child like a human being?”

  “What happened to you?” he asked. “When you were a kid. What did she do to you? You both insinuate things, but neither of you get into the details.”

  “What didn’t she do? She said the angel told her to make me afraid, to make me submit, so I wouldn’t screw up the world or something. She definitely made me afraid. I wasn’t allowed play with other kids, she only sent me to school when somebody called in the social workers, and she made it her mission to take the impurity out of me.”

  “How?”

  His voice was so quiet and soothing that I barely realised I was answering questions.

  “Sometimes, she didn’t feed me. Other times, she used ice baths or hot wax to try to expel the demon. I don’t know. She was convinced there was an actual creature inside me or something. She invited every lunatic to our home, especially the violent ones.”

  “She told them about you?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, right. She told them I was evil, or sick, or needed to be exorcised. That kind of thing. Some people were harmless. It was all pretty words and dramatics. Others were… bad people. I begged her to help me, to make them stop, but she washed her hands of me and let them do their worst. If I’m honest, I’ve blocked out most of it. Sometimes I get flashes of memories.”

  His hand covered mine, and the words flooded out of my mouth.

  “That first time we met Becca at that vampire bar freaked me out because it was close to one of the pla
ces my grandmother took me as a kid. I remember screaming at her to please take me home. I swore I would be good, but she drove off and left me with him.”

  “Who?”

  “A psychopath. The kind that pretends to be a holy man. I forget what religion he pretended to work on behalf of, but he didn’t like little girls. He left scars. In all sorts of places. Then, he cut off my hair and sent me home. When she saw me, she knew. She knew he wasn’t holy. But she didn’t say a word. She never sent me to him again, but what he did worked. I didn’t speak for a year, and she pretended we went travelling so the school wouldn’t get suspicious.” I leaned back, surprised by the memories, by the details that jumped out of me. I touched my back, remembering other things. Things I never wanted to say out loud.

  “How could I want her to love me, Peter? Why would I want her to? She let bad people do bad things to me. She couldn’t bear to touch me. In school, the other kids, and even the teachers, avoided me as much as possible. What is it about me that’s so obviously wrong?”

  He shook his head, but I couldn’t look in his eyes.

  “That woman at the trial. Helena. My grandmother went to her when I still hadn’t talked. It’s all a bit fuzzy. I remember she did things to me, too, nothing painful, but she was angry. Outraged, actually. She and my grandmother had a huge fight. I remember feeling sad because it meant she wouldn’t come back.”

  “Is that when she left?”

  “No. No, she came back, and Nancy told her things about me. True things. And Helena tried to bring us together. It started getting better, then Helena vanished, and I cried for her. Nancy was furious. She was convinced Helena was going to betray us. I wasn’t allowed to talk about her again, but I always remembered her. Life was never as bad again. We started to get along a little. She would sometimes go back to her old ways, but it was never as constant. Then, Wesley moved to the neighbourhood.”

  I smiled, remembering the first time I had seen him. He’d caught me staring, and I felt sure I had made the biggest fool of myself. But he sought me out after that. All of the girls in my class had crushes on him, but it was as though the strangeness in me that repelled others only attracted him.