“As long as you come back at the end of it,” Mom warned, getting up to clear the plates.
“Of course I’ll come back,” Clare said, but even as the words left her lips, she wondered if she ever would.
CHAPTER 8
Oliver yanked the dust covers off the dining table with a grimace.
Gods, these antique pieces were fucking ugly. All that gilt and carving and the high backs on the chairs made them look like freaking thrones. Vampire style was just not his thing.
He’d gotten used to the clean, svelte, modern lines in Selig. But these pieces were his family’s heirlooms, all that he had left of them. So here they would stay.
He looked up at the paintings that hung on the walls all around him.
His ancestors stared back, a solemn bunch. Austere. Aristocratic and used to dwelling in cold, dank castles in the mountains to the north, with stone walls and belfries to hang in for all he knew. This elegant residence on Motham Hill, which his parents had built in the early years of Motham City, would probably not have been to their liking.
“Too bad, Grandpa Hale,” he muttered as he took a cloth and dusted the gilt frame around the grumpy looking vampire.
When his parents had travelled to the valley lands three centuries ago to escape the ogre tribes who were taking over the mountains, his grandparents had refused to move, and hisuncles and aunts had scattered elsewhere. His parents had set up home in the hills above Tween, bred cattle and formed working partnerships with humans.
Gold and silver, precious stones and a few head of cattle had been exchanged for pure, sweet human blood.
Oliver remembered his childhood as being full of warmth and happiness. He recalled his mom softly crooning to his beloved baby sister, Effie, as they sat on the veranda that overlooked the verdant Avella Hills. He had fond memories of playing in the grassy paddocks nearby and testing out his wings by jumping off a steep rocky outcrop.
But when the Great War broke out, his father had sided with the monsters, led by Athelrose Motham, their mothman leader, to fight against the humans. They’d pared their diet down to blood from their own livestock. Once the war finished, Abraham Hale had been knighted by Athelrose for his service to monster kind, and they’d built this grand home in the prosperous years that followed.
Over time, his father’s diplomacy had helped them to re-engage quietly with humans. Abraham had traded human blood for heirlooms and jewels. But they’d done it fairly. And with integrity.
Unlike the fucking Kominsky clan, who snuck into Tween and Twill and stole the blood of humans while they slept in their beds at night. Sometimes they did worse, perpetrating dark acts against non-consenting young men and women. Rumor had it that they harnessed the powers of vile demons called grimaalds to help them.
And then, a lie was spread that it was the Hale clan who had committed these heinous crimes.
Fear bred in the human towns, and trust disintegrated.
Until finally, one balmy summer night, while his family holidayed in their old farmhouse in the Avella Hills, the humans sought revenge.
Oliver shuddered, his gut clenching. That was the fucking problem with eternity. You were never gifted the peace of oblivion.
His eyes turned now to the paintings of his parents. His mother Katharine had been a beautiful vampira. He had her eyes, her mouth, her fuller lips, which offset the lean angular bone structure he’d inherited from his father. Abraham was austere, fair, honorable, an attorney of law. He’d taught his children that human blood was not just theirs for the taking. That they had to work to forge relationships with humans, to gain their trust, and to not let greed cloud their judgment.
There was no picture of his sister, Effie. It was too painful to have her sweet, innocent face on display.
Oliver ran a finger over the lacquered table, took the ornate candlestick off the dresser and set it in the center, recalling when there’d been laughter and dinner parties in this room. He’d watched from the shadows as humans mingled with vampires.
And then his mother would tell him and his sister to go to bed.
And the dining room doors would close.
But over the next few weeks, his belly would be full, and his strength and happiness would increase. Meanwhile, the human guests had a stimulating evening and returned to their families with pieces of gold and clusters of rubies and diamonds in their pockets.
How had it all gone so horribly wrong?
Why did he still torment himself with that question? He would never be able prove that it was the Kominsky clan who gave away his family’s location that night to a group of vengeful humans. But he knew how much they’d envied the Hales’closeness to the Motham elite, their decent values and integrity. The Kominskys would stop at nothing to unseat the Hales from power.
And then… after that… Gods save him, in his despair Oliver had descended into dark depravity himself, a century-long feeding frenzy.
He had behaved as villainously as any of the Kominsky clan.
It had taken many years to climb out of that dark place, to finally live a productive life. And, if not to forgive himself, at least to lessen the burden of his guilt by giving back to society.
