Chapter
33
“You don’t think he’ll come here, do
you?” Elena asked.
“He will regret it if he does,” Drake
assured her. “Stop worrying.”
“The newspaper said he killed a patient
and a doctor before he escaped.” She worried the hem of her skirt.
“He’s been gone for three days.”
“It would not make sense for him to
come back here,” Drake said, taking her hands in his. “This is the
first place they will look.”
“Of course. You’re right. I know you’re
right.” She folded her arms protectively over her womb. She
couldn’t forget the barely veiled threat in her uncle’s cold gray
gaze when he’d looked at her in the courtroom, the hatred in his
eyes when the judge handed down his sentence.
“I think you should stay close to home
until Dinescu is apprehended,” Drake said. “I will drive you into
town when you need to go.”
“I thought you said he wouldn’t come
here.”
Drake shrugged. “He will not, if he is
smart, but I would rather be safe than sorry.”
In the days that followed, nothing else
was heard of Tavian Dinescu. The newspaper speculated that he had
left the area, and then other stories, more current, took over the
front page.
Elena told herself there was nothing to
worry about, that Drake would protect her, that her uncle wouldn’t
dare come to the castle after what had happened the last
time.
Still, she spent her days inside the
castle or in the garden. She took up knitting, intending to make a
blanket for the baby, but it kept getting bigger and bigger, until
she had an afghan.
No matter how hard she tried, she
couldn’t shake a sense of impending doom, and she began having
nightmares. Sometimes her uncle showed up in the castle, intending
to do her harm in ever-changing ways that grew increasingly
grotesque as time went on. Sometimes he destroyed Drake before
coming after her. Sometimes he waited until her baby had been born,
and then he murdered her little girl first.
She tried to hide her worry from Drake,
but that was impossible. He could read the anxiety in her eyes. And
in her mind. Nor was there any way to hide her nightmares from him,
not when she woke up screaming or crying every night.
One night, after a particularly
horrible dream, Drake suggested they return to the Fortress until
Dinescu was caught. The idea held a certain appeal, except that
Elena didn’t want to have her baby there, didn’t want to be
anywhere near Liliana’s corrosive influence.
As the days slipped into weeks and then
became a month, Elena’s fears gradually subsided. Worry over her
uncle receded into the background as the reality of the baby she
carried grew more real with her growing waistline. She could feel
the baby moving now and thought how awesome it was that she carried
a new life beneath her heart, a child born out of her love for
Drake. Although the idea of being a mother was a little
frightening, she could hardly wait to hold the baby in her arms.
She’d had little to do with babies. Never taken care of an infant,
only held them on rare occasions when she was growing
up.
Sitting in front of the fire one night,
with Drake’s arm around her shoulders, she gave voice to her fears.
“I don’t know how to be a mother,” she said, gazing into the
flames. “I’ve never even changed a diaper. How will I know what to
do? Babies are so fragile and need so much care. I scarcely
remember my own mother.”
“Elena, you will be a wonderful mother.
You have a tender heart, a generous nature. You will love our child
and that will be enough.” He brushed his knuckles across her cheek.
“You should be more worried about the kind of father your child
will have.”
“What do you mean?”
“I come from a family where expressions
of love and affection were rare. My father ruled the Fortress with
an iron hand. He had little time for us, or for my mother. His
neglect made her bitter and she took it out on us. Once we reached
maturity, we saw little of our parents. I know nothing of children.
You have given me the only real love I have ever
known.”
“We make a fine pair, don’t we?” she
asked with a rueful grin.
“We will learn as we go along,” he
assured her. “People have been having babies for thousands of
years. Most of them survive, one way or another. Ours will be rich
in love, if nothing else.”
Rich in love, Elena thought. Perhaps
that would see them through. But, to be on the safe side, she had
Drake drive her to the bookstore in the city the following
night.
Drake shook his head as she handed him
one book after another. “Are you sure we need all of these?” he
asked, perusing the titles—Your Baby
from Birth to Teen, Doctor
Spock’s Baby and Child Care, Your Baby’s First Year, How to Be a Successful Parent,
Do’s and Don’ts of Rearing Your
Child, The ABC’s of Baby
Care.
“I just wish they had a few
more.”
“More? Good Lord, woman, we are only
having one child.”
“I want to know everything there is to
know.”
Wisely, he didn’t argue, just paid the
bill, and prayed that the baby would be born strong and healthy and
that Elena would survive the birth of their child.
For the next two weeks, Elena immersed
herself in reading. She’d known she had a lot to learn, but she had
no idea how much she didn’t know.
She said as much to Drake when they
were in bed one night.
He laughed softly as he stroked the
curve of her cheek. “You do not have to learn all of it before the
baby comes,” he said. “You only need to learn what you need right
now. No point in worrying about raising a teenager until the time
comes.”
“You’re right,” she said with a sigh.
“I know you’re right. It’s just such an awesome responsibility,
raising a baby.” Taking his hand in hers, she placed it over her
womb. “Feel that?”
“Quite a lusty kick for a little girl,”
he remarked. Surely that was a good sign. “I hope she looks like
you.”
“Drake?”
“Yes, wife?”
“What will she be?”
He knew what she was asking, knew she
was wondering if their daughter would follow in her father’s
footsteps when she turned twenty. “I do not know if she will become
vampire, Elena. To my knowledge, there are no half-vampires in
existence.”
“Does that mean they are born either
human or vampire?”
He drew her closer, afraid to tell her
the truth, yet certain that keeping it from her would do more harm
than good. She needed to be prepared for the worst, should it
happen.
“Drake?”
“As far as I know, no child conceived
by a vampire and a human has ever survived.”
Elena stared at him, her hand pressed
tightly, protectively, over her stomach. “No! No! That can’t be
true!” Tears flooded her eyes. “I don’t believe you!” she said,
sobbing. “I won’t!”
He drew her into his arms and held her
close. He should have taken precautions, he thought, should have
remembered what had happened to Stefan, but matings between
vampires and humans were rare, and conceptions rarer still. . . .
He cursed softly. If anything happened to Elena or their baby, he
would never forgive himself.
Tavian Dinescu huddled under a tree in
the forest behind Wolfram Castle. Clad in rags, his body gaunt from
lack of food, his beard thick, he stared at the lights burning in
the window on the second floor.
He had hidden here for days, leaving
the cover of the trees only late at night to scavenge in the
forest, or creep down the hill to the town to steal whatever food
he could find.
Sitting there, shivering in the cold,
he tried to make sense of his muddled thoughts, but it was hard to
think, hard to concentrate. He recalled the trial, but could not
remember why he had confessed. Even when they showed him the
confession, written in his own hand, he could not remember writing
it. Deep in the far recesses of his mind, a faint memory niggled,
something to do with the lord of Wolfram Castle, but when he tried
to remember, it made his head hurt.
He hated all of them, hated the whole
town for their treachery. He had protected them, kept them safe,
and they had all turned their backs on him.
But the worst offender was Elena. He
had opened his home to her, fed and clothed her, offered her his
name and what had she done in return? She had testified against
him, the ungrateful brat! Sent him to that awful place for crazy
people. He clapped his hands over his ears, shutting out the echo
of tormented cries in the night, the moaning and groaning of the
sick, the dying, the sobs of the hopeless, the
helpless.
They would pay, he thought, rubbing his
hands together with anticipation. Oh, yes, they would all pay. And
Elena most of all. When the moment was right, he would strike. She
would not escape him again.