Love and Brimstone

Chapter Eighteen

“Why are we here?” Taz thought to Matthias.

Matthias lay on his bed, reading. He was still dressed, but shoeless, and making a concerted effort to ignore her.

Finally, she spoke out loud. “Are you ignoring me?”

He didn’t look at her. “I was under the impression you didn’t want me to speak to you. I was trying to give you some privacy.”

“Why are we here?”

He still didn’t look up from his book.

Frankly, she couldn’t blame him.

“I have some meetings,” he said, “and I need to keep you close. I’d rather have you here, where I can protect you. I have a lot of contacts in this area, and if someone tries to get into the park who doesn’t belong, I’ll know about it.”

She tried to wrap her mind around that. “Uh, so they wouldn’t possibly sneak in through thousands of miles of unwatched park borders? They’d come through one of the main gates?”

Snarky much?

He looked at her over the top of his book. “When I give you information, you get mad at me. When I withhold information, you get mad at me. So what would you have me do? Nothing I say to you is right.”

“What happened to bringing me into the loop?”

He put the book down and sat up. “I mean it. I don’t know what to say to you. I’m screwing this up, and for once in my life, I can’t fix it.”

She sat on her bed and didn’t reply. He watched her, saying nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin. And then to hear you talk about your harem—”

Matthias threw his book across the room, and she flinched as it bounced off the wall by the door.

“Goddamn it, Taz! Would you quit thinking like that? Stop it. I can’t help that I had partners before I met you. I had sex, yes, I did. I’m not a virgin. So did you. If anyone has a right to be pissed, it’s me. It’s been ten years since I’ve had a relationship. You were still in college the last time I got laid.”

It took her a moment to digest what he said. “Wha—how dare you! How was I supposed to know I’d meet you?”

“Exactly my point.”

She stared at him, her eyes narrowing, comprehending what he meant. “You mean you were planning on meeting me all this time? All this time? Ten fucking years?” There was something both romantically sweet and totally creepy about that.

“No, Jesus, that’s not what I meant.” He stood and paced, which in the small room meant two strides one direction, turn, and two strides back across to his bed. “That’s not what I meant at all.” He stopped and closed his eyes, as if trying to put his thoughts together.

“Taz, I didn’t deliberately set this up as some sort of diabolical plan to sleep with you. I keep telling you that, and I wish you’d believe me. I knew you would need to be near us for protection and training. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t attracted to you. You are a beautiful woman. And yes, I could probably work on you and take advantage of you and talk you into bed. If I was going to do that, don’t you think I would have done so back at the house, when you were physically and emotionally vulnerable and throwing yourself at me? Not to mention do you think I would get a cabin with two beds?”

She had to admit, it wasn’t the most romantic of arrangements.

“Right. And yes, I did listen to your thoughts that time.” He sat on his bed. “I’m not going to beg you. I won’t grovel. I’ve apologized for the way this has unraveled. When I find out who’s behind it, they will pay, I promise. I know you’re upset and confused. Part of that is stress, part of it is you’re tuning into your powers for the first time and you’re probably having difficulty maintaining some semblance of control over your emotions. But believe me, if you tell me you never want to sleep with me or have a relationship with me, okay, fine, I can deal with it. Like it, no. Accept it, yes. I would never force you to have a relationship with me if you didn’t want to.”

She stared at him. “I’m sorry,” she softly said. “I think I need sleep. Maybe tomorrow we can start over. You’re right, I don’t feel like myself.”

He took a deep breath and let it out before replying. “I think that’s a great idea.”

He found his book, straightened a few bent pages, and didn’t look her direction for the rest of the evening. She took a shower, finding it hard to move in the tiny space. When she turned off the light and tried to go to sleep, she watched his face, illuminated by moonlight streaming through the window over his bed.

His handsome profile looked old and weathered in the shadows.

How does he put up with me? I wouldn’t tolerate this shit from me if I was him.

The corner of his mouth curled at that last thought.

Taz rolled over and closed her eyes, wishing she could read his mind and really see what was going on behind those gorgeous blue eyes.

Matthias had already showered when she got up the next morning. He must have arisen before dawn. The light outside was chilly and grey when she emerged from the bathroom. He wasn’t in the room, and she heard him outside talking in a low voice with the other men.

She grabbed her jacket and joined them and thought she caught the briefest of smiles from Matthias.

“Good, you’re here,” he said. “Let’s get breakfast.”

He led the way with long strides, Albert at his side, not waiting for her. She followed, Robertson beside her.

“Well,” he said in her ear, “at least you’re not screaming at each other.”

“Shut up. I’m still mad at you.”

“No you’re not. You’re mad at the situation.”

She hated when he was right. The more she thought about what she did to the guard, the sicker it made her. She hated to admit it, but Albert did the right thing. If their circumstances were reversed, she would have done the same.

In a heartbeat.

Albert stopped her before anyone got hurt. She never thought about it, that she could hurt or kill someone with her thoughts. It explained why during the demonstration with Mayfield that Matthias stood at her shoulder, carefully controlling the situation.

Breakfast was good. Matthias never looked at her, didn’t speak to her, giving her space. She received the itinerary from Albert and Robertson and was able to watch Old Faithful erupt. The guards flanked her as she sat on the bench next to Albert while Robertson went with Matthias. Apparently their meeting was in one of the nearby buildings because they didn’t take the Rover.

“What did Matthias mean when he said he’d know if someone got in here who didn’t belong?”

Albert looked out over the geyser field. “Just that.”

“How come the Others can’t just hike through the woods to get here?”

“What do you smell, Anastazia?”

She sniffed. “I don’t know. Pine. Place smells like Christmas trees. And whatever the geysers are putting out, rotten egg smell. This whole place is a huge supervolcano. I saw it on the Discovery Channel.”

He nodded. “If you’re a fan of irony, which I am, you’ll be happy to learn a lot of what you’re smelling is sulfur. Another term for which is ‘brimstone.’”

She looked at him, sure he was pulling her leg. Then she realized he was serious. “You’re not kidding?”

He shook his head. “About something like this, I never kid, my dear. We are surrounded, if you will, by fire and brimstone.”

“Fire?”

He smiled. “Well, technically. The Others can’t stand sulfur. The smell. It burns them or something. Which, in this case, is lucky for us. Yellowstone has been a safe haven and meeting spot for our kind, as well as other paranormal breeds, for many, many years.”

“‘Other paranormal breeds?’ Do I even want to ask?”

He arched an eyebrow at her.

“Um, right. We’ll cover that later. Sorry, go ahead.”

“As I was going to say, the Others are most likely watching for us to leave the park, and we can probably expect some sort of trouble on the way out. They could send their hybrids, but they’re not much fonder of brimstone than the Others. And if they try to send humans through the gates, they’ll be spotted.”

“Because they have pointy horns growing out of their heads?”

He looked at her. “It doesn’t matter how they’d be spotted. They would.”

“Need-to-know basis?”

“And you don’t need to know right now. You’ve got enough on your plate. I’ll be happy to explain it all later. For now, you need to work on a few things. Lessons to learn, and all that.”

“Is this where we have the action montage sequence of me doing the kick-ass ninja-slayer training so I can handle evil bad things?”

He looked at her strangely.

“You never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer on TV, did you?”

“No. But I heard it received quite a bit of critical praise for the writing. Too bad the facts were totally wrong.”

“Well, I got my black belt in karate because of that show. I wanted to be like Buffy.” Taz sighed. “How was I supposed to know it was life imitating art? Sort of.”

He smirked. “Matthias had a fit when Tim reported that. He was afraid you’d get hurt, or hurt someone. Once I convinced him you having those skills could only help, he settled down.”

“Back to the brimstone.”

“Ah, yes. Of course, as you are well aware by now, there is nothing evil or supernatural about what we are. It’s a physical condition, like any other genetic anomaly.”

“But you just said vampires are paranormal.” She rubbed her temples. “And that there are other paranormal breeds. You’re making my head hurt.”

“Paranormal, meaning outside the realm of the normal. By supernatural, I mean those silly, old Hollywood myths. There are legitimate explanations for what we are and what we can do that science just hasn’t caught up with yet. And explanations for the other ‘creatures’ out there as well.”

She stared at him. “You’re really nitpicky about semantics, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure people would argue with you about us not being supernatural.”

“Probably. But the truth is, we are not much different from ‘normal’ humans.”

“Only we tend to live a long time, have freaky powers of quick healing, can sometimes read each other’s thoughts, and drink blood,” she snarked.

“We don’t drink blood.”

“Usually.”

He sighed. “We don’t need to feed on blood to stay alive. But I’ll concede the point. Yes, sometimes, we drink blood.”

“That doesn’t explain the Others.”

“Did you know they are still discovering new species of creatures in the oceans and in rain forests, in both South America and Indonesia? Animals and plants never before known to science. Just in the past few years. If there was an intelligent species that wished to remain in the shadows, don’t you think they could accomplish it? Especially when they were fervently persecuted throughout most of history?”

She considered it. “Werewolves, huh?”

“Not really. There are breeds of shape-shifters out there, but like us, they are more interested in not being discovered than they are causing trouble. The Others, however, have a chip on their shoulder. They have for centuries. And while it’s easy for the Clans and most other types of paranormals to blend in and go undetected, it’s not so easy for the Others.”

“What are they?”

“They don’t usually hang around long enough to have that discussion. Most of the time they keep to themselves and don’t interact with humans outside their groups. Some of them can transform like shape-shifters, or so we’ve been told. But some of them are very nonhuman in their appearance and cannot shift.”

“I saw the head.” The thought of the dismembered head made her want to urp her breakfast. What had Matthias done with that, anyway? She hoped she didn’t open a freezer at the house and find it.

“That’s right—you did. But that’s just one form they have.”

She asked even though she didn’t want to. “Why did he take the head?”

“DNA. To track down its group. It was easier to take the head than to try to wrestle the whole body into the car. I was having a difficult enough time just getting Matthias loaded, as injured as he was.”

“It won’t turn into a human head and be waiting in the freezer for us, will it?”

“I doubt it. That was probably its true form anyway. Had it been a shape-shifter, it would have shifted when it died.”

“Area 51?”

He laughed. “Do I look like a Wikipedia of the Weird? Your guess is as good as mine. But I’ve personally seen a ghost.”

She stared across the geyser basin. Old Faithful still spouted steam occasionally, and in the distance, steam clouds puffed from other geysers in the chilly morning air.

“What else is there out there we don’t know about?”

“‘We’ meaning you and I and those like us, or ‘we’ meaning the rest of the world?”

“That.”

He paused, weighing his words. She sensed there was a lot of carefully concealed knowledge in that brain of his. “There are lots of unknowns, Anastazia, even to those like us. Most of the European lines managed to survive the worst of the Inquisition, the Plagues, the upheavals. Then World Wars I and II nearly killed the entire Eastern European Clan.”

“Couldn’t someone have done something?”

“And bring more attention to us? As it is, some of the greatest myths were written by those like us.”

“Really?”

“What better way to misdirect than create works of fiction? No one would believe it was real. Now there are so many people claiming to be ‘real’ vampires all over the world, and as you’ve seen, they’ve got it all wrong, that no one bats an eye about us anymore.”

“Ha-ha.”

He looked at her for a moment and smiled. “Yes, I get it. Bats. Ha-ha.”

“Except for science.”

“Ah, yes. That’s the true threat, now. There’s plenty of room for myths when blood can’t be analyzed under an electron microscope. That’s why it’s desperately important to identify all those like yourself and Matthias and bring them in from the cold, so to speak.”

“What about you?”

He shrugged and studied his hands. “I’m a hybrid. As is Tim. We have traits and certain talents, but our blood looks nearly normal. Normal enough. Which is why it was useless to heal Matthias.”

They sat for a long time, watching the geyser basin while she tried to collect her thoughts. “I don’t know why I’m taking it out on him,” she quietly admitted.

“I do. It’s understandable.”

She shook her head. “No it’s not. I’m not like this. I’m normally a controlled, rational person. I’m not like this at all. I don’t like being like this. I don’t like being a bitch.”

He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “You love him.”

Her heart rolled. Yes!

“Do I? Or is it just some sort of stupid vampire hypnosis infatuation?”

Albert looked at her, and she sensed a deep, timeless sadness in his heart.

“Kindred hearts sometimes take a while to find each other, my dear. And when they do, they are so much alike sometimes they fight before they realize they don’t need to. It’s fear. It’s normal. The soul always returns home, Anastazia. Never forget that. The heart knows what it knows, and the soul always returns home.”

There was something melancholy in his voice and manner, something deeper she sensed she didn’t want to explore right then—or shouldn’t. She opted for humor. “New World Order?”

“Doesn’t exist.” Damn, he was unflappable.

“Masons taking over the planet?”

“Only if the Shriners make enough of those funny clown cars for them.”

She laughed. Then something inside her turned loose, and she laughed until she cried and had to lean against his shoulder for support. He hesitantly put his arms around her then pulled her to him, let her cry against him. He was a lot like Robertson. It was almost as much a comfort having his arms around her. Protective.

Loving.

When she pulled herself together and sat up, sniffling, he handed her a handkerchief. He waited until she looked into his eyes, and she again felt there was more than he was telling her.

“Just give Matthias a chance,” he whispered. “That’s all he wants. He doesn’t expect you to do anything you don’t wish to do. Especially now that he owes you his life.”

Taz dried her eyes. “I don’t know what to think. I’m still sure I’m going to wake up in the hospital with Robertson telling me someone spiked my drink at a party and put me in a coma.”

Albert reached for her left hand and tenderly touched her wrist where the thin white scar bore mute testimony to what happened. “When you think that, take a look at this. You risked your life for him, Anastazia, without hesitation or thought for your own safety. Remember, the heart knows what it knows.”