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“Okay, wife, where do we start?”
“At the Den, of course. And then we need to find out if any of our old enemies are looking for us.”
“The Den.” Derek sat forward, his brow furrowed. “There were a couple of vampires there a few days ago. I had the feeling I knew one of them, although I couldn’t place her.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed. “What did she look like?”
“She was old. . . .”
“Was she with another old lady?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
Mara glanced at Logan. “Edna and Pearl.”
“You know them?” Derek asked.
“Oh, yes, I know them.” Mara’s eyes glittered with menace. “They kidnapped you when you were a baby. They were partly responsible for your father’s death.”
“How so?” It was a story she had never told him.
Mara looked at Logan, a question in her eyes.
“Maybe it’s time he knows. Past time, if you ask me.”
Mara’s gaze grew distant. “I met Kyle Bowden at the foot of the Sphinx. He was a brilliant artist and I was captivated by him and in awe of his talent.” She smiled at the memory. “He fell in love with me, and I suppose I loved him, too, in my way. We parted when he discovered I was a vampire. It was about that time I realized I was losing my powers. Not long after that, I ran into Logan,” she said, squeezing his hand. “I hadn’t seen him in centuries. I don’t know what I would have done without him, especially after I discovered I was pregnant. He took care of me, found a vampire doctor to look after me. A few months later, Kyle hired a hunter to find me and your father and I were reunited.”
She glanced at Derek. He was watching her intently, his fingers digging into the arm of the chair. She hesitated a moment before continuing, but there was no point in stopping now.
“Because I was human and pregnant with Kyle’s child, I decided to marry him. I had lost all my powers by then and I was learning to be human again. Unknown to me, the doctor I had been seeing during my pregnancy had designs on you. With the help of Edna and Pearl, he kidnapped you and your father. Everyone in our family tried to find the two of you, but it was useless. Edna and Pearl had some sort of spray that completely masked their scent and yours, making it impossible to follow their trail.
“I knew there was only one way to find you, and that was to have Logan turn me again. I was certain the blood bond between us would lead me to you, and it did. I killed Ramsden when I found him. He had been doing some sort of experiments on your father’s DNA, hoping to discover how Kyle had impregnated me while I was both vampire and human. Your father died in my arms.”
“You could have saved him,” Derek said, his voice filled with accusation. “Why didn’t you bring him across?”
Mara stared into the distance, seeing it all again in her mind’s eye—the cage where Ramsden had imprisoned Kyle, the love in Kyle’s eyes when she cradled him in her arms, Kyle’s voice as he declared he had always loved her, even when he hated her. She had carried the guilt of his death in her heart ever since.
“Why didn’t you save him?” Derek’s voice was sharp, filled with bitterness. “Why didn’t you bring him across?”
“I asked him to let me, but he didn’t want it.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t turn him against his will. He would have been miserable the rest of his life.”
Derek sat there a moment, trying to process everything she’d told him, and then he left the room.
Mara stared after him. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Logan slipped his arm around her shoulders. “He needed to know.”
“Did I make the right decision when I let Kyle die?”
“It was the right thing to do, darlin’ . He never would have accepted what he’d become. I doubt if he would have endured it for more than a day or two before he would have taken his own life, or found someone to destroy him. He would have hated you for turning him against his will.”
“You didn’t.”
He laughed softly. “There are very few men like me. And none who love you the way I do.”
She nodded absently, thinking about the book she had written while she was pregnant with Derek. The story of her life, it contained everything she could remember from the time her mother had abandoned her. She had written of her years as a slave in Pharaoh’s house, of the night Dendar had changed her and how she had found him and destroyed him for it. She wrote of the men she had known, the enemies she had made, her horror at reverting, her despair when she lost her powers, her mixed emotions when she learned she was pregnant, her joy in holding her son in her arms. It was a story filled with violence and war and bloodshed, of mistakes she had made, of lives she had ruined.
She had intended to give the book to Derek when he was old enough to appreciate it, but the timing had never seemed right. Now, she wondered if that time would ever come.
Chapter Seventeen
Derek stood on the balcony, his hands clenched over the wrought-iron railing. It was his fault his father was dead. If he had never been born, his father wouldn’t have been kidnapped and subjected to Ramsden’s vile experiments.
Derek slammed a fist against the side of the building. How was he supposed to live with that? And what about his mother? Had she been happy to be mortal again? Had he robbed her of the chance to live a normal human life?
Vaulting over the rail, Derek landed lightly on his feet. Filled with nervous energy, he began to run, darting around the trees in his path, vaulting over fallen logs. When he reached the bottom of the hill, he slowed his pace. It wouldn’t do to be seen running faster than the traffic on the street.
But there was no outrunning the past.
He slowed when he realized he was approaching Sheree’s house, and stopped when he reached her driveway. All the lights were out save the one in her bedroom. She was in bed. Asleep.
A thought took him to her side. “Sheree?”
She stirred, a faint smile curving her lips. “Am I dreaming again?”
He swallowed hard. “Only if that’s what you want.”
“I want you here,” she murmured sleepily. “Beside me.”
It was what he wanted, too. What he needed. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he removed his shoes, socks, and shirt, then slid under the covers.
Sheree turned onto her side, her eyes widening in alarm at the realization that he was really there and not a figment of her imagination. “What’s wrong? What are you doing here?”
