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“You accept me. You and your friends. Would hunters accept me if they knew I had parents who had been turned? I want to reconnect with my parents, so it’s not like I would want to hide what they are from others.”
“I’m sure some will accept you for who you are, and others won’t. You know how it is.”
“Oh, yeah. Even in school, it was definitely like that without even putting the hunter/vampire stigma to the test. I wonder why my parents wouldn’t have given me to a hunter family.”
“Maybe for the same reason they didn’t want to keep you with them. That they were afraid that’s the first place Tobias would look,” Arman said.
“Or”—Fiona had to look at this realistically—“it’s possible that other hunters didn’t want the trouble. I mean, when you really think of it, that could put them more at risk too. Whereas finding a human family who needed money, they could more easily be bought off, don’t you think?”
“A money trail,” Arman said, snapping his fingers. “Unless your parents gave them a lumpsum payment.”
“Or just used their vampire persuasion to make them believe I was their child.”
“Oh.” Arman looked defeated in that moment. “I keep forgetting that your parents would have been vampires by the time they had to find a new home for you. They definitely could have done that. But still, if they did pay them, it might have been in installments to make sure you were fed and clothed properly. Or your foster parents might have spent the whole amount on themselves. Do you remember your foster parents ever talking about the money they were getting for you?”
“Uhm, I remember them arguing about money. But I thought it was just that they weren’t making enough. They were really frugal, but Dad spent so much on his alcohol or at pubs that the money might have been tight because of that. My brother and I did get gifts from an aunt and uncle who sent them at Christmas and for our birthdays. I tried to learn who they were, but they were just listed as Uncle Nat and Aunt Bea. My foster mom and dad never mentioned who they were or whose side of the family they were related to by blood. I never really thought to ask. For whatever reason, we always assumed they were on my mother’s side of the family.”
“It could have been a way for your biological parents to keep a connection with you if the gifts were from them and as a reminder, if they were paying your foster parents, to keep up the charade and spend the money on you that they were sending for your upkeep.”
Fiona could understand that but what about her brother? “But they sent the gifts to my brother also. They were expensive gifts too. Updated computers every year. New cell phones every year. They gave my brother a car before he went to college, and when I turned seventeen, they gave me one too before my parents’ untimely deaths, but Regina sold it, saying it would have cost too much to drive it all the way to Oregon.”
“To make it seem more like they were truly your aunt and uncle, they would have needed to send gifts to both of you.”
“Then if that’s the case, wouldn’t they have been monitoring what had happened to me after my foster parents died? They must have known that Regina took me to Oregon. Why didn’t they come to rescue me?”
“What if your father still has the gift of dreams? What if he connected with me in some way to come and help you out? Maybe it was the both of you who encouraged me to come? The man was blond-haired who had visited me.”
“Oh, wow. A blond-haired man also came to see me. But why wouldn’t he have physically come for me?”
“It’s possible that by the time your mother and father learned your foster parents had died it was too late. And then when Regina took you in, she was surrounded by her own pack of vampires. That would have been too many vampires for them to deal with if your parents aren’t in a pack of their own.”
“Then why would my father make a connection with you?” Fiona didn’t think it made any sense.
“What if you and I had this connection, for whatever reason, and your father could listen in on your dreams? Then he interceded on your behalf to me in a dream way to go to your aid. Maybe he and your mother researched who I was and learned that my friends and I had successfully removed the vampires who were in control of the League of Vampires in Scotland, no easy task, and thought we might be up to the mission.”
“Hmm.”
“It couldn’t be random,” Ruric said, his eyes still closed.
Fiona and Arman smiled at him.
Had Ruric been listening to their conversation the whole time?
“I think you hit on something with the idea that you and Fiona were dreaming about each other, and her father joined in on the dream and then learned who Arman was. But also since we travel together, he would have learned who all of us are and realized we might be able to help you out,” Ruric said.
“But he has to realize we are considered rogues, by some leagues,” Arman said. “I still don’t know why you and I connected.”
“Because we were at the Dallas mall, and I spilled a soda on you earlier? What if that wasn’t by accident? Then again, maybe it was just meant to be. I felt lost when my foster parents died and then there you were in my dreams, telling me I was important, loved, special. You don’t know how much I needed to hear that. And then when I saw you at the Halloween party, I couldn’t believe it was you. It couldn’t have been. You were just a dream to me. A figment of my imagination. Not a real person. Yet once I saw you, I thought of you being at the Dallas mall and how I was instantly drawn to you, attracted to you, and that had never happened to me before.”
“I felt the same way about you. But I thought I could control you with my vampiric gaze, bring you with me and protect you and I wasn’t able to. I knew for certain that you weren’t just a human girl I was supposed to save.”
Ruric started to snore. Arman and Fiona smiled.
“Did that bother you that I wasn’t a human who could easily be persuaded to do as you commanded?” Fiona asked.
Arman sighed and then smiled. “It meant I had to work harder at it, do more research, find out what we needed to do to keep you safe, which was certainly worth it. No, it didn’t bother me that you were a huntress. What bothered me was that you didn’t know it. You could have been a prime candidate for a rogue vampire to eliminate you, especially since you had no other hunters to help you.”
“Like Tobias.”
