Eternal Changes (Mikah) (11 page)

Ashton tore his gaze away from the chairs. A beautiful woman’s gaze bore through him at the head of the table. All of the Daroch in the room bowed and Ashton mimicked their actions.

“Welcome to our home, Ashton,” the woman said as she looked at him. “My name’s Caoilainn and I am queen of the Daroch. We have strict rules in the city of Othniel. Those who are not our kind don’t leave once they enter.” Her eyebrow arched upward. “So, tell me, why are you here?”

“I mean no disrespect towards you or your people,” Ashton told her as he stood up. “I need to know why you have one of your people following a female Halfling. Why are you interested in Lucy?”

“Tell me why I should tell you why we do what we do if it’s none of your concern,” Caoilainn said.

Ashton looked at the ethereal woman in front of him. He felt her violet eyes pierce through him as he answered her question. “Lucy’s special,” he explained, his hand running through his hair. “She’s trying to find her place in the world, but she doesn’t understand how special she truly is. I just want to protect her. The last thing that I want is for her to get hurt.”

 “She’s even more special than you know,” Caoilainn told Ashton as she stood up and walked towards him. She took Ashton’s hand in hers. “We protect ours as you protect yours.”

Ashton stumbled back. “She’s half
shifter
and half
vampire
? Is that what you’re telling me?” he asked as he shook his head in denial. “Impossible.”

“Love knows no boundaries vampire. It’s blind to all things and sees what’s possible even when it’s impossible,” Caoilainn said as she released Ashton’s hand.

“That’s why she’s so powerful even though she hasn’t fully turned. She’s tapping into some of the powers that come from being part shifter,” Ashton stated.

“Lucy’s barely grazed her powers,” Caoilainn said. “She’ll need to be mentored not just by your people, but by ours as well. She has a long, hard road ahead of her.”

Ashton thought about what Caoilainn told him as he looked at her. There was
something
about Caoilainn that was eating at him. Ashton’s eyebrows scrunched together as he rubbed his neck and studied Caoilainn’s features. Her blonde hair glistened as she moved and her amethyst eyes sparkled with wisdom. Every movement of her body was fluid. 

Understanding dawned in Ashton’s eyes. “Lucy’s your daughter.”

Caoilainn glanced at Ashton and inclined her head. “Lucy’s father and I agreed that she’d be better off in the care of a human until she approached her eighteenth birthday. We’d made a pact with each other that can’t be broken in order to keep her safe from those who’d harm her while she’s vulnerable.”

“Will she have the ability to shift into an animal along with having the full powers she’ll gain from being half vampire on her birthday?” Ashton asked as he thought about what could possibly happen to Lucy on that fateful day.

Caoilainn paused. “She should still have the ability to shift, but I’m not really sure. She’s what my people call a Mikah. My people have discussed the possibility of a hybrid of one of ours with a vampire, but crossing that line was taboo. A Mikah was whispered of, but never tried...until Lucy. My daughter’s
magnificent
and she’ll be beyond anything any of us have ever witnessed.”

Ashton shook his head and ice filled his veins. “Do you realize how
painful
the change is for a normal Halfling?” Ashton clenched his fist. “The pain Lucy will endure on her eighteenth birthday will be a hundred times worse as the shifter and vampire genetics collide.”

Caoilainn glowered at Ashton. “I’ve told you enough, vampire,” she said as she turned her back on him. “I’m letting you leave Euphranor so you can protect Lucy. But, if she dies -
you
die.”

Caoilainn nodded her head at Malachi. He grabbed Ashton’s arm and they both disappeared from her sight.

Chapter 10

After everything that happened with Michael, Lucy didn’t sleep well at all that night. The sunlight crept in through her bedroom window and she moaned in agony. It couldn’t be time to get up yet. She pulled her pink pillow over her head to block it out.

A rooster started crowing.

“A rooster?” Lucy mumbled, as she popped her head out from underneath the pillow and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “But we don’t own any chickens.”

She scrambled out of bed and looked out the window. Sure enough there was a rooster and a few chickens in the yard. Where in the world did they come from?

Lucy glanced over at her disheveled bed with longing. A sigh escaped her lips. It was pointless to even give in to the temptation. She opened her bedroom door and the wonderful smell of bacon invaded her nose. Lucy touched her stomach as it grumbled.

Lucy stumbled down the stairs, still half asleep, and found her mom in the kitchen humming as she cooked. Lucy walked over to see what her mom was cooking. Bacon sizzled and popped in one frying pan and several sausage links were turning a golden brown. Lucy perked up.

“What’s the special occasion?” Lucy asked as she watched her mom turn the sausage.

“No special occasion,” Jean said as she turned to look at Lucy, “but there’s this cute golden eyed guy here. Jean turned her attention back to the scrambled eggs on the stove. “He said he was a friend of yours from school. I showed him to the bathroom right before you walked in.”

Lucy’s mouth popped open as she stared at her mom’s back. “Are you telling me Ashton’s HERE? Right now?”

“Yep!” Jean glanced over her shoulder to look at Lucy. “The guys really love you in the country.”

Lucy glanced down at her purple pajamas that had pink, green, and yellow cats all over them. They looked like something her grandma would wear. “I’ll be back in a little bit,” Lucy murmured as she rushed out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

Lucy shook her head as she found a pair of jeans and a shirt. What was it with these guys just popping up at her house unannounced? Was it a country thing? 

Lucy quickly changed her clothes and headed for the bathroom. She plugged in her flat iron and looked in the mirror. She cringed at the reflection peering back at her. Dark circles were under her eyes and her hair was sticking up in every direction. Lucy pulled out the hidden artillery from underneath the oak cabinet. She unzipped the brown and pink bag and rummaged through it. She found the eyeliner and popped the cap off. Lucy’s hand shook as she neared her eyes with the think black stick. She paused and scowled at her hands. “Stop it,” she muttered to herself. She didn’t need to look like a kid who got overzealous with a crayola crayon.

Lucy pinned up her hair and left the bottom layer of it out. She went to work using the flat iron to make her hair shimmer even more than it did on its own. She took one last cursory glance in the mirror and made her way back downstairs.

 Her mom and Ashton were sitting at the small kitchen table. The food sitting on it was enough to feed a small army. There was bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, sugar syrup, pancakes, strawberries, and blueberries.

Ashton turned around when Lucy entered and stared at her without saying a word. Lucy touched her hair wondering if she’d made a mistake by wearing it down.

“You’re absolutely stunning, Luce,” Ashton said as he stood up.

“Thanks,” Lucy murmured as she felt herself starting to blush. She walked over to the seat next to him.

“Let me get that for you,” Ashton said as he got up and pulled out the chair for Lucy to sit in.

“Well, not only does he have good looks, but he has manners too,” Jean stated.

Ashton and Lucy looked at Jean as if they’d just realized she was in the room with them.

“I just do what any man should do, ma’am,” Ashton said as Lucy sat down.

“The key word in that sentence,” Jean told Ashton as she stabbed her fork into a sausage link, “was
should
. Most men don’t put forth the effort.”

Lucy looked at the biscuits sitting on the rectangular pan in front of her. They didn’t look like the usual Pillsbury biscuits her mom usually made. “New biscuits?” Lucy asked as she picked one up and looked at it. The thing felt heavy and as hard as a rock. She was pretty sure someone could break a window with one of these babies.

“Yep,” Jean said as a smile lit up her face. “Our neighbor down the street, Mrs. Gordon, gave me the recipe. I guess country folk don’t use measuring cups. They just put in a pinch of this and a dash of that. I think I may have added a little too much flour.”

Lucy tapped the biscuit on the kitchen table. “You think?”

Jean shrugged her shoulders. “I thought it’d be something neat to try. It’ll just take a little bit of practice, but my biscuits will be delicious in no time at all.”

“So, what brings you to our humble abode?” Lucy asked Ashton as she grabbed a few pieces of bacon.

“We’re both new in town, so I wanted to stop by and see if you’d be interested in seeing what’s in Campbellsville. Obviously there isn’t too much in Greensburg,” Ashton said as he shrugged his shoulders. “I just figured it’d give us something interesting to do today.”

Lucy thought about it as she took a bite out of one of the sausage links. She hadn’t really had time to check what was beyond Greensburg. It’d probably be beneficial and fun to explore with someone besides her mom. “Well, I don’t have too much on my agenda for the day and it beats staying around the house with nothing to do. But I don’t think anything is open this early in the morning.”

Ashton smiled at her. That was all it took for goose bumps to rise up and cover Lucy’s arms.

“I haven’t really explored the countryside,” Ashton told her. “It might be fun to go for a hike in the woods. There’s a ton of great places to explore around here.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” Lucy said. “I found a creek in the woods not too far from here. I found it the first day we arrived, but I haven’t had a chance to go back yet.”

“Would you like to go with us Ms. Walden?” Ashton asked Jean.

Lucy cringed as she looked over at her mom. Lucy crossed her fingers under the table. She didn’t want to spend the day with Ashton and have her mom tagging along. There was so much that she wanted to know about him.

“Thank you for asking, but I really need to focus on my writing,” Jean said. “I’ve spent most of this week unpacking and I have a deadline I have to meet.”

Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. Hallelujah. She finished the food on her plate and sat back in her chair. “Breakfast was delicious,” Lucy told her mom, “But the biscuits are definitely going to take some time. I didn’t take a bite of one because I was afraid that I’d break a tooth”

“Ha ha. Very funny,” Jean said as she stood up. “I’m gonna scoot out of here and try to get in the writing zone.”

Lucy watched as her mom left the kitchen before looking back at Ashton. “We’ll head out once I get done cleaning the kitchen.”

“Once
we
get done,” Ashton said as he started picking up the empty plates.

Lucy didn’t feel like moving now that her belly was full, but the dishes weren’t going to clean themselves. She heaved herself up from the chair and headed for the kitchen sink.

A half hour later, Lucy and Ashton stepped outside into the glorious sunshine. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the vehicle that was sitting in her drive way. It was a beautiful, metallic blue, sports car.

“What kind of car is
that
?” Lucy asked him in shock.

“It’s a 2010 California Ferrari. It has a hard top, but it’s still a convertible. It was love at first sight,” Ashton said as he walked over to the car.

“That had to have cost a small fortune,” Lucy murmured as she followed him.

“It didn’t put much of a dent in the pocketbook,” Ashton said as they reached the vehicle. He opened the driver side door. “Go ahead, get in.”

Lucy touched the vehicle’s door to make sure it was real. The metal was cool against her fingertips. She climbed into the cream leather seat and touched the steering wheel. She looked around. A GPS was built into the dashboard and there was a button to heat the seats. Her eyes fell upon the red and black speedometer and her mouth dropped open. It went up to
three hundred and forty
miles per hour! “This is the coolest car I’ve ever seen,” she murmured.

“I’m not too picky about most things, but I’m when it comes to vehicles,” Ashton said as he stroked the hood of the car. “Some people think it’s too much money to spend on a car, but you only live once. Why not enjoy it?”

Lucy nodded my head in agreement. A wistful sigh escaped her lips as she climbed out of the car.

“So, what do your parents do?” Lucy asked Ashton.

“My parents invested their money wisely and it built up into a substantial amount over time,” Ashton said. “They’re now happily retired.”

“That’s awesome,” Lucy said as they started walking towards the woods. “So, are you always up this early?”

“No, not usually,” Ashton said, “but my sleeping schedule has been a little messed up lately.”

“Tell me about it. The last few months of my life have been a complete mess,” Lucy told him. She glanced over in his direction and noticed that Ashton had a weird look on his face. “What’s wrong?”

Ashton snapped out of it and looked over at her. “Nothing. I just completely understand how you feel.”

“Do you really?” Lucy asked in disbelief.

“You’re not the only one in the world whose felt like everything was coming crashing down around them, Luce,” Ashton said as he looked into her eyes. “I’ve been through more than what you can even comprehend.”

Lucy stopped and turned to Ashton. “Then tell me and help me understand.”

Ashton stared at her for several minutes before he said a word. “Do you think there are other beings in the world besides just humans?” he finally asked.

“Like aliens?” Lucy asked a little confused.

“Not
quite
like that,” Ashton said as looked up at the sky, “but more along the lines of vampires or what most people just consider creatures of make-believe.”

Lucy thought about it for a minute before giving him an answer. “I don’t think humans are all that encompass the world. There are so many things that can’t be explained, so I can’t be naïve enough to assume we’re the only thing that’s out there.”

“Like the powers you feel build within you when you run?” Ashton asked as he grabbed her hand.

Lucy jerked her hand from him. How did he know that?

“It’s ok, Luce,” Ashton soothed. “You’re not the only one out there who’s different.”

Lucy looked into Ashton’s eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”