Family Secrets (Young Adult Edition) (Davenport Manor (Young Adult Edition)) (24 page)

“
Aidan and I have prepared
to do that,” she replied to the open air beside her as Aidan rolled
his eyes, thinking this was absolutely ridiculous.

“
And…” Todd said, looking
confused. Hesitantly, he continued, “She said you, Zachariah, and
Aidan need to tell the truth about Daniel’s parents, John and
Mary…?”

Horrified, Emma looked at Zachariah,
who mirrored her alarm. They both had feared that this would happen
and they would be forced to expose the secret they had hidden for
the past six years.

Angry and puzzled, Daniel looked to
his vampire “siblings” for an answer. “What about my
parents?”

Emma and Zachariah had been rendered
speechless, neither knowing what to say or how to say it. Their
mouths hung open, but no words escaped; their eyes wide with
alarm.

After a long silence filled with
tension, Aidan finally spoke up for them, “Your parents didn’t just
die in a freak accident, Daniel.”

Daniel turned to him, barely
breathing, afraid of what he was about to say. “What happened to my
parents?” His voice quivered.

“
I killed them. I only
meant to kill only your father, but I didn’t realize your mother
was in the car with him. The tree didn’t just fall on the car…I
pushed it. Sorry, kid.” Aidan replied without an ounce of
remorse.

Daniel’s breathing became short and
heavy, fighting the emotions that were flooding him. “Why did you
want to kill my father?”

“
When I came to visit Emma
and Zachariah on business that week, I learned that your father was
a threat to our kind,” he nonchalantly replied.

Daniel had never met this man before
in his life and knew he had never been to their home. He would have
remembered someone like Aidan. “What do you mean he was a threat?
And when were you here? I had never met you until
yesterday.”

Aidan was beginning to get
perturbed from being interrogated; he hated nothing more than being
questioned, especially by a human. “You
have
met me before…I just made you
forget.”

Daniel was appalled and asked Emma and
Zachariah, “What did you have to do with this?”

Both hung their heads in shame, unable
to look at him. Emma had never been so infuriated with her sister
in her entire life. The remorse and guilt that had plagued her for
so many years was replaced with rage in the matter of one
sentence.

“
Answer me!” Daniel
yelled. He couldn’t believe that Emma or Zachariah had anything to
do with his parents’ deaths; he didn’t want to believe
it.

“
We should talk upstairs,”
Zachariah forced the words from his mouth.

“
Why can’t we talk here?”
Daniel asked shortly.

Zachariah locked eyes with
Daniel and steadily said, “We
need
to go upstairs to talk.”

As if in a trace, Daniel bluntly
replied, “Okay, let’s go upstairs.”

Aidan muttered under his breath so
that only the vampires could hear, “He cannot know about the
weapon.” Zachariah glanced back at him with an
I-got-it-under-control look as they exited the parlor.

Emma, Zachariah, and Daniel went into
his bedroom and shut the door behind them. He was still furious at
them for hiding any truth regarding his parents’ deaths. He had
trusted them his entire life and now, he could hardly look at them.
Never had he felt so deceived by them.

“Daniel,” Emma gently
said. “I know you’re hurt, but please listen to what we have to
say. You know how much I love you, how much
we
love you. I hope you realize that
we would never do anything to hurt you, which is why we had to make
the decision we did. There was no easy way to go about
it.”

“To go about what?” Daniel asked, his
voice still lit with anger.

Zachariah continued for Emma, “When
Aidan came to visit on business that time, he decided to do what he
does best. He hunts for what we call ‘living weapons’. It’s the
only thing that kills us—he has hunted them his entire immortal
life. As it turns out, your dad was one of them.”

Emma interjected, “Aidan’s ancient and
while he has adjusted to modern ways, he still has a bit of old
school in him. He was a warrior during his human life and was
taught by his maker to hunt the living weapons, even though they
are extremely rare. So, when he met your dad, his embedded instinct
was to kill him…”

“…but, I was ready to fight him to
protect John, your dad.” Zachariah finished.

Daniel’s chin quivered and his eyes
began to fill with tears, “So, why didn’t you?”

Defeated, Zachariah looked away and
shook his head when he softly replied, “I don’t have the strength
to take on Aidan.”

“
None of us do, Daniel,”
Emma said as she placed her hand on his arm. “The thing is, we
argued with him, and since we did that it made him angry. He said
he would either kill just your dad or he would kill all of you…we
couldn’t let that happen to you, Daniel. So, we made the choice and
told him to do what he needed to do, even though it completely
broke our hearts. You have no idea how much it pained
us.”

“
You have to remember, we
had known your dad since the day he was born as well,” Zachariah
added. “But, we knew Aidan was going to do what he needed to do and
we requested for him to leave you and your mom out of it, to which
he obliged.

“
He planned to make it
look like an accident so none of us would be implied. He watched
your dad get in the car and he took off into the woods to wait for
him to drive by. He didn’t know that your mom had left the house a
minute afterward and got into the car, too. Emma and I stayed
upstairs, we felt disgusting knowing what was going to happen—we
were distraught. But, that was our big mistake right there, had we
been downstairs, we would have known your mom decided to go with
him and we could have tried to stop her from going or Aidan from
pushing down the tree.”

“
We blame ourselves…we
always will,” Emma said. “And we understand if you can’t forgive
us, but please know we made our choice because we were looking out
for you. We love you so very much, Daniel.” Her eyes pleaded for
redemption.

Daniel sat silently while he absorbed
all of this new information about the death of his parents. He was
angry at Emma and Zachariah for not telling him the truth for the
past six years, but he could also understand why. He knew they had
no choice and that they at least tried to convince Aidan to spare
his father. He just couldn’t understand why Emma didn’t have more
pull, considering who she was to Aidan. He was her maker, which
made her no ordinary vampire—she had rank in their world, that much
he knew. But, in the end, it was in the past and there was nothing
that could be done about it.

“
I don’t know what to
say,” Daniel said. This had caused all of his bad memories to swim
back up to the surface. Bad memories that he spent the past few
years trying to bury within him. “I feel like all the pain that I
was able to alleviate has burst into a spontaneous
fire.”

Zachariah thought for a moment before
choosing his words wisely, “I can make you forget the pain,
Daniel.”

Daniel didn’t want to forget the pain
when he lost his parents initially. It was devastating, but he also
knew it was part of the grieving process. He considered it for a
moment and replied, “No.”

“
Alright, but if you
change your mind, just say the word,” Zachariah said. He shifted on
the couch to face Daniel directly and locked eyes with him once
again. “However, you will not remember anything we told you about
the living weapons. Humans are not allowed to know.” He knew Aidan
would be listening intently through the walls of the Manor and he
could be assured that the living weapon secret was still safe among
vampires.

“
You okay, Dan?” Emma
asked as she put her arm around him.

“
Yeah, I’ll be okay. I
just want to be alone for a while.”

Emma and Zachariah respected his
wishes and left him to grieve in private once again, but not
without monitoring him with their ears. They returned downstairs to
the group that was still lingering in the parlor, awkwardness
permeating the air. Vivienne and Declan were never told the real
story behind the accident that took the lives of Daniel’s parents.
Zachariah and Emma decided that the less people who knew, the
better. So, their secret was kept contained between them and Aidan;
that was until Elizabeth had to open her big mouth. Emma was still
livid that she threw her under the bus like that.

“
So, is Elizabeth happy
now?” Emma asked Todd sarcastically. “Now that she has drudged up
the past and caused Daniel to hurt all over again?”

Todd waited for a moment while she
answered, then relayed, “No, she’s not happy. She doesn’t want to
see him hurting, but he deserved to know the truth about the
monsters he lives with.”

Emma glared into the absent space and
said, “Screw you, Elizabeth. To think I felt bad for so long about
what I did.” She shook her head and gave an exasperated laugh. She
immediately wanted to suck those words back into her mouth, she
couldn’t believe she had just said that to her sister that she had
mourned for so long. However, Elizabeth’s words had stung. Emma
didn’t see herself as a monster, but she had far more time than a
human to make big mistakes in her life.

Todd, feeling uncomfortable with being
in the middle of this sibling rivalry, transmitted Elizabeth’s
reply, “She said that she knows you don’t mean that and you said it
because you’re hurt. But, you are an abomination of nature.” He
paused for a moment and held up a finger so Emma knew there was
more coming. “She said she’ll finally be able to rest once you move
her to the family crypt…where you should be, too.”

Emma’s emotions were
riding high now as Elizabeth’s words pierced her.
“
I’m
an
abomination? Who’s the one floating around here and haunting my
guest? No one else can see you! You’re just as much of a monster as
I am, Elizabeth. Don’t you worry, I’ll put you in the family crypt,
Miss Judgey.”

“
She said once you do, she
will come to say goodbye. She doesn’t want to part like this,” Todd
said.

“
Well then, quit throwing
the word monster around, yeah?” Emma snapped as she stood up. “Come
on Aidan, let’s go get this over with. I’m done with this crap.
Merry stinkin’ Christmas.” Emma stormed out the front door and
Aidan casually followed behind.

The remaining people in the room all
glanced at each other and then focused on Todd. Realizing all eyes
were on him, he said, “Elizabeth’s gone. This is really too weird
for me.”

Chapter 16

Emma pried the sealed crypt door open,
revealing the three coffins that held the remains of her parents
and brother. There were two ledges on two of the interior walls and
one ledge on another where the coffins were placed, making room for
the family of five. Emma took a moment to study the singular ledge
that would never hold her own coffin. The wood on the coffins that
were already occupied were rotting and she feared bumping into one
and seeing yet another long-dead family member. It was traumatic
enough for her to dig up Elizabeth, who was nothing but bones and
scraps of clothing now. It was an image she would never be able to
erase from her memory for as long as she walked the
Earth.

Luckily, Aidan had no emotional
attachment to the deceased and did most of the work for her. While
he had most of the aloof characteristics of an old vampire, he
still had drops of feelings here and there, and felt somewhat bad
that Emma was in pain. He knew that her cross words toward her
sister were out of hurt, not anger, and that she still truly loved
Elizabeth. She had shed a single blood tear as they dug up the
makeshift grave, but neither of them spoke while they got the job
done. When they found the remains, Aidan lightly grabbed hold of
her arm and motioned for her to walk away, knowing it was difficult
for her. He placed all the remains he could find in the casket that
they had placed there the night before. He carried it through the
forest and followed the path to the cemetery where Emma was waiting
in the opened crypt.

“Just set her on the top one, above my
brother,” Emma said with no emotion in her voice.

Aidan followed her orders and gently
placed the casket, which looked incredibly new and fancy compared
to the others, on the top ledge. Emma lingered, her eyes not quite
focused on anything in particular, but was clearly lost in her own
thoughts.

“I’ll go back to the Manor,” Aidan
said as he stepped out.

“Aidan,” Emma called behind her. He
returned and popped his head back in the doorway. “Thanks for
helping me. I appreciate it.”

He winked and said, “What are makers
for?”

She turned back to the four coffins
that lay before her, her eyes lingering on each one. After a few
moments of paying a respectful silence, she said aloud, “Well,
Elizabeth, I hope you’re able to rest now.”

“I am.” Emma heard the reply come from
behind her in the entrance to the crypt. She knew the voice and
flung around to face it. Her eyes immediately filled with tears of
joy as she saw her sister transparently standing before
her.