Revelation of Blood (15 page)

I swallowed thickly and stared at the man in
front of me. “I don’t believe you,” I whispered, shaking my head,
thoroughly shocked. I jerked my hand out of his hold and took two
steps back.

“It’s true,” he explained, a sad look in his
eyes. “My human name was Steven Edward Mitchell and I went to
school with your mother at MIT.” He pulled a wallet out of his back
pants pocket and retrieved a photo with tattered edges. “This was
taken about a year before you were conceived.”

Reaching out with shaking hands, I took the
photo and stared down at it. It was a picture of Lucian and my
mother, smiling and appearing very much in love. Lucian looked much
the same as he did now and my mother appeared to be around my
age.

My gaze slowly slid from the photo in my hand
to the man standing before me. I felt my eyes flicker back to their
normal colorless state and I gasped a single word, “No.”

I wanted to throw up. I wanted Ashton Kutcher
to come running out of nowhere and yell ‘Surprise! You just got
Punked, bitch!’. I wanted to wake up from this impossibly horrible
bad dream and find that I’d been safe all along at home in Archer’s
arms instead of standing here looking into the eyes of the man
who’d fathered me.

I swallowed hard and let the photo slide from
my fingers. “You’ve got some fucking nerve, you know that?” I
frowned angrily as I crossed my arms under my chest.

Lucian sighed and ran his fingers through his
red hair…hair almost as red as mine. “I’m sorry, Skye,” he said
softly. “I know I wasn’t there for you growing up and I regret
that.”

“Please,” I scoffed. “You wrote my mother a
check and threw it at her, telling her to get an abortion because
you wanted nothing to do with me, you selfish bastard.”

“Is that what she told you?” he asked, his
body instantly straightening with a look of pure, horrified shock
on his face.

“Two days ago, matter of fact, when she found
out I was a vampire and accused me of turning out just like you,” I
bit out. “I guess she was right. The apple doesn’t fall far from
the tree, does it Dad?”

“Regardless,” Lucian said, his intense green
eyes boring into mine, “that’s not how it happened. I did give your
mother a check, but it wasn’t for an abortion. It was for her
prenatal vitamins and anything else she needed at the time. I
wanted to be in your life; it was she who pushed me away.”

Murmuring from the back of the room drew my
attention again and I suddenly remembered that we had an audience.
“Look, I’m not having this discussion with you here. I don’t think
a room full of people need to be privy to this particular
conversation.”

My father turned to Atticus and addressed
him. “Master, would it be possible to have some privacy so Skye
would feel more comfortable?”

Atticus appeared thoughtful for a moment as
he studied me. “I have a feeling you are a woman of your word,
Skye, so I will take you at it. Will you swear that no harm will
come to him or my people if I grant his request?”

I glanced back at my father and saw the
pleading in his eyes. I could tell he very much wanted this. “I
swear,” I whispered, looking back at Atticus.

“Will you also swear to hear him out fully
before you decide whether or not to join us?” he asked and his
request gave me greater pause. Would knowing my father ultimately
sway my decision? I didn’t think so but stranger things had
happened. The thought made me suddenly nauseous.

I sighed and closed my eyes. No matter how I
felt about being kidnapped, some part deep down inside of me had
been aching for this moment my entire life. I’d always wondered who
my father was and now I had an opportunity to find out, direct from
the source. Coming to a decision, I opened my eyes and met
Atticus’. “I swear.”

“Excellent,” Atticus smiled, clapping his
hands together. Shuffling behind me signaled that the room was
being cleared. “You may utilize my throne room. Take as much time
as you need.” I watched as Atticus and his men disappeared behind
me and with a final, loud clang of a metal door, my father and I
were alone.

“Come,” he smiled, motioning to a place
behind me with his hand. I turned to see that there were chairs and
two couches off to the side of the room and followed him to one.
After sitting down on one end of the couch, my father sat on the
other and stared happily at me for a few quiet moments. “I can’t
believe you’re really here,” he said softly. “I’ve dreamed about
this day for twenty-three years.”

“I’ve always wondered who you were,” I said
honestly as I fidgeted with my fingers in my lap. “What you looked
like, what your voice sounded like.”

“Did your mother tell you nothing about me?”
he asked, sounding a bit shocked.

“I knew absolutely nothing of you until two
days ago. Mom refused to talk about you my whole life and any time
I asked she’d get mad.” I looked up at him and cocked one eyebrow.
“She hates you, you know. You broke her heart when you chose
immortality over us. She’s never gotten over it…or you.”

Lucian sighed and ran his fingers through his
hair, this seemed to genuinely distress him. “I loved your mother
very much, Skye, and it was not my intention to leave her forever.
I tried explaining that to her when I told her about my decision to
become a vampire, but she wasn’t hearing it.” He gazed over at me
and his eyes seemed to beg me for the answer to his next question.
“How is she?”

I sighed and frowned. “Pissed at me…very
pissed at me. She’s not speaking to me at the moment and claims I’m
no longer her daughter. I think it’s safe to say that it’ll be a
long time before I see her again.”

“Your mother will come around,” he said
simply.

“So, why did you want to become a vampire
anyway?” I asked, genuinely confused. He’d seemed to have it all as
a human; a good career, a woman who loved him, and a child on the
way. I couldn’t understand why he’d thrown that all away.

My father leaned forward and rested his
forearms on his knees. “I was sick…very sick. I’d been diagnosed
with Lupus my senior year of high school and as the years passed,
my disease got progressively worse. It affected my brain and
nervous system the most. By the time I was in my second year of
post-grad school, I was having seizures almost on a daily basis,
the headaches were completely debilitating and I was developing
serious vision problems which felt like a death sentence to me. A
neuroscientist needs their sight. I was barely able to work.”

“I thought Lupus was a treatable disease,” I
shook my head, not understanding.

“It is for most people,” he sighed, “but I
had a particularly nasty case. My immune system was very
aggressively attacking healthy tissue and destroying it, mainly my
brain. For a year or two after my diagnosis, my body responded well
to the high doses of corticosteroids my doctors placed me on. But
the more time passed, the more my body grew immune to treatment.
Toward the end of my human life, nothing they gave me helped. When
I met Vincent, the Dark One that turned me, he told me that
becoming a vampire would fully cure me and I’d be free to work and
live pain-free. Nothing in this world sounded better than a cure to
me, so I begged him to change me.”

My brow furrowed and I stared at my hands,
confused. “I don’t get it,” I said, finally looking up at Lucian.
“Why would my mother tell me that you’d abandoned us? Nothing she
told me about you two days ago lines up with what you are telling
me now.”

“I did my best to hide the extent of my
illness from your mother,” he explained gently. “I had a seizure
once in the lab and she got very emotional. I didn’t want to
subject her to the horrors of my disease, so I stayed quiet after
that…spent less and less time with her as my body spent more time
dealing with the symptoms.” He grew quiet for a few moments and I
saw the grief on his face as he looked down at the floor. “I loved
your mother so much, but I began pulling away from her in order to
spare her. When she told me that we were going to have a baby…well,
it was the happiest and saddest day of my life.”

“Why saddest?” I asked in a whisper.

“Because Vincent told me earlier that day
that he would grant me immortality,” my father explained, looking
up at me. Tears swam in his eyes and he looked tortured. “I
couldn’t back out, not now that I was going to be a father. I
needed to be at my best and strongest so that I could provide you
and your mother the life you deserved.”

“But what happened with you and mom?” I
asked, leaning closer to him. “Why did it end so badly? Why is she
telling me you abandoned us? I don’t get it, Lucian. I’ve never
known my mother to be dishonest with me. We normally have a very
good relationship…well, when she’s not being completely
overbearing,” I added with a shrug of my shoulder.

“That day in the lab, I told your mother of
my decision and explained how long I’d have to be away. When a Dark
One first awakens…well, it takes some time to come back to the
person you once were. I knew I’d need at least a year before I
could try to see her again. Your mother wasn’t happy with that, to
say the least. She screamed that I was abandoning her in her
greatest time of need and that you would need a father. I couldn’t
bring myself to tell her how bad my disease had really gotten so I
stayed silent on that front. Vincent had instructed me that we were
to leave for New York that night so I promised your mother I’d be
back, cut her a check for ten thousand dollars, and told her that I
loved her.”

I took a deep breath, letting his words sink
in. Tears formed in my eyes and I didn’t know if they were from
relief or what, but I was dangerously close to full out crying.
“You never told her you didn’t want me?” I asked in a small,
trembling voice.

My father scooted closer to me on the couch
and cupped my cheeks as he lifted my face to his. “No,” he said
fiercely. “Never. How could I not want my child, my own flesh and
blood? Finding out that we were expecting you was best news I’d
gotten in my life. I couldn’t wait to come back and be your father,
Skye. I loved you from the second I found out about you and thought
about you every day that I was gone. You were a part of me. You
were my little girl.”

A sob escaped my lips and my father pulled me
to him and hugged me tightly. “My precious daughter,” he whispered
as he held me. “Don’t cry.”

I allowed Lucian to hold me and rub my back
as I drank in my father’s smell and memorized the cadence of his
voice. I wanted to firmly imprint this moment in my mind. When my
tears slowed, I leaned back up and allowed him to wipe my tears
with the back of his hand.

“Are you okay?” he asked gently.

I nodded my head and swallowed thickly.
Something my mother had said stuck out in my mind and I mentioned
it to my father. “Mom said that you came by the house one night
when I was three.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“Well, I wanted to see you both,” he
explained like it was a silly question. “I’d regained who I was and
was ready to start a life with you both as a husband and father.”
He sighed and stared at the wall in front of us as he continued, a
haunted look in his eye. “You answered the door and told me that
dinner was ready. You came outside and took me by the hand,
inviting me to dinner, but I couldn’t move. I was so shocked to see
you and even more shocked that you were so beautiful and sweet. You
were the most beautiful child I had ever seen and you looked just
like me with your red hair and big eyes.”

“I don’t remember you,” I whispered
sadly.

“You were young, Skye,” he said, reaching
over to pat my hand. “Anyway, your mother saw me and screamed. She
ran to the door and jerked you away from me. I told her I’d come
back like I promised I would and she said that you both didn’t need
a monster like me in your lives and that you would never know who I
was. I was angry and hurt at first. I didn’t understand why she
would want to keep you from me. Every child needs a father. I could
see that her yelling was upsetting you, so I told her I would go
for the night but asked if I could know your name. She said hell
would freeze over first and slammed the door in my face. I
pretended to leave but then hid in the shadows on the side of the
house, listening intently…hoping she would utter your name. I
needed to know my daughter’s name at least. I didn’t have to wait
long. When she called the airline to book your flight to Houston
that night, she gave them your full name.”

“Why didn’t you come looking for us?” I
asked, shaking my head. “Why didn’t you try harder?”

Lucian sighed and looked over at me. “I’d
never seen your mother so angry and disgusted. When she looked at
me…it broke my heart. I figured that I’d give her some time and try
again a few months later, but when I went to Houston to visit her,
I found out she was seeing someone and couldn’t bear to talk to her
then. It hurt…seeing her with another man. The woman I was madly in
love with had moved on. Some small part of me thought it was for
the best. I figured a human father would be the best option for
you. I only had your best interests in mind, Skye.”

“Mom dated but she never truly let herself
get close to another man. I certainly was never allowed to see the
men she dated; she never brought them home. I think even though she
was angry at you, deep down she still loved you. I don’t think she
ever got over you, Lucian.”

“And I never got over her,” he whispered
sadly.

We were quiet for a bit, each lost to our own
thoughts. It was a surprisingly comfortable silence but my father
broke it first.

“So tell me about your life,” he smiled over
at me. “I want to know everything I missed.”

I smiled and began telling him everything I
could remember about growing up in Houston. We talked about high
school and college and eventually the conversation drifted to how
I’d ended up becoming a vampire.