Undertow (29 page)

“Actually, no. I was given the house, by an anonymous buyer,” I said, trying not to choke on the words.

Raines visibly straightened. “Why?”

It was a single word and the answer was going to make or break us. Literally. “Because the buyer wanted the home to go back into the hands of the original family that built it, which is me. I’m Eila Walker. My 4
th
Great Grandmother was . . .”

“Elizabeth,” said Raines, quietly, almost breathlessly. He looked shocked. I actually thought he might be having a heart attack, if such an a
ilment could even be possible in his kind.

He reached out his hand to me slowly. “I am very pleased to meet you Eila,” he said carefully.

I knew what he was doing. He wanted to touch me. To confirm I was Elizabeth’s descendant. I managed to force one of my hands to release MJ’s now rock-hard arm, and I reached out to Raines. When our hands met, I was shocked to feel my palm turn cool then warm, almost in waves. He slowly released my hand and smiled lightly, almost as a father would look at his child. It was . . . strange.

I glanced at MJ and released his arm
completely, stepping towards Raines. I saw Raef immediately appear out of the stairwell, no doubt a reaction to my movement toward our host. “I know
what
you are and I know you knew my grandmother. I need your help,” I said, confidence growing inside me.

“Of course,” said Raines, his velvet voice more serious.

I was surprised he answered so quickly. I glanced over to Raef, and Raines followed my eyes, nearly doing a double take. They walked over to MJ and me, Ana walking next to Kian. “Mr. Raines, this is . . .”

“Kian O’Reilly and Raef Paris,” said Raines, still staring at them as if he was seeing ghosts.

Raef, always in bodyguard mode, was not sold on the safety factor with Raines. “How do you know us? We barely spoke back then,” he asked, his voice dangerously low.

“Because Elizabeth was fond of both of you. When you disappeared, she feared you had been killed,” Raines replied. “I see you are not dead, however.”

Kian and Raef were still uneasy with Raines so close to me, but the odd sensation when he shook my hand filled me with a strange sort of familiarity. “We have questions we need answered Mr. Raines.”

“I understand. But I need to clarify something, right now. That while you are most definitely the granddaughter of Elizabeth, you are not the granddaughter of Josiah Walker.”

I was completely confused. If I wasn’t Josiah’s granddaughter, who the . . .?

“You are
my
granddaughter. You are a
Raines
,” he said, smiling again.

Oh, snap.

22

At first, Raef and Kia
n
were dead set against going anywhere with Raines-the-Liar, but arguing in the balcony with the party raging beneath us seemed unwise.  Raef, close beside me, finally agreed to follow Raines to one of the ornate bedrooms so we could all get up to speed with each other.

Once in the gilded boudoir, Raef immediately spoke up, “There is no way in hell you are related to Eila! Our kind cannot have children – especially with a Lunaterra!”

Kian nodded, “He’s right Eila. My bullshit-meter just pinned on that one.”

Raines put his hands up, casually defensive,  “Look, I know it sounds impossible, but I am telling you the absolute truth. Elizabeth and I were far more than friends and she did conceive a child with me. Trust me when I say that we were as completely shocked as you are now.”

Raef was shaking his head, not changing his mind, “Not possible.”

“It’s true. And Eila is my descendant. I could tell the moment I touched her. You felt it as well, did you not?” Raines asked, looking to me for confirmation. I glanced to Raef and then back to Raines. “I felt an odd sensation, yes.” 

Raef stepped forward to me. “Eila,” he pleaded, no doubt ready to argue about my sanity.  I looked at him and he stopped where he was. He knew enough to stop talking. Instead he set himself like a fortress next to me. He crossed his arms, his stance screaming, “
Say the word and I snap his neck
.”

“How did you know Elizabeth?” I asked. “How did you meet her?”

Raines looked at me and sat down in an ornate armchair near the bed. He rubbed his forehead, thinking.

“I met Elizabeth when she was only five years old in the northern part of France. I had been a Mortis for almost 90 years when I met her.  She was one of the Lisles – a royal – and she had somehow gotten separated from her family. I found her wandering the woods, miles from her home.”

“What do you mean ‘a royal’?” I asked.

“Hers was the ruling family. She was heir to the empire,” said Raines, plainly, as if any of us would have known this. “None of you knew this? That she was destined to be Empress?”

We all shook our heads. Yeah – that 411 we definitely missed.

“Then you don’t know how the Lunaterra function?” Again, all heads shook
no.
I felt supremely ignorant, especially since I was supposed to be one of them.

“The Lunaterra royal family dictates the will of the rest of the Lunaterra species. They are linked, in one mind-set, to their leader. Basically, no free will. It’s genetic,” said Raines. “But Elizabeth was born different, sort of handicapped. She didn’t connect with the pack mentality of her kind. I have a feeling that is why she was able to wander off. But back then, her family didn’t realize she was different.”

I was completely intrigued.

“I had been hunting in the forest when I found her, crying and cold, in the hollow of the base of a tree. I knew what she was and, because of what she was, I should have killed her. Or left her to die. The Lunaterra were brutal to our kind. It didn’t matter if you lived in peace with the humans. If you were a Mortis and a Lunaterra found you, you were dead. If you were lucky, they killed you instantly and if you were unlucky . . .” Raines shifted, as if he was remembering something, “. . .they killed you slowly.”

Raef looked at me as I sat down slowly across from Raines. I couldn’t help thinking he might never be able to see me as his “E” after this. The skeletons in my family closet were executioners. Somehow, I wasn’t sure the Mortis were the soulless ones after all. I felt ill.

“I sensed there was something about her,” continued Raines. “Her essence was so unique. She didn’t look at me like I was to be loathed. She just gave a small smile and reached her little arms up to me. I knew, absolutely knew, she was not like the rest. Lunaterra are programmed to hate the soulless. As children they watch
ed their parents kill and, like wolves, parents would sometimes bring a weakened Mortis back to their children so they could practice their ability.”

I definitely was going to be sick. I put my hand over my mouth, horrified at what my kind had done. Raef sat down next to me and put his arm
around my waist. It was an effort to show that this information didn’t change how he saw me, although
I
wasn’t sure my reflection would ever be the same. Kian and Ana sat down on a sofa across from us, but MJ stayed on his feet by the door, always the watchdog.

“I took her back to her family and left her close enough to the estate so she would be found. I didn’t hear of her again until a decade later when rumors spread that an heiress was found to be ‘abnormal.’ Defective, because she didn’t follow orders to kill. Word was that she had even helped a few of my kind escape by feeding them information on pending attacks. Her family decided to execute her, charging her with treason, but before they could, she ran.” Raines shook his head, his eyes cast to the floor.

“I knew it had to be the little girl from the woods and I was determined to help her. It took me nearly a week to find her and when I did, she was in terrible shape. She had been living in the forest, exposed to the cold winter that had set in. She was thin, sick, and bruised from beatings at the hands of her own family. But she recognized me and knew she was safe. Even back then, at fifteen, she was beautiful, much like you,” said Raines, looking at me.

I felt Raef move slightly, pulling me closer to him. He never took his eyes off of my possible grandfather.

“I guarded her and took care of her. She became critical in the fight against her own kind and started to hide those of us she knew were truly good people. By the time she was eighteen, her power was unlike any other Lunaterra I had ever seen, and that made her family furious. They hunted her relentlessly and I knew we had to put real distance between us and them. We came to Massachusetts and I posed as her brother due to our apparent age difference of nearly 10 years. For a brief time, her life was normal – she made friends at the school I sent her to and she was happy.”

“But then word came that a Mortis named Jacob Rysse had entered the fray in Europe and he was unlike any we had ever known. He was a killing machine and seemed to have a high tolerance when it came to the Lunaterra’s power. He also had zero tolerance for the type of soulless people Elizabeth had tried to protect. He saw them as a weakness to his race. He started to build a small army, known as the Rysse Clan.  They decimated the Lunaterra and started picking off our own race as well.”

Raef glanced to me. I knew he had been one of them – a killing machine, though he went after humans. I wondered if he also eliminated the weaker Mortis.

Raines rubbed his face and leaned back farther in the chair. “There was always this spark between us, but I kept it buried. Forced it down. I felt that to become more than her guardian was unwise, but we had this link. I couldn’t break it, couldn’t talk her out of it. And one night, all that emotion and desire came out and she ended up carrying my child. Neither of us ever thought such a thing was possible, especially between the two of us. I panicked when I realized that she and the baby would be hunted by both of our families. So I did the only thing I could - I set her up to marry Walker immediately and hide who she was.”

I realized I had stopped breathing and drew a deep lungful. My heart clenched for Elizabeth and what she had gone through at such a young age.

Raines locked his hands together and leaned forward in his seat, his head hanging. “She was furious and begged me to not make her do it. She was absolutely broken hearted and I just wanted to die. But she did it, for the child.  I stood there and watched her marry him. Watched her leave with him, knowing it was their wedding night and that she was carrying our baby within her. It ripped me to pieces.” Raines placed his face in his hands, his body stiff.

“Walker assumed the child, born eight months later, was his. Elizabeth kept her pregnancy and our son hidden from everyone. No one knew about our son. I got to hold him once, when Walker was away. He was a few weeks old,” said Raines, choking up. “Elizabeth said when she was alone with our son, she called him Christian.” 

Raines shook his head, unable to continue speaking. His grief seemed to crush him and my heart went out to him.  He sat back, blinking back tears and looking out past the massive glass windows. A silence fell on the room.

I glanced at Raef and Kian, then back to Raines. “Do you know how Elizabeth died?” I asked quietly.

Raines managed to pull himself together the best he could. “No. Not really, though I guessed Rysse attacked her and somehow they both ended up dead.” Anger laced his words. “I found her body in the old harbor square. I even heard the blast. I buried her, but a local man did see her lying by the harbor fountain, before I got there. He believed she had been struck by lightning, but few believed him as he drank too much and the body wasn’t there.” 

I glanced at my friends and cautiously spoke. “We believe that Rysse didn’t kill Elizabeth. We think she allowed him to touch her and that something went wrong and her own power killed them both.”

Raines looked shocked. Raef looked at me suspiciously, confused as to why I was bringing it up at all. We were supposed to be asking about the house, but I needed more answers than just the buyer’s identity.

“She wouldn’t do that. She hated him. You’re wrong . . . you’re . . . wait, why do you think this?” asked Raines, standing up slowly. Raef was immediately on his feet, a predatorial look in his dark eyes.

I slowly got to my feet, “Because I’ve seen her death in my dreams and I think they’re from Elizabeth. I think she is trying to tell me somet
hing. And I think Rysse believed he could do something to her. Maybe draw off her soul, or something.”  My friends looked downright floored at my hypothesis.

Raines looked at me, his brow dropping into a deep crease. “There was a rumor that Rysse
was
a Lunaterra who had been turned. But it was regarded as pure fiction because Lunaterra cannot be turned. Elizabeth, however, had her suspicions. And she herself was a flaw of nature, but an evolutionary jump as well. If the rumor was true, than it was possible that Rysse thought he could turn her.” Raines slowly sank back to his chair. “In your vision, what exactly happened when Rysse touched her?”

I glanced at Raef, unsure if I should continue.

He didn’t protest so I went on, “He grabbed her by the neck and they seemed to focus on one another. His face - it became marked. And then he suddenly panicked and appeared to be sort of chained to her, unable to let go. Elizabeth, however, didn’t act afraid. A bright light wound around both of them, almost like a snake. When it became almost blinding, it turned into . . . “

“ . .  .
A column of white fire,” finished Raines, in a near whisper.  “She . . . she triggered a Core collapse.”

“A what?” asked Raef, shifting towards Raines.

Raines was lost to his own thoughts, staring down at his hands. It was then that I realized he was rubbing a fine gold ring on his pinkie finger. Delicate and wound with a braid-like pattern, it was definitely a woman’s band.

Raines finally looked up and his eyes were glossy. “A . . . Core collapse.  It’s a DNA encoded trip wire in the Lunaterra. A self-destruct trigger that calls down the Web’s core. That kind of energy no one can handle.”

He swallowed hard and looked away from us, out toward the sea beyond the windows. “Rysse must have tried to push a stolen life-force into her as a way to corrupt her DNA and turn her. Why he thought he could do it, however, is beyond me. Knowing Elizabeth, I am sure she orchestrated it to lure him in . . . and kill him.”

Raines’ gaze was distant, as if realizing for the first time that Elizabeth probably knew she was going to die. Knowingly lured in Rysse with a promise of being turned so she could kill him. I was not sure he would ever find comfort in the knowledge that she left this world on her own terms.

I looked at Raef, whose own face was now tense. I spoke to him directly. “That explains why the Bridge Boy didn’t kill me, the day he got into my house.”

“Someone tried to KILL you?” asked Raines, alarmed, now looking pointedly at Raef. “Who?”

“A clansman who managed to get into the house without an invitation,” said Raef, stepping in front of me. “He nearly killed Ana and tried to take Eila somewhere. He said that his orders were to secure her and the diary,” said Raef. “Knowing what we do now, I think they are going to attempt to turn Eila.”

I saw Ana wrap her arms around herself and Kian leaned closer to her so his body was just barely touching hers. Automatically, she angled closer to her lifeguard.

“Then the house has been breached,” said Raines. “To do that takes someone powerful enough to disable the protective nature of the home. That’s not good.”  Raines thought for a moment, “What about her diary? Did you find it?”

I shook my head, “No, just an unfinished photo book. That’s how we found your picture.”

Raines suddenly looked brighter, stepping forward. “Did it have an engraved leather cover? With a round imprint in the center?”

“Yeah. That’s it,” I said, hope rising.

“That’s the diary!” said Raines. “Elizabeth’s necklace is the key that unlocks it. The necklace fits in the cover and reveals the written portion of the diary. Those blank pages are not really empty. We could have answers!”