Page 153 of Vampire's Choice
Up her father’s legs, to his knees. Her mother’s feet were tucked partially under his calf. She’d been wearing a pair of her canvas sneakers with the cat faces. Mal painted them on every new pair she bought. Different types of cats, different expressions.
A sob hit her in the chest, like Mason’s bowling ball had hit that container door. Merc’s arm tightened around her, but he honored his promise. He didn’t take her away. He was deep in her mind, in her soul. He knew what she needed.
Steeling herself, she let her eyes travel up their inert bodies to discover what Yvette had done.
The sorceress had left the area mostly unaltered, knowing Ruth needed to see it. For Adan, and for herself, she needed to see evidence of her father’s heroic fight to defend Kane and Farida, Elisa and their home. Her mother’s agonizing journey to reach his side before they crossed the Veil. But Yvette had decided there was one key thing Ruth did not need to see.
To her eyes, her father was intact, his head tilted down toward Elisa. Elisa had managed to pull one of his arms around her, their hands clasped.
In this position, they looked almost the way they did when they were on the couch. Elisa curled up next to him, Mal’s arm around her as they spoke in low, affectionate murmurs, punctuated with the occasional soft laugh or wry comment.
The only evidence that what Ruth was seeing wasn’t reality was the pendant Mal always wore, a carved cat’s head on a silk cord. It connected to the bespelled energies of the island, helped him monitor them wherever he was. It was on the ground a few feet away. That, with more spurted blood patterns, told her where his head actually was.
Seeing her gaze move in that direction, Merc picked up the pendant. He had to step away and bend over to do it, but he kept his fingertips resting on her hip. He grasped Ruth’s wrist, lifted her limp hand and put it in her palm. Her fingers convulsively closed over it, and the reality of it under her hand, the polished stone, told her all of it was real. There was no escaping this, no chance it was a bad dream.
She was Mal and Elisa’s daughter. She needed to do what they’d expect her to do. Holding onto that as tenaciously as she held the pendant, she moved forward. While her bones felt ancient, she managed to kneel by them. Laying her hand on Elisa’s was another terrible moment, the feel of her mother’s soft skin and slim bones, the well-worn cloth of her father’s shirt and solidness of his chest beneath it. All of it devoid of the life that made them…them.
After she choked back another sob, she began the chant to give peace to the dead, and wish them a safe journey.
For the living…she didn’t want peace. She wanted death. Horrible, horrible death. For everyone responsible for this.
After she completed the chant, she rose, swaying, not sure what to do next.
“Lady Yvette is on the porch,” Merc prompted her. “She needs to talk to you.”
Ruth moved that way, mostly because Merc took her hand and led her in that direction. Her feet dragged, then stopped.
“It’s all right,” he said, reading the confusion in her mind. “No one is going to bother them.”
Yvette stood against an unbroken part of the rail. There was a tightness to her mouth, an anger in her eyes, a deep well of emotion.
“Thank you,” Ruth whispered.
Yvette nodded. “Lady Lyssa wants you at Council headquarters,” she said quietly. “Maddock has already headed that way. You met with the Trad. There may be things you can offer that will help them find Farida and Kane.”
Ruth stared at the Circus Mistress. “I can’t leave them.”
“Ruth.” Merc touched her face.
She saw the knowledge in his eyes, felt it in her own self, but she savagely rejected it. She didn’t want to go anywhere.
But Farida and Kane were in danger. Mal and Elisa would tell her that took priority over everything else. Especially the dead, who didn’t need her help.
“There’s some disruption to the sanctuary spell work, but the cats are safe,” Yvette said carefully. “They’re just very spooked. I patched it enough, and Derek can fully right it, once he and Adan return.”
“The staff…”
“Three were killed. Two men, one woman. They were at the house when the attack happened, and joined your parents in trying to resist the invaders. The rest were at various places on the sanctuary, and found they couldn’t approach the house. An additional blocking field was brought down around it. A man named Hanska said Farida and Kane were with your parents when it happened.”
Hanska was alive. A relief, since he knew how to manage the sanctuary. A detestably practical thought, but it kept her from having to think about the three staff members who had been killed.
“I expect that’s why they used the additional field,” Yvette added, “to contain their target and keep out any other attempts to come to their aid. Not because they felt they were a threat, but to minimize the nuisance of having to deal with them. It saved most of their lives.”
Yvette’s gaze flickered with suppressed fury. “The humans were taken out far more easily than your parents were. Which did not make them any less brave for trying.”
“No.” Just the opposite. During visits by more contentious vampires, Da would firmly tell Hanska and the others not to interfere in any conflicts between him and them, because a human would have no chance against those vampires, and he didn’t want them harmed. Their focus was the care of the cats.
But if they’d been close enough to help, they wouldn’t have listened. Just as the three whose names she didn’t want to know yet hadn’t. Because they were family.