Page 15 of Too Brazen to Bite (Gothic Love Stories #5)

Ellie’s sudden laugh bordered on hysteria. “Not at all, but pray continue. It seems I need to know your story in order to better understand mine.”

Watching her daughter uncertainly, Mama stammered at first, then let loose with a torrent of words as if a dam had broken free.

Ellie, on the other hand, could only listen and stare, unable to make a sound. Anger, disbelief, and wonder all crashed together as she tried to assimilate the flood of unforeseeable information and unbelievable twists to what she thought she knew about her own life.

Her mother was a vampire.

“I was reborn in Castle Foulis, centuries ago.” Mama’s voice was dreamy. “I lived amongst dozens more of our kind. There was a clan. A family. A government. It was paradise… and then I ran away.”

“Why?” Ellie asked quietly.

“I fell in love.” Her mother’s eyes grew sad.

“Outside of master-and-servant or hunter-and-prey, relationships with humans are verboten. Human-vampire relations are forbidden above all things, even though mixed-blood procreation was believed to be a myth. The only way to be with the human man I loved was to denounce everything that I knew and run.”

Ellie tried to imagine loving someone so much she would give up paradise to keep them.

Mama had done it twice. First for a human, and now for Ellie. She was the albatross keeping her mother from returning home.

“Taking a human lover was the first of my crimes,” Mama continued.

“I also broke a betrothal contract. One I had never agreed to. In those days, even a vampire woman’s consent wasn’t needed when it came to planning her life.

I was to be sacrificed to the leader of the Pitreavie as a token of peace to end centuries of territorial disputes.

No one asked my wishes. I was commanded to submit to the Elders’ bidding before the new moon.

But my heart wasn’t theirs to rule. I had already given it to another. ”

“How romantic,” Ellie said softly.

“I thought so. I was wrong.” Mama took Ellie’s hands.

“We’re being hunted , daughter. We’re in constant danger.

The Elders sent searchers to bring me to justice.

I would be given to the Pitreavie clan at last or condemned to the castle dungeon for my transgressions.

But if the Elders find out about you … it would be a death warrant for us both. ”

Ellie swallowed hard. “No wonder we run. If only we had funds!”

“I have riches.” Mama’s laugh did not reach her eyes.

“It doesn’t help. I was once a high-ranking member of our clan.

But my collection of precious jewels can neither be worn nor sold, because its very singularity makes it easily traced.

When desperation forces me to part with an item, we must quit town that night and travel as far as we can, before news of the sale has an opportunity to spread. ”

Ellie nodded. All that made sense. But her mother had left out all details of the person Ellie most longed to know.

“What about my father?” she asked. “I wish he hadn’t died before my birth.”

“Oh, darling…” Mama’s eyes shimmered and she glanced away for a long moment. “He didn’t die. Not then. His name was Nigel. We’d been married for thirty years before you were born, and he died of old age decades later. You were barely out of leading strings.”

“ What? ” Ellie stammered, her mind swimming. She’d had decades with her father?

“We thought you were human,” Mama explained.

“At first. Nigel knew what I was, and still we dared to hope. You weren’t developing like other children, and I talked myself into believing you were a late bloomer.

.. until I couldn’t deny the truth. You didn’t grow at the normal pace and ceased aging altogether by the time you gained your current appearance. ”

Ellie stared at her mother in both hurt and horror. “You knew I was a vampire and didn’t think it important enough to mention?”

“It came up,” her mother admitted. “Frequently. But as long as you were more human than not, you were still susceptible to a thought obfuscation technique we refer to as Compulsion. Whenever you asked dangerous questions, I simply Compelled you to forget.”

“You ‘simply’—”

“For your own safety, Elspeth! What would you have had me do?”

“Tell the truth, for starters!” The teacup tumbled from Ellie’s fingers as the full impact of her mother’s words hit her. No wonder she had so many holes in her memory! Ellie’s head swam as an ugly suspicion sucked the air from the room. “Did you Compel me to forget my own father?”

Her mother reached out a hand. “You would never have believed you were human if you could remember decades passing whilst you were still a tot. I had no choice but to?—”

“No choice?” Ellie repeated, choking on the words. She sprang to her feet. “You gave me no choice!”

“You hadn’t turned yet! You still haven’t turned. There was plenty of time for you to have a normal life. There still is. Maybe decades, or centuries. I know this must be difficult for you, but?—”

“You know nothing. ” Ellie whirled for the door, her head still spinning with hurt and rage, and the desperate desire to flee the one person she had always gone to for comfort and advice. As the world tilted off its axis, Ellie could hear her mother scrambling to her feet behind her.

“Wait!” Hesitation shook her mother’s voice as she added, “Elspeth... I—I Compel you to stay!”

But Ellie wasn’t mostly human anymore. No longer Mama’s little girl, susceptible to vampiric head games. No longer even herself.

Ellie was out of the door and gone.