Five minutes later, I've watched the recording Declan sent several times. The old lady is a smaller and frailer version of the she wolf I recognize. She was part of my old pack. My parents had her babysit my sister and me a few times.
On camera, she's unfocused and confused, her story meandering until she comes to the details of attack. She tells the tale with the growing horror of someone who can never forget the atrocity they lived through. Someone who still has nightmares of their pack's slaughter. Her description matches the image of the old picture. Bodies lying on the floor--she was one of the last to be wounded, and she fell and played dead until the attacker left. When she describes the attacker, her words are clear: a large, male vampire with scars on his face and one eye.
I replay the recording a few times, even though I don't need to. She said it over and over: the one-eyed vampire. He did it. He had one eye.
Scars and physical build are easy to recreate as part of a physical disguise, but there's no faking that one damning detail. How many one eyed vampires are there?
Declan sent me the details of the pack who made the recording, so I can follow up, but I believe this account. There's no reason for Lucius to lie, to create this long con. And this old lady isn't the only witness. Deep down, suppressed until they appear only in my darkest dreams, I have my own memories of the attacker.
All these years. All the nightmares, night after night. Sleeping with a stake to protect myself from the vampire in the room. Not Lucius.
Xavier.
It was Xavier who came to my family home and killed my parents, did away with my siblings. Xavier who took me away for foster care to raise me until he was ready to train me to kill. But first, Xavier mind wiped me so I wouldn't remember.
Except I knew. Deep down I knew. I never let down my guard.
Movement outside the car makes me jump. A bird flies into the shelter of mesquite branches. The sun has sunk behind the mountains, taking away all warmth. The last dying rays slant through the park, the world holding its breath before plunging into night.
I dial up Declan. I don't know why. I need to talk to someone.
He answers without a greeting. "Did ya watch it?"
"Yes." My voice must be thick with grief because his softens.
"I'm sorry, lass."
"It's okay. I'll be okay. I had a dream actually. Xavier killed my family and wiped my mind so I wouldn't remember. He returned and killed my pack. He took me and raised me…" I have to swallow several times to wet my throat enough to continue. "He told me Lucius did it. He promised me revenge, but all the while it was Xavier who killed them…" Because of Georgianna, I realize. He wanted to avenge her death, and when he found me, a girl who looked like her, he set his plan in motion. All those years for one long con.
Declan is silent, as if shocked by the turn of events. I can't blame him. I lived through it and I still find it horrifying.
"What ya goin tae do now?"
Good question. Easy answer. My mission hasn't changed, just my target.
I'm about to tell him to get intel on where Xavier is when an SUV screeches into the lot. In a cloud of dust, an escalade pulls up and parks behind me, blocking me in.
"Declan," I croak. "I've got company. I gotta call you back."
"What do ya mean, company?" His voice gets high and tiny as I toss the burner on the seat beside me. The escalade looms in the rearview mirror. Doors open and shadows stream out of it. My visitors aren't human.
My stomach starts roiling again. As if in a dream, I twist and grab the cooler on the car floor. Take the blood. You might need it.
Lucius knew this moment would come. My bad luck that it happened sooner rather than later.
Eyes on the vampires surrounding the car, I grab the first bag and uncap it.
A vampire knocks on my window. "Get out, sweetheart. Xavier wants to talk to you."
Bottoms up. I tip my head back and swallow the thick liquid as fast as I can. Maybe I'm too desperate to be grossed out, but the bittersweet taste isn't unpleasant. As soon as it pours down my throat, adrenaline floods my system. Time slows. The vampires blurring from the Escalade to my car seem to walk at a normal pace. My limbs, a second ago weak and shaky, feel stronger than ever.
My last gift to you.
I can fight anything off, even a vampire. Which is good, because in about two minutes I'm going to have to fight a lot of them.
"Come on," the vampire knocks again. His buddies are now armed with crowbars. Shame to use them on the Lambo, but I'm not getting out of the car. Not until I've downed more blood.
"Go to hell," I reply, and grab a second bag.
The world slows.
Moonlight glints on the leader's fangs. "Your funeral." He grabs his colleague's crowbar--the blurred movement almost at normal speed to my enhanced vision--and leaps on the car. A thud as the hood takes his body weight, and another as he brings the crowbar down onto the windshield. The glass cracks but doesn't shatter right away. Must be reinforced.
I wait as the vampire brings down the metal rod again and again. His buds stand back and watch the show. Not that they can pick the lock while their leader is destroying this beautiful car. Xavier must want me dead or alive--and I don't blame him. If I plotted and planned, killed and manipulated for a decade, only to have my quest for revenge thwarted by a single she wolf, I'd be mad too.