“He wasn’t dead,” I deduced. “Vampires can’t be killed by hanging.”
“Right. However, it did take Luther three days to recover from the assault. During that time, he hid within an outcropping of rocks, protecting himself from the sun,” he said. “Poor Violetta, believing that Luther had forsaken her, was inconsolable. It wasn’t until she overheard her mother discussing the ambush in the forest that she believed he was dead. She confronted her mother, who didn’t deny what she’d done. She told Violetta there was no longer any reason not to marry the man she’d been promised to.”
I was inexplicably furious. It wasn’t like I knew these people. Still, how awful. “Caterina was the worst!”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t get any better,” Sebastian said. “Violetta went mad with grief. Devastated, she threw herself off a cliff and died in the ocean below. She’d left a note:May death join us.”
“So sad,” I said, my eyes watering.
“As fate would have it, Luther came back to the village the very night of Violetta’s death. Learning that his beloved was gone, he set out on a warpath of revenge against the whole village. The townspeople naively underestimated Luther’s strength and tried to fight him. Caterina and the elders tried tocompel him to leave, but his rage was far too great.” Sebastian swallowed. “I saw the massacre with my own eyes. I’ve witnessed countless atrocities in all the years I’ve been alive, but what happened in our village that night was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It still haunts me to this day, even though the whole thing took place within an hour.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it. What could I say that wouldn’t sound glib?
“Luther set fire to the village and slaughtered the adults, including my parents, who would technically be your great-grandparents. He spared only the children because he felt that we were innocent in the betrayal.”
“Lucky for you that Luther was sensible enough to do that.”
Sebastian tipped his head thoughtfully. “He saved Caterina for last so that she would witness the destruction. Her final words before he ripped her limb from limb were a hex: ‘May the village children be a curse to your kind!’”
“That was dumb,” I remarked. “What if her curse made Luther change his mind about sparing the children?”
“Maybe that’s what Caterina had hoped for, since all the adults were gone. Maybe she thought we wouldn’t survive without them. Luckily, Luther dismissed Caterina’s curse as the delusional ravings of a superstitious peasant.”
“How did the children survive, if you were all so young?”
“The fires Luther created were vast enough that surrounding towns came to our aid. This is how our bloodline was dispersed. We went to different regions, where our adopted families resided.”
I ruminated on all my grandfather had told me. “Did you hate Luther for what he did?”
Sebastian shrugged. “If I hated Luther, I might as well have hated Caterina and the whole village. They were all innocent yet guilty, if you know what I mean? Luther only wanted to loveVioletta. Caterina only wanted what she believed was best for her daughter and family. And the village was only trying to protect their way of life. I’ve been alive for over a thousand years. Can you imagine what it would have done to me, carrying around so much hate? Harboring hate gets you nowhere, and the only person it really hurts is yourself. No, I made peace with the past long ago,” Sebastian said, his voice a million miles away.
25
The wait overnight and then the whole next day at Sebastian’s was agonizing.
My grandfather insisted that going to Robert’s after sundown would be our safest bet. His rationale was that anyone looking to attack would have a harder time seeing us coming in the dark. I agreed, albeit begrudgingly, knowing deep down that he was right. We were pressing our luck as it was by going back to the very spot I’d been kidnapped. The Nolans may not personally come for me, but they certainly had the means to hire a large crew of thugs to watch Robert’s place twenty-four-seven.
As dangerous as it was, I needed my cell phone. It killed me, thinking that I might have missed a call from Joseph about Robert’s whereabouts—or maybe even a call from Robert himself. My plan was to also inform Joseph about the Nolans nefarious plot to commit vampire genocide. The VGO would probably kill them. Unfortunate, but what could I do? It wasn’t as if they weren’t asking for it.
When Sebastian and I pulled onto Robert’s street, we could see all the way from the end of the block that his home was litup like a Christmas tree. Whomever was in the house was making absolutely no attempt to hide that they were there.
Sebastian slowed to a crawl to do a drive-by. I leapt from the car once I recognized the vehicles parked in the driveway. Liz and Joseph were there.
Sebastian slammed on the breaks. “Olivia! Wait for me!”
Breathlessly, I hollered, “It’s okay! I know who?—”
“It could be a trap,” he cautioned.
He’d raised a valid point. My trustworthiness was what had gotten me kidnapped in the first place.
“Wait for me to park the car, at least, okay? Thirty more seconds of waiting won’t kill you, Granddaughter.”
No, but it felt like it would. I nearly ripped Sebastian’s arm off trying to hurry him along the driveway after he’d parked.
“Let’s not go bursting in there like two bank robbers,” he whispered hotly. “We have no idea what’s waiting for us. They could have your friends held hostage, for all we know.”
“They’re vampires,” I whispered back, dubious. No way decrepit old Richard and Maxine, or even a platoon of humans they might have hired, could overpower the likes of Joseph and Liz.
