Turned By Him

*****

After several hours, Mirana returned. Dark black streaks ran down her pale cheeks. Her brown curls too disheveled to repair with an hour of work, Mirana combed her hands through her hair. Many members of the coven seemed to sense Mirana’s return and made their way from around Novum Sanguinem.

“Hello children,” Mirana said. Her voice was steadier than before. Though she was in disarray, Mirana seemed unharmed. There was no further exchange for several minutes.

Tom was the first to break the silence. “What happened?” he asked.

Mirana shook her head. “Damien and Alastair apologized for their lieutenant.” Mirana seemed to be withholding something and it was evident. Tom pressured her for more. Mirana seemed to be searching for something in the room. “They restored Randal.” Her voice was grim and defeated. A mummer of disagreement and outrage erupted in the small coven. “I protested and begged,” Mirana confessed to her children. “It did not matter, Alastair restored Randal.”

“What about the others?” Harper voiced a question on everyone’s mind. Mirana shook her head again. Only a single tear escaped her eye to streak down her face.

“So,” Tom asked in gloomed concern, “The attack was sanctioned?”

“No,” Mirana said confidently. “The Rothschilds did not give Randal the order to attack us.”

“But the restored him,” Trevor said. His pale blue eyes alive with rage. “What are we going to do when they try it again?”

Mirana waved her hand in the air as if her coven’s concerns were smoke that could be blown away. “I need some time,” she said. “We are safe, for now. I have already told the Zohar coven about what happened in the cemetery. They vowed to support us should we need to flee the city. Again, we are safe, for now.” Mirana left them and lied down in the room she and Devlin had shared.

Eliza and Tom retired to Tom’s room. There was a narrow couch framed by bookshelves and a short wooden desk. As far as Eliza knew, there were no actual beds anywhere in Novum Sanguinem. Tom sat down and prepared to read again. Eliza sat next to him. Her dark gift did not include mind reading, she had not yet learned the vampire ability to glamour someone in to hypnosis. She did not need powers to detect Tom’s anger and depression. She could see it ebb and flow from his thoughts like the sea in a raging storm. Behind those emerald green eyes brewed a perilous chaos which fathomed nothing but revenge. His malicious expression seemed so out of place on the priest’s, typically tender, face.

Eliza leaned in to kiss Tom. She set her palms on his new wounds which would surely scar but heal in a few days. She tenderly kissed the blood which still occasionally escaped the long gash over his right eye. Eliza was unsure what would happen next. She had no clue how the Rothschild coven would respond to the loss of one of their highest in command. And to Trevor’s point, she had no clue if Randal would seek them out once more against the wishes of his sire. What Eliza did know was that mortality had nothing new about it. In the past week she had died, killed and suffered incredible loss. Her appreciation for every second which ticked by could not be any more. She slid her left hand from Tom’s cheek, down his chest and rested it between his legs.

Much later, Eliza and Tom found themselves joining the others in the main room. The surviving members sat around the smoky couches with morose grins. Everyone was pleased that some had survived and no one was yet used to the absence of those who didn’t. They chatted and murmured concerns about where and when they would next feed. Many, including Eliza, had not had their fill and were thus still hungry.