Chapter 243

Almara’s Pov

I awake to a familiar beeping sound. It’s faint at first, like a distant call from far away until it’s suddenly blaring in my ears. My eyes shoot open and the blood in my body rushes to the important organs and I sit up with a jolt.

“Where’s Grace?” I ask before I can make out anything else. “Arthur? Robbie?” I call out, hoping the sound of my distressed voice will cause Robbie to cry back.

“Shhh,” a gentle voice says with a light touch to my chest guiding me back down. The delicate touch pulls me into the present moment, activating my primal instincts.

I see my mother standing near me with a weary smile. She’s holding a handheld heart monitor that explains that beeping. I’m on a makeshift gurney which is really a slab of a metal table and some sheets thrown on top. We’re tucked away in a cell.

“What’s going on?” I ask, fear rising in my throat. “What happened?” I ask more urgently as I realize my mom didn’t answer my question about my family. The beeping on the monitor picks up. “Where’s Arthur and the kids?” I ask again, sitting back up but this time it’s a searing hot pian that causes me to stop moving, not the gentle touch of my mother’s hand.

“They’re okay,” she says and I’ve never felt more relieved at the utterance of a mere two words before. “Robbie’s beautiful,” my mother says with tears welling her eyes. I have to smile at that.

“What happened?” I ask again. My mother’s smile fades as she begins to lift my shirt and reveals an ugly slicing down the front of my chest. The wound is wet and sowed together with stitches.

“You passed out from lack of blood, but by then Arthur was already carrying you and luckily he ran into me,”

At the mention of losing consciousness, I start to feel dizzy again and lie back down. “How did I get this?” I ask and then add, “Can you just explain everything?”

My mother started doing this as a nurse, only spoon-feeding bits and pieces of information to patients so that she didn’t upset them too much. She only gave them what they could handle, and now I wonder if any of her patients feel like I do. Just rip the band-aid off.

My mother leans against the table and pulls my shirt back down. “I don’t know all the details, it was a very quick encounter,” my mother admits.

“After we separated, Delfino brought us to a secure location away from the fighting, which only lasted so long.” My mother gets a faraway look in her eyes as she continues. “We were in a pantry, of course, all the food was disgusting and plasma-based,” my mother grimaces. “Still, we ate what we could.

She lets out a small laugh, “It was your father who suggested we go out and fight after we had our fill. He said we couldn’t stay in here like cowards. I agreed. We made our way through the castle and we fought familiars, my mother says like recalling a fond memory.

I try to picture my father and mother being vicious and it’s almost impossible to picture. They’ve always been loyal and sweet, not much of fighters.

“I admit, it was fun.” My mother says her eyes growing wide with a surprised delight. “I didn’t think your father and I had it in us,” She shrugs, “Then we saw Arthur running,” my mother shakes her head in disbelief, “My God, was he running,” She looks at me and wraps her hand around my arm, het grip much stronger than it was moments ago.

“I instantly saw you, my baby, in his one arm. Then I saw your newest baby in his second. Little Grace was on his back, holding on for dear life because like I said Arthur was running faster than I thought would be possible,”

My mother softens her gaze at me, “I ran to meet them and that’s when he told me that a familiar attacked you. You both were covered in blood, which Arthur told me was all yours- but that the familiar was dead,” at those words I sigh with relief.

“I took you into my arms, your father told me to take care of you and that he would continue fighting. Arthur said he was going to take the kids somewhere and I told him about the pantry. If it’s still safe there, I imagine that’s where he is,”

As my mother speaks, it dawns on me that she left her husband to fight by himself so that she could take care of her child. She has no idea if my father is still alive, able to fend for himself and defend others of these familiars. It makes me wonder if I would do the same if I were in her shoes.

“Will you tell me how to get to the pantry?” I ask. My mother leans off the table and holds her hand out for me.

“I’ll go with you.”

“Mom, you have to go look for dad,” I tell her.

My mother gives me a sad smile, “Honey, your father would want me to make sure you’re okay and get back to your family safely. It’s what parents do. All I can do is trust that your father taps into that wild beast that he was when I met him,”

I take my mother’s hand and decide to not argue with her. “Besides,” she says as she helps lift me from the table, “you need to tell me about that little one you delivered,” I laugh.

“Maybe we can save the birth story for a time when all this is over,” I say. Instead, I tell her about the bear-like familiar and how I think that Grace never really was under any influence, how instead she let them believe she was as a self-defense mechanism.

As I recall the events to my mom, I’m trying also to fill in the blanks. How did Grace avoid being cast under a spell? Also, why did I get attacked?

My mother leads me out of the cell doors. “Ready?” She asks. I give a firm nod and follow her, avoiding the pain ripping across my chest.

We walk through what seems like narrow alleyways. These small passageways must be hidden routes that the vampires made, something of their own in this familiar dominated castle. The passageways are tight and narrow, only slightly bigger than the width of bat wings.

My mother and I walk sideways in order to be able to fit. Our ears are pressed against the cold stone walls, hearing the rumbling and war cries of wolves and familiars surrounding us. I have a feeling if we broke through one of these walls on either side, we would be in the middle of combat.

“It’s through here,” my mother says and we reach an end in the narrow halls. We have to climb up an air duct in the wall, which I imagine leads to a vent in the floorboards.

I think about the stitches ripping on my wound, then I think about my family and launch myself into the air.

On the other side, we land in a kitchen. Black and white tile is splattered with blood, appliances are smashed of broken on the floor, the farmhouse-style sink is spluttering water. I stay low to the ground, noticing how some red seeps into my shirt.

My mother lands next to me and uses her body to guard mine. I look up and see Cathy standing over a familiar’s body. “Cathy?” I call out. She looks over her shoulder and gives me a wide grin, her eyes crazed.

“Told you I work well alone,”