Angels Fall First, page 14
Gregori nodded at that, smirking. “Guessing it helps that she’s not covered in blood, too. Right?”
The grandfather looked away from him to consider Serena.
And—HOLY SHIT!—is he ever considering A LOT! she thought, catching a glimpse of his working mind, Looks like Gramps is a kinky motherfucker!
“Don’t take this the wrong way, kid,” he finally said, looking back up at Gregori, “but I don’t think there’s much of anythin’ your momma could be covered in that would make her any less hot.”
“I’ll… uh, try not to take that in any way, actually,” Gregori said, wiping his face and moving to lean against the fallen statue. “In fact, I’ll try real hard to forget I heard it entirely.”
“You do that,” the grandfather said with a smirk and a nod, “but, first, finish tellin’ my boy what you was sayin’ before ‘bout your fangs and all. Truth be said, I’m more than a little curious, myself. Your momma’s hot, sure, but ain’t a bitch on Earth or Heaven hot enough to have me feedin’ ‘em my grandson.”
Gregori stared, regarding the not-so-old man a moment longer, and it occurred to Serena that, where the others might have thought that her son’s gaze was one of irritation or shock, she was recognizing it as the “I wish others saw you the way you deserved to be seen”-look that she was used to seeing from him towards her. She wished she could tell them that, but she already knew that it would sound insincere; that even bringing it up would invite the three to believe what she’d be trying to assure them wasn’t the truth. So, knowing, she stayed quiet and watched as her son finally looked away from the not-so-old man.
His head swiveled, paused for a fraction-of-a-second on her—somehow fitting in a reassuring nod along with a look of raw skepticism—and then come to fall upon the father and his son.
The father tensed.
The son winced.
The father’s tensing was simple enough to read, and both saw this for what it was. Both of them, having watched the man’s efforts when they’d first arrived, could also understand the “Why?” behind all the waves of pain that rippled across his body as he did. Serena saw this, understood what she was seeing, and thought, You tore yourself up pretty bad trying to lift that statue, didn’t you? Probably knew it was going to happen, too, but that didn’t stop you.
She wanted to help him, but she knew he wouldn’t let her until her son convinced him she wasn’t a monster.
That neither of them were.
She could see that the young man already knew this, and she knew this was why he’d winced when Gregori’s shifting gaze landed on him and his father. He’d just come back from a near-death experience, likely hadn’t been having much fun before that, either—Not if he’s spent more than a fucking second out here tonight, Serena thought—and the first thing he’d woken up to was a mountain of embarrassment. Now, in the wake of all that, he was being forced to watch as the two vampires—the two vampires that saved our lives! she “heard” him thinking—were now fumbling with an explanation to make up for what he’d said in a half-conscious stupor.
Like his father, Serena wanted to help him. She wanted to reassure him that it wasn’t his fault; that there was a good likelihood they’d be seen as monsters either way. She also wanted to tell him, embarrassed as he was, that she didn’t resent him for seeing what he’d obviously seen. Just as it was with wanting to defend Gregori, though, she knew that bringing it up, even in private through thought-speak, would likely only embarrass the young man that much more and probably leave him certain that Serena did resent him for what he’d seen.
But, like everything else, she couldn’t do anything. She could only sit back, watch, and hope that her son knew what he was doing; that he’d be able to make things right. It felt wrong to hope that Gregori might do what he’d always done and surpass her own expectations and prove that he was better than even she could have imagined, but, in that moment, Serena felt herself growing strangely certain that he wouldn’t stop at just making things right, but shoot beyond that goal and—somehow—actually manage to make things better. She’d always been confident in her son—it was hard not to when he kept making a habit of exceeding her wildest dreams—but something in that moment felt different. She knew that Gregori would leave this moment with everyone who’d been a part of it better off than they would have been; that this otherwise horrible event will suddenly have been worth it because of the greatness that came out of it.
But how?
She couldn’t bring herself to even imagine how her son could make things right after everything they had been through, so how-in-the-hell could he make it better? Moreover, how could Serena, who couldn’t even imagine it, somehow know that it was about to happen?
Bet this is how Xander feels all the time, she thought, resisting the urge to shiver. No wonder the sexy goth-god is always staring off like he is.
As she was thinking this, Serena saw the bright, blood-red aura that had since replaced her son’s own slip free from his chest and start towards the two. She worked to avoid following it with her eyes, not wanting to startle the already tense humans by watching something that they couldn’t see as it drew nearer to them. Ignoring it, however, was something she had an easier time wishing for than working towards. She wanted nothing more than to deny the sight of what she immediately recognized as the same auric signature that she’d seen the first time she’d met Zane. It had been as different from his then as it was to their son’s now. So much so, in fact, that she’d been certain the blue-aura wielding Zane had arrived on her doorstep with somebody else. She hadn’t known Zane then, so she hadn’t had any reason to understand the wrongness of that aura—this aura—but here, now, with her firstborn son?
Serena didn’t think there was an aura on the planet she’d recognize faster than her children’s. Like any other auric vampire—Like any other mother—could attest, there was no bond more powerful. Nobody else, not even Zane, had ever been as connected with her auric presence as her sons. Though it could be argued that the two of them had tried, the truth of the matter was that there was no kink or fetish or depraved act that could ever come close to the experience of having another’s aura literally emanating from within Serena’s body for over seven consecutive months. Before their births, her sons’ auras were hers and her aura was theirs.
Then, same as the being it belonged to, what began as little more than a soft and gentle light grew and matured, became something greater than the sum of its parts; became something unique. Serena had learned to see that little glow for what it was—had even seen the light that would eventually become Ruby Stryker before Estella knew she was even pregnant—and so she was no stranger to the awe-inspiring moment when the auric “echo” radiating from an expecting mother’s middle suddenly became two auras.
During both of her pregnancies, there’d been that moment—that “first meeting”—when she’d awoken to find her somewhat brighter-than-usual aura suddenly back to its old, normal hue. Then, there—swirling and swimming about with the same dazed and bewildered curiosity as its owner on the day of their birth—she would see a second aura; their aura. It was the first of many bittersweet moments she’d come to experience in the journey, one that most non-auric mothers likely only felt in the deepest, most distant recesses of their minds. She’d sometimes wondered how it was for them—wondered, especially, if there was any sense of sadness that loomed within them without any understanding of why—because, during both of Serena’s pregnancies, she’d greeted the sight with a smile on her lips and tears in her eyes. She hadn’t fully known or understood why when she’d first seen Gregori’s aura reaching out from her swollen belly, but, by the time it was happening again with Onyx, she’d figured it out.
“Hey, you little shit,” she’d whispered then, putting words to the conflicting emotions she recognized from her first pregnancy, “look who finally decided they’re too good to be ‘us’ anymore.” Then, forcing herself to stifle the gentle weeping that clambered up with the spurting giggles, she’d encircled her arms around the orb her stomach had become—same as she had the first time around—and whispered, “It’s okay, though, ‘cause no matter how far from here you get, I’ll never love you any less. And that’s a promise, you nest-hopping little fucker: you can go as far as you like, but it’ll never be far enough for me to let you go.”
And, in more ways than one, she hadn’t. Because those auras, both Gregori’s and Onyx’s—those uniquely them lights that had grown bright enough to shine on their own and exist alongside hers even while their owners went on “cooking” within her womb—had melded with Serena’s. Even after they’d been born, even now, her aura still carried threads of theirs. It always would. If she looked close enough, she could see little ribbons of her sons’ auras there, and she was sure that, if she was all science-y like Zoey—And if I had clue número-fucking-uno about what I was looking for—she’d even see ribbons of their DNA hanging out in her bloodstream, as well.
Or maybe not. Maybe the only postpartum “residue” that got left behind was the shit that science couldn’t measure. If that was the case, Serena hoped that there was a “yet” attached to it. She liked the idea of every mommy, auric vampire or not, knowing that a very real piece of her own little fucker was never fully gone from her.
No matter how big they got. No matter how far they went.
She wasn’t science-y like Zoey, though. Serena knew fuck-all and jack-shit about the science of it. She did, however, know more than a thing-or-two about auras, and, still carrying bits of her sons’ auras within her own even in that moment, she could boast with absolute certainty that theirs were ones she would recognize above any and all others.
Serena knew Gregori’s aura. Same as his voice, his face, and his scent—the things that all mothers knew without ever even trying—she knew her son’s aura. She knew it in ways that transcended all other forms of knowing and laid waste to any other sort of certainty.
She definitely knew it better than she’d known Zane’s that first night they’d met all those years ago. She was even willing to wager that she still didn’t know her husband’s aura as intimately as she knew her sons’. In either case, though she hadn’t known Zane or his aura well enough to understand the wrongness of that bright, blood-red thing when she first saw it surrounding him all those years ago, seeing it now—seeing it and not the aura she knew and loved so much—as it emerged from Gregori’s chest was just too awful.
It was recognizable, sure, but for all the wrong reasons.
There was no ignoring it. No amount of working or wishing would make it so.
Knowing this but not wanting to interfere with her son’s efforts, Serena looked away. A small wisp of her aura slipped out from her shoulder, coming to occupy the space she was aiming her gaze towards. She was sure that, at a glance, it looked as if she was simply checking to make sure there were no surprises headed their way. This, however, was easy enough to know without looking. Even if she wasn’t as certain as she was that Gregori—and the Maledictus!—had taken out the incoming horde, those things were anything but quiet. Even in the middle of his own panic, the human father had heard them coming and seen their silhouetted forms shambling in their direction from the other side of the park. Serena didn’t need her eyes to tell her what human ears could have just as easily detected, but they didn’t know that. Nor did they know that, while it may have appeared as though she was staring out into that vast, dark distance of the park’s depths, she was actually staring at the swirling wisp of her own aura. It took a bit of effort, especially while avoiding any sort of expression or gesture that might worry the others, but—there, deep within the luminous glow of her energy signature—she finally managed to make out a narrow thread of…
There you are, you nest-hopping little fucker.
She had to work to keep it in focus, but it was a small effort compared to the futile one she could have been working towards. The process, she mused, wasn’t unlike trying to follow an eye floater, and she supposed the end result didn’t look too unlike one, either.
Just a billion-fucking-times more beautiful.
As if hearing this thought, it paused in its awkward little dance within her aura to bend first one way and then the next.
Serena knew better than to look too deeply into it—knew that it was no more a sign of this-or-that than the eye floaters it seemed to mock—but she almost thought it looked as though it was waving. Though she’d been working to avoid it, she couldn’t help but smile faintly at this, imagining that little piece of her baby-boy saying—
Don’t worry, Mom…
… I’m still here, Gregori finished reassuring his mother before addressing the still-skeptical father. He wasn’t sure why it mattered that they put the three’s minds to rest, why they didn’t just clear the three generations’ worth of fear and uncertainty that they’d stumbled across and go on their way, but, just as with so much else that night, he just knew that it was the right thing to do. All the same, though, it mattered that much more that he put Serena’s mind to rest, as well.
And, in that moment—seeing the effect that the Maledictus was having on his aura—he saw that her mind was even more restless than the father’s.
He’d been startled by how quickly the grandfather’s concerns had been satisfied, but not nearly as startled as he was by just how not concerned the youngest was. Along with that finding was the equally jarring realization that, though his initial impulse had been to think of him that way—“the youngest”—the teenager that his mother had just saved was only about a year younger than Gregori, himself. There’d been a clashing of thoughts at this, one part of him thinking “too young to be out here” and igniting a too-much-to-consider-now thought from another part that demanded, “What does that mean for me?” He hadn’t liked the thoughts; hadn’t liked how they simultaneously made the year separating them make him feel too old while also instilling him with a panicky notion that he wasn’t old enough. Despite this—or maybe because of it—he found himself feeling envious of the young man.
Until he realized that, in lieu of concern, there was an overwhelming abundance of embarrassment coasting along a repeating current of, “The vampire warrior from the Internet!”
Then, wishing he hadn’t scanned further for the answers, Gregori realized that it all made sense. He regretted knowing that it made sense, and he especially regretted knowing why it made sense. Likewise, as he’d reached out with his aura—their aura—for the sake of capturing a few details to help him in his efforts of putting the father’s mind to rest, he regretted knowing that the sight of it was upsetting his mother. Worse yet, though, was the regret he felt at knowing why it was upsetting to her.
She’d gone into his head to save him from the rage-curse, to bring him back and put the Maledictus in its place—effectively enforcing what Gregori had been hoping to achieve when he’d first tried to garner a truce with it—but she was still seeing its aura—their aura—instead of his own in that moment.
He’d caught a flitting, whisper of “That’s not my son’s—” in her mind, saw it teetering towards “That’s not my son!” and, at the end of that journey, a thought that seemed to be trying very, very hard to stay hidden:
My son’s gone.
Hating that, he’d paused for a fraction-of-a-second to reassure her, smiling inwardly as he “saw” his psychic call—Don’t worry, Mom. I’m still here—catch her plummeting thoughts like a pillowy updraft.
Then, beginning to understand why it mattered, he went to work putting the three humans’ minds to rest:
“Like I was saying,” Gregori began, and Serena could already sense the word “bodybuilding” floating on the outskirts of his mind. Even though it had been less-than a second since he’d turned his head to address the two, it was obvious that it had been more than enough time for him and that not-his aura to find whatever it needed. “Our fangs might be a product of evolution that allow us to hunt and feed and defend ourselves, but they have a nasty habit of not always knowing when they’re actually needed.” Then, so faint that she barely believed it was real, a thought rolled across the surface of his mind:
How would Xander…?
The thought ended there, and, as though discouraged by this, Serena watched as he averted his gaze and aimed it at the toppled statue, seeming suddenly distracted by it. Distracted enough that Serena started to believe that he was distracted. She shifted, nervous, wondering if she’d be doing more harm than good in that moment if she tried to shake him out of whatever bizarre trance had claimed him, but the father beat her to it:
“Hey, vampire!” he called out, his face twisted into a mask of even greater worry and uncertainty than it had been a moment earlier. In his mind, gears of panic were beginning to turn:
What if he don’t wanna talk?
What if he thinks we’re not worth the trouble and…
Serena fought to hide her flinch in the next moment. There was an avalanche of “and then”s inside the nervous parent’s head. To him, the seemingly distracted and suddenly distant mythos was an early warning, and most of his prior worries were evaporating in the scorching dawn of these new ones. With them came a fresh round of worries for Serena, as well, and she felt the knot in her guts tighten as she waited for Gregori to—
“You were saying?” the man finally blurted as the shared demand became too much for him.
Gregori didn’t seem to hear the man as he went right on staring at the statue. Serena, however, spotted a shift in that blood-red aura; saw something in her son that reminded her of Zoey when she was hashing through a calculation or Isaac when he was playing his violin. There was thought there, intention, and, deeper still, she saw that he wasn’t distracted—not really—but, instead, creating a show that had all three of the humans’ attention shifting with his.
