The Night the Vampires Came

Chapter 5 - Bonus Content - Alternate POV

Chapter 5 - The Price

Orion was standing at the doorway to River Way and ran down to approach Oslen's car.

"I saw the missed call. I had a feeling it was you, father." Orion laughed in relief and rubbed the tears out of his eyes at the sight of Oslen. "Thank goodness you're alive. What are you doing driving a car?"

"Where the hell is your mother?" Oslen grabbed his son by the upper arms and shook him. Orion was about 180 lbs of pure muscle, but he quivered and shrank his shoulders at his father's question. Orion's smile faded, and all the relief left his eyes. His sudden fear did nothing to calm Oslen's nerves. "Why didn't you find a way to contact me?"

"She asked me not to," Orion whispered, his voice barely audible. "I-I wanted to go with her. She . . .she said she found a way to. . . to. . . ."

In blinding fury, Oslen shoved his son backward. Orion slipped back and fell into a pile of muddy branches. His shoes slipped on the wet, soggy dirt. It wasn't the shoes or the mud that gave him trouble finding his way back to his feet again. The poor boy was shaking so hard with emotion one could hear his teeth chattering from the doorway to the manor where Ian was standing.

Oslen struggled to catch his breath. The bruises on his side had largely healed, but at that moment, they seemed to break out in explosive phantom pain. He couldn't tell if the pain was coming from his ribs or from his chest. He reached out for the door of the car to brace himself.

He struggled not to place his fist over his chest like a man who was having a heart attack. No, he was absolutely not having a heart attack. It just seemed like the reflexive thing to do when one had pain radiating out of the center of one's chest.

No, that was still an unlikely occurrence for a man of his age. However, his current state of extreme shock might have been enough to set his aging arteries over the edge. His other son, Ian, was staring but made no move to approach. Oslen caught his breath and stared back at the boy. It was all he could muster at that moment.

Oslen saw his own blue-green eyes staring back at him, but that raven-black hair and pale complexion belonged to the boy's mother. Ian fell back a step toward the house as though he had seen enough.

"Father, please," Orion blurted as he broke Oslen out of his momentary trance. "I tried to stop her."

Oslen turned from his adopted son. His chest wasn't throbbing anymore, but his mouth was as dry as the desert. Every word he uttered felt like it was made of sandpaper.

"She's about a mile south of Cairn Castle. There's a cottage just north of an entrance to Mearnox there. She said that if you turned up alive . . . to go meet her there."

"When did you last see her?"

"A m-month ago."

"And nothing since then?"

"No."

Oslen entered the car and slammed the car door firmly shut. Orion didn't step away. Instead, he banged on the glass of the old rusted vehicle.

"Let me go with you, father. I can help you."

Oslen slammed the car into reverse, and Orion jumped backward at the last second to avoid being hit by the rearview mirror. He ran in front of the car and tried to block the driveway with his body. "Please, let me help. I can — I can drive."

Oslen stared down at his son's frantic pleas for forgiveness. For a second, just for the briefest second, he considered driving the car into his tearful son. Then he took a deep breath and cleared his head.