"Crap."
My head swims as I come to, confusion gripping me when I roll over, pushing myself up off of the carpet. My body aches and I pull out my phone, sliding the unlock when I notice the time and date.
"What in the hell?" I mutter. It's been a whole day? It was around supper time when I'd come up here, and now it was almost dinner time again.
I pull my hair up into a bun and go to the door when I hear the soft knock.
"Come on, Rose." Octavia whispers. "You've got to be hungry by now. You don't plan to live in that room for the rest of your life do you?" I crack the door, the light from the hallway hurting my sensitive eyes. Octavia's large eyes widen even more, taking up all of the space on her face. "You were still sleeping? Are you alright?"
I nod, sliding out past her and take the stairs two at a time, Octavia following behind me.
I made my way through the house, going down into the renovated basement to find my mom, dad, and Logan all sitting around the dining table speaking quietly until they saw me.
"Rosie." Dad sighs, a smile on his face, but I ignore him, looking over at mom instead. She starts to smile too until she takes in the look that must be on my face and she frowns.
I was angry, annoyed, and ready to stop being lied to.
"So you told me the whole truth, huh?" I put my hands on my hips, then realizing how dramatic that looks I cross my arms instead, holding mom's gaze.
She pulls her brows together, a small crease between them and glances slightly to dad who shrugs. "I did." She nods. "I told you, we didn't want to keep anything from you."
I had to give it to her, she genuinely looks confused, but I knew she had to be lying.
"Oh really?" I counter. "Is that why you decided to not tell me that Grandpa is a vampire too? You told me he was dead."
Mom's mouth fell open while everyone else looks at me like I'm a crazy person who escaped the loony bin. "Rosebud..." Logan mutters quietly and carefully, speaking in a voice like he isn't trying to spook a wild horse or something. "What are you talking about? Your mom never knew your grandad."
I tilt my head at him, silently calling his bluff.
"Seriously." Mom nods, standing up from her chair and brushing the sides of her blue dress down. "Why would you think he was a vampire?"
I back up, pursing my lips into a hard line. "So I'm supposed to believe it's just a coincidence that you all are vampires and your dad just happened to be one too and you never knew?" I roll my eyes at their expressions. "How stupid do you all think I am? I thought we were done with the lies."
Dad stands too, not bothering to push his chair in as he walks over to me, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Rose, why do you think your grandfather was a vampire?" He asks seriously "Did someone say something to you? Because it isn't true." I could tell in his voice that he was concerned for me, so I start to wonder if I'd gotten it wrong somehow.
My heartrate accelerates and I know they can all hear it. Dad brushes his hand up and down my arm comfortingly, like he's always done. "I-I-I..." I try to form the words to come clean, but how do you come out to your family that you've been getting visions for years and never got around to telling them? "I saw it." I whisper.
"Saw it?" Octavia asks from the doorway.
I walk over to the couch in the adjoining room and plop down in the middle, Logan and dad flanking me on either side while mom stands in front of the recliner and tilts her head at me.
"Yeah," I whisper, keeping my eyes on the holes in the knees of my blue jeans. "I-I kind of have, well, I have these blackouts sometimes," I hear mom gasp and dad's hand that is rubbing circles on my back stops for just a second before he continues the rotation. "When I do, I see stuff. Weird stuff, like things that haven't happened yet, and sometimes stuff that doesn't mean anything...but...I know how weird it sounds."
"Why would you never tell us about any of it?" Mom asks, worry all over her face. "How long has this been happening?" Her loose curls cascade down one side of her neck and she runs her hands through it to hide her shaking. I can feel it though, her worry. She knows something is wrong with me.
"It's been a while now...since I was about sixteen I guess." I admit and I know now that I probably should have told them sooner, but I just never could. It wasn't something you bring up over family dinner. "Last night I saw one of Gran." Mom's eyes water instantly. "She was young and hanging out at this bar and she met a man who was there. She didn't know, but he was one of you. They were together, and then he fed on her." Mom sucks in a breath, her hand covering her mouth and Octavia holds her other hand in hers. "It was weird this time, time sped up in the dream and I was in the hospital room when you were born. He was there too though, watching from the hallway...I just assumed you had to have known and just kept it from me."
"We wouldn't keep that from you." Dad assures me. "We've never hidden what we are from you." I knew he was right. I've always known my family was different from all of the other's at school and around town. When I was thirteen I finally asked them about it and they were totally open with me about what they were.
"Why did you keep this a secret, Rose?" Logan asks.
I shake my head, looking up at the ceiling for a second. "I don't know...I just didn't want everyone to think I was a freak of nature or something."
Dad laughs, pulling me over and kissing the side of my head. "Rosie," He smiles, his dimples dipping into his cheeks. "We are a family of vampires...I don't think we can pass much judgement on you."
I start to laugh with him, feeling a little relieved that the secret is out and that no one freaked out or called me crazy, but then mom's high voice stopped me.
"Calvin, is this even possible?" She asks him, her eyes even more blue than usual as they filled with tears. "In all of the studying and things I learned from you and from my time there, I never heard anything about something like this. Special abilities?" Her voice rose higher and higher as she spoke.
Dad sighs, glancing over to me and then back up at mom. "Well, I haven't ever heard of it before...but that doesn't mean..."
"Great." I smack my hands down on my legs. "So I am a weird freak."
Everyone looks up and towards the door before it pops open.
"No Goddaughter of mine is a freak." A deep voice echoes in.
"Pedro!" I squeal, jumping up and running over to him, throwing my arms around his neck. He wraps his long arms around me, laughing deeply. "I missed you." I tell him as I release him and he kisses my forehead before adjusting his blue suit and walking over to mom, pulling her into his arms too. She holds him for a while, then sighs.
"Rose said you were coming but I thought it was going to be a few days?" She asks.
He nods once, tapping her on the nose with his index finger. "I had planned to, but I did some quick research and I needed to come sooner so I've been flying for hours."
He moves from mom over to Octavia, giving her a big hug and a kiss on the cheek before he shakes hands with Dad and Logan.
"What did you find?" I ask him, rushing over to sit beside him on the couch. "Is it normal?"
Mom and dad both share a glance, then stare over at Pedro. He holds up both hands in surrender, raising his eyebrows. "Don't give me that look." He shakes his head. "She only told me last night and I made her promise to tell you both as well."
I pull his hands down, bringing his attention back. "Well?" I prompt, biting my lip nervously.
He sighs and my hopes are dashed again. "It isn't quite normal, love, but it isn't unheard of either."
"So I'm not the only one?" I inch closer to him.
I smile when he shakes his head. "No, there are other cases that have been studied, but very few...less than twenty in the last thousand years since we've been keeping records." He tells us, waving his hands around as he spoke. "That's not to say that there aren't more, but as you are human, and the others were as well, not many would have been accessible to us."
"So what?" Logan asks. "Kids of vampires sometimes gain an extra ability?"
Dad shakes his head before Pedro can answer. "No, my father was a vampire too, many other's I've known over the years as well and I've never heard of this."
Pedro nods, looking over at mom for a second before turning back to me and dad.
"So from what I can gather from the limited information we have..." He pauses, sorting things out in his mind, then he back tracks. "So vampirism in itself is a virus like mutation in our genes." He explains, though I already knew that from the book and dad and I had talked about it before. That psycho doctor had used the science of vampire blood to mutate it even further to create the Lamia Mortem that killed so many of my dad's people so long ago. "So, since Calvin was a vampire at the time of Rose's conception, he passed along a marker for the vampire virus but it lies dormant in that type of crossover." He glanced over at mom again. "So she already had the vampirism in her genetic makeup from her father, but..." He pauses again giving dad a look. "In the few cases I was able to get my hands on without raising any sort of suspicion, the subjects who exhibited heightened abilities...They, well, they were the product of multiple vampire crossovers."
My mom stumbles backward, falling down into the recliner behind her. "So it's true then?" She gasps, tears springing free from her eyes.
Dad begins to stand to go to her, but I feel her pain. I get up quickly and go to sit beside her in the chair, hugging her to me and she kisses my head, drying her face. "I'm so sorry, mom, I honestly thought you knew."
"Hush, don't apologize." She shushes me. "You had no way to know."
Pedro furrows his brows. "You already know?" He asks, confused.
I nod, still holding onto mom's hand. "I had a-a...I saw it." I explain. "It was a one night stand. Gran didn't know what he was when she met him."
Pedro nods, understanding. "You saw what he looks like?"
I nod.
Dad walks over, standing behind the chair to put his hand on mom's shoulder, squeezing a little. "Do you think you can find him?" Dad asks Pedro carefully.
Mom shivers at my side and I lean into her.
Pedro shrugs. "If Rose can give me a good description I can certainly try."
I sit up quickly. "What if I help you find him, Pedro?" I purpose. "I want to come to Castrum with you anyway, but I also know exactly what he looks like so I am the perfect person to help you look for him."
"Rose," Mom shakes her head. "I told you, it's too dangerous for you there."
"Mom, this is what I want." I insist. "I need to go there, see it with my own eyes, be a part of it." I try to make her understand. "Plus Pedro will need me to find your dad." I tell her. "Don't you want to meet him? You still have a parent out there somewhere and I have a Grandpa."
Mom stands, raking her hands through her hair in frustration. I feel badly for stressing her out so much lately, but I need to make her see.
"Why do you refuse to understand that it is an awful place?" She snaps. "I told you all about it. All of the horrors I endured there. Yet you can't wait to run out of safety and right into the mix of it." She can't hold back the frustration in her eyes. "Plus, odds are that that man isn't even in Castrum."
I roll my eyes, standing firm. "Why do you refuse to see that I just want to live my own life mom?" I snap right back at her. "Plus, if you want to talk about odds here, Castrum is the capital so technically the odds are that he'd be there rather than somewhere else."
Dad shoots me a glare and I uncross my arms and drop the smart ass look on my face and turn to him and Pedro instead. "Please let me go, Dad." I beg. "Pedro, just let me come with you."
"The decision isn't mine." Pedro shakes his head, staying out of the drama and looking over at Mom.
She glares back at him and dad. "The two of you are on board with this?" She asks angrily. "The both of you know firsthand all of the awful things that happened to me there."
"You mean like meeting dad?" I counter, a smirk on my face that makes dad glare at me again and Logan chide me.
Mom narrows her eyes at me, but Pedro steps forward, taking her arm. "With all due respect, Rachel, and you know that I love you with all of my heart, but a lot of the trouble you found yourself in there was...well, a bit of it was your own fault." He said very carefully and I fought back my smile. He wasn't wrong. Mom was never good at following rules or safety precautions while she was there. "And the rest was due to you being in the center of the public eye. You were made a target because you were interfering with a plot. Rose has no reason to be in any heightened danger there."
If looks could kill Pedro would be dead from the daggers mom is shooting out of her eyes in his direction. When dad comes forward, putting his hand on the side of her face he becomes the new recipient of the death stare. "He isn't wrong, Rachel." He whispers. "We house lots of humans each year in Castrum when they're debating undergoing the change and we have almost never had any issues."
Mom pushes his hand away. "Now we're talking about her possibly changing?" She raises her voice. "Already? She's only nineteen, Calvin."
I grab the book off of the coffee table and hold it up.
"And according to this I need to be twenty to be changed legally." I point out, feeling a little bad that I'm literally using her own words against her. "It's my choice, mom, you have to let me make it."
Though it shouldn't be possible, mom's face seems to go red with anger.
"Rose you have hardly even lived!" She shouts. "You have your whole life ahead of you and so many other things that you should be looking forward to experiencing." She paced her spot. "It's not a place you want to go, it's...it's...You'd hate it there."
The situation felt all too familiar and I waited until she was done fuming before I looked her in the eyes evenly, no attitude about it when I spoke to her.
"Mom, how did it make you feel when dad told you that?" I ask her. "Dad told you how much you'd hate it and how he wanted to keep you away in order to protect you from life there, right?" I didn't wait for her to answer. "How did it make you feel when dad, or anyone else, tried to take away choices that were yours to make?"
I pleaded with her with my eyes and finally she softened a little, looking at me more like the adult I am now and not her little girl.
Dad leans into her, brushing her hair away from her neck and kisses her cheek. "She's your daughter alright." He whispers to her. "It's time you learn something I had to learn a long time ago." He smiled, drawing one out of her too. "Once a Montgomery girl has made up her mind about something, there's no use in trying to fight her on it." He squeezes her hand and she glances over at me, then to Pedro.
He steps forward. "I promise you I can keep her safe." He nods. "I have made so many changes around there, and I'll give her two of the best bodyguards there are."
I tried to hold back my smile as I looked at her. "Please, mom." I whisper. "I need to do this." I tell her. "I need to see it, I need to know where I come from. I promise, I can do this."
She surprises me by coming forward and holding me close, kissing my head.
"My Rose, that's not what I'm worried about at all." She whispers to me. "I know you can do anything in the whole world that you set your mind to...You've got your father's heart and bravery."
I leaned back to look her in the eyes, pretending not to notice the tears growing in my mine. "Most would probably say I've got my mom's." I smile and so does she. I realize in that moment that the reason the man in the vision looked so familiar was because it was just like hers. She's got her father's smile. The father that I can help her find. "Can I go?" I ask, holding my breath for the answer.
Mom looks over at dad, then across the room to Logan, then to Pedro.
Each one nods, then she meets my eyes again.
"Yes."