June 1938
We were in Lewis' room, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that he was upset about something. My guess was the evening dinner conversation.
"Who are the Greysons?" I finally mustered enough courage to ask.
He sighed and sat on his bed. "A powerful old family. They took something important from us a long time ago."
I sat next to him. "Would it be rude to ask what they took?"
He smiled sadly. "My sister."
"They kidnapped her?" I asked, surprised.
"When she was just a baby. We tried to get her back, but by that point...it was too late."
"What do you mean? What did they do to her?"
He sighed again, stood, and began pacing the room. "The Covingtons and the Greysons share blood. Centuries ago, two of our ancestors were brothers, but they had a very violent disagreement. They disowned each other, and one – we don't know which – changed his name. The two families have been rivals ever since. They split their own generation in half and kept the marriages in the family, so the bloodlines would remain strong. Now the Greyson line has thinned, the blood corrupted, and ours has dwindled as well. Both sides want to carry on the bloodline, but that would require a union of the two sides. Cyprian, the only true-blooded male left with the Greysons asked for my sister's hand in marriage when she was born."
"How old was he at the time?"
"Too old. My parents vehemently denied the union. The Greysons seemed to accept that, and we didn't think otherwise, until Anna went missing."
I gasped. "Anna? The pregnant woman? She's your sister?" And how terrifying that truly was! They had only just been speaking of sabotaging the poor woman's pregnancy.
Lewis looked worried. "It sounds heinous, I know, but my sister is twenty-two now and has been utterly corrupted by their kind."
"Lewis, she's your flesh and blood!" I was truly distraught. What madness was this? Greyson debauchery aside, were the Covingtons truly so horrible? Was Lewis?
"You won't understand until we've explained everything. The formula, the feud – it all comes back to the Greysons."
"Did you try to involve the authorities? What were your parents thinking? Did they just give up on your sister?"
Lewis was distressed. "I think now is the time to tell you, else you'd spend the rest of your time here thinking the worst of me." He stood and left the room, gesturing for me to follow.
I had no idea what was in store, but I followed him anyway. After all, humans are always at the mercy of their own curiosity, and humanity was all that I had back then. Humanity and Lewis.
(My, how times have changed.)