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“Because I love children and have dreamed of becoming a mother.” I pause, looking at the boy. “Your mother and I have a mutual friend.”
“We don’t need another mother,” Alexander argues.
“I’m not trying to replace your mother. I would love a few children of my own.”
“Who’s this?” a female voice says from the other side of the room. “I can smell her from here.”
I turn, seeing a little girl dressed in clothes from the ’50s. She doesn’t look any older than nine or ten. “She’s mine,” the boy answers. “Stay away.” He hisses at the girl.
“I’m here to see your mother,” I answer.
“Mother?” the girl repeats. “What do you want with Mother?”
“A mutual friend of ours asked me to come.” The girl moves completely into the room, giving me a glimpse at her angelic face. The innocent child depicted through her smile is instantly hidden by her eyes…eyes that hold the look of death.
“Tell her I’m here,” I say, using a sterner voice. “She’s expecting me.”
“Mother doesn’t accept visitors.” The boy is standing next to me in an instant. Even with my vampire eyes, I didn’t see his movement. His face changes from the innocent child he was moments earlier to that of a monster. Black eyes replace the blue, and fangs protrude from his mouth.
“Stop!” I demand. “Don’t make me punish you.”
“Punish? You’re not Mother.” The girl’s face contorts as the two children move even closer.
“Amelia says to sing,”Thorne’s words echo through my mind. Sing? Was that my imagination?“Dammit, sing, Elsie!”
A song I used to sing to my siblings when we lived in Scotland is the only song that comes to mind under pressure. I begin softly, then crescendo as the verse continues.
My love is like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June
My love is like the melody
That's sweetly played in tune.
The children freeze in place. Both stare at me.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till all the seas gang dry.
Their faces return to normal, and their eyes soften. “That was beautiful,” the girl whispers. “Sing more.”
Loud clapping echoes off the walls of the wooden church. I turn, finding a woman with dark hair standing in the corner. “Well done, my dear. Well done.”
“Patrice?”
She bows grandly. “The one and only.”
EIGHT
a hunting we will go…
I stareat the woman in front of me. While the children are dressed in clothes from what I presume is their era of death. she’s wearing a pair of designer leggings and a fitted shirt. Her coal black hair and oversized dark eyes are a beautiful contrast to her pale skin. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was in her mid-twenties, driving an oversized SUV with three kids in the back, and on the way to a soccer game.
