And now we were back to how this whole conversation had started. “Nadia Kübler, she’s the one imprisoned?”
She nodded a wicked grin that looked so sinister on her face. “She’d changed her name, remarried a few times even. But I found her in Argentina in 1955. You should have seen her face when she saw me standing across the street. She tried to make her husband walk faster as if that would help her. I killed him on that street and took her away. I sank her in the earth and gave her the same gruel we had been fed once a day. She begged and screamed and begged more. Her head twisted to the side, left and right, trying to get out. Eventually, though, she stopped fighting. She stopped eating. She’d just beg for death. It was then I let her go. I didn’t want to bother with her anymore…with that pain. The anger vanished, or rather, I wanted it to vanish. I wanted to stop being angry, especially with Arsiein. He always understood, and he was always watching over me even when I was hunting Nazis. He never said anything, simply asked me if I was ready to go home or if I was thirsty.”
“You never drank from the ones you hunted?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, I was scared of their final thoughts or what they would show me.”
“What did you do after you released her?”
“I dropped her in front of a Polish prison with a note listing all her crimes. She was mortal, and, therefore, mortal laws applied to her. I had gotten my rage out, but I wasn’t the only one she had destroyed, so I wished for the rest of them who made it to find closure—the end!” she said with a bit more pep and cheerfulness that did not at all fit the story. She seemed to get what my face was trying to say. “Yes, it is regrettable. But there is a moral to my story!”
“Don’t help fucking Nazis, and definitely don’t be a Nazi?”
Melora snickered, her eyes closed as she lay back on the grass. “That is always a good takeaway.”
“Yes.” Atarah grinned. “But a vampire’s moral is…patience. Especially with yourself. As your new older sister—”
“Here we go,” Melora huffed. “Atarah, you are no less young than the rest of us even with her here.”
“At least I am not the young one!” she shot back. “As I was saying to you, as your new older sister, I feel the need to tell…relax, Dru. The first couple of years for all of us is hard, messy, and confusing. And Theseus really doesn’t have it that bad—he’s just spoiled! I didn’t fall into Arsiein—”
“You sort of did,” Melora cut in.
“What I mean”—Atarah shot Melora a nasty look—“is that I didn’t choose to be reborn because I was head over heels for Arsiein. In fact, I thought he was a little odd. I had ulterior motives. I had things I wanted to do. I flipped out, and I broke things. I hid and cried and mourned and went on revenge hunts. I was a lot to deal with.”
“Now she sits in puffy dresses and tends flowers,” Melora teased.
“I totally understand why Ulrik is your mate.” I laughed, looking at Melora. “You are always looking for a fight.”
She shrugged. “I grew up in a somewhat repressed society where I was never able to be me. Now I finally can, and I’m getting used to it still.”
“Melora, you are over 567 years old. I think you’re plenty use to it.” Atarah laughed, and so did Melora.
However, they stopped abruptly when, all of a sudden, a teenager with long dreads was flung into the grass a few feet from Melora.
“What in the world?” I asked as the boy tried to pick himself up.
“Hello, Jabari,” Melora and Atarah both said, not even shocked.
“I said I didn’t want to come here,” the boy snapped.
Jabari, as well as his mate, M’kena, just appeared right beside the teen. “And I said you didn’t have a choice.”
“You guys missed all the fun.” Melora waved over t
o them. Noticing us, all three of them glanced over.
“Sisters, forgive us for the intrusion,” Jabari said as he yanked the boy up by his shirt. “I was too preoccupied with this one to care about my landing.”
“No problem. Teenagers can be difficult,” Atarah said as if she hadn’t told me she was nineteen.
“I am older than you—”
“Don’t be rude to your aunts,” Jabari ordered.
“I am not in the mood to play fucking vampire family—ah!” he yelled as Jabari flung him once again, but this time, he did not hit the ground but disappeared.
“M’kena, would you like to join us?” I asked, curious about her and the land she had come from.