Somewhere in my hazy brain I noted the irony of me saying that to her, considering what we were. Floating back into sleep, I heard Nika's sniffles growing louder, along with her tremors. "Mommy...wake up."
I popped an eye open, trying to fight the desire to just ignore her and let that peace wash over me. Maybe she'd pieced things together about why so many people had been camping out with us lately and it had frightened her. She did seem genuinely scared.
Her little heat-pack hands came up to cup my cheeks and I opened my eyes wider. Seeing the dark depths of hers, I saw the sheer terror in them and felt a hot tear splash on my arm. Fighting through the fog of waking up, I frowned. "Baby, you're safe. Mommy and Daddy have you." Teren's arm around her tightened, silently agreeing with me.
In a whisper that even I could barely hear, she said, "Monster took Julie."
I opened my mouth to automatically tell her that monsters weren't real, when I finally felt it. Teren and I sat bolt upright at the exact same time. We looked at each other for the briefest fraction of a second as fear washed through every part of me. Nika was right - Julian wasn't in the house.
We sprang out of bed, blurring on any clothes we could find nearby while Nika watched us, tears on her cheeks as she sat small and alone on our bed. I ended up in Teren's work shirt and a pair of my lounge pants that I'd tossed in the corner a couple of days ago. I couldn't have cared less though. My son was no longer in my sanctuary. Pure ice flooded my body, my soul.
"Stay in the house with her, I'm getting Julian," Teren said, tossing on some pants and immediately phasing from the room. I could sense him streaking towards the front door and scooped Nika up, following. Seeing her parents in action, Nika started to sob. Her terror mixed with mine, amplifying it.
The blurb on my personal radar that was Julian was moving fast, away from us, in a southerly direction. I had no idea why Julian would leave his bed in the middle of the night. I had no idea why he'd go outside, much less run away from us. When Teren was at the entryway and I was at the top of the stairs, I felt something change. Julian's position turned around, started coming back to us. Holding my breath, I locked eyes with my husband as he looked up at me. "He's coming back," he muttered.
I nodded. "Go get him." He had the door open before I even finished nodding. I heard yawns and whispers from my mom and sister as I felt my husband streaking to meet up with my son. I was still holding my breath. Nika was still sobbing uncontrollably. Staring at the door below me, I felt my mom and Ash stumble from their room to enter the hallway with me.
"Em? What's going on?"
Ashley reached out for a distraught Nika and I woodenly handed her over, still not pulling my gaze from the door, waiting for Teren to burst through it with our wandering son. I could feel him closing the distance as Julian's slower blurb sped towards his.
My mom put a hand on my back, asking what was wrong. I couldn't speak, and only Nika answered. In between sobs, she got out, "Monster took Julie."
My stomach tightened at her words. No. She must have had been having a weird dream, like the dream I'd awoken from. Kids were rarely taken from the homes, from their beds, especially vampire children. That just couldn't have been what happened. He must have heard something and wandered away. With his super ears, he could have heard something blocks from here. Maybe he'd drifted farther than he'd intended and was streaking back to us because he was scared. Feeling Teren almost on him, I closed my eyes. Nika's wailing in the background amplified my stress. For the first time since my death, I felt a phantom thumping in my chest. A fake heartbeat.
Just as Teren was almost on him, everything I'd ever known...changed.
My eyes flew open as I gasped. "No," was all I got out before I lost the ability to stand up straight. Falling to my knees in front of the stair's railing, I gripped it with every ounce of strength I possessed; it snapped in two.
My mother's arms were instantly around me as I clutched my stomach. "What's wrong, Emma?"
Her warm, pudgy body gave me no comfort as I rocked back and forth on my heels. Shaking my head, I could only mutter, "No," over and over, like it was suddenly the only word I knew.
From somewhere in the night, a yell ripped through the quiet streets. I knew my husband's voice and covered my ears. No, this could not be happening. Even my mother heard his scream and started shaking. Maybe not registering that he'd made that sound, she asked, "What's out there?"
I had no answer for her; I had no coherent words at all, only the beginnings of a long grief-filled wail of my own. Hearing my daughter's pained cries behind me, I clamped my hand over my mouth and forced myself to not scream. It was hard. I felt like my entire body had shattered into a thousand pieces. Tears stung my eyes as a face in my memory filled my watery vision.
My son. My first born. My carbon copy of the man I loved...was gone.
Sucking in breaths, trying to not scare Nika anymore than she already was, I ignored my mother and sister's concerned questions and panicking voices. I felt my husband's presence stop in my head, felt his location jerk back and forth aimlessly. Julian was gone. The blip of him in my head that told me where he was at every moment and time, had vanished. Like someone had thrown off a light switch, it had just stopped spouting his location to me. By Teren's scream, I knew he'd lost him too. That only meant one thing in my mind:
Julian was dead.
Hyperventilating on the air I didn't need, I felt cool tears surging down my cheeks. Staring at everything, but seeing none of it, I started muttering, "He's gone...he's gone."
Nika started wailing my name and I heard Ashley coo in her ear, rubbing her back. I felt Teren start to return to me in a circular pattern, back and forth, searching, searching for our son's body.
I shot to my feet, startling my mother back a step. No...I couldn't stomach my son's lifeless form being brought back to the house in my husband's arms. That would surely unhinge me. I had to find him. I had to see where and how and....why.
I started to streak downstairs, but my mom clenched my arm. I turned back to her, not even seeing her.
"Emma? What happened?" Her voice was clipped, short, her eyes murky with unshed tears. Looking at her for the first time since noting Julian's absence, I finally heard the hearts thumping around me. All three pulsating beats in the hall were hard, surging with adrenaline. For an odd moment, I wondered if Julian's heart had surged...before it stopped.
Not feeling like it was even me speaking, I shakily told her, "Julian left the house."
Her eyes widened as tears flowed down her cheeks and she pushed my body towards the stairs. "Then go get him!"
I shook my head, looking between her and my sister. "I can't." I shrugged, feeling pieces of my soul crumbling apart.
Ashley held Nika to her tight, my daughter wrapping every limb around her as she cried for her brother, her twin. "Why can't you? Where's Teren?"
Her eyes looked around for him while I shrugged again. "He's searching, but he doesn't know where to look."
My mother grabbed my face, shaking me from my daze. "You can feel him, go get him, Emma!"
I blinked, a sob rising in me. "I can't...I can't feel him anymore."
My mother's mouth dropped as fat tears splashed on her skin. "No...does that mean he's...?" She couldn't finish saying what I most feared and the unspoken word reverberated in the air.
I nodded, not able to say it either, especially with Nika listening.
Both Mom and Ashley gasped, then choked on their grief. Twisting from the sight of so much internal damage, I made to flee from it - towards my grieving husband who was madly searching where he'd last felt our son. "I need to help Teren...find his body."
I could not believe those words had just left my mouth.
As my vision clouded to a point where I couldn't even see the stairs anymore, I flew myself down them. My hand reached out for the knob of our once beautiful front door; every once beautiful thing seemed dull and lifeless to me now. Twisting the knob so hard the metal warped, I nearly pulled the elaborate decoration off its hinges. My daughter's voice stopped me a split second before I streaked away.
"Julie's so scared, Mommy."
I gasped, twisting my body to stare up at my daughter. Her tiny head was resting on Ashley's shoulder, her light hair mixing with my sister's darker shade. I took a step back to her, feeling like my legs were Jell-o, and any second I was going to cave to the floor again. Staring up at her, disbelieving, I murmured, "Do you feel him, sweetheart? Do you feel what he's feeling...right now?"
The hope blossoming in my chest was nearly as painful as dying had been. At that moment, I would have preferred another conversion. Every breath in the house stopped as everyone focused on my daughter, the one person on this earth who would know with absolute certainty if my son was still alive. Ticking the long seconds off in my head, I held my breath, terrified of her answer.
Nika swallowed repeatedly, hiccupping with her fading sobs. Finally, she nodded. "He's scared," she whispered.
My hands came to my mouth as a sob broke free from me. If he was scared...he was alive. I felt streaks rushing to me in my head. So many were moving towards me at one time that it felt like my world was imploding. The other vampires had felt the disconnect with Julian and were racing here, to find out why. I'd have no answers for them once they got here, none but - he's alive.
But my husband was my main concern. He believed our son was dead; I couldn't just let him continue to believe that, it would eat him alive. Wishing I could call him to me with just the connection we had, I hovered at the door. Torn between flying to him and flying to my daughter, to question her on everything she knew, I debated. Just as I started to move towards Nika, I felt Teren's presence shift towards mine. Our pull kicked in when he did. A dull sense of homecoming started to burn in me but I ignored it. This reunion wasn't going to be our usual sweet one. This one would give me no satisfied peace. I didn't think I'd ever feel satisfied peace again.
Maybe sensing his family approaching, Teren was blurring back to me, to strategize on how best to find where our son lay lifeless. I twisted back to the door, eager to tell him that Julian wasn't gone. He may have vanished, but he wasn't gone.
He phased into the house, nothing more than a trick of the lights to any human eyes. I inhaled him as he went past, the world dancing off his skin as a small rush of reunion washed over me. It was nothing though, nothing compared to the void in my chest. Dirt, grease and garbage filled my senses as he stopped just inside the door. His bare chest streaked with mud, his hands dirty, his slacks filthy, I had to assume that Teren had been ripping apart...everything. Anything he could to find our son. Glancing down his body, my eyes watered at the blood smeared across his bare feet. He'd already healed, but he'd ripped his skin apart, searching in vain.
Tears fell from his eyes as he looked back at me as I closed the door; his eyes watched the wrought iron ominously as it cut off the path to our lost kin. "Emma," he croaked out, "I couldn't...I couldn't find him. He's gone. He's not there anymore. I could smell him, but it's windy tonight...it was faint...and then it just stopped." Tears ran down his face and he started to breathe heavy, like he was hyperventilating. "There's nothing there..."