Gabriel smiled at hearing them. "Twins among our kind are exceedingly rare." He smirked at me. "Rarer than you, my dear." With a technical demeanor, he shrugged and said, "If they survive this, I'd be very interested in watching their development."
Teren's hand firmed on my stomach. His jaw tightened too and I could see the protective instinct flare up inside him, it flared up in me too. I was very grateful to Gabriel, for giving us hope, for giving our family a chance, but I didn't exactly want him poking and prodding our kids like tiny little science experiments. Before I could say anything in rebuttal, Teren responded with, "We are extremely thankful, for everything you've done for us. We will never forget...your friendship."
His tone was tight when he said that and I knew he was having the same thoughts I was - you'll never get so much as a drop of blood from our babies - but he couldn't be that blatantly rude to this ancient, well connected vampire. We needed him to be firmly on our side, especially if we ever needed more life-giving vials of his miraculous juice.
Gabriel didn't seem to take any offense to Teren's words or tone. With a smile, he indicated the door to leave the room. As we exited the soundproof lab under the house, the sounds of dozens of bustling people filled my ears. I didn't know how many I was hearing, or what species they all were - mixed or pure - but there was a harmonic quality to the cacophony and I found myself smiling. Being in that room had been too quiet. Considering how I used to wonder how Teren could stand all of his extra abilities, it was pretty interesting how I'd already adapted to mine.
Occasionally, the human hunter's cry would hit my sharp ears. I did my best to ignore it, but every wail and every plea for help, only made me feel even worse. As we walked back up the hallway, passing a few mixed vamps along with a couple that I thought were purebloods (being surrounded by so many vampires, I was beginning to notice a very faint difference in the smell between the two), I tried to remember that the person being served up as dinner, had brought this upon themselves.
That really didn't excuse what they were doing, but Teren and I were not strong enough to take on a house of vampires to save him. Teren was right with his non-verbal warning, this was just something I was going to have to let go. I just wished I could block out the pleading.
Teren squeezed my hand as we walked back into the main house. Looking up at his face, I could see the haunted expression in his pale eyes. He was hearing it too, and it bothered him as well. He glanced down at me, smiled briefly, and then looked over at Gabriel. "Emma's conversion...you said she was basically a carbon copy of me. Does that mean that she will she come out like me?" I knew he'd said that not only out of curiosity, but also to distract us with something pleasant to think about.
We walked through a set of glass doors into an arboretum. A few more vampires nodded at Gabriel, before leaving us to our privacy. A couple cast hard looks at Teren, and I thought maybe he'd pissed off people they knew. Marble paths laced through raised, barked gardens, holding just about every medium to small sized tree I'd ever seen. The air was warm in here, and I could feel my feet swelling even more. As he walked us to a stone bench, I noticed a few more sets of full vampires. They seemed to like the almost tropical air.
Gabriel plucked a deep red flower with a dark, black stamen and gave it to me. I took the flower as we all sat down, a little marveled by the botanical beauty around us, enclosed under a huge glass roof, showing us the pitch black night outside.
Sitting on the other side of Teren, Gabriel smiled. "She has your blood. She will share all of your attributes and weaknesses." He grinned wryly. "Or lack thereof."
I gasped, a little surprised. As I did, the smell of hundreds of flowers assaulted me, made me a little dizzy. I'd sort of not let myself hope that I'd come out of this like my husband. Really, I'd sort of figured I wouldn't be getting out of this. It was pretty shocking to learn that I probably would, and I'd be at the same level of normalcy as Teren. That just seemed too much to hope for. "I'll get to be in the sun?" I whispered, stunned.
Gabriel looked around Teren, who also looked a little stunned as his beautiful eyes swept over my body. "You have no issues with it now, I'm assuming, since you made the trip okay?"
I nodded my head, my eyes watering again. All of this new hope combined with pregnancy hormones wasn't mixing well. Gabriel smiled at my reaction. "Then yes, you should be able to endure sunlight, among other things."
Feeling overwhelmed, I needed an answer to our children's outcome too. Putting a hand on my stomach, I quietly asked, "And them? Did changing me, do anything to them? "
Gabriel looked at my stomach, then me, then Teren. "They are your children?" he asked clinically. Teren clenched his jaw, but nodded. Gabriel smiled and looked back at me. "Then they were already mixed vampires. Teren's blood is the same as what's already in their veins, if slightly more potent, as he is third generation and they are fourth. Being exposed to more of his blood, should not have affected them. As far as we know, vampires cannot be turned twice." He smiled and shrugged. "I foresee their limitations to be roughly equal to yours."
I smiled, relieved, and felt a child kick me, almost as if they were relieved too. "And the shot won't hurt them?"
Gabriel shook his head. "No, my dear, they are not close enough to their conversion for it to have any true affect on them." He smiled warmly and I found a small laugh escaping me.
Teren smiled at me and shook his head. With a soft laugh he twisted back to Gabriel. "You're over six hundred years old. You must have seen quite a few of our kind. Have you ever seen the trait dilute out? Have you ever met a child that was purely human?" Curiosity overtook Teren's face as he waited for the wise man's answer. Teren's family had lofty ideals of eventually seeing their line return to humanity.
Gabriel twisted his head, his eyes taking in the paradise around him. Somewhere in the room bursting with life, I heard a nocturnal bird calling to its kind. The sound was odd to hear in a house, but comforting, on a basic one-with-nature level. It spoke to the foreignness within me. I may not have the sharpness of Teren's "deceased" senses, but I already felt more connected to my world.
Pausing another moment to watch a teenage looking mixed, clearly with child, walk into the room, Gabriel turned back to Teren and spoke. "All of the mixed that I have seen...have had, at the bare minimum, fangs and a mild interest in blood." He shrugged his shoulders. "But I've seen few beyond fifth or sixth generation." He tilted his head, his green eyes clearly thinking through the tons of vampiric knowledge he must have in his head. "Having studied the blood for as long as I have, I believe dilution of that level, would take several generations. Perhaps dozens." He smiled wryly. "But who knows, our kind have been around for as long as our cousins, it is entirely possible that some humans in this world are descendants of mixed vampires, and they just don't know it."
I frowned as I thought of that possibility. "Descendents...that sure would explain some of the nearly impossible things some athletes can do." I shrugged as Teren grinned and nodded. Sure, some people were enhanced through drugs, but there were stories of "miraculous" feats that came out every year, each seemingly more impressive than the next. Some of those people just had to be enhanced in a different way.
As Teren and I started talking about that possibility, a loud growl broke the relative silence. It sent goose bumps down my spine and my teeth automatically dropped down into a defensive position. Not knowing what was going on, I left them down. Teren, fangless, twisted to stare at Gabriel. Gabriel wasn't looking at our reactions; his eyes were studying the double doors we'd entered, focusing on the sound that had ripped through the night.
As I held my breath, the dizzying scent of various species of flowers stopping, Gabriel flicked a quick glance at us. "Please, excuse me." With that, he blurred out of the room.
My hand found Teren's and I clutched him, hard. The vampire going through his conversion, had just awoken - hungry.
I closed my eyes as the sounds of shuffling and shouting entered my brain. The growl intensified, and the shouting and pleading intensified as well. Teren dropped my hand and brought his to my ears, clenching them hard, trying to block the sounds that he only succeeded in muffling - the sound of that human man, screaming for mercy. I started to cry as Teren pulled my head to his chest, kissing me and holding me tight. To block out the muffled screams and growls that I could still hear, I started going over baby names in my head. I started at A, and made up two boy names and two girl names with every letter of the alphabet, all the while inhaling the calming scent of Teren under my nose.
As I reached "L" and Lauren and Libby for girls' names, Teren pulled his hands away, cupping my cheeks with them. His eyes were closed and his face looked solemn. He'd heard everything, crystal-clear. The night was relatively silent again, and my tears flowed even harder. Knowing that the man had brought this disaster on himself, knowing that the man would have killed each of us, without a second thought, and knowing that he would have stopped at nothing to take the life of my children, really did nothing to stop the horror I felt at listening to him die.
I harshly swallowed. "I'm ready to go home, Teren."
As conversations and rustling noises filled the home again, I noticed that the birds started making noises again too. An owl hooted at me from somewhere and I felt myself relaxing. Even nature was moving on. Teren stroked my cheeks, murmuring that everything would be fine and we'd leave once Halina was safely here. I could feel that she had markedly closed the distance between us. She must have been hauling ass to get as far as she had so fast. I could only imagine that when she got here, she was gonna be pissed that we'd gone off with a group of strange, potentially dangerous partial vampires without her.
As I pulled away from Teren, pulling his hands from my cheeks and kissing the palms, Gabriel swished back into the room. He stood in front of our stone bench, his face apologetic and yet, somehow pleased too.
"I do apologize, if that was...unpleasant for you." The beauty of his face intensified as he broke out into a wide smile. "But, Zane is doing wonderfully and should be fully recovered within a few hours." He put his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, looking genuinely happy that the in-danger member of his family had survived, no matter the cost. A shudder went through me.
Teren stood, holding his hand out to help me up. "Is there somewhere where Emma can rest, before we head back home?" he asked politely, as he pulled me to my feet.
Gabriel glanced at my stomach and then back to Teren. "You mean, until your vampire gets here?"
Teren looked away for a second before looking back. "Yes. She's wearing herself out getting here so fast. She won't have enough energy to return with us. I won't leave here until I know..." He bit his lip for a moment, looking unsure if he should second-guess our "savior's" hospitality.
Gabriel grinned crookedly. "None of you have anything to fear from me. Your vampire will be treated as an honored guest, and allowed to stay in the basement levels, for as long as they like." He raised an eyebrow at Teren and I. "You may stay as long as you like as well. It is approaching the middle of the night. The two of you must be tired."