Shea stooped to grasp a handful of soil, then let it trail through her fingers. Had Noelle, the woman her mother had named as his wife, been as obsessed with Rand as Maggie had? It sounded very much as if she had. Shea had no intentions of ever taking a chance that she shared her mother’s failings. She would never need a man so much that she would neglect a child and eventually kill herself. Her mother’s death had been a senseless tragedy, and she had abandoned Shea to a cold, cruel life without love or guidance. Maggie had known her daughter needed blood; it was all there in the diary, every damning word. Shea’s fist clenched until her knuckles turned white. Maggie knew Rand’s saliva carried a healing agent. She had known that, yet she had left it to her daughter to find out on her own.
Shea had healed herself countless times as a child while her mother stared dully out a window, half-alive, never once hearing a toddler’s cries of pain when she fell learning to walk and run, learning everything alone. She had discovered the ability to heal small cuts and bruises with her tongue. It had taken a while before she realized she was unique in such a thing. Maggie had been an emotionless robot, caring for the barest minimum of Shea’s physical needs and none of her emotional ones. Maggie had killed herself the day Shea turned eighteen. A low sound of sorrow escaped Shea’s throat. It had been terrible enough to know she had to have blood to exist, but to grow up knowing her mother couldn’t love her had been devastating.
Seven years ago, a kind of madness had swept Europe. It had seemed so laughable at first. For eons uneducated, superstitious people had whispered of the existence of vampires in this region her father had come from.
It now seemed probable that a blood disorder, perhaps originating here in the Carpathian Mountains, had been the basis of the vampire legends. If the disease was indigenous only to this region, wasn’t it possible that those persecuted down through the ages had suffered from this condition Shea’s father and she shared? Shea’s excitement had set in at the prospect of studying others like herself.
Then the modern-day “vampire” killings had swept through Europe like a plague. Men mostly, murdered in ritual vampire style, stakes through the heart. It was sickening, repugnant, frightening. Respected scientists had begun to discuss the possibility of vampires being real. Committees had been formed to study—and eliminate—them. Evidence from some earlier source, combined with samples of a female child’s blood—hers, Shea was certain—had raised further questions. Shea had been terrified, certain those murdering in Europe might try to find her. And now, indeed, they were attempting to track her down. She had had to abandon her country and her career there to pursue her own line of research.
How could anyone in these educated times believe in such nonsense as vampires? She identified with those murdered people, certain she shared the same blood disorder. She was a doctor, a researcher, yet up until now she had failed all its victims, fearful of the discovery of what she thought of as her loathsome little secret. It angered her. She was gifted, brilliant even; she should have unlocked the secrets of this thing long ago. How many others had died because she hadn’t been aggressive enough in her search for data?
Her guilt and fear now fed her wild, exhaustive sessions of study. She accumulated everything she could find on the area, the people, and the legends. Rumors, supposed evidence, old translations, and the latest newspaper articles. She rarely ate, rarely remembered to give herself transfusions, rarely slept, always searching for that one piece of the puzzle that would give her a trail to follow. She studied her blood endlessly, her saliva, her blood after animal intake, after human transfusions.
Shea had reluctantly burned her mother’s diary; she would never forget a single word, but she still felt the loss of it deeply. Her bank account, however, was substantial. She had inherited funds from her mother, and she had made good money in her profession. She even owned property in Ireland that rented out for a sizable amount. She lived frugally and invested wisely. It had been easy enough to move her money to Switzerland and lay a few false trails through the Continent.