A Vial of Life(23)

When we finally reached The Shade, I was glad that it was overcast again. The spell that Ibrahim had cast over us to keep us in shadow while we were gone had lasted till now, but I didn’t want any hunters detecting our movements.

The dragons remained above the clouds until we were past the boundary, then descended upon The Shade, silently and gracefully. They touched down in the clearing before the Port.

We had been gone longer than I’d hoped, and the first thing I wanted to do was check on my sister and Xavier. I wondered if Vivienne might have given birth already. But aside from checking that she was in good health, and possibly meeting my new niece or nephew, I needed to see how they’d been holding up since we’d been gone.

Sofia and I hurried through the forest to the couple’s penthouse. The lights were on, but as we knocked, nobody answered. Sofia couldn’t detect even the slightest sound of anyone inside. The door hadn’t been locked. I pushed it open and we stepped inside. We moved from room to room, seeing if they might have left a note for us as to their whereabouts in case we returned.

“Derek,” Sofia called from Vivienne and Xavier’s bedroom. I hurried to the room to find her pointing to a wet patch on the bed. “I’m guessing Viv’s water broke already. Maybe she’s been taken to the Sanctuary?”

For all we knew, Corrine was still mysteriously absent from The Shade. But it was possible that Vivienne had been taken there to be tended by other witches.

We descended from the treehouse and ran back through the woods toward the witch’s residence. We bumped into Rose and Caleb, who followed us to the Sanctuary.

When we arrived outside the door, my spine tingled as my ears caught the crying of an infant. Sofia gasped.

“Oh, my God, it’s happened already!” Rose exclaimed.

Worries about my son momentarily drifted into the background as excitement overtook me. I forced open the front door, too impatient to wait for somebody to come to answer it, and barged into the entrance hall. We hurried toward the crying, stopping outside one of the bedrooms.

“Vivienne?” I spoke up, a slight tremble in my voice.

The door flung open a moment later, and we found ourselves standing face to face with Corrine. Her thick brown locks were wrapped tightly above her head in a bun, beads of perspiration shining in the roots of her hair.

Her eyes widened, and a look of relief washed over her face. “Oh, thank goodness you’re back. Come in! Come in!”

We rushed in to find Vivienne lying on a double bed, cradling a blanket-clad baby in her arms. Xavier sat next to her on the bed. Vivienne looked drained and exhausted, but both of the new parents were positively glowing with happiness.

My throat tightened. My voice choked up, and I could hardly even greet them. I broke out into a smile, joy billowing up within me.

I hurried to Vivienne’s bedside and kissed her forehead while looking down at her beautiful baby.

“A boy or a girl?” Sofia asked, arriving by my side along with Rose.

“A girl,” Vivienne replied, tears moistening the corners of her eyes as she gazed at her baby.

“How late are we?” Rose asked, smiling at the baby girl.

“A few hours,” Xavier replied. His eyes had the same glistening quality as his wife’s. They both looked in a daze, lost in their own little bubble with their new child.

Vivienne raised the baby from her chest and handed her to me. I held her in my arms, taking in her features. Fine strands of dark hair covered her head and her eyes were bright blue, closer to my mother’s—and my—eye color than to Vivienne or Xavier’s. I dipped down and planted a kiss on her tiny nose.

“So you’ve named her Aurora?” I asked.

“We thought that’s what we’d name her… Xavier and I decided on that name months ago if we had a girl. But when she came out and I looked into her eyes for the first time… I wanted to name her after our mother, Derek.” Vivienne’s eyes shimmered with melancholy even as she smiled. “Victoria.”

Victoria Vaughn.

We had lost our mother hundreds of years ago. Her death—caused by a vampire—had been the catalyst to my becoming a hunter before my siblings and I were eventually turned into vampires. My mother had died so long ago that she was but a distant memory. I had been only a teenager in human years, and so for the vast majority of my life, she had been absent.

But the look in my twin sister’s eyes stirred up memories of Victoria Lisette Novak. Memories of a beautiful, strong, dutiful woman. A woman my father Gregor Novak hadn’t deserved. I wished that she could be here now, that she could hold her new granddaughter in her arms and remark on how similar their eye colors were.