Vampire Most Wanted(77)
“And she did all this for a baby?” he asked with a frown. “Why not just manipulate a mortal into impregnating her? Hell, she wouldn’t even have had to manipulate one. They’d have been lining up to sleep with her.”
When Divine raised her eyebrows at that, he explained, “We apparently give off some chemical mix of hormones that makes us seem ultra attractive to mortals.”
“Really?” she asked with interest. Divine hadn’t known that. But it explained why mortal men seemed always to be making nuisances of themselves around her.
“Yes,” Marcus said, and then added. “Even if that hadn’t worked, she could have easily influenced any mortal to think she was gorgeous. Although, if you got your looks from her, she must have already been gorgeous.”
Divine felt her face heat up at the compliment and rolled her eyes at her own reaction. Seriously? Blushing? She was too damned old to blush, she thought, and then said, “Yes, she could have. But apparently my mother didn’t want just any baby. She wanted the baby of a man from a powerful family.”
“And your father, Felix? He was from a powerful family?”
Divine almost bit off her tongue as she realized that she’d given something away that might be dangerous. Trying to act as if she hadn’t, she shrugged. “Apparently, although I only heard all of this from a servant. And my mother had been a servant herself before she tricked my father into thinking he was her life mate.”
“Your mother was older than your father, immortal, and yet a servant?” Marcus asked with surprise.
Divine shrugged. “That’s what I was told.”
Marcus sat back and shook his head at this news, apparently finding it hard to believe. She could understand why. As an immortal Tisiphone could have controlled and influenced any number of wealthy mortals into marrying her, and with them under her control, they would have let her do whatever she wanted with their wealth. Heck, she could even have just used mind control to make them give her their wealth if she’d been of a mind to. That was certainly no less dastardly than what she’d done to Divine’s poor father. But the truth was she’d needed the power of Divine’s father’s family to get her out of servitude. Because she’d been a servant to another powerful, immortal family to pay a debt she owed for causing the death of one of their children.
Marcus cleared his throat suddenly and Divine glanced to him. He was about to ask a question, and she knew exactly what it would be. What was the name of her father’s powerful family? She couldn’t answer that, so quickly said, “Of course, her lies and manipulations couldn’t hold up forever. I was four when my father eventually figured out that she’d used him. Once he realized that, he apparently snuck out a message explaining the situation and asking for help with one of the servants, who was ordered to take it to one of his brothers.”
“She could still control him,” Marcus realized with slow dawning horror at the predicament her father had been in.
Divine nodded. “And she could still read him, which she must have done. The night after the servant slipped away with the message, she barricaded the doors and windows of our home and set it on fire.”
“And then took you with her when she fled?” Marcus asked.
“Oh, she didn’t flee,” Divine corrected him. “She barricaded all of us in the house while we slept: myself, my father, the rest of the servants, and herself. She meant for all of us to die.”
“How did you get out?” Marcus asked at once.
“The servants,” Divine said quietly. “They slept on the main floor and woke first. She tried to control them and make them just sit down and let themselves burn, but there were apparently four of them, too many to control all at once. I gather she gave it a good try though,” she added dryly. “She kept them busy long enough that by the time my father woke to their cries, the fire was raging.”