Relentless (Vampire Awakenings #11) - Brenda K. Davies Page 0,110

the Jeep that brought me to Lewis’s parents, and they also brought the body of the vamp who attacked me. It burned up before I got the chance to see it, and Lewis sent his friends back to the school later that day. He told them—”

“To say they helped him move back home,” Dante said, “and that was the last time they saw him.”

“Yes,” Maya said.

“I’ve interviewed Jim and Tom multiple times over the years; their stories never wavered. I compelled them into telling me the truth, and their stories didn’t change.”

Dante didn’t know if he wanted to bellow and smash his fist into a wall, cry from the joy of finding her, or laugh bitterly over the years he wasted on trying to find someone who didn’t want to be found. When he bowed his head, Cassidy rested her hand on his shoulder and edged closer.

“Compelling them wouldn’t have worked,” she said. “The memories Lewis and his father put in there were their real memories, or at least they were to them. Their mind had already been manipulated into a new truth by vampires stronger than you.”

“Shit,” Dante muttered as he tugged at his hair.

“What happened afterward?” Cassidy asked Maya.

“I was so freaked out by the attack, my heightened senses, and my newfound thirst for blood, that it took me a couple of months to adjust and accept what I’d become. I had nightmares every night about the attack, and Lewis would come in to comfort me. We became friends, and over time, it developed into more. By the time Lewis reached maturity, we were already mated.”

He hated that she experienced such a traumatic event, but he still didn’t understand why she shut them out. “Why didn’t you come home or at least let us know you were alive?”

Maya bit her bottom lip and ducked her head. “At first, I was too scared to be around people. I was worried that I’d attack one of you, or you would somehow see right through me and know I was different. And then, as more time passed, I was scared to return because I was gone for so long. I was afraid of what you would all say and do, and I didn’t know what to tell you about why I’d gone missing. I couldn’t stand seeing the hurt and betrayal I knew would be on all your faces. I told myself every day that I would stop being a coward and go back, but then…”

“What?” Dante prodded when her voice trailed off.

Maya sighed and met his gaze again. She wiped away the tear streaking her cheek. “And then I read Mom’s obituary and learned Dad had already passed and I… I was too late.”

After all this time, Dante still hated to see his sister cry. In the past, he would have hugged her and told her a joke, or threatened to beat someone up to make her laugh. Now, despite the fact he still loved her and always would, he couldn’t bring himself to do any of those things. She was not the person he remembered; he wasn’t sure she was ever the person he’d believed her to be.

“I was still alive,” he said.

“I was scared,” she whispered.

“Of what?”

“That you would hate me.”

And he was saddened to realize a part of him did hate her for what she put them through. She couldn’t have told them the truth about her disappearance, but she could have returned at some point. Julie had faced it with her mom, but Maya had chosen to hide instead.

“Even if you didn’t stay, you could have come back or called to let us know you were alive. Yes, we would have been pissed and upset, but we also would have been so happy, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t have been so broken.”

Maya winced and bowed her head. He waited for her to say something more, but she didn’t. Her silence only annoyed him more.

“Mom and I watched the cancer eat Dad alive. We cried together, we prayed together, and throughout it all, I wished you were there to help us get through it. And then, he was gone.”

Unable to sit anymore, Dante rose and paced over to the mantle. His nails dug into his palms as he resisted the urge to smash the pictures of the smiling, perfect family built on the ashes of his family.

“I was the one who found Mom,” he said.

A jolt of surprise went through Cassidy as she stared at Dante’s rigid