After Daybreak

“He got angry over everything.”

I realize he looks tired.

“Did everything go okay?” I ask.

“We have adequate blood for now. It’ll keep the Lessers content until we return, but after that”—he shakes his head—“I’ll deal with it when I get back.”

He glances over at the pouch. “Did you open it?”

“No.”

“It frightens you. Why? What is it that you think your father was talking about?”

“Not frighten exactly.” I can see the earnestness and worry in his eyes. I feel like I’m treading water, on the verge of drowning.

“That ancient vampire in the mountain—” I begin. “His family name was Montgomery.”

Victor grows still, processing the information, and I’m not even sure he’s breathing. I force out the words —

“Victor . . . I’m a vampire.”

I don’t know what sort of reaction I expected, but it certainly isn’t a smile followed by a quick laugh.

“That’s not possible, Dawn. I would know.”

“Okay, maybe not a vampire, but a dhampir.”

“They’re a myth. Like leprechauns, faeries, and werewolves.”

“You thought Day Walkers were a myth, too.”

That sobers him a bit.

“Think about it, Victor, think about my blood. If it contained vampire, it would explain why for a time you had a craving for it after you tasted it.” Once vampires taste the blood of their kind, they risk becoming addicted to it until they are infected with the Thirst.

That totally wipes the smile from his face.

“And our ability to share dreams,” I continue, pressing my point. “Faith said that only happens with Old Family.”

I can tell that I’ve left him speechless. I’ve never seen him like this—he seems lost, whereas he usually takes command of any situation. Which means he’s as confused and unsettled by all of this as I am.

He turns his back on me and takes a couple of steps away. Can he hear the thudding of my heart? Vampires have such keen senses that he must be aware of my anxiousness. Finally he faces me.

“What exactly did that old vampire say?”

I take a deep breath, not even sure where to begin. “That symbol in my dreams, the one on the document that my father discovered, the one you said was written in ancient vampiric—it’s the name of the fifteenth Old Family—Montgomery. What legend referred to as the lost family. Apparently they had the ability to produce offspring with humans. The document was a death warrant against the Montgomerys, signed by the other fourteen families.”

“Why exterminate them?”

“Why does Old Family do anything?”

He sighs. “Fear of change. Fear of things becoming different. Fear of anything they don’t understand. It’s why they hated Sin.”

He walks back over, pushes my hair behind my ear, and trails his finger along the crucifix tattoo on my neck. “You always hated the thought of becoming a vampire.”

I force a smile. I imagine it looks pretty pitiful. “Ironic, huh?”

“Did Sin know about your heritage?”

I nod, swallow past the lump in my throat. “He shares it. His mother was a Montgomery. Esmerelda. I think that’s why he—and your father—were obsessed with my family.”

“Jesus, Dawn.”

“I know. I—” I’m so overwhelmed with emotions that I can barely think. I wanted him to find a reason that my being a vampire was impossible. Victor cradles my face between his powerful hands. “This changes nothing,” he says. “And it doesn’t change what I feel for you.”

“Oh, Victor.” I wrap my arms around his shoulders and bury my face against his neck. “I’m so afraid that it changes everything. That I’ll be alone. Not fully vampire, not fully human. Some half-breed freak. Like Sin.”

“You’ll never be like Sin,” he growls. He threads his fingers through my hair, cradling the back of my head. “You’re not like Sin.”

Then he covers my mouth with his, kissing me desperately as though he has the power to change what I might be, as though he is just as afraid as I am of what all this might mean.

When he pulls back, his smile reassures me of everything, and suddenly all of this feels inconsequential. And I remember what my dad said, his final message to me: You will always be Dawn.

“Let’s see what your father kept from you for so long,” Victor says.

He holds out his hand. I slip mine into it, drawing strength and comfort from his touch. We walk over to the sitting area. Instead of selecting a chair, I drop to the floor in front of the table and fold my legs beneath me.

I take the band off and slowly unfold the leather. It cracks and whines as I lay it flat, then curls back slowly in protest. Inside are an assortment of papers, some original documents, some that appear to be copies, and some handwritten notes. I immediately recognize my father’s handwriting on those. And at the top, a tiny piece of paper:

In some way, I always knew this was true.

And I suspect you always knew the same.

—Dad

I carefully take out each piece of paper, arranging it slowly and methodically on the table. To my surprise, I find a photo of all four of us: Mom, Dad, Brady, and myself, sitting around a table. I didn’t know there were any photos of us all together.

I only look at it for a moment, not letting my memories go there just yet. I place it very carefully off to the side and return my attention to the documents.

The more I dig, the older the pages become. Until I get to the end and pull out a very, very ancient parchment. The writing on it is remarkably clear for the weathered state of the paper, the infinite folds and creases that come from hundreds of years of moving from place to place.

“Octavian Montgomery?” Victor asks.

“That’s what he said.”

Victor points near the top of the page and the name is clearly written out, both in Latin script as well as vampiric and others from the time.

“What is this?” I ask.

“A family tree,” he says, tracing a line from Octavian upward to his ancestors, then following it down along a branching tree. Octavian is in the middle of these branches, his brothers and sisters and cousins . . . but then they all end, and only his line continues.

“The death warrant,” I say. “The Montgomery family was almost wiped out.”

“Octavian survived, and so did his son, and his son’s children.”

I follow the line down, but the branches never extend very far.

“It ends here,” I say, at the final entry: Maximillian—1802.

That’s when I notice what the other documents are. They’re hospital records. And Maximillian Montgomery is listed as the father of a boy named Abraham Montgomery, born in 1832. As the records go on, they become more modern, including the names of the hospital, the names of the entire family. Then I recognize the name Lloyd Montgomery.

“My grandfather,” I say. I don’t have many memories of him. He came to our house once for the holidays, but the war was still raging. How he made it there I’ll never know, or why he thought it was so important to risk his life in order to visit with us.

Unless he knew. I think about the note on top of the documents: In some way, I always knew this was true.

I try to imagine my grandfather talking to his son—my father—in the dark of night. They discuss what they always knew, what their years and years of vampiric studies pointed toward. They talk about being drawn to the