Everything he believed he knew about what happened to his sister was a lie, but if he was sure about one thing in his life, it was her love for him. And he was certain about his love for her. He’d die for her, but more than that, he would live for her as she’d brought him back to life in a way he’d never believed possible.
When his attention shifted back to Maya, he discovered her smiling at them.
“What happened after that?” Cassidy asked.
Maya’s smile slid away. “I’m not really sure. At some point, the agony became too much, and I blacked out. I woke hours later, and when I did, everything was too bright, too loud, and wrong. I had flashes of memory about what happened, but no idea how I got where I was or what was wrong with me.”
“The vampire who attacked you also changed you?” Cassidy asked.
“No,” Maya said. “The vampire who saved me also changed me.”
Chapter Fifty-One
“And who was that?” Dante asked.
Maya released his hand and rose to walk over to the fireplace mantle. Dante had already noticed more family photos there, but he hadn’t paid much attention to them. She pulled down the picture in the middle and returned to hand it over to him.
Dante didn’t take it from her; he couldn’t move as he was stunned speechless. He’d believed that when Maya opened the door, nothing would ever shock him again, but he was wrong. Somehow, he managed to keep his mouth from dropping as he stared at the handsome man in the center of the photo. Lewis Guthrie’s blond hair and blue eyes matched those of his daughter.
Dante recalled the quiet man who watched Maya like a lovesick puppy dog. Lewis had asked her out a couple of times, but Maya always turned him down. Still, Dante believed he was a good guy, which meant he wasn’t Maya’s type.
And then Maya vanished, and Lewis Guthrie became the main suspect in her case. Over the years, Dante’s memories of the way Lewis watched her like she was the most wonderful thing in the world, twisted until he turned Lewis into a serial killer in hiding.
He’d become convinced that all the times Lewis brought Maya coffee, carried her books, opened doors for her, or helped her with schoolwork weren’t the desperate moves of a lovesick boy, but the twisted manipulations of a psychopath.
“Lewis Guthrie saved you?” Dante asked.
“Yes.” Maya retreated to return the picture to the mantle. “He took me to his parents’ house after the attack, but we moved shortly afterward and kept on moving until Mateo was born. His parents live in Manhattan now, and Lewis and I bought this place a few years ago. We wanted the kids to have a more stable upbringing. Like the kids, Lewis was born a vampire.”
“So was I,” Cassidy said.
Maya returned to perch on the love seat. “It’s a small world.”
“That it is,” Cassidy agreed. “There aren’t many purebreds, but the number is growing.”
“If Lewis is a vampire, then why was he at college?” Dante asked.
“He always dreamed of living a more human life, and he wanted to experience what it would be like to go to college. Plus, he loves to learn. He’s earned three master’s degrees online, but my attack changed everything for him at our college,” Maya said.
“Some members of my family went to college too,” Cassidy said.
Dante pondered this revelation as he stared at the pictures over Maya’s shoulder. Now that he wasn’t purposely trying to ignore them, he saw Lewis in a lot of them.
“I spent almost as much time trying to find him as I did searching for you,” he said. “He was the only suspect in your disappearance.”
“By the time he stopped the attack, I was too far gone to be saved. If he hadn’t changed me, I would have died,” Maya said.
“What happened to the vamp who attacked you?”
“Lewis killed him.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. Lewis didn’t know either, and neither did his friends. They’d never seen him before.”
“Why was Lewis there that night?”
“He was out walking with Jim and Tom when they witnessed the attack and intervened. Both Jim and Tom were there when I woke up, but they didn’t remember anything; Lewis and his father changed their memories. Jim owned 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
