CHAPTER 11

"I think you should stay out here."

"Absolutely not."

"You're uncomfortable with the ritual, and my father doesn't know you. It's for the best," I insisted.

"But I—"

"No, Edward. My mind is settled on this." When he looked at me with hesitant eyes, I tried to reassure him. "I haven't seen my father in a millennia. This reunion will be very emotional, and I need to do it alone, as I was supposed to from the beginning."

He took a firm hold of my hands. "But you're not alone anymore. And you'll never be again."

"That's not the point," I said. "I know you'll always be there for me. I'm not doubting that. This is just something I have to do on my own. It's something I share with my father only." I took one of his hands and held it over my flat stomach, which was still not showing any signs. "When you meet our child for the first time, you'll understand what I'm talking about."

I didn't allow him to protest further as I entered the tomb with the unconscious human over my shoulder and the unwilling vampire shackled to me with reinforced chains and shut the entrance before he could follow.

The place where my father's tomb was built wasn't much more than a cave, and the deeper I walked, the more moist and dank the air became. It didn't matter though. A vampire didn't decay like a regular human, so I knew my father's body would be in pristine condition.

A distant sound of dripping water echoed through the cave, and the smell was thick and stale. There were no foreign scents, clearly indicating no one had been here since I closed the entrance.

Good.

The cave tunnel opened up into a larger cavern where the stone tables were, and two of the five were occupied by the corpses of my parents.

I hadn't laid eyes on them for so long, and it took me a moment to regain my composure before I could proceed. It had struck me harder than I'd initially thought it would—to see my mother's long, bright red, curly hair and my father's serene death mask.

Clenching my jaw, I put the limp human body in its place and forced the vampire down as well. She protested with hisses and tried to bite me, but all I had to do was to grab her face in my hand to shut her up.

She was a no one. A nomad who had lived in the sewers, according to Edward, and by the smell of her, he wasn't wrong. It was doubtful anyone would miss her.

"If you don't calm down," I warned her in my mother tongue, which was an ancient dialect of the modern Romanian language, but her eyes conveyed she still understood what I was saying, "I won't be merciful with you and force you to witness your own ending, is that understood?"

She sneered at me, but she must have realized my threat was very real because she did calm down.

"Good girl," I praised her before hypnotizing her to believe she was home. Not her home in the sewer, but the home she had before her change. It was as compassionate as I could be.

The time was closing in, and I walked around the cavern, placing silver chalices in each cardinal direction on pedestals and filled them with the Unholy Water. I emptied the vial of Father's blood over his body, making sure it touched his skin and then I stood before the stone table, in between the two docile sacrifices, and waited.

At the stroke of midnight when the moon—the jewel of the night—was highest risen, I called out to the creator of us all.

"Per potentiam dei Patris creator noster, Lucifer. Quaero te, noctis rex, oriri. Surgere!"

With a swift swing of the blade in my hand, I slit the human's throat, and then drove the tip into the vampire's heart so their blood could funnel down toward Father's stone table.

A loud rumble went through the cave walls as the blood pooled around his body, and the silver chalices trembled violently.

"Surgere, noctis rex! Surgere!"

One by one, the chalices exploded, and my father's body absorbed the blood around him, causing a lively flush to rise in his cheeks, and then his eyes shot open.

I wanted to run up to him and wrap my aching arms around his form, but I held back. I needed to complete the last step of the ritual.

The blood of a child was the purest blood in the world, which was exactly what my father needed to drink to regain his strength, but both Edward and I had agreed neither of us could kill a child for this purpose. That's why we'd broken into the nearest blood bank and stolen the most recent donation from a child that we could find.

I knelt down on the ground and offered my father the cup of blood, and while his hands felt cold as death when they touched my skin and made me shudder, I knew they would soon heat up.

My eyes were downcast as I waited and listened to the gulping sounds of Father emptying the cup, and I remained that way until I felt familiar fingertips under my chin.

"Daughter," the warm, timbre tones of Vladislaus Dragulia echoed between the stone walls. "My most beloved treasure ... how delighted I am to lay my eyes upon you once more."

My sight blurred as I raised my head and looked at my father's smiling face. "Father!" I exclaimed happily and rose to my feet just so I could melt into his embrace.

"Oh, Marya!" he whispered and inhaled deeply. "My sweet, beautiful swan. How I've missed you."

"And I you, Father," I said but got confused when I felt his embrace stiffen around me.

"What's this?" he asked and parted us only to stare down at my stomach, and then place his hand there. "Marya, you are with child!" His shocked expression quickly warmed into one filled with love. "You found your one then?"

I was reeling from the revelation that he knew I was pregnant when my body hadn't even confirmed it to me yet, but I had also learned long ago that there were few things that escaped my father's notice.

"Uh, yes," I said now. "And you'll get to meet him, but, Father, first you need to know that you've been dead for a thousand years, and a lot has changed. Aro and his companions took over the rule of the vampire world. They call themselves the Volturi, and they've destroyed your legacy. We need to take them down before they ruin the world completely."

Father looked deep in thought and nodded. "I was afraid it was a possibility when I felt my life drain away." He suddenly whipped his head away from me and toward the stone table where my mother was. "Oh, no, Regina, my one true love," he moaned and walked over to her. He cradled her face lovingly in his hands and stroked her hair. "Daughter," he called for me, and I obeyed. "I cannot bring your mother back yet. She needs blood from my veins, but I'm not strong enough to share my life essence yet. Is she safe here?"

"This tomb is still hidden," I reassured. "Only I and my mate know where it is."

"Good. We have to leave her for now, but we'll be back." He held out his hand for me to take, and then he led me out of the tomb where Edward was pacing worriedly.

When he saw my father, he froze and stared with wide eyes and an open mouth.

"Son, has no one ever told you it is very rude to stare," Father rebuked, but he did so in our language, one Edward didn't understand.

"He doesn't know our language, Father," I said. "He's American. It's a country across the ocean only a few centuries old. You have to speak English."

Edward looked between us as we spoke to each other.

"You have not taught him your mother tongue?" Father asked with disapproval clear in his tone.

I looked down at the ground, embarrassed. "I haven't had the time. We met only two months ago, and I've been occupied with getting your revival ritual together." I let go of Father's hand and walked up to Edward, who immediately wrapped his arms protectively around me. "Father," I said in English. "This is my one true mate, Edward Cullen. Edward, this is my father, Vladislaus Dragulia."

Edward swallowed nervously. "It's a pleasure to meet you ... uh ... I'm sorry, but should I call you by a title or just your name?"

Father smiled, impressed by his manners and his obvious love for me. "Please, son, you can call me Vlad," he replied in perfect English, which caused Edward to once again look very surprised. "After all, you are my daughter's mate, and the father of my grandchild. We're family."

"Grandchild?" Edward repeated and then looked down at me. "You mean that—"

I nodded. "Yes. Father says I'm pregnant."

"Right," he said, but it looked like he wanted to say something else. However, before he could absorb the overwhelming amount of new impressions in the last minute, Father jumped right into it.

"Tell me then, what are we going to about Aro and the Volturi?"