Read Honor Calls for Free Online

because its violence has already touched my world and I need to stop it.”
    “Like you may one day have to stop me?”
    “Yes. I will stop you if I need to.”
    Her body went rigid. She ceased her caresses and moved away from him both physically and spiritually. As he met her gaze, the gleam of unshed tears shimmered in her eyes, but she held them back as she said, “I won’t let you prevent me from what I have to do. Honor demands that I finish what I’ve started.”
    “What have you started? Why did you stake that vamp?”
    She shook her head and bit her bottom lip before she finally faced him. “They raped my mother. That’s how I came to be born. She managed to escape them, but they came after us.”
    Jesus grabbed hold of her fisted hands. “They wanted you dead?”
    She nodded and a lone tear escaped, tracking down her face.
    “They wanted my mother dead. They got their wish,” she said and told him her story.
    New Jersey Shore
Twenty Years Earlier
    Her mother was bleeding.
    Michaela could feel the warmth and wet of it drip down onto her as her mother held her hand and dragged her through the tall marsh grasses along the edges of the dunes. The stalks, dry from a lack of summer rain, crackled, the noise overly loud in the silence of the night.
    Too loud, Michaela thought, recalling the creature that had attacked them. The creature who would surely hear them pounding and crashing through the grasses as they tried to escape.
    Suddenly her mother stopped short and shoved Michaela away toward a larger patch of foliage.
    She fell to the ground, the sharp edges of the grasses biting into her palms as the tall stalks swallowed her up. The saw edges of the plants cut her hands and arms, but she bit down on her lower lip to stifle her cry of pain, aware the sound would reveal where she was.
    Aware that her mother was ready to sacrifice her life to hide her daughter.
    Holding her breath, Michaela tried not to move as she peered through the ever-shifting mass of dune grass.
    Her mother stood, her chin at a defiant tilt. Blood dripped down the side of her face from a large gash above her brow. The blood looked black thanks to the palette of the night. Her face was washed to a pale green hue by the light of the full moon.
    “You didn’t think you could run from me again, did you?”
    The tone of the creature’s voice was low, almost soothing, with an odd rolling sound beneath, like the purr of a cat.
    Her mother said nothing for a moment, then picked up her chin another rebellious inch. “You will not take me again. I will not allow it.”
    The odd rumble in the creature’s voice intensified as he laughed and said incredulously, “You will not allow it?”
    Something flashed before her mother. A bright white blur so close to her…
    A gush of dark liquid erupted from her mother’s throat and spilled down the front of her bright yellow sundress.
    Her mother brought her hand to her throat, but the creature yanked it away, laughing cruelly. “I will have you now, as you die. I will have you after, as your body cools. But first…”
    The creature wrapped an arm around her mother’s waist, holding her up as her knees buckled, burying his head against her ravaged throat.
    The horrible sounds of his sucking and her mother’s moaning carried across the still night.
    Michaela covered her ears, but it was too late to avoid hearing him say, “But first I will have your blood.”
    Curling into a tight ball, Michaela tucked her head against her knees, brought her arms over her head and closed her eyes. She tried to escape from what was going on just a few feet before her. She imagined other places and times. Prayed for her mother to be safe. Thought about the yellow sundress her mother wore and how they had bought it at the thrift store just earlier that week.
    The rough shake of the ground beneath her body pulled her back from where she had gone.
    Only then did she realize the night was now almost quiet. The only sounds