Collateral Damage

- TWENTY -

Tilly's POV

The slam of the door startled me from my slumber. I had momentarily forgotten that I was in the lair of the strigoi that had taken me from my home and were using me as a personal feed bank all because of my mother for some reason. A reason I had yet to figure out.

I had narrowed my curiosity to three main questions. Why is my mother so important? How do they even know my mother at all? And if they know who she is how is it that the academy doesn't? All of which I had hoped to find the answers to.

"Morning honey muffin," the blonde woman greeted. She has a new nickname for me every time we meet. "I thought you would be hungry." She slid a sandwich and a bottle of water over to me. I hesitated before chowing into the food they had supplied.

"What do you want from me?" I plead, screwing the cap back on the water.

"We have had this conversation before darling." She replied, smiling down at me. "We want your mother and you are the bait."

"How do you know her?" I asked.

She took a seat on a chair by the door and I prepared myself for story time with the vampires. It honestly confuses me that you are sixteen and yet you have no idea."

"What are you talking about?" I wondered out loud and she smirked.

"I knew her when she was pregnant with you, she was so unprepared to be a mother. And yet I was. You see, we attended the same antenatal classes, the only difference is that she had a healthy baby girl and I had a dead baby boy. My son was a still born and it ruined me, so I did what any sane person would do, I found a way to cure the pain."

"So you turned yourself into a strigoi?" I replied.

"Yes, and I am surprised your mother didn't do the same. She knew from word go that she would be giving you up to the academy, I didn't understand why she was so eager to let you go. It wasn't until later that I worked it out. Anyway, from what I remember it killed her. Letting you go I mean. She knew that you would be safer in the hands of the academy, I guess she was wrong. I remember the last time we spoke, it was about a month after she had you, and it was about two weeks after I had my son. She had just given you to the academy and she was drunk. She was wandering New York off her face, she told me that she missed you and it felt like her heart had been ripped out. I knew exactly what she felt, I dropped her home and that was the last time I saw her."

"That doesn't answer my question," I pushed.

She shook her head as if it were some huge master plan. "You honestly have no idea do you?"

"I don't understand."

"You are a miracle. A baby born from two dhampirs."

"That's impossible." I said, and she shook her head.

"Your mother was screwing her teacher, and when he said he didn't love her she took off and had a baby, if she can have a baby with another dhampir, human or moroi... than maybe just maybe, she can have one with a strigoi."

My heart sank.