Vampires and Mistletoe

Excerpt

December 21st

Cold and still, a soft dusting of sparkling snow mocked her in the lamplight. Her New York state apartment was a world away from the life she'd known as a child. Snow always made her think of a happier time before her mother died. Tessa tried not to be depressed; Christmas was a week away after all.

Once again she would be going to her father's domain without a boyfriend. Granted, she had a family that would make most regular guys flee in terror; but she still hated to go home alone, again. Once she'd brought a human man home, a man she thought she would marry. He'd told her that he could handle it. She'd been very clear and frank about her families… differences. However, her heritage freaked him out, and as soon as they were in the human realm again he broke up with her. In fact, he'd been so afraid of her he'd moved out of the city, without leaving a forwarding address. She'd received his break up email telling her that he just couldn't deal with what she was. Tessa knew she deserved more from him after living with the jerk for two years. The coward even changed his phone number. She wouldn't be surprised if he'd left the country. He was the last man she'd allowed into her life, or her heart.

Her heritage would scare away the most determined of men. Blaming her father for her lonely existence was easy. Every paranormal creature great or small called her father Master; he was a dark dangerous force of nature. He could be frightening when he chose to be cruel. Victor Dark was a very powerful demon, and he'd fought his way to the top of the Other World hierarchy to be the current Grand Master of Other World. As an adult she understood his need to rule his realm with an iron fist, but as a child she'd been confused and afraid of him. This fact had caused a very strange childhood for Tessa and her five sisters. They'd been born in the human world never knowing what their absent father was until the death of the mother who loved them. Tessa's mother would leave her with a friend or her grandmother for a few weeks each year. At the time she'd wondered why. After meeting her father she felt certain her mother was trying to shelter her. She'd never worked up the courage to ask him why he'd shown her no interest. At time she'd wondered if she'd even have met him if her mother hadn't died. Tessa loved her sisters, but she hated what they were — half demon. Her heart belonged in the "normal" world of her mother's kind; humans.

Her sixteenth birthday present had been tail removal. What kind of a thing was that to have as a memory? Tail removal, blech. Her family didn't understand her anger about what she was. They didn't understand that all Tessa wanted was to be human! And having a tail grow in at puberty (even if you could hide it) was not normal for a human. Most of her sisters reveled in the fact that they were Victor's children. They didn't remember what it was like to be sure you were human. Finding out that she wasn't had been shocking, especially as the knowledge followed her mother's death so closely.

Tessa was the oldest of the six girls and she'd the most memories of their mother and of living in the human world. She'd been the only one to attend regular school and the only one to remember their mother dying. The triplets; Tara, Tonia, and Tabitha, had been infants and Talia and Trista, two and three. Tessa's mother's best friend kept the children for weeks after her death, and there had been no mention of a father in all of that time.

Tessa never met the man until the dark night he arrived with an entourage of weird, scary people. Her mother's friend acted strangely when the dark man arrived, as if she couldn't see him. She sat down in her favorite chair and immediately fell asleep. Doing her best to wake the woman she considered a second mother proved futile. Tessa had realized something made her sleep unnaturally. Even to a child, that was clear.

The tall, dark man who came for them hadn't smiled or said a kind word to the frightened, grieving seven-year-old Tessa, only said that he was her father. She remembered gazing up at his dark scowling eyes and bursting into tears. The stranger offered no comfort or condolence to her, a terrified little girl just needing a kind look or word in that horrible moment.

When the large hand came down to take her smaller one, she shied away, afraid, and he looked displeased. That was the last time he attempted to touch her. What she was seeing was not for just any eyes. It was obvious that somehow not all humans could see the group that followed her dark mysterious father. Having been born with magical abilities, Tessa knew she was different to the other kids at school, but her mother had never made her feel badly, only careful, about those differences. His menagerie rushed them out of the house. Tessa managed to grab her stuffed cat, but every other memento or piece of her human life had been lost to her in that painful moment.

A small blue woman took her and her sisters to a waiting car. Blue was not a normal color. Heartbroken, she watched her neighborhood melt away into the darkness.

The car lurched strangely and she remembered clinging to her stuffed animal. When she saw a shimmering wall of sparkling light she thought they'd be hurt. Shaking and crying she felt the change, the difference when the car left the world she'd always known. In that moment she entered the Other World, and her life changed forever.

Pulling herself out of her sad memories, she felt a keen sense of loss. She had a small Christmas tree, decorated with red and gold balls, just as her childhood Christmas trees had looked. She knew a large lavish tree waited at the castle, but her little tree was far more special in her eyes because of how similar it was to the ones her mother had decorated. She'd avoided going to her father's world for several years, but she just couldn't do that her sisters again. Regretfully she'd taken an extra week's vacation to "travel" for the holidays. As she never took time off her accrued bank of vacation hours sat bursting at the seams. Her boss seemed genuinely relieved that she was finally taking a little time off.

Out of the entire year Christmas was the time she missed her mother most. Hannah, her mother, loved Christmas, and she had instilled her sense of wonder and joy over the magic of the season in her eldest child. After her mother died, Tessa felt a sense of responsibility to her little sisters. Her mother would bake and sing while dancing in the kitchen. They'd been close, she and her mother. After she was gone all the giggling and laughing had ended. No one sang in the kitchen at the castle. Victor had hired and assortment of creatures to nanny and tutor his daughters. Having nannies who gave you nightmares didn't exactly help in developing a close bond. She'd decided that she was all that her sisters could rely on. She owed it to her mother to keep them human.

She seldom saw her father, and when she did it was because she was to be reprimanded. At such a young age, the weight of it changed her and made her quiet and serious. Tessa, intense to a fault, was nothing like her wild sisters, and she had only accepted training in her powers so that they wouldn't overwhelm her. Her mother had ignored the burgeoning abilities, but Victor pushed her tutors manically to make her powerful. When she wanted to play imaginary games with her sisters or the few children he allowed her to know she'd be pulled away and locked away indoors to train.

She wasn't allowed to watch cartoons, or to play with the normal toys she'd been used to. All she'd wanted for that first Christmas, only three months after her mother's death, was a Barbie doll, simply one doll. Her father was the most powerful man in his world and he couldn't manage to scrounge up one silly plastic fashion doll. That was the year she realized there was no Santa Claus.

Their father was cold, the polar opposite of the mother they'd lost. He made Tessa nervous. Her sisters all seemed to be Daddy's girls, but Tessa stood apart. She didn't see Victor as a hero, he was the villain. Maybe it was how broken his relationship with her was that saved her sisters from the constant training. Or, he might just have decided they didn't have lost time to make up for, but the other girls had an easier childhood. If she had to pick one thing about Victor Dark that redeemed him, it was that. Tessa would always be grateful that her sisters hadn't suffered as she'd suffered trying to fit into Other World. She remembered her humanity, whereas all her sisters but Talia embraced their demon sides. It didn't make the evil or bad, just more suited to their father's realm.