Unbearable by Tracy Cooper-Posey Read Free Book Online

to him and expanded his education in American culture.
    He also read whenever he was left alone for a few minutes. He started off reading with a dictionary next to him, consulting it whenever he reached a word he did not recognize. Gradually, though, he left the dictionary sitting on the bookshelf as he needed it less and less. He worked his way through every book in the apartment, then we helped him arrange a library card for himself. His first social solo outings were to the local library.
    Nick and Tally spent the year combing the news for odd reports about wild predators and checking out the few they uncovered. In 1980, news did not zip around the globe at the speed of an electron the way it does now. They mostly relied upon hunters in the far-flung corners of the country and around the globe reporting back to them on anything that might be traces of Lirgon.
    However, Lirgon had gone to ground. It was possible that he might be nesting in some remote location like the Outer Hebrides or Inner Mongolia, a possibility that Nick and Tally and even Nyanther discussed more than once.
    “If he is the last and if he is not in your country, eating your humans, what do you care?” Nyanther asked in his deep baritone. “Let him chip and shatter in his lonely cave, wherever he is.”
    “Except that he exists because of us, Ny,” Tally explained. “The demon, Azazel, made the six of them purely to hunt down my father and the hunters who worked with him. We’ve taken care of Azazel and all but Lirgon. We have to find him and destroy him because he’s not supposed to be alive at all. He shouldn’t be alive and he wouldn’t be if not for my father’s enemies conspiring.”
    “Is that the same way I am not supposed to be here?” Nyanther asked curiously.
    “You don’t know that,” I said sharply. “You might well have lived through the last two millennium if you hadn’t been bitten. I did.”
    “I was not the only vampire in my clan,” Nyanther said gravely. “None of them exist anymore.” It had been one of the first things he had researched at the library, looking for vampires who had lived freely and openly among humans back then. He had not found any of them, although both Nick and I had pointed out that even if his clan still existed, they would be passing as human now and untraceable. “I do not intend to open up that discussion once more,” he added swiftly. “I only point out that both Lirgon and I are strangers to this time. He might be content to cling to the life he has been given once more and stay away from anything that might remove it again.”
    “I don’t believe that,” Tally said firmly. “He is vengeful and he hates me and Nick in particular because we’ve hunted his clan into extinction one more time. He’ll come back just because he can’t help himself.”
    So Nick and Tally kept monitoring every source of news they had gradually acquired.
    Riley spent the year growing into a sun-shiny toddler who laughed a lot. She had three substitute fathers and a mother who loved her to pieces…it was impossible for her to be anything other than completely content and happy. Except that every now and again I saw the frown appear between her brows when she wanted something she couldn’t have and it reminded me strongly of Carson.
    Riley had more than her father’s eyes. She had his stubborn streak, too.
    We were rapidly approaching Riley’s first birthday. The date advanced toward us with the speed and relentlessness of a steam train in a tunnel, with nowhere for us to run.
    On Boxing Day, we got a surprise visitor. Donna Pascel arrived bearing gifts of a sort. She looked as though the year had not been kind to her. There were lines around her eyes and mouth that no amount of makeup could hide. She had put on weight and there was gray in her hair. She walked slowly, as if someone had beaten her up quite badly and she wasn’t yet fully recovered.
    I didn’t know how right I was until Tally had her