Page 52 of Vampires & Bikers

Chapter 23

Ruby

Captain Dennington fetched me in a big, black car with blacked out windows. There were four more cars like this behind me, filled with men. We were in the first car, just the two of us.

“I’m really sorry about this,” he said to me as we drove off. “I will find your mother.”

I didn’t know what to say.

I looked out of the window, feeling numb.

“There was no sign at the hospital that anything was wrong,” he went on. “Her chart had her name on it and I was told she was a dark-haired woman of about 45. When I asked her name, she said Charlotte.” He sounded sincere.

“I don’t blame you,” I said. I blamed myself. I should have gone to check on her as soon as I’d gotten away from the shifters or that first morning, when I woke up and felt like I could walk two feet without collapsing. Instead, I was screwing a vampire, having fun in a hotel room like I was on some kind of holiday.

I felt horribly guilty and was filled with remorse. If something had happened to my mother, I would never forgive myself. I knew that.

A part of me kept hoping that she had managed to get away, that someone had helped her.

Luc had given me a phone but I switched it off. I couldn’t even look at it now.

I understood that he had important work to do, that he had taken off enough time to be with me and that his people needed him but this was important to me. I felt like he had made a choice and he had chosen them.

I knew I was being unfair, but I didn’t care.

I didn’t care about his stupid war.

I only cared about my mother.

Captain Dennington respected my privacy and we didn’t talk for the rest of the trip south. A few hours later, in the late afternoon, we arrived at the hospital. I saw his guards fan out and he went into the hospital to speak to the people in charge. I pushed past him and went to the ward my mother had been in. There were four beds, all of them occupied. Not one of them was my mother. I found a nurse, someone I hadn’t seen before and asked about my mother. She fetched the file and repeated what I already knew; that my mother had been transferred to another facility at the capital.

I asked the other women in the ward if they knew my mother. Only one of them did, an older woman who said she remembered my mother leaving that day.

“Tell me exactly how she left. With doctors, nurses? Who came to fetch her?”

The old lady couldn’t remember.

“But did she look like she wanted to go? Or was she taken against her will?’

“Against her will?” the old lady was taken aback. “What do you mean?”

This was hopeless.

I walked out to the nurse’s station and saw one of the male nurses that I had met before.

“Excuse me!” I ran to him. “Do you remember my mother? Lottie Winton? She was a patient here a few days ago?”

He took a step back. “Yes… she was transferred, though, right?”

He had wide shoulders and friendly eyes; I remembered him as being caring towards my mother.

“That’s just it. It wasn’t her! They transferred someone else!”

“Who?”

“I don’t know! But the woman they say is my mother, is definitely not her!”

I could feel tears rising behind my eyes again. The situation was impossible. How was I ever going to find my mom?

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