Free Her Devoted Vampire by Siobhan Muir Page A

father hadn’t been
so drunk and stressed all the time, and she’d met her best friend, Kate
Blackamber. Kate had lived with her great aunt after her parents died. They’d
been peas in a pod and spent as much time together as possible. Their friendship
had bloomed and solidified even after Bridget stopped visiting
Three
Lakes
.
    “What’s your
dam’s name?”
    “My
what?”
    “Sorry,
your mother’s name.”
    “Abigail
Colleen Shanahan, why?”
    “What
was her last name before she got married?”
    Bridget
frowned, trying to remember. “I think her last name was Cymru.”
    Cynthia’s
head came up and her nostrils flared. “Cymru, as in “
Wales
” in Gaelic?” She pronounced
it “khoom-ree”.
    “I
guess. I don’t know Gaelic.” What is she
getting at?
    “What
was her mother’s name?”
    “I don’t
know. Gramma never came to see us, and we never visited her. Mom didn’t talk
much about her. Why?”
    Cynthia
grinned just like a kid who’d grabbed the brass ring on a carousel.
    “There’s
a legend I’ve heard that talks about the Goddess of the Gaels taking human form
periodically and giving birth to children in hopes those children will help the
human race restore the balance of nature.”
    Bridget
raised an eyebrow. In her experience, humans didn’t give a damn about nature
unless it stopped them from getting where they wanted to go or doing what they
wanted to do.
    “Each
country has a bloodline stemming from the Goddess, and those from the Welsh
line came from the Cymru Clan, Cymru meaning
Wales
, or the Goddess Herself. I’d
guess you’re descended from one of the Cymru Clan, which would explain why you
don’t smell human, but more like a pine forest. You aren’t completely human if
your grandmother was, or rather is, the Goddess.”
    “Whoa! Hold
on here.” Bridget shook her head as she put both hands out to forestall any
other weird pronouncements. “Trust me, I’m human enough. My parents were ordinary,
dysfunctional people. My dad was a drunk, and my mother is a normal,
guilt-driven Catholic woman who prefers her men manipulative and abusive. Why
would the child of the Goddess, if there is such a being, put up with my asshole
father until his death? If she was so special, wouldn’t she have raised my
brothers and me with knowledge of our birthright?”
    “You
said she was a normal, guilt-ridden Catholic. Perhaps she fell out of favor
with her Mother and turned her back on her heritage.” Cynthia shrugged. “The
Catholic religion did a number on the druids and the ‘nature-lovers’, as they
were called. I can only guess, but it sounds like your mother was trying to
hide her ancestry and abilities.”
    “What
abilities? The only abilities my mother had were making her children feel awful
and getting in the way of my father’s fists,” Bridget said bitterly. “There was
no magic, no spiritual pursuits other than Catholicism, and certainly no escape
except alcohol. It’s a wonder my brothers and I even survived to adulthood.”
    “Are you
a Catholic?”
    Bridget
snorted. “I gave up Catholicism for Lent one year, and by the time Lent was
over, it didn’t seem all that worthwhile to pick back up again. I never was
into the whole ‘guilt-by-birth’ thing. Sin doesn’t get handed down to us like
an inheritance.”
    She
stopped before she got going too much. The old argument she’d had with her
brothers, who   practiced Catholicism,
still irked her. She didn’t need to tell a perfect stranger, and a delusional
one, she’d never felt comfortable worshiping the graphic displays of Jesus’s
suffering to get a free pass to a paradise. All bets were off if sex happened before
marriage, which meant she’d lost her free pass years ago.
    “My
brothers and I have agreed to disagree about Catholicism,” she said at last. “I
won’t even talk to my mother about it. She goes into this whole ‘Hellfire and
Brimstone’ rant that would make you think she’s Southern