Darkness & Discovery (The Bespelled Trilogy #2)

by A. L. Larsen

  “Yeah, just wore myself out today. I worked a lot of spells, and it drained my energy. I’ll be better after I sleep. But first I wanted to tell you not to worry. I’ve set up a little virtual trip wire between the suites. So if, say, Joey gets the bright idea to kill Athos while he’s sleeping and comes over to this suite, an alarm will sound and wake everyone up.”

  “Good call.”

  “I also want to tell you not to worry about Athos. Your instincts are absolutely right about him. He’s a good person who made a mistake getting involved with the Order. He intensely dislikes Alastair, but he’s not going to harm him or Joey, for your sake.”

  “And how do you know all that?”

  “I read it in him.”

  “I’d always wondered if you could read minds. What am I thinking about now?” I asked with a grin.

  “You’re thinking about jellyfish. You’re an odd girl, Luna,” he said with a grin of his own.

  “You really can read minds! And I was thinking about them because that’s exactly what the glass sculpture in the lobby looks like – hundreds of jellyfish.”

  “You’re right, it does. And I can only read minds when I make the conscious decision to do so and expend a lot of energy. What I do all the time and fairly effortlessly is read people’s intentions and emotions. I don’t like it when anyone catches me off guard.”

  “Is that why you let Augustine stick around? Because you can read his intentions and know he’s not planning anything bad?”

  “Actually, vampires are almost impossible to read. I should have said I can read humans and half-humans, not people in general.” Bryn yawned hugely. And then he added, “Speaking of Augustine, he’s in a room on this floor of the hotel. If you need him for some reason, you can find him in the Cypress Suite.”

  “You told him to come?”

  “Nope. He came on his own, and thinks I don’t know he’s here. He’s concerned, because he’s expecting me to go on an epic bender now that I’m in Vegas. He’s not wrong.” Bryn’s eyelids were half-shut, and he smiled sweetly.

  “How do you know he’s here if you can’t read vampires?”

  “Because I can track him like a cocker spaniel with a microchip.” Bryn was murmuring now, his eyes closed.

  “Huh?”

  “I cast a spell marking Augustine with a locator signal, so I always know exactly where he is. You know, like people do with their dogs so they can find them if they run off? Only in this case it’s for the opposite reason. It’s so I can find him in case he doesn’t run off. Thought it was probably a good idea to keep tabs on him if I was going to let him hang about.” He was barely awake, his speech slurring a bit.

  “Makes sense. Good night, Bryn. Oh, and thanks for the plane ride and the posh accommodations,” I said as I pulled a blanket over him and shut off the light on the nightstand.

  “Welcome, love.” He was asleep before I even shut the door.

  I’d almost made it to my bedroom before Joey stuck his head out into the hall and asked, “So, in all the excitement, I never did ask how it went with your mom.”

  “Bad, Joey. Really, really bad.”

  “What happened?”

  I so didn’t have the energy to talk about this right now, but I muttered, “Turns out she was released from prison this past spring. And she never bothered to call and tell me, or come and see me, or find out her sister was dying, or anything.”

  “Oh God.”

  “So, do me a favor, Joey: never, ever mention her to me again. Because as far as I’m concerned, I don’t have a mother.”

  Joey moved so fast, I didn’t even see it. One moment he was in the doorway to his bedroom, the next he was crushing me to him in a huge hug. “I’m so sorry, Lu. God, I’m sorry. I kept pushing you to go see her. You kept trying to tell me she was awful, but I didn’t listen. Are you ok?” His cheek was against mine, and I felt his cold tears on my skin. But I for one was done crying about this.

  I let go of him and stepped back. “I’m fine. Turns out I was right all along to keep her out of my life. I know that now, beyond any doubt.” I turned and went to my room.

  Pausing only long enough to pull off my boots, I fell onto my bed fully clothed like Bryn had, draping an arm over my eyes. The door to my bedroom opened and shut, and then a blanket was being pulled over me. I didn’t have to open my eyes to know who it was. I rolled over and buried my head in Alastair’s chest as he climbed into bed and wrapped his strong arms around me.

  “So, you obviously heard what I said to Joey,” I murmured.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m fine, you know. I don’t need comforting.”

  “I know,” he said, and went right on holding me. I slipped my arms around him.

  After a while, he changed the subject by asking quietly, “Did he hurt you? Athos, I mean, when he took you hostage.”

  “No. He didn’t do much of anything to me, aside from drugging me and tying me up.”

  I felt the tension ripple through the muscles of Alastair’s back and shoulders. “I want to kill him,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “I hate him for doing that to you. And I hate myself for constantly bringing danger into your life. Everything bad that happens to you is because of me.”

  “Not true. Plenty of bad stuff manages to happen all on its own. And please don’t be mad at Athos. He was just following orders, and ended up doing the right thing by helping me escape.”

  “Only after you saved his life.” His voice was still very low. I tilted my head back to look at Alastair in the darkness and saw immediately that he was angry. And the reason I knew that was because his eyes were glowing and flickering ever-so-slightly, as if burning from within, transforming the deep indigo to a rich royal blue. It was equal parts unnerving and eerily beautiful.

  I put my head back on his chest and said, “I really do think he’s a good person, and he’s your half-brother. So I wish you’d give him a chance.” It was a bit hypocritical to argue the case for giving someone a chance just because they were family. I’d been reminded far too recently that just because someone was related to you, it didn’t automatically mean they deserved to be a part of your life. But I really felt that Alastair and Athos could be good for each other.

  Alastair kissed the top of my head and tried to close the subject by saying, “It’s late, Lu. Let’s try to get some sleep.”

  I nodded, still resting my head against his broad chest, and felt him relax in my arms incrementally. His breathing leveled out and became deeper. Soon Alastair was asleep and I rolled over in his arms, his body automatically following, fitting against mine. I stared out into the darkness, inexplicably awake now.

  And unbidden, thoughts of my mom came to me. I had known they would.

  I could picture her so clearly in my mind. She’d been young when she had me, only nineteen. Just two years older than I was now. Her honey blonde hair fell past her shoulders in waves, and I remembered that she used to wear white sundresses, set off against the year-round tan that came from spending most of her time outdoors. She looked nothing like me, except for one thing: her eyes were sky blue, just like mine. I tried not to see her looking back at me whenever I caught my reflection in a mirror.

  I never understood her – not when I was a kid, and not now. My mother was someone that just couldn’t live in her own skin, she couldn’t be clear-headed, even for an hour. As soon as the drugs would start to wear off, as soon as she’d start to feel, she’d get upset. And she’d retreat right back into a haze. Not that that meant she was completely dysfunctional. She’d somehow been capable of illegally cultivating and selling marijuana, after all, and that did keep a roof over our heads. But everything else, things like being a parent, were just too much for her.

  I had to wonder: what was it about Miranda Harper’s life that compelled her to drug herself, to live in a fog? What was she trying not to think about, trying not to feel? I’d probably never know the answer to that. I didn’t even know why I cared enough to a
sk these questions.

  It occurred to me then that my mother must have gotten clean in prison. She must have been forced to learn to face reality, to deal with life without the crutch of drugs. But it clearly hadn’t helped her. It didn’t mature her, or make her responsible. That was blatantly obvious, given the fact that she’d skipped out on all her responsibilities when she got out of jail. Given the fact that she’d skipped out on me.

  Tears prickled at the back of my eyes, and that made me angry with myself. I’d already cried over this. I wasn’t going to do it again. I wasn’t going to let her selfishness and carelessness keep hurting me.

  I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Alastair, and left the room, closing the door softly behind me. I wanted something to distract myself, so I decided to go stare out at the Strip for a while, and crossed through the open doorway into Bryn’s suite, which had the better view.

  Athos was in the darkened living room, sitting on the floor right in front of the floor-to-ceiling window and leaning against a big, square ottoman. His feet were bare and his hair was down, falling to the small of his back like a dark silken curtain. I came and sat beside him, and he leaned over so he was ever-so-slightly touching my arm with his. “Thank you for befriending me,” he said quietly.

  “Thank you for letting me.” I scanned the horizon, out beyond the grand hotels. The sky was just beginning to lighten, steel grey replacing rich black.

  “Thinking about your mom?” he asked after a pause.

  “Yeah. How could you tell?”

  “I feel so much sadness coming from you.”

  We were quiet for a long time as the sky went a paler shade of grey.

  “They’re coming,” he said softly after a while.

  “The Order?”

  He nodded, and I asked, “How do you know?”

  “I was with them long enough to sort of…integrate them into me. It’s hard to explain. When I spend enough time with someone, I guess I sort of make them a part of me. I start to feel their emotions. It’s an unusual offshoot of my abilities as a reader – or at least, that’s what I assume it is.”

  “Do you literally feel my sadness?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because we spent those few hours together? It happened that fast?”

  “It actually happened the moment I met you. You were so upset. You just flooded me with emotion, and part of me opened up to you instinctively.” He smiled a little and said, “I was doomed to care about you from the very start.”

  I raised an eyebrow and said, “Didn’t stop you from drugging me. What would you have done if I hadn’t drunk the spiked water, out of curiosity?”

  He sighed and said, “I would have held you down and injected you with a hypodermic needle that I’d brought for that purpose.” Then he added, “I’m so sorry I drugged you and kidnapped you. I’m terribly ashamed that you were a victim of and witness to my darkest hour. And I can’t believe that I wanted to belong to something so desperately that I was willing to put aside my own sense of right and wrong.”

  We both watched as the sky slowly warmed to a pale pink. “I’m glad I was thirsty,” I said after a while.

  “Me too.” After a while, he gestured at the massive hotels out the window and said, “I’m not used to this kind of environment. It makes me feel really uneasy, all those people, all that sound and light and commotion. I do a lot better in a rural landscape.”

  “What were you doing before you joined the Order?”

  “I was a shepherd.”

  I grinned at that and looked at his profile. “Like, with the crook and the flowing robes?”

  He smiled and said, “Like with an ATV and a cowboy hat. I worked on a modern sheep farm.”

  “In France?”

  “In Idaho.”

  “So, you probably could’ve just said you were a farm hand.”

  “I could have,” he said. “But I figured you’d get a kick out of picturing me dressed like a Biblical character.”

  “And you were right.”

  The sky ignited like fire in slow motion, turning a brilliant shade of rose. We watched it for a while before I finally spoke again. “How close is the Order?”

  “They’re making slow progress, so I guess they’re driving. Which means they’ll be here by mid-afternoon.”

  “How did they know to come here?”

  “I really don’t know.” Athos took a deep breath and said, “I’m going to track them down when they get here. I won’t be able to take out all four of them, but I should be able to take out one, maybe two. That’ll increase your boyfriend’s odds of survival a bit. And the reason I’m telling you this is not so you can talk me out of it. You’ll probably be asleep when I go, and I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”

  “Ok. So, in other words, less than twenty four hours after Bryn saved your life, you’re going to go out and commit suicide. Seriously, Athos?”

  “It has to be done. Alastair won’t let me fight beside him, and the Order are too strong, too well-trained, for him to take on all four of them by himself. And it will be by himself, because they’ll find a way to separate him from Joey and Bryn – that’s how they operate. If I don’t do this he’ll be hopelessly outnumbered, and they’ll take him down.”

  “What do you care? You want Alastair dead as much as they do.”

  “I care,” he said, “because there’s a chance you’ll get hurt or killed in the crossfire. And beyond that, if Alastair is killed, you’ll be devastated. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

  I stared at his profile and said firmly, “There is absolutely no way I’m going to let you go out and sacrifice yourself like that.”

  He turned his head to meet my gaze, his aquamarine eyes so full of sadness. “I’m already a dead man walking, Luna. The Order will kill me for deserting, there’s no escaping my fate. At least this way I can help you before I die.”

  “That’s not the only alternative. If you want to help Alastair for my sake, then get over your animosity and fight at his side, like brothers should. Can you do that? Can you deal with the fact that Alastair is a vampire and team up with him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I could learn to live with it for your sake…maybe not. Regardless, Alastair doesn’t want me at his side, Luna. He hates me because of what I did to you, and he’s never going to forgive me. And I don’t blame him at all for that.”

  “Give him time, Athos.”

  “There is no time. The Order is coming. I have to do this.”

  “Even though it’ll cost you your life.”

  He nodded.

  “You took some kind of vow to me. Can I order you not to go off on this suicide mission?”

  Athos grinned a little. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, I’m still not letting you go! I’m just not letting you face the Order by yourself. I’ll…I’ll incapacitate you and tie you up if I have to, at least until I’m able to talk some sense into you!”

  “You’re not strong enough to incapacitate me.” He said it as a simple statement of fact, but I found it really irritating.

  And ok, technically he was right about that. I wasn’t strong enough. But I knew someone who was. I glared at him and pushed myself to my feet, then padded down the hall to Bryn’s room. He was sound asleep and I felt bad for waking him, but I did it anyway. He sat up and stared at me expressionlessly from beneath hooded lids and a wild matt of dark hair, as I quickly explained Athos’ proposed suicide mission. Bryn rolled his eyes and muttered, “Everyone’s such a martyr around here.” And he dragged himself out of bed.

  He marched into the living room and took Athos by the arm, then dragged him into the other suite. “What are you doing?” Athos demanded, trying and somehow failing to pull away.

  Bryn didn’t answer. He just led the nephilim to my room at the end of the hall, opened the door, and practically tossed Athos inside, displaying an obviously magic-enhanced amount of strength. Then he slammed the door shut and it immed
iately disappeared.

  “Are you kidding?” I exclaimed. “You sealed Athos and Alastair in together? Why? They’ll kill each other!”

  “No they won’t,” Bryn said as he walked away.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Well, I don’t really. I can only assume.”

  “What’s this supposed to accomplish?” I yelled after him.

  “Now they have no choice but to deal with each other and learn to get along. And once they do that they can fight side by side, instead of one of them going off and trying to be a hero.”

  “But—”

  “Go to sleep, Luna. And for God’s sake, let me sleep too. Don’t make me go all wicked witch on you and knock you out with a spell, Sleeping Beauty.”

  I watched him go, and crossed my arms over my chest. Already, raised voices were coming from the other side of the wall.

  Joey stuck his head out of his bedroom door, his short golden blonde hair sticking up in messy spikes. “What’s going on?” he mumbled.

  I quickly filled him in on the situation, and said, “It’s just a matter of time before they attack each other.” A loud crash from behind the wall confirmed that.

  “Alastair’s got this,” Joey said. “He can take that big dork, no problem.” He grinned and went back to bed.

  I yelled through the wall, “If either one of you kills the other, I’m never forgiving you!” And then I sat down in the hall and rested my arms on my bent knees. Ok, I really didn’t believe anyone was going to get killed. But I did think it was hopelessly lame that men sorted out their issues with violence. A sound like a truck hitting the side of the building reverberated through the hotel room. I dropped my head onto my arms with a big sigh.

  Chapter Eleven

  Apparently I’d fallen asleep out in the hall, and at some point someone had come along and put a pillow under my head and tossed a blanket over me. I sat up now and stretched my stiff back and shoulders. The door to the room that contained Alastair and his half-brother was still missing. I leaned against the wall with a sigh and waited for Bryn to get up. After a few minutes Joey joined me, sitting beside me and leaning against the wall like I was doing.