by Rye Brewer
“It can’t be,” Branwen muttered, shaking her head.
“No, she has,” I insisted, looking at Sirene. “Hasn’t she? Does she feel heavier to you?”
“I suppose I didn’t notice because I was holding her at the time.” Sirene shifted Elena from one arm to the other, testing her size and weight. When she moved her, I gaped in shock at the difference. This was not the matter of a pound here or there.
Elena had aged a month in an hour. Easily. She was longer, fuller.
Branwen shook her head again, but this time it was in wonder. “Remarkable,” she whispered.
Elena, meanwhile, had no concern for our observations. She wanted more blood. I watched in shock as she reached for the bottle Sirene still held.
“No, sweet one,” Sirene crooned. “Your tummy cannot hold too much at once. I don’t want you to become ill.”
I, on the other hand, wondered at a baby Elena’s age reaching for anything. She shouldn’t have been capable of such behavior yet. What was happening to her?
“She can’t still be hungry,” Branwen remarked.
“No, dearest,” Sirene insisted when Elena began to fuss. She almost never fussed.
I chewed my lip, wondering about this.
Suddenly, Elena let out a wail of frustration and clenched her fists—just as the lightbulbs which ran along the length of the room, mounted inside the ceiling, popped from one end to the other.
12
Jonah
I wanted nothing more than to go home, to be with Anissa. But duty prevailed. I couldn’t leave with a clear conscience until I knew for certain that Marcus and Genevieve were back, and that their guards were well-prepared.
When one of the guards—a scarred, grizzled one who had clearly seen quite a lot of fighting in his day—approached the door to Lucian’s old office, I stood to greet him. “Are the prisoners safe?”
“They are,” he confirmed with a rather grim smile, “and one of them wishes to speak with you.”
“Allow me to guess. Marcus?”
He shook his head. “The other one.”
Genevieve. I could only imagine. “Thank you. I’ll be down shortly.” Once I was finished with her, I would get back to the high-rise. Whatever she wanted was more likely than not something I could easily dismiss.
It was much easier to deal with the likes of her when she was locked away, without her minions to do her bidding. I wondered how much the time in captivity might have broken her and decided it wasn’t nearly enough, no matter how she’d suffered. She deserved all of it and more.
The dungeon was dark except for the torches burning along the length of the stone corridor. Centuries had passed since its creation, dug from the very rock upon which the original cathedral had been built. My footsteps rang out, alerting the inhabitant of the first cell I passed.
Marcus. Our eyes met as I crossed his path, and the urge to tear his heart from his chest threatened to overpower me. I couldn’t look at him or even spend too much time thinking about him without remembering everything he’d put Anissa and Sara through. What he’d forced Anissa to do in order to keep her sister from being tortured.
How he’d turned her into his own personal killer.
I was deliberate in looking away before the dark, murderous desire he inspired overwhelmed me. One could only resist so much temptation.
Genevieve waited for me at the bars to her cell, farther down the line. I knew what folly it might be to place her and Marcus too close to each other.
“You came,” she murmured in a voice unlike that which I’d become accustomed to. Gone was the sharp edge, the sense of superiority which she had never really earned. Her cool, untouchable façade had broken.
Without her cosmetics and expensive clothing, she was nothing. Her eyes bore dark circles, the frown lines around her mouth were more pronounced. Her hair was flat, as dull as her voice.
“I was curious as to what you might have to say,” I replied, standing at a distance. I had no fear of her, but that didn’t mean I wished to share space.
“You will like what I have to say,” she promised, the French accent tinging her words. “I wish to align myself with you.”
I raised my eyebrows. This was a development I’d hoped for but hadn’t expected.
“You realize such an arrangement couldn’t be arrived at without you giving me something I need,” I replied, careful not to give away my enthusiasm.
“Naturally. What is it you wish?”
“Information on the European shifters who visited the States not long ago—I don’t know if they’re still here, granted, but they made their presence known a while back.” To the point where they had very nearly killed Carissa.
Not something I could bring up with Genevieve, as it would mean knowing about Cari’s situation and Gage’s involvement.
She raised an eyebrow. “Shifters?”
Still playing games. We both knew she knew what I meant, but she wouldn’t give me anything she didn’t feel good and ready to give me.
I decided to play along instead of losing my patience. “Yes. Rather than base, crude creatures only capable of turning to werewolves when the moon is full—except in the case of having a spell cast on them—they’re able to change at will. I’ve heard them referred to as shifters. And I heard they come from Europe.”
She nodded slowly. I could all but see the wheels turning in her head, determining how to best turn this to her advantage. As always.
“Yes. I have heard of these creatures,” she admitted. “I would be glad to bring you more information on them if you agree to become my ally.”
“And what would that mean for me?” I asked. “What would you want in return, exactly?”
“Exactly? What do you think?” She smiled. She still had that smile, even if she hadn’t used blood red lipstick to enhance it. The smile of a predator. “I want my freedom.”
“Really?”
“Well, how else do you expect me to gather information for you?” She looked around at the stone walls, shrugging. “There is little I can do from inside this place.”
“This is true.” But was it true that I needed information about the shifters badly enough to free her? I knew what she’d done, knew she had a hand in providing the tainted blood which had granted Sara her elemental powers. That alone could have been construed as an act of war.
All the same, it was good to have allies. Wasn’t it? We would need all we could get in the coming days, when life was bound to only become more challenging. War tended to do that, even if we weren’t the ones directly involved.
I hoped I was making the right choice.
“Well?” she prompted. Her chin was somewhat higher than it had been when I first saw her, a signal of her growing confidence.
I hoped again this wasn’t a mistake.
The key to her door hung just across from the cell, well out of her reach. I took it from the hook and dropped it on the floor where she could easily slide her arm through the bars and retrieve it.
“Do not get caught, whatever you do,” I whispered. “I won’t be able to save you if you’re recaptured.”
Her smile widened. “I’ll be careful. You can be sure of that.”
The only thing I was sure of as I walked away, careful to avoid Marcus’s gaze, was that I’d just made a deal with the devil.
13
Anissa
The three of us looked at each other, eyes wide, as the last of the glass from the lightbulbs hit the floor.
“That wouldn’t be a coincidence, would it?” Branwen’s voice was low.
“If it were an electrical surge, the entire suite would’ve gone dark,” I whispered back. I was almost afraid to move, the way a person could be when something completely unexpected and rather unsettling occurred.
It made me think of my sister. This was not a pleasant comparison. Sara was the only person I’d ever seen control electricity that way.
“I have no elemental powers,” Sirene murmured a
s the baby turned her attention to a strand of her mother’s dark hair, distracting her for the moment. “Nor does Fane. This makes no sense.”
“But you thought along the same lines I did.” I sat on the edge of the bed. “Elemental powers. Are they simply born in a witch when neither parent possesses them?”
“Elemental power is so rare, it’s difficult to say,” she admitted, looking down at her baby with equal parts of love and worry. “I must say, this is all unexpected.”
Elena noticed the bottle again and, again, reached for it.
“Maybe you had better let her have it,” I suggested, afraid of what might happen if she was denied again. “She must need the nutrition if she’s so desperate to drink.”
“True, she ought to have been drinking all along, I suppose. I wish I knew what to make of this.” Sirene raised the bottle to the baby’s lips.
As Elena reached to clasp her hands around it, electric sparks leapt from her fingertips.
“Ouch!” Sirene dropped the bottle, as the charge had gone through her—not strong enough to hurt, but clearly strong enough to frighten her.
Elena began to wail, and I was quick to retrieve the bottle from where it had fallen onto the mattress, then guided it into her mouth before she had the chance to cause any further damage to the room. Or to me.
“What is going on?” I whispered, my eyes meeting Sirene’s. Her fear and panic were palpable, as was Branwen’s. The witch stood on the other side of the bed, wringing her hands in worry.
Sparks flying from Elena’s fingertips.
Just as they had with Sara.
Who had drunk contaminated blood.
I stared at the bottle in horror.
Hadn’t we destroyed all traces of the contamination?
Jonah entered the room but stopped short when he sensed something wrong. “What happened to the lights?” He pointed to the ceiling.
I went to him, keeping my back to the others. “The baby. She’s a vampire,” I whispered, frantic. “We had to give her blood to drink, she was starving. Listless, lifeless. But now…”
“Now?” He took me by the shoulders.
“Now, she’s showing the same powers Sara did. The electricity.” I nodded up toward the lights. “That was her. She shocked Sirene just now.”
“Oh, no…” His hands tightened for an instant before releasing me, backing away as he stared at his baby sister. “That was it. I never cleared out those few bags I kept down here, in case we needed them. I always keep a small supply in this refrigerator.”
We went out to the kitchen and poured the rest of what was in the refrigerator into the sink, though that felt a lot like closing the barn doors after the horses had already escaped. There was only supposed to be one more contaminated bag unaccounted for. We had used it to fill the baby’s bottle.
“This reminds me,” he said as we emptied the blood into the sink, turning the stainless-steel red, “I got a look at this Stark of Sara’s.”
“When?”
“Before I left for the meeting. Fane was speaking with him. I… followed him to the alley in which they met up.”
He was careful to avoid meeting my gaze, for obvious reasons. Following his father around. He knew I’d have strong opinions about that.
I let it go, since there were obviously more important things to worry about. “What were they discussing? Was it about Sara?”
“No. About Gage. The Starkers are after him for turning a human.”
“What?” I dropped the bag into the sink, completely stunned. “When did this happen? Did you know?”
“Shh.” He glanced toward the doorway, making sure we were alone before continuing. “Yes. I knew. I didn’t want to tell you for obvious reasons. The fewer who knew, the better for all of us—including you, who could get into just as much trouble for knowing without reporting him to the League.”
For once, I couldn’t give him grief over keeping me out of the loop. “I don’t understand. Why would he do something so crazy?”
“It’s a long story. Suffice it to say, he cared deeply for the girl and she had been attacked, brutalized, nearly to the point of death. Giving her his blood was all he could do to save her.” Jonah looked down at me. “Remember how I did the same for you?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t human at the time.” Though I supposed I couldn’t split hairs. Jonah saved me because he loved me, the same as Gage had done for his girl.
“At any rate, Fane has now gone to Europe to find Gage and this Carissa—Cari—girl before the Starkers do.”
“Oh, no…” We would have to tell Sirene, though I supposed she understood how complicated his life was. It had been so when they’d first met, I guessed, and not much had changed since then.
I remembered Sara telling me about the Starkers, too, and how she wanted to do something about them. Why hadn’t I asked her to elaborate? Right, because of the mass confusion going on at the time. And the fact I’d wanted nothing more than to leave Shadowsbane Island and never see it again.
Jonah’s forehead was deeply creased in a frown, his eyes troubled, his jaw set in a dangerously firm line. There was no point in telling him something I knew nothing about. There was just as good a chance as any Elewyn would keep Sara too busy with training to allow her to go after the Starkers.
“I’m sure Fane will be able to find him in time,” I said as I stroked his arm, wishing there was something I could do to comfort him. “Gage will be all right. I would hate to be the Starkers if Fane gets his hands on them.”
He didn’t see the humor in this, dark though it was.
“I wanted to go with him.” He dropped the last empty bag into the trash then leaned against the counter with a sigh. “I hate thinking of him taking this on all by himself. He told me to stay here and take care of Sirene and Elena, instead. That he needed me to protect them as I already had.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
He let out a brief, bitter laugh. “Look what a terrific job I’m doing.”
14
Jonah
I had allowed my baby sister to become an elemental witch, all because I was too stupid and careless to empty the refrigerator. What kind of big brother was I? What sort of protector?
“Excuse me.” Branwen stuck her head in before Anissa had the chance to comfort me, not that it wouldn’t have been a waste of breath on her part. “I think there’s something you should see.”
“What is it?” Anissa asked.
Just then, as if on cue, we heard the shattering of a lightbulb.
“That, for one,” Branwen replied with a nervous chuckle. “And the fact that she appears to have grown again.”
“Grown? Again?” I hadn’t gotten a good look at Elena before Anissa had stopped me from approaching the bed. We followed Branwen back to the bedroom, which was considerably darker than it had been minutes earlier.
I didn’t need bright light to see the difference in my sister.
“I’m not very familiar with babies, I have to admit.” I walked across the room, half-expecting to hear sizzles from Elena on my approach. “But it does seem she’s aged. Considerably. In the last several hours since I saw her.” She was older, to put it simply. Bigger. Fairly bursting out of the fleece pajamas which had swum around her tiny body before.
I glanced around at the others. “Is this normal?”
They stared at me as if I had two heads. “There is no normal in this situation,” Sirene explained, appearing harried and exhausted. “Elena is most definitely one-of-a-kind.”
I wanted to fall to my knees and beg her forgiveness for allowing this to happen. What would Fane say when he found out about my carelessness? He would certainly regret ever thinking I was capable of keeping his family safe.
“We cannot stay here,” Branwen announced, speaking to Sirene. “Not when Elena’s powers are so unpredictable. It would be safer in Hallowthorn Landing.”
“What? No, you can’t do that.” I turned to Sirene, too. “Fane
wanted you to stay here. You would be safer here. He believed this, and so do I.”
She rose from the bed, the baby resting in a nest of blankets. “That was before this occurred. I agree with Branwen. We must leave.”
I threw Anissa a desperate look. She was just as lost as I was.
“I wish Fane was here. Of all the times for him to go off somewhere.” Sirene caught my eye. “Yes. I know he’s bound to be on one mission or another. I knew it as soon as he said he had to meet with Stark. I assumed when he did not return quickly that something had come of their meeting. I only wish I didn’t have to be now.”
“We’ll have to go soon,” Branwen urged her.
Sirene left the room to get her things together.
I turned to Branwen, halfway to anger at the way she’d stepped in and started making decisions. “I made a promise to Fane that I would watch over Sirene and Elena. How can I make good on that promise if you go to Hallowthorn Landing? It’s impossible. I won’t hear of it. This is the safest place for both of them now.”
“With all due respect,” Branwen replied, “this is the worst possible place for them to hide at the moment. What happens if Elena decides to throw a tantrum? She’s aging rapidly. If she continues at this rate, she’ll be a toddler before we know it. With a toddler’s temper. She could easily knock out the power to the entire building. How would you explain something like that to your clan? Or when she begins shooting lightning bolts out the windows and the authorities come pounding on the door. What then?”
My resolve weakened with every word she said. She was right; any number of terrible things might occur if Elena’s powers strengthened as she did.
“I promised him.” It was all I could say.
Sirene spoke over my shoulder, standing in the doorway. “I know this, and I know your intentions are good, Jonah. But I will not stay here with my child in a nest full of vipers. No offense intended.” She was every inch the protective mother.