“Éliane,” Yves whispered. “You have grown stronger.”
“Damn right,” I muttered and peered down at a rematerialised spymaster.
The Dark vampire met my eyes. Then he let his gaze trace down my neck, over my pulse. Hakan snarled. But he was outside my Light shield now. He and the Dark Shadow prowled. Samson just cuffed Alain over the back of the head.
“Never thought it’d come to this, did we, spymaster?” I whispered.
“I will suck you dry,” he promised.
I shook my head and turned to Zahra. “What do you think?”
“His ties to his master are strong. It may save him.”
“But Luc’s aren’t?”
“They have been severed.” What?
“That can’t be right. He is his father’s son. As I am Papa’s daughter. Check again.”
Zahra looked up at me. “I see your threads. They are still there but loosely held. Your sire has not cut them, but he no longer holds them tightly. He has let you go, Kafinefendi, even as he waits for you to call him back.”
I shook my head again, desperation making my dreads fly. I stared at Luc. He stared at Zahra.
“And my brother?”
“There are no threads,” she said.
“Papa wouldn’t do that. He’d never let Luc go like that. He’d never give up on him.”
“Touch his Sigillum,” she urged.
I knew in my heart that she was right. Luc’s Sigillum was black as the night. It had lost all colour. If he pressed a finger to the centre of my parent’s mark now, I would not feel it. Neither would my father.
Perhaps Luc’s Dark would have pulled Papa down. Perhaps the Champion was saving himself, saving Mama. Saving the Iunctio and all vampyre. But I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t have fought harder for his son.
I curled my hands into fists and let out a furious snarl.
“Doesn’t matter,” I snapped. “Can you do this? Will you?” Or would I have to resort to drastic measures? Measures she would never forgive me for. Measures Hakan would find hard to accept as well.
And measures that were no better than what the Kral had done to his niece five hundred years ago.
“Please,” I whispered, resorting to begging. “He is worth it.”
She smiled. Smoke swirled in her eyes. Mhachkay magic, black and powerful, swelled.
“I have no doubt,” she said and struck out.
13
Five Hundred Years In The Making
Sound became distorted, and the world appeared as though viewed through a veil of smoke. Something black and powerful surged around us, inside my Light shield. A distant whining sound much like a dog who has been frightened reached me. I thought perhaps it was Ediz, but I didn’t take my eyes off my brother. I did take an instinctive step back, however, even as my mother’s words of warning shouted out inside my head. Showing no fear now would not save me, but taking a step back from all that black witchcraft might just give me time to think of an out.
Samson’s hand landed on my shoulder and then Mama’s vampire stepped in front of me, trying to block the foul-smelling sorcery from reaching his mistress’ daughter. If Zahra wished it, though, she could have struck the vampire down.
Her head was thrown back; her arms were spread wide. Luc looked up at her with awe in his eyes; his face at that moment seemed so pure and divine. My brother had never looked so handsome.
And so enraptured with a woman.
I fisted my hands, my stakes heavy on my hips. My Svante’s weight a welcome sensation down my spine.
Alain hissed. His eyes had bled pure red. There was no cyan to be seen, but I sensed his Sanguis Vitam. It swelled. My father’s swelled along with it.
Wherever Papa was now, he knew his spymaster was in trouble.
I hadn’t breathed in long seconds. I tried to suck in a breath of air now but only inhaled smoke. My eyes itched. My skin felt clammy. Samson’s position between the Black Witch and me was doing nothing. I stepped around him.
Zahra murmured words in Turkish too low for me to hear. I thought I could hear voices answering, however. Their presence made my body chill.
Luc cried out and then collapsed to the floor. He started convulsing, froth appearing at his mouth. I ran to his side; Samson stepped closer, a sword in his hands, Darkness consuming his eyes.
Dark destroys. Light creates. But Samson Beauregard’s connection to my mother saved the vampire; gave him reason to fight the Dark, to protect her offspring when otherwise Darkness would have turned its back and laughed out loud.
I disregarded the vampire behind me and concentrated on Luc.
His body shook with tremors; his head banged back against the floorboards; something stirred within his chest; I felt it. I flicked my eyes to Zahra. She was sweating, shaking, pale when she should have had a natural tan. Her hands were fisted, even as she kept her arms wide. Her feet were spaced shoulder-width apart, but they trembled. I thought perhaps she would collapse.
If the Black Witch collapsed, this would be over.
I stood up and prowled toward her. If she knew how close I was, she didn’t show it. Her words came faster and faster. I caught one or two of them. I’d have preferred not to have deciphered them at all.
What the Black Witch asked the spirits for would haunt my dreams forever.
It said a lot about the love I had for my brother that I didn’t stop her. That I didn’t pull my stake and stab her through her hearts. I would take Luc in any form I could get him.
Even if he ended up as black as night. As black as her.
Dark swelled. There was no Light to counter it. Even when I reached for mine, it slipped from my grasp.
My heart sped up. I licked my lips. Zahra stumbled. A gash had appeared in her hand; her palm bled. Red like any vampire.
I glanced at my brother. He had a matching wound. I hadn’t even seen Zahra do it.
I stepped up to the witch and wrapped my arms around her torso, holding her up when it looked like she would fall over. I locked my legs, trying futilely to reach for my Light. Dark oozed out of my brother. It oozed out of Alain as well. Thick and oily, it rolled across the floor, combining. Two pools becoming a bigger one, getting closer and closer to Zahra and me.
I wasn’t sure what would happen if the Dark reached us, but because Zahra’s voice took on a note of desperation, I thought perhaps it wouldn’t be good.
My desperate gaze met Samson’s eyes.
He was still full of Darkness. Darkness of his own making. If we got out of this, if we all survived to see another day, Samson Beauregard would be Darker than any other vampire.
I looked over my shoulder; tried to decipher shapes outside of the shield that somehow still stood all around us. Smoke blocked my vision, but I knew Yves and his Nosferatin were right outside.
My eyes came back to Samson. Panic started to swell inside. He held my gaze; that impassive vampire mask on his face. And then he stepped right into the puddle of Dark and closed his eyes.
It rolled up his legs, over his knees, and wrapped around his torso. Then it slowly crept up his chest and slunk ever higher.
I could hear someone pounding against my Light shield. I could hear the snarl of the Dark Shadow and Georgia’s screams of protest.
I watched as Samson sucked all that Dark into him and then lifted his head and stared at me with black eyes.
Oh, Goddess, I thought. Was it right to accept one life for another? Was Luc’s Light worth more than Samson’s? What would my friend do when the Nosferatin staked him? What would Georgia become then?
What would my mother? Mama would never become Dark, but something inside her would break. Samson was the first vampire to join her line. She didn’t know half of what he could do, but she loved him like a brother.
I looked at Luc; my brother. The Dark had almost entirely gone, replaced with something else. I looked at Alain. He matched him. No longer Dark, but no longer Light. Luc’s Sigillum swirled. Blacks and greys; no colour
. Smoke twisted in both of their eyes.
What was she making them? Was it better or worse than the Dark? Would Yves accept it?
Zahra’s full weight rested now in my arms and yet she kept chanting, her voice nothing more than a rasp. Her leathers were stained in sweat. Her hair clung to her pasty skin. Her body trembled. I held her tight; I would not let her fall.
I would pay whatever price there was to pay to save my brother.
Finally, the Black Witch stopped talking. The smoke around us stilled. There was no sound. Just my heartbeat. And Luc’s. I could see his newly developed fangs. I could see the red glint that washed through the smoke in his eyes. But I could still hear his heart.
It gave me hope.
Zahra tried to shake herself, but all she managed to do was twist out of my grasp. Her legs buckled. Her body crumbled. She landed in a heap on the floor.
Samson growled.
The smoke was slowly dissipating, but I could feel the threat as it approached. I pulled a stake and spun to face it. A flash of red, a wash of blond hair, and then fangs scraped down my neck and were gone.
I couldn’t risk lowering the Light shield. I also had no explanation for how it still stood, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. The Light shield kept Yves and his hunters out. It also kept out Georgia who was frothing at the mouth and still hammering against its sides.
“Samson,” I snapped, putting as much of my mother as I could muster into my voice. “Stand down.”
He laughed. It was eerie. Guilt almost made me miss his next attack. Experience and training had me rolling out of his grasp.
My heartbeat escalated. Hakan roared. Georgia kept throwing herself against the shield. I had no idea what Yves or Ediz were doing, but I did not want to add them into this mess.
“Samson!” I shouted. “Remember your place, vampyre!”
“Your heartbeat betrays you,” he purred.
Smoke still swirled around us. But it was getting thinner. I kept my back to Luc and Zahra, not wanting the Dark vampire before me to turn his attention to them. Alain was on his own. And for that I was sorry. Still, if I kept Samson’s focus on me, Papa’s spymaster might survive the encounter.
“Don’t make me stake you, vampyre,” I growled.
“Come closer and try,” he taunted.
He flashed in. I couldn’t spin away. If I spun, I’d expose Zahra and Luc. I had to protect them. I raised my stake, but Samson was fast. And without being able to shift my position, my defence was weak at best. Fangs punctured my arm. My Sigillum swirled. Sage, mint green, lime. Unease, fear, worry.
Samson laughed.
When I next glanced down at my arm, magenta and violet clashed with the greens making for an unpleasant sight. I let my anger and outrage grow, stretching my lips into a blunt-toothed smile.
“Try that again, vampyre,” I said. “I dare you.”
He attacked. I sliced his side with the stake, silver in the wound had him howling.
His vampire-within reared inside, the red eyes of the huge black dog met mine. He growled.
“Nice doggy,” I said.
He charged. Claws raked, silver smarted, fangs pierced skin and blood rained down.
I didn’t want to have to do it. I didn’t want to be the one who put the rabid animal down. I didn’t want the guilt and heavy weight and regret of it. But this was my choice. This had been my task. My father had trusted I could save Luc. My mother had wished for it with all of her broken heart.
This was on me and if I had to wear the shame of bringing the final death to my friend’s mate for the rest of my very long life, then I would.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. No one heard me. And even if they did, it was too little; not enough.
I spun. The thought of leaving Luc and Zahra exposed made my skin prickle. But in order to end this humanely, I needed all of my Nosferatin talent. Samson was a level one Sanguis Vitam vampire. He was fast and strong and old now. Not old-old like my father or Hakan. But old enough to put up a decent fight.
We crashed together. My Light swelled. I didn’t have time to be grateful I had it back because his Sanguis Vitam raged all around us. The Dark made him stronger still. But Light is more powerful than the Dark. It didn’t always seem that way, but it was. I just had to believe in it. Trust in it. Trust in Nut, as well.
Sparks flew. I felt the sting of his bite. He felt the blast of my Light. Neither stopped us.
And then when we flew apart, our feet skidding across the floorboards, arms pinwheeling for balance, snarls rending the air apart, blood dripping from multiple wounds, an explosion of Light blinded my eyes.
It must have blinded Samson’s as well because the vampire didn’t use my distraction to his advantage. By the time I blinked the spots away from my vision, my mother stood before me. Wreathed in Light.
The Prophesied shone like a beacon; shadows disappeared. The night became day and the day became our night.
She looked corporeal to me. But I knew to vampires she would be nothing but a hazy outline at best and invisible at worst. My mother was their scariest nightmare when she Dream Walked.
“Ellie,” she said. She touched my cheek, such love in that simple connection. “You have joined.”
“Entwined, Mama,” I corrected her. She cocked her head.
“We have much to talk about then,” she finally said. I nodded.
She turned around and looked down at Luc. So many emotions washed across her features then; chasing each other, one by one, out of sight. Until all that was left was a Nosferatin. Powerful, impassive, full of Light.
Luc was unconscious, but my mother took the time to kneel by his side. She brushed his dark hair off his handsome face, and then leaned down and kissed his forehead. For a moment, I thought she might cry. But her gaze swept over his body to the woman who lay collapsed at his side. Zahra didn’t stir, and my mother took the time to see her; I could feel her Sanguis Vitam Cupitor powers ignite. She wouldn’t find any Dark in either of them. But what would her Prophesied powers show her of the blackness that had consumed their lives?
One last stroke of her hand over Luc’s face and then she stood and faced Samson.
He’d been immobile from the moment she’d arrived, and I realised she’d done that; pinned him down somehow. Maybe the Lux Lucis Tribuo connection they shared had allowed it, but I’d never seen her do that before. Her relationship with her line was the not the same as my father’s with his. She couldn’t command them. She couldn’t telepathically reach them. But right then she did something to keep the Dark vampire contained and quiet.
“Oh, Samson,” she murmured.
Georgia crashed into my Light shield, and my mother flicked tear-filled eyes to the crazed vampire.
She sighed.
“Did you know?” I asked.
“That he was capable of such Darkness?” she murmured. I nodded my head, but she wouldn’t have seen it; all her attention was on her vampire. “Yes,” she whispered. “I knew. But he did not wish for me to know, so I kept quiet.”
“Can you save him?”
“He is my vampyre. I shall die trying.”
“Mama,” I said, panicked. If she died, Papa would die. I couldn’t handle losing them both when we’d only just got Lucien back.
“I’m being dramatic,” she said wryly. “I thought the moment warranted it.” She turned to look at me. “When did you lose your sense of humour, El?”
I scowled at her. “None of this is funny!” I snapped.
She smiled, and then the smile fell, and I saw something I did not like in my mother’s eyes.
“What is it?”
“Your father,” she said, cocking her head. “He wants me back. Something’s not right.”
“What?”
She shook her head and lifted her hand to cup Samson’s cheek. “Please forgive me,” she murmured and then blasted him with her Light.
Samson let out a groan that the Dark Shadow did not like. I thou
ght perhaps Samson did like it, at least a little bit. He collapsed to his knees before my mother and shuddered.
I turned away. I’d seen what my mother’s Light did to vampires before. I’d long ago learned it was best to pretend it wasn’t happening. Heat washed my cheeks and my eyes connected with Hakan’s outside the shield of Light.
A sinful promise was written there, laced with silver and dripping in ice. Hakan could burn so hot and cold, both of which sent shivers of delight through my body in anticipation. He smiled.
The Dark Shadow hissed. Mama stepped back from her vampire and turned to Georgia.
“You know I had no choice,” she said.
The Dark Shadow prowled outside the shield. She flashed fang, red glinted in her eyes, along with a promise of retribution.
“Lower the shield, El,” she said.
“Are you mad?”
“Do it.”
I lowered the shield, keeping ahold of my Light in case I had to blast Georgia with it.
The Dark Shadow took one step toward my mother and growled. The sound reverberated around the room we were in, rattling the glass in the windows behind the closed shutters.
Mama leaned forward and growled right back at her. Somehow, despite not being as powerful or loud, my mother’s growl outdid Georgia’s.
They stared at each other and then the Dark Shadow broke eye contact and slunk around us both to reach her mate. Mama watched them for a moment and then lifted her gaze to my vampire.
He bowed low, hand fisted over his chest.
“Prophesied,” my Savaşçı said; his voice level, his emotions locked down and out of sight.
“Shouldn’t it be ‘Mother’ now?” Mama asked.
Hakan looked startled. He quickly corrected himself.
“Just kidding,” Mama said and smirked.
“Lucinda,” Yves said, announcing himself.
“Hello, Yves. Wish I could stay for a catch-up, but duty calls. Or rather, a very irate dragon does.”
The Nosferatin nodded his head.
“I trust you have no recourse here?” she enquired.
“I am satisfied if not a little perplexed.”
“Mysteries are good for the soul,” my mother offered.
Blood Enthralled (Blood Enchanted, Book Three): A Vampire Hunter Paranormal Romance Series Page 12