“An escape? Dr. Talbot, did Prince Valerian contribute to the ‘chaos’ into which you lost my daughter?”
“Yes.”
He thought that over for a moment. “I want to examine his cell.”
“Of – of course.”
They all trooped down to the dungeon. It sparked a knee-jerk, momentary panic in Jake to see the door of the last cell standing open. He hung back, and wasn’t even ashamed of the fact, content to let Price walk into the cell and take a look around. This was his errand, after all.
The mage turned in slow circles, eyes tracking over everything. He leaned forward and picked something up off the cot. He smirked and then showed it to them: a small mirror, like a woman would carry in her purse. “Someone brought him a little gift for his vanity.”
Talbot sighed. “That would be the baroness, I imagine. They’re friends of a sort.”
“Hmm.”
Price found a comb under the pillow, and a small plastic container full of residue of what looked and smelled like salad dressing. A few empty glass Starbucks bottles under the cot, tucked into the shadows.
“I can’t help but notice,” he finally said, “that there are no restraints of any kind.”
“Vlad had them removed.”
“And you allowed it.”
“He’s taken personal responsibility of his brother’s captivity.”
Price smiled, thin and hard. “And you allowed him to?”
“He…”
“Vlad gets what he wants,” Jake supplied. “That’s just how things are.”
Price’s head snapped around, his gaze pinning Jake to the wall. The smile widened, sharp at the edges. “Is that so.” It wasn’t a question. He glanced away. “Tell me how he managed to escape this cell. He was chained?”
“Yes.” In halting tones, Talbot explained what they’d been able to piece together from context clues, and Valerian’s pained confessions.
“The mortal helped him? Ruby’s mortal?” Jake didn’t like the feral gleam that sparked in his eyes. “The soldier.”
“Marine, actually,” Jake said, and he wasn’t sure why he’d felt the need to make the correction.
Deep down, he knew why, but he wasn’t ready to examine that reason too closely just yet.
“Marine, yes.” Price’s voice raised all the hairs on his arms. “Tell me about him.”
Something seemed to pass through the cell. A chill, but one with a presence. Jake felt it ripple through the stone beneath his boots, like a shock wave.
“He’s no one important,” Talbot said. “Just a mortal. A badly wounded veteran. He obviously feels some sense of responsibility for the girl–”
“Love.”
“What?”
“Responsibility doesn’t propel a man, unarmed, into a place like this, Doctor. Love does that. He loves her.” His teeth set, a muscle in his jaw leaping.
How dare he, Jake thought, get angry and fatherly about the man who was probably sleeping with his daughter when he’d had her raised in a lab and never even met her face-to-face.
“Does that bother you?” he asked. “That someone loves her?” He thought of Rooster Palmer staring him down on a stretch of Wyoming highway, gun in one motionless hand, Ruby Russell’s big green eyes peering over his broad shoulder. Yeah, Palmer loved her. A terrifying amount.
Price stared at him, inscrutable. “Why should it, Major?”
“You tell me.”
Another grin; dangerous as a knife. “Word games. How charming.”
“I assure you, Mr. Price,” Talbot said, “we will find your daughter.”
The mage laughed. “Oh, Doctor. You’d better.”
~*~
So much of the house had been if not lovingly, then at least meticulously restored to its former grandeur and cleanliness. The new items purchased to replace those aged beyond repair were careful replicas of the original antiques; Annabel felt certain that someone had consulted a historian as to authenticity.
But the one area of the house so far untouched was the conservatory. With its patterned tile floors, and soaring glass walls and ceilings, it had once been an oasis of delights. Native plants, and English plants brought from the duke’s manor in Cambridge, and exotic tropical flowers carefully tended by a team of gardeners. There had been a massive koi pond in the center, studded with lily pads and water hyacinths, fish longer than her forearm begging for food with gaping mouths.
The pond was nothing but a few inches of black sludge now. The plants had withered and crumpled and been left as tattered gray streamers spilling out of the planters. The fruit trees had been dead for decades, their bare limbs reaching for the ceiling like claws.
A dead, haunted place.
Small steps had been taken. The glass had been cleaned, so now it sparkled, and the gas torches, designed like old English lampposts, had been repaired, so the pathways were lighted. The old dead vegetation had been cleared out, wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of it trucked out to a dumpster. It had been stripped down to the bones, to a starting place for someone with a green thumb to work magic.
Annabel had brought a basil plant out here a few weeks ago, picked a spot with plenty of daytime sun and carefully patted it into place. Had watered it. But she didn’t have a knack for green things, not like her sister; that was how she knew she’d find Lily in the conservatory, and she wasn’t wrong.
Lily sat on the stone lip of a planting box, heels of her brown boots peeking from beneath the hem of her emerald skirt. She leaned forward, hair falling around her face, her expression one of intense concentration. She held both hands above Anna’s sad basil plant…and her fingertips seemed to glow. Slowly, slowly, visible to the naked eye, the plant’s leaves broadened and darkened; its stems lengthened. The basil grew. When she finally sat back with a deep exhale, the sallow plant was thick and healthy. Thriving.
She lifted her head and sent a small, uneven smile toward Anna. “Hello, sister.”
Annabel folded her arms and braced her shoulder against one of the (rather creepy) angel statues that had been cleaned up. “Trust you to find the one growing thing here.”
Lily turned her smile on the plant and dusted invisible dirt from her palms. “It was doing fine. It just needed a little help.”
“Help I didn’t ask for.”
A sigh. She lifted her gaze again. “Anna–”
“Why are you here?”
“Why did you seek me out if you just want to argue?” Lily countered, but calmly.
Anna’s hackles went up – and she forcibly smoothed them back down. Lily had adopted her husband’s infuriating habit of riling up those around him. Lily had always been able to do it, but now it was effortless. The worst part, always, was her guileless tranquility.
“I don’t want to fight,” Anna said, her own calm coming with difficulty. “I’m trying to figure out – okay, Fulk and I are here because these assholes threatened us. Did they threaten you? Because I’m getting the really bad feeling that you and Liam let them grow your kids like lab monkeys willingly.”
Another sigh. Lily pulled her hands into her lap and looked up, her tone that of an adult explaining something complicated to a child. “I lost four children, Anna. The first time I didn’t know. But after that, I tried – but there was always some reason I needed to use my powers. I can’t carry my own babies, so I gave up on motherhood. There are other ways to find meaning in life, and I found them.
“Liam was in contact with the Institute early, in its first incarnation, before they went to Russia. He of course knew that you and Fulk were out there somewhere, hiding, but he told Dr. Ingraham that he didn’t know of any living wolves. To spare you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“It was a kindness,” Lily insisted. “He let them go to Russia, let them make a new wolf. Nothing came of it. The Institute failed, reduced to a few boxes of singed files. We thought that was it, and for a little while, it was.”
“Fine. That still doesn’t explain the t
est tube babies.”
Lily smiled, wistful. “Liam always loved the idea of having a family – one of our own. Mages with whom we could share our gifts. A family that we wouldn’t…wouldn’t outlive.” She frowned; her gaze drew inward. “It was only a fantasy, but then – we met another mage.” Her tone shifted, and it set Annabel’s skin prickling. “He called himself the Roman. He nearly killed Liam.”
Shame he didn’t, Anna thought, but it was a hollow assertion. What could kill Liam? What could get close enough even for almost?
Lily swallowed; her face was very pale, freckles stark across her nose. “When Dr. Talbot approached us about his program, we felt like it was important to participate. Not just for our sakes,” she rushed to say when Anna opened her mouth with a protest. “I know you think poorly of Liam, but he isn’t one of those world-destroyer types. We want what you and Fulk want: to live in peace, for the world to keep spinning.”
“Peace? Liam doesn’t believe in peace.”
“He does,” Lily said, stubborn now. She had her jaw set at that angle their mother used to get when she was about to whack someone with her fan. “There are rumblings, Anna, things you haven’t heard. There are some immortals who aren’t content to just live and let live. They think that the mortals have had control of things for long enough, and that immortals should take power. That the people with the most physical power should be front and center, respected. Feared. The mage who calls himself the Roman thinks that, obviously. The time for immortals minding their own business is over. We all have to choose a side, and we all have to fight.
“So Liam and I donated our DNA, yes. We helped them grow soldiers. We’re going to need those soldiers. And believe it or not, I do care about them. They’re my children.”
Anna’s heart pounded hard against her ribs. All this talk of stirring, of a war, of choosing sides. It sent her spinning back home, to smoke in the sky, and the boom of cannon fire. Back to the taste of ash, and the constant panic turning her legs to water. The burned-out ruin of Atlanta. She’d seen war, and she didn’t want to see it ever again.
But she managed to keep her voice steady when she said, “If you care about them, how come none of them have ever met you?”
Lily’s gaze dropped, russet lashes fanning down across pale cheeks. “I wish they had.”
“One of them’s dead, you know,” Anna said, just to be a little shit, because she was so sick of Lily’s calm, her self-assuredness, her unwavering faith in the man who she should have loathed.
Lily’s head lifted, eyes wide.
“Nikita Baskin choked one of the boys to death in New York.” And clearly, no one had told Lily that.
Slowly, her expression settled into a hard mask. “He’ll wish he hadn’t done that,” she said, and Anna shivered.
~*~
Jake’s radio crackled to life on his belt and he reached for it lazily, expecting another mundane update about shift changes or some such. But before he could get the thing unclipped, one of the upstairs guards shouted through it: “Major Treadwell, it’s Sergeant Ramirez! She’s badly injured!”
Jake turned away from Talbot and Price, their startled and curious expressions, and headed for the stairs, heart rate spiking. He thumbed the transmit button as he started up at a jog. “Where is she? What’s her status? What happened?” Was he panicking? Yes, a little bit. She’d gone riding as escort with the princes and Talbot’s daughter, and if Jake was honest, he didn’t like the way Vlad looked at Adela. Like she was a meal.
Static. Hesitation. Then: “The prince brought her in. They’re going to wheel her into an operating theater. She, um…”
Jake sprinted through the shadowed, musty subbasement that served as storage. “I’m on my way,” he snapped into the radio, and slapped the elevator button.
The lab, when he finally reached it, was in a state of chaos. Techs and nurses in scrubs rushed around, gathering supplies. A young doctor with glasses and a harried expression guided a group of orderlies pushing a gurney toward the center of the room…
Where Vlad Tepes stood with a bloody, unconscious Adela held bridal-style in his arms. Blood on his shirt, blood all over her.
Jake’s first thought was that Vlad had attacked her. All too easily he could envision those long fangs breaking her skin.
He charged forward. “What the fuck?” he demanded, reaching them, blowing like a racehorse. To Vlad: “What did you do?”
Everyone around them froze. Doctors, nurses, techs, everyone.
Vlad’s mouth was clean, he noticed stupidly. The blood was on his shirt. One of the sleeves of his compression shirt had been torn off and was currently tied around Adela’s shin. He met Jake’s glare with a level stare of his own. “I carried her,” he said, his voice low and unnerving, touched with a Romanian accent. “Her horse fell on her, and I carried her back.”
Jake breathed harshly through his mouth.
“Excuse me,” the doctor said, intervening between them. “If I can just – oh, my. Your grace, if you could please place her on the stretcher…”
Jake got pushed back in the shuffle of nurses as they laid Adela out on a stretcher and surrounded her. Her skin was too pale, her face slack. And she was wet.
Jake’s panic rapped beneath his skin like a second pulse, skittery as a rat. “What happened?” he asked again. Beneath the tourniquet, he saw the white of bone protruding from her leg.
Vlad’s eyes remained trained on her. He shook his head. “There was a bear. It frightened her mount. I frightened the bear away, but it was too late, and the horse fell on her. She needs blood.”
“Sir, we have blood,” a tech said, lifting a cold blood bag.
“No,” Vlad said. He lifted his own hand, his own wrist, his own blood. “That’s not what I mean.”
The bespectacled doctor turned to a tech. “Fetch me–”
“Your serum?” Vlad said, mocking. “Don’t bother. It isn’t strong enough.” And he motioned imperiously toward the OR. “Lead the way, Doctor. I will provide whatever blood you need.”
Jake moved to protest – and was promptly swept aside in the tide of professionals.
~*~
It felt like someone was sitting on her chest. But it was a dull pressure. Nothing hurt; in fact, she felt mostly numb, but she couldn’t breathe, and that was going to be a problem in the long run.
Around her: movement, frantic, but professional voices, beeping.
She cracked her eyes, and everything was a blur. Drugs, she realized. She’d been pumped full of something. Why was she awake? She…
She wet her lips, some sort of instinct, and her tongue passed over something wet and warm that sent a jolt through her entire numb body.
“Your grace!” someone shouted. “I told you we can’t…” The voice flickered in and out. “…untested…vials of the serum!”
“Shut up. See to her leg.” That voice she knew: the low, accented voice of Vlad Tepes.
Which meant that the hand that gripped her face was his. And that the warm, electrifying thing on her tongue? That was his blood. He pushed his slit wrist against her mouth, and she was too dopey and ruined to resist this time.
The blood went down her throat like good whiskey. Like fire. And then she fainted.
~*~
In the mayhem of getting Ramirez to the house, Mia and Val had been overlooked. She wished their stolen moment of alone time had come under better circumstances. But she would take what she could get.
She pulled the saddle down off the steaming back of Vlad’s gelding, wincing when she saw the lather under the saddle pad. Vlad had ridden hard to catch up to them, effortlessly balancing Ramirez’s unconscious body in his arms. It had struck Mia as a distinctly medieval image.
“So let me get this straight,” she said as she set the saddle aside and reached for the bucket and water and sponge that waited against the wall. The big black shivered when she swiped the wet sponge down his neck for the first time. “Dad’s fancy drug keeps her body
from rejecting a donated leg” – she couldn’t wrap her head around that one just yet – “but she has to keep taking the drug all the time, and it won’t be strong enough to fix this kind of injury.”
Ramirez’s bay was exhausted in the aftermath of his explosion, head hanging in his cross-ties as Val rubbed him down. Poor thing. Val worked a sponge in long strokes and frowned to himself. “We won’t know what will happen until the doctors are done operating. She might lose the foot, yes. Your father’s drug is – unpredictable.”
“You mentioned side-effects before,” she prompted.
He sighed. “Humans and vampires aren’t so different. They can interbreed, after all. Sometimes, anyway. My brother Mircea was a half-breed. But…” He hesitated, expression pained.
“Val,” she said, softly. “I want to know.”
He sighed. “According to my father, my uncle tried countless times to mate, with both human and vampire women. He was never able to beget a child. I’ve heard other such stories. Breeding isn’t always possible. Just like…” He paused, and turned to her, eyes bright in the afternoon sunlight that fell through the skylights. “Not everyone can digest vampire blood. You can turn anyone, but you can’t always medicate them. No matter how badly your father wants it to be so, our blood is, ultimately, blood, and not medicine.”
She wet her lips. She felt choked, like a fist was pressed to her windpipe. “What if – what if I could take the serum? Without side-effects? Then what?”
Val looked very sad. “Then you would have to take it the rest of your life. It’s a temporary solution, Mia, not a cure.”
Chills chased across her skin, and it had nothing to do with the cool water trickling down her arm. “But there is a cure. A very permanent one. That’s what you meant when you told me to decide. Decide if I want you to–”
He silenced her with one quick wave. “I would not speak it aloud. I don’t want to influence you.”
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 71