by J. R. Ward
Pulling himself together by will alone, because God knew his emotions were so big, his body could barely contain them, he sat up straight and wiped his face off on the sleeve of his shirt.
“I will get you out.”
While he tried to think, he pulled the blankets higher, as if she were still alive, as if she could feel the chill in the air and he could do something to fix that. And as he did, he bumped against the cot and dislodged that which had been carefully balanced on the pillow.
The skull fell to the side, toward him, those empty sockets swinging in his direction.
Duran quickly righted his clothes and patted his hair down.
As if she could still see her precious young. Who was no longer young, regardless of what his age put him at, and who had never been precious, no matter what she had told him.
“I love you, Mahmen,” he whispered.
He put his hand about where he imagined hers would be under the blankets, and the great divide between the living and the dead had never been so clear to him. She would never hear his words, nor he her responses. No touches. No smiles to exchange.
No future, only the past.
And there was no crossing this cavern in order to connect, at least not while he was alive, and likely not when he died, either.
After all, his father had been wrong about everything he’d told his congregation. Why wouldn’t the same be true of the rumors of the Fade? The traditions of the Scribe Virgin?
You could trust no immortal leader. No temporal one, either.
Taking a deep breath, he saw the water bottles and instantly refocused.
His father was alive.
Goddamn it, the motherfucker was alive and somewhere down here.
“Ahmare,” he said as he got to his feet. “Let’s get you out of here with the beloved.”
He needed her to be safe and on her way back to Chalen before he went after the Dhavos. He didn’t know what kind of condition his father was in, but he couldn’t take chances with Ahmare. Also didn’t want to be distracted by her.
“Ahmare.” She was no doubt giving him space. “You can come in.”
With a frown, he looked over his shoulder toward the open door and the darkness of the bedroom. “Ahmare?”
Warning bells began to ring in his head as he flicked on his flashlight and went over to the doorway.
Before his beam had done a full sweep, he already knew she wasn’t there.
“Ahmare!”
26
AHMARE FOUGHT AGAINST HER captor with everything she had, twisting and kicking, punching—she would have brought her fangs to the party, but the sack over her head robbed her of that. Grunts, like she was taxing the male who was dragging her through a tight space, got louder.
And then he struck her hard on the side of the head and she saw stars, a whole galaxy blooming in the claustrophobic confines of the hood.
Going lax was, at first, not an option but an overwhelming imperative, her legs falling boneless, her arms flopping loose, her mind muddling up. But as the male continued to pull her along, she saved her strength and banked on him getting sloppy with his hold.
There was a pause. Then an air lock, like they were going through a sealed portal.
Next she was thrown on the ground and something shut.
Breathing. Heavy breathing, not hers. And illumination. Through the thick hood, she could sense a light source.
When he grabbed her again, taking one of her wrists, she let loose with an attack, knowing damn well he was going to tie her up and that could not happen. Flipping around on him, she came alive and kicked up with her boot with such force, she drove the base of her spine into a hard floor and thought she had broken it in two.
But she got a clean hit on him. Had to be on his chest or the abdomen.
The impact sent him flying—he had to be airborne, given how hard he landed—and that crack? She prayed it was his head.
Ahmare moved fast, ripping the hood off and going for one of her knives—except he’d taken her weapons. Somehow, he’d stripped them off her. She must have lost consciousness.
Her eyes were momentarily blinded by the light. When that cleared, she saw a massive male coming at her, rags instead of clothes covering him, streaks of bright white down his long black hair.
He looked like Duran. An emaciated, crazed, older alter ego.
With bared fangs.
Ahmare sprang up on her feet, knowing a ground game was going to be harder for her against his weight. Settling into her thighs, she set her stance. They were in a storage area, all kinds of wooden spindle-backed chairs stacked five and six high, with conference tables lying on their sides. The lights overhead blinked like the ones out in the corridors did, the strobing effect making all movement seem stop-motion.
“My son’s gotten himself a female,” the Dhavos said. “And she is a thief. Or do you think I don’t know what you took from me.”
The Dhavos attacked her head-on, going for her throat with his hands, his arms out straight. With a duck, dodge, and spin, she slipped around behind him and shoved, giving him more momentum, creating a wave he was forced to ride even as he tried to stop himself. He hit a stack of those chairs like a bowling ball, shattering the order, pieces going flying.
He rebounded fast, jumping up on his bare feet, snapping free a chair leg that became a stake. It was some real-life Bram Stoker vampire time as he came at her again, that wooden length with its jagged, pointed end up over his shoulder.
Ahmare did him one better. She grabbed for a chair and put its four legs toward him, holding him off like a lion, redirecting his momentum again, sending him careening off to the side. His balance was bad, likely because he had been surviving on inferior blood—humans, deer—but he was motivated. Crashing into a table, he kept his weapon with him and shot back toward her.
The key was making him engage. He might have been on the thin side, but it was clear where Duran had gotten his muscularity from, and once all that meat got going, his physical strength became a weakness for her to exploit.
This time, as he lunged forth, she jumped out of his way and nailed him across the back with the chair, the force she put into the hit so great, the seat broke away from the top.
Just like the pearl popped out of her sports bra.
Chalen’s beloved fell out the bottom of her windbreaker and hit the bare floor, the flash of iridescence as it ricocheted away catching her eye because she thought the Dhavos had somehow found a knife.
Ahmare dove for the pearl.
The Dhavos jumped to his feet again.
She hit the floor on a slide, her hand outstretched.
And he stabbed her.
27
DURAN KNEW A FRESH kind of terror—which was saying a fuck of a lot—as he frantically spun his flashlight around the yes-it’s-really-empty bedroom.
She wouldn’t have left him. He knew that down to his soul. There was no way Ahmare would have taken the pearl and run without saying anything to him. And then he thought of the light that had come on in the antechamber—
His father. His father had turned the switch, created the distraction . . . and must have come through a hidden passageway to take her without a sound.
“Ahmare!” Duran screamed.
He picked up the first thing he came to—a bureau—and threw it across the bedroom, the wood shattering as it gouged one of the garden murals. As he yelled her name again, he wanted to trash the place, rip the drapes down, tear the bed apart, break the mirrors.
Duran forced the rage to the back of his mind because it wasn’t going to help him find his female. Trying to ground himself in logic, he went back to the golden passage in case his father had entered from the rear. No scents. They hadn’t gone that way so there had to be a secret access point. Focusing on the wall behind where Ahmare had been standing, he looked for a seam . . . a scratch on the floor . . . a . . .
In the mural she had been checking out right before the light had come on, there wa
s a door depicted off to one side, as if the viewer could go through it to access another part of the fake estate.
Bringing the flashlight close to the wall, he found a faint break that followed the artist’s contours of the portal, an actuality in the midst of the illusion.
Duran backed up. Took three running jumps.
And slammed his body into the “door.”
The access panel gave way, the plaster that covered the wooden supports powdering under the impact, and he caught himself before he face-planted in the passageway beyond.
The scents were unmistakable. More than that, now that he was calming down, he could track Ahmare because he’d fed from her, zeroing in on her as if her body had a beacon attached to it.
She had not only come through here; she was somewhere not far.
Shining his flashlight ahead, he followed the cramped crawl space at a run and found her weapons thirty or forty feet down, the guns and knives scattered as if they had been stripped off her in a hurry. He almost left them. But as urgent as this was, he had no idea what he was going to find, so he tucked the pair of autoloaders into his belt and left the hunting knife and length of chain behind.
As he continued along, heart pounding, palms sweating, half his brain was enraged, the other terrified.
Some forty feet farther down, he came to the end of the passage, and he didn’t waste time. Turning his shoulder into the solid wall, he gave himself a runway, as he had done before, and threw himself at the panel—
Like a sledgehammer hitting a steel plate, instead of breaking through, his body baseballed back, becoming airborne.
Landing on his ass, he skidded over the concrete floor, losing his flashlight, the beam of which settled at a haphazard angle focused on the panel.
Back up on his feet, he gave it a second try. And like the panel was improving its punch, he was thrown even farther, his breath getting knocked out of him as he hit the floor.
Passcode, dummy.
As he caught his breath, he saw in the beam of the flashlight that there was a passcode pad to the left, and he launched himself at it. Entering the digits, he slammed that pound key—
On the far side, he heard with his keen ears the sound of a fight.
This was good. It meant she was alive.
He shoved against the panel. Nothing gave way.
Entering the code again, he banged with his fist so she might hear that he was coming for her—
The lock did not budge. The code he had did not work.
As Ahmare slid belly-down over the floor, she felt the chair leg go into the meat of her shoulder.
The penetration was so deep, her momentum stopped as the wooden stake pinned her in place to the linoleum.
Even through the pain, she stayed focused on the pearl, reaching, straining. Inches, she had only inches—
“Is that all you’re after?” the Dhavos said through heaving breaths. “Chalen’s worthless beloved?”
Thunderous impact. Over on the far wall. Like someone had hit it with their entire body.
Duran, she thought.
There was a sudden hush, as if the father had recognized the son’s presence. And then . . . an inhale. A long, slow inhale.
“Dearest Virgin Scribe,” the Dhavos whispered with reverence.
“I thought you only believed in yourself,” she muttered.
Another impact, so loud she could have sworn Duran was going to come through the plaster.
“No,” Duran’s father said. “Your blood . . . so long it has been for me. A proper feeding . . .”
Pounding now, like Duran was hitting the other side with his fists.
“He’s coming for you,” she vowed grimly. “Let me go, and run for your life. I’ve seen what he’s like when he attacks, and I promise you, you will not live through it.”
The chuckle above her was evil. “I’m not worried. That’s a steel door. He will not make it through—so we have plenty of time here together to get acquainted.”
All at once, the stake was removed and she was freed—from the floor at least. But before she could twist around and get at him, he gripped the back of her neck and pushed down so hard, she thought her face was going to be crushed—
Sucking. On the wound.
The bastard was taking her blood.
Ahmare felt a wave of power come into her, and suddenly, it didn’t matter that he was a male and he was strong and he weighed more than she did. Planting her palms, she did the push-up of all push-ups, lifting her chest and the body on top of her off the floor. So great was her anger at the taking, she got her knees up under them both as well.
And then she let out a roar and threw Duran’s father off her, sending him flying into the stacks of chairs.
She was on him in a heartbeat, attacking with her own fangs, taking a hunk out of the side of his neck—except he didn’t fight her. He went limp and laid himself open, his eyes rapturous as he looked at her, her reaction captivating him in an unholy way.
Yeah, she would cure him of that one.
Ahmare kneed that bastard in the nuts so hard, he sat up like a schoolboy, cupping what she’d nailed, his eyes popping from pain.
She wanted to keep going at him.
But she had to get the beloved.
Stumbling, slipping in her own blood where it had pooled on the floor, she went back to where he’d stabbed her. Where the fuck was it?
She checked over her shoulder. The Dhavos was where she’d left him, curled in and coughing.
Getting down on her hands and knees, she patted around the mess on the floor. It must have been kicked aside. Into the chaos of chairs.
“Goddamn it—”
The crash came from overhead, part of the ceiling breaking free, something enormous dropping through and bringing with it all kinds of ductwork.
Duran landed like a superhero, boots planted, body ready to fight, half of a section of venting falling off his huge shoulder and clanging as it hit the floor.
The sound he made was that of a T. rex, shaking the very foundation of the compound.
Behind him, his father jumped up and disappeared, leaving through a hole in the wall that appeared like a hunting dog summoned, the escape closing up in his wake as if it had never been.
“Your father!” She pointed across the room. “He went through there!”
28
DURAN’S BRAIN TOLD HIM to bolt after his father. Get his revenge. Tear the male up into pieces and eat some of them.
But his body refused to move the instant he caught the scent of Ahmare’s blood in the air. “You’re hurt!”
She dropped down to the ground. Like she had passed out.
“You’re dying—”
“The pearl!” She looked up over her shoulder. “I’m trying to find the beloved! It fell out while we were fighting—”
“He stabbed you!”
They were both yelling in the silence, her while she patted around, him while standing over her. And she became more frantic the more she looked without finding it while he got more enraged.
Duran knelt and captured her hands, bringing her focus to him. With a pounding heart, he measured her pupils, her skin tone, her breathing. “You’re bleeding.”
“I can’t feel anything—”
“You’re in shock—”
“I have to find the pearl!” Her voice vibrated with urgency. “I can’t go back without it. Go after your father!”
Duran looked across the storage area.
A ragged path had been cut in stacks of chairs, like a body had careened through them. Streaks of red painted the floor. There was a trail of blood drops as well, one that ended at the wall.
His father. Escaping.
“Go,” she said urgently. “I’ll find the pearl and get out. You told me how—follow the spokes, not the curved corridors, and I have the code that works. If you go after him now, you can catch him—maybe through the ceiling again?”
He thought of his mother’s bones on that cot,
and the way her skull had seemed to look at him.
“Duran, go—it’s what you came here to do. I’ll be okay.”
His eyes returned to Ahmare. Blood from that shoulder wound was dripping out the bottom of her windbreaker. What the fuck had his father stabbed her with? The hole in that light, waterproof fabric at her shoulder was too big for a dagger.
“I’ll be okay,” she repeated with sudden calm. Along the lines of that being the only outcome she could contemplate.
For as long as he could remember, he had always assumed his life would come down to one moment, one crucial, all-encompassing moment . . . where he plunged a knife into his father’s black heart. Or snapped the male’s neck. Or shot him in the face.
The method of killing didn’t matter, and in his fantasies, it was often different. But that point of no return, when death took his sire unto Dhunhd, that was always going to be Duran’s defining moment, what his life’s toil boiled down to, his seminal event.
It was a shock to realize he’d been wrong about all that.
His defining moment actually came down to whether he helped a female he’d known for barely twenty-four hours . . . or left her to fulfill the destiny he had declared was his own.
It turned out to be no contest.
Duran dropped down beside her. “You search that way, I’ll head over here. We’re not leaving until we find the beloved.”
She hesitated only a moment, but he couldn’t read her expression. He was too busy patting around on the pale linoleum, trying to find a pearl that was almost the exact color of the flooring, in a room where there was debris all around and blinking fluorescent lights overhead.
He didn’t think about his father. There would be time for that later.
Right now, he cared only about the pearl. Only what Ahmare needed to get her brother free.
Sweeping his vision from left to right, using his hands to feel around, he moved fast but with care, searching . . . searching . . . searching. When he came to a tossed wooden chair, he picked it up and put it behind himself. And then he arrived at a hole in the floor.