She fell back, fell back into Jason’s arms, eyes already closed, arms cradled over the womb that had once carried their child.
Nothing.
I felt nothing.
While my Master wept over the loss of his lover, I felt nothing but a very distinct chill that seemed to come from the very core of my body.
And when his eyes, wide and frightening, fell on me, I could do nothing.
“Why?” he mouthed, silvery trails of moisture making their way down his lean cheeks. “Why did you kill her?”
“Because you asked this of me,” I said quietly. “Because I am your Ailward and any and all threat must go through me.”
Tears spilled free from those onyx black eyes. “She was not going to kill me!”
I wished I could have felt something, anything, but there were no emotions I could dredge.
“She made herself a threat.”
He threw back his head and howled, his lover already turning into dust in his arms.
I stared at the glint of metal in her right hand, the small dagger that had brought Lazaro into Death’s embrace.
She had meant to kill.
Perhaps not Jason, but someone.
I bent down and took it from the rapidly flaking hand already smelling like acrid smoke and ashes. “You see this?”
For one moment, I thought he would kill me. Ah, and wouldn’t that had been just ironic?
“I see.”
“She wanted someone to die,” I said. “She wanted someone to hurt. Do not ever question my actions. I am your Ailward. Your life, your very existences lies in my hands.”
He was speechless.
Had anyone ever spoken to him like that?
“Don’t fuck with me.” Was this my voice? Did I really sound so heartless, so empty, so...void of life? “I mean it, Jason. Don’t you ever fuck with me. Or Ailward or no, I will hunt you. And I’ll kill you.”
The male vampire Shannon sought to protect groveled on the floor and Matthias shoved his face into the floor. “Ailward. What do you plan on doing with this piece of filth?”
I looked at Jason weeping over his ex-fiance. “Kill him.”
I sheathed my sword and left.
15
Ryder did not catch up with me until I was outside, headed for a car that looked like his. Then again, all the cars looked alike. Either that, or I just couldn’t remember.
“Hey! Wait! Where you going?”
Somewhere. Anywhere. I didn’t care.
As long as it wasn’t there.
As long as I didn’t have to look at Jason’s face anymore. As long as I didn’t have to hear the sounds of his cries. As long as I didn’t have to feel the raptured gaze of every vampire there, as hungry for the sight for spilled blood as they would be to taste it.
He put a hand on my shoulder and I pulled away quickly. “Don’t touch me. I mean it.”
Blond hair mussed, his eyes wide and confused, it was hard to remember he was an enemy, a creature who was, the lack of a better word, dead.
He wasn’t human.
He was dead.
Why was I having trouble trying to remember this? “What do you want?”
He was quiet for a moment, just watching me from those crisp blue eyes. “Wow. You really are everything they say you are, aren’t you? You have absolutely no remorse.”
For whatever reason, he made me sound worse than a child molester. “She threw herself at Jason. I merely did my duty. I protected him.”
He leaned on the car, and let out a low breath, eyes still on me. “You sure did that thing. Now the Committee knows you two aren’t lovers.”
“Shouldn’t have lied for us, then.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” he said. “Although, I guess it’s not your fault. Shannon...wow, she really lost her cool back there. I thought she and Paul were way over. I didn’t expect her to react like that.”
“I don’t think anyone expected her to react in such a way,” I said dryly and shivered in the wake of a brisk breeze that felt like it could shoot ice straight through my body.
The moonlight turned Ryder’s hair almost white and when he turned his gaze upward, I was relieved.
“Vincent is making excuses. Said something about how you two were lovers. Made it sound like a jealous lovers spat and how you were just looking for an excuse to do away with her.”
Jealous.
The very word froze me.
Jealous.
I pressed a fist to my mouth, still seeing Jason’s accusing eyes in my mind. “Is that what you think? Do you think I was jealous of her?”
“I don’t know.” I hated the look in his eyes, as though he could see everything in my mind, in my heart. “Are you?”
I shook my head. “Why should I be jealous for her? She’s dead.”
“He loved her,” he said simply.
I stared at the full moon, hanging low in the sky, impossibly large and for a moment, just one moment I thought I could reach out and pluck it out of the sky. Fanciful thought, although it was a pretty one. “It had to be done. She wanted to hurt him. I only did my duty. They won’t kill him, will they?”
A glimmer of a smile played around the curve of his lips. “Not yet. Noir’s shown interest in your Master. That’s always good. If anyone had Jason on their kill list, they’ll think twice about trying to finish him off now. If he was killed while under Noir’s protection, there’s going to be hell to pay. Noir might look meek and mild, but Vincent respects him. I think Vincent’s even a bit scared of him.”
An interesting bit of information, and one I stored away for future use. “So, he’s safe.”
“For now.”
As Jason’s Ailward, it was my duty to stand by his side and protect him from all harm. But what if he no longer wanted me, no longer needed my sword?
Still, through strange circumstances, somehow we had gotten close to Noir. We had infiltrated his House.
Surely, surely, that was something to be proud of, something to be lauded.
The Fellowship would be pleased.
The plan would go forward as planned.
Ryder scuffed the hard, frozen ground with a booted foot. “So…what should we do?”
What should we do, indeed. “The most prudent thing would be to wait for Jason to come out. For what it’s worth, I must protect him.”
He winced. “Yikes. Maybe right now, you should really just leave him alone. No offense, but you just offed his ex-fiance. Something like that…you’ve got to give a guy some time to recover. Look, Vincent’s helping him right now, believe it or not. And besides, he’s under Noir’s wing. Now that we’ve got him, they’re not going to let him go so easily.”
The last sentence brought me up short. “What…what do you mean?”
“Are you worried?”
I saw no point in lying. “You make it sound like we should be trying to run away.”
The blond vampire shrugged. “The Council hasn’t seen a Sanguinate in such a long time, nor one who was actually coherent and not some raging beast. They’ll take this time to study him…find out what factors goes into the formation of such a thing.”
“Are they going to experiment on him?” I asked, startled. “There was no word of such things.”
Ryder’s eyes widened and he put his hands up as if to assuage me. “Hey, hey, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like they’re going to hook him up to a bunch of machines and perform a lobotomy. They’re just going to do some blood tests. Maybe run a few tests. That’s all. Think of it like humans getting a physical.”
I eyed him. “And what would you know about humans getting a physical?”
His smile was lascivious. “I’ve dated humans before.”
I had the feeling that his idea of “dating” varied wildly from mine, but declined to make any other comments about that. “They will not harm him?”
He put a hand over his heart, and under the moonlight, he looked innocent, untouched from all the evil and blood that seemed
to taint every vampire I had ever hunted. It was surprising, no, strangely encouraging. “Scout’s honor. I promise,” he said and then winked broadly. “I’m telling you. We’re not all bad as you think.”
We’re not all bad as you think.
For some reason, his words felt like a bucket of ice water thrown over my head.
“Before Jason, I used to hunt things like you,” I said, the memory even now making me feel vaguely uneasy, ill. “About three years ago, there was a vampire. Not that old. Maybe twenty, thirty years old. He seemed to have a liking for little boys. He was responsible for six missing boys all from Centennial City before I was given orders to dispatch him. The human police couldn’t do anything. They came to the Fellowship and the Elders came to me.”
Ryder’s mouth tightened and he took a step away from me, hands behind his back. “Sounds like Pike.”
Even now, I could smell the thick blood splashed across the bedsheets, see the open eyes that would see no more, and I felt my gorge rise. Back then, I was still fairly young, fairly innocent and made a mess in the bathroom before Adrian found me and slapped me back together, literally.
“He was going to hit another house, something he’s never done before, and I practically ran into him when he jumped a fence,” I said, watching Ryder’s emotionless face, wondering what was going on behind those clear blue eyes. “I thought I’d lost him. I really thought I’d lost him, but he almost knocked me over and he saw the sword in my hand. You know what I did?”
The vampire shook his head wordlessly and I saw a tiny gem, the same color as his eyes, glint in one lobe.
“I laughed. I laughed because I was so relieved. I thought another child would die before we could get the chance to kill the son of a bitch, but there he was, right in front of me, covered in blood, the blood already drying in his hands.” I drew in a deep breath and shoved my hands into my pockets. For some reason, I couldn’t continue looking at Ryder. “I killed him. It doesn’t happen that frequently, but I took the head right off his skinny little shoulders. Everything happened so quickly. When the cops came, they found me with his head, my fingers tangled in his hair.”
He nodded slowly, carefully. “He went rogue. We did what we could, but in the end, we heard a hunter found him. I heard Vincent sent the mayor Pike’s master’s head in a box as an apology.”
I snorted. “Yes. Because I can see how that would make up for the seven families without their sons.”
His eyes grew shuttered. “You think I don’t feel bad, Ran? You think we’re all monsters, don’t you?”
“You’re all dead,” I said baldly, without any fear. Hard to feel fear for someone who looked like the next teenybopper idol. Hard to feel fear for someone I felt strangely attracted to.
“Really?” he said and sauntered towards me, a small smile on those crimson lips. He ran a hand through his silky blond hair and I knew what he was trying to do. “That’s funny. I don’t feel…what’s the word you used? Oh, yeah. Dead. I don’t feel very dead, Ran.”
Had I been anyone else, I think I might have started to weep tears of joy at this beauty coming closer and closer, but I had seen the horror behind the loveliness. I had seen the violence and blood. “I said you’re dead. I didn’t say you were ugly.”
The smile widened. “So you don’t think I’m ugly?”
Two could play at this game. “You’re beautiful. I’m not blind, Ryder.”
He sucked in a breath, biting his lower lip and for a moment, one strange, utterly exhilarating moment, I thought he was going to strip right there, in the middle of all this snow and shadows. “You think I’m beautiful? Do you really think I’m beautiful?”
I nodded, momentarily completely lost of all words, lots of all thought.
He was close, close enough to touch. If only I reached out a hand…
I didn’t.
But he did.
Fingertips ran down my face, surprisingly gentle, almost like the tickle of butterfly wings against my skin. Here, underneath this bright moonlight, his beauty seemed almost unreal, as if when the night vanished, so too would he.
“I know you don’t like to be touched,” he said softly, voice low and slightly harsh. “If you want me to go away, I’ll go away. Just say it, Ran. Just say it, and I’ll leave you alone.”
My throat felt impossibly tight and I tried to swallow a lump keeping down the words I needed to say.
This close to him, it was easier to appreciate the clean, natural beauty of the features better belonging on a Raphael sculpture. I couldn’t have stepped away, not for anything, and that in itself was damn frightening.
I could smell a clean, fresh scent, almost perfectly covering up that metallic scent that surrounds vampires like an invisible mantle. “I’m going to step back, Ryder.”
Something flashed in his eyes. Regret? Shame? “I understand.”
I was glad someone understood.
His hand stayed in the air for just a moment, touching nothing and then he let it drop slowly, almost deliberately, as if for effect.
Someone called out for him from entrance of the house, but he didn’t move. His gaze never left mine and I could not have looked away for anything. He could have slipped a knife into my stomach and I would have been powerless.
But something like that works both ways.
There was no smile on his face, on his lips, in his eyes. Calm and yet strangely intense, savage, he watched me with eyes of a predator.
Was this truly the laughing, smiling vampire?
Or was Ryder really this quiet, this unrelenting?
Which was the real one?
And why did it matter so much? “Vincent needs you.”
Slowly, he nodded, and the spell broke. Whatever ensnared the both of us vanished like fog before the morning sun and he nodded again, this time quicker, more sure. “Jason needs you.”
I shook my head. “I doubt that. Not now.”
A hint of his familiar smile flickered. “I hate going to work when you don’t have to.”
“You’re not an Ailward,” I pointed out.
“And thank the saints I’m not,” he said, this time smiling widely. “No offense, but all you Ailwards are just boring sons of bitches.”
“I’m not a son.”
He began walking towards the house, but spared me a quick glance. “No, you’re better.”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
***
The car ride was quiet.
Jason sat in the front seat, eyes set forward. He had not spoken to me, hadn’t even so much as looked at me since Vincent escorted him down the stairs of that giant mansion.
He needed time. I understood that.
Vincent sat next to me, conversing quietly with Ryder about the current events, both human and otherwise. An utterly engrossing conversation, if I had the interest, but I was too focused on Jason, too aware of his presence.
“I will need to stop by my house in Camden,” he said once we hit the highway. “I would like to pick up my belongings.”
“There is no need,” said Vincent. “All of that will be arranged for you. We’ll take you to Noir. He lives in the outskirts of Centennial. He will have rooms prepared for you and your…Ailward.”
I had half-expected Jason to say I was not his protector, but he merely nodded and turned back to the road and the rapidly disappearing miles.
This late, there were almost no cars and we arrived in front of a large, brick house with dark windows extending to both sides of the white double doors. The property sat nestled at the edge of the Centennial Nature Conservation Reserve which was about a hundred square miles of forest filled with all sorts of wildlife, deer and wolf being the most plentiful. The last house we passed was a farmhouse about a mile back and when I stepped into the crisp air, only then did it occur to me just how remote the location was.
Perfect for a vampire lord.
How fitting.
Now, my job had become remarkably easy. Easy in t
hat I now gained entrance into Noir’s home. But the crux still laid in how I was to dispatch one of the four Vampire Lords of Centennial City.
As Adrian would have said, Good luck, Chuck. You’re going to fucking need it.
Vincent took Jason’s spot in the passenger seat. Clearly, he did not intend on staying for any longer than he had to.
“Ran.”
I nodded.
His brows furrowed downward. Had he been human, it would have left him looking permanently aged, but he was a vampire. He was perfection made to mimic the human form. “You will keep him safe.”
For the lack of anything else I do, I nodded again.
“Good,” he said and then paused. “He is under Noir’s protection, but there are many of us who are still…antiquated. The birth of something like Jason was generally at the beginning of any revolution, any great coup to the current vampiric power system. Noir has vouched for him, but that might not be enough to spare his life and keep him completely safe. It will be your duty to keep him…from harm.” He shook his head. “I still don’t know what it is that he has over you, why you have chosen to protect someone like him, when it seems the exact opposite of everything you have ever stood for. It’s not love. It can’t be for money.”
This time, I shook my head. “That is between Jason and myself.”
His green eyes hardened and unconsciously, I took a step back. “We’ll be watching.”
I was glad I wasn’t born with a sarcastic nature. If I had, I didn’t think I would have survived for so long. “You do that.”
Ryder shot me a salute through the pristine windows and they drove away, leaving me with a man who would no longer talk to me.
Not that it mattered, not terribly much.
And perhaps it was even better that way.
I counted fifteen windows on each sides of the building, three sets for each floor, but could not even start to fathom a guess about the insides or the back.
Still, I was here. This much closer to fulfilling my orders and then getting out of here, and getting away from these...monsters.
Invincible (A Centennial City Novel) Page 19