Revelation

by Rye Brewer

  She might already be too far gone.

  I clenched my teeth against the roar that threatened to escape. I wouldn’t give that sadistic bastard and his friends the satisfaction of hearing me scream.

  Instead, I whispered. “Cari? Can you hear me?”

  She didn’t move. Her breathing didn’t even change.

  I gripped the metal bars tight enough to hurt. She was going to die and I was going to have to watch, unable to help or even touch her.

  Think. Think.

  The cage was on wheels. I threw myself against the bars and it moved—maybe an inch, but it did move.

  I threw myself against them again.

  And again.

  Until my arms screamed for mercy and my bones rattled every time I hit the cold steel. I didn’t notice it at first, because I was unable to keep my eyes off her even as hot tears rolled down my cheeks. Tears. I was shedding tears for her. Me. A vampire.

  It was because I was unable to ignore the way her chest rose less and less, slower and slower, shallower every passing minute. She didn’t have long.

  “It’s my fault!” I grunted as I hit the bars. “I should’ve stopped this!” I hit the bars again. “I killed her!” Another hit, until I was just next to the bed she was in.

  I could barely lift my arm to slide it through the bars, but I managed. I wanted to stroke her hair and wash the blood off her body. I wanted to cover her and give her a little dignity. I wanted to hold her and give her a little comfort as she died.

  Instead, I took her cold, limp hand in mine and wished I could rub warmth back into it. I would do anything to save her life. She deserved to live.

  “I’m so sorry,” I groaned. “Cari, please, believe how sorry I am. I didn’t know it would come to this. It was all my fault this happened and my fault for underestimating them and only thinking about myself and hell—please, don’t leave me. Please. Stay. Stay with me, Cari.” I squeezed her hand as tight as I dared, but she didn’t flinch.

  She barely breathed.

  “Remember our walk? Remember the things we talked about? I’m sorry that I wasn’t honest with you.” I watched her face as I spoke, looking for any hint of reaction. “Maybe if I had been forthright, you wouldn’t have gone back to that club. Why didn’t I just tell you? I guess I was sure you wouldn’t believe me—and you probably wouldn’t have, because it would’ve sounded crazy. Why would you have believed that? You didn’t even know me.” I stroked her hand, then locked my fingers through hers the way I had that night. “Maybe you did know me. Maybe you knew me right away. I felt like I knew you, for sure. I wanted you too much. I was scared. I ran away and I’ll never, ever forgive myself. Oh, please, Cari, please…” I closed my eyes and let my head fall forward. I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t live in a world she wasn’t in—even if we weren’t together, just knowing she was out there making things better just by breathing the air would be enough.

  I could—

  I could—

  I could let her drink from me.

  The idea dawned on me slowly.

  It was dangerous, beyond dangerous. If I turned her, it was all over.

  One of the League’s highest laws forbade us from turning humans into vampires. They wouldn’t care that I was watching an innocent girl die. That she had gone through so much unspeakable pain and humiliation, that she deserved to live. That I couldn’t live without her.

  She would be on their Most Wanted List anyway, surely hunted. Certainly killed if they caught her. Would I only be prolonging the inevitable if I turned her? And what about me? I couldn’t imagine the punishment they would hand down for turning her. I’d probably be killed, too.

  Her breathing became worse. There was no way that could last much longer.

  I didn’t have much time to make up my mind. If I could get her to drink my blood before she died, she would heal. I would save her. She wouldn’t die.

  If she died after drinking, though, she would turn. I couldn’t wait. She was getting closer to death with every labored breath. I hoped it wasn’t already too late.

  As I slashed my wrist, I remembered my own turning. How my body had changed, how terrifying the whole thing was even though my father guided me through it. Or tried to.

  A brand-new vampire was almost uncontrollable. The strength that had coursed through me then was the scariest of all. I was powerful for the first time in my life, almost supernatural. She would be like that. If she turned.

  I bit into my wrist and broke the skin. Blood started to flow. I held my arm out, through the bars, over her mouth. “Come on,” I urged as the blood dripped onto her slightly parted lips. “Drink, damn it. Drink. Drink before it’s too late, Cari. Please. Hear me!”

  She didn’t move. Her chest was barely moving.

  My eyes darted back and forth between her practically motionless chest and her mouth, where my blood flowed. Her lips didn’t move. I couldn’t tell if she was drinking or not.

  No, she couldn’t be, or she would’ve started healing instantly.

  “Cari!” I shouted. I had to wake her up. “Cari, please! Try! Drink! You have to drink!”

  Tears were flowing down my cheeks again, tears of blood to match the blood flowing from me to her. I sobbed brokenly as I held my wrist over her mouth, pleading with her. I watched her chest, willing it to keep moving, keep rising and falling, keep her alive.

  Until it stopped. Until she died.

  “No!” I roared. I watched, hoping something would happen, some miracle.

  Nothing.

  She was gone.

  It was too late. I waited too damned long.

  She was dead because of me. I couldn’t even save her. I slammed my head against the bars, my entire body, screaming and raging and weeping brokenly as her lifeless body condemned me for being such a heartless coward.

  That couldn’t last forever. I sank to my knees out of exhaustion, holding my head in my hands.

  I never knew real pain until that moment. Not even when we lost Mom and Dad. That was nothing compared to watching Cari die.

  I wanted to die with her.

  At that moment, I heard a gasp.

  I looked up to find her eyes open wide, staring up at the ceiling.

  Her blood-tinged eyes.

  5

  Philippa

  I was still reeling. Jonah telling me that Vance had killed his father... No, not Vance. Valerius, in Vance’s body. And now he was under arrest and being held. I may have been reeling, but that didn’t mean I was frozen with inaction.

  If there was one thing I was known for—at least, one thing I was willing to admit I was known for—impulsiveness would have to be it.

  I had never been one to wait when taking actions was an option. All too often, I moved ahead without a plan in place and trusted that things would work themselves out as I went along.

  I didn’t think of it as a character flaw, though I knew my brothers did. Especially Jonah. So, I knew, when I pushed my way out of the vault, he’d either try to stop me or roll his eyes and chalk up my actions to just another example of impulse taking over for sense.

  But it wasn’t pure impulse, not really. He didn’t know what it was like to sit for hours, staring at a dead-but-not-dead body and think. So much thinking.

  Enough so that I’d already gone down every possible road in my head, planning what I would do if this happened. If that happened. If he or she said or did this. If one of my family members were caught in the middle. If, if, if.

  You didn’t plan for what you’d do if Valerius killed Lucian, the nagging voice of doubt reminded me as I coursed my way to League Headquarters.

  I had traveled there more in the last months than I had in my whole life, combined. When Vance and I were together, I had always nagged him to spend time in the city with me instead of out there. Near his father’s mansion. Even then, it was like I knew something was wrong. I’d known Lucian my whole, long life, and I had felt there was something off with him no matter how many h
oops he’d jumped through to prove it wasn’t so.

  I wished I’d done a little more listening to my instincts back when it counted. Things could’ve been different, or so I told myself. Maybe it was easier to blame myself, to think there was something I would’ve been able to change, than to admit there were too many forces at work which were out of my control.

  What could I have changed? I had no way of knowing Valerius was waiting in that underground tomb. I had no knowledge of his age-old grudge against Lucian. I didn’t even know what Lucian did to my family until fairly recently. What were my instincts supposed to do?

  Still, I couldn’t stomach the idea that things were out of my hands and always had been.

  I wished I could stop thinking, thinking, thinking. I wished the trip to headquarters was shorter so there wouldn’t be enough time to blame myself. I wished I could figure out how to free Vance, instead, since blaming myself for allowing such a terrible thing to happen wasn’t going to do it.

  It was a relief when the spires of the old cathedral came into view, and I didn’t slow down until I was almost on top of the building.

  Funny, but the energy wrapping itself around the building had changed. Or maybe it wasn’t quite so funny. I had never known the League of Vampires without Lucian as its head, so I had never felt any other energy, or presence, or whatever it was, encasing the cathedral. I had never given any thought to its existence until it was gone. Because Lucian was gone.

  A world without Lucian in it. The idea seemed laughable.

  I craned my neck to look up at the towering spires and the glowing, vaulted windows. It all looked the same, but it may as well have been on another planet. There was something off. It looked the same, but it would never be the same again. And that was a good thing. It meant Lucian was no more, and that was the best thing I could imagine.

  Almost the best thing I could imagine. There was one much bigger thing. I only had to figure out how to manage it.

  It was with that in mind that I stepped in through the double doors.

  Immediately, three guards were on me.

  “Do I look as though I’m here to hurt somebody?” I asked, glaring at each of them in turn.

  I recognized them as Lucian’s personal guards. They had to feel pretty low, knowing they had left him open to the attack. Even so, it didn’t give them an excuse for jumping down my throat, as far as I was concerned.

  “Looks can deceive,” one of them snarled.

  I would allow that. Looks were deceiving. As far as they knew, Lucian had been murdered by his own son.

  “I’ll grant you, but I’m not here to do any harm. I want to see Vance.” His name stuck in my throat.

  What would they think if they knew who they were really holding in one of the cells deep underground?

  “Why should we allow you to visit a prisoner?”

  “Because I’m asking you to. This is me, asking.” I stood with hands planted on my hips, and my blood pressure rose steadily the longer they tried to stall me. “I can demand, if you would rather. Especially considering the fact that my brother is interim leader in place of Lucian. A quick phone call is all it’ll take.”

  The three of them look confused. Torn between their long-standing loyalty to Lucian and the loyalty they needed to show Jonah.

  There was no room in my heart for pity. “Come on. I don’t have all night. And I want to see him alone,” I added at the last second. Why not keep pushing while they were teetering back and forth?

  “Impossible.”

  “Are you sure?” I slid my phone out of my pocket and held it up, finger poised over the screen. “A quick phone call.”

  Moments later, two of them led me down the long, winding stone staircase which led to the dungeons. A cathedral with dungeons. One of Lucian’s additions after the League took over the property. The sort of touch only he would think to add.

  The air turned dank, filled with a scent I could only describe as wet. The smell of centuries of rainwater working its way through the stones which made up the underground levels. Mold, too.

  Torches lined the wall at regular intervals. The skittering of tiny rodent feet was somehow louder than the beating of my heart, which was saying something considering the way it thumped like a bass drum with every step I took. This was definitely a different area than the one that Allonic had been held in.

  Who would I find down there? What would he say?

  We reached the cells, which looked like something out of one of those medieval theme park restaurant places. Rusty iron bars, impossibly thick webs full of what I didn’t even want to imagine, dark red stains on the walls inside the cells which I decided not to consider the origin of. There were so many cells, too. How many did Lucian imprison down here? Then I wondered if he was even the one that had this area built. Did it predate his leadership? If so, how many did the leaders before him imprison?

  I waited in one of the empty ones, standing in the center with my arms wrapped around me to keep from accidentally touching anything. Just the thought made my skin crawl. And Vance was in a cell like this one, when he didn’t deserve it. The thought almost made me choke on my tears.

  And there he was. Dirt streaked his face and clothes and caked under his nails. He hardly even looked like himself. I couldn’t read his eyes. Who was he? I could barely breathe, waiting to find out. His face was a blank page.

  Until we were alone.

  Once the guards were gone, a slow, knowing smile spread across his face.

  My heart dropped. “It’s you,” I whispered.

  “Depends on who you mean by me.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Perhaps I do.” He shrugged. “Well? Don’t I get a little appreciation for what I did?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing’s that black-and-white.”

  “It seems that way from where I’m standing.” He spread his hands as far apart as the shackles on his wrists would allow. “He was nothing but a plague on your family. He specialized in making you miserable. I would appreciate a little gratitude instead of the look on your face.”

  “Why would you kill him publicly like that? It’s the one thing I don’t understand.”

  “You know why it was so important for me to end his miserable existence,” he snarled.

  “Yes, but why do it in front of everybody? You had to know it would end here, in the dungeon. Chained up. For somebody so ancient, you didn’t put much thought into your methods.”

  His features twisted into a snarl. “Don’t tell me how to conduct business, girl.”

  I winced inside. Making him angry wouldn’t help anything, especially since we had business to conduct. “Well, you’ve done what you set out to do. I have to hand it to you. You know how to make a splash.”

  “Thank you.” He tipped his head in acknowledgment.

  “Now that you’re finished, and Lucian is dead, you can release Vance.”

  One corner of his mouth curled up in a smile. “I was waiting for that.”

  I bristled but did my best to hide it. “So? Why are you still in his body?”

  “Because I’m nowhere near my actual body, naturally.” He tilted his head to one side. “Do you think I can float around, aimless, body-less?”

  “I have to admit, I hadn’t thought much about it at all,” I snarled through gritted teeth.

  The body was still safe in the vault, which was a relief, but how was I supposed to get him back to it when he was imprisoned?

  “Now that Lucian is no longer breathing, I have a new goal: recovering my own body and reuniting with my love.”

  I fought to keep a grimace from my face. His love, Nivia. My mom. All the same person. The two of them were intertwined in my head. Mom’s sweet, loving smile. Nivia’s cold, ruthless spirit.

  My stomach turned. “Where is she? Do you know?”

  He nodded. “She’s on the hunt for her body as well. While this body is… adequate,” he observed, looking down at himself, “it’s not th
e same as inhabiting my own. She feels the same way.”

  The memory of those few short moments with Vance, when Valerius had let him come to the surface, flashed through my mind.

  If Vance was still in there, was my mother in her body as well? What would happen when Nivia found her original body and inhabited it again? Would I get my mother back?

  “There’s something else I need, as well,” he continued, and his voice deepened with anger. “My bone dagger.”

  “Noted.” I blinked. “What bone dagger?”

  “The one I used to kill Lucian.”

  “All right. I’ll make a note of that. You want your dagger back.” Like that had anything to do with me.

  “You’d better, because you’re going to have to get it for me.”

  “Excuse me? And I would do that why?”

  He bared his teeth. How could he look so much like Vance and so little like him all at once? “Because if I don’t get it back, you won’t get Vance back. It seems pretty simple to me.”

  Of course. Just one more hurdle to overcome. “What’s so important about it?”

  “It’s what I used to kill Lucian. I would think that alone would be reason enough.”

  “You want it as a souvenir?” I asked, one eyebrow cocked.

  “I want it because it’s obviously a powerful weapon,” he snapped, eyes blazing.

  How many times had I stared into those eyes when they looked at me with something like love?

  “It can do to any magical creature what it did to Lucian.”

  “All right. I get it. What do you want me to do about it, though? I wasn’t even here when you used it. I have no idea what happened to it.”

  “I know exactly where it is,” he snarled, and his lip curled up like he was talking about something truly disgusting. “That white-haired fae bitch took it.”

  Anissa. I should’ve known. One more obstacle, and she was the one who’d set it up for me. My brother wondered why I had a problem with her—case in point. She couldn’t mind her own damn business. Sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong, filching things she had no business touching.