Savior (Starlight Book 4)

by D. N. Hoxa

  The sound of Samayan’s laugh took me by surprise. Men like that, or vampires rather, did not look like they ever laughed in their lives. Not even when they got their first puppy, if that were the case with him. But he finally showed me his face, nothing but a reflection on all four sides of me.

  I’m not too proud to admit I was wrong. Having Samayan’s huge face everywhere I looked, fangs extended and eyes silver, made me a whole lot more uncomfortable than just hearing his voice.

  “I was told I was very funny,” I said dryly, no longer having the energy to pretend.

  “My dear Raven, you are more like me than anyone I’ve ever met in my centuries of life. You almost make me proud.”

  Ugh. A blow to the gut would have been much easier to handle.

  “I am nothing like you,” I hissed as shivers ran down my body and my hands pulled up in fists. The truth was, he wasn’t too far off with his statement. I remembered. Oh, I remembered well how my mind worked when his red potion coursed through my veins after he kidnapped me. Nothing but a power hungry monster lived inside my head and chest. Everything like the vampire whose face surrounded me on all sides.

  “Let’s play with our cards up, shall we? We both know you like a good game.”

  His eyes slowly lost the silver and turned into two soul-sucking, black orbs. I couldn’t decide which version of him freaked me out more.

  “Tell yourself whatever you want, Samayan, but I’m not a monster. I haven’t spent centuries manipulating an entire world, killing for convenience and sucking power out of other people’s bodies.”

  My voice rose, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “But you would, wouldn’t you? When I showed you what you could become, all the power you could possess, you were ready and willing to become like me. Even worse,” he whispered, raising a brow.

  My breath caught in my throat. “I would never—”

  “I recall what you said with perfect clarity, Raven. ‘What makes you think I want to share,’ was what you said to me.”

  My mouth opened, but no words came out for the longest second. Those had been the exact words I’d said to him while he held me in captivity in Alcatraz.

  “Nothing unexpected. After all, given the power, every man, woman and child would be in my shoes this day. But I must admit, it was pretty shocking to realize that you’re so ready to throw it all away.”

  “I’m not throwing anything away. Whatever you gave me, whatever I was while on it, that was not me. It’s just a version of me that will never have control over my body and mind again, I promise you that. I’m going to fight you, Samayan, and I’m going to defeat you. And when the world tries to make others like you, I will fight and defeat them, too. The people deserve—”

  “The people deserve what they are willing and strong enough to take and defend. Nothing more, nothing less,” he cut me off.

  With a sigh, I allowed myself to smile. This was going to get me nowhere, fast. Time was wasting, and I needed to rest. So I cut right to the chase.

  “What do you want, Samayan? Can’t imagine that you missed me. Why create all of this”—I waved my arms around the glass and mirror room—“to come see me when you know this conversation isn’t going to go anywhere close to how you want it?”

  He pressed his lips and thought for a second. “I haven’t given up on you yet, Raven. I’m wise enough to know I need you, and you should be wise enough to realize you need me, too.”

  This time I laughed. “Oh, I know that you need me, Samayan. I know why you gave me your stupid potion in the first place, but know this—you will never perform the Binding Ceremony with me. You will never have my powers. You will never read Illyon as long as I’m still breathing.”

  Big words I was speaking, but in those seconds, I believed them wholeheartedly. I was doing the right thing. I was fighting for a better world. Not Samayan, and not even the Elders were going to corrupt and fool me. I’d been made a fool enough to last me three lifetimes.

  “But to hear you say that I need you? I’m not sure if you’re joking, or you really are fucked up in the head.”

  Samayan no longer smiled.

  “You’re playing with fire, Raven. You have no idea about the extent of my being.”

  “Good thing I’m an Elemental. Fire doesn’t burn me.”

  “And that is your mistake. You take things too literally, and nothing is ever what it seems.”

  “On the contrary. People make things a lot more complicated than they need to be. I’ve declared my position in this war you’ve been brewing. I’m going to play with anything I can get my hands on to win, and I am not alone.”

  I had some of his army, too, or the armies of his own people, without even mentioning the RR.

  Samayan showed me his perfectly even teeth again. “That, you are not. Another mistake of yours is that you trust too much.”

  “I imagine you don’t have a lot of people you can trust. That’s your mistake.”

  “Tell me, how can you be so certain that everyone is who they say they are? How can you know that somebody from your own side won’t betray you?”

  Shivers up and down my bodies again. “Because these people aren’t your people, Samayan. They’re true to their words. They would never betray me. They would never betray their own people.”

  A cheeky grin took over his entire face and I saw every detail. “Why don’t you let me prove you wrong?”

  When I woke up, it was already morning, and I was screwed.

  11

  ——————————

  My head pounded like a drum, and it wasn’t a pleasant melody. I was on my bed, still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, my hair a tangled mess. I barely managed to blink the blur of the morning away to check the small clock on my nightstand. Barely nine a.m.—I’d apparently slept like the dead.

  Before a sigh of relief could escape me, I remembered the glass and mirror room I’d been in the night before. I remembered the image of Samayan’s face, huge and on all four sides of me. I also recalled everything he said, including his last words, and shivers washed through my body. I dragged myself over to the tiny bathroom, the vampire’s voice making a mess of my thoughts. I hated that guy so much. He could get to me like no other. He could plant ideas in my head with too much ease. Maybe he was really right. Maybe I was like him, more so than I realized.

  A look in the small mirror above my sink and I almost flinched. I looked like shit. My skin was so pale, it looked white, my black eyes a scary contrast. My hair…not even going there. I needed a shower. I was going to have a long one when I realized something wasn’t exactly right.

  I stopped moving, even breathing, and I listened. No strange sound reached my ears. No smell, either. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary around me, but the weird feeling on my chest wouldn’t go away. SO I turned my senses on and I felt. A few seconds later, I could feel almost every supernatural in the Base, those that slept there, and those that were only passersby.

  Yes, I felt every supernatural down there, except one: me.

  My knees shook as both my hands gripped at my throat and felt for a chain. My fingers found one. One. Not two.

  Terrified, my eyes moved to the mirror from my hair and down to my chest. Grandmother’s flower-shaped, protective necklace was the only thing that graced my neck.

  Illyon was not there.

  Panic shot through my nerves faster than fire to a curtain. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t feel. My body was in shock as I frantically searched with my eyes and hands for the sun-shaped necklace that had been there the night before. Every night before. I stripped completely naked and searched myself, and when I found nothing, I searched my bed. My closet. The whole room, inch by inch.

  No luck. There was no sign of my golden necklace. There was no sign of Illyon, and if I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, my feelings confirmed it. I’d always felt Illyon, not just when it touched my skin, but I felt its energy as well. It was connected to mine. I
t was too powerful to miss.

  That energy was gone. All of it.

  I put a robe on and ran for the door, opened it and walked out in the hallway, mouth and voice ready to shout at the top of my voice.

  But then I stopped.

  Nobody in the Base—or anywhere—knew that I had Illyon, except for Aaron. Nobody knew it could be more than a book. Nobody knew that Illyon wasn’t in Samayan’s hands, or that it had been right there, under their noses, this whole time.

  What would they think now if I suddenly told everyone I’d had it and now I didn’t?

  They’d think the same thing I would have, were I in their shoes—that I wasn’t to be trusted. Everything I’d worked so hard for would be gone in a blink of an eye. Nobody was going to be willing to fight beside me anymore.

  I clamped my mouth shut and went back inside my room. Breathe, I told myself. I needed my head cleared if I was going to think this through and figure out exactly what the hell had happened, how had the thief known about my necklace, and how I hadn’t felt a single thing…

  Samayan’s last words came back full strength once more. Why don’t you let me prove you wrong?

  Shit. Was this it? Samayan was the only one of two people who knew I had Illyon. He asked me why I was certain I wasn’t going to be betrayed by my own. The blood in my veins turned to ice. What if he was right? What if we had a traitor among us? What if this was his doing?

  But how could Samayan know that the necklace was Illyon? It had been right next to him in Alcatraz, and he hadn’t even felt it.

  I heard the footsteps before I felt Aaron’s energy outside my door. He walked in as if he knew I was already up, which he probably did, a smile on his face until he saw mine. I must’ve looked exactly as I felt because panic registered in his blue eyes as he looked around the room.

  “What’s wrong?” He came to sit on the edge of the bed with me.

  “Nothing,” I breathed. Maybe I was still hoping this was a dream, and I had still to wake up.

  “You feel like you’ve seen a ghost—or worse. What’s the matter?” He took my face in his hands. His hands felt damn real, too.

  “Illyon.” Strangely, my voice sounded as strong as ever. “Illyon is gone.”

  I couldn’t bear to look into his eyes, so I kept mine on my lap, but I practically heard the blood drain from his face.

  “What do you mean? How is Illyon gone?” He let go of me and slowly stood up.

  “The necklace wasn’t on me this morning.”

  Even before I finished speaking, he began to pull the sheets of the bed and turn them over.

  “Don’t bother. It’s not here. I don’t feel it.”

  “We need to tell everyone. We need to shut down the Base and—”

  “No.” I felt sick to my stomach, but I knew that nothing would come out if I went to the bathroom, so I didn’t bother. I needed to stay seated. Who knew if my legs would hold me if I tried to walk?

  “What do you mean, no?” Aaron was bright red in the face again. At least he wasn’t frozen.

  “Nobody knows about Illyon, Aaron. I want to keep it that way. Whoever took it is long gone now. I just need to figure out how they took it from me without me even realizing it.”

  I had a strong feeling this was connected to Samayan’s little meeting the night before. He’d sucked me into his illusion, and I’d fallen for it like a little girl. The perfect distraction and I hadn’t even suspected a thing.

  “Are you kidding me? Illyon is gone, and you don’t want people to know you’ve had it? You should be out the door running after whoever did this by now!” he shouted. He was right to be angry, but he was wrong, too. Running without direction was exactly what Samayan would expect me to do. He orchestrated the whole thing, and I was ready to bet my life that he’d calculated the time it would take for me to realize Illyon was missing perfectly.

  “Like I said, they’re long gone by now. Without a lead, I’m not going anywhere and wasting precious time.” Maybe it was the need to appear strong in front of Aaron, or rather to not let him see how broken I really was, but I stood up on shaking legs and began to get dressed.

  He didn’t say anything for the longest second.

  “How can you be so calm?”

  Calm? I was losing my fucking mind! My biggest weapon—my only weapon against Samayan—was gone, and like a fool, I hadn’t even read about the power of the sky from fear it would reveal just how much more of a monster I really was. Selfish coward.

  “Freaking out is not going to get me anywhere. I need to clear my head and think about this because that’s the surest way of finding Illyon and getting it back. If I run around like a headless chicken, I’m going to mess everything up. Everything we’ve built until now…”

  “You’re scared they’re not going to trust you when they find out you’ve had Illyon all this time,” he said, as if my mind was a fucking book and he read the lines out loud. Sometimes, I really, really hated his gift.

  “I’m not scared they won’t trust me. I know they won’t. I’m not going to let anyone get in the way of preparations. No matter what happened here the night before, it’s not going to change what’s coming.” Hearing myself speak was like listening to someone else. It was a miracle I was still standing when I felt so weak. I never realized just how much Illyon’s energy gave me when it pulsated on my skin like a living thing.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Aaron said, shaking his head. “If we act now, we might find whoever did this. If we shut down the Base and spread the word…someone must have seen something!”

  “Nobody saw anything.” Not if Samayan had anything to do with it, and he did. “We’re going to find the thief, but we’re going to find him quietly. Nobody can know about this. Nobody.”

  I knew what he was thinking. Where would we even start? If I could just get my thoughts in order, I was sure I’d come up with something.

  “The Elders can help,” Aaron said through gritted teeth. He hated this, that much was obvious.

  “We’ve talked about Illyon and the Elders. They’re the last people I want to know where Illyon is—was—or that it can even look like a necklace.”

  They were the only ones I feared with the book in their hands the way I feared Samayan.

  “Star—”

  I didn’t let him finish.

  “Let’s start with what we know. You said you were coming over last night. Did you? Did you see anything suspicious?”

  Aaron took a step back and pressed his lips. He didn’t like to be cut off any more than I did. “I stayed up late in the office and didn’t want to wake you.”

  “So you never came to my room.”

  “No,” he said, and I cursed under my breath. If he had, and if he saw something, it could’ve at least given us a lead.

  “That’s okay. You know exactly who was in the Base the night before, right? You keep records?”

  Aaron nodded. “All entries and exits are guarded. I update the registers every day,” he said. “And that’s the first thing I’m going to do right now.”

  “It’s a start. I’ll be walking around to see if I can pick up on the energy. If you can’t find me, I’ll probably be outside checking the surrounding areas, too.”

  I opened the door and the air in the hallway seemed to suffocate me, not relieve me like I’d hoped. Maybe because I knew that Illyon wasn’t in the Base. I would’ve felt it by now. But maybe the thief was still above ground, close to us. Maybe I could track him. And if not, there was always Arsenal. He hadn’t been very productive with finding Samayan, but maybe, if I gave him my own blood and made him track its energy, maybe he could track Illyon.

  There, I thought. A plan. A weak one, but one that had my blood flowing again and my spirits a tiny bit up at least.

  “I still think you’re making a mistake.”

  When I looked at Aaron, I found him with a fine layer of sweat on his face. I don’t know why I was surprised to see him so worked up about this. Maybe
that’s how I should’ve been. But personal experience had shown me, over and over again, that panic and sweat only drew you a step back.

  “Trust me on this, Aaron. If I don’t find anything by the end of the day, we’ll tell everyone. I promise.” It was the least I could do. A day was all I was willing to grant myself.

  Aaron nodded. “Call me if you find anything.”

  Without another look my way, he took off down the hallway. I watched after him like I expected him to disappear into thin air any second now, but I was so damn glad I did. Just as Aaron turned the corner, I saw it. The camera mounted on the ceiling at the end of the hallway.

  “Holy shit,” I whispered to myself. How come it hadn’t occurred to Aaron? He’d installed cameras all over the place!

  Before I knew it, I was running for the security room and Kyle. I could’ve told Aaron about it, but I was too impatient, and he had a lot of guards to talk to.

  Kyle was all alone in front of his screens, just like I’d hoped he would be, though I had told him to take it easy. His eyes were still swollen from sleep, which told me he’d just gotten there himself. The still dark screens confirmed it.

  “I need you to go over the footage of the camera mounted in the hallway outside my room,” I said in a breath, smiling for whatever reason.

  He seemed even more reserved of me now—had been ever since I threatened him for dating Ella.

  “Uh…okay?” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes raw. “I need a sec until everything is on.”

  “Just check every second from midnight to this morning. I’ll be back in a bit, and you can tell me if somebody was there after I went to my room.”

  “Am I looking for something specific?” he called after me when I turned for the door.

  “Anything that moves! Anything at all.” We had spells and wards in place for intruders, especially strong after what happened in Kentucky, but once again, Samayan’s voice invaded my head. Whoever had done this was from the RR or at least playing the part. The vampire was not one to make empty threats, of that much I was certain.