Between Darkness & Light
Page 20
“Yes. I believe a man named Stefan may be their leader.”
My breath hitched at hearing the name. “He’s the one who attacked us.” My stomach clenched and I fought down a wave of nausea as I continued, “He also goes by the name of Gregory.” I looked at Samuel. “I refuse to fight him again. You or someone else needs to.”
“If only it will be that easy,” Matthew mumbled.
Lane’s expression changed from surprise to bewilderment. “You’re afraid of him. You’re terrified of that Hunter, more scared of him than you are of me. Why?”
I trembled as I struggled to find my voice again. “It’s a long story. He’s evil.”
“I’m evil. Most vampires will agree in a second. What’s so special about this Hunter?”
“You’re not evil,” I said and tried to figure out how to answer his question. “We have history. I have a personal grudge against him.”
“Do you want me to kill him for you?” Lane asked.
“Problem solved. You can let Lane go after him,” Samuel said.
Matthew shook his head as I nodded. “I appreciate your offer Lane. I wouldn’t mind if you tried, although I fear fate has different plans.”
Lane nodded, but stared at me in curiosity. He glanced toward the other two. “Do you think I’m evil or are you agreeing with her?”
“Honestly, I haven’t decided,” Matthew replied.
Samuel looked perturbed for a second, but it quickly passed. “Everyone has evil in them, Lane. Do I think you’re pure malevolence? No.”
He frowned at Samuel and me. “I don’t understand you two.”
“Why would I think you are evil? You have done nothing but help me,” I replied.
Lane looked at Samuel again. He seemed to be searching for a certain expression on his face, maybe confusion or fear. However, Samuel’s expression was simply one of neutrality. “I won’t keep you any longer. I’m going to find dinner,” Lane said.
“Goodbye,” I said. Lane turned, glanced back once, and disappeared into the trees.
Samuel turned to us. “Come on. Those vampires are gone now.”
I looked at him thoughtfully. “I think you and Lane should talk. I think you understand him more than you’ll admit. Certainly better than the rest of us.”
“Let’s go, Julia. This is not the time to talk about this,” Samuel snapped.
“What, afraid Lane might hear?” I asked. Matthew raised an eyebrow, but stayed quiet.
“No. The others are going to start worrying. Besides, the longer we stay here, the more likely unwelcome company will stumble upon us.”
“Let’s go,” I said, thinking of the Hunters. I did not want to run into them tonight.
Chapter 15
My arm was much more healed the next night and I bandaged it before dressing in a pair of trousers and a green tunic. I was on guard now, and wanted clothes that were easy to fight in.
When I joined the rest of my ka-tet they were already exchanging information. “The swelling in Kali’s jaw is down. She might be able to eat and talk normally in another day or two,” Mary Anne said.
“It’s important that she rests,” Matthew replied. I sat down beside him at the table, facing everyone else.
“So, what about this Hunter? Are you sure it’s Gregory?” Jeffrey asked.
“I have no doubt,” I replied and relayed what he had told me. His eyes widened and he nodded.
“We’re talking about an extremely vengeful spirit: to haunt Julia, and be reincarnated in less than a century, aware of who he had been,” Matthew said.
Mary Anne twisted her braided hair around her fingers and sighed. She glanced at Samuel and then at me, distress clear in her eyes and movements. “Ah, Matthew – I’m not sure if that’s all true.”
“It is him,” I answered. “The knowledge and mannerisms are the same.”
She looked at me, looking both concerned and uneasy. “I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that if he is reborn, there’s no way you saw him five years ago. That man appears to be in his twenties, so Gregory would have been in this body years beforehand.”
“You are saying she doesn’t have the ability to see the dead?” Samuel questioned.
It felt as if all the air had been sucked out of me. “Wait. He told me five years ago about the bastard son he had,” I argued. “The Saladino twins both look like him so they must be descendants.”
“He couldn’t have been there and be the soul in this body.” Mary Anne took a deep breath and continued. “He must have told you about it some other time, perhaps when you were unconscious. And under the stress, you remembered it in a hallucination.”
I thought back, but all I remembered was being berated for not providing him a son. I shook my head. “No, it had to be him, somehow. Besides, I’ve seen people other than him.” I looked around the group, but all I saw was varying degrees of pity, concern, worry, or a mix. Matthew was the one person whose face I couldn’t see well, sitting so close.
“Julia, your vision of Adam back then could easily be attributed to grief and duress. The woman in white you think you’re seeing could be your mind substituting Kali’s likeness for what your daughter might have looked like,” she replied gently.
I gripped the edge of the table so hard that I could feel the wood digging into my fingertips. “I never claimed the woman in white was my daughter. I didn’t imagine him in England. I don’t know how, but it was him. The girl is real too. How else would I have known that I shared a dream with Samuel? She said someone is tampering with destiny. How else would you explain Gregory being reincarnated this soon? All of you said that was unusual.”
“I can think of two people who can change destiny and one of them is resting in that room,” Jeffrey replied, pointing at Kali’s. “You don’t want to believe it’s them, so you invented a third person.”
I hoped Matthew would say something. When he didn’t, I looked at Samuel. His expression was gentle as he said, “I know this is difficult to hear. As for Gregory, yes, we said it was unusual. No one said it was impossible.”
I stood, my mind a whirlwind of racing thoughts and emotions. “I am going to see Kali.” Deliberately, I turned my back on them and walked toward the small bedroom. “And they wonder why I never tell them anything,” I muttered.
A single candle burned in the room when I entered. I made my way to the bed and gazed down at the injured girl sleeping in it. Bruises and cuts covered her face and arms. A particularly nasty looking one followed the left side of her jawbone, a line of deep purple and blue that had started to fade to yellow along the swollen edges.
Tears spilled down my cheeks as I stroked her forehead. She had been hurt because of me. Everyone here was in danger because of Gregory’s obsession with me. Besides that, I wasn’t sure if I could trust my perceptions anymore.
A stifled sob escaped me and her eyes opened. “Julia,” she whispered.
“Shh, I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”
She studied me a moment, then said, “There’s no need to cry. I’ll be all right.”
“You shouldn’t have gotten hurt. It is my fault since he is after me.”
“It is not. You saved my life. Your abilities are flourishing nicely.” The tears kept flowing. I felt her hand touch my cheek, her fingers soaking in the salty wetness. Her voice had a steely edge when she spoke next. “What has happened?”
“I need to find a way to protect you. Maybe you should stay with Lane the next time we see him. You should be safe with him,” I whispered. “Safer than with me.”
“Julia.” I lifted my head to look at her and her smoky eyes pierced through my ramblings. I fell silent and she said, “Lane is not the best option to keep me safe. He’s strong, but he has more people after him than we do. Besides, he would have no idea how to care for a human traveling with him.”
“We can talk about this later. I wanted to see you, see for myself how you were healing. Your jaw . . .”
�
��Hurts.” Kali sighed and said, “And it will hurt tomorrow, just as much. What happened?” she repeated. I stumbled backward into a chair and remained quiet. As the silence stretched on, I heard voices from the sitting room.
“. . . Julia’s vision hardly qualifies as proof that anyone other than Kali or Lane are affecting destiny,” Mary Anne finished.
“We don’t even know what Kali’s abilities are. And Mary Anne is right; if he is reincarnated, she couldn’t have seen him back then. That means everything she’s seen should be treated with suspicion,” Samuel said.
“She knew what the in-between was. Don’t you think all of this is just a little strange? What if you’re wrong?” Matthew argued.
“How would that be possible?” Jeffrey said.
“If I knew that, I would have it figured out,” Matthew retorted.
Kali spoke again, her voice drowning out the rest. “I see. They are questioning your power again.”
I stared at the closed door in surprise. Matthew hadn’t spoken up when I had been in the room, but he was arguing against the others now. Perhaps he hadn’t lost faith in me yet. “Yes. Since Gregory is reincarnated, it brought into question how I could have seen just a few years ago. And they think the woman in white is merely my grief and desire to see Marie again. Oh, and did I mention they think you are the one tampering with destiny? Or Lane?”
“We are not perfect. Our very nature alters the way destiny unfolds, but neither of us is willfully tampering with it. That is someone else’s doing.”
I pulled my legs up and pressed my face into the cloth of the trousers, shaking with frustration. I felt like slamming my head into the wall repeatedly, but that wouldn’t be very productive. “My great power seems to be having complex hallucinations with people who aren’t there,” I muttered. “Maybe I should be the one joining Lane in the forest.”
Kali snorted. “Lane’s not insane. Neither are you, although I’m starting to think the rest of your ka-tet will push you to that point soon.”
“But Mary Anne is right. He couldn’t have been the soul in this body and appearing to me at the same time.”
“I never said it was reincarnation. You all came to that conclusion on your own. Think, Julia! I told you of two possibilities.”
I thought a moment, replaying our conversations in my head. My head shot up. “Possession? Why didn’t you just tell me that weeks ago?”
“Would you have believed me? Besides, I had to be sure. I can only read someone’s destiny if I’m close enough. I hadn’t seen Stefan until now.”
“What did you see?” I asked, although I was afraid of her answer.
“It’s what I didn’t see.” Her gaze became unfocused as she spoke. “It was like looking for fish in muddy water. Very little was clear. The man has a destiny, but I couldn’t read any of it. There were outside influences at work. A secondary presence.”
“Gregory,” I said. “What do we do? I can’t kill an innocent person because the foul brute has taken him over.”
“I’m not so sure Stefan is innocent. Remember what I said? The spirit must have permission.”
“You also said it can happen if a spirit wears down a person’s psychic defenses,” I said.
She nodded slightly. “You saw him in England, Julia. A spirit is not constrained to a body the way a living soul is. It can do what it wants. A spirit doesn’t have a destiny. It might have a purpose, but that soul’s destiny ended when it died.”
I sprang up from the chair and paced her tiny room restlessly. “They won’t believe you. I’m not even sure if Matthew trusts me anymore! I don’t even know if I believe it. I don’t know if I can believe anything I see!” I cried, flailing my arms around.
Kali’s hand clamped painfully down on my right arm as she sat up. “Stop. From what little I heard of the argument out there, I wouldn’t count Matthew out yet.” She paused, then said, “Samuel and the others aren’t trying to hurt you, but they don’t understand. None of them have seen this before.” She took a deep breath and whispered, “Trust the woman in white.”
“Kali, how can I do that when I don’t even know if she is real?”
“Has her advice hurt you? Has it led you astray?”
I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it in defeat. “No.”
“So trust her. Even if she is a manifestation of your conscience, would it hurt you to trust her, considering everything?”
I hesitated and again said, “No.” My shoulders sagged as exhaustion rushed through me.
The door to Kali’s room opened and closed behind me. “Answers. Now.”
I turned to see Matthew standing in the doorway. The color of his eyes looked lighter again, almost a honey color. He stared at Kali expectantly.
She sighed and flexed her jaw. Before I could suggest that he come back, he strode over to the bed, reached underneath and retrieved a wine bottle. He uncorked it and handed it to her seconds later. She tilted it to her mouth and took several large swallows.
I frowned at him. “Are you seriously getting her drunk?”
He shrugged. “It’ll help with the pain.” He lowered his voice and said, “And maybe it’ll loosen her tongue a little as well.”
“I heard that,” Kali retorted between gulps of the sweet liquid.
“You wanted me to help Julia. I cannot do that if I don’t have some answers.”
I wanted to ask him why he didn’t come to my defense earlier, but his last statement probably answered that. Carefully, I plucked the partially drunk bottle out of Kali’s hands as she started talking. I set it on the table before sliding the chair to the corner of the room where I could rest my head against the wall.
I tuned their conversation out, instead focusing on my own wild, racing thoughts. I was desperate for confirmation, some indication that I wasn’t completely mad. I needed someone the group had known to appear to me, to give me irrefutable proof. Without knowing how to call them to me, I drew upon all of the mental power available to me, the telepathy, the ka-tet’s own power, and the energy I had used to help Kali during the fight.
Not wanting to call attention to myself, I silently shouted out the names, putting as much power as I could into each one. I even called to Alessandra, Samuel’s sister.
“How do we . . . Julia?” Matthew said, his voice sounding distant over my mental chanting.
I ignored him and repeated the names, anxiety flooding me. Why wasn’t anyone appearing? Not even the woman in white appeared, no matter how much power I put into the name. A sickening realization dawned on me. No one was appearing because I didn’t have the gift. I was unequivocally, completely insane. Grief and despair swept over me until I felt as if I was drowning in it. In defeat, I let go of the power I had gathered. “Marie,” I whispered brokenly.
“She hasn’t heard a word we said. What is she doing?”
“I believe she is trying to summon the dead so people will stop questioning her sanity,” Kali replied.
Matthew uttered a curse and turned to me. I stared at him in exhaustion, beyond caring if he yelled at me. He took my hand, squeezing it. A small buzz of energy went through me and I realized it was his through the ka-tet. “Julia, I know what you’re trying to do. Do you remember what I said about being weakened and our abilities?” I nodded, but said nothing. “How is this going to help? You only started regaining your mental abilities and you are depleting them already. Jesu, Julia, do you really think draining yourself is going to make it work better?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
Matthew sat back on his heels and turned his other hand over so the palm faced up. A second later a flame danced in his hand, the size of a candle flame. “Did you think I was able to do this in a few short years? When I was your age I was just as likely to burn down a room as I was to hit my
target. It takes time, strength, and a lot of practice.”
“No one ever doubted you had the ability,” I said as he closed his hand, extinguishing the flame in it.
“No, they only had to worry about being seriously injured or killed,” Matthew replied. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“You didn’t say anything earlier. I thought you changed your mind, that you didn’t believe me.”
“I was trying to think, Julia. Mary Anne made a valid argument, and I had to think of a way to counter. That’s difficult to do, when you’re learning about a gift that hasn’t been seen for most of our lifetimes.” He took a breath and said, “You need to stay strong. You aren’t going to be able to defend yourself or anyone else if you keep draining your power and energy.”
“I just wanted to prove I’m not . . .”
“I know.” He looked at Kali.
“Tell her.”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
He frowned. “A Resistance delegation is coming here from Florence. They’ll be here any day now. Cain might be among them, along with Sandro from Florence. I don’t know who else might be with them.” He paused, then said, “They are coming to talk to Samuel about Lane, as well as other things.”
“I assume I’ll be one of the topics,” I replied with a sigh.
Matthew didn’t dispute my conclusion. “You need to stay well-fed, Julia. Keep your spirit and strength up.”
“I cannot do it alone.”
He smiled. “That’s why we’re here,” he replied, glancing at Kali who also smiled.
I believed him. Without them, I would have been totally alone and lost.
Chapter 16
Five Resistance supporters arrived at the villa two nights later. A member of the Resistance Council was among them, but it wasn’t Cain. I only knew two of the delegation, David and Christina, the two German members we had met five years ago. The presence of the younger vampires was surprising, but then again, many of the Resistance’s inner circle had died when we fought Valentino.
I wandered through the small garden area attached to our villa. Although the flowers were closed tight, I still found it calming to walk past the greenery. I was unwanted at the meeting so I willingly excused myself before I was forced to leave. It would just be the latest in rounds of arguments and discussions anyway.