Amaranthine Special Edition Vol I

by Naylor, Joleene

  Katelina shuddered and clutched her towel. Her eyes darted around the tiny room, looking desperately for a weapon, but there was nothing. There was a sense of déjà vu about the moment that left her feeling weak and terrified. “Jorick!” she creamed silently.

  “She has nothing to say to you!” Jorick shouted, and then his silent voice whispered through her mind, “I’ll be loose in a moment. Right now, tell her that you don’t know anything.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Katelina repeated, her voice high with panic, as Senya gripped her bare shoulders and squeezed. If Jorick was going to get free he’d better do it soon. “Oh God, I swear I don’t know!”

  “She doesn’t know!” Jorick shouted, and another wave of red fury splashed through Katelina’s consciousness. “Is this what Malick sent you to do? Or aren’t you supposed to bring Oren in before he attacks precious Kateesha?”

  Senya muttered something under her breath, and slowly released Katelina’s shoulders. “Malick didn’t say why he wanted him, Jorick, as I’m sure you know.” She made a low noise in her throat, her face still too close to Katelina’s, and whispered, “However, you escape again, human. Maybe next time you won’t be so lucky.”

  Katelina’s insides spasmed like jelly, but Senya stood and marched out of the bathroom. “All right,” she snapped. “You can get off of him, Zuri.” Katelina peered around the door frame, to see the broad vampire stand. He was only half erect when Jorick shot up, and knocked him to the floor with a blow to his chin.

  Zuri bellowed in anger and surprise, but Senya only came to a stop near them and rolled her eyes. “Get up, Zuri.” Her angry gaze shifted to the impassive blonde. “And thanks for your help, Beldren.”

  “I didn’t feel it was required.”

  “No,” Jorick snarled. “It wasn’t, and neither was any of this.” His eyes stayed on the vampiress, but his mind demanded silently of Katelina, “You’re all right?”

  She nodded dumbly, then forced herself to think a more verbal, “Yes.”

  “Who’s to say what’s required?” Senya asked, unaware of their silent conversation. “You gave us trouble, so I had you restrained. There’s nothing wrong with that.” She flashed him a fanged smile that made Katelina’s skin crawl. “After all, no one got hurt, did they?” She packed enough innuendo into the single word to fill Katelina’s mind with horrible visions.

  Jorick came to stand in front of the Executioner. His voice was a low rumble in his throat, “Yet. But if the three of you don’t leave immediately-”

  “There’s no need to threaten anyone,” Beldren interrupted. “We have far more important things to do than stay here.”

  “Other people to harass?” Jorick asked sarcastically. “In that case, go annoy them, and leave us alone. If I see the three of you again, things will go very differently.”

  “Yes,” Senya agreed, her cold eyes alight at some nasty thought. “They will.” Then, she tossed her head arrogantly and marched towards the door. “Come along!”

  Zuri brushed himself off, glared angrily at Jorick, and followed her outside, but Beldren hung back for a moment. His face was unreadable, his gaze hooded by disinterested eyelids, but something in his stance betrayed his curiosity. “I’m starting to wonder why Malick’s so interested in seeing your fledgling, Jorick.”

  Jorick didn’t answer and, with a final glance, Beldren strode from the room. He was barely gone before Jorick hurried over to Katelina and helped her to her feet. His eyes smoldered, and his lips were pressed together into a tight line of anger. “You’re all right?”

  “Yes.” She nodded along to the word, though her pale face made her seem like a liar. “Will they really stay gone?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “They’ve gone to look for Oren, but I doubt they’ll find him. Never the less, I’m going to follow them.”

  Katelina grabbed his arm. “You’re leaving? You can’t be serious?”

  “You’ll be fine,” he said gently, and guided her towards the bed. “I’ll be right behind them, and should they head in this direction, I’ll bypass them and be back first.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “Trust me.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she muttered and let her shaking legs drop her onto the bed. “And when Senya slits my throat, or Kateesha sends her goons?”

  “You’ll be fine,” he assured her again, his tone more urgent. “If I’m going to follow them, then I need to go.”

  “Right, of course. Go. Go.” She waved her hands with the words.

  Jorick glanced from her to the door, indecision on his face, and then he gave her a quick, regretful kiss and promised to return, before he disappeared, hot on their heels.

  Katelina shuffled to the door, locked the locks, then buried herself under the bedclothes, as if they could somehow keep all the horrors at bay. She didn’t know who she more afraid of now; Kateesha or Senya, but she suspected they’d both be in her dreams.

  **********

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was late when Jorick returned. Katelina asked him for details, but he only told her that he’d followed the Executioners until they left town, and not to worry. Despite those words, his thoughts were full of darkness and apprehension, though he refused to say why. As dawn approached she gave up and went to sleep, doing her best to ignore his still form in the chair across the room.

  When Katelina woke, sunlight leaked around the edges of the curtain and the stack of dressers. She rolled over to find Jorick in bed next to her, perfectly still. All the comfort of another body, without the inconveniences. His eyes were closed and his dark lashes curled against his pale cheeks, but he didn’t look peaceful. His brow was creased and his mouth was pressed in a tight line that betrayed his anxiety. She wished she could do something for him, but she didn’t know what.

  She contemplated waking him, but decided to let him rest. He said before that being up early required extra blood and she hated to be the cause of that. Despite his words to Oren about wildlife, she suspected he preyed on people, anyway. Where else did all that cash come from?

  She pressed a kiss to his forehead, then hauled the tatty suitcase to the bathroom and got dressed. Even after a day’s sleep, she didn’t know what to feel. What had Jorick said about her being different because she’d ingested his blood? Damn. Just when she’d accepted the Linking, here was something else. She supposed she should view the increase in strength as a good thing, especially with Executioners skulking around, but it was hard to do on short notice.

  The Executioners. Those words were enough to make her shudder, even now. Kateesha’s hired goons had nearly killed her, Claudius and company had tortured her and murdered Sarah, and yet it was The Guild’s death squad that terrified her the most.

  She shuddered at the thought and headed into the bedroom, but there was no Jorick, only a piece of paper that said “Be back soon”. Torn between disappointment and impatience, she kicked the scraps of broken chair stacked by the trashcan, then flopped on the bed. She was halfway through a pointless reality show when Jorick returned. He offered her a tense smile, then dumped a plastic bag of gas station junk food next to her.

  “Good to see you,” she commented sarcastically.

  His smile grew wider, but not brighter, and he muttered something about a shower before he disappeared. He returned some minutes later, smelling of soap, with his hair hanging damp down his back and a brooding look in his eyes. He dropped into the chair across the room with barely a glance at her. Every sinew of his body screamed restlessness; a caged tiger waiting to escape and rip the spectators to shreds.

  When he stayed silent, Katelina asked, “Well?”

  Jorick shrugged, his attention on his feet. “They move tomorrow.”

  “And?”

  His eyes snapped up and met hers. “And so do we.”

  “We”. So much in that one word. The two of them going to Kateesha’s stronghold to take on an army of vampires; Jorick, the dark God, and his human pet. This was what she’d
wanted, yet, now that she stood on the threshold, staring into the pit of blood and death, her nerves wavered. “We?”

  His dark eyes probed hers. “Unless you’d rather stay here?”

  She licked her lips nervously. Oren had abandoned him and left him to fight on his own to placate a handful. But, she wouldn’t, even though she was terrified. “No. Of course not.”

  “You don’t have to come,” he said softly. “You know it isn’t like that.”

  She sighed heavily; he’d read her thoughts, again. “Yes, it is – to me.”

  “You don’t owe me that. You don’t owe me anything.” His eyes moved to the TV where images flashed past; kitchen knives for sale at discount prices. “If you don’t want to go then don’t. I thought you did. You’re always angry when you’re not included.”

  This was a test, she could feel it. She wanted him to treat her as an equal instead of a weak child. He was willing do that, and take her into the thick of it, and now she felt squeamish. If she gave into her fear and refused, she knew that he’d never offer it again. “No. I want to go.”

  “Your words sound sure.” He stared through her as though he was reading her soul. “But, your thoughts aren’t.”

  “And how sure are yours? I can’t hear them, but that doesn’t mean they’re different than mine. Haven’t you ever been afraid before?”

  He looked thoughtful and weighed his words carefully. “Yes, I’ve been afraid before, Katelina. One must face their fear when there’s no other alternative, but you have a choice. You don’t need to torture yourself.”

  “My answer’s the same either way.”

  He gave a single, sharp nod of acceptance. “I met with Oren. He laid the plans out for me.” He glanced at her and corrected himself, “– for us; so we’d know where they’d be and could stay out of their way. He also gave me a map of Kateesha’s den, crude though it is. They don’t know very much of it, but they have two entrances and the start of the three main tunnels, anyway.” He tugged a piece of folded paper from his pocket and held it out to her.

  She took the offered map. It unfolded easily to reveal crudely sketched pencil lines. There were no words, only a thick arrow that indicated what must be the main entrance, and on the other side of the rectangle, a tiny, insignificant arrow that pointed to nothing. “What’s that?”

  “A side entrance. The one they intend to take.”

  “Then how do we get in?” A strange feeling of foreboding filled her. “We’re not…”

  “The main entrance.” He was calm even as he affirmed her fears. “There’s no other way, unless we dig through the roof. It would be hours boring through concrete and steel.”

  “Ah.” She swallowed hard. So, Oren and his coven would sneak in the side entrance, on the other side of the building, while she and Jorick were left to battle through the main gates. This wasn’t good, and it wasn’t right! She looked from the paper and the terribly factual lines to Jorick. “Won’t it be guarded?”

  “Undoubtedly. But if we wait until Oren’s entered, or at the least attempted to, then their attention will be diverted.” He pointed to the larger arrow with one long finger. “To get from here to-” His fingertip trailed along to the smaller arrow. “-Here, they have to follow the first passage all the way to its end and then cross over. Once they’ve moved to the side door it will take a few minutes to return.”

  “A few minutes?” she demanded. He acted as though that could make a substantial difference.

  “It can. A lot can happen in the space of a few seconds. Lives are lost, and battles won all in a moment. It will be long enough.”

  “And once we’re inside, then what?” She studied the rough map again. The tunnels just faded away towards the edge of the paper, without a definite end. “We sneak up behind them?”

  Jorick snorted derisively. “No. Oren can chew his own way in. Once we’re inside, we find Kateesha and end this.” There was finality, both to his words and tone.

  Katelina raised an eyebrow. “And what about what’s-her-name? The one who’s supposed to take the coven over? Won’t she be mad if you get to it first?”

  “I don’t want the coven, I only want Kateesha’s blood. Jeda can have her heart.”

  “I thought that to take the coven you had to actually kill them?” She stared back at the map, hopelessly.

  “In a way. You have to drink from the heart.” He spoke rationally, as if he was talking about buying bed sheets. “Battles are too unpredictable to give everything to the one who deals the final blow. Without destroying the heart of a vampire, you haven’t really killed them, only laid them out. They might lie for weeks, even months, dead for all appearances, while their body slowly rebuilds itself, but they’d rise again.”

  “I see.” Katelina met Jorick’s eyes. “So you’ll leave her for Jeda to finish off. But why? They think you’re a coward and a traitor. If you take her out, it’s yours.”

  “I don’t want it,” he answered firmly. “What would I do with it? Even a disbanded coven is loyal to you until they take a new master. I’m no one’s master. I own no one, and no one owns me. Let them owe loyalty to Jeda.”

  “What about Oren?” she asked. “You made him swear to protect me by saying he owed you a Blood Debt.”

  He smirked. “Listening in were we?”

  She rolled her eyes impatiently. “You already knew that.”

  “Yes, I suppose I did,” he mused. “I released Oren, long ago, but he refused to accept that. He enjoys his ceremony too much and felt he owed a longer one.” A strange smirk crossed his lips. “I believe he feels it’s been fulfilled now, though.”

  Katelina shook her head in surrender. “You’re all really weird, do you know that? All these rules and regulations and layers of hierarchy. It’s worse than the government.”

  “We’ve been around longer than your government.” He gave her a wry smile. “When one has power, they start to make rules, and when they live for eternity, they have time to make many, many rules.”

  “I guess.” She handed the map back to him. “It just seems stupid to me.”

  “There are many who agree with you – Rogues, they’re called, like the group that turned Loren’s brother. The Guild takes them out when they find them.”

  “The Guild sounds like a bunch of power hungry bastards to me.”

  Jorick’s rich laughter rippled through the room. “Yes, they are, actually. They’ve lived for centuries and think they have the right to dictate and mandate. They rule with terror and wield the Executioners like weapons against any who refuse to obey them or their laws.”

  Speaking of the death squad, “What about the Executioners?”

  “What about them?”

  She tried to keep the annoyance out of her voice. “Will they be there?”

  Jorick looked surprised. “At the battle? I doubt it. “

  “But they’re looking for Oren?”

  Jorick snorted. “They’re not looking very hard. I imagine the point of it was to stop his warring with Kateesha, since Malick sent them, but he can’t be seen to interfere too heavily without an official complaint, and it would take severe interference to stop the battle now. Even if Oren disappeared, he has the rest worked up into fighting the war.”

  “Malick wants to protect her?” Katelina demanded, sickened at the idea of the kind of monster who’d want to save a neurotic bitch like her.

  “Maybe.” Jorick shrugged. “Who knows.”

  Katelina flopped back on the bed, dissatisfied. “So where’d you go last night after they left town?”

  “I met with Micah and Loren. They wanted to know how the meeting with Oren went.”

  “Loren?” She hadn’t expected that. “So you’ve made up?”

  “We put aside our differences, I guess you’d say.” He sighed and added, “I admitted that I might have underestimated him. Though, he isn’t as strong as his opponents.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You can’t ever just be wrong, can you?”
>
  “I rarely am,” he said dismissively. “They wanted to know how the meeting went. It seems Oren is very near the revolt he fears. There’s some anger over Jeda getting the heart.”

  “What a shame.” She tried to keep the sarcasm from her voice, but wasn’t entirely successful. “And after he went to all the trouble of kicking you out to make everyone happy.” She rolled her eyes. “Vampires are a nasty, selfish bunch of people.” She glanced at Jorick and added hastily, “Present company excluded.”

  “My thanks for that.” He smirked. “Yes, they are. They live forever and they want everything. Only a selfish person thinks they’re good enough to deserve immortality. The meek don’t. They’re happy to go to their graves and turn to dust. The self absorbed are the ones who crave eternity.”

  “I guess.” She studied him curiously. “So you wanted to live forever?”

  “Not particularly. I only begged Malick because I wanted the strength.” Jorick’s voice dropped low. “I needed it.”

  “Why?” He was talking and she wasn’t going to waste it.

  “Revenge. What else?”

  “On who?”

  He was silent for a moment, and she felt his indecision. She knew what was coming; his usual “it’s in the past and doesn’t matter” excuse. She opened her mouth to tell him to forget it, when he surprised her and actually answered.

  “The men who killed my sister, Tryne.” He took a deep breath to calm himself, then went on. “They were soldiers traveling through, Spaniards; we were in the middle of a war. They caught her walking down the road with her basket of vegetables to sell at the market and took a fancy to her. When they were finished she probably begged them to kill her.” He fell silent, and his hurt and regret tingled in Katelina’s mind with a startling intensity.

  “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what else to say.

  “What’s done is done and no man can change that,” he replied. “I bathed in their blood. I relished their pleas for mercy and screams of agony, and now I walk the earth forever to remember it.”

  She tried to come up with a reply, but had nothing. It was as good a reason as any to become a vampire, she supposed. She found his admission of begging Malick interesting. Did that mean that-