by Laura Hall
I blinked, taken aback by his candor. “Because I’m staying in the Consort’s suite?” He nodded. “I’m surprised you’re not dating someone with a little more backbone.”
Amusement flared in his eyes. “Has it occurred to you I might not appreciate being challenged by a lover?”
“No, actually,” I said, then snapped my mouth shut.
His expression went blank. “Let’s begin. Remove the bracelets.”
I looked at my wrists and back at him. “What? How?”
“There are release catches located on each.”
I launched into action, finding and pressing small, etched runes at the base of each bracelet. They parted with a soft pop and fell to the ground. Electricity surged through me, bending my spine and tearing a moan from my throat.
I was whole.
There’d be time later to examine the double-edged blade currently swinging. One side: Declan’s warm touch and a part of me missing. And the other: feeling complete, but cut off from physical affection.
Well, from everyone save the Western Prime.
While I stood basking in my current, the Prime crossed the space between us and took position behind me.
“Hit the targets, please.”
I descended from my musings to see his index finger outstretched toward the opposite wall. Three large bull’s-eyes were painted on the white surface, spaced several feet apart, with four rings around each central point.
I ignored them for the moment, turning to stare at him. He sighed, lowering his arm. “Yes?”
“Did absorbing my charges really not hurt you, or were you pretending for Adam’s sake?”
He fixed me with a dispassionate gaze. “I’d rather not discuss it.”
“So they did hurt you.”
“No.”
“No, what? No, they didn’t hurt you, or no, you aren’t talking about it?”
His eyes flashed to emerald. Call me sick and twisted, but I was glad to have provoked him.
“You’re trying my patience.”
I shrugged. “What else is new?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw, which made me smile. Yep, there was something seriously wrong with me.
“You know very well it doesn’t hurt me,” he growled. “Moreover, if the ride back to the compound was any indication, your blood enhanced my immunity.”
“I’ve never actually hit you with lightning. Not in real life, at least.”
He took a menacing step toward me. I took a quick step back. Fangs flashed behind his lips. “I wouldn’t finish that line of thought if I were you.”
Adrenaline zinged through me, blotting out my worry, my fear—all the dark, helpless feelings I kept buried moment to moment.
The Prime’s eyes narrowed. “There are better ways to cope with your emotions.”
The words hit home, instantly deflating my mood. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” I turned away to stare at one of the bull’s-eyes.
He said softly, “I have to attend an event tonight in Seattle. I’d like you to come as a part of my security retinue. It will be an excellent opportunity for you to practice tracking.”
“That’s like telling me to practice my Swahili,” I muttered.
“You’ve tracked mages before, with your father.”
I sighed, shaking my head. “With credit card receipts and investigative work.” I faced him, scowling. “What if I’m not, in fact, capable of tracking magical resonance?”
“You are,” he said sharply. He pointed behind me. “Hit the targets.”
Anger brought heat and electricity surging down my arms and into my hands. I turned on my heel and released a bolt.
It hit the ceiling.
“Again.”
The next one careened off the rubber mat, sizzling out with a muted flash.
“Again.”
“Shut up,” I snarled and funneled more power. I missed spectacularly, three times in a row. “Fuck!”
Fingers curled over my shoulders and a hard chest met my back. His breath tickled my ear as he said, “In the heat of battle, emotions surge. Fear, rage, horror. Discipline allows us to use these emotions to elevate our skills.”
“Stop touching me,” I snapped.
He did the opposite, moving his hands around my neck and clasping the column lightly. Lips grazed my ear and goose bumps bloomed over my chest.
“Do not mistake me for Declan,” he whispered, and I felt the kiss of fangs along my earlobe. I shuddered. “Nothing about me is warm. Little enough is human. I am going to use you to get what I want. And if you keep testing the boundaries between us, I’m going to use you in other ways. Ways that, from your scent even now, you will greatly enjoy. Do you understand?”
Animal arousal plummeted through me. Every nerve in my body went hyperaware, my senses unfurling, purring at his strength, his scent, his nearness.
Then my brain entered the battle ring and took out desire with a blinding right hook.
I was a fool.
A fool who’d fallen prey to the manufactured charm and predatory glamour of an ancient vampire. A fool who looked for him in every room I entered, who constantly sought his notice, and ways to make him smile and laugh.
Holy shit.
I had Stockholm syndrome.
“I understand that you’re a manipulative bastard,” I told him. My voice only shook a little. “I understand nothing about you is authentic. That you’re a machine with a dead heart.”
His fingers left my throat. “Machines don’t have hearts,” he said flatly. “Now use your anger to focus. Hit the targets.”
I didn’t hit them—I obliterated them, the wall they were painted on, and Adam’s ward. And as plaster dust rained down, and the mild autumn sunlight glinted through the hole blown in the side of the compound, the Prime laughed, his eyes twinkling and bright.
Grinning down at me, he said, “You are everything I hoped for and more, mo spréach.”
Panting and shaking from fatigue, I weighed the chances I might pass out if I tried for another bolt, this time aimed at him. “What does that mean?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Mo spréach is Gaelic for ‘my spark.’ Because you are both.”
A spark. And his.
I was mildly surprised to find that, indeed, I still had energy for anger.
“You and Samantha deserve each other.”
Nothing. Not even a flicker of eyelashes.
“I’ve never lied to you. Not once. Hate me if you will, but I’m the only chance you have to see your father again.”
“Fuck you.”
Between one blink and the next, his fingers gripped my jaw. My face was yanked upward, giving me no choice but to stare into glittering black eyes. For the very first time in his presence, I felt real fear.
His nostrils flared and his voice came as a hiss through fangs. “I see through you, Fiona Sullivan. I see every layer of your mind and heart. And yet, somehow, you confound me at every turn. Aggravate me. Challenge me. For all your resiliency, you lack basic instinct when it comes to me. Perhaps it is because I have withheld my aura from you. Or perhaps I have been too familiar. Too kind. There are compelling reasons why I’m respected and obeyed. Once, long ago, I was worshipped. You would do well to remember that.”
Against all my efforts, tears filled my eyes. “You’re scaring me,” I whispered. “Why are you doing this?”
The black in his eyes was swallowed by green. His expression was suddenly tortured, so much that I cried out softly. He swallowed hard, the grip on my face slackening.
“To protect you,” he said roughly.
I blinked and he was gone, and I stared at the space he’d occupied until I heard a soft throat-clearing. I looked numbly across the room at Adam, standing just inside the door.
“Will you come with me, Fiona? We need to talk.”
Something in his tone overcame my need to crawl in a hole and cry.
“Can we go outside?” I asked weakly. “I need some air.”
“Of course.”
I retrieved my bracelets and snapped them on, only wincing a little as my charge disappeared. Other parts of me hurt worse.
Fourteen
Adam led me farther down the hallway, around a few turns, and out a side entrance. Our shoes crunched over dead leaves and damp gravel as we crossed a small courtyard. In the center stood a weathered fountain, its tiers empty of water. A frigid wind blew past, lifting leaves into a frenzy and not so much drying my sweat as freezing it.
“Are you cold?” asked Adam. “We can go inside.”
“No,” I said quickly. “I’m fine. What did you want to talk about?”
He motioned to an iron bench backed by a vine-covered brick wall. I sat beside him, wincing at the cold metal, and a moment later magic flared. Winter was replaced by a tropical jungle; around our bench, at least.
“That’s so nice.” I slouched against the now-warm seat. “Thanks.”
Adam nodded, his dark gaze fixed on the fountain. “I need to tell you some things about Connor.”
Physical and emotional exhaustion were apparently a winning combination, because I abruptly saw the situation through unveiled eyes. My dad called such moments the right-sizing of the ego. In other words, the usually accidental process of being humbled.
“Don’t bother,” I said with a wan smile. “You don’t have to justify his behavior. He was right to remind me who he is. The Western-freaking-Prime. I haven’t treated him with the respect due his age and power, and he’s given me a lot of leeway thus far. I finally crossed the line enough times that he redrew it.” I shook my head. “I just want my dad back, Adam. He’s been missing for seven days. What have we accomplished toward that goal? Nothing.”
“Of course you’re worried and unsettled by being here,” he said softly. I glanced sharply at him; this was a new Omega, almost nice-sounding. “As of this morning, we’ve handed your father’s case to the FBI, with assurances that it will be given priority attention.”
“That’s actually very reassuring,” I said softly. “Thank you for telling me.”
“You’re welcome.” He sighed. “I know you don’t want to talk about Connor, but I think we need to.” I started shaking my head, but he continued, “It starts with your mother, Delilah.”
For close to a minute, I sat completely still, my mind strangely fuzzy. Finally, I nodded.
“Twenty-five years ago, Delilah was in Seattle. Connor had no idea who she was, but for days she kept appearing in the same locations as he—the theater, a park, the bar at the top of the Space Needle. Needless to say, Connor wasn’t the Prime then. Nor was he a daywalker. He confronted your mother when she tried following him home one night. He threatened her. He, uh, bit her.”
“So much for his fast.”
“He didn’t drink from her. But he did taste her blood.” He paused. “I realize that’s a fine line.”
I didn’t say anything. I was having a Zen moment. The bottom of the world was about to drop out and I was going to serenely watch happen.
Adam cleared his throat and shifted on the bench, as though summoning courage for his next words. “Her blood didn’t taste human. She wasn’t a mage or shifter, though. She was something other. Your mother… she has a gift.”
The surface of my calm shivered, cracks appearing. “What kind of gift?” I asked.
“She can see the future.”
Not what I’d been expecting.
“She’s psychic? As in palm reading and tarot cards?”
He shook his head. “No, I mean actual precognition. That was how she found Connor. She could glimpse where he would be at any future time. This all happened pre-Ascension, too. Now, her skills are greatly honed. She can find anyone, at any time, anywhere.”
I jolted to my feet. “Get her on the goddamn phone! She can find my father!”
He looked at me with such sympathy that I immediately wanted to punch something. “No one has seen or heard from her in years. Connor has been looking for her without success since the first whispers of the Liberati.”
Like tendons had been cut, I collapsed back to the bench. “If she’s some super psychic, like you say, then she probably knows my dad is missing, maybe hurt or worse, and is doing fuck-all about it.”
“Unless something has happened to her, then yes, that’s a possibility.”
I dropped my chin to my chest, then straightened as something horrible occurred to me. I stared at Adam unblinking until my eyes burned.
“Does Connor think I have Delilah’s skill?” He said nothing, which was answer enough. I laughed hoarsely. “Are you kidding me? All this focus on me tracking resonance is just a smokescreen while he waits for me to manifest some crazy psychic power? Has everyone been lying to me?”
“Fiona—” he began resignedly.
My breath whistled through clenched teeth. “Wow. I thought Delilah Greer had done damage when she abandoned her family, but that was nothing. A cake walk. This whole situation is her doing.”
Adam said softly, “Connor believes you can track magical resonance because the night before Delilah left, she told him you could. She also told him you have her Sight. I was there, Fiona. I heard what she said. I have no reason to think she was lying.”
“Because you’re a sucker,” I snapped.
“No. Because much of what has happened since Los Angeles, she predicted that night.”
The tension in my neck crackled as I turned my head toward him. “Explain.”
“Your hair turning white, the death of the Liberati agent, you freely offering blood to Connor… more random details, all of which have come to pass. But the larger message was this: she told Connor you would either be the catalyst of his success, or that of his failure. That without you, everything we’ve worked so hard to build would crumble.”
“Wow. No pressure,” I muttered.
“Fiona.” He said my name in a strange tone, both pleading and foreboding. It got my attention, dragging me out of a vortex of resentment. “There was someone else there that night, who heard Delilah’s words. Her name was Gabriella. Connor was her sire—he made her a vampire some fifty years before Ascension. It’s her room you’re occupying now.”
I scanned his face. “Past tense?” I asked softly.
“She was taken by the Liberati eight years ago.”
“Oh… Oh.”
“Gabriella was kind and gentle. The most passive vampire I’ve ever met. If it hadn’t been for Connor’s blood…” He shrugged. “As you know, no vampire under three hundred lived through Ascension, and even then, a third of the Ancients didn’t survive. Gabriella would have assuredly died, but instead, she joined Connor as a daywalker.”
I looked at the sky, where heavy-bellied clouds moved swiftly southward. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but asked anyway, “What happened to her?”
“She volunteered several times a week at a botanical garden in the city. One day, she went to the gardens and never came back.”
“How do you know it was the Liberati?”
He paused. “We don’t, not with certainty. But they prey on the weakest among us, and Gabriella was that. She would not have willingly left Connor, ever.”
My heart hurt.
My brain hurt.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
He dragged a hand down his face, scratching the blond stubble on his jaw. “Connor is a complex man. Even I, his right hand for nearly thirteen years, sometimes think I don’t know him at all. If he grieved when Gabriella disappeared, no one saw it. What I did notice, however, was a growing fixation.”
I got a funny feeling in my stomach.
Adam nodded at the frozen expression on my face. “Yes, with you. Even before Delilah spoke of you, he knew who you were. There was a bidding war of sorts between Primes when you participated in the first Census. Connor happened to be in Los Angeles that day. He won the rights to you by proximity and wouldn’t back down when the others wanted to meet you. They wo
uld have offered you anything you wanted, taken you from your home, and turned you into a weapon.”
Isn’t that what Connor’s doing?
But I didn’t ask. I sat very still. Quietly.
Zen. I am Zen.
I remembered Census. Sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair, sweating bullets and praying that Mal’s amulets and spells would keep my charge from surging. Ignoring the itching beneath the wig that concealed my singed scalp. Answering questions for an Emerald Mage while another, lesser mage typed my responses.
After, I’d been left alone for close to an hour before the Emerald—a kind-faced woman who reminded me of Betty Crocker—had reentered and proclaimed me a cipher.
And I also remembered the two-way glass in the room.
“He was watching that day,” I guessed. Adam nodded. “He recognized me. Alisande says I look like my mother.”
“You do.”
“So he kept tabs on me for four years, then when Gabriella disappeared, he started stalking me?”
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” he said dryly. “More like he began monitoring you more closely.”
My throat was dry as dust as I swallowed the lump in it. “And here I’d always thought I was free, when I simply couldn’t see the prison walls.”
He said gently, “Perhaps it’s not captivity but fate. The road set before you by forces unknown.”
The fault lines of my world stretched, opening a void beneath my feet. I stared into Adam’s eyes until everything else drifted away. And I suddenly knew, with absolute conviction, that he’d kept the worst from me.
“What else did my mother tell him, Adam?” He began shaking his head, but I grabbed him by the collar of his sweatshirt and yanked our faces close. “What. Else.”
He didn’t even try to fight me, eyes staying brown and anguished. In a broken voice, he whispered, “That you would bring his love back to life.”
I recoiled in astonishment. “Gabriella?”
“Yes.”
But it wasn’t Adam who said it.
It was the Prime, standing in the doorway leading back into the compound, watching us with cool, blank eyes.
“That’s insane,” I blurted. “I can’t raise the dead. I can’t see the future.”