“Not even if I ask you?” Eric pushed the curtains back and stepped into the pink light of the setting sun.
“I just can’t.” I looked back out over the ocean.
“Come on, Ara. You’re the only person worth talking to down there.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Do you really think I want to be there?” He leaned against the railing beside me with his arms folded, back to the view. “I’m a vampire. I have no real need to eat, but I go—for you.”
I bit my teeth together, shaking my head.
“Please?” He grinned, and that long dimple beamed off his cheek and hit me in the hard exterior.
“Uhg! Fine.” I threw my hands up. “But only because I’m hungry; not because you used that grin on me.”
“Okay.” He cocked his head, winking. “I won’t tell anyone you can’t resist me—it’ll be our little secret.”
“You wish.” I punched him softly in the arm.
“Hey.” He grabbed my wrist. “When did you last have blood?”
“Just after the attack a few hours ago. Why?”
“See this?” He ran his index finger over my vein. “See how it’s raised and the smaller veins around it are purple?”
“Mm-hm.”
“It means you’re blood-thirsty.”
“Already?”
“You must have used a lot to heal.”
I ran a finger over my wrist. “I guess so.”
“I’ll call up a Sacrificial.” He went to walk away.
“No. Don’t. I’ll just starve.”
“Why?”
“I really hate those guys. They’re so impersonal.”
“That’s the idea, kiddo.”
“I know, but… I don’t know. Maybe I’m more like you guys than my kind.”
“What do you mean? You want to kill?”
“No.” I sighed. “Not kill. But… I like the bite—the intimacy. Drinking from some man in a suit, who looks away while I suck his arm, it’s like washing chocolate down with a glass water real quick so you can eat a plate of broccoli.”
Eric laughed loudly, rolling his head back. His pointy fangs made me miss my vampire so, so much. “Here. You’ll just have to drink from me then, until David can come back.”
“Are you immune?”
“Yeah. Mike’s been tipping his blood into a cup for me.” He made a face like he was grossed-out.
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“And you’re sure that makes you immune to my venom too?” I wasn’t taking any risks.
“To all venom, including Created.”
I took his hand in a delicate grasp. “I really hope you’re right about that, Eric.”
“If not, guess we’ll find out the hard way.”
“And…” I looked at his wrist, then his chocolate eyes, all smiling and sagacious. “What about the lust?”
His brow arched high. “Amara, I think we’re a little past all that now. Just drink.”
* * *
“Well, the prophecy child is no longer an option!” one person said sternly.
I rolled my eyes, walking into the Great Hall.
“I disagree. There is nothing to say it must be conceived with a firstborn son of Knight.”
“Right, and if it was, Arthur is a firstborn, so he could impregnate the princess.”
My attention shot right at Arthur when I heard that, shame and disgust slathering me, but he closed his eyes, shaking his head as if he was the one that needed to apologize.
“Look, right now, we need to focus on catching Drake,” Mike cut in. “We can debate the prophecy after that.”
Everyone stood suddenly, conversations ceasing as I pulled my chair out. I held the urge to swallow in the silence until, as I sat down, everyone else followed, making quiet chatter again.
“We should be focusing on the coronation,” Portly woman said.
“Yes. Steps. We must break this down into steps. The coronation needs to happen.”
“Why?” I said, unfolding my napkin.
A few people shook their heads, a couple of eyes rolling.
“It’s a sacrificial right,” Arthur said. “It completes the process of your transformation.”
“Into a Lilithian?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Like a person being baptized,” he said.
“Baptized? But what if I don’t believe in God?”
“That is irrelevant,” Arthur’s tone was a little harsher than usual.
“Yes, see, Your Majesty, that Stone has power,” Mustache Man said with a bit of a stutter. “It is said to be the scale that measures balance between all living things.”
“And when you make a promise to assist it, you become a part of Nature’s army,” a woman in a pink blouse said, “like a bee or a seed, helping keep things in greater order—all life.”
“What, like, I can make a plant grow by touching it?” I half laughed.
“It is not just the plants you will command,” Mustache Man said, “but the animals, the insects—all creatures that walk this earth.”
“All living creatures,” someone corrected.
“Yes,” Mustache Man amended.
“Well, what un-living creatures are there, if vampires aren’t un-dead?”
The room grew silent. Everyone seemed to have an answer, but no one wanted to say it.
“Ghosts?” I asked, smiling under the high-arched brows of sarcasm.
“The issue at hand here is not what you will command, but what you must do before you can,” Arthur said.
“And… so I’ll be a complete Lilithian vampire when I make my oath on the Stone?”
“Once the full ceremony is completed, yes.”
“I don’t really understand how a simple coronation can change things.”
“Again, like making your Confirmation in God’s church, you will be bound: the slit of which your purity and your power enters and leaves your soul will, essentially, be sewn shut—set in stone. You will be one with Mother Nature.”
“Cool. So, if Drake is destructive and cruel, not really balancing things, how come the Stone lets him rule? Can’t it just do some mumbo-jumbo magic and get rid of him?”
“The Stone is not there to maintain balance. It’s a gateway—an energy point that connects the earth and its spirit to all living creatures. It has no power to change things itself,” Morgaine said. “It needs… assistants; bodies rooted to this realm, which can do its bidding.”
“Like me?” I said.
“Yes.”
“So Drake was, what, fired?” I asked.
“No. Drake never made an oath on the Stone. He commissioned the monarchy and the laws, and is deemed ruler by law, by vote, but it is the one who Nature deems worthy that counts in the eyes of that stone. Drake can remain on the throne of the Vampires, but once you make your oath and prove your worth, Mother Nature will deem you the only ruler—like Lilith before you.”
“Right, and with Her backing,” Portly Woman said, “Heaven help any who try to get in your way.”
“So, do we really need to catch Drake and let this prophecy child kill him? Can’t we just coexist, you know, he can rule the Vampires and I rule all else?”
“Drake has become a power-hungry man,” another said. “He serves a purpose outside maintaining balance now, and that is why Fate has placed you here; it is why there is a child foretold to kill him; it is why we must not allow him to continue.”
Personally, I didn’t really believe all of that. Fate couldn’t go around settling scores for the sake of natural order. But I wasn’t going to get into that argument again. “Well, what’s so bad about Drake?” I said instead. “What’s he doing that deems him worthy of death?”
“Black magic,” someone said.
“He invoked a curse on this land many centuries ago, and the runes of the old language once said the curse would come again around the time of a new queen’s rising.”
“Runes?”
“Yes,” an old man said. “Aside from prophecies on parchment, written in languages most can no longer read by a vampire no one has seen in centuries, we Lilithians have been predicting futures by use of stones marked with Symbols.”
“And you predicted me?” I asked.
“Yes. But not this prophecy child.”
I sat up, suddenly more interested, while the rest of the table shushed the old man.
“No, wait, I want to hear this. So you think there’s no child?”
“Oh, no, there is a child, but she is of little significance—in this chapter of Drake’s story, anyway.”
“But… will she be the one to free the Damned?”
“I’ve not had any…” The old man shook his head a few times, looking at the man who pretty much looked like his double. “I don’t believe we’ve foretold such a possibility.”
“But Vampirie did, right? Because he’s the one who wrote all those scrolls and prophecies?” I said then looked at Arthur, who stared at Morgaine with his eyes narrowed with thought.
“Yes,” Morg said, suddenly sitting taller. “That’s what we’ve deciphered.”
“Well…” I looked back at the old man. “Vampirie says one thing. What did you predict?”
“Two paths,” the old man said. When he stood, I noticed the gray cloak he wore, very out of place among the modern suits and sequined dresses. “A great queen would rise and give birth to a new Order, where two kinds would live in peace. She will defeat the evil for love of a child, but the story will not end there.”
“Well, what happens next?” I realized I was sitting really far forward.
“We… we don’t know,” he said in a shaky voice and sat back down.
“Darkness,” his double said. “As if the path does not exist, or perhaps has no determination.”
“What, like a plan-your-own-future story?”
“Perhaps, or perhaps a decision must be made before the door opens.”
I nodded to myself. “So, you said there were two paths? What was the other one?”
Another old man stood, tucking his long beard to his chest as he bowed to me. “A curse, Majesty. If the wrong path is taken, a great Darkness will rebirth the curse on these lands. We have foreseen it: seen death, destruction.”
“So, how can we stop that from happening? Did you get any clues?”
“One.”
I waited.
“Love must offer Life.”
“Life?”
“Yes. Nhym, in the old language,” said the man in the gray cloak.
“Well, how do we do that? Is it, like, I offer my life in service, or sacrifice myself on the Stone? What do we do?”
“The door to any path reveals itself as you walk, Princess.” The standing man sat back down. “When the time comes, you will know.”
“And what, in the meantime I get some freaky power from Mother Nature by making an oath on some stone?”
“That is not just some stone,” Gray Sideburns said. “It is connected deeply to your roots—to Vampirie’s mother, Lilith—your ancestor. Her Majesty should have more respect.”
That intrigued me—the idea that facts surrounded Lilith’s story—and made me feel connected, like a part of myth and legend, as if I knew Lilith once.
“So she was real? Lilith, like… the First Woman?”
“No one has proved she either existed or that she didn’t. So, until they do, we have only stories and faith,” Arthur said, raising his glass.
“Like God.”
He smiled at me. “Precisely.”
“Okay.” I shrugged. “Well, I’ll give it a go. Bring on this coronation and let’s see if I really do have Mother Nature’s backing, then I’ll go catch Drake myself.”
“And do what with him?” Arthur asked.
I looked around at all the faces. They wanted me to say I’d kill him, but I wasn’t going to do that unless I really had to.
“Kill him,” Morgaine said, jamming her heel into my ankle.
“Ouch—ur, yeah.” I sat back. “Figure out how to kill him, I guess.”
“You’ll have a fight on your hands. You must make sure you’re strong before you do this.”
I nodded. That much, I knew. But it was like going to a party that hadn’t listed a dress code on the invitation: I had no idea what to expect. For all I knew, he could be like the Head Boss in a video game—a riddle I had to figure out on the spot—and I was sure there wouldn’t be any ‘power up’ cartridges or ‘health packs’ lying around when I reached a hundred points.
“I disagree. From a tactical standpoint, sending an inexperienced fighter—a young girl—to catch an ancient warrior is a bad idea. I mean, this is Ara we’re talking about.” Mike presented me, looking at Eric then Morgaine. “She’s not capable of something like that.”
“Perhaps you just need a little faith yourself, Michael,” Arthur said. “I don’t believe you know what that girl is capable of.”
“I train with her. I taught her everything she knows. She can’t even fight off a mob of human attackers yet. How’s she gonna measure up against Drake?”
“Once she has made her oath, her powers will enrich,” the old cloak man said. “Give her a chance before you place limitations on her.”
Mike sat back. I knew he wouldn’t believe I could just become more powerful by spilling blood on some rock and making a promise; it wasn’t factual enough for him. He needed something tangible, a weapon—a heavy object he could throw—not a mythical story passed down from old man to old man, translated from several different languages since its inception. And maybe he was right not to place too much faith in oracles. But, at the same time, the idea of the runes really sparked my interest. They held more worth in my mind than some half-ripped, hard to read prophecy Morgaine, who wasn’t even an expert, had deciphered. I wanted Arthur’s opinion on what the prophecy said. But he hadn’t mentioned it to me at all, like he was avoiding it.
“Anyway, right now it’s not Amara’s battle with Drake you need to prepare her for, Mike,” Morgaine said. “It’s the Walk of Faith.”
“What’s the Walk of faith?” I asked, and everyone groaned.
Mike swallowed.
“You didn’t tell her?” Morgaine looked right at him.
“I… I was going to.” He scratched the back of his neck.
“What is it?”
“In order to seal your oath, you must prove your worth—prove you’re a descendant of Lilith,” Morgaine said. “This is the rite of passage Arthur mentioned.”
“A walk is a rite of passage?”
“Yes, see, to prove you have the courage and strength to rule, you will take the path of treachery, walk darkness in isolation, to find hope and bring it back to your people.”
“How do you find hope? It’s not a thing: a stick, a pebble, a—”
“It’s a metaphor,” Morgaine said. “Basically, by doing the walk you’re finding the hope—or whatever.”
“Oh. Okay, so I have to walk. What’s the big deal?”
“You start it after you swear your oath—a part of the ceremony that will weaken you both physically and spiritually,” Mustache Man said.
“Yes, and you must leave the border of the forest before dawn.”
“Why before dawn?”
“Because if you don’t, a: you will be trapped in there for eternity.”
I rolled my eyes.
“And, b: you will have failed your people. You will not be crowned as Queen.”
“Oh.” I looked down at my plate. “So, I just wander around the forest for the night, that’s it?”
“It won’t be that simple, Princess,” Arthur said. “It will be pitch-black, you will be exhausted, burning from your markings and—”
“There are… things in the forest,” Portly Woman interrupted. “Only myths and stories have been told of the dangers you must face and the fears you must overcome to prove your worth, but even those are enough to see b
rave men run.”
“Yeah, or it’s just a forest and she draws pictures in the dirt with a stick for the night and walks up the hill as the sun starts to show,” Eric said.
“Well”—Morgaine folded her napkin—“we’ve no way of knowing. Not one who entered that forest after making an oath ever came out, except Lilith.”
“There were others?”
“Yes. We have searched for a Pure Blood Lilithian for centuries, but none proved to be such.”
“Why?”
“Aside from failing the Walk of Faith, there was no other way of proving it.”
“Why?” I said, sure it was becoming my new favorite word. “It’s easy enough to prove: just give them a vampire for lunch and see if he dies from the bite.”
“And where do you propose we’d have gotten one of those?” someone else asked. “Do you think Drake would just hand one over—let us kill it? If he knew those of us who weren’t imprisoned in the cells were searching for a Pure Blood all these centuries, he’d have had us all beheaded.”
I touched my hand to my collarbones, in search of my locket. “Okay, so this Walk of Faith is quite possibly fatal?”
“Possibly,” Morgaine said, issuing a stern glare down the table at Eric. “But not likely.”
“You don’t have to do this, baby.” Mike reached across and rubbed my shoulder blade.
“Yes, I do.”
“No. You don’t. This is your life, Ara, if you don’t want to—”
“Look, Mike, disagreeable obligations don’t liberate a princess from her duties. You of all people would be the first to tell me that.” I made a point of seeing each pair of eyes around the table. “This changes nothing.”
Everyone looked at their dinner, except Arthur, who bowed his head to me and smiled. Mike sat back, but his face burned pink with rage and his eyes fixed to one spot on his plate.
“I say we set a date for the coronation at the House meeting tomorrow.”
“No. It will be discussed among the Private Council first,” Mike said.
“It should be an event determined and agreed on by all, not just those who—”
“That’s enough.” I stopped it before it started. “I am officially ruling that no one talks politics or battle tactics at the table for the rest of the night. I am so sick of these arguments.”
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 154