Ulysses Exposed (Blaire Thorne Book 1)

by N Gray

  I lost my appetite, pushed food around the plate and finished a second cup of coffee.

  I had heard some of Sebastian’s story already. Sebastian being the leader of his leap certainly matched his image. He seemed to fill the room with swirls of dominance, and power surrounded him, along with a splash of scary. At first glance, Sebastian seemed like the cute boy next door—gentle and kind—but something else lurked just beneath the surface; a spine-chilling darkness that consumed him if he was pushed too close to the edge.

  Ralph had eaten less than I had and was pushing his food around his plate, too. “Ralph, are you all right?” I asked.

  Even though I didn’t really remember, I had supposedly known Ralph for years, and the new me had never known him to be this solemn during the last few days we had spent together. There was something wrong; he looked distant, tired and not all together there.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong,” he replied glumly. “I started to feel down the moment you opened that coffin.”

  When we had opened the sarcophagus, Ralph had been the only person not in the container with us. I reached out to touch his arm, but he flinched like my hand was on fire, even though I hadn’t actually touched him. I took my hand back and stared at the large man who hunched over his plate.

  “You were the only one who wasn’t near the coffin when we opened it. Maybe something happened to you because you weren’t near it?” I was spitballing. “Maybe if you touch the jewels, or stand near them or something, you might feel better? I don’t know. You want to try?”

  “Maybe,” he shrugged.

  I got up from my chair, picked up the bag and placed it next to him on the table. Sebastian, Lee and Kai got up from the table and stood on the other side of the room near to the front door. I didn’t know what to expect, but nothing happened. Ralph sat, still staring down at his plate. He rubbed his arm again.

  “Is that where the witch touched you?”

  He looked at his arm. “Yes, it tingles.” He rubbed it again.

  I looked at Sebastian. “Seraphine touched Ralph when she was busy removing the curse from me. Can we trust her?”

  “She has helped us in the past, but one can’t be too careful when it comes to witches.”

  I couldn’t help but think that whatever this was, it was the last thing we needed.

  “Do you feel ill, or are you just—quiet?”

  “I don’t know how to describe it,” he said, touching his arm again. The skin beneath his fingers was visibly pink. “It feels sensitive.”

  “Maybe you should stop rubbing it; it’s turning pink.”

  I would have asked if he was in shock, but he was an assassin—I doubted that anything could shock him anymore. Even so, his was strange behavior for an assassin.

  “Do you have Seraphine’s number?” I said, but Sebastian wasn’t in the room anymore. He must have moved to one of the other rooms.

  I opened the bag with the jewels, picked one up and handed it to Ralph.

  I shrugged. “Maybe hold one, I don’t know. We aren’t the ones with powers to lose, so maybe they affect us differently. Not sure if the jewels do anything to the leopards, but they are all standing out of the way.”

  Ralph took the jewel from me and held it in both his hands. I couldn’t describe it, but one moment the spot where Seraphine had touched him was pink, and the next his skin was light brown again. It could only be courtesy of the jewel.

  “I think it did something, Ralph,” I said, pointing to his arm. “It’s not pink anymore.” Even Ralph’s cheeks had color again. I picked up another of the jewels and held it in my hands. I could feel the stone’s power calling to me, and so I picked up the final jewel and held the two I had close to the one Ralph was holding. The moment the three jewels touched, an incandescent light emitted from them and shone on the ceiling. I flinched and stood back, separating the three jewels; as soon as that happened, the light disappeared.

  Sebastian came running into the kitchen. “What the hell was that?” he said, rubbing his arms.

  I looked at Kai and Lee, and they, too, were rubbing their arms as though they were cold. The hair on my arms stood on end, but I felt nothing else.

  “When all three jewels touched, they created a light.”

  We repeated what I had done, and the moment that all three jewels touched, a light shone out of the middle where they connected and reflected onto the ceiling. We held our arms still so that the light would stay. Ralph lifted his free hand and let the light brush against his fingers.

  “Does that hurt?”

  “No, it’s just a normal light. Well, normal for me.”

  “Any of you want to try your hand through the light?” I asked the were-leopards.

  Kai pushed Lee forward. “You go first.”

  “Pussy,” Lee said, stomping forward. When he reached us, he lifted one of his hands and waved it through the light. Nothing happened. Then he stopped, so that all the light hit the palm of his hand. Still, nothing happened. “What’s it supposed to do, anyway?”

  “Control vampires,” I said, almost nonchalantly.

  “How?” Kai asked while moving closer to us and running his hand through the light. “It tickles and burns a little if you keep your hand there,” he said, continually moving his hand through the light like he was trying to chop it up.

  “Sebastian, can you still feel your power? I don’t know what you call it, but can you channel your power?”

  He closed his eyes. “Can you feel that?” he said, opening them again.

  “What?”

  “Shit.”

  “Is it affecting you?”

  “Yes! You sure you can’t feel anything?”

  “No.”

  I waited expectantly to experience once again the very power that had earlier trickled along my skin, the power that had so easily turned that wire mesh to molten slag, but now I felt nothing—not even a breeze. I pulled the two jewels away from the third and asked, “Try now.”

  As I spoke, his power flowed over me like heat running over the sides of my body and around my waist. It raised the hairs all over, and my body started to curve backwards. “Yup, I can feel that. You can stop it now.” I smiled at him, and then I frowned.

  His smile reached his eyes, and he knew what he had just done. “I guess that means the jewels work on were-animals, as well.”

  “I guess so.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Pack the jewels securely,” Sebastian said. “We can’t afford for any of them to be chipped or cracked. Miles is on his way to fetch us. He should be here within the next hour or two.”

  I yawned and said, “I’m lying down until he gets here.”

  “We will tap into the warehouse camera feed,” Sebastian said. “Maybe we can see who attacked us.”

  CHAPTER 21

  SOMEONE TOUCHED MY shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw that it had been Ralph. He sat on the edge of the bed, still holding my shoulder. “Miles is here; we need to go. They will drop us off at my car, and then we will meet them at their house, place, whatever it’s called, to hand the jewels over to Léon. Apparently, none of them want to handle them.”

  “Oh, okay.” I begrudgingly moved my legs to the side of the bed and stood up to follow him.

  All the guys were waiting for us in the living room.

  We piled into Miles’s Jeep with Sebastian riding shotgun, me in the middle with Ralph on my right and Kai on my left, and Lee in the back on one of those chairs that fold against the side.

  As we drove through the late morning traffic, I asked, “Sebastian, could you see who stormed the warehouse?”

  “No. They were all wearing black, and their faces were covered. We couldn’t see a thing.”

  “So, you don’t know who did it?”

  “No,” he said, not sounding entirely happy about that fact.

  The traffic was light, and after twenty minutes, we parked behind Ralph’s car. As I reached the passenger side, I looked back and saw Sebastian walk toward
me. With his loose limbs and strong muscles, he walked like a cat. He stopped, and close enough to touch me, he said, “Follow us and park where we park. I don’t want Léon’s guests to know you are in the building.”

  I frowned and said, “I don’t understand. It can’t be because we are assassins. What’s the real reason, Sebastian?”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it again, glancing back at the occupants of the Jeep before turning back to me and whispering, “They are not the most sociable of vampires, Blaire. They will chew you up and spit you out.”

  “Why? They don’t know me?”

  “They love toying with humans, and if they found out that you are an assassin, they will certainly sink their fangs into you. They are worse than Ian and Esther.”

  I shuddered at the thought. Enough said.

  “Do the other vampires know what Léon did—about the first mark on me? If I remember correctly, they have some kind of metaphysical link to one another, or to one directly from their line.”

  Sebastian’s shoulders slumped slightly, as though he was holding onto something that had hurt for so long that it was straining them. He exhaled, the sound suggesting that he could finally breathe properly again. “You seem to know a lot about vampires.”

  “Honestly, I surprise myself. Almost every minute, I keep remembering little tidbits of information. It’s mainly generic details; nothing personal at all, really. It’s like my brain is still alive, but there’s just no memory of who I am.”

  He sighed. “You are right, Blaire. That’s the reason why the other vampires are here. They sensed that something had happened, but they don’t know what it was. If they saw you, in the flesh, their link to Léon would allow them to see exactly what happened, hence he doesn’t want you brought anywhere near them.”

  Léon had promised that he wanted nothing in exchange for giving me the first mark. That he had only done so to save my life.

  “Will he be punished for what he has done?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Shit, I didn’t know that.”

  “I hate vampire politics.”

  “What I can’t figure out is why they care so much as to whether he has a human servant or not? I thought vampires had free choice in things like that. Léon is a master vampire; surely he can choose who he wants?”

  “Typically, that is the case; master vampires can take on any human servant they choose. But this is the council, and all vampires still have to answer to them.”

  “Why do they care who his human servant is?”

  Sebastian hesitated. Finally, he said, “Léon is over eight hundred years of age, so he has been around the world a few times. And in all this time, he has never had a human servant—not once. A master vampire can take on a human servant, and if the servant dies, the master, if strong enough, may survive and take on another. But”—he tried to find the right words— “Léon is stubborn. There was a human, once, who would have been the perfect servant for him, but he didn’t want her. Eventually she became a vampire, and now she is extremely powerful herself. She sits on the council, and it is she who is here demanding to know what happened.”

  “Is she the jealous type?”

  “Very.”

  A horn sounded, and Miles started yelling out the window for Sebastian to hurry.

  “In a minute,” Sebastian said, holding up his hand to tell Miles to be patient.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Who?”

  “This jealous vampire.”

  “Galina. She is quite something, Blaire. I hate being in the same room as her.” He shuddered.

  The memory of how Galina made him feel seemed to take Sebastian aback, and he started to shiver, even though the air was warm and there wasn’t a wind. Whatever she did to him seemed to linger just beneath the surface of his composure, along with his inner animal.

  He pulled himself out of his daydream and held his arms. The shivering stopped, and he tried to smile but failed. It was unusual for Sebastian, but he actually looked scared.

  “She cannot know who you are.”

  “I definitely don’t want to meet her, thanks. What is she going to do to Léon?”

  “Fuck knows, but I know that I don’t want to be around when it happens.” He paused to run his fingers through his hair. “But Léon needs me, and he is expecting me to be there soon. Galina won’t start anything until I get there, so we have to go.”

  Miles honked the horn again, but Sebastian ignored him. His sparkling green eyes paled and showed a little more white than before. Even though I had only known him for a few days, he was usually much more confident than this. He pulled himself together, shook his body and put on a smile that almost reached his eyes. The tension in his jaw was gone as he exhaled, like he was able to release himself from that bad memory.

  “It will be okay,” he said, and I suspected that he was trying to convince himself of it more than he was me. “Just stay out of sight.” He touched my elbow and squeezed.

  “Are you sure we should go there? It really doesn’t sound like we should,” Ralph said as I climbed into the car. As I got comfortable in the passenger seat, Ralph was racking the slide of a pistol he had reached for under the seat.

  “I know; I don’t like it either. Do you have a spare gun for me?”

  Ralph’s smile broadened, and his eyes sparkled with a hint of mischief. “Look in the glove compartment. At the top, there is a latch. Press on it and see.”

  I did as he said and found that there was a Glock 19 Gen4 inside the secret compartment. As I took it out, it fit into my hand perfectly. How I knew that it was a Glock 19 Gen4, I had no idea, but I liked the feel of it in my hand.

  “Cool. Hopefully, I have the guts to shoot it. Does it have silver bullets?” Yet another piece of information that swam into my mind, for which I had no explanation.

  “We can’t kill them with silver, but it does enough damage to slow them down.” He pulled away from the curb and followed Miles’s car.

  “If Galina comes after me, I want to protect myself long enough to either get away or come up with another plan.”

  “I hope it won’t come to it, but if you need a knife, there’s one under the carpet beneath your feet.”

  I lifted the carpet to find that, as promised, beneath it was a tactical Benchmade 810 Contego Pocketknife. As I lifted it and turned the stainless-steel handle over in my hands, I noticed that it even had a butterfly engraved upon it—the symbol of our organization. The knife flicked open to reveal an extremely sharp blade that could easily stab through a vampire’s cold, thick skin.

  “Cool, I like the Benchmade 810 Contego Pocketknife. It’s not too heavy and fits easily in my hand. Thanks, Ralph.”

  “You know the make?”

  “It’s strange. I’m remembering bits and pieces of things, but not all. At least it’s something, I guess.” I shrugged.

  We were still behind the other car and driving at the speed limit, the smoothness of the road and the surrounding trees almost hypnotic and tranquil. I tucked the gun into my pants at the small of my back and pocketed the knife. I rested my head on the seat and closed my eyes for a moment.

  The water was warm and thick, like a blanket comforting me from the cold. I opened my eyes, and the water was maroon. The tree that always seemed to pop up in my dreams was on the shore, but it was different now— it was hollow and ashen. The motion of the crimson waves pushed me to shore, and I walked up the rich, silky sand that shimmered beneath my feet, its fire-like color shifting between red, yellow and maroon. I knelt and touched the tree where its bark met the sand, and the earth fell away. Below was only darkness, and as I looked into the chasm to see what else was there, I fell inside. I floated and fell all at once, like the air was nothing, exactly how I imagined Alice must have felt when she visited Wonderland. When my stomach didn’t flip with the sudden motion, I reached out to the sides, and as I did, I stopped and looked down.

  My feet came to rest on a cold
floor. The bedroom was inside a cave, with a bed in its center and platinum silk bedding that looked smooth and inviting. To the right of the bed stood a dressing table with a high-backed chair in front of it, and its left, there was a wardrobe. Near the only door was an antique mirror with an engraved mahogany frame that stood apart from the rest of the furniture.

  As I turned to reach for the door, a woman appeared before me. She was slightly taller than I, but her posture seemed to magnify her height until it began to feel as though she was looming over me. Her startling, vivid green eyes revealed the evil within her—a power so great that I felt it pulsing through the air. Her hair, the color of the whitest of snow, fell like a curtain around her shoulders and ended near her hips. Her black eyebrows offered a shocking contrast to her pale skin and the white of her hair, and beneath them, her green eyes seemed to illuminate in the dark cave. Her thin lips curved upward in a shallow smile, revealing her sharp fangs.

  I stepped away, but she grabbed my arms.

  “So, you are the one who has caught his eye,” she hissed. “You are not much to look at, so there has to be some other reason as to why he chose you.” Her deep, piercing eyes looked me over, and it felt like tiny insects biting my skin. The sensation was almost scalding.

  “You must be Galina?” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Oh, so he has spoken of me?” The insect bites stopped, but her grasp still felt hot against my skin.

  “Not quite, but I’ve heard a few things about you.” I felt beads of sweat run down the side of my face.

  She dug her fingernails into my skin, and they were sharp and painful. I felt liquid trickle down my arms.