“What is it?” Tristan asked, straining against the ropes binding his wrists as he tried to reach for her. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” Avery murmured, coming to the same conclusion as Quinn and playing up her vulnerability. “I’m still just a little weak. Charlotte’s methods were... well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. You were there after all.”
“Avery,” his voice broke, “you have to know that I didn’t want that. I never wanted you to get hurt. I didn’t know... you have to believe that I would never have condoned them hurting you.”
“I know.” Those words silenced him as Avery continued. “I remember. You were very clear on that when you visited. But it’s what they did when you weren’t there...” She paused dramatically, lulling him into a false sense of security, before resuming. Her voice had dropped to barely more than a whisper, making her seem timid and vulnerable. “They hurt me, Tristan. They tortured me and they enjoyed every second of it. Charlotte fed from me.” Quinn’s own gasp of outrage echoed Tristan’s at this revelation. A vampire feeding off a Guardian was the ultimate degradation. A vile act intended to humiliate. Avery’s body was quivering as she relived the memory and this time it was no act. Quinn clenched both fists at her sides in an effort not to reach for her sister and offer words of comfort.
“I didn’t know,” Tristan shook his head in denial. “She promised me... she swore...”
“And you believed her?” Avery cried. She took two steps toward him and Quinn steeled herself, ready to intervene, but Avery surprised her, dropping to her knees at Tristan’s feet and meeting his gaze. “She hurt me,” she echoed. Tristan shook his head from side to side, his eyes closing tightly as though he could block her out simply by not seeing her.
“Please stop,” he pleaded. “I can’t... I can’t hear anymore.” The guilt was festering, spreading through him like a black, ugly cancer. Quinn could sense that Avery was becoming unhinged, but she prayed that she would find the strength to go on, to push, now that she had Tristan where she wanted him. She only hoped that Tristan would snap before Avery. It took a lot to push aside her own guilt at putting Avery through this.
“Why did you do it?” Avery asked. A simple question, but one designed to make him admit his true feelings once more.
“For you,” Tristan insisted, as they knew he would. “For us. For our family. I did it because I love you.” Avery held his attention, her eyes softening as if this proclamation meant something. Then she lifted her hand and Tristan caught his breath as she brushed his own.
“It was pointless,” Avery crooned regretfully. “You did all of that for me, but you signed my death warrant. I wish you had trusted me. You thought I was going to run, but I wasn’t.” The lie was so convincing that Quinn would have believed it herself if she hadn’t known better. “We could have left... taken the children...” A sob erupted from Avery’s chest, and Quinn sensed that the mention of the children had evoked a very real emotion.
“That’s enough, Avery.” Quinn announced. “You asked me for a few minutes – you’ve had that. Let’s go.” Obediently, Avery got to her feet, throwing Quinn a hateful glare as she did so.
“She told me,” Avery said to Tristan, ignoring Quinn. “About you and her.”
“Oh God,” Tristan looked like he was going to be sick as he turned to Quinn. “You told her?”
“She’s my sister,” Quinn shrugged.
“And yet you had no qualms about sleeping with my husband,” Avery snapped.
Tristan seized his chance to apologise. “I’m so sorry, Avery. I only ever wanted the crystals. I had to make her trust me. It didn’t mean anything!” As much as Quinn despised Tristan, it still stung that he had felt nothing for her while she had entertained a future with him.
Avery looked at Tristan for a long time as though weighing up the truth in his words.
“She never got over you,” she finally admitted. “I know it wasn’t only your fault.” She cast an accusatory look at Quinn, making it clear where she apportioned the bulk of the blame.
“Enough,” Quinn said. “You’ve had your time to say goodbye. Now out.”
Avery seemed about to argue, but then she cast one last look at Tristan and headed for the door.
“Goodbye, Tristan,” she murmured.
“Wait!” Tristan seemed to come alive as he watched Avery’s departing figure but she didn’t turn around. Quinn followed Avery, hiding a smug smile as she reached the door. “Quinn, wait!” Tristan was frantic. Composing herself, she turned to face him, arching a dark brow.
“What?” she snapped.
“What’s going on?” he asked, his face a mask of terror. “Why did she come here? What do you mean she had time to say goodbye? What’s going on?”
“You have no right to ask questions here, Tristan.”
“She’s my wife!”
Quinn actually laughed at that. “How can you even say that? After everything you did to her.”
He didn’t even bother apologising, not to her. “Regardless of your opinion of me, I have a right to know what’s going on.”
“Fine,” Quinn snapped, feigning irritation. “If you really want to know I’ll tell you, but you’re going to wish I hadn’t.”
“Tell me.”
“All your plans to keep her safe were for nothing.” The lie slipped easily from her lips. “Avery’s going after Charlotte.”
“What?” Tristan erupted. “You can’t let her do that!”
Quinn let her shoulders slump, allowing herself to look defeated. “I don’t have a choice. She’s made her decision and nothing I say will make any difference. She’s not the same.”
“Quinn, listen to me!” Tristan writhed against his restraints with newfound vigour. “I’m the only reason Charlotte kept her alive before. Now that I’m gone, Charlotte will kill her!”
Quinn finally snapped, crossing the room in two strides and lowering her face so that their noses were almost touching. His blue eyes, which she had always thought so boyish and beautiful, were shimmering with fear, but Quinn finally saw beyond his youthful charm to the person beneath. A weak and insipid man who had walked away from his duty. Tristan was a coward, and Quinn couldn’t believe she had once chosen him over Drake, who had risked his life to save them all. A vampire who was ten times the man Tristan could ever be.
“And yet you took that bitch’s side!” Quinn roared, right up in Tristan’s face. “You sold us out, to a monster!”
“She’ll kill her!” Tristan repeated, refusing to be swayed off course. His only concern was Avery, he didn’t give a damn about the rest.
“You think I don’t know that?” Quinn hissed into his face. “Thanks to you I’m about to lose my sister all over again. And this time she’s not coming back!” Drawing a stake from her belt she pressed it against his neck. “I should kill you right now,” she growled, and a part of her was desperate to actually do it. “If it wasn’t for you, none of this would have happened!”
“You can hate me all you want,” Tristan struggled to speak as the stake pressed against his voice box, “but you have to save her.”
“It’s too late for that,” Quinn intoned, so softly that she wondered if he had heard her. Her words held a double meaning, unbeknown to Tristan. She could protect Avery from physical harm, but Quinn wondered whether she would ever truly be able to save her sister from the darkness that had settled inside of her, whether she would ever be able to fully heal the scars that Tristan’s betrayal and her torture had inflicted. Stepping deliberately back towards the door, Quinn heard Tristan’s cries, begging her to do something, anything. She feigned a look of ignorance as she turned back to him again.
“What would you have me do, Tristan? Kill Charlotte myself?” She gave a mock laugh of derision, but in reality she watched his expression very carefully. She saw the moment that he came to the only logical conclusion, one that she had planted in his mind without him even realising it, but she kept her face impassive.
“Yes!” Tristan gasped. “That’s it! You’re the Slayer now, Quinn! If anybody can kill Charlotte, it’s you. Please, you have to do it... Charlotte will annihilate Avery. I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to her.”
“Your concern for my own safety is truly touching,” Quinn countered, but she appeared thoughtful.
“I’m sorry,” Tristan was placatory, determined to get her on his side. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“That’s bullshit, and we both know it.”
“I didn’t!” Tristan insisted. “I never set out to kill the Guardians. I simply wanted the wards destroyed. I wanted the charm broken.” Quinn forgot herself for a moment and let her anger show.
“And if the rest of us got killed in the process, I suppose that was just collateral damage?”
“You can think what you want of me, Quinn, but everything I did, I did for my family; for Avery and the children. Just as you did when you abandoned the Guardians to take care of Jack and Ava. You and I are more alike than you want to believe and we both know it.”
“For someone so concerned about your children, you’ve hardly worried about where they are,” Quinn countered.
To her surprise, Tristan smiled. “I didn’t ask where they were for a reason,” he replied simply. “Do you really think I wanted Jack and Ava in Charlotte’s clutches? And to answer your implied insinuation, I didn’t ask exactly where you had taken them because I didn’t want to know, in case...”
“In case Charlotte turned on you, too?” Quinn breathed. It appeared Tristan hadn’t been as taken in by Charlotte as she had thought.
“You did me a favour getting them as far from Summerfeld as possible. I wasn’t going to question it.”
“And now you want me to do you another favour?” Quinn sneered. “It seems to me that I am far more effective at protecting your family than you have ever been.”
“I can’t deny that. Please, do what I failed to do.”
“I have no idea where Charlotte is.” Quinn was finally getting to the crux of why she had come here in the first place.
“She’s at her house,” Tristan volunteered immediately. “She’s been there since we left the ruins of the City.”
“And the crystals?”
Tristan smiled, not so easily fooled. “I can’t tell you that.”
“You’re still hoping that the vampires will win this war, aren’t you,” Quinn was disgusted. “That by some miracle your plan might come to fruition and once all the wards are destroyed you can have Avery’s memory wiped. Let me tell you something, you spineless little shit. That will never happen. I will make sure of it. If you want any chance of redemption, tell me what I need to know, and maybe, just maybe, if you spend an eternity trying to right the wrongs you have done, you might regain a mere iota of her respect. If you want Avery to feel anything for you again, then help us.” Quinn hurled the words at him, trying to inflict pain, but still, the resounding truth could not be missed. Relenting slightly, she continued more gently. “You’re not evil, Tristan. You’re sick. Delusional. Your obsession with Avery has blinded you and you have made terrible mistakes, unforgiveable mistakes. But you can still make amends. Isaiah once told me that when a Guardian loses his way, he will find his way back in his own time. This is your time. Prove that you’re not a monster. Please. Tell me what I need to know.”
The words hung in the air between them and Quinn wondered for a moment if he had even heard her, slumped as he was in his chair, his face in shadow. She had played her trump card. If this didn’t work, nothing would. A sickening sense of failure passed over her as Tristan stayed perfectly still, saying nothing. She was about to leave when he lifted his head. Quinn could barely believe what she was seeing. Tears spilled from his eyes, running over his cheeks and dripping onto the front of his filthy shirt. In that moment Quinn felt only pity. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and his face crumpled with the shame that he had finally been made to feel. Tristan was broken.
‘You’ll make sure she’s safe?” he asked, and Quinn knew that the battle was won.
“I give you my word.”
“Then I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
Chapter 5
While Tristan was spilling his secrets to Quinn, Charlotte had taken refuge from the sun in a house only a few miles away. Charlotte was in a foul temper. She had already disposed of the only human occupant of the house in a frenzy of rage and was now licking her wounds. The humiliation of her failure washed over her in waves and her skin crawled with disgust. Even the fact that she had killed the Slayer did not make up for the fact that the wards still lived; that Quinn still lived - and Drake! Charlotte couldn’t fathom how he had survived. She had staked him through the chest. There was no way she had missed his heart. Even if she had only nicked it, he should have bled out. And yet he had been there when she had taken Lenora hostage. He had watched her kill the Slayer. Why would the bastard not die?
And then Charlotte had had to endure Aleksei’s wrath. It was imperative that she prove herself capable in order to get back in his good graces. She still wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t suspect her of treason. She had used Sloane as a scapegoat but that wasn’t to say she was in the clear. She had toyed with the idea of withholding what had happened, putting it off for another day in the hope that she would find the Guardians again tonight and finish what she had started, but Aleksei had been insistent that she update him daily. In the end she had made the dreaded call, telling him that she had found the wards but that she had failed to kill them. Aleksei’s icy calm carried a subtle threat, but it was no less effective.
“Find them. You have one week. I expect a daily update, as usual.” was all he had said and Charlotte had felt the icy hand of fear trickle down her spine, mingling with the anger and shame. She knew with absolute certainty that unless she destroyed the wards soon, she would not live much longer.
Still clasping her phone in her hand she paced the darkened hall. She would have to wait until nightfall to return to Lenora’s house, not that she had expected that anyone would still be there. She jumped as the phone rang. Expecting Aleksei, no doubt with further instructions, she raised it automatically to her cheek.
“Hello?” She winced as she heard the tremor in her own voice, but the voice she heard on the other end of the line was not Aleksei’s.
“Hello Charlotte,” Quinn said.
Hastily checking the screen, Charlotte recognised Tristan’s number. “Quinn,” she crooned sweetly, “what a pleasant surprise.”
“I think it’s time you and I had a little chat,” Quinn replied, just as calmly. If Charlotte was surprised, she didn’t show it.
“I agree. Where and when?”
“Your house. Three days from now.”
Charlotte quickly calculated. If they were still in the same vicinity, they could both be back at the manor house by then. Quinn must be close. Probably they hadn’t yet left Lenora’s. It infuriated her that her enemies were only a few miles away and she was powerless to do anything about it.
“I look forward to it,” Charlotte said, but the line had already gone dead.
“Miss Charlotte?” A voice sounded to her right. One of the young vampires who had fled along with her last night loitered in the space between the hall and the kitchen, unsure of his reception.
“What is it?” she snapped.
“There’s something we thought you might like to see.”
Charlotte followed him through to the living room, where a small group of her army had gathered. The others had taken up residence in houses along the same street. Charlotte had been quick to issue instructions when they arrived and every available body had started gathering new recruits, calling in vampires, from far and wide, who would wait until darkness fell to join them. She needed to replenish her numbers. Many of her people had been killed last night.
“Well?” Charlotte demanded, as the group seemed to shrink against the walls, shying away from her. The
same youth who had summoned her cleared his throat, holding out his hand to a plain, mousy-haired vampire girl beside him. Wordlessly, she handed over a cell phone which he passed to Charlotte.
“Bethany made contact with her sire at Summerfeld,” the boy explained as Charlotte gazed at the words on the screen. “The vampire Dimitri. He gave her the news. We thought... well, given that you and the councilman were close... we thought that you might want to know.”
Charlotte’s face remained impassive as she read the short thread of text messages. Sloane was dead. It was nothing less than she had expected, given that she had offered him up to Aleksei as a sheep to the slaughter to shift suspicion from herself, but she didn’t need anyone else knowing that. Some of these vampires had been Sloane’s people.
“What is your name?” she demanded of the boy.
“Peter, my lady.”
“And do we know what happened, Peter?” she asked, injecting just the right amount of dejection in her tone.
“It would seem that he displeased King Aleksei.”
Charlotte nodded, passing the phone back. “Thank you for letting me know,” she said graciously. “I am sure Sloane would have appreciated your loyalty.” She watched them closely, assessing their reactions. If she were to take over Sloane’s people and gather her forces around her against Aleksei, this would be the time to start. To her outrage, the youth drew himself up to his full height and met her gaze levelly.
“We do not need his appreciation. He was a traitor. He deserved what he got.”
A scream welled up in Charlotte’s chest as, with those simple words, her best-laid plans unravelled. She choked it down, but such was the force of her rage that the room’s occupants scattered in all directions, sensing trouble.
Guardians of Summerfeld: Full Series: Books 1-4 Page 82