Tempt (The Kresova Vampire Harems: Aurora Book 2)

by Graceley Knox

  There’s a raised, mirrored platform in the center of the room, and three mirrored steps leading up to it. And sitting on it is something huge and square covered in a black velvet cloth.

  “Unlike God,” Morana continues. “I believe Creation can still be improved upon. And we, in particular, are far from perfection yet. But not for long. Perfection is in reach. And to that end, I would like to introduce the newest member of La Tiruer.”

  She pulls the cloth away from the object and I feel Carver tense beside me as a huge silver cage is revealed. A woman crouches in the center and, as soon as the cloth is removed, launches herself at the bars, snarling and biting like an animal. She’s wearing a fine dress, but it’s been torn and stained, probably recently, and her hair is a wild mess. Her eyes are huge and rimmed with white and there is not a speck of human sanity in them.

  “Sweet Jolie,” Morana says, looking directly at Carver as she speaks. “Only a few centuries old, yet already her strength rivals mine. And she has no weaknesses. Sunlight, silver, staking- she is immune to all of it, and as immortal as an ancient. Believe me, we’ve tried to kill her, haven’t we Carver?”

  She laughs, and Carver lunges at her, surprising me. I grab one arm and Lucian snags the other, holding him back. Morana doesn’t even acknowledge his meaningless threat.

  “This is the future of our kind,” Morana announces to the crowd. “Perfect immortality, with nothing to hold us back.”

  Jolie interrupts with a hideous animal shriek and starts trying to tear her dress off. I squeeze Carver’s arm, horrified.

  “Of course, she’s also mad as a hatter,” Morana says with a laugh. “There are still a few bugs to work out. But we have nothing if not time, no? The future of our kind is coming, soon. And all of you gathered here today, the finest of my court, will be the first to taste perfection when it arrives. If that is not a reason to be prideful, then I don’t know what is!”

  Someone in the crowd opens a bottle of champagne with a loud pop as the vampires cheer for Morana. Carver turns quickly away, pulling Lucian and I with him. There are glass doors at the rear of the ballroom, almost hidden by the mirrors, which lead out into the gardens. The clear, cold night air is an immediate relief, but Carver keeps going, leading us further away from the party, until I finally drag on his arm to stop him.

  “What’s going on?” I demand. “Who was that woman in the cage? What the hell was Morana talking about?”

  “You looked ready to fight her right there,” Lucian adds. “I’d like to know what upset you so much you would risk all our lives.” His tone is harsh but there’s an undertone of concern as well, and I nod in agreement with him.

  Carver is silent for a moment, tense as piano wire. Finally, he meets my eye, something in him looking broken. “She’s my sister,” he says at last. “Jolie is my sister.”

  “What happened to her?” I ask, reaching for his hand. He turns away, too upset to be touched right now. He leans against a stone terrace wall, gripping it hard to try and restrain himself.

  “Morana happened to her,” he says grimly. “I happened to her. I failed her. I was supposed to protect her. But after Morana turned me… I told her I wanted to go back to my family, that they needed me. So she turned them too, so there would be nothing to draw me away from her. But the change was too much for them. It killed my mother and older sister and drove Jolie mad. Or so Morana told me at the time.”

  I jump as a chunk of the wall crumbles under his white knuckled grip, my heart breaking for Carver as he talks, his voice cracked and broken sounding.

  “I found out recently that Jolie- That all of it, was because of Morana,” he goes on, ignoring the stone cracking under his hands. “She used them in some diabolical experiment, some attempt to increase her own power. She drove Jolie mad for her own greed, and she was in there bragging about it, showing her off like, like-“

  Worried he’s going to hurt himself, I throw my arms around him from behind, pressing my face to his back. He goes tense at first, and for a moment I’m afraid he’ll throw me off. But then he softens, leaning in to my embrace.

  “She made me kill her,” Carver whispers. “With my own hands. I thought she was dead. If I’d known she was alive all this time, that Morana had her…”

  “And it seems she’s been putting her to use,” Lucian says quietly. “The creature Lavinia mentioned. If she’s really as strong as Morana and as wild as she seems… She could be a weapon the likes of which we’ve never seen.”

  Carver looks like he might be sick. I take his shoulder, turning him around to look at me, and hold his face in my hands. I look into his eyes, heavy with grief. I can’t imagine going through that. Losing most of your family, seeing one of them driven so crazy they couldn’t even recognize you anymore, finally putting them out of their misery yourself, only to find out they’d lived, suffering in the hands of your enemy. It sounds like a hell that would rival most anything in Morana’s horror show. I pull him down to me and he presses his forehead to mine, closing his eyes. I simply hold him there for a long moment, his hands over mine, feeling him shake as he wars with his grief, unwilling to cry even now.

  “She has single handedly taken from me every single thing that has ever mattered to me,” Carver whispers. “When I think of her taking you too…”

  “She won’t,” I promise him, though I have no idea how to keep that promise. “I won’t let it happen. We’ll figure something out. We’ll run tonight, now. We’ll hide and never come back. To hell with Morana and Abe and all of it. As long as I have you and Lucian I don’t care.”

  It’s a lie. The failure would burn more than I have words for. But I can get a new purpose in life. I can make loving them my purpose. Right now, all I want is for all three of us to be far away from here and safe.

  Lucian puts a hand on my shoulder and I look up from Carver to smile at him. Carver takes a deep breath and puts an arm around Lucian’s shoulder, bringing him in to the embrace. We can get through this. We’re stronger together than Morana could ever be.

  I raise my head to say so, when a blinding flash and the sound of an explosion rips through the garden, knocking all three of us off our feet.

  Chapter 18

  I come to a moment later, dazed and in pain.

  The entire side of my body that was facing the house is blistered and burning, my healing powers struggling to repair the damage. It’s agonizing, but I’m too in shock to fully process it. I stumble to my feet instead, searching for Carver and Lucian. Instead, I see Morana’s mansion in flames. The entire wall of the ballroom we’d just left has been obliterated, open on a smoking crater. I walk towards it, like a moth drawn to flame. My ears are ringing too loudly to hear the screams of the injured and dying, the crunch of rubble and broken mirror under my feet, but I can smell it. The char of burned meat, the stink of blood.

  The vampires who had been closest to Jolie’s cage are in pieces. I can’t tell which bits are Morana from the rest. Whatever exploded was enough to reduce even her and Jolie to twitching parts. They are still alive, in more pain than I can imagine in my wildest nightmares, pieces slowly drawing back together. They will reconstitute, but it will be slow and horrific. Others, younger vampires without an ancient’s powers, are nothing but ash now, or blackened corpses skewered with silver shrapnel from the shattered mirrors. Further away from the blast, vampires with wounds that would have been mortal on any human drag themselves away from the carnage, wailing in agony. For all Morana’s pretentious preaching about Dante, this seems more a vision of hell than anything I saw at the party. I am the only one standing amid the dead and dying.

  Lucian stumbles into me, pulling me away from the nightmare. He’s as badly burned as I am, but it’s an injury we can recover from, unlike the others around us. I remember the kind man in the hallway and shudder, hoping he was far enough away from the blast to have survived. If we hadn’t been in the garden, I don’t doubt that I at least would be dead. Lucian and Carver probably wouldn
’t have survived either.

  “Where’s Carver?” I ask Lucian, dazed and struggling to focus. “He was right there, he was right beside us.”

  “I don’t know,” Lucian replies, his voice shaking, tripping as he tries to walk on a leg that’s more char than flesh. “I don’t know. We have to go. We need to leave, now.”

  “But Carver-”

  “You’re more important,” Lucian interrupts. “Carver will be alright. We have to get you out of here, now.”

  “But Carver-“

  Lucian stops, grabbing me by my less burned shoulder. His eyes are wide with fear, for me, for all of us.

  “If you die here, it was all for nothing,” he says.

  I don’t have the strength to argue any further. Leaning on each other for support, we flee the garden. I can’t help searching every flowerbed we pass for any sign of Carver, but I see nothing. By the time we reach the back wall I can hear angry shouts coming from the ballroom. The survivors, Morana’s soldiers who were dispersed throughout the house, out of range of the blast, search for someone to blame. And I can’t imagine whoever set that bomb won’t also be closing in to take advantage of the chaos. My fear for Carver, for the kind man in the hall, even for Morana’s lifeless dolls, only grows.

  Lucian hurries me into the car and drives away, struggling to stay on the road with the severity of his burns. We get a few miles away before he pulls over at last, shaking, and we both lie there while our healing abilities try to grow us new skin.

  “Why is it taking so long to heal?” I ask, groaning.

  “It was a light bomb,” Lucian replies, breathless with pain. “Concentrated UV radiation. It’s one of the few weaknesses almost all vampires share. Even the ancients. It will heal. But it will take time. And it will hurt.”

  “We need to go back,” I say, imagining Carver going through this. “We need to find Carver. What if got him worse? What if-”

  “He’s strong,” Lucian replies, shaking his head. “He survived the blast, I’m sure. And he would not want you to come back for him. It’s almost more dangerous for you now than the bomb. Morana will suspect us, and her revenge for an insult like this would be worse than fatal. Some of her most powerful allies will be down for months recovering from this. We need to get away while we have the chance.”

  “We can’t leave without Carver,” I insist, the pain becoming blinding as the shock slowly wears off. “We can’t leave him!”

  “Aura,” Lucian says sharply and I flinch for a moment, until he reaches for me, for my unburned cheek, pulling me closer to him. My heart is racing and tears are scalding my burns, but his touch calms me. He strokes any unburned skin he can find, runs his fingers through my dry, singed hair. “Carver is alive. He’ll find a way to get back to us. I trust him. You need to trust him.”

  I sob, hating it, but knowing he’s right. I know Carver. I know he wouldn’t want me to go back for him. But I don’t know if I have it in me to leave him behind, not knowing he’ll be safe.

  Lucian kisses me softly, my burned lips stinging, and wipes away my tears.

  “Nothing in heaven or hell could keep me away from you,” he whispers, and my heart aches at the words. “And I know Carver feels the same. We’ll be together again. We have to stay alive until then.”

  I nod, accepting it despite how wrong it feels. I’m in too much pain to fight. He kisses me one last time, then returns to driving. He sends a message to Reina and Row, letting them know that we’re moving the plan to leave up immediately. I am silent the rest of the drive, slipping in and out of consciousness, my brief, terrible dreams always of Carver’s face, his eyes wide just before the explosion hit us.

  They meet us at the airport and the horror on Reina’s face as she sees the state we’re in hurts me, though we’re already better than we were when we got in the car. She hugs me, crying, which starts me crying again as well. We board the plane, waiting for clearance to leave. I lay shivering in my seat, fevers and hot flashes passing over me as my body tries to heal, and watch the tarmac through the window, willing Carver to appear. There’s still time, I think as the plane goes through final checks. He could still make it.

  Through all of this, from the moment I was bitten, Carver has been with me, guiding me. I don’t know what to do without him. I don’t know how to continue. I need him with me. The pain I’m in is indescribable, but preferable to the thought of being without him. He has to make it. He was right next to us when the bomb went off. He must have woken up not that long after us. If he made it out of the garden then he knows where we’re going. He’ll find us. He’ll make it.

  “We’re ready for take-off,” the pilot announces. She’s a vampire too, and looks at the state Lucian and I are in with disgust and sympathy.

  “Hold the plane,” I insist, my voice rough.

  “Aura,” Reina says, squeezing my unburned hand. Lucian has already passed out, the pain too much. I’m only still conscious because of the numbing shock. “We can’t linger. If Morana knows about the plan, about the plane-“

  “Just wait,” I demand, pain from the burns warring with pain from my heart. “Please. Just a little longer. He might have been right behind us. He could be just a few minutes away.” I’m being foolish. I know he’d have been with us if something wasn’t stopping him. And the thought shatters my heart into little pieces.

  Reina’s face softens with sympathy.

  “Five more minutes,” she tells the pilot, then turns to me. “If he doesn’t come, we still have to leave.”

  “I can’t leave him, Reina,” I whisper, struggling to stay conscious. “I can’t.”

  “You have to,” Reina says, her voice firm. “I don’t want to leave him either, but we have to keep you safe. Lucian, Row, me. All our lives depend on this too.”

  It feels worse than the burns. I can’t leave Carver, but I can’t risk Lucian and Reina’s lives for my own selfishness either. I feel torn in two. I stare out the window, willing Carver to appear. Please, I think, over and over, praying to any god that will answer. Please, please let him get here in time.

  The plane begins to roll down the landing strip and I lose my will power, begging Reina and the pilot to stop the plane, to wait just a little longer. Pleading, screaming, threatening through my tears, anything to make them wait just a little longer. They ignore me, as they should, Reina and Row struggling to hold me in my seat, and I sob as the plane lifts off, leaving Carver behind. I cry myself into swift unconsciousness, feeling as though I’m lying in Lucifer’s mouth next to Judas, and I deserve to be there.

  Chapter 19

  Two days later, the burns are mostly gone. All that remains is fleshy reddened marks, no worse than some I had as a human.

  There has still been no word from Carver. We arrived at his safe house the same night and whenever the pain receded enough for me to be lucid I waited, tense with anxiety, for his call. For any sign at all. There was nothing. When I slept, I dreamed of the party. I saw Carver served up to the ortolan eaters in Gluttony, flayed and gutted in Wrath, doped into mindlessness in Sloth while Morana did whatever she pleased to him. Again and again I saw the last moments in the garden and wondered what I could have done differently to save him. Why he hadn’t woken up with us.

  I lay on the bed in my room, staring into space. I hadn’t done much else since we arrived. Everything hurt too much, literally and metaphorically. Lucian and I put aloe on each other’s burns and tried to comfort one another, but there wasn’t much he could to make me feel less guilty.

  “My life shouldn’t be more important than his,” I told Lucian the last time we talked about it. “My life shouldn’t be more important than anyone’s.”

  If Carver was dead, I think, then we should have all died together. I don’t tell anyone this. It would only make them worry, and we have enough to worry about already. The safe house won’t be safe for long. We have to assume Morana knew where Carver’s houses were. Lucian, Reina and Row are already making plans about where t
o go next. I let them plan without me. It doesn’t matter. Anywhere we go without Carver will be the same. And I hate the thought of leaving this place, of possibly making it even harder for him to find us. Reina had suggested leaving him a message, but Row had vetoed it. Anything that Carver could understand, someone else could figure out. Or Carver could be tortured to give away.

  “Once things have settled down, we’ll look for him ourselves,” Lucian promised. “Once you’re safe, that will be our number one priority.”

  But I couldn’t believe him. We’d never be safe enough. And if Morana had Carver then we wouldn’t be able to get him back even if we found him. She was too strong.

  I put my face in my hands, curled up in the fetal position on the bed, twisted up in miserable thoughts and worst case scenarios.

  A tap on the door breaks me from my miserable contemplation and I look up as Reina opens the door, peering in cautiously.

  “Can I come in?” she asks softly. I shrug, rolling onto my side facing away from her. The bed dips as she sits down next to me. After a moment, I feel her arm around my waist as she curls up behind me, her head against my shoulder.

  “How are you doing?” she asks.

  “Bad,” I say honestly.

  “Burns still hurting you?”

  “Yeah.” But that’s not what I meant. The physical pain I can deal with. It’s the mental anguish of never seeing Carver again that’s got me distraught.

  She squeezes me a little tighter, avoiding the burns carefully.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

  I consider saying no, but not talking certainly hasn’t helped me feel any better. And Reina is my best friend. If anyone can understand how I’m feeling it’s her.