As the path ended, Ariana entered the cemetery and made her way to the alabaster tomb towering in the center. The elders had already arrived.
She did a quick count of ten, recognizing a few of the regulars right away.
“Why’d you drag us way out here?” Edmund asked from his perch on the nearest stone. “The vamps that showed up last night wouldn’t have bothered us. We could’ve stayed on the field.”
“I didn’t move our practice because of the vamps that were brought in. I moved it because this cemetery offers us the one thing we don’t have inside the haven.” She paused, waiting for someone to guess. When no one did, she said, “Seclusion. There are no cameras out here. There’s no electricity and no phones. More importantly, there are no distractions.”
The elders looked around, scanning the tree line behind them, the blank faces of the others. They had no clue how to get to the zen state necessary to effectively reveal their mawares.
They’d learn soon enough.
“Let’s get started, shall we?” She slipped out of her coat, rolled it up the best she could, and put in on the ground near the tomb. She watched closely as Echo hovered around the edge of the cemetery and plopped onto a round stone that wobbled when his weight hit. “Mind if we have some privacy, Echo?”
“Never minded me watchin’ before.”
“Never distrusted you before.” The words stung as they came out, buzzing against Ariana’s lips, but they were the truth. “I think it’d be best if you leave.”
He nodded slowly, looking as if he wanted to say something more. “I wait for you just outside the forest, okay? I want to talk more about your friend Dante, about us. There’s stuff you oughta know.”
She really couldn’t listen to what he had to say. Not now. Not when ten pairs of elder ears were honing in on their conversation.
“Fine, Echo,” she said, waving him away with her hand. “That’s fine.”
When she turned back to the group, they were still as stone, watching with eager eyes.
Expecting.
“Okay,” she said, taking a quick inventory of the group. “Now that we’re alone, why don’t you go ahead and take a seat.”
She motioned for the three regulars—Darcy, Thom, and Edmund—to sit on the tombstones around her and for the seven newbies to sit on the dirt-slathered steps climbing up to the tomb.
It’d been a month since her last session. Had she really stolen seven elders from the black market right beneath Juan Carlos’s nose? Somehow that didn’t seem right, but sure enough, as she scanned each of their faces, she remembered their journey from the black market to the projection ring, and into Black Moon.
Either Juan Carlos was as stupid as he looked or he knew what was going on. If he knew about her business there, why would he allow it? The more she thought about it, the more questions popped up.
“Mind if I join you?” a voice said from behind her, spinning her around.
“Ruan,” she said, spreading her arms to her sides. His elder vibe was strong, fresh. She could almost see the colors from his newly transitioned aura circling him—heavenly blue and pearly white. “Welcome. You’ve come to the right place.”
Smiling, he held up his hand to the group. “Hope you all don’t mind if I crash your little party.”
“Not at all,” Ariana answered for everyone. “We were just getting started.”
She was sure the group wouldn’t mind befriending another elder. And Ariana had to admit, she’d heard Ruan’s maware was special. That it wasn’t given to just anyone. Rumor around the Ever After was that it hadn’t been bestowed upon an elder in over a thousand years. Whatever maware he’d acquired was powerful . . .
She couldn’t wait to see what kind of show they had in store.
Ruan sat near the bottom of the stairs and kicked his feet on the step below him, hiking his knees to his chest. He was so large that the elder behind him couldn’t see and leaned around his massive shoulders for a better view. It wasn’t Ariana’s problem, so she moved on.
“Darcy, Thom, and Edmund have been in Black Moon three months, have taken six sessions from me, and are this close to controlling their mawares completely.” She pinched her fingers together and held them up. “Within a few months, you’ll be there, too. But you have to practice day and night. Give it all your energy, all your focus. You’ve got to want to flesh out your maware, to discover the secrets that lie inside you.”
Ruan cleared his throat. “Anyone ever discover and hone their maware faster than a few months?” He paused. “Like in a few days, let’s say?”
He was thinking about Savage, wanting to use his maware to assist in the battle to come. She could sense the excitement building in him, the determination written in the hard lines of his face. Did the other elders know about the imminent threat?
“No, I’m afraid not. Mawares are bestowed upon us in the Ever After as a sort of reward for living as long as we have, but you have to value the skill it takes to fully acquire them. Think of mawares like a box of See’s that have been gifted to you. You did something to earn that little box of chocolate and should savor them one by one. You wouldn’t receive a box only to tear open the packaging and wolf it down, would you?”
She eyed the group with squinted eyes, wondering if she’d just given the worst analogy on the planet. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for this teaching stuff. She’d warned the Primus about her lack of instructional skills when he’d asked her to take on the position.
“I suppose it would depend on how intense my sweet tooth was,” Ruan said.
“Or how little you cared for chocolate in the first place. I’ll have to tell Eve to stick with cigars and wine.” She winked and turned back to her regulars. “Gentlemen, would you mind showing them what you’ve learned so far? I want to make sure we’re on an even playing field, no secrets, nothing held back.”
Darcy stood, his midnight black hair sweeping across his forehead. “I’ll go first.”
Ariana backed against the tomb, giving Darcy all the space he needed. Then she cleared her mind of anything and everything he could use against her.
He put his hand to his temple and pinched his eyes shut.
“You’ve had sex recently,” he said. Ariana froze. He pointed to Ruan without opening his eyes, and Ariana released the breath she held in her lungs. “I’d say two days ago. Last night, maybe.”
“Try an hour ago.”
Ariana shook her head, incredulous. “You and Eve just got here.”
Ruan shrugged. “Had to break in the place.”
She couldn’t judge him. Hell, if she had Dante at her disposal—in one of his better moods—she’d be breaking in every damned room in the haven.
“What else?” she asked Darcy, blushing from the knowledge of what had happened on her balcony. She fought hard to keep her walls up and solid.
“You in the back,” he said, blinking big brown eyes. “With the ponytail . . . you’re a virgin. And the guy next to you has wanted to get in your pants since you sat next to him.”
“Okay, that’s enough. Let’s stop there,” Ariana said, jumping in. How could a vampire remain chaste for four hundred years? She’d obviously never run into someone magnetic, someone who seeped raw sexuality. Someone like Dante. “Can someone take a stab at Darcy’s maware?”
She tried not to focus on the elders in back, though their humiliation swept over her as thick as the fog.
“He can pick up sexual energy,” Ruan said, swiping his thumb across his jaw. “Don’t know how that can come in handy in a fight, but all right.”
“Not all mawares are used for fighting. Some are used to heal. Some to understand or release parts of the mind. Others don’t do much of anything other than clear the thoughts of the person you’re directing it at.” She paused, gauging the understanding of the group. “Thom, you’re up.”
He stood as
Darcy reclaimed his stone. Thom knelt down, scraped his hands through the earth over leaves and dirt, and came up with a rock.
“I need a volunteer,” he said, tossing it in his hand.
After the embarrassment Darcy inflicted on the elders on the top step, no one piped up. Ariana couldn’t blame them.
“Oh, let’s not all jump up at once.” Edmund slid from his headstone and stepped to Thom’s side. “Let’s get this over with.”
Thom narrowed his onyx eyes to slits, then cocked back and hurled the rock, pitcher-style, right at Edmund’s chest. It hit Edmund hard, then dropped to the ground with a thud.
Edmund blinked and forced out a pathetic yawn. “You ready for this? I’ll count to three if you want.”
“Fuck you.” Thom crouched, his fists slowly clenching and unclenching.
With movement so quick Ariana barely tracked it, Edmund bent low, picked up the rock, and chucked it back at Thom. The rock spun through the air between them lightning fast. From such close range, it should’ve hit Thom square.
But Thom had the bead on Edmund like he knew what his reaction would be.
Because he did.
Without batting an eye or twitching a muscle, Thom snatched the rock out of the air and curled his fingers around it, crushing it to dust.
“Thought I might’ve had you that time,” Edmund said, returning to his tombstone, kicking his feet up. “You looked off your game tonight.”
“After last month’s incident I doubt he’ll be off his game again,” Ariana said. “Thom can pick up certain patterns in brain activity and—”
“I can see the future,” he interrupted. He bowed to the newbies, scraping his boots through the dust from the stone. “Well, at least I’ll be able to once I learn to control it. I can’t change what you’re going to do, and I don’t know what’s going to happen more than a few milliseconds ahead, but it at least gives me the chance to react.”
“Wicked,” Ruan said. “Like living in a déjà vu nightmare.”
“Except it doesn’t happen all the time,” Thom said. “Tonight the switch was flipped, but last month . . .” He craned his neck to the side, revealing a scar above his ear. “I didn’t think Edmund was going to throw the rock back and ended up catching it with my head instead of my hand.”
“But we’re working on it, and with a little more training you’ll be fine.” Ariana nodded to Edmund. “You’re up.”
He cleared his throat and stepped up, rubbing his hands together.
Ariana stepped further away.
Edmund noticed, setting his squinty coal eyes upon her. “I think I’ve got a handle on it this time. I’ve been practicing with houses of cards.”
Still didn’t mean she trusted him. Last month he’d nearly singed all their eyebrows off.
He closed his eyes. Rubbed his hands together faster and faster until she couldn’t see more than a blur of flesh. Heat radiated from his hands, warming the cemetery hotter and hotter. The newbies leaned back, shielding their eyes as flames erupted from his fingers.
Edmund smiled and pulled his hands apart, stretching the flames caught between them. Then with the force of a cannon blast, he shot the fire into the tombstone he’d been sitting on, splitting it in two.
“Now we’re talking,” Ruan said, standing with the other newbies.
“What the hell are you pulling?” Ariana said, shoving Edmund in the chest as she walked by. “Mawares are not to be used to destroy property unless it’s as an indirect result of an act used to protect yourself. You know the rules.”
He shrugged. “Guy’s dead anyway. Not like he’s gonna mind getting a shiny, new headstone. That one was so grimy you could barely make out the inscription.”
Ariana snatched her coat off the ground and tossed it onto the fire, stomping out the flames. “That’s not the point. It’s disgraceful and shows a hell of a lot about your level of respect for the elders who came before you.”
When the flames snuffed out, Ariana shook out her coat. It was dirty, smelled of ash, and had a huge, ratted hole in the back like a sewer rat had chomped on it for dinner.
Super.
He’d completely desecrated the grave. The grass around the tombstone was dead and charred, and the stone itself was split right down the middle. Like a lightning bolt struck it from above.
She’d have a hell of a time cleaning up his mess. She wiped her hand over the stone where the inscription was covered by layers of filth.
Black Moon’s Primus, it read in old-time script. Curious, she swept her fingers over the rest of the inscription, holding her breath as she revealed the words. An angel’s mate, Dante’s father, my trinity of love and life.
“Class is canceled early today,” Ariana mumbled, the crisp morning air warping in and out around her. “We’ll continue the session tomorrow. Same time.”
Dante’s father. The words clumped in her mind like soot to the dirt. Black Moon’s Primus.
Could it be referring to the same Dante? And when had a Primus ever preceded the current one?
Strength leached from Ariana’s muscles, rooting her into the dirt, centering her gaze on the busted tombstone. She knew the truth in her gut. There was a reason she’d run into Dante in the black market and again a few nights back. There was a reason she felt such an intense attraction to him that went far deeper than physical—an attraction she couldn’t explain.
Dante was linked to Black Moon. Just like she was.
Rubbing Black Moon’s emblem on her arm, Ariana stared at the name carved into the stone—the name that connected Dante to Black Moon, to her.
Andre Cornelison.
Chapter Twenty
DANTE RAN UNTIL he couldn’t breathe, until his lungs punched and wheezed with every pounding step. He sprinted around every corner of the haven, praying for reprieve, hoping the next loop would spark something in his veins that would satiate his hunger.
Running himself into the ground had quieted his voices before. It didn’t work every time, but once in a blue moon he could go for a kick-ass ten-mile run and come back to his apartment feeling completely, one hundred percent drained. Relaxed. As if he’d fed.
It wasn’t working. He could still taste Ariana on his lips, smell the intoxicating fragrance of her skin like he was nuzzled into her neck.
And he couldn’t even think about the mark that had sprouted over the top half of his body or what it meant. Not without feeling like he needed to bust open Pike’s head to let some answers spill out.
As Dante rounded the northern corner, entered a rose garden, and weaved around a pickle-shaped fountain, he spotted the back gate. He could head out into the forest, locate the Watchers’ compound, and drag Echo out by his jugular. Get his fill and satiate the voices while repaying Echo for stabbing Ariana in the back. Bloody perfection.
Early sparks of adrenaline shook his veins like live wires.
Make him pay for his sins. Spill his blood!
No one would have to suffer for his hunger. No one other than Echo, and he was far from innocent.
“That’ll never happen again,” Dante swore as memories of his former lover crashed over him in a clamming sweat. Sway hadn’t deserved what had happened to her. She’d wanted nothing more than to grow old at his side. He’d stolen those things from her. Loving Sway had killed her in the end. He’d be a monster to forgive himself for such a thing. “I’ll never do it again.”
But you will, slave. You will drain Ariana. You’re evil to the bone. Prove it . . . drink some blood, break some bone.
As the voices rose up, Dante sprinted hard and slammed into the back gate, shoving it aside as he swept through. Demonic commands escalated, pounding and vibrating like drums in his head. The gate hit the wall behind it with a thud, echoing through the forest like a gong signaling his entrance.
The weight of a thousand pairs of
eyes set upon him. Dante slowed his pace, coming to a stop.
Someone is out there. Someone is watching. Peel the lids from their eyes and make them see the error of their ways!
Whispers tiptoed through the forest—high-pitched little squeaks that reminded Dante too much of what the kids at school used to do the second he turned his back. Like he couldn’t hear they were talking about him, spreading rumors that he was a freak.
Had they known the truth about him—if he would’ve let them in on what he could do—they would’ve saved their breath and run as far away from him as possible. They wouldn’t have stayed talking behind his back, knowing he could hear their every malicious word.
Thinking about it only fueled his anger and increased the gnashing of voices in his head. Determined to reach the compound before he blacked out, Dante ran hard, past row after row of trees. The voices carried on the wind, whistling through his ears. They sucked at his feet, dragging him down, slowing his pace.
Every mile was another tree. Another mud pit. A turn around the bend up ahead. He’d trudged so deep into the forest that not even the light of dawn was granted entrance. The bright orange orb cowered behind umbrellas of leaves. Not a single stream of light led the way.
He was never going to find the Watchers’ compound. And if the voices got much worse, he’d black out in one of these damn mud pits. The Watchers would find him, wouldn’t they? They knew this forest and were probably watching his every stupid move. He’d black out and be dragged to the compound, never to see the light of day again.
Above the mashing of voices, he made out, The world would be better off without you!
Would that be such a bad thing? Dante wondered. It’s not like he’d be missed by a mother or father—his mundane parents were long gone, and his biological gene-donors had never been there to begin with. And it wasn’t like people at work would notice he’d taken a major hiatus—he quit assisting at Crimson Bay University right before the shit with Savage hit the fan. He didn’t have friends other than Ruan and Eve, and they were too busy sucking each other’s faces to care about whether he lived or woke up in a fiery pit of hell.
Last Vamp Standing Page 20