“You will fall into the clutches of my father. You will set him on the throne of magic.”
I wasn't following his line of logic here. “Okay, so that's totally not the plan.”
“You have not met him! Women swoon to him, flock to him! They cannot resist the temptation of his smile and the sickly-sweet promises he whispers in their ears. They all go to him.”
There was a whole wealth of bitterness in his words that had me taking a step back. Okay, part of that probably had something to do with the fact that I was pretty sure I was going to throw up. Just the thought of going to Vlad in any way was enough to make me feel nauseated. Ew. Just ew. Ew times a billion.
“Okay, two things. One, I've totally met Vlad.”
His eyes went wide, and then they narrowed. “You are lost!”
“That's thing number two. Dude tried and failed.”
“Liar!”
I shrugged. I really had no desire to sit her and explain why I was totally not interested in his creepy dad, but I found myself saying, “Have I ever lied to you?”
He seemed to think it over. For that matter, I did too. I wasn't a dishonest person by nature, but I wondered if I had ever lied to him about anything.
“What happened?” he demanded, as if he wanted more proof.
“Dude...”
“What happened!” he snapped at me. I jumped.
“Don't you make commands of me,” I snapped right back. My fists clenched at my sides. “You aren't my father, you aren't my boyfriend. Hell! You're the creep who lied to me to get me to go out on a date with him in case you've forgotten.”
“I had good reasons.”
“Yeah, I'm sure. And I'm also sure those reasons all revolved around the idea that you knew a better way of dealing with this stupid prophecy, right?” When he didn't immediately answer I took a step towards him, taking back the ground that I had given up. “Right?”
“Yes.”
I threw up my hands. “Yeah, that's what I thought. You know what? I'm so tired of this crap. I'm so tired of everyone, literally everyone thinking that they know what's best for me. Literally from the moment I was born everyone has been making the decisions for me and I am done.”
“Your father-” he started.
“My father, my mother, my sister. The Order. You. Heck, you wanna get bitchy about your vampire daddy trying to ensnare me, but dude, you are no better.”
“What are you saying?”
I don't know why I told him. I don't know why it all came spilling out, but it did. I told him everything that had happened from the moment I had woken up in bed, with him and Wei missing to the moment that I had walked into the house. Somewhere during the tirade, I had plopped down on the ground, mist swirling all around me.
I don't know who was more surprised when he sat down next to me, him or myself, but I was absolutely floored when his arms came around me.
“I am sorry.”
I tensed. The last time he had been nice to me it was all a lie. “For what?”
“For thinking you were weak.”
He hadn't been the only one, but I couldn't bring myself to say that out loud. I was definitely tired of people thinking that they knew what I should do rather than just letting me make my own decisions.
“I can't trust you.”
He gave my shoulders a squeeze. I think he was trying to be comforting. It would have been more comforting if he was wearing pants. “I can help you.”
“How?” I knew there was only one thing that he could say that would let me let him help me.
“I know where Wei is.”
Yeah. That was the thing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Where is he?” I demanded. I stood up fast enough to jerk out of Zane's embrace, which is pretty impressive when one of us had supernatural strength and the other didn't. “Who has him?”
Okay, I had some guesses to those questions, but they were just guesses. I didn't actually know. For all I knew Wei had been taken by aliens to a tropical planet on the other side of the Andromeda galaxy. Zane’s lips turned into a grim line.
“If I tell you will you release me from your necromancer's hold?”
I had absolutely no idea what a necromancer's hold was, much less that I had him in one. But now that I was thinking about it I could feel the magic that bound him to me like an invisible leash. I felt a little guilty about it, but then I remembered that he had lied to me and played with my feelings. I felt a little less bad. “Not until I know the information you have pans out.”
“What does that mean?” I didn't know his lips could get into a thinner line, but they did.
“Until I have proof that you aren't lying. I don't know if you know this but pretty much our entire relationship has been based on lies and that's just not okay with me.” I threw my hands up into the air. “Jeez, were you even in trouble when I rescued you the first time?”
He turned his head to the side, his already thin mouth forming into a razor-sharp frown. “Yes.”
I felt a tinge of shock. “So, what? My sister tricked you into being a ritual sacrifice and then?” I needed to understand. If someone I had been sweet on wanted to steal all of my blood for some screwed up ritual I'd have to say bye. That was just one of my deal breakers. No smoking, no drugs, no ritual sacrifice. I'm weird that way.
“I love her,” he said, and I wasn't sure if he was talking to himself or me.
“Dude...” I shook my head. I wanted to tell him that he deserved better. Maybe he did. I liked to think that I knew Zane, but I wasn't entirely sure that was true. “Where is he?”
“Your mother has him. And she is keeping him at the temple.”
I had not been right about the who or the where. “Wait. What? My mom? He's not at the compound?”
“You know the location of the compound; do you honestly believe that your mother would keep him there?” He gave me a mocking look.
He had a point, but he didn't have to say it like that. “Okay. Fine. So why mother dearest? I would have put my money on Connie.”
“You killed her lover.”
Oh. Right. That. I had played a pretty major role in the death of the leader of the Order, who had also been my mom's boy toy, but to be fair, he had started it.
“She’s going to kill Wei?” I asked. “Wait, she's had him for months, why wouldn't she kill him already?”
“Markus lingered for weeks in his coma, and your mother knows that he was in pain the entire time.” His words were careful, and for just a moment his eyes stopped being red and went back to their normal tiger's eye brown.
Markus, who I had nicknamed Creepy Dude about two point five seconds after I had met him, was the recently deceased lover of my mother, and the father to my half-sister Connie. He had also been the leader of the cult known as the Order of the Loyal Hermit, who liked to think that I was pretty much the anti-Christ to their way of thinking. He'd had me locked in a room after my mom had used her magic to kidnap me from one of the few nights out that I had. When I had broken out there had been a fight, he was injured. I hadn't known how bad the injury was, but it had been enough to put him into a coma.
“Yeah, well, he took that pain out on me.” I couldn't muster up any pity for Markus the Creepy Dude. He had tried to trap me in my own dreams before he died.
He shrugged. “It doesn't matter, she still blames you, and she will take all of her misery out on him.”
“How does Connie factor into this?”
“He was her father,” he said. “They were never close, but now she does not have the chance to try to be.”
They had seemed close enough to me, but I guess that I didn't know much. “So what? They have Wei in some temple? Jeez, he's been there for a month?”
Zane couldn't quite meet my eyes. “Your mother is in pain, and your sister is vengeful.” He paused before he said, “a vampire can take a great deal of pain before they die.”
His words hit me like a hammer. Wei. My beautiful, stubborn Wei
. It had been a month since he disappeared. A month. My mother's magics tended towards mental manipulation, my sister had an affinity with beasts and, if the ritual she'd put Zane through had anything to show me, blood. What had they done to him? A hundred terrible images flickered through my mind. I felt a wave of sickness roll through me. I swallowed it. There would be time for getting sick later. I had stuff to do.
“Where is the temple?”
“You cannot go there.”
“Why the heck not?”
He gave me a look that told me just what he thought of how little I knew. It bothered me. The Zane I knew had been a nice person, not the kind to sling dark looks at everyone. Then again, the Zane I had known had been a lie.
“The Temple of the Order of the Loyal Hermit is a fortress.”
I remembered the compound, which seemed more like a school for the Order, it was a big square building behind an impressive fence that looked more like some military fort than anything comfortable. “Sounds about right.”
“It's a fortress,” he repeated. “You'd need a whole army to get in. Even then...”
I shrugged. I was just going to have to find an army, wasn't I? I added that to my mental to-do list and rolled my shoulders in preparation. “You tell me where it is. Leave the rest to me.”
He chewed on his lower lip and then hung his head. “You'll hurt her.”
“Huh?”
His head snapped up, and flicks of crimson red chased the natural golden-brown hue of his eyes. “If you go to the Temple, if you go for Wei, you are going to hurt Connie.”
Well, that was probably true. I'd like to pretend it wasn't going to happen that way, but it would be a lie. She hated me, I wasn't all that fond of her. There was a pretty high chance that me assaulting the Order's base of operations was going to end in a throw down and Connie and I were probably going to be involved. Epic boss battles and all that. “I don't want to.”
It was true enough. I didn't want to hurt Connie. I didn't want to hurt my mom. I didn't have a whole lot of family. Just my dad. The truth was, before all of this started, I used to imagine having a big family. One that could take up a whole dining table, not just two chairs of it. I used to imagine a loving mother who cared about me, and a sibling, usually a sister, I could be best friends with. I didn't get that. I got creepy mom and angry sister and both of them wanted me to not fulfill my destiny. It was a sticking point.
“You might not, but it will happen.” He sounded so sure.
“What do you want me to do? Let her kill Wei? Let her kill me?” I gave a laugh empty of any real humor. “Not gonna happen.”
"Let me go with you."
I blinked in shock. "Wait, what? You want to come with me?" I shook my head. "Nope. No, no, no. I've played enough video games to know how this works out. I show the enemy a little trust, one of them comes with me to show me a secret way into the Arch Villain's super-secret base and I end up going right to the boss battle where the helper shows their true face and I end up getting my butt whooped. Nope. Noooo." I shook my head again, hard enough to make my ash brown hair bounce. "Hard pass."
"You have to!" he snapped. His eyes were still glittering and red. Jeez, how had I ever gone out with him? He was scary. Not quite Dmitri in a rage scary, but scary enough. Sure, we got along and cuddling had been nice, but jeez, I dodged a bullet on this one.
I held up a single finger, showing him just how intimidated I was. "Here's the thing. I totally don't. I don't have to do anything. I don't have to take you anywhere. I can leave you in this creepy place where the mist smells like a dog who rolled around in swamp water." My voice didn't even shake when I said it. Bad ass points for me.
"I know the layout of the temple. I know the strengths and weaknesses of everyone who dwells within. You cannot take the temple without my help."
"Yeah, see, here's another thing. The whole reason I am here is to get help. Jenny is in one of these rooms, and you are going to help me get to her."
He gave me another long look. His eyes glittered like rubies and some emotion passed through them that had me wanting to take a step back. "Not if you don't promise to take me with you."
"Why?" I wanted to know. “Why does it matter so much to you if you go? So what if I hurt Connie. I hate to point this out, but the girl totally hurt you. Like...a lot.” I remembered how he had looked stretched out on the strange blood sucking apparatus all those weeks ago. He had been gray with blood loss and skinny. Well, I thought looking down at his bare legs, he was still skinny. But now he was healthy skinny rather than sick skinny and those were two really different things.
"I love her," he snarled. He shuddered when he said it, like he hated himself for saying it.
"You are insane." I rolled my eyes. "She tried to kill you. Heck...is she the person who put you in this creepy place?" I waved my hands about in the general direction of the broken door.
He frowned at me. "Yes." His shoulder sagged forward.
"Then you are extra insane. Dude, when a girl tries to sacrifice you for her beliefs she isn't interested in keeping you. Move on. This isn't healthy."
"It is not that easy."
"Why not?"
"I am a vampire." He said it like that had more meaning than I understood.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Inquiring minds needed to know, what with me being in love with a vampire and all.
"Do you believe that a vampire is merely a human turned blood drinker?” he asked. His eyes went bright as rubies. “Do you think there is no difference between mortals and immortals but the span of our lives? We are other. We do not seek out the companionship of humans. They are too short lived to bond with, to connect ourselves to.. They can offer us nothing than a glimpse of what we once were. They are, at their very best, a pleasant bit of food, and at worst a painful mirror to show us all that we have lost."
His eyes were growing bright enough to cast ruby tinted shadows across the walls. The mist seemed to glow red around us. "But every now and then, Lorena, every now and then there comes a human whom makes us remember what it is like to care. Their presence makes our dead hearts ache with the desire to beat for them. It is a rare thing, once a millennium if you are very very lucky. The presence of this person is the one and only thing we crave more than blood. It is what used to drive Vlad to create more wives and children for himself, and had I the ability I would make your sister mine for all of eternity. It goes beyond the fleeting idea of human love which can last for the shortness of your lifetime, but the bond that only an immortal can truly understand."
His words didn't just catch me by surprise. They threw me for a loop. I stood there, absolutely dumbfounded. Was that what Wei felt when he looked at me? There was a part of me that didn't like that, not a little, not even at all. I didn't feel that way about Wei. I loved him. I loved those secret smiles he had and the way he looked when he practiced his martial arts, but he didn't make me feel alive any more than a binge session of my favorite television show did. Oh boy. "Oh." I swallowed twice. “And. you are sure you feel this for my sister?”
“Yes.”
“But does she feel it about you?” I asked, because I was pretty sure I knew the answer to that one.
“It doesn't matter if she does or does not,” he said, “love does not have to be returned to matter.”
He gave me a look that told me he thought I was an idiot. I held my hands up in surrender and rolled my eyes. “Whatever, dude.”
"Now, will you let me join you?" His nose flared as if he was taking in deep and ragged breaths, but I knew better. He was a vampire and they didn't need to breathe.
I wasn't sure it was a good idea, but I nodded. "Help me get through these doors, and you can come with us. I still think you are a fool, but," I shrugged. "Love makes people foolish or something like that." I motioned to the door behind him. "I need to get through these doors."
He turned from me, and I could see the tense line of his shoulders bunch and curl as he inspected t
he same symbols on the doors that I had. "These are magical runes."
"No, duh. I knew that much. I just don't know how to get through them. I was trying to find a ghost to help me, I got you instead."
"A ghost?" he asked, still keeping his eye on the door.
"Yeah, you know. Preferably named Casper or something equally friendly. Just something to help me see what's on the other side of that door, maybe knew more about magical runes than I did."
He snorted. "What use is a witch who doesn't know runes?"
"Dude, back off," I snapped. "I have been at this all of two months and in that time, I've been kidnapped, dream-napped, and attacked by the father of all vampires. I deserve a gold star for putting up with everything that I have and not freaking out on, you know, everyone."
House Of Vampires 3 (The Lorena Quinn Trilogy) Page 10