by Tes Hilaire
“Christos, come here.” Lucifer’s voice turned the simple command into a seduction, one Christos could not resist. Limbs trembling uncontrollably, he half knee-walked, half crawled around the table toward the fallen angel.
Wings, as black as the deepest abyss, snapped out and encircled Christos. Christos choked. No air. No sense of time or space. Only the suffocation of Lucifer’s dark presence as it filtered through him, absorbing his essence.
Just when Christos thought he could take no more, that he would cease to exist here and now, Lucifer hissed, snapping his wings back. “Her blood has changed you.”
Christos bowed his head, muscles shivering from pure exhaustion and fear shriveling him to the size of a bug. He’d upset his master. “Yes, my lord.”
“It has made you both stronger and weaker.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Lucifer stepped away, circling the table. “Pick your darkest, most trusted followers. No more than ten. And give them her blood.”
“But my lord, we have enough for far more than that,” Ganelon said from across the room.
“No.” Lucifer flared his wings out, the black webbing snapping. “Ten. No more.” He turned his gaze back to Christos. “And make sure their hearts are as dark as they come.”
“And the woman?” Ganelon’s voice was as cold as ice, but he did not contradict Lucifer.
Lucifer turned back to the table, one clawed hand reaching out to stroke the woman’s pale cheek. “They come for her.”
“What should we do?”
“Let them come.” He dragged the clawed hand up over her forehead. She gasped, her eyes popping open, her mouth twisted in a silent cry of agony. Lucifer smiled. “By then she will be dead.”
Chapter 22
They were going unerringly westward now. At first the directional pull had switched around, first west, then south, then all of a sudden northwest, before turning west again. The roads weren’t helping. More than once they found that they’d gone down a road only to end up going in a direction they didn’t want to go. When following a changing trail, GPS and maps were worse than worthless. Now, however, the aching tug of his and Karissa’s bond had steadied out. The ever-increasing throb in his veins evidence of the closing distance.
“Crap. We have company,” Logan said from the front seat, punctuating the announcement with another string of curses.
Roland scooted closer to the folded down opening. “Merker? Demons?” Like him, the vamps would have had to take cover during the day. Even Christos would be reduced to hiding in shadow under the bright afternoon sun.
“No. Valin. He’s following us.”
Crap was right. “Windows rolled up, right?”
“I don’t think that—” even as Logan said it a fine dusting of particles sifted through the air vents of the car, settling into the passenger seat. The dark particles solidified until Valin sat there, casually picking something—dried blood?—out from under his fingernails.
Roland couldn’t stop the rumble that rose in his throat. Where this particular Paladin was concerned, he was far from unbiased. They had a history to begin with and that was before Valin had tried to mark his woman. Nope. Roland’s feelings for the bastard weren’t exactly stable.
“What, Logan, did you get a dog?” Valin asked.
“Go away, Valin,” Logan commanded dispassionately.
Valin twisted around in the seat, smiling back at Roland. A false smile. “Hey there, Roland. You look surprisingly good for someone who’s supposed to be dead. Though, maybe a little pinkish. Too much sun?”
“Fuck you.”
Valin chuckled, turning back around in the seat. “Westward on.” He clucked his tongue. “Hmm. You guys were acting like blind mice running round in a maze there for a while. Now you’re not.” He cocked his head, tapping his lips as if in thought. “Gee, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you must have a way to track her. Like some sort of bond, a blood bond maybe…Did your dog bite her, Logan?”
“Valin…” Logan warned, but Valin ignored him.
“Talk about reaching above one’s station.”
“Possibly, but at least what Karissa and I have is a true bond, not some hyped up pairing. What sort of Paladin doesn’t even feel his partner’s need when she’s dying?”
Valin went deathly silent, his pain a palpable stain in the recycled air of the vehicle. Logan didn’t say anything; he didn’t have to. His eyes skewering Roland’s through the rearview mirror said it all: You fucking asshole. Not that Roland needed the chastisement. The moment the words had crossed his lips he’d wished he could take them back. Valin and Angeline may never have been true mates, but they had been friends, and that bond had been enough that when they had been paired in hopes of rejuvenating the failing Paladin line, they’d managed to conceive a child. A child lost before it could ever be held by its father.
“I’m sorry. That was,” he cleared his throat, “uncalled for. And I, of all people, have no right to judge.” Valin and Angeline’s bond may not have been strong enough for the Paladin to feel his mate’s impending doom, but Roland had actually been there—and been unable to do anything as Christos had her throat slit. Because he was weak. Because he’d succumbed to temptation and been made slave to a master vamp. It didn’t matter that a few years later he clawed his way back to freedom; the fact that it happened at all just proved Valin right: Roland wasn’t good enough for Karissa. The only way he could make up for the defect now was to find her and save her.
“What are the other Paladin doing?” This came from Logan. Trust him to break an awkward silence and drive things back on track.
“Why don’t you ask your father? I’m sure you could reach him, even at this distance.”
Logan glared at him.
Valin laughed, returning to his earlier sarcastic gleefulness, though there was a hint of hollowness in the malice, as if he derived no pleasure from it now. “So the prodigal son fears running into the father. Yet at the same time hopes he can help him on his quest.”
Logan’s hands tightened around the wheel. “You know, I really don’t like you, Valin.”
“Ah, and here I thought we were best friends.”
Logan glanced upward, the equivalent of rolling his eyes. “Which is why I’m going to give you one more chance to tell me why you’re in this car. And if it is for any reason other than to help us, then I suggest you get the fuck out before I unleash my ‘dog’ and sic him on you.”
Valin took a good minute to answer, his interest seeming completely preoccupied with the cleaning and buffing of his nails. Roland was about to take himself off his leash when the Paladin finally opened his mouth.
“Your father has assembled the others. I was sent to follow you and have been checking in regularly with updates. And before you both get your boxers in a wad, it was done with the assumption that Roland here had a way of tracking her. Good assumption, huh?” He lifted his head, his eyes meeting Roland’s in the mirror.
“I did not bite her. We are bonded. And before you ask, she initiated the ceremony that bonded us.”
Valin whistled, shaking his head. “I so want to be in the room when you tell Senior that.”
Roland’s eyes narrowed. “You seem awfully amused by that when you yourself tried to mark her.”
Valin shrugged. “Can’t blame a man for trying. A woman like that? Your Karissa is just bursting with light.”
And Valin always had a thing for the light. It was as if the darkness that was the power of his gift forced him to seek out other sources of light to balance itself out. It might very well be true too. Roland’s sister had been a healer, using the light to cure wounds of the soul and burn demon poison from the blood. If she had lived, Roland always wondered if she could have saved him. But she hadn’t, because both Roland and the others had failed her that day.
Turning his thoughts away from bleak memories, he forced himself into the equally bleak present. Though, at least this time he had a chance of doing
something about it. “So are the Paladin coming after me? Or are they after saving Karissa?”
“Both. But they’ll save staking you until after you find Karissa for them.”
“They do and they might very well incapacitate her.”
“You wouldn’t be the first vampire Senior’s staked to ‘protect’ his daughter.”
Logan snapped his head around. “What do you mean? Father told me he hadn’t had contact with her since he’d hidden her at birth.”
“Oh, didn’t Daddy get that far before locking you up?”
Logan’s jaw ticked. “No,” he drawled. “So what didn’t my father tell me about?”
“About Karissa’s mother, of course.” Valin’s eyes twinkled, obviously enjoying being the holder of unknown information. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell you what she was.”
“You mean that she had Paladin blood?”
“Well, duh, anyone with a brain could figure that out. I meant the other thing.”
“What other thing?”
“Wow, Daddy doesn’t trust you with much, does he? Then again,” Valin glanced at Roland, “maybe his lack of trust is justified.”
Roland took one look at Logan, who looked like he was about to leap across the seat, driving or not, and decided he better intervene—the car was handy, but not if it was crumpled into a scrap of metal. “Valin, I suggest you stop fucking with us.”
Valin twisted around so he could play to the other half of his audience. “Well, you know she’s his half sister. And obviously her mother had some diluted Paladin blood in her for her daughter to have been born with such strong gifts.”
He nodded. “Yes. What I don’t understand is why Calhoun Senior didn’t bring the mother under the protection of Haven.”
“Because first off, she was human. And secondly it wasn’t a true bond, merely a pairing—and you know how some Paladin feel about that.”
Roland flinched but nodded. “But when she turned up pregnant?”
“By then it was too late.”
“How so?”
“By then Ganelon had found her. He figured the best way to torture Elder Calhoun was not to have her killed, but to have Christos—”
“Turn her. Shit.” Roland fought to suck in air in the tight space of the trunk. The thought of Christos drinking from Karissa’s vein, the thought of him forcing his tainted blood upon her was too much. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe past the panic that hit him like a freight train in his chest.
Not Karissa. Karissa could not survive without the light. It would kill her as assuredly as ripping off her limbs and bleeding her out would.
“Roland. Roland!” Logan’s sharp tone had Roland lifting his head. Their gazes met in the mirror, Logan’s blue-gray eyes fired with steel. “They’re not going to turn her.”
Sick acid burned in the back of Roland’s throat, but he managed to press the panic down enough to speak. “Why not? What better way to stick it to the Paladin than to compromise the last female.”
Valin scoffed. “She’s already compromised if she’s bonded to you.”
Red coated Roland’s vision, his fangs pressing into his gums. “My taint does not pass to her,” he hissed. He would not have the Paladin turning on Karissa because of the man she’d bonded to.
“Geez, Roland, paranoid?” Valin shook his head. “I wasn’t saying that she wouldn’t be a Paladin, merely that as long as she remains with you, the Paladin line will remain as it is. Stagnant.”
I.e., There would be no offspring. A pang of guilt had his gut twisting.
“How’s it feel, bub? Being the death of an entire race?”
Like shit, but that didn’t cap Roland’s anger. Valin was having way too much fun driving the stake home. “Don’t let the air conditioning belt hit you on the way out.”
Valin shrugged. “Logan’s right though. They aren’t going to turn her.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I, unlike a certain scolded child, was in the hall when Logan Senior explained why he tried to hide her instead of bringing her in.”
“Why?”
“Because of your dad, Rolly.”
“What does my dad have to do with any of this?” Roland didn’t like talking about his dad. The man he’d loved, the man he could never live up to, the man who’d gone to his grave with the belief that his son was a monster.
“Come now, your dad was an even more powerful clairvoyant than you, right?”
“So?”
“So, he made a prediction.”
“About?”
“About Karissa, of course.”
***
Karissa sucked in the dank air. She knew if she could look at herself in the mirror right now that her eyes would be fully dilated and her face paler than chalk. What was that thing?
Too dark. There was a portable spotlight set up in the corner bathing light on what appeared to be a hollowed out cavern, but not a drop spilled upon the creature hovering over her. All she got was a sense of vast size that was only defined by the blackness of the creature’s edges. Human in body shape, but with a presence of evil about it that sucked the hope right out of her. And it had touched her.
She’d woken on a scream. A bone-deep knowledge that having brushed against such evil she might never be at home in the light again. That she was somehow tainted and if it continued to touch her it would be at the cost of her soul.
Evil. Her mind had recoiled from its purity. All thought had focused on an escape which she knew was unachievable. The evil held her, cutting her off from all sense of reality.
Evil. She was going to shatter under its pressure. When Roland eventually found her, and she knew he would, it would be to find a broken body, alive but devoid of any sense of mind or soul.
Evil. It wrapped her up, spiraling her down into darkness until there was nothing else. This was her existence. This was her life. This was—and then…then it was gone.
***
Karissa tore back into the real world on a gasp, her eyes blinking against the blinding light around her. She tried to lift her hand to wipe her eyes but couldn’t lift her arms past the burning cut of rope bindings.
Where was she? What happened? The last thing she remembered was stepping outside the cabin to…
Oh crap. The girl. Bait for the trap. How stupid, stupid, stupid could she be?
“She’s awake.”
Karissa sucked in a breath, sweat beading and instantly chilling on her skin. She shivered. She knew that voice. It was the last thing she’d heard after the pleased laughter, before her world had gone dark. She twisted her head. Still in the cave. The monster was gone but now there were two men, neither of whom looked like a white knight.
“What shall we do with her?” the first man, the scary, handsome one said.
The second man absently waved his hand. “Do as you wish. We have the blood we need.”
“For ten chosen.” His lips curled back, revealing long pointed fangs. “Do you wonder why only ten? Do you wonder why the ten should be mine alone?”
Eyes narrowed. “It is your children who cannot breach the light.”
The vampire nodded. “Conceived by the light and born in darkness, the child’s blood shall give the dark lord’s children the ability to breach the two worlds.” He smiled. “Worlds. Not day and night. Why just mine? Do you think he’s afraid? Or do you think, perhaps, that he likes me better?”
“Just do as you’ve been told.” The other man spun around, grabbing up a handful of vials and stiffly marching out of the room.
The vampire laughed, leaning down over Karissa. “Guess it’s just you and me, pet.”
“What,” Karissa croaked, wet her cracked lips, and tried again, “What do you want?”
“Want? Why, for you to scream.” He lifted a wicked looking instrument in front of her. Scalpel. Oh crap. “Scream, darling. Call your mate’s name.”
He lowered the blade and pierced her skin. Karissa screamed.
Chapter 23
Roland jerked up so fast he rapped his head on the lid of the trunk. “Crap.” He grabbed the top of his head, even as he tried to hone in on the frantic thought that had him jumping out of his pants.
“What? What’s wrong?” Logan asked.
“She’s awake. Goddamn bastards. They’re hurting her.” He closed his eyes, following the residual stain of fear and pain that had jarred him from the silent tension in the car. Where are you, baby? Tell me where you are.
Roland?
Her essence clung to him, like nails digging into his insides. He could feel her panic and the throbbing agony that was her body.
Karissa, God. I’m coming for you, honey. I’m coming.
No…don’t. The nails slipped free, her mental presence trying to push away.
Karissa! he screamed, grasping onto her with all his might. Don’t you dare leave me!
Can’t come here…Trap. He wants you.
Who, baby? Who wants me?
The second he asked, her mind provided the answer: a blurred image of a man with high cheekbones and a chiseled face. Christos. Placing the knowledge aside, he forced himself to look past the object of his eternal hatred and onto the room beyond. Not a room, but some sort of unnatural cavern. Whatever the light source was it bounced off the reflective stone in the background creating an eye-blinking mix of light and shadow.
Christos leaned in closer, clucking his tongue over something. Searing pain tore over their link, obliterating the image.
Karissa! Roland rode out Karissa’s pain, trying to take it in but knowing he couldn’t. All he could do was share it. He felt her slipping, her mind shutting down as the torture, heaped upon whatever else she’d already been put through, became too much. Good. If she was unconscious they’d leave her alone. Please, Father, make them leave her alone.