by Billi Jean
“Christian? We trust him.”
“Christian, yeah, I trust him, sure, about as far as I can throw him. Look,” Jaxon snapped, “all I’m saying is if this girl rose, after almost seven hundred fucking years in a wall in Gia’s House, then managed to escape, killing Aquinas, perhaps, but definitely Gia, then we have something here we need to step back from and study. It isn’t fitting together. Even Aidan admitted that he never knew who held him prisoner. He also admitted, when he did rise, he was told Isobel killed his father. He thought her mad when she rose, she was laughing, crazy laughing, and he was pissed… You know how he can be.”
“What are you getting at?”
Joey ducked under Jaxon’s arm and hugged her mate around his waist. Bryson held back the curses he wanted to throw at Jaxon. He couldn’t now, not with Joey’s eyes on him.
“What Jaxon is getting at is what if she didn’t kill Aaron?” Joey asked quietly, probably because he would have snapped Jaxon’s head off for asking it. Just like Faolan, Joey wasn’t someone he could punch in the face, unlike Jaxon.
“It’s worth asking.” Jaxon shrugged.
“It’s worth asking,” he agreed and marched off. “I’ve got things to do. I think that meeting has to be postponed. But I’ll let you know.”
“Wait,” Joey called. “We can help you—”
“Joey, hotshot, let’s let Bryson dig his own grave, shall we?”
“Jaxon—”
“Is right.” Bryson shoved his hair off his forehead. “I’m off. I’ll call if you’re needed. You won’t be,” he added when Jaxon frowned at the suggestion.
Joey grimaced and bit her lip but nodded.
He shifted to his home in Seattle, something drawing him there, his gut he realized. It was something he had begun to trust more and more.
Immediately, he exhaled in relief. Isobel. She is here. But… He shifted to where he’d taken Samuel’s body and burned his ashes. The trees here were thick, but he still could see the burned remains of a few saplings that had caught in the fire. Had Samuel been on the council?
There was only one way to find out. He broke into mist and flew toward the house he’d hoped to never step foot in—ever again.
* * * *
Bryson.
Isobel had known a man, once, named Bryson, or had heard of a warrior named Bryson MacAfee. He was a fiercely loyal captain in the king’s guard, directly under Aaron himself, but not of royal blood. He was unusual. Instead of being born by birth into that honor, he’d risen through the ranks of Vampires on his own merit. His parents had been mixed—one royal blood, one commoner.
However he had been spawned, Bryson was a man to fear. And not on her list of those who would die. Nor was he her mate. If he was the man from the Chamber, then he was nothing more than someone she should avoid. Even in her mist form, she had been intrigued by him, curious in ways she had never been for another.
The chill of night grew wetter as dawn approached, reminding her she shouldn’t be thinking about a Vampire she had no desire to meet.
She studied the night sky and tested the wind. Her hunt had brought her here. This town wasn’t old, but parts of it were infected with so much sin she felt dirty standing in the shadows.
But the answers she sought were here, buried underground.
Christian. At one time, he’d been Aaron’s closest confidant. Now he was…sick. Filled with greed and an insane desire for power she couldn’t understand. She’d found Christian by following a trail of dead. The aphrodisiac of drinking until death was heavy in the air. Drenching the ground she walked on. Closely linked to Christian’s trail, she found another of those she sought.
Samuel.
Both had saturated themselves in the blood of their conquests. But Samuel had celebrated his bloodlust with another, much more powerful being she didn’t know and didn’t wish to ever encounter.
She stepped deeper into the catacombs. Madness dripped along the corridors, leaving behind a sickness she sensed everywhere. She kept on, passing empty branching side tunnels and vast, open underground areas that smelled of waste and water. Farther in, she found what had drawn her. A hidden sanctuary for the ultimate of their hideous acts lay before her, the stench of evil so thick she was surprised it hadn’t drawn someone, anyone to cleanse it. She threw her hand up and let light shine down upon the room.
There, at the entrance, she paused, struck by the horror facing her from every angle. Many innocents had died here, but not until they had been subjected to the most horrifying and inhuman tortures. There were no limits here, except those of their shallow, perverted minds. Sickness and insanity dripped from the tools they had used to torture their victims, before killing them gruesomely.
It was here that Samuel and Christian and this other had brought their victims and here they had hidden the bodies—what was left of them. She walked to the far wall, over an uneven, slick floor, and pushed aside a hanging of the devil eating a virgin. There, in the dark behind the fabric lay what remained. The bodies were piled up, burned, but not completely. No, whoever had orchestrated this had wanted to keep something of them behind. Something to savor when he chose, she thought. A flash of gold caught her eye and she bent and turned over a small locket. Forever was scrolled along the back of it. She stood and walked toward the altar.
The being who had done this wasn’t Christian. It hadn’t been Samuel. This was someone far more dangerous and far more evil. The scratching on the altar indicated the victim’s struggles, but beneath the claw marks were other, deeper lines. Words she recognized, but only from the most ancient texts she had ever studied. They spelled evil words that no man or woman should ever write.
Frowning, she backed away from the stone and drew her sword from the air. Lifting it high in both hands she spoke the words to cleanse this place, pushing against a force that was deeply entrenched. She swam through it, forcing herself upward even as she drew her power, pulling a storm from the heavens to bring light to the vile darkness. As her voice rose, she brought the lightning to strike right through the soil above her head. It connected with the earth. She slashed her blade down, breaking the altar in two.
A flood of black, angry spirits rose screaming from the thing, but she held on. Eyes clenched tightly closed, she whispered her guarding words. The blackness disappeared and moonlight filtered down on the filth left behind. Peace settled over the ground, growing as the silver light of the moon cleansed the lingering evil.
She lowered her sword, exhausted, but exhilarated at the same time. Breathlessly, she let her blade hold her weight so she could regain her balance.
This place was just one of the reasons Samuel had to die. Christian would follow. Does this mean that our kind has sunk to nothing more than monsters? Is even Aidan guilty of this madness?
There were no answers, only the night air blowing gently on her face. With it came a scent she knew. She tensed, nothing more.
“Don’t move.”
The rush of cooler air, brought on by a shift, should have alerted her, but the words were enough of a warning. A warning she wouldn’t have given if their roles had been reversed.
She spun and struck, encountering the cave wall where a man had stood. Bryson. He had found her.
Not waiting for him to return, she threw herself into mist, realizing, as she did, that he followed. No! This is my only chance. I cannot end it now, before I am finished.
He was good. But she was better.
She lost him but for a moment, then he appeared again, much closer this time. Lightning struck inches from her, impacting the forest floor and throwing her backward.
“I said don’t move.”
“Why do you chase me?” When he could kill me? It was there, in his moves, in his strength and speed. An ancient. But one that had lived long before she had ever drawn breath.
“What were you doing there in that chamber? How did you break the altar and the roof?”
The way he asked seemed to imply that she would leave ev
il behind. Because I am evil? Anger swelled in her breast. He thinks to judge me.
“With my sword.” His scent. It had been in the chamber…but not a part of the horror. He had discovered the place, though. “Which is more than you did. You left that evil there to stain the earth.”
“I fought the men who created that place!”
She looked for him, but he didn’t step into the moonlight. She knew such maneuvers, had been taught them since she could first transfer her body from its solid state to the droplets of mist that hung low in the air.
Hiding would do him no good. Not when he spoke. She spun a circle, and with it the wind, knocking the trees down at their roots. Timber went flying and, through it, she sought escape trying to outsmart an enemy stronger than herself. On his terms. Take the battle away from him. Move. Move to low ground, he will expect high.
She ducked closer to the ground until she was moisture among the heavy fog. Keeping her speed slow, she eased along, hoping he believed she had already shot skyward to hide within the heavy clouds. Shifting again would draw him to her. Until he left, she would have to remain.
Another crash landed from the heavens, but she dodged it, and instead of rising to the bait of going to higher ground, she stayed down, melting into the shadows. He had struck to see if she still remained. His techniques were common among the king’s captains. She would not fall for tricks.
She concentrated on nothingness at the surface of her mind while her inner mind worked on what she could do. Nothing for now. She could not choose another form, not the wolf, nor bat, nor eagle. He would expect that and worse, give chase and more than likely catch her. The captains were feared as much as the king’s hunters, for when they were called to action, nothing stopped them.
Until me.
Time went by, the clouds flew quickly over the moon, letting shadows play a cat and mouse game over the countryside. She sensed he lingered, and fear crept up to strangle her. He was better than she’d believed.
I cannot be entombed again. Why is he not throwing down a killing strike? I cannot be taken. Not again. Why does he remain, remain and not chase after the shadows?
No answers came to her. If the boy were to be believed, if this man was the same from her waking, the same from the chamber, and was the same Bryson she remembered from the stories of her youth, then he was strong. But was he her mate?
And if he is…why does he come now, and not once during the centuries while I suffered in silence?
Anger burned her fear, but she changed tactics. Taking to the air, she rose above the forest she’d sheltered in and toward the houses lining it. The humans were rising, just as the sun was, but it didn’t matter. She spilled into their garden, covering the shaded growth of clover with her essence. Seconds crawled by, but he did not appear. The longer she waited assured her that the rising dawn would bind him. Only when the light threatened to touch her did she shift.
He stood across from her, a shadow in the eaves of the house. At her appearance, he turned to face her.
Bryson.
It was him. The warrior from her past. The warrior from the chamber she had been sentenced to die in.
She had glimpsed him once, when she had been but a young apprentice. Now, seeing his face clearly, she knew him. He stood with his head held high. The wind picked up and tugged his light brown hair, daring to play with the short strands. His strong, proud brow was furrowed, his dark eyebrows veered downward over his nose in aggression. Power radiated from every inch of him. Yet it still wasn’t as much as filled the space between them. The air crackled with it.
A certainty, as if she’d slid a key into an ancient lock and discovered that the fit was perfect, settled over her.
The boy spoke the truth.
“Do not run again.”
The tenor of his voice stroked along her flesh, but, instead of soothing her, the sound roused an emotion she didn’t understand. The last time she had heard his voice it had been rough from shouting. This time it was soft and lingered on her bare flesh in an unwanted caress.
Her brother’s face was dear to her, and that of his chosen bride, but this man caused her heart to clench.
Was it fear? Was it dread? Or was it rage, white-hot and so powerful it eclipsed all else?
This man was hers. This man is meant to be mine.
Only he wasn’t. This was the voice that had called her out of her endless sleep, but instead of welcoming her as he should have, he had sent her to her death.
‘Trust no one, Isobel. They are all liars, scheming for something so evil we have no chance of defeating it.’ Jorge’s passionate words came back to her as strong now as they had been all those centuries before. ‘Trust no one for they will only hurt you.’
Chapter Seven
Isobel’s blow was powerful, striking Bryson perfectly. At the same time, she blasted the house, destroying it so that it covered him. Her abilities were staggering. Her training must have been from the time of her birth. Even as he thought it, Bryson surged upward, rising above the devastation to seek her out.
She fled, but he chased. There was no other way. He had to have answers. She had survived the Chamber of the Sun. She had survived her entombment. Apparently, she was unharmed in body and mind. She had destroyed the underground lair used by Samuel and his friends. She’d even broken their altar and cleansed the evil.
The winds blew the flavor of her shift, along with the breath of air from her new location. He followed, bursting into being above mountains. Long ago, she had lived here, near this place. He wondered at her choice, then knew she had left again.
He followed, shifting five more times before he found her in Istanbul. She seemed to prefer churches, ancient ones that he avoided. There, in the parapet of one, he spotted her. He waited, letting her gain her confidence. When enough time had passed that she eased her stiff posture and leaned on the low wall overlooking the bustling city below, he moved.
She spun, too late, much too late for him. He had her. Her eyes widened. She raised her hand to ward him off, but he showed no more mercy than she had by burying him in rubble. She crumpled to the ground, giving him just enough time to catch her head before she suffered injury from the rough flagstones. He held her close to his chest.
Mine. This woman is mine.
The reality stunned him. Instead of joy at finally holding her, dread crept up his spine. I’ve made a mistake. There had been something in her expression back in Seattle. Recognition followed with fury. He had known when she struck, she would do so hard.
He’d been right.
He stared down at the perfection of her face in slumber. Gone was the frown that drew her delicate, winged brows down into a slashed furrow. What remained was a small, delicate woman. Just a woman.
But she wasn’t. She was an oath-breaker. A king-killer.
Seemingly of their own will, his fingers stroked along her cheek. The satin smoothness boggled his mind. He knew evil could take many forms, but this… It was sinful how much he wanted, needed to excuse her crimes. Any reason, just as long as she had one…but there were no reasons to place herself above the laws of their kind.
The long strands of her midnight hair feathered over his fingers, so soft he watched it slide through his hand, falling in long waves to the ground. It’d been tightly braided but had unraveled during their battle. Satisfaction ached along his bones as he stared down at her, eclipsing the dread trying to take over this moment.
No woman in his long existence had ever been so dear to him and yet so hated. They had no future because she had destroyed their past.
She will hate me now. Unless she already does…
Had it been hatred in her eyes in Seattle? For a moment that had left him unable to move, he’d thought he’d sensed recognition. Was he right about this awful suspicion? Did she know he was hers? If so…
She’ll know that I didn’t attempt to save her. She’ll know I was the one who sent her to her death.
The thought crystallize
d into painful shards. The fleeting pleasure of moments before vanished. Still, he dared to crush her to him. Once again he experienced the contentment, followed quickly by hopelessness. Just this once, he let the contentment win. He bowed his head and brushed his cheek against hers, drawing deeply of her perfect scent. Her skin was cool but so ultra-smooth his throat grew tight.
There would never be a time when he could dare to do the same with her awake and aware.
If I do, I will truly be damned.
* * * *
“You stupid woman,” Christian snarled. He backhanded Agatha on her perfect porcelain face. Her head twisted to the side, but she didn’t fall. Pity that, but the royal was much too strong. The blow released his temper, though, which counted for a lot. “You’ve come to me to tell me that Aquinas has fallen? Do you realize you could have brought her here?”
Agatha brushed at her lip. A drop of crimson colored her fingers. She studied it as if she’d never seen the like before.
“Aquinas was a fool. Will you be, as well?”
Christian ground his teeth but knew a threat when he heard one. Agatha was not only extremely spoiled. She carried royal blood directly from their forefathers.
And I struck her.
He stiffened but asked, “What do you mean?”
“It was not I that led Bryson by her crypt. It was not I that sentenced her to death. Nor was it I that went to her, thinking to gain something before she kissed the sun. But…” She locked gazes with him.
Belatedly he understood that he’d been outsmarted by her quiet acceptance these past centuries. He’d deemed her merely a pretty face. A bobble to gleam and shine for him to gaze upon in his leisure.
The power she held made that assumption ridiculous. And yet, she rarely let her full strength shine. She did now. His flesh shivered at it. To have that kind of power—at his side—would gain him much that he sought.
She lifted her finger, just the one, and studied the drop of blood. It traveled downward slowly. As it did he swallowed and loosened his tie. There would be more blood lost tonight, but not hers. She licked out and quickly caught the drop, sucking the blood free from her finger with her gaze firmly locked on his. He only wished she meant do the same to the arousal swelling his flesh.