when we found it,” said Lucien. “We took it out of the cave you were
guarding as nothing but a bag of bones.”
Rafael stared into the chamber, then looked at Lucien. “Samis.”
“He went by Aanu when I knew him.”
“When will he be . . . in one piece again?”
“We’re not sure. I’ve never seen a regeneration with this kind of
technology, or with the healing assistance Julian and I have been able
to provide, though Aanu and I both went through a similar regeneration
after the Great Flood.”
“The Great Flood,” Rafael repeated dully. This was nuts.
“The Black Sea flood. He disappeared not long after that. Now I
know what happened to him.” He smiled at Rafael’s look of complete
disbelief, then turned toward the door. “I’d better go check on Sasha.
My guess is she’s probably pretty damned pissed right about now.”
Rafael watched Lucien go. And felt him go. The big man’s aura
faded gradually as he walked away. Like Ialdaboth’s, Rafael thought
again, but not quite the same.
“What is he?” he said suddenly, without thinking.
Julian laughed a little. “Not an unfair question. They call them
selves the First Demons.”
“‘They?’”
“Lucien and Ialdaboth.” He gestured toward the bones on the
table. “Aanu and Ruha. They’re brothers. Half-brothers, really. All
sired by a demon on different mothers.”
Rafael nodded. “I’ve heard the stories. I thought it was all a load
of crap.”
Julian shrugged. “We all have to come from somewhere. Vampires
came from them.”
Rafael mulled that over. He’d spent most of his four years as a
vampire wishing he could be mortal, not absorbing the vampiric back-
story. He’d heard some of the tales, the folklore, but it hadn’t made
much of an impression on him. It hadn’t mattered. Now, to discover it
was true—
“We’ve heard some odd stories, as well,” Julian went on. “I was
hoping you could confirm or deny them.”
“If it’s about Ialdaboth’s enclave, I won’t have much. Like I said,
I just stayed low and tried to keep out of trouble.”
“Lilith said you belonged to Brigitte.”
Rafael tensed. Where the hell was this going? Had he escaped
Brigitte just to end up a slave again, this time to Lilith? It didn’t bear
thinking of. He’d heard horrible stories about Lilith. He’d even met her
once. She had been cold and pale and frightening.
“Lilith is here?” He couldn’t keep a tremor of fear out of his
voice.
Julian nodded soberly. “She’s left Ialdaboth’s enclave.”
“She was—” He stopped.
“Tremendously evil,” Julian finished for him. “She changed her
mind.”
Rafael decided not to ask how someone could just change her
mind about being tremendously evil.
“Now. About Brigitte,” Julian continued.
“What about her?” Rafael couldn’t fathom what any of these
people could possibly want to know about Brigitte.
“There was a litany. Something Ialdaboth knew and passed on to
certain members of his inner circle. Lilith had not yet finished the initiation
process, but Brigitte had. Am I right?”
Rafael eyed him narrowly. Things still weren’t quite making sense.
“She was one of his inner circle, yes.”
“Do you know the litany? Did you ever hear it?”
Rafael was silent for a long moment, thinking. Could he remember
the litany? And if he could, should he tell it to Julian? Hell, never
mind the litany. Should he tell Julian anything at all?
“Why do you want it?”
“I want to kill Ialdaboth. The litany is, I believe, part of what will
tell me how.”
He schooled his features carefully. He’d gotten good at hiding his
emotions, at keeping Brigitte, in particular, from knowing what he was
thinking. “Why do you want to kill him?”
“Can you think of any reason why I shouldn’t?”
Okay, that was annoying, that answering a question with a question
thing. Then again, it was a good question. Meaty. Worth a bit of
consideration.
“If you want to take his place,” Rafael answered slowly, “to take
over his enclave, use your power for—” He broke off.
Julian grinned. “Use my powers for evil?”
“Something like that. I mean, doesn’t everybody?”
Julian sobered. “Not everybody.”
“I’m starting to get that.”
“Will you help us, then?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Sasha sat up and rubbed the bump on her head, unsure what had
happened. A second later, she remembered—she just wasn’t prepared
to believe it. Surely Rafael wouldn’t be stupid enough to whack her
over the head with a lamp.
Or maybe he would be. He was too damned pretty to have any
actual brains. She rubbed the bump a little harder, feeling it disappear,
along with the pain, under her fingers. Regardless of the speedy healing
time, Rafael was in deep shit.
She was halfway to her feet when the door opened. She spun,
ready to fly on the intruder if it happened to be Rafael. But it was
Lucien.
“You okay?” he asked.
She straightened, adjusting her mussed blouse at the same time.
“Yeah.”
“You deserved it, you know.”
His smile should have infuriated her, but she found it hard to be
angry with Lucien. Maybe it was those blue eyes. Her annoyance at
Rafael evaporated, as well. “Yeah, I suppose I did. Where is he?”
“He’s next door with Julian and Aanu.”
“Aanu’s awake?”
“No. Not even close.”
A shadow passed through Lucien’s eyes, and she wondered, not
for the first time, what Aanu must be going through right now. Enough
to warrant Lucien’s concern, certainly. She hated to think what it must
be like to come back from a pile of bones. She wasn’t even sure she,
as an ordinary, run-of-the-mill vampire, could do it. That kind of destruction
would probably kill her permanently.
“Do you think he’ll be okay?” she ventured.
“Eventually.” He stepped into the hallway, holding the door open
so she could follow. “Let’s go. You can apologize to Rafael.”
“I will not.”
Lucien only smiled.
Rafael looked up as they entered the other hospital room, but the
expression on his face held more fear than contrition. Good. He should
be afraid of her.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
“For the most part.”
“Sorry about the lamp.”
She shrugged. “Sorry about the rock. And the kidnapping—you
know, all that jazz.”
His lopsided smile appealed to her. “Would you like to talk?”
“Sure.” With a glance at Lucien, who was smiling, she backed
toward the door. “Follow me. I know a place where we won’t be
interrupted by these ancient, all-powerful geeks.”
She’d found the little cavern a few years ago, in a bend of a
tunnel off a side-co
rridor that branched into a little-used area of the
Underground. She had no doubt Julian knew about it—he seemed to
know a great deal—but he’d never interrupted her when she was there.
Maybe he understood that she only went there when she needed to be
alone. There were several such niches and crevices throughout the
Underground, with various vampires laying claim to them as their private
“thinking places.”
She led Rafael toward her own secret alcove. He looked around
at the corridors as they wound their way deeper into the complex.
Occasionally they passed other vampires. One, who had the appearance
of a ten-year-old boy with odd, mud-colored skin and dark brown,
curly hair, gave Sasha a smile as they went by. Rafael eyed him reflec
tively.
“That’s Daniel,” said Sasha. “He’s about five hundred years old.”
“That’s just not right.”
“I know. Here, this way.” They started along the first branch off
the main corridor. It had a steepish downward slant. “Dr. Greene’s
working on some kind of procedure to make the Children mortal again.”
She looked over her shoulder, judging Rafael’s reaction. He was
frowning.
“We don’t have kids,” he said.
“No one ever Turns kids in Ialdaboth’s enclave?”
“No, we—they—Turn them all the time. But as far as I know,
none of them has ever lived through the initiation phases.” He spoke in
a near-monotone, as if dissociating himself from his own words.
“So they Turn the kids just so they can kill them?”
He shook his head. “It’s bad over there. I hated it. You did me a
favor, braining me with that rock.”
She wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she said nothing. Neither
did Rafael. They continued in silence until, finally, they took the last
bend of the last narrow corridor and Sasha led the way into her small
cavern. It was big enough for them to sit comfortably, with a few feet
between them, but they both had to duck under the low entryway.
“This is nice,” Rafael said, looking around. The cavern had rough,
unfinished walls, and some of the bumps sparkled with embedded quartz.
A small stalactite had begun in a concavity in the ceiling.
“It’s quiet,” she said, settling herself in her usual sitting-spot. The
darkness, impenetrable to human eyes, presented no challenge to vampiric
senses.
Rafael settled cross-legged against the opposite wall. “So what
about this bunch of brats they’re trying to make mortal again?”
“They’re not brats,” she said. “And we don’t think of them as
being kids anymore, either. They’re the Children—a special group.”
He shrugged. “Okay, if you say so. But what about this procedure
for un-Turning them? What do you know about it?”
The question surprised her. “As far as I know, the doctor’s still
working on it. We don’t even know for sure if it’s possible. Why?”
“Just curious. It seems like a good thing to do.”
“Yeah. I feel bad for all the kids. We’ve got about twenty-five of
them, and most of them have been through hell.”
He studied her curiously. “You spend a lot of time with them?”
“Technically, I’m one of them.” She smiled at his surprise. “I was
sixteen when I was Turned. I didn’t choose it.”
“Neither did I. I was seventeen.” He folded his hands, settling
them against his crossed ankles—good hands, well-shaped and with a
certain grace to the way the fingers moved. “Why did you drag me out
of Romania?”
She tilted her head, at a loss for an answer. “Would you believe it
was because I thought you were cute?”
He laughed. “Yeah. From you, I’d believe it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her offended tone was mostly
feigned.
“It means I find you a little hard to follow.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“So what do you say? Friends?”
He held out a hand, but she didn’t take it. Instead she looked at it,
considering. “I like to make up with a little more than a handshake.”
“Kiss and make up?”
“That’s a start.”
He leaned toward her, and she was shocked to realize she was
genuinely nervous. Why? In three hundred years she’d slept with more
men than she could possibly count. Why should this one be any different?
Because he just was. And she couldn’t come up with any better
answer as her lips met his and she found herself involved in a careful,
chaste kiss instead of the passionate tongue-tangle she’d intended to
initiate. And that careful, chaste kiss sent heat through her body more
intense than anything she’d ever experienced from a kiss from any
other man.
She backed up, just a little, and looked into his dark eyes. “Can
you answer one thing for me?”
“Yes.” The breath of his answer fluttered against her lips.
“Do you have any desire whatsoever to go back to Romania?
Back to Ialdaboth?”
“No.”
She smiled. “Good,” she said, and kissed him again.
Two
They talked for a while longer, about nothing in particular. Sasha
had a strange urge to unload her heart to Rafael, tell him everything
she’d experienced in her long, not necessarily happy un-life. But the
urge frightened her as much as it drove her, so she held back. They
talked about music, movies, books, and for the first time ever Sasha
had some sense of what it might be like to be a modern teenager. They
faked it pretty well, she thought, considering he was technically twenty-
one and she was three hundred and sixteen.
After a while she grew tired of the darkness in the cavern and
offered to take him to her room. The look he gave her made her dizzy.
In spite of everything, he wanted her.
“How close is it to daylight?” he asked as they headed back up
the long corridors.
“A few hours yet. Can’t you tell?”
He shook his head. “I’m jet-lagged or something. I think I’m still
on Romanian time.”
She laughed, amused by the idea. “The nights are still pretty long
here. Not as long as in Romania, but we have some time.”
“Good.”
Leading him into her room, she seemed to see it for the first time,
and wished she’d cleaned up before inviting him in. There were bits of
things everywhere—paper and wire, hemp cord, glass beads, stubby
pencils—all remnants of projects she’d started and never quite finished.
Inspired by conversations with Dina, she’d gotten the idea she
could design jewelry for one of Vivian’s profit-making ventures, but too
often in the middle of a project she got distracted by something else.
The TV was a huge culprit. It continued to fascinate her, because
some part of her three century-old brain simply couldn’t comprehend
it.
Rafael didn’t seem interested in the condition of her room, though.
He closed the door behind him, watching her. She recognized the heat
in his eyes and her body responded, tingling.
But for the first time in recent memory, she was having doubts
about falling into bed with a man. As he reached for her she shrugged
away, almost without realizing she’d done it.
He frowned, looking hurt. “What?”
“I don’t know. I think— I think maybe I like you too much to just
jump into bed with you.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Even though I clocked you with the
lamp?”
“Maybe because you clocked me with the lamp.”
“I’m flattered.” He reached for her again. She held still this time
and he ran a finger gently down her face. His expression told her he
was struggling with something. Finally he spoke again, his voice soft
and halting.
“I was a virgin when Brigitte Turned me. She taught me everything
I needed to know to make a woman crazy in bed, but I can’t say
I ever really enjoyed it. I was her personal whore, basically.”
His fingers trailed from her face down her throat, feather light.
She wondered again why she’d decided to knock him on the head and
drag him across the ocean. Had she sensed what they both were feeling
now? Had she somehow known he wanted out?
“I’ve often wondered,” he went on, his voice rumbling barely
above a whisper, “what it’s like to make love to a woman I actually
want to be with.”
“I would be . . . the first?”
“Yes.”
“Now I’m flattered.”
He smiled. His fingers had paused at the point of the V in the
neckline of her sweater. “I like you,” he said. “Plus I get the feeling
you might just know what you’re doing.”
She grinned. “You calling me a slut?”
“Just acknowledging the fact you’re about two hundred years
older than I am.”
“More than that.”
“I was told to always underestimate a woman’s age.”
“Good policy.”
He took his hand away, looking into her eyes. He had lowered
something, some guard or wall he’d been maintaining, and she saw
new depths in him. Pain, mostly, and threads of fear. Vulnerability above
all. His openness made her feel vulnerable, as well.
“Would you do this for me?” he said, and for a moment she could
almost swear he was afraid of her.
“Yes,” she said, and then suddenly had no idea what to do next.
Nothing like an emotional preamble to make sex awkward,
Knights, Katriena - Vampire Apocalypse Book II.txt Page 10