Lailah (The Styclar Saga)

by Nikki Kelly

  I bowed my head, confused; I looked the same as my photo. I didn’t have long to ponder on the mistake; Ruadhan was like a bat out of Hell taking my hand and dragging me to the waiting car. In exchange for a credit card swipe, Ruadhan received the keys to a matte black sedan. A few moments later, a bright yellow bumblebee-striped Mini Cooper convertible appeared.

  Brooke dashed from the entrance to swipe the keys out of the young lad’s hand with an extended smile. “Come on, Cessie, you can ride with me!”

  Obediently I stepped forward, but Ruadhan’s long arm moved over my chest, yanking me back. “No, the little love is with me. You take Jonah and follow. Keep your eyes on your mirrors, make sure no one’s behind you that shouldn’t be.”

  Her face soured. “Ruadhan, I apologized. I won’t hurt her, freakin’ hell, you can’t tell everyone what to do!”

  Ruadhan didn’t grace her with a reply.

  As Jonah found his way to the car, suitcases in tow, she stopped complaining. Riding alone with Jonah wouldn’t be so terrible after all.

  I opened the door and Ruadhan chuckled under his breath. “Other door, love, they drive on the wrong side of the road here, you know.”

  “It’s the right side!” Brooke shouted at him, deliberately emphasizing her American accent.

  I slammed the door shut.

  “You ready?” Ruadhan asked.

  I nodded as he pulled away from the curb, switching his lights on. The clock on the dashboard informed me that it was 6:27 a.m., and I found my thoughts wandering back to Gabriel. I switched on my phone and waited to see if any messages would load. They didn’t.

  “He’ll be halfway over the Atlantic by now, he won’t be able to call you yet.” Ruadhan tilted his head in my direction as if he were reading my mind.

  “Oh … Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “When he’s found who he needs to find and he knows what he needs to know.” Shrugging, Ruadhan circled several roundabouts, finally hitting a long stretch of road. I peered out at the side mirror to check that the Cooper was following us. Sure enough, they were there.

  Ruadhan broke the silence between us. “I need you to keep your distance from Jonah.”

  I let his words drift between us before I replied. “Says who, you or Gabriel?” Snuggling deeper into the seat, I rubbed my coat sleeves.

  “Gabriel has concerns.… Jonah’s unusually taken by you; he drank from you and Gabriel’s worried he might try again.”

  “He had the opportunity two nights ago. He didn’t,” I argued.

  “No, but if Brooke hadn’t walked in, well, who knows…”

  What actually worried me more was that night, in the kitchen, I was on the verge of asking him to do so.

  “He’s a Vampire, sweetheart. He, like the rest of us, feeds on blood. Sometimes that urge supersedes even the strongest of wills.”

  “He’s not a monster! He risked himself to save me, and I for one am most grateful for that.”

  “I’m not saying he’s a monster. By all accounts, he’s a good lad. He’s trying his best to overcome the hand he was dealt, but he has many people’s lives to pay for. In the eyes of God, in a thousand lifetimes he’d still be hard-pressed to have redeemed himself.”

  We continued down the motorway, breaking the speed limit and passing row upon row of plane trees. The branches were pointing at me like old, decrepit fingers poised accusingly. What it was they were accusing me of, I didn’t know.

  “You know about the dimensions?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how is it you believe in God?” I was walking a tightrope, but I had to know what he knew.

  “However Gabriel puts it, whatever science is involved and by whatever name you would call these dimensions, to me they are Heaven and Hell. The mythology stems from what people witnessed all those years ago; different people interpret things differently. I still believe there is a God.”

  “Have you asked Gabriel if that’s true?” I was losing my balance on the tightrope.

  “He’s not able to explain to that degree. He’s an Angel, and I am one of the Devil’s. I understand and accept that.” He nodded, rubbing his hairy chin, the other hand placed rigidly on the steering wheel. He didn’t know about the crystal, about Orifiel, about the reason behind the existence of Angels.

  Ruadhan had been deeply religious before he was turned, I had gathered as much from the conversation we had shared in the church back in Hedgerley. Shattering someone’s faith like his would never be easy and even if you could, why would you want to if it gave a purpose to his existence and provided some sort of comfort?

  I swerved the conversation back to Jonah. If I was going to be spending some serious time with him, I needed to know more about him and his intentions. “How did Jonah become a Vampire? What happened to him, Ruadhan?”

  “Would it help you understand him, help you understand the danger?” He was not one to gossip, but if it served a purpose he might tell me.

  “Yes.”

  He contemplated before he began, and I sat up straight in the passenger’s seat, ready to listen.

  “Jonah has been with us just shy of seven years. He grew up in New Jersey, and by all accounts he was a perfectly normal lad—captain of the football team, and all that. He was granted a scholarship to Florida State and started in the autumn. He hadn’t been there long when he received a call to say that his family had been in an accident; they had all perished.”

  He stopped there and I inhaled a sharp breath. “Poor Jonah…” I trailed off. “What happened?”

  “A car accident … drunk driver knocked them clean off the road. From the account Jonah gave, it sounds as though they didn’t suffer. But he couldn’t accept it. Especially his sister. She was the baby, he loved her more than anything. He never went back to Jersey; he stayed down in Florida, but he went off the rails. Spent most of his time drunk, squandering his inheritance away in bars and by gambling. He got kicked out of college.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “He told me once; some of us have shared our stories. He’s still haunted by his past life. He’s not the only one.…”

  “How did he come to be a Vampire?”

  “He was found by a Second Generation, slumped behind some dumpsters outside a biker bar, and was dragged back to their Gualtiero—Emery. Jonah was a light soul, and so Emery chose to turn him. Jonah took to his new role like a moth to a flame, enjoying his new powers. He moved up the Gualtiero’s ranks quickly, and was out stealing humans for him within a matter of weeks. Within months he was one of Emery’s most prestigious soldiers. Jonah took orders only from Emery and did his bidding directly. That is unusual with an army of so many.”

  The rounded streetlamps that lit the borders of the mountains reminded me of army helmets. Ruadhan drove fast but steady; sheer drops into the forest on any other day might have scared me.

  “So how did he come to travel with you, with Gabriel?”

  “He savagely murdered and pillaged, Cessie. Worse still, he enjoyed it. Emery held him in such high regard that he would turn females specifically for Jonah to feed off, to grow stronger. He granted him the freedom to hunt for his own human meals and Jonah always sought out pretty little things like you. There’s your second warning sign.”

  I tried to stop my heart banging against my chest as I imagined him feeding off young girls, chasing them down for sport.

  “What was the first?”

  “The very fact that he is a Vampire.”

  I didn’t say anything for a while, letting this new information sink in. “You didn’t answer my question—how did he come to travel with you?”

  Ruadhan was trying to highlight the evil in Jonah to scare me away from him; I would have to do more than scratch the surface in order to understand the entirety of his story.

  “That’s not really important, is it, love? What’s crucial is that you recognize the danger and keep your distance.”

  “It’s important to me
.”

  Looking at my expectant face, reluctantly he continued. “He was hunting with some of the others and found a house on the beach. Inside were a mother, father, and daughter. The girl was the same age as his sister and had the same disability.”

  “Disability?”

  “She was blind.”

  “Oh…” I trailed off.

  “He told the Vampires to leave, but they wouldn’t. Some went, taking the parents back to Emery, but a few stayed, turning on the girl. She was not worthy of presenting to their Master, so they set about tormenting and killing her. Jonah had to make a choice, and for whatever reason, he decided to turn on his own kind and tried to save her. Gabriel and I found them at the moment Jonah broke through the door, carrying her in his arms.”

  “What happened to the girl? To Jonah?”

  “She, well, she died.…” Ruadhan went quiet and I sensed he was not telling the whole story. “Gabriel and I ended the three Vampires who made chase, but we offered Jonah a choice: return to his Gualtiero, or leave with us and try to regain his decency. He chose the latter.”

  I pondered on this for a while. “He felt love for the girl, like he did for his sister. It broke through the darkness of his soul, long enough for him to decide. And he chose redemption. Why would you warn me off him, when he’s so clearly trying to find himself again, trying to be a good person?” If anything, Ruadhan’s story had caused me to feel a surge of compassion for Jonah.

  “As much as he tries, like the rest of us, he is still dangerous.”

  “Then why aren’t you warning me off Brooke, or off you? You’re all the same, aren’t you?” It was a bold question, but I had to ask.

  “Essentially, yes. But he is the only one of us who has drunk your blood. He’s showing signs of being drawn to you and it can only be for that reason.”

  “But Brooke told me that it is only truly dangerous if a Vampire drinks from another Vampire, that’s when a connection is fused.”

  “Yes, but human blood can still be difficult to resist. You may have been the first light soul Jonah has ever drunk from.” He put it in layman’s terms.

  “But then theoretically he should be put off by my blood. If I have a light soul surely I would just repel him?”

  The further Ruadhan tried to explain, the more I started to concede that Jonah might have been onto something earlier.

  “True, darkness feeds darkness. He shouldn’t be drawn to you, but for whatever reason he still seems to be.”

  I could see that Ruadhan hadn’t fully considered this, but then he wasn’t entirely enlightened on my individual circumstances. I might exist in a human form, but I was immortal. And who the hell knew what kind of immortal I was or how it had come to be. I didn’t break the rules because I was some sort of weird, abnormal exception.

  “Well then, I’d stop worrying. Perhaps he just wants to be my friend!” I didn’t want Ruadhan looking over his shoulder every time Jonah and I had a conversation.

  “Perhaps … We’ll see.”

  * * *

  EVENTUALLY THE MOUNTAINOUS, curved roads came to an end and Ruadhan highlighted the Pyrenees Mountains, which were coming into view as the light of the early day began to glimmer. The mountains were quite something, but what was even more appealing was that I felt nothing toward them. This was the first time that I was seeing them and I enjoyed the newness of the sensation.

  “It’s pretty brisk up there,” Ruadhan said. “They’re covered in snow some three thousand meters above sea level, like.” Ruadhan knew a lot. Over a hundred years of reading and an interest in history and geography would do that to you.

  “They are stunning, Ruadhan, really,” I replied with genuine interest.

  We passed a sign for Neylis. I wasn’t surprised by the isolation of the place—there weren’t many houses around. Gabriel chose remote properties, and unique ones; our destination was an impressive barn conversion. I was too tired to ask for a tour. I needed to sleep. Ruadhan turned off the engine, unlocked the ground level with a key from underneath a plant pot, and led me to a bedroom in the basement of the property.

  “You’ve not been here for a while?” I asked.

  Remarkably there were fresh sheets and towels placed neatly at the end of the bed.

  “Gabriel had someone here a few days ago, readying it for our arrival,” Ruadhan explained as he placed my backpack down neatly next to the head of the bed.

  “A few days ago? I thought he only decided yesterday morning that we were leaving?”

  “He decided several days ago, but Michael persuaded Gabriel to stay on a bit longer in Hedgerley. I guess we know why now.”

  As groggy as I was, Ruadhan’s comment startled me. “Michael was lying all this time about his Gualtiero’s stirrings, wasn’t he? He knew they were near, but he wanted to get Thomas back in exchange for me—”

  “Seems so,” Ruadhan cut in. “He didn’t count on Gabriel striking his own deal with Thomas and ending him first. Thomas, at least, must have had the sense to know that there’s no such thing as a deal with a Pureblood. I guess Michael was pretty cut up about it. I reckon in the end he just wanted revenge.”

  “I cost him his life,” I murmured, pulling the quilt back.

  Ruadhan drew the curtains, blocking the rising sun, before tucking me in like a small child. “No, love, the darkness inside him cost him his existence,” he said, his voice gentle. “His life was taken from him a long time ago; you need to separate the two.”

  I was quite certain Ruadhan was also reminding me that the same rule of thumb applied where Jonah was concerned. So he got the last word in the end, and I was too tired to care.

  Still dressed, I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

  EIGHTEEN

  I COULDN’T BE SURE HOW LONG I SLEPT FOR; the thick velvet curtains blocked out any sense of day or night. My phone buzzing inside my pocket woke me.

  Wearily sitting up, I yanked it out and saw a text from Gabriel. The message was simply a description of where the chess pieces had been when we had left our game.

  I was surprised to find the set neatly placed upon the table in the corner of the room, waiting for me. I followed Gabriel’s instructions, carefully positioning the ivory statues back in the checkered boxes.

  Cautiously this time, I moved the knight two up and one across to the left—where I had originally intended—this time fingering the round base. I texted him back with my move, nothing more. The phone vibrated in my hand as he speedily replied. This time it was his move, continued with a note.

  CASTLE ON THE RIGHT FOUR SPACES FORWARD.

  ARE YOU OKAY?

  I contemplated my response. Moving one of my pawns, I spent far longer considering my answer to his question.

  THIRD PAWN FROM THE RIGHT ONE SPACE FORWARD.

  WE HAVE ARRIVED AT THE HOUSE, HOW ARE YOU AND HANORA?

  I couldn’t help putting her name on the message—my way of reminding him that I was still upset about the situation. He didn’t reply instantly. I perched at the foot of the bed, waiting.

  WE’RE IN THE STATES. I HAVE SEPARATED FROM HANORA FOR NOW IN SEARCH OF MALACHI ALONE. KEEP SAFE. STAY WITH RUADHAN.

  DON’T LEAVE THE HOUSE. I’LL BE IN TOUCH.

  I was disappointed at the lack of emotion; I guessed he was giving me space.

  Rummaging through my backpack, I changed my outfit for some sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a jacket. I just wanted to be comfy. I found the bathroom and splashed water over my face, waking myself up, and ran my fingers through my long hair.

  The glint of my crystal gem in the mirror above the basin reminded me of the interest that had spread over the Vampire’s face as he had regarded it. I took it off and sat on the tiled floor to study it further. The jewel was certainly unique; I had never seen anything like it. The gold band was delicate in comparison. I tipped it upside down and for the first time I noticed that the round, thick base underneath the stone had some sort of marking on it. I had to squint, but I
was sure it was the symbol of a swan. How had I never seen it before? I guess I had never had a reason to look at it that closely.

  As I rolled it back and forth in my palm, my mind wandered back to Gabriel, and how he had considered it while I recovered after I had been shot. When he kissed me and held me in the cottage, this very ring had caused him to seize up.

  What did this ring actually represent?

  As I pondered that, I slid my hand under my T-shirt and touched my navel, now unmarked. When Gabriel had filled me with light it had healed, not leaving even the faintest of reminders that anything had ever perforated my skin. I could almost hear the faint sound of his breath blowing gently, skimming my midriff as he stitched me up—quite a contrast to the noise that had filled the room when I had been shot. Why hadn’t he just breathed this magical light of his across my shoulder that night?

  I needed answers and so I decided to leave my lonesome fortress and text him. Okay, it was a cop-out, I should call, but leaving your fortress and jumping off the top of the castle were two entirely different things.

  YOU HEALED ME WITH YOUR LIGHT WHEN YOU FOUND ME IN THE COTTAGE, WHY DIDN’T YOU DO THAT WHEN I WAS SHOT? WHY DID YOU STITCH ME UP INSTEAD? DO YOU KNOW WHERE MY RING CAME FROM? DID YOU GIVE IT TO ME?

  I hit send before I had a chance to change my mind. I stayed nervously on the floor, waiting for his reply. A few minutes later my phone started to ring. I hadn’t considered that he might call. I nearly let the voice mail pick it up, but I answered at the last second.

  “Delete that message from your phone.” Gabriel’s words were hurried.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because it’s dangerous.”

  “What do you mean? Why is it dangerous?”

  He paused and I heard him breathing heavily down the line, which was crackling.

  I shifted the phone away from my ear, long enough to realize that my reception wasn’t very good in the basement.

  “The light, the energy I released, doesn’t heal humans or anything of this world. If one of the others reads your messages, they will know you are not what I have said you are.”