Where Loyalty Lies

by Hannah Valentine

  Humiliation filled me again and it doubled when I realised that Roy was watching me.

  “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions, so I honestly don’t mind if people have a problem with me. It’s just that I find some people harder to figure out than others,” I said, feeling like I needed to give a reason for my long silence.

  “When you’ve been alive for hundreds of years, it becomes very easy to master your emotions. Older vampires don’t seem to react to anything, they’ve learnt how much body language gives away and they’ve learnt not to use it because it gives them an advantage.”

  I nodded, remembering the bored faces of The Sénat on the first day I was brought here. “Sounds like a good trick. I wouldn’t mind being able to cover up my emotions sometimes.”

  Roy shrugged. “I guess, but I quite like having reactions and body language. It’s a human trait that I hope to never lose.”

  That was an interesting point but I barely had time to mull it over when the door opened. For a split second my stomach gave a sickening lurch but then I realised it wasn’t Saul, it was Henry.

  “Here you are,” he said. In the seconds I’d thought he was Saul, the panic that had shot through me must have given off a powerful wave of emotion because I saw Henry’s eyes flick to Roy, trying to find out where my source of discomfort was coming from.

  “Have you seen Saul? He was looking for you earlier,” Henry said.

  I shook my head. What was I supposed to do now? I couldn’t exactly tell Henry that I was avoiding his brother, but, if I tried to lie, he’d more than likely be able to sense that something was wrong. Before I could figure out a solution to my predicament, music filled the room. I jumped before realising it was coming from Henry’s phone. He pulled it out of his trouser pocket.

  I frowned. “Where do I recognise that song from?” I said.

  Henry grinned. “It’s Jace Everett’s Bad Things.”

  I frowned harder; the name didn’t ring any bells.

  “Basically known as the theme tune to the True Blood TV series,” Roy added.

  I nodded as it clicked into place and then laughed at the irony of it.

  “Ah, brother, we were just talking about you,” Henry said into his phone.

  My laughter stopped so abruptly that I earned two sets of odd looks.

  “Well, yes, I did find her; we’re at the shooting range.”

  I could tell by Henry’s tone that he could sense I wasn’t thrilled at the thought of seeing Saul.

  “Okay,” Henry said before snapping his phone shut and putting it back in his pocket. He looked at me. “Saul’s on his way.”

  I nodded a little dumbly. “Right, well, I um... have a bit of a headache, actually, so I think I might just go and have a lie down.” I knew my words were so feeble that even Roy could tell I was lying but I just wanted to leave before Saul arrived and brought a whole lot more awkwardness with him.

  I turned and tried to disassemble the gun but, in my haste, I fumbled and almost sent the box of bullets crashing to the floor.

  “Here, I can do that for you,” Roy said, coming up and pushing me gently out of the way. “We don’t want you accidentally shooting yourself now.”

  I gave him a grateful smile then excused myself from the room. On the other side of the door I sighed with relief. I’d made it blindingly obvious that I hadn’t wanted to see Saul and I was sure that, once Saul turned up, Henry would tell him so. All I had to hope for now was that Saul would get the message and leave me alone.

  Chapter 33

  “Ouch!” I yelled as the bamboo stick smacked me for what felt like the millionth time. I’d learned not to complain when I got struck, but this particular blow had landed across the top of my bare foot and it hurt way too much to go without complaining.

  I hopped on one leg, holding the injured foot in my hands and watching as a red line appeared. Peter wasn’t bothered about my injury and swiped the bamboo stick through the air again. I managed to duck and avoid a blow to my shoulder but didn’t recover in time for his next strike and, as I attempted to jump over the knee high blow, I lost my balance and landed hard on my arse.

  I gritted my teeth and huffed. “That hurts, you know.”

  Peter stopped and stood watching me, gently twirling the stick in his right hand.

  “Well, if you dodged the blow it wouldn’t hurt,” he said, but the words were heavy with his accent. Peter wasn’t exactly the chatty type, so I hadn’t found out exactly where he came from but I guessed it was Russia. He was only a couple of inches taller than me but, after my first training session with him when he’d first kicked my arse, I’d always thought of him as bigger. With his long black hair pulled back in a ponytail, I secretly thought of him as Dracula but I was nowhere near stupid enough to voice my thought out loud.

  “I am trying,” I snapped, using this moment on the floor to get my breath back.

  “Obviously not hard enough,” Peter said, eyeing the welt on my foot.

  “Have you ever thought of wrapping that bloody stick in foam or something so it doesn’t hurt as much?”

  “That would defeat the point of the exercise. If the blows didn’t hurt, you wouldn’t have the motivation to avoid them.”

  I ground my teeth together. He had a point. “At least I wouldn’t be covered in bruises,” I muttered.

  “They never last more than a week,” Peter said, as if that made everything better. “Now get up and try again.”

  There was no point in arguing. I was barely on my feet when the first swipe came; I dodged to the left to avoid it. The next came across at neck height and I ducked under it. The third swipe swept down towards the foot that was already bruised but, this time, I managed to jump back and avoid it. I grinned, glad that I’d beaten him, but my cockiness cost me as I didn’t see his next blow until it had struck the top of my undamaged foot.

  I let out a scream of frustration and stormed across to the other side of the gym where I was further away from Peter and that bloody stick.

  “It’s a good job there aren’t any wars taking place here; if you were fighting, you’d be dead before you’d even started,” Peter said, not moving from his spot on the mats.

  It took everything I had to keep my sarcastic comment to myself. Instead I balled my hands into fists and squeezed them as hard as I could.

  “You’re thinking too much. You need to trust your instincts; your reactions will be faster if you act before you think. Now try again.”

  Peter pointed to a spot just in front of him on the mats. Grudgingly, I stomped over and stood there.

  “I can’t just turn off my brain. It’s not like there’s a switch I can flick off,” I grumbled.

  “Yes there is, and once you learn how to tune out of your brain and into your instincts, you’ll have mastered what many people never do.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to relax. This whole process was slow and painful but I couldn’t deny that I wanted to succeed. Out of all the rubbish The Sénat had me doing for my tests, this was the only thing that seemed worthwhile. If I could master this, it would be something that might actually come in handy in my life.

  “Okay, I’m...”

  Before I could get the word “ready” out, the first lash came at me and I managed to avoid it, and the next six, before my luck ran out and I was struck on my thigh. This time I didn’t complain but Peter stopped and looked at me.

  “Do you read?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied, gasping for air and hoping he wasn’t going to give me a stack of books to read on how to dodge a stick.

  “What are you reading right now?”

  “Stardust.”

  “Who wrote that?”

  “Neil Gai...” My response was cut short as I had to duck to avoid another swipe. I opened my mouth to complain about his unfair tactics but the look he was giving me made me hesitate. Then I understood.

  “That was instinct,” Peter said. “Now what is this book about?”


  I couldn’t help but grin as I marvelled at Peter’s idea. With my mind occupied on thinking about my book, I’d have no choice but to rely on instincts to avoid getting hit. It was very clever. Not that I would ever have told him that.

  Chapter 34

  I could hear Saul and Thomas’ voices through my closed bedroom door. Henry had also been there earlier but had left about five minutes ago. I envied Henry for that.

  At some point in the fifteen minutes that I’d been in the shower, all three vampires had arrived and had decided to sit in my living room and wait for me. It wasn’t Thomas that I was bothered about seeing, it was Saul. I’d thought he might have left shortly after Henry, but I was having no such luck. I pictured Saul on the other side of the door, sitting on the couch, wearing one of the dark shirts he always wore. More than anything I wanted to go and see him, and that was the exact reason I couldn’t. I was finding it harder and harder to keep myself from falling for him even more than I had.

  After that day at the library, I’d done everything I could to keep away from him and, when I didn’t have any choice but to be in the same room as him, I’d made sure I was civil and nothing more. I could tell he was confused. Ever since the Autumn Ball, I’d lit up like a Christmas tree whenever I’d seen him. I’d wanted nothing more than for him to kiss me, and then the second he had, I’d frozen over and avoided him like the plague. He’d tried to speak to me countless times but, so far, I’d always managed to wriggle out of it. I now knew why he never failed to get what he wanted, he was relentless. And, as he was on the other side of my door, there was no chance of me making a quick exit.

  Giving up on waiting for him to leave, I grabbed my bikini and a towel and shoved them into a backpack. A glance out of my bedroom and bathroom windows told me that my best escape route was from the bathroom. I was four storeys up. I quickly mapped out a route in my head and then climbed over the window sill. I had no idea what the technical name was for the little ledge that ran around the building but I was certainly grateful to whoever had built it.

  I edged along until I reached the gutter I’d planned to shimmy down. Shimmy had been a tad optimistic; I’m not sure there was a word that described my movements but it involved a lot of grunting and scraping of knuckles. When I’d finally made it to somewhere between the first and second storey, I stopped on another little ledge. The guttering sloped off at an angle so that I could no longer climb down it. I was just eyeing the ground below me and wondering if I could land without twisting anything, when a voice made me yelp and jump so hard I almost fell.

  “I reckon your best bet is to keep going along to there and climb down that plant.”

  I followed the sound of the voice to find Henry propped up against a tree about thirty yards away. I swore under my breath, but shuffled along to the creeper he’d pointed out. Once again I demonstrated no grace as I descended, but eventually I got low enough that I could jump the last metre or so.

  Henry came to stand beside me. I glanced up at him ready to defend my actions but he merely grinned at me.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not here to bind and gag you and drag you back up, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t break your neck on the way down.”

  “How did you know what I was going to do?”

  “Maybe I just know you to well.”

  I chewed my bottom lip. Henry hadn’t once asked about why I was avoiding Saul, even though it had become hugely obvious that that was exactly what I was doing. I wouldn’t have hesitated to talk to Henry about my feelings if it hadn’t been his brother that was the cause of my predicament. I could have really used his advice. There were only three people I felt I knew well enough to talk to, but I couldn’t talk to any of them about this. Henry was out because of his family ties, Dale was out because I already knew his view of Saul and I couldn’t ask Holt because I didn’t want to give him more to worry about.

  I felt like I should at least give Henry a reason for my actions, but I was amazed that Saul hadn’t already discovered my clumsy exit so I gave Henry a quick hug of thanks and loped off around the building at a jog.

  I couldn’t help feeling like I was trespassing as I stood at the edge of the swimming pool. After a day of combat training, my muscles were sore and aching but I took pride in that, knowing that I’d given my all. Peter was the only one of my examiners who seemed to have any respect for my efforts. That didn’t mean he cut me any slack, though, and halfway through my day I’d realised that a dip in the pool would be the perfect reward for my efforts.

  As I looked around I was astounded by the beauty of the place. It was a true testament to how ill I’d been the other day when Dale had found me, that I hadn’t noticed anything of its splendour.

  The pool itself was enormous, plain and rectangular in shape but the bottom of it was decorated in blue mosaic tiles that formed the shape of an intricate star. Stretching above the pool, the ceiling was a huge expanse of stained glass that had dozens of stars on it, each star a little different to all the others.

  Being about six in the evening, the sky outside was dark now and, not wanting to attract attention to myself, I didn’t turned the main lights on, only the lights that were under the surface of the water.

  For a while I stood and admired the tranquillity of the place but the call of the water soon became too strong and I took a run up and dived straight in at the deep end. I was no professional swimmer and my dive was probably terrible, but as my body sliced through the water it felt incredible. The cuts I’d just earned during my escape, stung as the water hit them but I didn’t care. It was a small price to pay for getting a Saul-free evening. I paddled around for a bit, letting all the stress of my week’s tests fall away.

  Chapter 35

  When I was truly relaxed, I floated on my back studying the stained glass above me. I took in every inch of it and then decided to study the mosaic beneath me. I took deep breaths and hovered along the bottom of the pool, studying the intricate pattern and tracing my fingers over the lines. As I got further into the deep end, I had to keep reminding myself to leave time to get back up to the surface for air. I left it way too long on the last attempt and was gasping for air as soon as I hit the surface. I trod water while my breathing returned to normal.

  Just as I was about to lie back for some more mindless drifting, I noticed a figure standing at the side of the room, leaning up against the wall. The dim light meant all I could see was a black silhouette but somehow I knew who it was and my heart sped up in response.

  “You know, lurking around in dark corners watching someone is usually considered stalking,” I snapped, mostly because I was embarrassed that he’d witnessed my rather unattractive gasping for air. Saul pushed off from the wall and came to stand by the pool’s edge where the lights underneath him lit him like a statue.

  “Maybe if you weren’t so hell bent on not spending time with me, I wouldn’t have to resort to stalking.” His tone was light but I could tell he was upset that I’d taken such extreme measures to avoid him.

  “Well, you’re persistent, I’ll give you that. Most people would give up trying to spend time with someone who climbs out of windows and scales down buildings just to get away.”

  I swam towards Saul because he was standing at the shallow end and my energy was fast running out. Once the water was just below my shoulders I stopped and looked up at him.

  This had been exactly the sort of situation I’d been trying to avoid. I hated these warring parts of me. There was no doubt that I felt more attracted to Saul than I ever had to anyone before. I’d spent a ridiculous amount of time imagining what it would be like to have his arms wrapped around me and his lips pressed against mine, but the logical part of me knew what vampires were like. Not only had I heard Monique’s words that day in the library but they’d rung true.

  Growing up with the constant affections of men had made me regularly scrutinise my looks. I'd spent lengthy periods of time, especially when I was a teenager and Attraction had been at
its strongest, standing in front of the mirror assessing my looks. I'd desperately tried to find whatever it was that made men look at me like they did, in hopes that I could change it and just go back to being unnoticed. But there had never been anything I could find, I really was just average so I knew that Saul’s reasons for wanting me were purely political. Of course the main reason to be attracted to somebody should be for their personality, rather than their looks but with the way I’d been acting, I knew there wasn’t a chance Saul was lured in by that either.

  My thoughts led me into anger. Considering I wanted him so much I thought I was doing a damn good job of not caving into Saul but him showing up everywhere I was made it feel like a constant battle and one I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep up much longer. Five minutes ago I’d felt calmer and more relaxed than I had in ages and, now he was here, calmness had disappeared and I was left feeling a complete mess again.

  “What are you doing here, Saul?” I snapped. “What do you want?”

  “You know what I want. My feelings haven’t changed; I want you.” His eyes looked at me in a way that made me feel exposed.

  “Well, my feelings haven’t changed either. The answer is still no.”

  “I know your feelings haven’t changed, but that’s why it makes no sense that your answer’s no. I can feel from here how much you want me. I’ve made no secret of how I feel about you. You enjoyed that kiss just as much as I did, so I don’t understand why you won’t let this happen.” His eyes stayed on mine as he spoke; his gaze was so intense that I almost fell for it.

  “I have no interest in casual sex,” I said. It was mostly true. “I don’t do one night stands or fuck buddies; that’s why I’m saying no.” I stared back at him just so he’d understand I wasn’t playing games, even if he was.

  “You think that’s all I want?” Saul said. I could see the muscles in his jaw ticking as he tensed and released his teeth. Then, before I knew it, he was walking into the pool without even removing his clothes. The water seemed to give no resistance as he moved effortlessly towards me. Before I could even contemplate moving away, Saul was grabbing my arms and pulling me up against him. With our faces just inches apart his eyes bored into mine.