* * * *
“Kaelyn,” a voice sounded to her left. It was somewhat familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it. After slowly letting her eyelids drift open, she squinted against the light and turned her head to the side. The pale, beautiful face of a woman came into focus, and an awful feeling of dread enveloped her. She shot to the other side of the bed in horror.
“Who the hell are you?” she rasped, her voice hoarse and her breathing labored.
“My name is Starla.” The pale woman settled her small hands in her lap, and took no action to reach for Kaelyn. Though that did nothing to assuage her nerves.
“Where is Tyrian?” Kaelyn leveled a glare at the woman.
Starla sighed, and dropped her milky white gaze for a moment, before meeting Kaelyn’s eye once more.
“He’s gone.”
“Gone?” Kaelyn repeated.
“Yes.”
“Gone where?” Kaelyn punctuated each syllable with gritted teeth.
Raising her unnaturally pale eyes, Starla pinned Kaelyn with an unreadable, yet slightly remorseful, stare. “The Vampire realm.”
Three simple words, and Kaelyn snapped. Hysteria drowned her rationality, and she launched for the door, only to find it firmly locked.
“Let me out,” Kaelyn breathed.
“Kaelyn—”
“No!” Kaelyn cut the woman off. “Let me out! Get away from me!” Grasping the sides of her head, she slid down the corner of the room, panting and screaming as the Hunter leader looked on. Tears streaming down her face in rivers, Kaelyn’s screams gave way to whimpering sobs, her shoulders shaking as she fought to draw breath.
Starla knelt next to the woman and drew her struggling form into her arms, letting her fight and claw against her as much as she needed. Her own tears joined Kaelyn’s.
Eventually, Kaelyn calmed, both mentally and physically drained. Her sobs had faded into small hiccups, and her bloodshot eyes were heavily caked with tears. Her entire body shook, and every muscle tensed as she tried to hug her arms around her middle. She finally lifted her gaze to meet Starla’s, begging her to make it all go away. As Starla’s pale eyes slowly slid closed against her plea, Kaelyn finally collapsed.
* * * *
The wind whipped furiously across the black, sandy plains of the Vampire realm unhindered, swirling dark clouds of sand and stone several feet in the air and tossing them about the barren landscape. This place was as good as any for the portal to open and bring the Vampire Hunter’s Sleeper back home. They were isolated, far from the cities and mining colonies; their arrival would go unnoticed by the Vampires. It would probably, however, be too much to ask the same of Caleb’s kidnapper.
Wherever and whatever they were, they probably already knew he had come.
Wrapping the midnight cloak more tightly around his shoulders, Tyrian thought back on the words Starla had imparted upon him before he left.
“Once you reach the other side, the barrier in your mind will be broken between you and your Sleeper. I will tell you this: Ra’al is the oldest and most powerful of the Sleepers I contracted into the service of the first Hunters. He is cunning and ruthless, but he will help you.” Then Starla had draped the cloak around his shoulders, and fastened it at the hollow of his neck.
“How do you know?” Tyrian had asked, more than a little skeptical of his Sleeper’s intentions upon finally returning home.
“Because if he does not, he will die with you. The blood seal is a merger, not a possession. On the other side, his life force is tied to yours. There will be no passing on from one host to another outside of the human realm, and whatever you experience, so does he.” Starla pinned Tyrian with a sharp look.
Tyrian raised an eyebrow. “Everything?”
Smirking softly, Starla replied, “Everything.”
“Splendid.” Tyrian sighed with exasperation.
“I will watch over your Medium until you return. And Tyrian, be careful.”
Tyrian grimaced at the memory. It tore him apart to have to leave her in such a state. Even now, he could feel their bond tugging at him across the realms, threatening to drag him back to her side, but he steeled himself against it. He had a job to do, and a life to save. There would be time for him to beg her forgiveness after he brought Caleb safely back home, and his kidnapper to a swift and decisive end.
“I do believe you and I may actually get along, human,” a low, gravelly voice sounded in his head, making his heart skip a beat at the sudden shock.
“Ra’al?” he asked apprehensively.
The voice snorted in his head. “Your accent is abhorrent. Do not speak my name in such a tone, worm.”
Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Tyrian clenched his jaw. “What exactly should I call you, then?”
“You may call me Master,” the voice replied succinctly.
“Not if hell froze over, beast,” Tyrian fired back. If this Vampire spirit thought he would be its own personal whipping boy, it was in for a very rude awakening.
With a bit of a smirk in its tone, the Sleeper replied, “Your predecessor called me Drake.”
Now that was a shock.
“You spoke with Caine? How?” Tyrian asked ardently. As far as he knew, Starla carefully guarded the connection between the consciousness of a Sleeper and its Hunter. He’d not heard of another Hunter speaking with their Sleeper. Nor had Caine ever mentioned such a thing during his training as the Vampire Page.
“I do as I please, and have no obligation to explain myself to you,” the voice grunted.
At that, Tyrian did roll his eyes. “Yes, we shall get along famously,” he replied, his tone dripping with sarcasm. He hitched his bag over his shoulder, and headed off to what he assumed was the north.
“The mines are to your ‘east,’” Drake offered offhandedly.
“How far?” Tyrian asked, still not quite sure he could trust his newly vocal mental companion.
“Two cycles, at least.” Its tone held a hint of malicious delight at the discomfort Tyrian would certainly endure on the journey. Apparently the fact that the Sleeper could now feel everything that he could did not trouble it.
“Then we’d better hurry.” Tyrian turned and headed in the direction Drake called east. He prayed that the arrogant prick would not lead him into a trap.
Chapter 9
Kaelyn again opened her eyes slowly, the soft light of the room burning through her retinas and into her brain. A burgeoning pain exploded behind her eyes, and she raised her hand sluggishly to clutch the side of her head. When she tried to rise, however, a small, yet firm hand kept her down amidst the pillows, and a soft, familiar voice addressed her. “You’re awake; how are you feeling?”
Kaelyn took in the form of the star of her most recent nightmare, in the startlingly brilliant flesh. She groaned, shrugged off Starla’s hand, and pushed herself into a sitting position on the bed. Her propriety almost led her to thank the woman for propping up her pillows, but the bitterness within her won out. She didn’t even know yet why she felt bitter toward the small, white woman, but the feeling gripped her heart in a stranglehold of epic proportion.
“Like I got run over by a Mack truck. Twice.” Kaelyn could not keep the bitterness from seeping into her tone.
A small, dark green ceramic mug entered her field of vision, held out to her by one small, white hand. “Here, this should help with the headache,” the tiny woman explained. Kaelyn heard a bit of remorse in her breathy voice, loosening by tiny increments the mountain of resentment crushing her heart within her chest.
In an effort to use her horrendous headache to rationalize her apparent bitterness against the tiny woman, Kaelyn asked, “Am I hung over?”
The white woman let out a small chuckle. “I’m afraid not. Just emotionally drained.”
Instantly, as if the reminder of her emotional upheaval had opened a floodgate in her mind, Kaelyn grew painfully aware of the past twelve hours. The scene played back in her mind like a vivid, technicolor w
hirlwind that did nothing to assuage the pain in her skull. If anything, it made it worse. Her stomach rolled as a new wave of agony assaulted her brain, and she pushed the mug back into the other woman’s hands. Blinking at her newfound clarity, she glanced at the woman from the corner of her eye.
“You’re...Starla,” Kaelyn said, her tone questioning.
The small woman offered her a gentle, warm smile that seemed to worm its way inside the vise that clutched at her chest. Now Kaelyn breathed a bit better, and some of the pain in her head cleared.
“Yes.” Starla offered the mug back to Kaelyn.
Glaring at the small woman, Kaelyn accepted the mug, cradled the warm ceramic cup in her hands, and let the steam drift into her lungs as she breathed in. She still didn’t trust the woman enough to drink the swirling mixture yet.
“Right,” she scoffed with a tiny shake of her head. She clicked her tongue against her teeth, and looked down at her lap.
A small, white hand came to rest on the dark green velvet blanket that covered her legs.
“It would be better for you to accept the truth, Kaelyn,” Starla all but pleaded.
That one last word only reinforced the bitterness in Kaelyn’s heart. “Truth.” She spat. “Not sure I know what that is anymore.”
Sighing, Starla took one of Kaelyn’s hands in her own. “How about I show you?”
A feeling of weightlessness suddenly overcame Kaelyn, and her world promptly turned upside down. Images and feelings assaulted her, and she recognized the scenes playing before her, beginning with the first meeting between herself and Tyrian nearly two weeks before.
This time, though, she saw it through his eyes. Felt it as he had.
She almost came undone.
The depth of feeling Kaelyn experienced through Starla’s connection with the Hunter floored her with its intensity. Transported back in time to the small bookstore where she worked, she looked from the outside in as his eyes first caught hers in the window. She felt the tingling warmth that seeped into his very bones at the first connection of his skin against hers, his longing when he’d had to leave her. Apparently, he had not lied to her about the meeting.
Then the connection whisked her forward to the meeting of the Hunter’s Association. She felt a sense of recognition as Tyrian scanned the room, falling on every Hunter’s face briefly, before glancing at Starla’s chair as she slowly materialized. She watched the scene play out above the marble surface, feeling her own trepidation at what she witnessed, yet somehow knowing that she saw the truth.
She flew through the battle against the Necros alongside Jagger and Byrne; her knowledge of their names she attributed to the connection with Tyrian’s consciousness. She watched him cut down the otherworldly creatures with strength and precision, only using as much force as absolutely necessary to dispatch them one after another.
Boy, had she ever aptly compared Tyrian to a Grecian warrior. He showed veritable genius in battle. The few hits that he did take never struck vital points, letting him continue to fight through whatever damage he incurred while dealing out double the damage to his adversary. She had little time to admire his battle prowess, however, as Starla summarily pulled her into yet another memory.
Their first night together.
She almost choked against the overwhelming sensation that assailed her, feeling everything multiplied by ten as she remembered her own experience coupled with the feelings Tyrian had experienced with her. The absolute purity of his love for her struck like a sledgehammer against the walls of bitterness encasing her sheltered heart, chiseling away at their protective hold until nothing remained. Raw emotion poured into her through the makeshift connection, dragging her over the coals and carrying her through to the other side, singed beyond all hope of reparation.
She could no longer deny this reality. She didn’t even want to anymore. Suddenly, she sensed the thin, yet incredibly dense string that now connected her heart and mind to her other half. Even across realms she felt him, and she realized that Starla had shown her, not a connection between Tyrian and herself, but between Tyrian and Kaelyn.
They had become forever and irrevocably linked, parts of each other as essential as air or water. She tenuously tested the bond in her mind, reaching out across the vast landscape of space and time for the other end of that connecting thread. She touched his consciousness briefly before pulling back sharply, snapping back into her own mind and body like a rubber band stretched too far. Starla broke the connection between their hands. She gasped, and stared with wide and wild eyes at the woman she now knew to be the Druid leader of the Hunter’s Association.
“What the hell?” Kaelyn exhaled in one long breath, then swallowed against the rush of sensation as it slowly began to seep away. She swiped at the moisture on her cheeks, brought forth by the overload of emotion forced upon her by the newly formed awakening of the bond.
“I am afraid it is a bit too soon for you to try making a connection across realms. It takes a great deal of strength and practice. The only reason you could get so far just now was my influence, and I will not chance that again.” Starla took the now-cooled mug of herbs from Kaelyn’s shaking hands and set it on the nightstand.
Kaelyn swallowed hard, and blinked rapidly to clear the haze from her vision. “Why not?” she asked. She took deep, calming breaths through her nose and mouth as she came down from the emotional high. Now the pain and discomfort that she had first awoken to had departed from both her heart and her mind.
Starla folded her hands in her lap, and regarded Kaelyn heavily.
“Your bond is still quite new, and Tyrian must remain focused on the task set before him. Any further connection between you two would be a detrimental distraction to him. One I am afraid I cannot allow for now,” Starla concluded, seemingly almost as an afterthought. She rose from her seat next to the bed, and brought the herb mixture with her.
Kaelyn swung her now somewhat steady legs over the side of the massive four-poster. “What am I supposed to do now?” she asked, unsure of how she should approach her current predicament. She couldn’t shake the overwhelming urge to find a way to reopen the connection Starla had briefly awakened within her.
“Move on.” Starla half turned to pin Kaelyn with a measuring stare. “Accept this as your reality, and move on.”
Kaelyn drew her brown down in a frown.
“On to what, exactly? Tyrian? He’s gone,” Kaelyn stated, her eyes downcast. The fact that a world separated her from her other half trampled the high that the realization of her bond had created within her. The bitterness returned with a vengeance.
Starla sighed softly, and cast a pitying glance at the now downtrodden young Medium on the bed. “It killed him to leave you before he could fully explain everything to you. But, as it happened, time was not on his side,” she offered.
Kaelyn shook her head and braced her hands on the side of the bed, digging her fingers into the velvet coverings. She launched herself from the downy surface and turned to face the Druid leader, arms crossed over her chest and a deep frown etched across her pretty face.
“Well, unfortunately, that doesn’t make me any less pissed off,” she ground out. Her recognition of the cause of her bitterness dug into her consciousness and fought for purchase. Tyrian, the bastard, had dropped an earth-shattering bombshell on her, then dumped her on his boss’s doorstep without so much as a backward glance. In her current state of mind, Kaelyn certainly would have killed the Vampire Hunter if he had not traveled to another realm.
A secretive smile played across Starla’s face at Kaelyn’s admission. “That’s a good sign.” She nodded to herself, a look akin to relief in her milky white gaze.
That, if anything, only pissed Kaelyn off more. “Me being pissed off?” She spat. How could this woman be happy about her anger?
“Yes, actually,” Starla reasoned. “It means you are starting to look past the shock and accept your situation. I would be concerned if you weren’t upset.”
Unable to comprehend the workings of the Druid’s logic in her current state of mind, Kaelyn threw up her hands and turned away from the placid woman in exasperation. Shaking her head and snorting, she said more to herself than anyone, “Well if this hasn’t turned out to be a complete tragedy.”
“Being mated to that pompous ass? I feel your pain, sweetheart,” a condescending voice sounded behind her from the mouth of the entryway. Kaelyn turned, and beheld the lithe form of the resident Witch Hunter leaning against the solid mahogany frame.
Lilith smirked as their eyes met. “The boss thought you might want some company.”
Kaelyn turned to glare at her would-be captor. “Am I on lockdown?” she asked indignantly.
Starla cast her eyes down as she answered the other woman. “Until Tyrian returns, I’m afraid I cannot allow you to leave.”
“So I’m supposed to put my life on hold for him?” Kaelyn exclaimed shrilly.
Starla cocked her head to the side just slightly, her pearlescent gaze hardening as she narrowed her eyes on the Medium. “I know that’s just the anger talking,” she stated, a note of warning in her tone.
Heedless of the apparent danger of pressing the issue, Kaelyn slammed her hands down on her hips and glared daggers at the Druid. “Now I’m not supposed to be mad?” she argued.
Lilith rolled her eyes, and the Hunter leader sighed exasperatedly.
“No, now you’re being pouty,” Starla droned, pinning the riled Medium with an admonishing glare.
Kaelyn frowned. She straightened her spine, opened her mouth, then closed it again, and drew in on herself. “Am not,” she defended pitifully, knowing that Starla was right, but also reticent to admit it.
Lilith rolled her eyes again, and glared at her from the doorway. “Put on your big girl pants, would you? If you’re going to sit around and mope the whole time, I’m out of here. I don’t do girl drama,” she stated, her condescending tone laced with boredom and disinterest.
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