by E. M. Moore
A knock came on the door along with a quick, “It’s Nic.”
I twisted the handle and the door silently opened and closed behind him. He stood in front of me, his dark eyes baring his soul. I put my hand on his chest. “What happened?”
His jaw clenched. “He forbade me to pursue any guardian training.”
“He’s just not ready to let you go yet.”
Nicolai bent down, pulling me up by my thighs and sat me on the counter behind me. “But I’m ready. I know where they’re going to send you and it’s not going to be anywhere near me. Do you know how that makes me feel?”
“Scared. Worried.”
He leaned forward, his husky voice drawing me in. “All those things, but something else, too. Less than, Ri. He makes me feel less than. If I want—if any vampire is willing—we should be out fighting for our own kind, too.”
“Don’t give up then.”
He shook his head, a smirk pushing back the shadows on his face as if what I said was ridiculous, or perfect, or just plain naive. I couldn’t tell which. “Can I kiss you?”
“Since when do you ask?”
“Since there are more than a few people here who don’t know about us.”
In answer, I leaned forward and passed my lips over his. He pulled me closer, his hand stretching behind me to the small of my back. He trailed kisses over my cheek, to my ear, and finally to my neck.
“Maybe I should ask Mom and Dad if you can spend the night…”
I gasped, then pushed him away, almost knocking myself off the counter in the process. “Do you realize how wrong that sentence sounded?”
He lifted his shoulders, gave me a quick kiss, then snuck out of the bathroom, an echo of laughter drifting behind him.
I jumped down from the counter and faced the mirror again, unable to wipe the grin off my face. I shook my head once and followed after him. He may be delusional—and humorless—but he was still one of my princes.
Chapter Twelve
Wide awake, I bolted upright in bed, blissfully sparing my mind from the culmination of the dream that had been replaying in my head since the moment I went to sleep. A cold shudder shook me and seeped all the way through my bones and settled in like the flu. I blinked around my dark room trying to find the reason I woke, my heart slamming inside my chest the whole time like a wild beast trying to escape. A floorboard creaked outside my door and a fist pounded on it. For a brief second, I wanted to pull my covers up over my head and pretend I didn’t hear anything. The dream had me on edge, gut-wrenching and pained, it felt like it had taken off a few years of my life.
With a deep breath, I threw the covers off my legs and padded toward the door during a break in the knocking. I pulled it open slightly, still wary. Lex stood on the other side, her usually carefully put together exterior in disarray. Opening it wider, I asked, “What’s wrong?”
The tortured look on her face made the dream I just had sink to my stomach and fester. No. It couldn’t be true… Her hands gripped the doorway. “Get ready. We need you now. Matthews was able to find something big and I don’t want to waste any time.”
A sweep of relief washed over me and at the same time, a tinge of excitement replaced it. Leaving the door open, I turned to gather some clothes and went to change in the small bathroom. When I emerged, I grabbed my keys and my phone and then followed her out the door, locking it up behind me. “What did he find?” I finally asked.
She breathed out. “Nothing about his human life came up, but Matthews found something very, very interesting in the old books from when Dumont was in power. I don’t know why we didn’t think about looking there before. You really were onto something, Ariana.”
We crossed the dew-laden grass in quick strides. At the far end of campus, we pushed in the main door to the biggest building at The Fort. This late at night, I was surprised to see some guards walking the grounds. It was different. This was definitely in response to the attack, more night activity than we ever had before and I should know since I’d once tried to escape this place. Foolish, foolish me.
Lex led me to an upstairs classroom where T.J. and Matthews already sat. As soon as we entered, she took charge, demanding Matthews tell me everything he found out about Soren. He greeted me only briefly and then pushed a large book over to the side of the table I leaned on. The lettering was very faint and the pages themselves were crisp like autumn leaves with the threat of withering and pulling apart at any moment. “How old is this?” I asked.
“Pretty damn old. It’s from the time when Dumont was in power. We have some of the texts digitized, which is what sent me in this direction, but I couldn’t get the whole story until I found it in this book, The Dumont Legacy.”
Legacy? Ha. To me, legacy was something you wanted to pass down from generation to generation, not the senseless killing and bloodshed that marred the Dumont Clan’s reign of power.
I started to scan the text, but Matthews interrupted me. “Soren had a lover. He fell in love with a servant at the castle, and when he wanted to make that servant his own, Dumont forbid him and then had the girl killed.”
My eyes widened. Shock echoed through my system. It wasn’t necessarily due to the story itself, of that I could totally see Dumont doing, but how was Soren still so loyal to him after all this? Soren was in love. If it was anything like the love my princes and I shared, I’d kill anyone who tried to take them away from me.
Ahh. Wait. It was all starting to make sense. Soren was so vested in what I did because my story mirrored his own. My eyes quickly read the few paragraphs of script that held the most important piece of information we had on Soren. It was true. A young farm girl they had brought into the castle to serve them had fallen into his clutches. Soren basically doomed her to her fate. Of course, the whole text was skewed in a way as to show how dangerous it was to fall in love with humans and what it meant. It spoke of a disrespectful Soren who cared not for his people or his king and cared only about the girl. For me, though, it just spoke of love. To even come to Dumont with his request to turn her, Soren must’ve been very much in love with her.
“Excellent,” I said, looking up from the words finally. “Exactly what we needed.”
Lex looked around the room, her expression grim as she stared at each of us. “Time is ticking. We need answers now. We’ll let Ariana go in and try to get something out of him. If she can’t…” she shrugged. “We’ll deal with it.”
“He’ll talk,” I said, speaking up and filling the silence. Not only because I truly believed he would, but because we really needed him to. Everyone stood when I turned for the door, but I looked back over my shoulder. “I think I should go down alone.”
Lex scrutinized me, her gaze narrowing. Finally, she nodded and told them they would spend the time alerting the Ravanas to what they had found. I bit my lip, hoping none of the princes would do anything stupid and demand to come down there with me. I needed to do this by myself. Soren needed to feel like he could relate to me and if I was right, he’d already guessed he could.
“I’ll be up as soon as I get an answer.”
My heart racing, I stumbled down the last bit of steps to the cells. I swung the door open and it creaked on its hinges, a sorrowful whine that echoed the story I’d just read above. When I passed through the light and then tread silently to the chair, I noticed Soren was asleep in his bed. I stood there looking for some time before I woke him. Without the hard grimace on his face or the wary eyes, he looked somewhat peaceful. I’d never peg him as a bad vampire if I hadn’t seen him in action myself. “It’s not polite to stare,” he said. I jumped, and Soren immediately began to chuckle. “Scare you, did I? I guess that means you still have some sense left inside you. I’m just not sure how much.”
He pulled himself from his laying position and stretched his arms out wide, yawning in the process. I sat in the chair, casting him a dark look. “Let me worry about my own sense. I know what I’m doing.”
He scoffed. “You k
eep telling yourself that, Young One.”
“Why do you call me that? Young One?”
“Well, you are young, aren’t you? It’s not like I could call you old one because that would be simply untrue. If it’s one thing I am, it’s honest.”
“Except when it comes to giving up Dumont.”
He wagged his finger at me. “Except that would be dishonest. Don’t you remember the conversation we had the other day about loyalty? How you’ll want nothing more than to please that prince once you let him turn you.”
“Who says he’s going to turn me? It’s not even legal. I think you know a thing or two about that.”
The flecks in his eyes nearly blazed with my insinuation. “Been doing some reading, have you?”
I shrugged. “Just curious as to your interest in me and I think I’ve figured it out. You think my story is the same as yours? That’s why you keep saying I’ll be dead, isn’t it?”
“You were going to be dead anyway because Dumont is going to kill the Ravanas and you’re stupid enough to try and save them. Now that I know what else is going on, you’re twice as dead.”
“That’s where I think you’re wrong. Gregor Ravana is nothing like Dumont. What if things changed?”
“It’s my experience that things don’t just change like that, Young One. The people you think who are going to come through for you just don’t.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know how you did it. Still do it. If you loved that woman as much as I think you did, your loyalty to Dumont is sick. You betray her every day.”
Soren’s teeth clenched, his eyes hardening. “I loved Sophie. It wasn’t meant to be though.”
“He killed her.”
“In punishment for my actions. I’m supposed to be loyal only to him. I’ve learned my lessons and it will never happen again. Your friend, the one who’s so keen on reminding me that they’ll kill me if I don’t talk, might as well just do it.”
“Dumont punished you into submission. You don’t have to live like that.”
“Like I have another choice. I’m going to stay in this cell or die. If I don’t say anything, I might live for awhile longer and if there’s anything you should’ve realized about vampires by now it’s that we have a strong desire for life. If I talk, I’ll die. You won’t need me anymore.”
“What if I could help you? What if you did talk and I could promise that nothing would happen to you?”
“Then you’re more delusional than I thought.”
“I’m offering you a third option.”
“One you’ve made up in your head that’ll never come true. I’m your enemy. I don’t care who you are, you don’t save enemies. No one’s that forgiving.”
“But I’m offering it. It’s probably more than Dumont ever did for you. Let me guess what his options were when you told him you were in love with Sophie. Give her up and only she would die. Fight for her and you both would die. How long did it take you to make the decision, Soren? A couple seconds? A minute? You just said yourself a vampire’s will to live is stronger than anything else. I’m offering you a chance.”
“You’re offering me a dream that’ll never come true.”
“But sometimes dreams are all we have. Tell me, did you see her one last time before he killed her? Was she looking at you when he did it?”
His fangs slid out and he snarled in my direction.
I gasped, my mind reeling at the purely evil thought I just had. “It was worse than that, wasn’t it? He made you kill her. To prove your loyalty to him. That’s what he did, didn’t he?”
Soren’s hands dropped hopelessly from the bars.
I pressed forward. At least I had some sort of reaction out of him other than just playing and teasing me. “I’m sorry,” I told him truthfully. “You never should’ve had to go through that. But there are better people in the world. Ones that don’t make you their instant family just so they can use you to do their bidding. You know that’s all Dumont is, don’t you? And every other action he’s taken, like making you kill Sophie, was to prove to you that you’re nothing without him. But you’re not, Soren. The Ravanas want to change things and I don’t care if you believe them or not, but you can believe me. You can look me in the eye right now and figure out whether I’m lying or whether I believe that with my whole heart. Change is coming, and I’m offering you another chance, an option Dumont would never give you.”
“Come closer,” he demanded, fixing me with a glare.
I stood on shaky legs and stepped forward. His arm moved toward me. I stayed where I was, unflinching, as his fingers moved through my hair. “You remind me of her.”
I swallowed the uneasiness and let Soren have his moment. “I’m just trying to save the people I love, and give others the options they won’t have if Dumont takes over. You know it’s true, Soren. Your story proves it. He won’t let others live their lives the way they want. He’ll control everything. Here, it’s not like that, and it’ll get even better.”
“You have that much faith in him? In the clan?”
I nodded. “They’re good people. And this is coming from someone who didn’t even know vampires existed six months ago. I should be revolted by all this, but I’m not. I stayed. I had a choice, and I stayed.”
Soren took a deep breath, his eyelids lowering. He pulled his hands away and moved back into the shadows of his cell. “I believe you’re telling me the truth. Even if I told you where he was, it wouldn’t matter. There are hundreds more like me that will die for him.”
“His army?”
“Yes, his army.”
My heart lifted. A breakthrough. Maybe Soren was finally seeing the truth about his sire. “Tell me anyway. We’re fighting for the chance to live life the way we want with who we want. If you were given that choice all those years ago, wouldn’t you have taken it? Sophie would still be alive.”
“Yours will only end in hurt, Young One. Take it from me. Take it from someone who lived through it, and who was penalized greatly for it. You might as well turn around now. They gave you a choice, you said. You should’ve chosen the other one. The one without this world. In this world, Dumont will reign, and you will die.”
“But, you don’t know the life I came from… And even if I hadn’t come from that one, even if I liked my life before, I don’t know that it would’ve mattered. I want to be here.”
Soren sat on his cot heavily as if the energy inside himself melted away and there was nothing left to hold him up. He sat motionless for a few seconds and I waited on bated breath to see if anything I said had gotten through to him. Finally, he glanced up at me. “If I’d been given a choice, I would’ve chosen Sophie.” He paused for several seconds, then dropped his head. “Dumont will have gone underground. We didn’t have a backup plan. He was so sure we were about to take over The Fort that we didn’t bother having a plan B. The nearest safe house from here is in Calcutta though. That’s where he would go.”
A knot twisted in my stomach and I blinked, unsure I’d heard him. “Calcutta?”
He nodded slowly.
Impossible. All this time, I’d been closer to this other world than I’d ever imagined.
Chapter Thirteen
I leaned against the wall in the gym the next morning while the rest of the trainees filed in. The Ravanas were shocked when they heard what Soren had told me about Dumont’s safe house. Four pairs of eyes had immediately turned to me, but I didn’t know what to tell them. Who knew I’d been that close to someone so evil? Yet again, we didn’t even know how often he used the place. Maybe he never used it and there was no reason why this new information should be spinning around and around inside my head and I couldn’t get it out.
Now, here we were, at the organization of the trainees just like Samuel had wanted. He stood in the front of the room, his arms clasped around himself while Lex and T.J. flanked him. Lex had been getting a lot of respect from the trainees since the night the invasion happened, and of course, everyone was already
enamored with T.J., their stake teacher. Maybe that was why Samuel always seemed displeased in their presence. He wasn’t used to sharing the spotlight.
When the last trainee came in, I anchored myself in the back of the pack, listening. I hadn’t said the words out loud, but I knew the Ravanas weren’t deluding themselves. When Samuel asked people to volunteer for the risky mission, I was doing it. This whole affair was my job after all. No one would be bothering us if it weren’t for the fact that the Ravanas—my family—were being targeted. Since it was, they had to let me help.
Samuel explained the situation. The trainees, most of them anyway, all leaned forward, listening to the specifics. My mind wouldn’t concentrate on everything Samuel said, it was already on the task that lie ahead. So, when he finally broke the class up and told everyone they had to make their decision within the half hour and to come put their name on a list at the front table when they had, he dismissed us and told us that no matter what, we needed to stick on campus to await further instruction. Things would be moving fast on this.
While pockets of trainees broke apart and discussed certain tactics with their friends, I made my way to the front. A folding table had been placed in front of them with two sheets of paper. General Defense of The Fort and Deployed Personnel. Deployed Personnel, that was me. There were already a few names on the list when I got there and I quickly added mine. T.J. and Lex gave me a smile while Samuel just nodded.
Once outside the gym entrance, a hand shot out to stop me. “Well?”
I turned and met Christian’s eyes. I gave him a small smile to try to ease the worry lines on his face. “You know what I did.”
He took in a deep breath and then turned to walk with me. He didn’t say anything until we exited the main building and started walking toward the guardian house. “I do. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to worry about you and I’m not the only one.”
“Of course. I’d be worried too if any of you were in this situation. But, we’re ahead of ourselves. We don’t even know if they’re going to take me.” I didn’t know why I said it, maybe just to make him feel a better about the situation, to act as if there was a bit of hope of not seeing me leave the protection of The Fort, but I was certain they would take me. Not because I was full of myself, but because I was sure I’d already proven myself. I defended The Fort when it was necessary, saved guards and vampires. I was also the one who got the information out of Soren. The least they could do was send me where I wanted to.