by Tijan
He knew—and he was pissed.
Roane chose his words carefully. “You need to be careful, Lucan. Things aren’t as they seem. Things are… undecided.”
Wren frowned and glanced to her leader.
Roane took a purposeful step forward. He didn’t step forward, he stalked forward.
Lucan stilled—I wasn’t inside of him, but I felt his body’s answer to the sudden shift in Roane’s body. Roane had been cautious, held himself back before and now there was no holding back. Lucan registered it all and I wondered how long it would be before he realized who exactly he held in his arms. It wasn’t my body. It wasn’t my blood, but I still didn’t want to feel his fangs rip through Shelly’s skin.
“What’s undecided, brother?” Lucan enjoyed the back and forth. “You led with me. You were the one who had this grand idea. It was just because she was a child. That’s the only reason why you stopped. You’re weak. You were weak then and you’re weak now. You protect her even though this one means nothing to you.”
Roane’s attention snapped to his brother. For the first time since the battle had started, Roane wasn’t focused on me. I frowned as I wondered who Lucan referred to….
He sounded malicious. “You hunted the first one. You were supposed to have the first drink. It shouldn’t have meant anything that the thread jumped to her child.”
“Shut up, Lucan!” Roane growled.
“It’s the truth. And the thread’s not in Talia anymore. Your lover died. You weren’t even there to protect her. That’s what you had chosen. You chose her over me.” Disdain and bitterness dripped from Lucan, but I watched horrified as something glazed over Roane’s eyes at the words.
Her? Lover?
Roane and Talia, the previous Immortal, had been lovers. From the clenched jaw, I judged that he still loved her…. I closed my eyes tightly as tears stung them. They were a knee jerk reaction.
Lucan continued, “You fell in love with a child. Only a vampire can be that sick, but I understood. I did, Lucas. I’m your brother. I understand things like love at first sight. You fought me for her, but that’s over. She’s not alive anymore. You can forget this charade and take up my side again. I need my brother beside me. It hasn’t been the same without you.”
“I didn’t fall in love with Talia until she was an adult. I fought you that day because she was a child. We don’t hurt children.”
“Yes, we do. We’re vampires. Why do you keep denying what we are?”
I opened my eyes, Shelly’s eyes, a crack and glimpsed the pain in Roane through her tears—my tears that her body produced from my suffering.
Roane shook his head. “I’m no longer your brother, Lucan. That ceased when Jaleathus sired me. The Roane’s Family blood became mine. We live with different standards in our blood.”
Lucan snorted in contempt. “Don’t tell me about your different standards. They come from Jacith. He brainwashed your entire Family, but you’re still vampires. You try to pretend you aren’t. I’m insulted that they did this to my brother.”
A bitter laugh wrung out of Roane. “You were nothing without me, Lucan. I told you how to act. I told you how to think. I told you everything. You wouldn’t have done anything if I hadn’t been there.”
Lucan froze behind me. I felt rage build inside of him. His fingers tightened on Shelly’s throat. His other hand gripped her arm until I felt a trickle of blood seep downwards. It trickled over his hands, but he didn’t realize it. Roane’s nostrils flared at the smell. So did Wren’s. I glanced around the room. All of them except Wren and Roane eyed the blood. It was Immortal blood… or so they thought.
“You’re wrong,” Lucan whispered. “I lead my Family. I’ve found the Immortal. I have her in my arms. You failed, brother.”
Roane smiled. It was a confident, too smooth, type of smile. Lucan gripped harder on Shelly’s arm—more blood slipped downwards. It trickled over her palm, down her finger, and hung just off the tip of the nail…. My heart pounded heavily as I waited… then it let loose and splattered on the floor.
Still no reaction from Lucan.
He was focused, almost crazily focused on Roane. “Now what is your Family going to do? You were supposed to protect the Immortal and you couldn’t do that, could you?”
“I’m a Hunter, Lucan. Are you forgetting what that means? I’m connected to all of the other Hunters. You rip into that girl and I can call on them. You won’t be fighting just me. You’ll be fighting all of them.”
“I’ll have the Immortal’s blood. I’ll be unstoppable.” Lucan was so sure, so confident in his own words. I knew instantly when he smelled the blood. His body jerked in reaction and I/Shelly was slammed against the wall. His fangs clamped onto Shelly’s neck and sunk further. He drank—oh—I fought against it. The blood was pulled out at breathtaking speed. I couldn’t… I tried to slow the draining, but it was useless.
Lucan was a starved animal. Shelly whimpered from inside of her box. She felt her body’s death. I saw the box open and the light shone briefly before she crawled out of the box. There she was, terrified, but calm. She knew her death was almost there.
I almost wished that Shelly had been a vampire. I could’ve talked to her, comforted her in that moment, but she wasn’t. She was just a human who didn’t have any special power, but it was a good thing that Shelly was a human. Life was simple for her.
I felt her heart slowing… thump… thump… she closed her eyes and fell. Her heart had stopped. Lucan let go, confused, and Shelly’s body really did fall to the ground.
“She’s dead,” he muttered, stricken. “But…”
Kates had been silent the entire time. She gasped now, “It’s not her. She’s not the Immortal, but—”
I could still hear from Shelly’s body, but I couldn’t see anything anymore. I didn’t want to stay inside of her and then I heard Kates again. “Lucan, what do we do?” Panic trembled just on the tip of her tongue, but I wondered where that had come from. Kates never panicked. I left Shelly and found Kates easily.
‘It can’t be, but I wonder… it can’t be,’ Kates thought. I caught an image of myself and knew my nolstage was connecting dots faster than I was comfortable with.
‘You can’t, there’s no way. You never could before…’
Kates knew I’d been on the roof with Talia. She’d known that Talia was the Immortal.
‘She’s the empath that was cozying up with the Hunter.’
Kates had been surprised when I’d shown up at the Shoilster with Roane… now it was starting to make sense.
‘She’s the Immortal.’ Kates cursed to herself.
I slipped out of Kates before I felt whatever she was feeling now. I shouldn’t have. I should’ve stayed inside of her because I knew my nolstage had power over Lucan—therefore over my livelihood, but I was a coward. I drew in another shuddering breath as I opened my own eyes and stared at the same door. I lifted a hand and tentatively touched the wood with my palm. It was so sturdy, but just on the other side… everything was barely hanging in the balance.
‘Your lover died.’
I pressed a knuckled fist against my mouth. Talia and Roane had been lovers. He had loved her. I remembered the stricken expression in Roane’s eyes as Lucan had said those words. It had been pure love, the kind that was meant for the rest of a lifetime. He had loved someone else like that… and me… I realized that there had been nothing between us.
My stomach turned over suddenly. I could’ve thrown up in that moment. I glanced downwards, distantly, as I looked at my stomach. Roane was drawn to the Immortal inside of me. A part of Talia was inside of me. He was drawn to her. He needed her—not me. I was just the body.
‘Davy,’ Roane called to me with his thoughts.
I jerked my head to the side. I didn’t want to talk to him, not at that moment, but it was irrational. I didn’t want to deal with what was really happening on the other side of that door. He had no obligation to me. We’d only… we’d only been to
gether one time.
Just once.
That was it. Right? There had been no words of affection, no… no nothing. He had loved her. How was I supposed to compete with that? I couldn’t. The answer was so bleak to me, but still….
‘Davy!’ Roane was more urgent this time. ‘Davy, you need to get out of here. There’s a hallway that goes down. Follow it, keep going. You’ll pass the fountain below us. Keep going. You need to get out of here, away from Lucan. He knows it’s not Shelly. It’s only a matter of time before he figures it out. He’s already looking at the door. You have to hurry.’
It hurt to even hear his voice. ‘Kates knows. She figured it out.’
There was a pause. ‘Yeah. I can see that. You have to hurry, Davy. The tunnel will go all the way to the mansion. It should be safe by the time you get there. Find Gregory.’
I was supposed to run. My childhood best friend, my vampire—I didn’t know what to call Roane—and so many others were in the room behind me. Shelly was dead. I knew I wouldn’t die. I was the Immortal and I had a strong feeling the thread wasn’t going to jump to anyone else—if it did then I was dead anyway.
I was stuck.
Run, not run, hide, not hide. What could I do? I knew what I wanted to do. I always ran. I pressed sweating palms to my pants and tried to wipe them off. I turned, faltering, and stared at where Roane urged me to go. The tunnel was dark, but it didn’t seem ominous. The room behind me was too ominous, but the sound of the water calmed me slightly. It ran through the wall beside my ear. Before I knew what I was doing, my foot had stretched outwards and I found myself slowly passing through the darkness.
I kept going and the water grew louder.
The tunnel dipped forward. I felt gravity on my body and knew I was heading downwards.
I took a harsh breath and clasped my eyes tightly together. I needed to be honest with myself. I was escaping. It wasn’t because Roane told me to go. He loved someone else, someone that was inside of me now. That hurt—it seared deep down, almost too far for my empathic abilities to comprehend. Well, that’s not true. I could comprehend it, I just didn’t want to. I wanted to run from it. He was behind me. Kates was in that room. She had the knowledge to change my life forever. She knew I was the Immortal. I could be hunted if Lucan found out who I was.
I stopped in the tunnel and drew in a ragged breath.
I could go back, but to what? Why? Lucan wanted my powers. He couldn’t have them. I knew that no matter the odds, Roane would best his brother. What was I afraid of? I could run… there was no danger.
But… I remembered the voice inside of Blue’s head. Roane and I could not be separated.
“Are we on a pity party? Is this what the staggering amount of suffering and affliction is about?” The Immortal chose to announce its presence.
I sighed in contempt. “Now is not the time. Why can I hear you like you’re here?”
“I’m the Immortal. Have you forgotten our first trip around the merry go round? You’re the pail. What do you carry? Who are Jack and Jill? You should know this by now!”
“Stop it—”
“—THINK!” The Immortal screamed. “Who’s Jack and Jill? You are the Immortal! You think I was the one pulling all those strings back there where you catapulted yourself out of that car and right to your sidekick? I didn’t do that, Davy. I wasn’t the one in the drivers’ seat. That was all you. I was riding shotgun. You were the Immortal. You, not me, not this voice you keep hearing. It was all you.”
My throat went dry at those words. The thread was inside of me. The thread jumped from person to person, body to body. I wasn’t—there was no way, but everyone had been shocked by the speed my body had acclimated to the Immortal thread. Gregory said some took years to do what I’d done in two days, but none of it made sense. What did it mean that I had done what I had? If it hadn’t been the Immortal… it was me? Who was I?
“Cut out the Buddha bull. You can ponder the eternal question of your identity later. You’ve got to stop moaning in your own piss and get back to that room.”
“Are you my conscious? Are you the good angel now?”
“That’s the issue, honey bunny. I’m neither. I’m the in between. I’m the go between. I’m the reason that your devil is on the left and your angel is on the right. That’s me—that’s you, so you better start deciphering it!”
The Immortal was pissing me off. “Get out of me!”
She chuckled. “Are you angry? You’re more than clueless. You’re choosing your ignorance. You can’t walk away when you know you’re needed in that other room.”
“Shut up! I don’t care. I’m doing what Roane wants.”
The Immortal laughed. “You’re doing what you want. You’re running away because you got your feelings hurt. You’re being a sissy. The boy likes someone that’s not you. Boo freaking hoo. Wake up! You’re more than that and all that romance crap is nothing compared to what’s going to happen if you don’t get your butt back there. Stop feeling with your emotions and think with your head.”
I was empathic. Feelings were my thing.
“Well, they aren’t anymore,” the Immortal snapped. “You want to know a little about yourself? A long, long time ago a visionary realized what vampires could do. He saw how dangerous they could be so he went and created a ‘prophecy’ that said one day, a person who was interwoven with the essence of life would take their life from them. You’re feared by vampires, but also desired. Some think you were created as an ultimate weapon against them, but then rumors started going around that they could drink from you. If they drank your blood, they could get your powers. That’s the prophecy, Davy. The prophecy was created and the Immortal thread came to be. You’ve got the essence of life flowing through every particle of your body. All the other girls, yes—even Talia—they weren’t the Immortal. They were just the carriers for the thread. One would come and become the Immortal. That’s you—not them. And if you want to sit and mope that Roane loves Talia, someone who was less than you, you disgust me.”
As shocking revelations came… this one was big.
It continued, “Every vampire out there thinks they can drink from you and they’ll have your powers. That’s what they’ve been taught. You’re the toad to their Cinderella. They’re wrong. If they’d bitten any other carrier then they would’ve gotten the powers. The thread would’ve jumped to them, given them a flare of power, but immediately attached itself to the first human they would’ve touched. No vampire can handle the essence of life inside of them. It goes against their grain as a vampire. They thrive on pain. They thrive on suffering, on darkness, on death. We are light. We are life. You are life, Davy, and you’re the prophecy.”
All this now… how could this help now?
“It’ll help because you know something they don’t. The prophecy states that when the Immortal becomes one, instead of giving them powers, you will give them life. You’ll strip them of their immortality, Davy.”
“They’ll be human?”
“You’ll make their heart beat. Again.”
The answer was so quaint.
“But what about Blue? About what the voice inside her head said? Roane and I aren’t supposed to be divided?” I’d been running when I knew that the ancient voice had commanded otherwise. I should be ashamed.
“That was Jacith. He’s a moron who believes he’s got way more power than he does. You have that power. Not him. You have the knowledge. Not him, but you are needed back there. Get back there! NOW!”
The decision slammed into my chest.
The sound of water tickled behind the back of my head. I focused on it again. It was louder than before. Roane had said the tunnel would pass the fountain. Maybe…I moved forward and as the water grew louder, I knew what I needed to do. Determination rang through me when I felt the tunnel dip dramatically below my feet and the sound of rushing water slammed against my ears.