Lightbringer (Silverlight Book 4)

by Laken Cane

  I bent over at the thought, crying out, the ends of my hair brushing the ground.

  No. I could not kill him.

  God, no.

  Amias lifted me to my feet, then dragged Shane from the ground and stood him in front of me. “No more. She would die for you. What would you do for her?”

  I lifted a tentative hand to touch Shane’s bruised face, but he growled and jerked away from me. He was like a wild, savage dog, full of fear and rage and confusion.

  “You shouldn’t have let him run,” I told Amias, suddenly angry. “He’s half-cooked. We’re never getting him back.”

  Amias only shrugged. “We will see. Let’s go home.”

  With Shane between us we strode through the city, and we were halfway to Bay Town when we saw the executioners driving down Main Street in a slowly moving procession of armored black SUVs, spotlights on the roofs, with a battered containment van trailing them.

  “They’ll be heading to Bay Town soon, the bastards,” I said, and as one, we slid into the shadows to watch them go by.

  Shane grabbed my arm. “Executioners?”

  I took the opportunity to cover his hand with mine. “Yeah. They’ve come for Rhys’s dragon.”

  He let go of my arm and shook my hand from his. “Rhys?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “You don’t know. You…”

  “Died,” he growled, when I couldn’t say the word.

  I nodded. “He’s a dragon, Shane, and he is magnificent. As big as the sky, and unbelievably beautiful. He shoots fire for miles. I don’t know what else he can do, but God, that dragon. When I was on his back, I could only think of how much you’d have loved to…” Once again I trailed off, but only because I was too full of tears to continue. “I love you so much,” I whispered, finally. “So fucking much.”

  We stood in silence for a while, watching the executioners crawl down the street. Then Amias spoke, his words for Shane, his voice hard.

  “She went willingly to her death,” he told my hunter. “She led the rifters to her blood, drew them out of the city, and let them tear her to pieces. I got to her seconds before the dragon set the island on fire. Look at her scars.”

  Shane would not, so Amias grabbed his jaw and forced him to. “Look at her. Look at her sacrifice. I made her one of us. They made her one of them. But she does not wallow in sanctimonious rage and self-pity.”

  Shane said nothing, and stared unseeingly over my head.

  Amias released his face. “You disgust me.”

  “You shouldn’t have brought me back,” Shane snarled.

  “No,” Amias agreed. “I should not have. I did it for Trinity, but you will only ever hurt her. I should have left you in your darkness.”

  But Shane didn’t hate me, not really. Shane hated himself. He hated what he’d become.

  I knew how he felt. There was a battle inside me—part of me wanted to embrace my coldness, and the other part of me was terrified I would. If I became a block of ice, I would feel no joy, would I? No love. Nothing but the need to feed and a savage, primitive need to kill.

  I’d felt some of that when I’d gone after Shane.

  The rifter wanted to take over, and I couldn’t let him.

  I shuddered, and Amias slipped his arm around me. He said nothing, but he was there, and that was enough.

  Chapter Eighteen

  DARKNESS

  Angus knew Shane wasn’t right.

  They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Angus turned away from him and took my shoulders. He sent his frowning gaze over my body, lingering on the bloodstains that crusted my shirt and colored my face.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Amias crossed his arms. “The hunter cannot seem to control his anger. I have given him a final warning.”

  Angus turned to look at the silent, closed-off Shane. “We’re here for you, bud. But I add my warning to the master’s.”

  There wasn’t so much as a flicker of emotion in Shane’s eyes.

  Rhys and Clayton, always with a tiny, undeniable connection that belonged only to them, watched Shane, regret dark in their faces. I wasn’t the only one who loved Shane, and it broke all our hearts to see him suffering.

  “Where’s Leo?” I asked.

  “He hasn’t returned,” Clayton told me.

  I sighed. There was no way Leo could follow me when I ran, but that knowledge wouldn’t stop him from trying. “I don’t like him out there alone.”

  “I’ll check on him,” Rhys said, sliding his cell from his pocket. “And let him know you’ve returned.”

  “Thanks.” I touched Angus’s huge arm. “We saw Mikhail Safin driving through the city.”

  He nodded. “We’re ready for them, sweetheart.”

  I smacked my palm with my fist. “They’ll come while Amias and I are asleep and useless.”

  Jin slipped out onto the porch. “Tell them that dragons are inclined to appear in darkness.”

  Angus shrugged. “Can’t hurt to try.”

  “I’ll get that rumor started,” Clayton said. But first, he walked to me and pulled me into his arms.

  I sank against the heat of his body and rubbed my lips against his throat. “Cake. You always smell like cake.” And even though I was forgetting the taste of it, I hadn’t forgotten the scent.

  I felt him smile. “It feels good to touch you,” he murmured.

  I lifted my lips for his kiss, then unintentionally glanced at Shane. He watched Clayton and me, and there was such a look of longing in his eyes that I couldn’t breathe. It hit me in the chest, that look, that need, that loneliness, harder than any shotgun stock could.

  “Shane,” I cried, and pulled away from Clayton. I held my arms out as I strode toward him. “Let me hold you. Let me help you.”

  But he was once again blank and cold. “Get the fuck away from me.”

  I stopped and lowered my arms. “My hunter,” I murmured. “What can I do?”

  His face did not soften as he included all of us in his contemptuous gaze. “She is no better than Miriam was when she enslaved Clayton. Those two—” He pointed at me and Amias, then closed his hand in a fist that wanted to smash something. “They forced me here, like an animal. Like a child. Whatever I do, whatever I am, that’s my business and I should be left to it.” Finally, he pinned me with a fierce stare. “You had no fucking right.”

  “You were suffering,” I said. “Someone would have sent you into the despair. I had to save you. You belong here. You were hurt. You were alone.”

  “I was free,” he snarled, then walked away.

  I put my fingers to my mouth. “He’s right. My God, what have I done?”

  “It’s the rifter,” Angus said, trying to comfort me.

  The flood of emotion shocked me—perhaps not even the rifter could smother the vampire when it came to my men.

  I shook my head, fiercely. “No. No. It’s me. I’ve made a mistake and I have to fix it.” I started to go after him, to apologize, to free him, but Clayton’s words took my mind off Shane and put it on something even more sinister.

  “Executioners are here,” he said.

  “Looks like they’re here to feel us out,” Angus said. “Only one car.”

  We stood side by side and watched calmly as the black SUV rolled to a stop. The occupants were hidden behind darkly tinted windows, and they sat without moving for a few interminable minutes before finally, they opened their doors and began stepping out.

  Four people in total—three men and one woman—and only one of them was dressed in a suit. The others wore combat gear. Vests, weapons, hats, hard faces and cold, cold eyes.

  They were killers. Simple as that.

  The man in the suit stood with his three crew members fanned out behind him, and he flicked his empty gaze at me and my people, and he seemed to see…everything.

  He settled that cold gaze on me.

  “I have come for the dragon. I believe he’s here. In three days, I’ll return, an
d you’ll be prepared to give me his name and his location.”

  Darkness.

  He was aptly named.

  He was slender, medium height, short dark hair…unremarkable. Until you looked into his eyes. They were like pieces of twinkling yellow glass, offset by thick lashes. Above them, his brows slashed like dark gashes.

  Death lived in those shocking eyes.

  Not so much as a flicker of emotion, or softness, or curiosity.

  Just death.

  “Darkness,” Jin whisper-screamed, then turned tail and ran into the house.

  Shane stepped from the shadows. He said nothing, but it was enough that he was showing his support. He could have left us to the executioners, but there he was, blank eyes and all.

  I suspected my blood had helped speed his healing, both physical and mental. He’d be fine. Changed, yes, as I was, but fine. He had to grow into his new circumstances.

  And I could only hope that in the end, he’d choose to grow with me.

  Maybe he’d heard me admit I was wrong, because the worried look he shot me was a little less dark. A little less hate-filled.

  “Copas,” one of Safin’s crew said. “We’d heard you were in Red Valley.”

  We all stared at Shane, surprised.

  “Shane?” I asked. “You know the executioners?”

  “Shane used to be one of mine,” Safin said. “Long time ago, for a little while. He was a good scout.”

  “He’s one of ours now,” Angus said, no judgment in his voice. And the dominant alpha he was couldn’t be hidden.

  Safin immediately focused on the werebull. The human alpha stared down the shifter alpha for a good two minutes before finally, I took a couple of steps toward the man Shane apparently used to work for.

  “We don’t have the dragon, Mikhail.”

  Darkness glanced at me, then back at Angus. He studied him for a minute before he decided to put his attention back on me.

  But I’d seen what was in his eyes when he looked at Angus. There was going to be trouble between the two men.

  Angus wanted to protect his territory. Safin wanted to take it.

  And something else—something instinctual and ancient. There was immediate hatred and a rising challenge between the two of them.

  “I expect resistance,” Safin said. That was all, nothing more.

  The woman in the crew stepped up beside him. Thick black braids fell over her shoulders, and she stared at us with bright hazel eyes, icy in the darkness of her face. She was stone cold, and she didn’t care who knew it.

  Even beneath the bulk of her clothes, I could see the bunching of muscle when she moved.

  And her stare lingered on Shane.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  I felt her knowledge of him. Intimate knowledge.

  And I didn’t like it at all.

  She put that cold stare on me and her smile spread slowly across her face, widening even as I clenched my fists, an almost silent growl floating from my lips.

  “Shane went and got himself a vampire girlfriend,” she told Safin, as she lovingly fingered one of the stakes in her belt. “Impossible as that seems, he has got himself a vampire girlfriend.” She paused as she studied my face. “You must be Trinity Sinclair. We’d heard you’d come back with a face like a road map.”

  “A lot of things are fucked up,” I said, calmly. “Not just my face. I used to be a vampire hunter.” I paused. “And Shane?” I smiled. “He used to be human.”

  Her eyes widened and she took a quick, unintentional step back. Then she strode toward Shane to see for herself.

  I was already moving. The second before she reached him, she found me standing in front of him, my body blocking hers.

  “He’s mine,” I told her.

  She was fast, too. Not vampire fast, but fast. Almost before I realized she’d moved, she had a stake pressed to my chest. “You made Shane Copas? You turned fucking Shane Copas?”

  I held up a hand to stop my men from doing something that might get them killed. “I did not,” I told her. “But he’s mine, nonetheless.”

  “Aspen,” Safin said. “We’re not here to fight over a man.”

  “He’s no man. He’s a fucking soulless bloodsucker.” She leaned a little closer to me. “I could tell you stories about the vampires he’s killed. Tortured.” She grinned. “I could tell you about the bad, bad things we did together.”

  “Get away from him,” I snarled.

  “Both of you get the fuck away from me,” Shane said.

  Aspen smirked and went back to her group. When I looked away from Aspen, I found Mikhail with his cold stare pinned to Clayton.

  “What are you, sir?” Darkness asked him.

  But we weren’t willing to stand like children and allow Mikhail and his crew to interrogate us.

  “We’re done here,” Angus said. “Take your bullies and get the fuck out of Bay Town.”

  Once again, Safin’s stare clashed with Angus’s.

  I wanted to jump between the werebull and the executioner’s deadly stare, but I didn’t move. No one spoke.

  When the silence became too hurtful, I broke it with a lie. Darkness would not believe it, but I’d stick with it for as long as I could. “The dragon was here long enough to burn the rifters, Safin. We haven’t seen him since. We don’t have a dragon living in Bay Town.”

  He looked at me, and it was like being looked at by a reptile. A cold, hissing snake or an ancient lizard. I resisted the urge to rub the goosebumps from my skin.

  Apparently he didn’t think my words deserved a reply, because he didn’t open his mouth.

  Mikhail Safin was the scariest human I’d ever met.

  He looked at me, and all I saw in his face was something raw and primal. Something freaking scary.

  He kept his silence and continued to stare at me, as though I might be so freaked out by that stare that I’d break down and tell him everything he wanted to know.

  Before I’d died, I might very well have.

  He can hurt us.

  That phrase ran through my mind, over and over, until finally I swallowed the dryness in my mouth and was able to speak without fear coloring my words.

  “There’s no dragon here.” I thought I sounded relatively normal. “You stick around long enough, you’ll figure out you’re just wasting your time.”

  His golden eyes glittered like hard, pale diamonds. He was a machine—analytical, methodical, and unemotional—but finally, I saw something besides emptiness.

  There was passion behind the hard glassiness of his eyes. Passion for killing. My savage bloodlust recognized his savage bloodlust. The coldness of my rifter understood the chill in his gaze.

  We were alike, Mikhail Safin and I, with maybe one important distinction. I could love. I was nearly certain he couldn’t.

  “What happened to you?” I murmured. “What happened to turn you into such a psychopath?”

  We stared at each other for so long that finally, Aspen cleared her throat. “Mikhail?” she asked, a little uncertain.

  He ignored her. “I would ask the same question of you,” he said to me.

  “A lot of shit happened to make me what I am—I was torn apart and put back together as…” I shrugged. “As this. A couple of times, actually. So…what happened to you?”

  And finally, he smiled. It was a tiny lifting of one corner of his lips, and a spark of genuine humor lit his eyes. He understood a person’s need to understand why he was so…dark. He understood, and he found it amusing. “I have no excuses.” He paused, as still as a master vampire. For a human, that was no small feat. “I was born this way.”

  There was no way to tell if he was lying. And in the end, it didn’t really matter. He would do what he’d come to do, and before it was over, some of us would suffer, and some of us would die.

  And that was the only truth in his eyes.

  Chapter Nineteen

  RAW

  He left.

  He gave us three da
ys to deliver the dragon, and then he walked away.

  Headlights appeared as another car turned onto the way station drive and sped toward us.

  “It’s Crawford,” Angus noted, but his stare lingered on Safin’s taillights.

  I nodded. “He must’ve heard that Darkness was coming to Bay Town.”

  “I’m not sure what he can do,” Rhys said.

  His voice was strained. The executioners had him worried, and understandably so. He caught my concerned gaze and sent me a wink. “I’m okay, love.”

  “We won’t let them take you, Rhys.”

  “I know.”

  But he was afraid—doubtless for the supernaturals and Bay Town more than for himself. He could shift and flee and they would never catch him. Even though that would mean he’d have to leave us, the ones with whom he belonged.

  He could run and he could hide.

  But if Safin attacked us, and he would attack us, Rhys would never leave us to him and run to save himself. If Safin began torturing supernaturals, Rhys would hand himself over to Darkness.

  As Crawford’s car and Safin’s car drew even, they rolled to a stop, muttered a few words, and then Crawford continued on toward us.

  He climbed out, motioning to someone else in the car to stay put. He’d brought backup, just in case. Probably a couple of off-duty cops.

  “Frank,” I said.

  He gave us a nod. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” I told him. “He played nice, sort of.”

  “He came to give you his terms.” Crawford hesitated, and finally, he looked at me. “You should go away for a while, Trinity.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “You think I’d take off and leave the supernats to those assholes?”

  His stare drifted over the scars that decorated my face. The scars that few people ever mentioned. The scars most people pretended not to notice.

  Crawford didn’t pretend not to notice. He lingered on them, and there was more than just pity and horror in his eyes. There was admiration, as well. “No,” he replied, finally. “But if you take the ones you care about and hide out for a few weeks, it could save you some grief.”