by Rye Brewer
“Where would we hide in Rome?”
“It’s not even that we would need to hide,” I explained, reminding myself to keep my voice calm and even.
This was not the time to have a fight. The night had been so perfect up to this point.
I tucked her hair behind her ear. “If it was just the two of us, we wouldn’t do enough damage to bring attention to ourselves. We could find a hotel where nobody asks questions and stay there during the day. I’m certain there are places like that in existence. And wouldn’t you rather stay in an actual hotel than in a cave?”
“I’m comfortable there.” Even though tiny lines appeared on her forehead when she said it.
She was lying to me. Worse, she was lying to herself.
“Carissa.” I swiveled her in my arms until we were facing each other. “I realize that you feel comfortable, but are you sure it’s not just because you feel accepted there? We can’t use them as a security blanket forever.”
She frowned. “A security blanket? You think that’s how I see them?”
“It wasn’t intended as an insult, I swear. This is all so new to you, and they’re all you know. Well, them and myself. But we don’t need them. We could be all right on our own.”
“Hold on.”
She extricated herself from my embrace, and I knew it was over.
I had destroyed the night. All because I couldn’t stop pressing her—but it wasn’t as though my misgivings were in my head. It was obvious that Micah wanted her, and it wasn’t obvious just to me. I saw the looks other clan members exchanged when they thought I wasn’t looking.
Micah was just short of cuckolding me, and I couldn’t stand for it much longer.
“Cari, please. I don’t want to fight.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t talk to me like I’m a child. Naomi and the others aren’t a security blanket. They’re individuals who I happen to like a lot. Maybe I don’t want to leave them just because you say I should.”
“I understand that. It was a poor choice of words on my part.”
“Damn straight, it was.” She folded her arms over her chest. “Why are you always trying to control everything? You think that just because you say something is a good idea, I’m naïve enough to believe you without voicing concerns. When I do voice concerns, you get upset.”
“You’re the only one who seems upset right now.”
“I’m tired of not being allowed to make my own decisions.”
She turned her head, and her wavy hair formed a cloud around her. When I reached out to touch it, she flinched and moved away.
I swallowed back the blow to my pride. “It’s just that I’m concerned about us.”
“Us? Or me? Because it seems as though you’re always concerned about me. Poor little Cari, the girl who can’t even decide where she should live. The girl who shouldn’t have a say in things.”
“Don’t I get a say, too? Am I not a part of what we have?”
“You’ve always had a say! You’re the one who brought me here. You’re the one who brought me to the clan. Was I not supposed to make friends within it? Was I not supposed to fit in? Did you want to keep me miserable, so you would be my hero again and again? Just like you had to be my hero the first time, when you turned me?”
This again.
“Will you ever let that go? I’ve explained why I did it, and I thought I was doing the right thing at the time. It was that, or let you die. And you weren’t conscious. I couldn’t exactly get your opinion on how to proceed. I wanted you to live. I wouldn’t let you go like that, because I loved you even then.”
“Yes, I know. But don’t pretend as though you had no ulterior motive, is all. You wanted to keep me for yourself, and turning me into something like you was the only way to do it.”
“What?” I couldn’t contain my horror. “Who told you that?”
“No one had to tell me. As always, you forget that I’m able to think for myself. What a surprise.” She turned away, shaking her head.
It was a good thing there was plenty of space between us and any of the other tourists enjoying the view. Something about us told them to keep their distance. It was the only explanation.
“Cari, please. I love you. I’m only concerned.”
“About what? I’m what you made me, Gage. Don’t you remember? This is who I am now. I’m only trying to be who I am, around those who understand me.”
“But there’s so much more to you than what the clan expects from you.” Again, she flinched away from my touch. My heart sank. “We were happy a few minutes ago. That was good. It was us, being us. That doesn’t change who we are or what we are. It only means that we have a dual nature. I don’t want you to forget that other side of yourself. I love that girl.”
“But you don’t love who you turned me into. That’s what you’re trying to say.”
“It isn’t.”
“It is, Gage.” She glared over her shoulder at me. “And it’s a shame, because it’s all your fault.”
I couldn’t believe how ravaged I felt over that. My fault. She saw it as my fault. She would never be able to get over what I had done. What was the purpose of turning her into a vampire if she would only ever be unhappy?
“Fancy meeting you two here.”
My skin crawled at the sound of a familiar—and unwelcome—voice.
It came from a man dressed in black. A man who drew the attention of every woman on the observation deck.
Including Cari, who visibly relaxed when she turned and realized he was standing beside us.
“Micah.”
She hadn’t sounded that happy to see me in far too long.
25
Anissa
I was about to burst. It was enough to make me forget how I wanted to hit Scott and instead I took his arm. My fingers dug in a little harder than they needed to, but it was better than my claws.
“Well? Aren’t you going to answer me?” Scott demanded, lunging toward Elazar before I could hold him back.
Not that Elazar considered him much of a threat, considering the way he openly laughed.
“Who do you think you are?” he asked, turning himself into a brick wall in the face of Scott’s rash behavior.
There was no going past him.
I managed to get a stronger grip on Scott and hold him back before he did anything even more stupid.
The necromancer chuckled.
“What did happen in there?” Stark asked. Sara clung to him the way I clung to Scott, but for a far different reason.
“Many things,” Elazar teased with a twinkle in his eye. “Things you couldn’t begin to understand.”
“I wasn’t asking for specifics—and you know it,” Stark growled. “Did Fane survive? Why are you torturing the people who care about him?”
“Because I’ve been locked away for far too long, Stark. You ought to know what it’s like when you’ve been locked up. You have to find your entertainment wherever and whenever possible.”
“Please,” I breathed.
He inclined his head slightly, as though nodding in acknowledgment. “As you wish. He lives.”
The four of us let out a massive sigh of relief—I was afraid for a moment that Scott would slump against me and take me down with him. Then, it hit me: only three of us were relieved. Stark, on the other hand, hadn’t lessened the intensity of his gaze as he stared at Elazar.
“Alive and what?” he finally asked. “Alive how? What’s the catch in this?”
“You have no faith in me,” Elazar smiled.
“It isn’t a matter of having faith. It’s a matter of understanding the way you think. I’ll ask you again: what’s the catch?”
“See for yourself.” Elazar took two long strides away from the door, leaving room for Fane to exit.
I tensed, holding my breath.
Scott reacted first when he saw who came out of that room by letting out a gust of air that made him sound as though he’d been punched in the stomach.
“Fane?” Sara whispered. “Is it you?”
It wasn’t—and yet it was. And yet it wasn’t. It seemed like every move he made changed the way he looked to the point where I wasn’t sure of anything.
One moment he was Fane.
The next, he could’ve been Fane’s brother—similar, but not exactly the same. His nose was a bit thicker, his brows a bit heavier. But just slightly, just enough to throw me off.
And then there was his aura. His green aura, something he hadn’t possessed when he was Fane.
This wasn’t Fane.
This was something like Fane, the next best thing. But not the vampire who had almost died in front of me. That vampire had died, I realized then, and my heart sank at the thought.
He was gone. And this was all we had to replace him.
“This isn’t my father. It’s not you!” Scott shouted.
“I assure you, it is. You can examine the room if you like,” Elazar offered with a sweep of his arm. “You’ll find no other body in there. His is all there was.”
“But he isn’t the same!”
“It isn’t possible for a creature touch death and go through the process of maintaining the hold on their mortal shell without experiencing a change,” the necromancer explained. “In Fane’s case, the loss was almost complete. He was in the midst of breathing his final breath when the spell took hold, and I was able to pull him back from the brink.”
“Why is his aura so changed?” And why wouldn’t he say a word to any of us? That bothered me more than almost anything else, that muteness. He stared straight ahead, his eyes focused on the wall behind Sara and Stark. He hadn’t yet looked at his son.
Elazar shrugged slightly. “That was an unforeseen turn of events, I grant you.”
“What was?” Stark asked.
“You see, in order to truly pull him back from the edge between life and death, I had no choice but to alter his healing abilities. Vampires heal quickly, I grant you, but not quickly enough. Not as quickly as those with enchanted witch blood.”
Silence fell over us as the truth sank in. I didn’t want to believe it, but all signs pointed to it being true. I wasn’t accustomed to being able to see auras—typically, only witches could see them, but those who’d only just been turned had stronger auras than others which were visible for all magical beings to see. And the only time I’d ever seen a green-tinged aura like his was while in the presence of a witch or warlock.
“You changed him.” It wasn’t a question from Stark. It was a statement, a fact delivered with perhaps just the slightest bit of amazement. As though he’d been imagining the most dramatic act Elazar could perform and even then, hadn’t come close to reality.
“I did. I had no choice. The only alternative was to let him perish, and the request was that I save his life. I did what was asked of me.”
I sensed Elazar fighting the urge to burst out laughing. He was enjoying himself, all right. Enjoying the way he’d managed to fool a vampire into thinking that he would ever play fair. There was no sense of fairness in Elazar—if there was, it only extended as far as what he felt was best for himself.
“This isn’t what you were supposed to do!” Scott shook with rage. “This is no longer my father!”
Fane, who still had yet to speak or even move, visibly flinched.
I gaped at Scott. “Are you really that heartless?” I let go of him then. I didn’t want to touch him.
“Heartless?” he scoffed. “What do you know about it? You didn’t even know you were a half-breed until not long ago. You don’t know what it’s like to be pureblooded and proud of who and where you came from.”
“You must be the biggest hypocrite I’ve ever met!” I raged.
The concept of Fane being a warlock wasn’t exactly a comfortable one for me, either. I was deeply unsettled by that green aura and his air of stoic silence. But my heart went out to him, just the same. He was a victim in all of this, doing the best he could to be brave. And all his son could do was belittle him, when it was he who’d begged for Fane’s life.
“How am I a hypocrite?” Scott growled.
“You weren’t born a vampire, for one. Let’s start there. You were human, turned to a vampire. Yet you call yourself pureblood. Just because both of your parents became vampires after you were born doesn’t make you anything special, Scott.”
“That’s enough,” Stark announced, trying to slide between us.
Scott was too involved in snarling at me to even notice the proximity to his enemy.
“And another thing. You begged for him to live.” I closed in, pushing myself against Stark’s extended arm just so I could get a little closer to Scott. Close enough to take a swipe at him, maybe—I hadn’t gotten my confiscated weapons back yet, or else he might have really been in danger. “You begged for your father to live through this, and he has. And all you can do is practically spit on him and deny that he’s really your father. Well, I’ll tell you this—” My voice dropped to a low whisper. “—whatever he is now is all on your head. You’re the one who entered into this deal.”
Instead of waking up to the truth, as I thought he would, he lunged for me.
Stark easily held him back.
Scott shoved him away. “Don’t touch me. Don’t any of you try to tell me I should accept this, either. I don’t accept it. This isn’t what I asked for, and you know it,” he accused, pointing a finger at Elazar, who had been watching the scene play out with a detached expression, not unlike boredom.
“I would watch where I was pointing that finger, if I were you,” he warned in a deadly tone.
It wasn’t enough for Scott to back down, however. He just took a different approach. “Fine. But if you think I’m paying anything for what you did, you’re crazy. You took my words and twisted them around to suit yourself. You played a game with me, with my family. I don’t want anything to do with you or the abomination you’ve created,” he spat, his lip curling up when he referenced Fane.
“Scott, don’t do this,” I warned, glancing at the necromancer out of the corner of my eye.
Not that I had a wide understanding of necromancers, but something told me it wasn’t recommended for one to renege on payment for services rendered.
Elazar might not have given Scott what he thought he wanted—not strictly, anyway—but he clearly had the sort of powers one didn’t toy with.
“It doesn’t matter,” Elazar assured me with a thin smile.
“It doesn’t?” Sara asked, standing by my side. “Why not?”
“Because it isn’t the vampire boy who shall repay me for the work I’ve done here—work which has been most seriously maligned, I might add.”
“Who will? I know you don’t work for free,” Stark wryly observed.
“Correct,” Elazar replied. “The vampire boy will not repay me. Fane shall balance the scales.”
“Fane?” I asked, feeling queasy.
Yes, Fane.
The new warlock.
And all the while, he stared straight ahead.
If it weren’t for the jumping muscles in his jaw, I might have thought he was a statue.
26
Philippa
“Where the hell is everybody?” I muttered to an empty penthouse as I walked in after checking on the vault and its contents.
I was sure that after an hour or two down there, sitting with Valerius and talking to him—even though he didn’t respond—couldn’t, really, I suppose. And even though I would’ve gone through the ceiling if he had—still I figured, somebody would’ve returned to the penthouse.
I hated being alone. One of the characteristics of my human life that I had never managed to shake once I turned. It might have stemmed from all the time I’d spent alone in the house when I was young, with the boys out in the fields with our father and our mother always busy doing something around the fa
rm.
I was a girl. I was supposed to learn to sew and embroider and sit prettily all day long—my mother might have been the sort who didn’t mind getting her hands dirty, but I was groomed to be a lady and ladies didn’t do things like riding horses and even getting thrown the way Gage always used to. He’d come home after riding hard with filthy clothes and a grin on his face, and envy would burn in my heart.
All those days spent staring out the window were still fresh in my mind as the only sound in these rooms in the penthouse was that of my breathing.
As usual, the boys were out doing interesting things in the world while I sat at home. At least they didn’t expect me to embroider anything.
I decided to try calling Gage again. I didn’t even remember the last time I’d seen him. it was when we had the fight about the girl he’d turned. If the League—what was left of it—had found out, I hadn’t heard about it.
There was still hope that he was alive and well, just in hiding. He couldn’t stay silent forever. There had to come a time when he’d at least answer his phone and let his sister know that he wasn’t dead or imprisoned.
“Damn it!” I hissed when I realized I’d left my phone in the vault.
I’d pulled it out of my pocket to avoid sitting on it.
A lot of good it would do the immobile Valerius.
I’d have to go all the way back down to get it, even though I didn’t like taking the risk of somebody noticing me going down twice in one day. I slid into the shoes I had kicked off when I entered the penthouse and opened the door.
I shrieked when I came face-to-face with the person on the other side.
His fist was raised as though he were just about to knock.
The first sight of him stirred my emotions, and I didn’t want anything more than to throw myself into his arms.
But I was wary.
I held myself back instead of flinging myself at him and only whispered.
“Vance? Is that really you?”
He looked down at himself, one eyebrow cocked. “Looks like me, doesn’t it? Though I know I’ve looked better.”