by Eve Newton
“Everything, okay?” Cole asks, making me jump.
“Yes, my love. I’m fine. Was just giving CK a heads up,” I hold up my phone.
He grimaces at me, although I think it was supposed to be a smile. “Oh,” he says.
“Don’t worry. He won’t take advantage,” I try to reassure him.
He nods. “Not sure what I’m supposed to say to him next time I see him,” he says with a confused frown. “Do I mention it?”
I shake my head. “No, it’s taken care of. Just leave it.”
He looks a bit relieved by that. I stand to pull him to me tightly. He sighs and relaxes at my touch.
“Things seem okay between you and Devon?” I dare to ask.
He answers me with a nod, “Yeah. He’s a good guy. I like him, and I can see now how much he loves you.”
“It makes me really happy to hear you say that. Try to work on forming a bond of your own with him, my love. We are all going to be around each other for eternity now. It will be easier. On you and on him.”
He looks surprised as my words sink in. Eternity, together. “Yes, I never thought of it that way. I still have so much to learn about what ‘forever’ really means. And I don’t blame him for wanting to be with you,” he adds seriously.
“I will teach you, my love. I promise you; all of this will get easier. You are still brand new.” I smile gently. I’m sure with this prophecy crap; things are just going to get even harder. “You are adapting better than I could have ever hoped for or imagined. I’m so proud of you,” I add.
He beams at my praise.
“And you don’t ever have to worry about me not being here for you or with you. I love you. Completely. You are mine in every way,” I say and kiss him passionately, trying to reassure him with actions as well as words.
He pulls away and says to me, “Yes, I’m yours. Completely, in every way. I will follow you to Hell and back if it means being with you, being your husband, lover, and friend. I will be your everything, my sire. My loyalty knows no bounds. I love you. Forever.”
Startled by this passionate speech, I open my mouth to respond, but a sharp sting on my shoulder forces me to say “Ow!” as I grab the area in question.
Looking alarmed, Cole asks, “Are you okay?”
The pain is searing now. I grunt in response as Devon rushes to my side, sensing my pain.
“Everything okay?” he asks, concerned.
“No. I don’t know. My shoulder…” They both turn me around to look. Pulling my shirt down my shoulder they both draw a breath.
“What, what is it?” I ask.
“Err, that diamond marking is glowing like it’s on fire and it’s getting bigger,” Devon says quietly, considering we are still in a very public place.
“Bigger? How much bigger?” I demand worriedly.
He peers at it and says, “An inch or so?”
Cole says, “Liv, it’s actually on fire now. Are you okay?”
“Humph, I’ll live. I think we need to get back to the suite, just in case all of me sets on fire,” I half joke, much to the un-amusement of my two boys.
My phone buzzes suddenly in my hand. Without looking at it, I hand it to Devon to answer, while Cole takes my elbow and leads me back the way we came.
“Yep?” Devon answers. “She’s fine. We’re going back to the suite now.” Pause. “Oh, you are? We’ll see you in a minute then. No, she’s fine, we’ll explain when we get there.” He hangs up. “Constantine,” he says, pocketing my phone gingerly in my back pocket. “He’s in the suite already.”
I nod.
“How did he know you were hurting?” Cole asks.
I glance up at him. “A sire can feel the pain of their charges if the bond is well established and strong enough. Well, no, more sense than feel,” I amend.
“Oh, wow. Okay, that’s intense. Hey, would you sense it if I punched Devon in the face?” he asks, unable to stop the snicker.
I giggle at the humor, not to mention Devon’s face. “Yes, I would know he’s hurting.”
“Humph, assuming you actually hurt me, newbie,” Devon retorts good-naturedly.
Cole laughs and so do I, although mine is short-lived as another searing pain shoots across my back. I double over to catch my breath as Cole grabs me. Luckily, we are at the elevator now. Devon impatiently stabs at the button.
At Cole’s concerned look, I say, “I’m fine, really. It’s not that bad.”
Unconvinced, he ushers me into the elevator when it arrives, followed closely by Devon.
Reaching the top floor, we hastily exit. Devon pushes open the suite door, where we are greeted by a handful of people. CK is looking overly concerned, as usual, Nico, Gregor, Eloise, and two men I don’t recognize, but judging by the size of them I’d say they belonged to Nico.
CK is at my side instantly. “Aefre, what the fuck was that?” he asks earnestly.
His urgency is weird as, yes, he would have had a slight sense that something had happened to me, but he shouldn’t be acting like he actually felt it.
I feel Cole stiffen next to me as CK touches me gently. Devon’s response now makes complete sense to me. He was staying away from me to give Cole time to get used to the idea of us being together before he had to see it. I turn around, giving him a loving look which he returns with a small shrug. He knows I know. I unbutton my shirt and pull the right shoulder down to show CK what’s happening.
“Aefre, my sweet, it’s on fire. Are you in much pain?” he asks quietly.
I sigh. I have to wonder why he has suddenly reverted back to calling me Aefre. It’s weird. I haven’t heard that name in so long. “I’m fine,” I say again for the millionth time. “Honestly. I’m more concerned with why it is getting bigger. What did you find out?” I ask as I turn around, flashing a large amount of cleavage to the room.
CK’s eyes drop briefly, but then snap back up to my inquisitive eyes, as he conservatively does up the buttons on my shirt.
“Not much actually. Corinne didn’t give us much to go on. We’re still trying to track her down,” he says with annoyance.
“Then why are all these people here?” I wave at them absently.
“Because this is an unusual situation and you need to be protected,” he says as if I’m dense.
I snort with amusement. “By them?” I say rudely, glaring at Gregor and Eloise, who both return my look with matching snarls.
“By all of us,” CK says sternly. “They know how important you are now. They won't hurt you,” he adds quietly.
“It’s not me that I’m worried about!” I whisper-snap, even though every Vampire in the room can still hear me.
He looks at me intently and leans forward close to my ear. “He’ll be fine. He is important too; this wouldn’t have happened without him. I won’t let anything happen to him. I promise you,” he murmurs so only I can hear.
I smile gratefully.
“Tell us, please. What happened before the mark first started to grow?” Gregor asks, surprising me with a good question.
CK takes my arm and ushers me to the sofa. “Sit, my dear. Nico, a drink, please,” he orders, and a drink appears in front of me.
I hear a collective gasp from everyone in the room as I reach for the glass on the table. Stopping just short of it, my hand wavers slightly. “Where did that come from?” I ask, pointing at it.
Silence. I glance at each of them in turn – blank stares.
“Where did that come from?” I ask again loudly.
“It just appeared out of nowhere,” Gregor finally answers.
I gape at him, assuming he’s joking, but his face is deadly serious. As is everyone else’s in the room.
“Erm, Liv, sweetie,” Devon starts. “I think you did that.”
I stare at him like he’s just lost his marbles. “Excuse me?” I bark at him.
He glances quickly at Cole. “I felt a tug on my energy before it appeared. I think somehow you conjured it,” he says.
; Cole nods in agreement. “I felt something too but didn’t know what it was.”
Eloise laughs. “Oh, she does magick now then?” she asks nastily. “This is ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not,” CK says. “The Power of One indicates magick. We just don’t know what or how.” He looks intrigued and proud, like I did something really special.
“Ignore the glass,” Gregor snaps. “Get back to what happened before the marking grew.”
I look at Cole. “Well, Cole and I were talking,” I say.
“About what?” he inquires.
“It was private!” I snap.
“Aefre,” CK says gently. “The content of your conversation might help us figure out more pieces to this puzzle.”
“It’s private!” I say again through gritted teeth.
“If you must know, I swore my love and loyalty to my sire,” Cole says quietly. I look at him sharply and he shrugs. “If it helps you, Liv, that’s all that matters.”
“Hm, interesting. A strengthening of your bond, perhaps,” Gregor muses out loud and then he says to Cole, “And your marking? Anything?”
Cole shakes his head and replies, “No.”
“And the second time? What were you doing then?” he asks.
I think back. “Cole and Devon were joking with each other; we were laughing together.”
“Another tightening of your bonds. Not just yours, but theirs. It is most unusual for siblings to bond,” he says, almost to himself. Eloise and CK nod in agreement, to my surprise. I don’t know much about sibling Vampires. I’ve not been allowed much contact with mine, apart from…well, we won’t talk about that right now. Rest assured though, there was no bond there.
“Then you appear to do magick. It seems to me the stronger your bonds grow, the stronger you get,” Gregor deduces. “Try to make something else appear.”
I’m surprised at not only his deductions, but also his apparent acceptance of this, of me. I glance at CK who is staring at me thoughtfully.
“He’s right. Your Power, whatever it is, is growing as those bound to you grow stronger. Stand up and try to bring something to you,” he orders.
I stand up, and with everyone watching me expectantly, I falter. “Oh, for fuck's sake, I am not some performing monkey. I can’t just do magick on demand. Even if it was me that did it,” I add, practically yelling in frustration.
“See, she’s not that special after all,” Eloise goads and I glare at her.
Bitch.
Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. I’ll show her.
Err, but show her what exactly?
Sighing, I sag my shoulders and open my eyes. This is pointless. “I need a drink,” I declare and before I can step towards the bar, a glass of wine appears in my hand in a swirl of black, glowing fog.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Everyone stares dumbfounded, especially me, at the glass in my hand.
“What the fuck?” I ask.
“Err…” is the general response.
“How did you do that?” Gregor asks, intrigued.
“I really don’t know. I wanted a drink and well, here it is,” I reply stupidly. I walk over to the bar and place it down carefully as if it might blow up. I notice a wine glass missing from the shelf, and that interests me. Walking around, I peer at the spot.
CK comes up behind me and asks, “What is it?”
“This shelf was full before. I’m sure of it.” Trying something, I grab the wine bottle out of the fridge and place it on the bar. Even Eloise is watching me with interest now. Making a note of the level of wine in the bottle, I hold out my hand and think about a glass of wine in it. Another swirl of black, glowing fog, and voilà: it appears in my hand. Handing the glass to CK, I check the level of the bottle: it’s a glass less than before and turning to the shelf, one more glass is missing.
“Huh, displacement,” I say as if it’s obvious.
“What?” comes from several voices in the room.
Blinking, I explain, “Displacement. Seems to work on the same principle as Teleporting. The older Vampires can move themselves through the three dimensions of space. I can move things. I’m not conjuring, I’m moving.” I hold out my empty hand, and in the next second, Devon’s phone is in my palm.
“Holy Shit!” he exclaims, patting his empty pocket, looking totally impressed. Cole is looking totally at a loss, Gregor is staring at me in awe (which is really creepy and weird), Eloise is trying her damndest not to look fascinated, and CK is looking at me with such love and pride, I almost blush.
“The Power of One,” he says.
“But how?” Eloise asks. “Just all of a sudden she has this Power? How? Where did it come from?” She is very suspicious.
Good questions, all. I shrug. “That’s the million-dollar question,” I say.
“We need Corinne,” CK states. “Somehow, we have to find her. Liv, you need to come to Milan immediately. You need to be sworn in, made an official member of The Council and once it’s official, we can try to figure out your Powers and the reason behind them. They’ve been given to you for a reason. We need to know what that reason is.”
I just nod dumbly at his request.
A loud knock at the door startles everyone, seeing as everyone is already here. Eloise smiles seductively and gets up to answer it.
Oh no…that can only mean one thing. I scowl as Constantine and Devon bristle, their Vampire senses going on alert.
She opens the door. “James,” she gushes and pulls him into a deep kiss. He kisses her back with abandon while we all watch in disgust, unable to look away. Pulling back, his bright blue eyes land on me, still scowling at him. James Lake is to Eloise what I am to Constantine. Slightly younger than me, Eloise turned him around nine hundred years or so ago. With his light blonde, spiky hair and intense blue eyes, not to mention cheekbones you could cut yourself on, he’s a looker all right. Of average height and all lean and rippling muscles, he turns heads. Even mine. Much to Eloise’s fury, we were lovers back in Dublin in the 1800s, and again in New York in the ’90s. 1990s, that is. It ended badly, twice, so I am not happy to see him in my hotel suite.
“Liv,” he says my name in his adopted South London accent.
“James,” I say with distaste.
Entwined around Eloise, which actually makes me slightly ill, he strolls into the room and remarks, “Nice digs.”
I throw him a withering look and say to Eloise, “What is he doing here?”
She looks at me innocently. “I invited him. Seems only fair to even the playing field,” she says, referring to CK, Cole, and Devon being firmly on ‘Team Me.’
“Great,” I mutter.
“Constantine and Devon,” James drawls. “Never far from her side. So nice to see you again.” Sarcasm drips from every word.
“And how nice to see you again, James,” Devon responds equally sarcastically, while CK just glowers at him.
“Hm, and you must be Cole?” James asks, his sharp eyes zeroing in on my new charge.
I’m instantly at Cole’s side, not trusting James as far as I can throw him. Well, I suppose technically, as I am older, I could throw him quite far, I’d imagine, but you get my drift.
Cole just stares at him impassively picking up on the oh-so-obvious dislike between us all.
“You must be something else in the sack to keep this one interested long enough to say yes and turn you,” James says insultingly. “I always wondered who it would be that would make an honest woman out of her again, seeing as how these two never managed it. Way I hear it, you have some big shoes to fill, not to mention other things,” he continues nastily, much to Eloise’s delight and my fury. Before I can respond, never mind Devon or Cole, CK has Vamped out and is at James’s throat, pulling him from Eloise as he would a rag doll. He shoves him up against the wall with a growl. “If you want to keep your head, I suggest you do not speak to my family that way again.”
My mouth drops open. Way to go CK! It’s been a while sinc
e I saw this side of him, and it makes my knickers slightly damp. And ‘my family’? That is high praise coming from him. I glance at Cole, whose eyebrows have gone skyward and he steps that bit closer to me. That now familiar burning in my shoulder flares up again and I hiss. Cole and Devon glance at each other. Devon takes a quick peek at my shoulder.
“Yep,” he confirms.
Seems Gregor is right. The strengthening of my bonds with these three men and their bonds to each other is key to this…whatever it is. CK’s declaration of his ‘family,’ the three of us descended from his bloodline, solidifies our commitment to each other.
With a final shove, CK retracts, releases James, then returns to my side. “Keep your boy in check, Eloise,” he orders. She stares defiantly at him for several moments before she submits.
Near as I can tell, as the creation of the Initial Vampires is shrouded in secrecy, Ahmed was the first, Constantine the second, then Gregor, and Eloise last – only by a matter of months, but it still makes a difference to them who is superior.
Pulling him over to the sofa quickly, she tells him to sit and shut up. He pays her no mind, though, and continues to look at us with that arrogant, overly confident glare. “Is anyone going to fill me in on why Liv got the fourth seat? Seems a bit biased to me,” he states.
Eloise makes a noise of agreement, but Gregor speaks up on my behalf, “She is the One. It matters not, why.”
James raises an eyebrow, as surprised as I am with Gregor’s apparent acceptance of me. I say ‘apparent,’ as I don’t take anything he says or does at face value. I haven’t had many dealings with him since I first met him, but the memories of him are etched into my brain with clarity. I first met him when we returned to Italy after the Norman Invasion of England. CK dropped me off and carried on for business in Rome, leaving me alone in the castle. Gregor visited a few days after CK left and he was quite taken with me and wanted to take me as a lover. I was repulsed by him. He was so cold, his eyes and manner dead. He had no heat, no fire, no passion – not like Constantine had, and besides, I still wanted no one but my sire. As a young Vampire, I was expected to fall in line, be grateful for the attention from an Initial Vampire and when I wouldn’t submit, he took me by force. I took it without fighting back as I knew I would have lost. He was much older and stronger than me. He lost interest in me soon after when Constantine returned and as I never gave him what he wanted, neither my willingness nor my fear, I was dismissed. To this day, Constantine doesn’t know. He would blame himself for leaving me there alone and not protecting me and that was something I wanted to protect him from. Sighing at the complexities of sire/charge relationships, I ponder why Gregor never told him what he did. At the time, I wasn’t about to say anything out of fear of accusing an Initial Vampire, a member of The Council, and the trepidation that it would somehow backfire on me. I kept a straight face, having been well practiced in that, and kept my distance until after he left. It takes a strong, established bond to sense fear over distance and ours wasn’t strong enough yet for him to be able to. That usually only develops after a century or so and in exceptional circumstances. We have it now, as I do with Devon, but back then I kept my mouth shut and my head down. It was many centuries later when I saw Gregor again and he acted like it never happened, so I did as well. I was no longer afraid of him and as a result Constantine has never found out.