Applause broke out from the onlookers. I joined in. Next to the Leviathan’s riveting aquatic display, the statue of Medusa walking around while filling her champagne glass from one of the many floating fountains paled by comparison.
I paled by comparison, too. Here, my half-celestial nature didn’t make me someone to be feared, loathed, admired or even noticed. I was simply one of many unusual creatures, more interesting than some and far less remarkable than others.
“You’re trembling,” Ian said, and drew me away from the crowd on the balcony.
“I’ve needed to hide what I am for my entire life, and suddenly, I’m ordinary.” I couldn’t suppress the wonder in my voice. “Even if I went into full daughter-of-the-underworld mode, I don’t think these people would be afraid. Some might even yawn!”
Ian snorted. “I doubt that, but I see your point. Must feel very freeing.”
“Yes,” I said with such emphasis, his brows went up.
“Are you saying you’d like to stay here permanently?”
I opened my mouth to deny that . . . and stopped.
Did I? I could, as the island’s entry requirement was rejection by your own species. I had that covered as soon as I showed Yonah what I was. Ian did, too, now that he was a vampire with partial demon powers. For all I knew, Yonah thought both Ian and I had come here to seek asylum. Ashael had told Yonah that he was bringing two sojourners. He hadn’t said he was bringing two people who only wanted Yonah to do a spell for them before they quickly left.
What if Ian, Silver, and I did stay here, safe from Dagon and everyone else trying to kill us? What if we made a life where none of us ever had to hide what we were again?
“You like the idea,” Ian said, no surprise on his features.
My sigh came from the deepest part of me. “I love it, but I can’t. I made a vow to my father. Even if I hadn’t, Dagon will try to kill the other resurrected souls to regain the power they absorbed from him, and some of them might have been innocent like you were.”
“I was no innocent,” Ian said, his smile sardonic. “But I was tricked, and I can hardly begrudge those people their chance to live if Dagon tricked them, too. Besides”—his gaze turned knowing—“you spent most of your life putting yourself in a position of power so you could help the powerless. You won’t give up on them just to hide out here.”
“Probably not,” I agreed, then a wry smile tugged my mouth. “But a girl can dream, right?”
His laughter wrapped around me like a tempting embrace as he led me to the dance floor. The floating instruments had switched from opera’s songs to a waltz. No surprise: Ian moved as if he’d been born to dance to it.
“Are you bad at anything?” I teasingly asked.
“Celibacy,” he replied, with a mock shudder. “Thought neglect would rot my parts off these past several weeks.”
I rolled my eyes even while something warm glowed inside me. I hadn’t asked if he’d sought comfort with anyone else during our time apart because I’d half expected the answer to be yes. Not that I would’ve had cause to criticize. You don’t abandon someone while simultaneously demanding their fidelity.
“Going without sex for weeks is nothing,” I said to mask my deeper feelings. It hadn’t escaped my notice that I’d told him I loved him earlier, and he hadn’t said it back. Yes, Ian cared for me, but he wasn’t where I was emotionally, and I didn’t need to keep reminding him of that.
“I’ve gone without for years at a time,” I added just to see his reaction. “Sometimes, even decades.”
A look of horror crossed his features. Then it faded and a predatory light shone in his gaze. “I hope you enjoyed your appalling sexual fasts, because they’re over. In fact, you won’t last the next ten minutes.”
I made a show of checking the alarm on my mobile. “Sorry, but I have twenty-six more minutes of celibacy left.”
He leaned down, his mouth sliding over my throat until it reached the tender hollow where my pulse would have been. “No, you don’t.” His fangs lightly grazed the spot. Shivers raced over me. “I spotted two loos on this level,” he went on, moving up until his breath touched my ear like the brush of feathers. “Pick one and go. I’ll be right behind you.”
“We could always go back to our room,” I said, stifling a gasp as his tongue traced the sensitive strip behind my ear.
“Too far.” A growl that swept heat through me.
Without another word, I left his arms and headed to the nearest bathroom. Ian wasn’t the only one who’d marked their location when we first came into the ballroom.
Two human women were inside, one applying lipstick, the other toying with her hair. “You both look stunning,” I told them, lighting up my gaze with green. “Leave now and have a wonderful night.”
They turned on their heels and walked out, one saying, “You do look stunning,” while the other replied, “I know, so do you!” with the kind of confidence women didn’t often enough allow themselves to feel. I didn’t hear any more heartbeats, but I bent to glance beneath the bathroom stalls to check for people anyway. Empty.
When I straightened, Ian was behind me, already turning the lock on the door.
I stared at him as I reached beneath the wide skirt of my dress to pull my undergarments down. He unbuttoned his jacket and unbuckled his pants, his gaze burning as my panties landed near his feet.
“Just this once,” he murmured, picking me up and setting me on the countertop. “Don’t release your control.”
I wrapped my legs around his waist, already wet with anticipation. “We’ll see.”
Chapter 27
I’d never used a stranger’s semi-public bathroom stall to freshen up after impromptu sex before. No one had aroused me to the point that waiting for privacy wasn’t an option. Most cultures would expect me to be embarrassed, especially since the women who’d been waiting outside had no doubt as to the reason for the locked door when Ian flashed them a satiated grin as he opened it and left. But I wasn’t embarrassed. I practically took a bow before slipping into the nearest stall to clean myself up.
Ian was so gorgeous, those women should more than understand. If they didn’t, that wasn’t my problem. We hadn’t even broken a single fixture in this room, and the countertop had escaped with only a new crack in the marble. They had no idea the amount of control that had taken. We couldn’t have been more restrained if we’d both been bound hand and foot.
And it had been mind-blowing. He’d tried bondage on me before his memory loss, but shadows from my past had ruined that. Now, I couldn’t wait for Ian to break out the magic ties. I’d loved being restrained while everything inside me was seething out of control, and he’d had to restrain me to keep this room in its borderline-pristine condition.
I finished cleaning up, then came out and washed my hands. The bathroom was empty now, the other women taking less time than I had. I’d just finished fixing my makeup and securing my hair back in its knot when the door opened and a lovely black-haired woman wearing a deep-purple ball gown came in.
She gave me a polite smile before she disappeared into the stall. I smiled back, but it froze as my brief, disinterested glance suddenly set my brain on fire with recognition.
Even after all this time, I knew that silky swath of long black hair, those clear brown eyes, and the skin that was the same golden-bronze shade as my own. But it couldn’t be. Ereshki had died thousands of years ago, and the woman in the stall was most assuredly human. Her heartbeat more than proved that, as did the sound of her urinating.
Still, memories I’d done my best to suppress slammed into me. Ereshki’s hesitant smile when she was first thrust into my cage. I’d been often taunted with smirks, leers, and grins, but no one before her had ever smiled at me with kindness.
A flush sounded, then the woman came out of the stall. She seemed surprised to see me standing between the sinks and the door, staring at her as if transfixed. But then she began to wash her hands as if nothing unusual was going
on.
“Do I know you?” I forced myself to ask in a calm voice.
She looked up and smiled again, more faltering this time. Her heart rate had sped up, too, indicating her new nervousness. Not that I could blame her. A vampire was blocking her path to the door while staring at her with unblinking intensity. If that didn’t make her nervous, she wouldn’t be smart enough to have survived whatever had forced her to take refuge at this island.
“I don’t think so,” she replied, then screamed.
I don’t remember making the decision to cross the room and grab her by the shoulders, let alone to hoist her up. But she was now in my hands, screaming while her high-heeled shoes kicked at the air since I’d lifted her off the ground.
That voice. Higher than mine but devastatingly familiar and with my same accent Ian said he couldn’t place when we first met. Few people could. Ancient Sumerian had died out as a language thousands of years ago.
“Who are you?” I snarled, just as the bathroom door burst open. The deadly magic horn had already exploded from Ian’s sleeve, but it retracted when he saw I wasn’t the one in danger.
“Veritas,” he said in a guarded voice. “What’s amiss?”
“Please, stop her!” the woman beseeched Ian. To me, she screamed, “Let me down, I’ve done nothing to you!”
She stopped, giving me a shocked look as I started cursing her in the first language I’d ever learned. From the way her eyes widened, she’d understood what I was saying, too.
“Who are you?” she breathed, speaking in Sumerian now, too.
I didn’t have time to reply when she began pounding on my arms and aiming her kicks at my body instead of the air.
“Who are you?” she shouted again, rage and frustration twisting her pretty features. “Do you know who did this to me? Was it you? Was it?” she finished in a roar.
Ian spun around, horn whipping out again at the crash as someone else flung the bathroom door open. Yonah strode into the room, red pinpoints gleaming from his moss green eyes.
“Who dares abuse my hospitality?” he thundered as the air in the room thickened until it felt like a tangible weight.
I dropped the woman only because I didn’t trust myself not to crush her to death in front of Yonah. “This woman,” I said through gritted teeth, “is not whoever she claims to be.”
“Ereshki is our guest of honor. This ball is in celebration of her being our newest member here.” Yonah’s tone sliced the air like a killing blow. For an instant, black wings spread out behind him, so large they touched the ceiling and pressed against each side of the hallway before they vanished.
The sight would’ve awed me, but it was nothing compared to hearing her name spoken aloud by someone else for the first time since I’d been human. For a moment, the past swallowed me so completely that I wasn’t Veritas, Law Guardian for the vampire council, any longer. I wasn’t even Ariel, beloved adopted daughter of Tenoch and secret biological daughter of the Warden of the Gateway to the Netherworld.
I had no name. I wasn’t worthy of one. I wasn’t even worthy to suffer and die for my god, Dagon, but he permitted it so others could see his magnificence when he raised me from the dead. After that, it was their turn to die for Dagon. If they truly believed in him, Dagon would raise them back to life, too. He’d proved that by raising Ereshki, and he’d gifted me with her presence so I was no longer alone in my cage. If Dagon didn’t raise his other sacrifices back to life, then they hadn’t truly believed in him. Perhaps the people in the next town would . . .
“Ereshki?” The harshness in Ian’s tone snapped me back to reality. “The bitch who conned you into continuing to believe in Dagon so he could keep torturing and murdering you?”
“What?” Yonah said.
At the same time, Ereshki screeched, “I did not do any of that! I don’t know you! Why would you say such things?”
Rage and regret over all the lives Dagon had brainwashed me to help him take made my voice hoarse. “If you’re not the same person who helped Dagon murder thousands by pretending to be his victim while all the time you were his ally, then you won’t have a birthmark shaped like a crescent moon on your left hip.”
I should have been satisfied to see her face pale when I ripped her purple ball gown to expose her hip so Yonah could see that the mark was there. But I didn’t. I still felt so choked by her betrayal when I’d been at my most helpless that my throat felt as if it had been suddenly stuffed full of razors.
“I never got the chance to ask you why,” I rasped. “Why did you bother to befriend me first? You could have convinced me of Dagon’s deity without pretending to love me as a sister. It’s that cruelty I can’t forgive, let alone understand.”
She’d backed as far as she could into the corner of the room, her heartbeat sounding like a drummer banging away on steel lids.
“I don’t know you.” An anguished whisper as she frantically glanced between me and Yonah. “I have never seen you before now. I have no idea who Dagon is, either. You know I don’t!” she wailed, directing that, oddly, at Yonah. “I remember almost nothing before waking up in that ditch five weeks ago!”
I felt the color drain from my face while my stomach dropped as if I’d come to a sudden stop after a long fall. She had almost no memory beyond the past five weeks? No. No. She couldn’t be one of the newly resurrected souls . . . could she?
She could. Ereshki had bargained her soul away to Dagon before we met. I’d overheard that when I learned of her betrayal on the same day that Tenoch rescued me. Of course Dagon would’ve collected on Ereshki’s debt a long time ago, and how like him to bottle her soul as his own personal resurrection fuel instead of delivering it to its intended destination.
That meant she was probably telling the truth. She didn’t know me because my time with Ereshki had been tied to Dagon, and my father had yanked all Dagon-related memories out of her when he brought her, Ian, and the other souls back to life. She wouldn’t have had cause for those memories to linger the way they had for Ian, either. She’d cared nothing for me.
“Bugger,” Ian said, echoing my suspicions.
I forced a neutral expression onto my features even though I was close to screaming at this cruel twist of fate.
“Yonah,” I said in an admirably controlled tone. “We need to talk.”
Chapter 28
Yonah, Ereshki, Ian, and I stood on opposite corners of the elegant drawing room on the third floor of the mansion, one full level away from the festivities. Of course, things were less festive now that the ball’s guest of honor had been hustled upstairs by Yonah’s guards. Yonah had summoned them because he hadn’t trusted me or Ian to secure her.
Wise of him. Despite her memory loss, a part of me still very much wanted to kill Ereshki. From the glares Ian shot her way, so did he. The only reason Ian probably hadn’t slaughtered Ereshki himself was because he wanted to watch me do it.
“We appear to be in a quagmire,” Yonah said, starting with the obvious. “Ereshki was brought to me three weeks ago by a loyal ally who’d found her in an Iraqi marketplace, screaming in terror at the planes overhead and the vehicles around her.”
A harsh snort left me before I could stuff it back. I suppose that would be terrifying, if the last thing Ereshki remembered before that was camels for transportation.
“This ally quickly realized Ereshki was suffering from more than normal mental health ailments,” Yonah went on. “Her last memories were from ancient Mesopotamia. Ereshki also exhibited mild supernatural abilities as well as having altered blood. All the above put her in danger from Law Guardians, demons, and Red Dragon dealers. Thus, this ally sent her to me, and she has been nothing but gracious and grateful—”
“Oh, she’s good at that act,” I interrupted, bitterness sliding like venom through my veins. “I fell for it, too, even when I was being repeatedly tortured and murdered.”
Yonah stared at me for a long moment. Then he sighed. “Many refugees over the centuries c
ame to me with the same story: a beautiful vampire-witch named Ariel with silver eyes and white-blonde hair streaked with gold and blue saved them. As if there was any doubt that this was you, no fewer than six of them recognized you at the ball tonight. For all that you have done on behalf of those who are now my people, Ariel, I thank you. But”—now his tone hardened—“my gratitude does not include giving you Ereshki as a sacrifice for your vengeance. Whoever she was when she wronged you, she is not that person any longer.”
The rational part of me agreed with his logic. The rest was screaming, That’s for ME to decide! I’d bought that right with my blood, and I was all that was left of Ereshki’s other victims, too. They also deserved long-denied justice being served to her.
That’s why I couldn’t trust myself to speak at Yonah’s arrogant declaration that I had no say in Ereshki’s fate. Worse, I could feel my other half stirring, drawn by my rage. It wouldn’t take much for that half to assume control again. She looked for weaknesses to exploit all the time now.
Ian glanced at me, then settled into his high-backed antique chair as if he had nothing more important to do than make himself comfortable. “You’re being shockingly naïve,” he said to Yonah in a companionable tone. “No wonder you couldn’t stand living in your former world. Must have been hell.”
With how Yonah’s face darkened, he didn’t appreciate the quip. “I know who you are, too, boy,” he replied coldly. “Unlike Ariel, nothing I’ve heard commends you.”
Ian grinned. “Then you heard exactly what I wanted you to hear. No one suspects a scoundrel of allying with righteous causes, so I’m not on any of the wrong radars. Let me tell you what you don’t know—Dagon is coming for this girl, so you endanger everyone on your island every moment that she is here.”
Yonah gave a diffident wave. “Someone is always coming after my residents. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t need to be here.”
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