The mention of Yanik makes me shudder. “Yanik has an interest in my blood. Is he still aligned with your father?”
“Yanik?” he asks, brows raised. “I would have never let him in my house if I knew that he was. The mad vampires created more mad vampires, so not everything is traced back to my father necessarily. He just wanted to create an army, he wanted the power. He saw how I turned, hoped that the next time would be easier, but it wasn’t. He then started breeding, though I’d consider it raping, producing natural born heirs, like my half-brother Kaleid. He’s my father’s righthand man now. The favorite,” he adds bitterly. “He never had to go through what I did.”
“So when was the last time you saw your father? Or brother?”
“Probably 1850,” he says. “In Lapland. It didn’t go well.”
“What happened?”
“Well, they tried to have me killed.”
“What?” I straighten up. “Why?”
He gives me a crooked smile. “Because I tried to have them killed. That’s been my goal all these years.”
“To kill your father?”
He nods. “He rules over all the vampires in one way or another, keeping them in line. It was him who outlawed creating other vampires, with good reason of course, but the hypocrisy is what gets me. You see, he’s still creating them. Making them. They’re evolving now, and he’s somehow figured out a way to control them. Not enough to do his bidding, I suppose, but that’s what he’s working towards. And god help the world if he’s ever able to do that. The Dark Order will be unstoppable.”
My heart goes ice cold.
“The Dark Order?” I repeat, remembering my dream.
He eyes me curiously. “Yes. Bit of a dramatic name, but we vampires are known for our drama. After all, Dracula’s nickname was Dramacula.”
I ignore the mention of Dracula for now, because wow there’s a lot to unpack there. “The Dark Order. Do they wear cloaks, their faces obscured by like hanging beads or curtains of red thread?”
He stares at me, growing stiff. “Yes. How do you know that? Did you see it just now, in a memory?”
I shake my head. “No. In my dream. That’s what I was dreaming about when I woke up, my nightmare.” I explain to him all the details I remember, plus the dreams I’d had before.
When I finish, Solon looks haunted, skin paler than ever. “That was Skarde,” he says in astonishment. “Why on earth are you dreaming about him?”
I shake my head, swallowing. “I don’t know.”
He adjusts his arm around me, holding me closer to him. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”
“Maybe I tapped into your subconscious somehow,” I tell him. “Saw what you saw.”
“Yes, but the Dark Order is new. They formed after I last saw them. I’ve only heard about what they look like now from Ezra and the others.”
“Ezra?” I repeat.
“He’s a spy,” he explains. “That’s why he’s not often here.”
“So, all this time you’ve been keeping tabs on your father.”
“Someone has to. It’s the reason why I’ve been accumulating magic all this time. Trying to create a stockpile.”
“Wow,” I say, mulling it all over. “I guess the both of us have daddy issues.”
He snorts at that. “I guess we do.”
“Tell me about Jeremias.”
He brushes his lips over the top of my head. “Of course.” He inhales, running his fingers through my hair. “Jeremias is a lot like Skarde, though I have less information about him. But what I do know is that Jeremias is a witch who has lived for hundreds of years.”
“Witches can do that?” I gasp.
“Not that I know of,” he informs me. “But Jeremias can. I don’t know if he made the same kind of bargain with the Devil as my father did, but sometimes I do wonder. Wouldn’t that be a thing for the Devil to do? To create two different sons in different creatures, and make them war against each other, eternal enemies?”
“So I’m guessing Jeremias is a bad witch,” I muse. “Atlas told me I had black magic running through my veins, just as he does.”
“I wouldn’t listen to a word Atlas Poe says,” he says stiffly.
“But I do have darkness in me,” I tell him, propping myself up on my elbows. “You know this as well as I do.”
“Everyone does, Lenore,” he says, eyes skimming over my face as he brushes my hair behind my ear. “It’s what you do with it that counts. Just because your father is Jeremias, doesn’t mean you will be like him. Just like I do what I can to not be like my own father.”
“Tell me what Jeremias does.”
“As far as I know, it’s all rumors and hearsay. Black magic is powerful, more powerful than I can handle. They say Jeremias wants to destroy all vampires once and for all, but I don’t think it’s true. After all, if he has that power, he would have done it already. Those are just rumors and fears that vampires spread, to make us hate all witches, to justify feeding on and killing them. I move in the space in between because I know neither side is truly right or just. That is why I do what I do.”
It’s all starting to make sense now. Handing over vampires to witches is a strike at his father. Handing over witches to vampires is a strike at Jeremias. This is Solon’s way of staying in the grey area.
“And me,” I say to him, finally putting out the question that has bugged me for far too long. “Why did you really take me? Did you really plan to sell me to the highest bidder from the start? Would it have mattered if it was a vampire or a witch?”
His expression softens, fingers trailing lightly along my cheek, holding his palm against the side of my face. “I told you the truth, my dear. I never planned on letting you go.” He bites his lip for a moment, gazing at me with a look of adoration. “I’d been watching over you your entire life. From the moment your parents first brought you into San Francisco, I was there.”
My eyes go round, heart skipping in my chest. “What?”
How can that be?
He gives me a small smile. “I feared the rumors about Alice and Hakan’s child were true. So when your parents left, I had a feeling that the child I saw them raise wasn’t theirs. More than that, I could sense the vampire in you. The guilt was starting to eat me alive, knowing that I was the reason you were in the witches’ care. So I watched over you. I watched you grow up. I looked out for you, and I waited, waited until you were twenty-one, to see if what I guessed was true.” He takes in a deep, shaking breath, fingers pressing against my cheekbone. “I was counting the years as they passed by, and for the first time in my life, I was painfully aware of time.”
Tears spring to my eyes, a crushing feeling in my chest. “You were watching me? You watched me…my whole life? All those years?”
“All those years.”
I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but I can’t. “So I was never really alone?”
“You were never alone, moonshine. I was always there.”
I close my eyes, a tear rolling down my cheek. He reaches out and brushes it away, and my heart is close to bursting. All those years I thought I was alone, that no one understood me, and yet he was there, watching over me, making sure I was safe, waiting until I could be his. Fuck. Explains why I’ve always been so paranoid. If I’d only known.
When I open my eyes, I swear I see a glimmer in his, emotion on his brow, his cool façade almost crumbling. Then he inhales through his nose and I feel the restraint roll back into him.
“You were so hard on me,” I tell him. “You took me from everything I knew and you just…you could have told me right away.”
“You wouldn’t have believed me. Do you want me to apologize for kidnapping you?”
I think about it, then shake my head. “No. Because I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“And I was a little hard on you,” he admits, a sheepish turn of his lips. “But I had to be. Blow hard on a candle’s flame and you’ll snuff it right out. Blow
on it just enough, and the fire will rise, stronger and brighter.” He leans forward and places his lips on mine. “You’re going to burn so bright, Lenore. I can’t wait for you to see it.”
* * *
I must have fallen asleep again, because when I open my eyes, the bed is empty next to me and sunlight seeps in through the edges of the hotel room’s blackout curtains.
“Solon?” I cry out softly, feeling the empty space.
“In here,” he says from the bathroom. “Just shaving.”
I slowly sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed, feeling the weight of the last twenty-four hours on my shoulders. So much has happened physically and emotionally, so much information, that I truly don’t know how my brain is going to sort it all out.
Coffee will help, I tell myself.
I get up, totally naked, and look around. My duffel bag had been here, along with my computer, but Solon did say he brought them back to the house. So other than my dress, which is ripped clean in half, there’s nothing for me to wear.
“Uh, can you toss me a towel?” I ask him, peering around the corner of the open bathroom door.
Solon is standing in front of the mirror in just his navy boxer briefs, remnants of shaving cream on his face, still leaving facial hair on his upper lip, his chin. Such a vampire look. He eyes me and holds out the razor blade. “When’s the last time you had something to drink?”
I stare at the blade, my eyes skipping back up to his. “When’s the last time you had something to drink?”
He grins at me. “If you’re suggesting the vampire equivalent of a sixty-nine…”
“Does that work?” I ask, totally intrigued, and he’s reaching over to the towel rack, handing me a towel. I wrap it around me.
“In theory,” he says, going back to shaving. “But really, you should feed.”
Hunger flares through me, but there’s this part of me that wills it to calm down, that still finds the blood business as something I don’t want to do until I absolutely have to. “I can wait.”
“You can’t,” he says, finishing up and washing his face. “You’ll be much stronger, think much clearer.” He faces me and takes the blade, slicing the skin across his neck, barely even flinching. “There. You don’t even have to bite me if you don’t want to. Though I rather enjoy when you do.”
I don’t even hear him anymore. All I see is the crimson blood running down his neck, smell the gorgeous scent in the air, and then I’m across the bathroom floor in half a second, wrapping my arms around him, my mouth at his skin.
He moves back until he’s pressed up against the wall and stays still while I drink him down, his arms around me in a light embrace, the occasional moan coming from deep inside him, his breath heavy. In the first few minutes, I am lost to the hunger and thirst, needing so badly to feel sated. But then, when my clarity returns a little, there’s a sense of peace between us, something so strangely pure and whole about his blood giving me life. There is intimacy during sex, but the intimacy when he lets me feed from him is something else entirely.
Finally, I pull away, careful not to take too much from him.
He gives me a weak smile, running his thumb over my chin to rub away the blood.
“Now your turn,” I tell him.
A brow lifts. “Are you sure?”
“I am very sure,” I tell him. “The fact that I have your blood in me, is that going to mess things up?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Then it’s settled,” I say, reaching over to the sink and taking the razor blade. I stare at it for a moment; it takes a lot of courage to just willingly cut your own flesh, no matter who you are.
I take in a deep breath.
“So if I feed on you, and you feed on me,” I ask him as I slash at my forearm, ignoring the pain of the cut, “does that mean all we need is each other to survive?”
He gives me a weighted look. “That’s exactly what it means,” he says, his tone grave.
Then his pupils glow red and he’s at me, holding my arm to his mouth, ravenously sucking and biting. Being a full vampire, he doesn’t have the same restraint as I do in this situation, and when I look at his eyes sometimes, they seem lost to the blood, the crimson glow eerie.
But then, as it happened with me, he comes back into control, and the red fades, and the way he drinks from me turns tender and beautiful.
I love you, I think. The blood is love.
After he finishes, we wipe ourselves off and the both of us look at each other, our eyes bright and shining, and he’s taking me in his arms, kissing me so deeply that it pulls at the strings around my heart.
My hands skim over his hard chest, his carved abs, reaching down between the waistband of his boxer briefs, and—
A knock at the door.
I gasp and we pull apart and I’m trying to smell the air to get a sense of who it is. Room service?
“Who is that?” I ask.
He gives me a wary look. “It’s your mother. I told her to bring you some clothes.”
“My mother!” I squeak. Oh, this won’t be good, not with Solon here.
I hurry over to the door, holding my towel tight around me and open it.
My mother looks at me, tears in her eyes, her face contorting, then she glances down at my chest, and my arm. The white towel is speckled with blood and the cut on my arm is still healing itself.
“I am never going to get used to this,” she says with a shake of her head.
I open the door and she comes in, just in time to see Solon emerge from the bathroom. At least he’s put on his pants.
“Absolon,” she says to him, giving him a frosty look.
“Elaine,” is his clipped response.
They stare at each other for a long minute, both of them tense, hackles raised, moons glowing in my mother’s eyes, a deadly look of contempt in Solon’s.
Then my mother sighs and hands me a garbage bag full of my clothes.
“Here,” she says. Suddenly she throws her arms around me and hugs me so tight I can barely breathe. I glance at Solon over her shoulder and he looks away.
“I’ll get some coffee, give you two your privacy,” he says, throwing on his white shirt and slipping out of the room so fast that neither of us can say anything.
“Oh my baby,” she says to me, still holding tight. I feel her tears on my neck. “How are you? Has he hurt you?”
“Mom,” I tell her, pulling back, stronger than she’s used to. Her arms drop away. I hold her by the shoulders. “I’m fine. I really am. He hasn’t hurt me, he never would.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t even know how you can stand to be in the same room as that thing.”
“He is not a thing,” I say sharply. “He is mine.”
Even if he doesn’t know it yet.
She stares at me, eyes glistening as she looks me over. “You’ve changed so much, sweetie. You’re…you were always so beautiful, but now you’re…you’re one of them.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, narrowing my eyes.
“It means you’re beyond beautiful, sweetie. Out of this world.” She takes in a deep, shaky breath, putting her hand to my cheek for a moment, then quickly taking it away when she feels how cold I am. “It suits you.”
“You didn’t bring your slayer blade, did you?” I ask, suddenly struck with the thought.
“No. Solon told me not to.”
“He was right. You’d probably try to kill him again.”
She sighs, placing her hands in her face for a moment. “No. I don’t want to kill him, I swore I wouldn’t.”
“That’s what you said last time when you had your little arrangement. Remember? You killed my parents and he gave you their whereabouts.”
She swallows audibly. “I know…I don’t like it, I hate it, and I hate him, but I know you need him. You need him more than you need us. We can’t protect you anymore. We heard about what happened with Atlas.”
Then my mother starts t
alking about Elle and how she’s still listed as missing and I start crying all over again because the pain is still so fresh and real, as is the guilt, this big dark anvil inside me.
Eventually I dry off my tears and then slip into some of the clothes she brought, a pair of striped wide-leg pants with an elastic waist and a crop top, not exactly my style anymore, but it’s better than a towel.
Then Solon is knocking at the door and he comes in holding two coffees. He hands one to my mother first. “For you,” he says.
She gives him the once-over, her skin visibly prickling at being so close to him. She snatches it from him and takes a few steps back. “Thank you,” she says coldly.
Then he hands me my coffee, giving me a smile that makes my heart sing. “And for you, my dear.”
My mother lets out a snort of contempt and I give her a dirty look.
She just shrugs. “Look at the two of you,” she says disdainfully.
Solon clears his throat and faces her. “I didn’t just invite you here because you had her clothes—”
My mom raises her hand, cutting him off. “Excuse me? Invite me here? We’re paying for this hotel room.”
“Mom,” I warn.
“It’s fine,” Solon says to me. Then he gives her a placating smile. “I asked you here because there’s something I wanted to tell you.”
“Oh god.” She nearly drops the coffee and stares at me in horror. “Please don’t tell me you’re pregnant. Or you’re getting married.”
“No,” I snap. “Let him finish.” Even though I don’t know what he’s going to say.
“I know who Lenore’s father is,” he goes on, voice deep and grave. “Her real father. I tasted her blood, I know this for a fact. It’s Jeremias.”
My mother’s face goes slack, hand at her chest. “Are you sure?”
He nods. “Jeremias and Alice had a child. Witch and vampire. Lenore is their daughter.”
She shakes her head, mulling it over, then plops down on the chair by the desk. “I can’t believe it. And yet I can believe it. Oh, this makes so much sense.” She looks at me with a sense of awe. “You know your father and I often wondered. We knew you were part witch, of course. But there were so many peculiar things about you.”
Black Sunshine Page 31
