And all of the other stuff? The memories she had again, the fear and uncertainty they brought with them… That could wait a few days. They didn’t need to talk about prophecies and death right then. At least, that’s what Ash had to tell herself to ease the guilt of another lie by omission. She cared, she really did. Perhaps too much, but there was no going back now. She was in love and would do whatever it took to protect such a precious and fragile thing.
A Preview for the next book in the series
1: The Outsider
WE should have rented camels.”
Ash rolled her eyes. For such a short trek, Tristan had managed to complain quite a lot. The reason behind his aggravation however, worried her. His mind may have been currently blocked, but she knew him better than he realized. “There is no need to be so dramatic. Besides, this is Greece, not the dessert. If you want a camel you need to cross the water into Africa or parts of the Middle East.”
He was only half kidding about the camel thing. “Isn’t this Middle East?”
Ash stopped and spun, kicking up a big dust cloud that couldn’t be seen in the dark. There was no moon tonight, obscured by the thick clouds. Rain was on the horizon that they would no doubt be caught in and Tristan was whining like a toddler. She was becoming cranky herself. Suppose it was her own fault for walking rather than taking the car.
“Your lack of geographical knowledge in this modern age is disturbingly astonishing.”
Tristan shut his eyes, huffed and then opened them again. “I’m sorry. Okay? I’m just… exhausted. When you said vacation, this really wasn’t what I had in mind.” What he had in mind was being a lazy ass by a pool, drinking himself stupid for a week before returning to Japan to pack his shit up and move back to the U.S. with Ash. Contractors for their new place said they’d be done by March. Couldn’t come fast enough.
“You said you wanted to see my home, the place I was born.”
“Yeah, but…” Tristan stopped for a moment to look around. It was well after dark since they’d been walking for… for, well who the fuck knew. All he knew was that there was zero population and his feet fucking hurt in the only shoes he had to wear after Sebastian stole his good vampire-kicking boots.
After their stint in Paris, they hopped the first cruise out of Le Havre. Sebastian, the bastard faerie, boarded the ship with the couple but never got a chance to step foot onto dry land again. Tristan never said anything, but Ash could tell the fae’s inevitable parting upset him.
Eight lazy days later the couple then debarked at Itea, Greece. From there they rented a car and drove down into the Mani peninsula—a three-hour trip with Ash behind the wheel that should have taken nearly five—where instead of staying East, Ash was inexplicably drawn West, the opposite side of where she’d grown up. Perhaps, unconsciously, she didn’t want to return home, perhaps she was afraid to. Whatever the reason, Ash was regretting the decision now as staying in Gytheio would have been much closer to their destination near Passavas than Karavostasi was.
Ash sighed and went to Tristan, brushing the hair and dust from her forehead. She stopped close to him, neck craned to look up at his ridiculous height. “I apologize.”
He started. “For what?”
“I just, I forget.”
He raised his eyebrows in question.
“That you are human.”
“Hey,” he said with a mischievous little smirk, “that’s Uruwashi to you, Lady.”
“And that is Master vampire to you, Uruwashi.”
He smiled and drew her in for a kiss. He wanted more than a peck, something deeper and apologetic. Or maybe even an, hey will you look at that, what a great place to make out, sort of kiss. But Ash had her rules and dammed be all if she would break them.
Ash sighed as she separated herself from him, lest things get out of hand too quickly. She wanted him more than he understood, almost more than she could bear. She was hoping to make that clearer to him while they were here if things went the way she had planned, if she found her mother’s biblos... It helped that she was mostly healed from her ordeal with Lucien, a feat she was sure would take months. But with the substantial help of Sebastian’s faerie blood, her healing time was dramatically reduced.
Her left eye was still several shades darker than her right, but she could see out of it again—if only on a human level, but there was sight. And the skin on the left side of her body was darker from forehead to thigh, but not black and dry anymore. She only had to put up a small aura whenever she was in public, the effort not even enough to make her hungry... –er than normal.
“Last time I was here the trek took nearly a fraction of the time since I was in… vampire company. We can run very fast and fatigue very slowly. It had not occurred to me that you would need assistance.”
There was snark in her tone, but Tristan still felt cranky and he muttered something under his breath about needing assistance, albeit on the grumpy-toddler side, as he kicked up rocks, trailing behind. They’d been walking for too long. And all Tristan could think about right then was not how badly his feet ached or how the dust was clogging his sinuses or how they were in the middle of nowhere and how unsafe that was for someone who was allergic to daylight, but how much he wanted a drink. Which, despite his panache for it in the very recent past, surprised him a little.
Something happened when he met Ash, besides falling in love with her, that curbed his desire for drowning in alcohol. Killing Malik had nearly squashed that craving all together. He hardly thought of drinking at all once he and Ash started living together. But ever since they stepped foot in Greece… something just switched on again. That tickle in the back of his throat, that groan in his belly, they craved alcohol the way the vampire craved blood. But worse. Much, much worse.
“Vampire company, you mean Malik?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, hating that the name came up. But the insane vampire was such a big part of who Ash was it was hard to avoid his name at all. Or the legacy he left behind. “When was the last time you were here?”
“Greece or my home specifically?”
He kicked at a big rock. Score! Hit that bastard tree. “Uh, both… I guess.” He was trying to sound as casual as he could, talking about something so sensitive.
“We left Greece in the winter of 1682.”
“And your home?”
“The night Malik killed me in the spring of ‘66.”
“Oh.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and let the silence hang. What could he say? Sorry? He’d said that plenty, apologizing for the crimes of another man. They’d already killed Malik together, so what more was there to say?
Good riddance.
Tristan stopped and looked behind him. To the East the sky was aglow with city light, faint as it was, but he couldn’t actually see the city anymore despite being uphill. They were going to cross the whole damn peninsula soon.
Ash on the other hand was sort of enjoying the reminiscence of the slow stroll. It reminded her of simpler days when she would make this long walk as a human to go into the cities.
“Did you really live all the way out here?”
Ash sighed.
Tristan grunted, shoving his hands into his pockets. “You’d think that cities would expand out this way, not cluster on the banks.”
“True, a lot does change in three centuries. And yet, some things never do. The city there,” She motioned over her shoulder towards the direct east. “Gytheio was here in my time, though much smaller. I would walk there for supplies, food and such.”
“Looks a hell of a lot closer than where we came from,” he mumbled.
He was right, what was she to say? She could have saved them both a lot of grumbling if she’d taken them into Gytheio, a mere mile’s walk to their destination. Instead, cutting across rough terrain was an almost nine mile trek from Karavostassis, thirteen if they took the paved roads.
Tristan stopped and looked back again at the diminishing city lights between
Gytheio and where they’d come from. “So why did the city never expand out here? There were obviously homes out this way if you lived out here. Hell, we passed a few awhile back too.”
“Yes, of course.” There were still homes out this way and beyond, just not very near to her old home.
“Why do I feel a but in there?”
Ash chuckled as she understood without needing to hear his mind that he was staring at her ass. He was so unassuming sometimes, it was refreshing. “What types of people live outside of cities, alone?”
“Nomads?”
She chuckled again. “Outsiders.”
“Seriously, you were an outsider?”
“In my time, in these lands, yes.” Before Tristan could ask it, she was giving him his answer. “Humanity fears the truths the pythia speak of. They are hardly ever wrong. They fear the power a pythia can wield, the crafts of their kind. Granted, the pythia are not always known as such. In my time we were called witches.”
“We?”
“My sister and I.”
Right, her. He still was trying to process the whole idea that Lilith, a pythia—The pythia (as far as he was concerned), was Ash’s niece. But Ash herself wasn’t a pythia. “But you said because you’re a twin, and your sister was the one with the pythia abilities, that you’re a null.”
“I am—was. I was merely human, but I was born of a witch, raised by a witch, lived with a witch and by association and such, therefore I was a witch.” She paused for a breath before adding, “We are nearly there.”
He was frowning down at his feet, watching them as he walked when he suddenly felt it. He stopped short and spun, searching the dark behind him, hand unconsciously going to the gun tucked under his jacket. Did he really just feel that? No, that wasn’t possible, right?
“Tristan?”
“Uh.” He glanced back at her, quickly jerking his hand away from the gun.
Ash was stopped a few yards away, up the slope of a hill. She was close enough that he could feel her in his blood, but not so much that it was distracting. But it wasn’t the cold burn of her distinctive flavor that made him stop and search his back. He was sure, just for a second, that he felt another flavor mix in with hers. It was so fast and so faint, he wondered if it really happened at all.
“Nothing,” he finally said. “It was nothing.”
Ash’s demeanor changed as she shifted her weight to one foot, arms crossed over her chest, lips pressed into a thin line. She didn’t mind walking around naked, that was, without any human weapons, but she still missed the security of her beloved katana, Murasaki Kaeru. Perhaps sending it off with the rest of their things was a hasty retort to her need to get out of France as soon as possible.
“You are blocking your thoughts with a great deal of effort.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you hiding?”
“What? Nothing. I’m just doing what you told me to. It’s kind of hard to let it go after I’ve got the mental block in place.” That was practically the truth. In the time it took them to get from France to Greece, Ash spent the majority of the trip teaching Tristan how to block his thoughts from any telepathic beings—and yes, there were more than just the vampire. Humans even, though a substantially smaller group than that of the vampire who were the most proficient of all the races. He’d had a hell of a time with it at first but after some real effort, he could bubble his thoughts just like she’d taught him. Only, once they were encased in his shield he found it very difficult to let it go. Almost painful. Unless he was upset, then the bubble just slid away like oil through fingers.
Ash sighed. She knew he was hiding something, but so was she. Back in France Yukihime gave Ash most of her stolen memories back. And then took some of Tristan’s. Ash wanted to tell Tristan everything she remembered, but didn’t know how to. She was only just coming to terms with the things she once knew, trying to truly understand them. How was she supposed to expect Tristan to understand if she barely could herself?
She also knew that Tristan couldn’t remember how he killed Lucien and it more than bothered him. He would start asking questions soon, questions she wasn’t sure how to answer. How could she possibly admit to him that she was afraid of what he was becoming? The guilt was starting to eat away at her. She knew she had no right to do that to him, but fear made one react even more rashly than love did.
Then again, it could have been the guilt he felt over allowing Sebastian to die right in front of him that kept him closed off from her. It was obvious he didn’t like the idea of killing the fae, but thought the man deserved it and hated that he felt that way. Tristan was a good man, but at his core, he was built to be a killer. It was a fact that was becoming very clear to them both.
“Just here,” she said and turned away to disappear over the top of the slope.
Tristan felt a twinge of panic when he lost sight of Ash and ran up the hill after her. Of course he could feel her, but he’d yet to learn to completely trust that instinct.
“Something the trouble?” she asked, blinking at him when he’d all but run into her.
“Nope, just trying to keep up.”
She smiled at him as if she understood what was really happening and took his hand. “There.”
Tristan looked to where she was pointing and let out a long breath. The cloud cover made it gloomy but he could see well enough to make out the shape of a rather comfortably sized building made completely of large gray stones overtaken by foliage and decimation. “Your home?”
“Yes,” she said in a small voice, smile lost to her sadness. “I was born here… and died here.”
He squeezed her hand, giving her a soft sympathetic look and then they were marching off again through the brush towards the home. When they reached the front of the house, Tristan let go of her hand and stopped to take a look around him. There was nothing else out here, just this little stone home with its crumbled stone fence. A mile, maybe more, to the west there was the glow of an electric light from a private home, but that was the closest anything to this place.
She gave a dejected little laugh. “Even after all these long years, people still fear the home of the witches.” She knelt near the wall of stone that’d surrounded the home to inspect the weeds. “It is sad really. It was such a beautiful home. But I suppose after so much death, a home is forever cursed.”
“You don’t really believe that do you?”
She looked up. “Oh yes, we Maniots were a very superstitious bunch. Even as a vampire, knowing what I know, I have a hard time letting go of those thoughts, silly as they might be. One cannot help the way they are raised.”
He smiled and held a hand out to her. “That’s true.”
“Like Master.”
Tristan frowned, taking a step back before she could touch him.
“As the bastard son of a whore, he should have served the house of pleasure as a mere house boy: cleaning and such. Instead, he was forced into service at the age of four.”
Tristan scoffed in disgust. He’d known Malik was a bastard child, but had no idea he was forced to become a whore and at such a young age.
“Despite his impressionable age and being told what he was doing was right, he hated it and wished to be free of his disgusting life. It was just a few years later that the rage reached a peak and he snapped. He savagely killed a cruel prince of the empire. It was only the unfortunate attention of a vampire that stayed Malik’s hand in taking his own life. Instead, the vampire directed that shame and hate onto Malik’s own mother. After he and his new patron killed every last living being in that place, Malik was given a new life.
“Vladislav, the vampire called himself. Vlad raised Malik in a very untraditional manner, even for a vampire. He taught Malik to kill efficiently and enjoy it with a perverse sense of pride. And once the boy was a man, a full-grown man with more worldly experience than most old men die with, Vlad killed him, making him the perfect murderer. A highly functioning sociopath with a lust for life and death.”
“So what, you’re saying you regret killing him now because how he was wasn’t his fault?”
Ash flicked him a dark look. “Being raised by Vlad did make Malik the way he was. He could not help but be the man he was. But no, I still believe he deserved to die. He was too sad and wretched to continue on. He knew he was wrong, deep down, but was unable to overcome his upbringing, centuries of being told wrong was right. It is nearly impossible to overcome something so engrained into a person.”
Tristan nodded his head slowly. He’d always known Malik was broken in a special way and now he understood that more clearly. There was a small part of his conscious that regretted the kill—he was raised knowing that killing was wrong. But the larger part, the part he was afraid he was losing to the Uruwashi in him, was glad. It was piece of mind, the small piece that it was, knowing that man was no longer around to hurt anyone else Tristan loved.
“Thank you,” Ash said softly as she wrapped her arms around Tristan’s waist.
He flinched, not even having notice her come up to him. “For what?”
She just smiled knowingly at him, giving him a warm hug. “Should we go inside?”
He looked past her, into the darkness. Maybe she could see where they were going but he was certain he’d be blind inside that dark house. Ash shot him a look with a huff and turned him around to dig in the back pack he carried and came back with a flashlight.
“Thanks.”
She smiled, patted him in the arm and stepped towards the house. She couldn’t pass the threshold. It had nothing to do with ancient, and inaccurate, vampire lore and everything to do with her own psyche. There was so much happiness and sorrow in this little home and all those feelings flooded her at once. It was hard to accept the good over the bad, but she wanted to remember this place fondly, not as the grave of a life she mourned.
Bete Noire Page 36
