I wanted to believe him, but I still had the habit of thinking like a human. Rourke sensed my trepidation and brought his arms up and flexed, his T-shirt bunching ridiculously over his well-defined muscles. The flowing lines of his tattoos wound their way up to his biceps like beautiful vines.
“Very funny,” I said, pushing at his chest. “No need to grandstand. I know you’re strong.”
“No, I’m serious. I want you to feel them.” He leaned into me and I acquiesced. The pads of my fingers prodded the muscle. They were like steel. No give. I let the palm of my hand flow over his smooth skin and I tried not to sigh.
“It feels like armor,” I contended. “Very strong.”
“Exactly. This is to show you not all supernaturals are created equal. If we were, it would be chaos all the time.” He put his arms down and wound his warm hands around my middle, pulling me toward him one last time. “Equality would mean constant status fights against every Sect. We have hierarchies in place for a reason. The most dangerous supernaturals are those who try to advance their station. Selene, who wanted ultimate immortality. Valdov, who wanted to be the Vampire King. Those are the supes who will fight to the death. But Tally, who is arguably one of the strongest witches in the world, is not a threat to us unless we attack. Why do you think that is?”
That was a good question. “I don’t know. Why?” Rourke let go of me and grabbed my hand, leading me out of the room.
“Because power respects power. For eons supernaturals have coexisted in this world together. If there was truly only one who was the strongest of them all, we would have a King or a Queen of all supernaturals. But we don’t.”
“But isn’t that exactly why everyone is so upset about me? They think I could finally be that Queen. The supernatural who is finally strong enough to rule everyone.”
“But the Prophecy states you are a reincarnate,” he pointed out. “One who walks again.”
I nodded. “That’s true.” It was weird to think of my wolf as a reincarnate, but she definitely had the knowledge and diva attitude to back it up.
“Then we would have had several Queens over the last millennia, correct?”
“But it doesn’t really matter if I wasn’t put here to rule”—which I could’ve told anyone who bothered to ask—“because unless we convince each Sect, they’ll interpret the Prophecy any way they wish. I’m a threat to their power. End of story.”
“Then we convince them all,” he growled. “If the supernatural race had a King or a Queen, we would know it by now. But make no mistake: I will bloody anyone who chooses not to listen, and we will fight to win.”
“That’s exactly what my father said. We have to fight until they fear our power, and when they stop fearing us, we fight again to prove we are the strongest.” We turned down a long hallway decorated in deep blues. It was weird no vamps were around. We must still be in the old warded part of the Queen’s wing.
“Your father’s right. You’re incredibly strong, Jessica, and it’s clear you don’t realize it. Power leaks out of you. Some will covet that strength, but most will seek to destroy it. Valdov died because he chose to fight you for power, but defeating him equalized us with the vampires. You made the right choice to end his life.”
We arrived at the top of a back stairway. The old treads looked well used. Rourke moved aside to let me go first, grabbing a handful of my ass as I went down.
I had to admit, no matter how shitty my future was as an equalizer of the supernatural race, I loved this man.
22
“Are you sure we’re heading in the right direction?” I asked. My fingertips brushed against cool stone. Feeling the rough texture of the wall was the only thing rooting me in place. We were trying to reach the area where I was held the first time, thinking Ray may be in a similar room. “I can’t see a single thing.”
“I smell something,” Rourke answered. “But it’s not Ray. It’s the old vamp I had by the neck.” Rourke was directly in front of me, his scent making him easy to follow. “I left the door of the cell open, but they must have stayed in the area. If the underground tunnels you told me about were a maze, this place is one too.”
All my senses were muted. “I can’t smell anything. How are you able to get through the mask?” Whatever spell this was, it was strong enough to blanket my senses. “This feels nothing like it did with Conan. Before, I could see everything, except for the fact I thought we were in a dungeon the entire time.”
“I think this is a new ward,” Rourke answered. “It has a taste, but it’s fresh.”
I inhaled, but I couldn’t taste anything. “The other spell had a flavor too. Is it tart?”
“Yes.” Rourke stopped abruptly.
I pulled up just short of running into him. “I wonder why I can’t sense it.”
Rourke’s body tensed, suddenly alert. “There’s something else here. Can you feel it?”
“No,” I said, frustrated. “I’m going to throw my magic out again and see what I can find.” I gathered my power and extended it into the area.
This time I did detect something. It was very faint and heavily masked. “Whatever it is, it has the same crab-apple taste I told you about. I’m thinking—”
“Come.” A broken Russian accent cut through the darkness. “We are here.”
Rourke’s blood jumped. He was a hairsbreadth away from reacting, which wouldn’t end well for the old vampire.
We both knew it was Yuri’s voice, but we couldn’t tell where it was coming from, or if there was another threat attached to it.
“Yuri,” I called. “Are you and Alana alone?”
“For the time being,” he replied. “But you must hurry. The Queen is angry with us.” His voice sounded strong and sure, nothing like before.
And he seemed to be waiting for us.
Rourke and I edged farther into the darkness, moving carefully, trying to sense if this was a trap. “The spell breaks here,” Rourke said, reaching out to grab my wrist and guide me around a corner.
Once my hand skimmed over a doorjamb, the haze immediately lifted.
We were in some sort of storage room. It was covered in cobwebs and dust, more than a few inches thick in some places. A single lightbulb illuminated the far corner, shedding some weak light, but everything else was etched in shadows.
Alana hissed.
I glanced around Rourke’s shoulder. She sat in the middle of the room. Her head wound was more or less healed, if you called a gaping scar with a partial indent healed, but at least she was awake and it wasn’t oozing. The most alarming thing, however, were her eyes. They were pulsing a pewter color and she seemed to be leaking bloody tears.
“What the hell is this?” Rourke said. “What is she doing?” He’d come to a full stop ten feet from where she was bound and hadn’t moved.
Alana rocked in place, and was mumble-hissing over and over again in what was likely Russian, but it was too garbled to tell.
“Yuri,” I asked. “Did you bind her to that crate?” I pointed to the chains he’d obviously brought with him from the cell, which were strung around her body and hooked to some kind of wooden storage box to keep her in place.
Instead of stating the obvious, he said, “We could’ve stayed well hidden from you, but Alana knew you were coming and bid me to find you. Tying her was the safest thing, as she is … unpredictable.”
My eyes flicked back to Alana, who appeared to be out of her ever-loving mind. “Unpredictable” was a quaint way to say she would rip our faces off if she had the chance.
I found it hard to believe she could form a coherent thought and speak to Yuri. She caught my eye and started waving a yellowed fingernail around in a circle, chanting something while sniffing the air in front of her like a dog.
Jesus.
“Yuri.” I slid out from behind Rourke and moved into the room. “What’s going on here? How did Alana know we would be coming? And was that your spell out there? The one that tastes like crab apple?”
<
br /> “Alana grows stronger out of the cell,” he responded. “But we must vacate this place soon. Danger is coming quickly and they must not find her here. If they do, things will not be as they should. We have waited too long for our freedom and we grow impatient.”
Okay, what?
“Why have you been kept prisoner here?” Rourke demanded. “If you are indeed the Queen’s blood-kin, she has broken a law by jailing you. It’s a high crime to harm your relatives according to vamp laws. That I do know.”
Yuri appraised Rourke, a reserved expression on his face. “It was necessary. She had no choice in the matter. Alana could not be contained … any other way.”
“What do you mean necessary?” I asked. “You willingly chose that lifestyle? Starved and rotting in a dirty cell? You can’t make us believe that was your only option. There had to be another way.”
Yuri sighed. “Alana is a seer. Eudoxia had no knowledge of us for many years. Our existence was kept from her on purpose. Once she found us, the damage was already too great. We had no other choice.”
“Seer?” My mouth fell open. I glanced over at Alana, who was still chanting and drawing circles in the air. Oracles and seers were of the same ilk. My first thought was poor little Maggie. Her future was looking bleaker by the second. My second thought was holy shit. “It was Valdov, wasn’t it? He turned you for some kind of gain of his own. Maybe for the throne?”
“Yes,” Yuri answered. “He turned me into a vampire because he wanted the throne. He saw that Vlad would not succeed and was determined to gain his own power.” He glanced lovingly at his wife. “But he did not turn Alana.”
Rourke’s face was stoic. “You turned her.”
“Of course.” Yuri sighed as he sat on the edge of the crate next to his wife. “I kept her turning a secret as long as I could, but I was a fledgling and we were both very weak. I should not have been able to turn her so young and I blame myself for her insanity. We had no guidance and craved the teachings of a true Master. Valdov punished us soundly for my interference. He took away all our wealth, our status, and closeted us away. Until…”
“He found out what your wife was truly capable of,” Rourke finished. “Seers are very rare in any Sect, but vampires especially. I’ve never even heard a whisper of one.”
A pained expression crossed the old vampire’s face. “Yes.” He bowed his head. “Turning my wife was the biggest mistake I ever made. She deserved a happy life and I made it a horror instead.” Misery etched his features. I glanced at Rourke. His face didn’t need to tell me what I already knew.
We would’ve each made the same choice, given the same circumstances. Living without the other now was unthinkable. We couldn’t blame Yuri at all.
“How long did Valdov keep your existence quiet from the Queen?” I asked.
“Four hundred years.”
I sucked in a breath. “How could he do such a thing? It should’ve been an impossible task. If the Queen was the ruler—”
“At the time of our making, she was not our Queen,” Yuri said firmly. There was respect in his voice for her. It surprised me. Why would he have love for a Queen who had forced them to live like rats? “Eudoxia had been turned by Vlad only a single year before, in the hopes he could gain power through the family. My brother, Ivan, was terrible indeed and had committed many atrocities by that time. Vlad had hoped to marry Eudoxia to put himself in power, but she … resisted … and things fell apart. They were forced to flee the country—”
“Life force … she craves it…” Alana’s voice sounded shrill and a lot more precise than anything she should be capable of uttering. “But … she will not get it,” she continued. “They will come … those who wake … from those below … they take much…” As she spoke nonsense, blood tears coursed from the corners of her pewter eyes, etching trails of red down her white face. Her hair was wiry and askew, her features sunken and bleak.
I took an unconscious step backward. Rourke reached out to comfort me, sensing my distress. “I don’t think weres and oracles mix very well,” I said, turning my head slightly toward Yuri. “We need to get her some help—”
“Silence!” she screeched, a curved nail pointed straight at my chest.
My mouth snapped shut.
She began to rattle her chains, her arms and legs twisting erratically. Yuri stood and tried to calm her. “My love, you must relax. We will leave here soon, as promised.” His voice was tender. “You wanted to talk to the girl. She is here. Say your piece and we will leave.”
All at once, a power surge shot around the room. It was so strong it slammed both Rourke and me against the wall. The only words Alana uttered before Yuri screamed were garbled.
But I understood them just fine.
“She is mine.”
The power signature Alana had emitted reeked of alcohol, of all things. I righted myself quickly, but Rourke was one step ahead of me. Yuri was down and Rourke was already by his side, kneeling at his chest.
There was only one problem.
Houdini had escaped her chains and she wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
The room wasn’t that big.
There were various shelving units and darkened areas stacked with goods, but I should be able to get a bead on her. “Um, Rourke?” I said as I inched forward cautiously. “Where’s Alana?” I glanced toward the door of the storage room, but it was closed and had no sign of a forced exit. She wouldn’t have had enough time to go through without us seeing her. “I can still smell her all over. It would be impossible for her to become invisible right—”
With a wicked shriek, she dropped from the ceiling onto my shoulders.
We tumbled to the floor as my mate yelled, and pandemonium hit the storage room.
Goddammit. I hadn’t looked up. That was the oldest trick in the book. But now that I was on my back, I could see the old rafters cut deeply into the weathered ceiling. Perfect place for a crazy lady to hide.
My wolf snarled fiendishly, trying to roll her off of us. Adrenaline raced through my system as my body morphed. “What are you doing?” I yelled at Alana as we tumbled. “Ow!” She’d locked her skinny arms around my neck and plunged her fangs deeply in my neck.
I gave a strangled howl.
“I can’t tear her loose,” Rourke shouted from above us. “There’s no space between you.” He clutched her around the waist, but her legs were locked like a vise around me, and we both rose in the air as he lifted, her fangs tearing deeper into my flesh.
“Gag, stop,” I gurgled. He set us back down carefully. “You can’t get her off me,” I gasped, trying to force her head backward, my claws digging deeply into her back, “because she’s not trying to fight me. She’s trying to eat me!”
Alana had clamped herself onto me like a vampire second skin and she was a lot stronger than she looked. Her power needled into my skin as she drank, her head buried so far in the crook of my neck her face wasn’t showing. I rolled again, trying to shake her loose. We knocked into crates and boxes, but she held on. Rourke swung his fist down on her head and then on her back. I heard bones break, but she didn’t move. Not even an inch.
“She’s not reacting,” Rourke yelled. “I don’t know how to get her off without ripping open your neck.” Her fangs were embedded so far into me, tearing her off would cause major trauma and take me too long to heal. Plus, it would hurt like a mother.
“Let me … try something.” I raked Alana’s back with my claws, using all my strength, tearing what little clothing she had. She gasped and writhed but wouldn’t unlatch. I turned her on her back, managing to make my way to my knees. Once up, I slammed her down. “Get off me!” I shouted.
Rourke was behind with something in his hand. “Look out, Jessica. I’m going to smash this—”
And just like that, she unlatched.
Once free, I jumped off the floor, my hand covering my dripping neck as I backed away.
Alana staggered like a drunk and laughed like a possessed cartoon cha
racter. She sounded like Woody Woodpecker on acid.
My gaping wound healed quickly, but for some reason I felt dizzy. She must have taken a gallon. Rourke was in front of me, throwing what appeared to be an ice pick into the corner. That would’ve been gruesome. “Are you okay? Did she take too much?” he asked. When I didn’t answer right away, he put his hands on my shoulders and urged, “Jessica, answer me. Are you hurt?”
I shook my head.
He didn’t need any more than that. He let go of me and turned, bearing down on Alana fast. “I don’t care what you are.” She didn’t make a move to dodge him. He took her by the throat, lifting her off the ground, shaking her thin body. “You do not get to do whatever you want.”
“You are too late,” Alana gasped, her teeth stained red with my blood. She ran her tongue over her pointed canines to prove her point. “I already took my fill.”
Those were coherent sentences.
Spoken from someone who had been mostly nonverbal a few short moments ago. I angled my head toward Alana, wiping the blood off my neck with the collar of my shirt. My eyes were semiunfocused, but I was regaining my strength by the moment. I narrowed my line of sight with effort so I could take in her appearance. Her head was almost fully back to normal. She was changing, morphing into what must have been her old self as I watched. My blood was healing her too quickly.
I inhaled, and her real scent hit me.
It was crab apple.
“Wait!” I shouted at Rourke. He had backed her up against a wall. Her eyes were beginning to roll back in her head. “Put her down. It was her ward we just felt in the hallway. She can cast spells, and she’s a vampire! Just like the Queen.”
“Are you sure?” Rourke replied through clenched teeth. “I’m having trouble … wanting to let her go. She’s a menace and needs to be stopped. What if she goes after you again?”
I placed a hand on his outstretched arm, his muscles corded like steel, just like he’d proven to me a few minutes ago. Alana was no match for his strength, which is why she hadn’t struggled. The hierarchy was certainly in place here. “I’m sure. Let her go. We need information more than we need to take her life. If she can cast spells like the Queen, I want to know why. There’s a link we’re missing. Let’s fill it in and then we can decide what to do after we hear it.”
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