The Bloodtruth Series (Box Set: Heiress of Lies, The Queen's Betrayal, Trials of Truth, A Heart's Deceit)

by Cege Smith

  It was a slightly rough poke in the back that reminded her that she still had a job to do. Angeline stepped into the chamber and somehow heard the doors close behind her even though the drum beat quickened its pace.

  Because of the light of the fire over her head, she was able to see everything in the room in minute detail. The Clan Council members no longer hid inside of their alcoves, each one standing on either side of the hall. However, they each wore a robe similar to Tobias’s, and so she still could not see their faces. It was an occasional glimpse of long hair or slender fingers peeping from the sleeves that told her there were other women present. She counted five council members on the right, and as Tobias slid into the final slot at the other end of the line, there were five on the left as well.

  Only Theodora stood with her head uncovered. Her robe glittered a dark ruby red which Angeline found fitting. Angeline made her way down the middle of the hall and felt the eyes of the Council members on her. They disgusted her with their cowardice. She didn’t know why they hid from her, and she didn’t care. If she came back from her meeting with the Immortal Ones with any kind of power or influence, she was determined she would teach those people to show proper respect to a royal.

  Theodora’s eyes glittered in a bizarre reflection of the fire above. Angeline thought that it was a cunning way to show off that it was Theodora who controlled the magic that made the fire. Angeline was impressed, but not intimidated, which she thought was Theodora’s intent with the show.

  Angeline drew up to stand in front of Theodora. A large stone table had replaced Theodora’s chair behind her. A thick bearskin covered the still form that rested on it from view. She steeled herself and tried to empty her mind. If she let the thought of what she was about to do settle in her mind for even one moment, she thought that she was going to get sick.

  “What brings you to the altar of the Immortal Ones, child?” Theodora’s voice was empty of emotions. Angeline could see that she was deep in the throes of the magic.

  Angeline’s part of the ritual was brief. “I come seeking truth. Answers that only they can answer. Open the portal and allow me passage for I am the One.”

  “It is not this simple servant who can open the portal for you, but I can provide the key. If the Immortal Ones accept the offering of the One, you will be granted passage. However, to help you find what you seek, the Clan offers you this gift so that you do not have to seek your own.”

  Theodora swept the bearskin off the altar and Angeline’s stomach wrenched. Kallie’s blue eyes stared back at her. Her arms and legs were bound tightly, and the gag in her mouth ensured that she could not cry out. Her dress had been torn away so that only her thin slip remained to cover her.

  Angeline wanted to turn and run. Although she thought her mind was set and that she could do whatever was necessary, looking into Kallie’s eyes brought back every shred of doubt and guilt and fear. She was about to kill an innocent. Surely that meant that she would be damned. Her mind turned it over and over again. How could her salvation come at such a high cost?

  The drum beats suddenly silenced. The quiet was more unnerving than the pounding that had been mimicking the thudding of the heart in her chest. She drew in a deep breath and thought about Altera. The choice was her kingdom, or the girl in front of her.

  What would Alair Robart do? she thought. Alair gave up his daughter to his most hated enemy to bring peace to Altera. Angeline knew what Alair would do. For the briefest moment, she thought about if Alair was truly the standard that she wanted to hold herself up to, but he had been the greatest king in Altera’s history. For all the despicable things she knew about him now, his people loved him. They would never know that darker side of him that he kept hidden because he had taken care of them.

  For all the faceless people that she would never meet, to protect them, she stepped forward. She let the rest of the scene around her drop away. The fire. Theodora’s scrunched face. The gasps of the Council members as she brought the knife up above her head in both of her hands.

  “I’m sorry,” Angeline whispered. Then she drove the knife straight down into Kallie’s chest.

  The girl heaved and twisted, but Angeline brought the knife back up and then the smell of Kallie’s blood swept up into her nose. The effect was immediate. The sweeping slice across Kallie’s throat ended the girl’s struggles and then a chalice appeared on the table. Angeline grabbed at it and brought Kallie’s head up so that her blood flowed into the cup.

  Angeline swooned as she brought the cup to her lips. Every thought, every memory was reduced to the fragrant liquid that swirled inside. She forgot who she was. She forgot everything. Then she lifted it up and drank deeply. The wraith chattered and squealed inside her mind, and Angeline found that instead of trying to stamp it down, she wanted to embrace it instead. Finally, she understood. Finally, it all made sense.

  “It’s happening!”

  “I don’t believe it.” Theodora’s voice.

  Angeline looked down at her hands and found that they were glowing. Her whole body was glowing. A rush of euphoria swept through her. She felt more alive than she had ever had before. Though something niggled at the back of her mind, she ignored it. She closed her eyes and let the sensations ripple through her.

  She had found her center. For the first time since leaving the Sisters of St. Abath, Angeline felt whole.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Red. Scarlet. Crimson. Burgundy. Cherry. The vibrant color absorbed every other color and bent it into itself. Connor’s thoughts were no longer his own. He was swimming on a sea of blood. He relaxed into it. It was what he wanted. He was completely alive.

  “Are you inside it?” The voice was an unwanted intrusion.

  Inside what? Connor wanted to ignore the voice, but it wouldn’t stop.

  “Is this was what is supposed to happen? How long will you be under?”

  A singular image rose out of the calm waters around him. He recognized the gorgeous face.

  Angeline.

  His world began and ended with her. It was only fitting. Then he remembered that there was something important that he was supposed to do. Something very important indeed. As Angeline’s face floated above him, he reached up to touch her ivory skin, but his arm wasn’t long enough. Her image floated higher and higher away from him.

  He felt distressed at the idea that she was no longer there with him.

  “What’s it like? Are you in pain?”

  The annoying voice was there again. Connor tried to swat it away, but when he looked around, he found that he was alone. He was a single man floating in the red abyss underneath a crimson sky. It was endless.

  There was something he was supposed to be looking for. He couldn’t remember what it was, so he let his body bob and follow the waves. He had never seen an ocean, but he imagined that this was what one looked like. Vampires usually feared water, but Connor felt no threat from the warm spray that tucked him tenderly into its grasp.

  He turned his head and swallowed some of the liquid. As he expected, it tasted just like blood. While it did not have the same consistency, he didn’t mind. The taste was what he craved. He had a whole ocean at his disposal. He had no need to leave, ever.

  When the tufts of velvety red clouds moved ever so slightly, he caught his first glimpse of a full harvest moon. Its stark whiteness against the sky at first alarmed him. He wondered why it was so different here. He had no answers, but now as he floated, he felt the first pinpricks of fear. This place that felt so welcoming had something wrong with it.

  He brought his hand up again to blot out the moon, wishing that the clouds returned to hide it from his view, when he noticed something that he had not noticed before. There was a thin silver thread binding his wrist.

  Theodora.

  The name slammed into his mind, and Connor started to thrash against the water and the dream. His awareness returned the answer to his mind. He was in a blood coma. He had delved into the heart of his darkness
to attempt something evil. He didn’t even know if it could be done, but it appeared he had succeeded.

  He had to break her hold on him; otherwise he would never be free. Connor’s body, now that he stiffened, was no longer buoyant, and he began to sink. He struggled, but his head bobbed up and down. His arms smacked against the surface trying to gain traction on something, anything to keep his head above the water, but there was nothing. It was nothing but the vast emptiness that just moments before he thought he could stay in forever.

  As the blood water entered his mouth, he tried to spit it out, but he couldn’t get it out before more was coming back in. His limbs felt as if they had been filled with sand, and all too soon he was sinking below the surface. Out of the light. Out of the air.

  There was nothing as terrible as realizing that even though you could be trapped somewhere, you would not actually die. As Connor’s lungs filled to the brim with the blood water, it hit him that the liquid would sustain him indefinitely. Even knowing that he was in a state of unconsciousness in reality did not help him from the fright that filled his mind.

  He gave up trying to fight it and let his body go limp. At some point, he would have to hit the bottom. The darkness around him was absolute. Even with his keen vampire eyesight he could see nothing once the surface was no longer visible. He forced himself to calm his mind. He closed his eyes, and it seemed to help.

  Now without the distraction of trying to create images out of the darkness, his thoughts turned to those last few hours before he entered this state of being. He considered it a measure of how far he had come that he didn’t even cringe as his mind conjured up an image of what he and Marcus left behind in the guards’ barracks. He had to rein in his new protégé, who had been more than willing to try to quench his own thirst. Connor let him have one of the old, weaker ones. The guards never knew what hit them.

  Still, ten or twelve men later, Connor’s thirst had only grown. He knew that he had to be close to the state he sought. Then, finally, when he stared in the deadened eyes of a boy who couldn’t have been older than Angeline as he drew his last breath, did Connor feel the effects of his actions.

  It would seem impossible for a vampire to drink too much blood, and in the old stories of vampire massacres, the legends made it sound like the insatiable appetites for blood were never quenched, not even after slaughtering a whole village. In reality, vampires reached a point after one or two humans where they experienced a sensation, not unlike human satiation. After that, a vampire was usually content to twist heads off necks, slice open torsos, or kidnap victims for future feedings. Vampires were brutal and merciless, but they were rather delicate about their stomachs.

  Connor thought that his self-imposed animal diet might have been the reason that it took the slaughter of so many to induce the coma. He had no idea the effects of fifty years of animal blood on a vampire’s system. It was one of those ideas that he would research and study if he survived that long. He knew that if it were possible to break Theodora’s spell, she would come looking for him. He had no idea how long he’d be able to evade her.

  First things first though. He had to find a way to escape her clutches. He wasn’t sure of the boundaries of his unconscious mind, and he also had no way of knowing how long it would take his body to heal itself sufficiently well where his conscious mind would claw itself back up and take control. Given that he could hear Marcus’s voice, he assumed that it wouldn’t be long. The accelerated healing was a distinct disadvantage to his vampire existence in this instance.

  He could almost hear Caspian’s voice lecturing him. “The unconscious mind is a marvelous thing! It can do things that our conscious mind would never be able to conceive of because the unconscious mind knows no boundaries. The impossible becomes possible. The only caution is that this same rule-breaking kind of behavior means that the unconscious mind might rebel against any structure or logic applied to it. It is imagination unfettered, and it does not take kindly to any interference.”

  Connor was mildly amused. If it wasn’t his body revolting against him, it was his mind. How typical, he thought. He shook that thought away. He had to get his subconscious mind to work with him. He decided that imaginary was the easiest way to communicate.

  The books said that binding magic was like a web, a sticky, tricky, all consuming web. Immediately, Connor felt tightness all around him unlike the soft waves of the water. He opened his eyes and saw the night sky. His relief was short lived when he realized that he was bound up in a tight cocoon made of white, silken webbing. A movement off to his left caught his eye, and as the immense black body came into view, he started to shake violently.

  He was caught in a spider’s web, and the spider was about to make a meal of him. He could tell by the huge fangs that dripped with a clear liquid. Poison. He was sure of it. He had the wrong imagery. He had to change it. He closed his eyes again and even as he felt the brush against the top of his head, he made himself imagine the spider away. He was in an old, empty, abandoned web.

  He tried to make himself small, expecting to feel the creature’s fangs penetrate his skin at any moment, but then nothing happened. He opened one eye and then another. There was nothing in the web. He was alone. Now, excited at the possibility of what he could do, Connor imagined a knife in his hand. He felt the weight of the handle a second later. Although he thought that could imagine the cocoon away, it felt important that he consciously cut it away.

  It took some time, but Connor finally was able to work himself free of all of the webbing. He could see the ground below him, and he grabbed the edge of the web and swung himself down. He landed lightly on his feet. He jumped back when he realized that he was no longer alone.

  Emma stood there staring at him. Her eyes glistened with tears.

  “Release me,” he said. He innately knew that she would be part of the unbinding process. It was her blood that bound him.

  “I cannot,” she whispered.

  “I broke free of the binds that held me. Set me free,” Connor demanded again.

  “Theodora’s magic binds you through my blood. Only death can break that bond.”

  Connor thought that he had left all emotions behind, but the pang in his chest told him that he had not done as good a job as he thought. “Whose death?”

  “It’s a blood bond,” Emma said evasively.

  “Your death then or Theodora’s?” Connor asked.

  Emma turned her head away. It was the only confirmation that Connor needed. “If I kill you here, does that kill you in reality?”

  “Death in a dream is just as real as death when you are awake,” Emma said. “You induced a blood coma to unbind yourself from Theodora. Make your wish come true.” She opened her arms wide and offered her throat to him. Her head remained turned toward the full moon.

  Connor wanted to say something to make what he was about to do right, but he knew there were no words that could do that. Every person had their own cross to bear. Emma was a slave to Theodora, and perhaps by setting her free this way, he was offering her soul peace.

  He brought his arm up, and the knife glinted in the moonlight. Emma’s lower lip trembled, but that was the only movement he detected from her. The knife came down, but he stopped it just short of her breastbone. She was an innocent. He had been an innocent once. Had he lost that man so entirely?

  Connor started to bring the knife down to his side when the realization of what he was about to do shone in Emma’s eyes. She grabbed his wrist and then shoved her body onto the knife’s edge. Shocked, Connor caught her as she slipped off of the blade and began her slow descent to the ground.

  He laid her gently down on the grass. “Why?”

  “Show me mercy. Show me death,” she whispered. “I do not fear it. Please.”

  Connor didn’t know what else to do. If he left her in that state, he wasn’t sure if her soul would go on or be caught in torment. He brought the knife up, and then he slammed it into her chest where he knew the tip would
meet her heart. A small smile crawled across her face following the trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. Then her eyes emptied of life.

  Connor sat back on his haunches and dropped the knife into the grass. It immediately disappeared. He looked at his hands. They were stained with blood. Although it was only Emma’s blood, in his mind, he knew that it represented every innocent and every guilty person who had ever died at his hands. He was a monster.

  “Connor? You in there? We need to go. They’ve discovered the guards.”

  He could feel the pull of reality. He was needed.

  His only consolation was that he was a monster with a purpose.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  As Angeline floated down from the ether to connect with her body again, it was quickly apparently that she was no longer in the Clan Council chamber. A bloody moon shone brightly in the night sky, but the walls that once held her were now gone. She stood on a beach of rocks. A dark tree line was visible twenty feet across a small riverbed. The most minuscule of streams ran through the rocks and made its way along with nary a care.

  She had no way to be certain, but it looked like the place where she emerged from the portal when she arrived at the Clan. That seemed like ages ago.

  “You have grown up to be so lovely.” The musical voice was familiar.

  Angeline whirled around and spied a face coming toward her from the darkness that she had not seen since she was five years old. Even if she had not recognized the face, the necklace that hung from the woman’s neck confirmed her identify. It was the same necklace Angeline had worn around her neck for years.

  “Mother?”

  A smile lit up her mother’s face. “You remember. That pleases me.”

  “Are you real? What are you doing here?” A million questions stumbled across Angeline’s mind. She felt as if she was in the middle of some kind of out of body experience.