by D. N. Hoxa
When I finally made my way to Kyle, I found him with his earpieces on as he stared at one of the screens, hardly even blinking. It took me a couple of waves for him to jump back in his chair and see me.
“Shit. You scared me,” he mumbled and retrieved his earpieces from where they’d fallen on the floor.
“Did you check the footage?”
Kyle nodded, still breathing fast. “I did. Nothing out of the ordinary,” he said with a shrug.
Cursing under my breath, I slammed my hand on the table and he jumped back again. “Are you sure you watched every second since I walked inside the room?” It never hurt to double-check.
“I did. Twice over. Nothing other than the usual,” he mumbled.
“The usual?”
Kyle shrugged again. “You know.”
“I don’t.”
He looked up at me then. “The usual. Aaron.” He raised his brows as if to ask what the hell was wrong with me.
My breath caught in my throat and walked closer to him. “Aaron was in my room last night.”
Kyle nodded, too many times. “Around three in the morning.”
“Show me,” I said because he was mistaken. I’d asked Aaron, and he said he wasn’t in my room the night before. At all. Kyle must have misunderstood something.
He waved at the screen in front of us just as the view of the hallway that led to my room came to life.
“Did you…” I was going to say check the date, but a grey ribbon on the upper right corner of the screen showed the date and the time. It was the night before.
A second later, I walked down the hallway in a rush. It was weird to see myself on screen, but I’d seen weirder things. Star from last night opened the door to the room and froze in place for exactly seven seconds. That’s when I’d seen the illusion Samayan had created.
“Fast forward,” I told Kyle, and he did so by pressing some keys on his keyboards. The image began to move fast, but it was still slow enough that we could see if someone was there.
No one.
Until the numbers on the grey ribbon said: 2:58:34 am.
Kyle hit play. The image moved at regular speed again. And in my worst nightmare, Aaron’s wide shoulders filled the view as he hurried his steps to my room.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t blink. I just watched Aaron walk inside my room and disappear behind the closed door.
The idea that it wasn’t really him crossed my mind, but the thing was that I would’ve recognized Aaron anywhere in the world, even in the midst of his clones.
So what had happened? Maybe he’d forgotten that he was there? Maybe he’d hit his head somewhere and his memory was wiped?
But it didn’t look like it when two and a half minutes later, he stepped out of my room and ran all the way down the hallway, and out of the picture.
My legs shook. The quality of the image wasn’t clear enough so I couldn’t exactly see the expression on his face. What the hell had he been thinking? Had he lied to me on purpose?
“Star?” Kyle said and brought me back to his office.
“Delete this and don’t talk about it to anyone. Ever.” The words slurred out of my lips in a rush. “Got it? Not ever.”
Kyle’s brows narrowed for a second, but he must’ve seen something on my face because he nodded and immediately turned to the screen again.
I needed a second. The chairs were too far away so I just hopped on Kyle’s table instead. The computer screens nearly fell off, but Kyle didn’t seem to mind. The room was spinning too fast for me to stand up again, so I stayed put and just reminded myself to breathe.
Oh, God. Aaron had lied to me.
And that wasn’t even the worst part.
Was this why he’d been so uncomfortable that morning? Why he was sweating like a pig and slurring his words? Because he was the one who stole Illyon from me?
He was the only one who knew aside from Samayan. He was the only one who knew that Illyon was a necklace.
“It’s done,” Kyle said. “Deleted from all servers.”
I wanted to say thank you, but when I opened my mouth, all that wanted to come out was a cry. My eyes were filled with tears, too. I felt weak, even weaker than when I realized how bad my connection to the elements was that morning. I felt betrayed.
And I felt guilty, too.
How was I so willing to believe that Aaron had lied to me when he’d been nothing but kind and supportive of me? He’d taken a chance on me when nobody else would. He was the first one to believe that I’d changed, that I was no longer the Raven when the rest of the world settled for hating my guts. The least he deserved was the benefit of a doubt. There had to be an explanation to all of this. He had a reason for lying. I’d lied to him before, too. I had strong reasons, and he probably did, too.
What I needed to do was talk to him. Ask him what the problem was. Ask him to explain. That’s all I needed to do: just talk it out with him. We were good at talking, Aaron and I. We were the best, in fact.
I jumped to my feet, and the desk’s legs wobbled again. No need to panic or to jump to conclusions. Just talk. Communication. It was the key to every relationship. Until then…
“I need your help with something else, Kyle. Both yours and Sam’s. Can you write some things down?”
***
I walked out of the office and hurried down to Aaron’s. I was going to meet him and Frosty before we took off. He should’ve been done with both the arrangements and Eleanor by now. When I got there, the two men were already walking out.
An invisible hand squeezed my lungs at the sight of Aaron’s face. All I needed to do was just swallow hard and talk it out. Breathe. Swallow hard. Talk it out. Easy.
“Are we ready?” Frosty said, his face full of color now. He’d obviously had his blood.
“I just need a second to talk to Aaron,” Without another look at either of them, I walked into the office again.
Breathe. Swallow hard. Talk it out.
“What’s up?” Aaron said when he closed the door behind him.
I turned to face him, the words at the tip of my tongue.
“I want to talk to you about something,” I said, my voice shaking. God, why was this so hard?
“Okay,” he said, a half smile on his face as he crossed his arms in front of his chest.
Okay. I could do this. Talking to Aaron was the easiest thing in the world to do. He would understand. He would probably be sorry he forgot. He was the man I loved, the man I trusted the most in the world. He would never betray me, just like I would never betray him. All I had to do was ask.
A deep breath later, I spoke. “I wanted to ask you something and I don’t…I don’t…” Holy hell, how hard this was. I was second away from pulling my own fingers off from nervousness.
“Hey, relax. Whatever it is, just ask me. Go ahead,” Aaron said.
I wished for a second he’d wrap his arms around me and hug me, just so I could get my thoughts into order and figure out where to go from there. I wished he would kiss me, tell me he loved me, and that I could still trust him like always.
But he didn’t.
“I need to ask you to stay behind for this one. We can’t leave the Base unsupervised for a day. Remember what happened last time?”
Call me a coward. I felt worse. I was going to loathe myself by the end of this conversation, too, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Part of it was the pain and part of it was guilt. I needed some time to think this through. Or rather not think this through, busy my mind with other issues, and then come back to it when the pain and the anger and the frustration settled down.
“Are you sure this is a good idea? Eleanor vouched for Frosty, but he’s still a stranger.” Aaron’s blue eyes were wide and filled with concern. For a strange reason, that made me want to cry all over again.
“Yes, I’m sure. You believe him. Eleanor does, too. A day will be gone in a blink of an eye, and tomorrow we’ll have the names of whoever stole Illyon from me.” Even
I hated how sure I sounded, how sincere. But I doubted Aaron could feel my insecurity over the other feelings reigning in my chest.
“I hate that you feel like this,” he said. “We’ll find the book, Star. You can’t lose hope right now.”
“I know. I won’t. But I should get going.” Having him believe that my feelings were solely because of Illyon was exactly the break I needed. I didn’t think I could handle his questioning right now without cracking.
With a nod, I turned to the door, more ready than ever to get out of the base and get some fresh air.
“Don’t you want to give me a kiss?” Aaron asked before I’d opened the door. It was like a slap to my face
“I do.” When I turned, he was already there, framing my face with his warm hands, planting a slow, tender kiss on my dry lips. Holding out from crying in those seconds as I held onto his wrists like they were life itself was harder than I ever thought possible. And as soon as the kiss ended, I was out the door and practically running down the hallway with Frosty right behind me.
Chapter
The chopper ride to the city consisted of me looking out one window and Frosty out the other. We were both wrapped up in our own thoughts, unwilling to say even a single word for long minutes. My head threatened to explode every few seconds and every time either the war, Illyon, or Aaron came to my mind. Hard to get a grip on your thoughts when the emotions seemed to control every breath you took.
I’d left Kyle with the little information Frosty had given me. Thirty missing female vampires from an independent coven in New York. Why? Anybody’s guess. I’d told him to send word to Sam, too. To ask him to look into this as a personal favor. If we had no leads by nightfall, I was going to have to give Arsenal a call. That was something I wasn’t too eager to do. I’d rather he focused only on finding Samayan’s hideout.
I also had Kyle tell Ella that I was leaving. I didn’t find her in her room, and I had no time to search. Seeing her might have calmed me down, at least a bit, but the day didn’t look like it had even begun for me yet.
“There might be some reactions to seeing you in our coven,” Frosty said after what felt like hours.
I smiled bitterly because I expected nothing less from people. I’d made my place and I was proud of it once upon a time. Now, I had to suffer the consequences.
“Why Frosty?” I asked.
It apparently caught him by surprise.
“Was almost frozen to death when Eleanor turned me. The cold had somehow wiped my memory. I don’t remember who I was before, so I don’t know what my name was. Frosty kind of stuck with me,” he said without hesitation.
“Tell me more about how your coven works.” The sooner I began to busy my mind with other things, the better I was going to feel and the more I was going to be able to focus. I wanted to help this guy, but I doubted twenty-four hours were going to be enough. Still, I was going to give him my best. And when all this was over, I was going to hunt down the people who stole Illyon from me, and hopefully, get it back before the time came to face Samayan.
“We work as well as any other community. No master. We choose our leaders ourselves,” Frosty said and it was obvious that he was proud of this.
“A democracy,” I said, nodding. Never knew how that could work with supernatural beings.
“More or less. We keep out of trouble. It’s forbidden to kill each other or humans. We take what we need from the willing and leave the rest alone. We like to live a good life. Have fun. Be free. You know the drill.”
“How long has that worked out for you?” I was extremely curious. No other supernatural community had been able to live like this, to my knowledge, assuming what Frosty was saying was true.
“Almost a century now.”
“A century? I thought it was you who won those vampires their independence. And you do refer to them as your own.” That wasn’t something you could miss.
“Well, I’ve been elected leader for the seventh time in a row now, so, yes, I refer to them as mine because it’s my job—a leader’s job to protect his people.”
“Good for you, Frosty. Good for you.” I could only wish that every other supernatural community would come to the point of working that way—keeping out of trouble, away from humans, peaceful. Happy.
But as long as people like Samayan and even the Elders were out there, that world was never going to become reality.
“Samayan took your vampires,” I said reluctantly.
Frosty was surprised but not entirely. “We don’t know that for sure. I’ve got friends in the Council. They’ve assured me—”
“I didn’t say the Council. I said Samayan. And the people you spoke to, they either have no clue, or they’re just pretending to be your friends. Trust me on this. He has them.” The look on Samayan’s face had been more than enough of confirmation.
“How do you know?” The vampire’s brows were narrowed, his eyes wide with suspicion.
Let’s see. How could I tell him that I had chats with the Master of the Council in my room that turned into a mirror and glass nest and reflected Samayan’s face like it was right there in front of me?
I couldn’t.
“I just do. I never agreed to share my sources with you, did I?”
Frosty thought about it for a second. “You expect me to just trust you.”
Trust was definitely too much to ask of a stranger, especially by someone like me. I’d switched sides once. Why would anybody trust me?
“No, not trust. I expect you to listen to me. I’m not going to lie to you. I’ll tell it to you exactly how it is. I haven’t been at this as long as you, but I’m good at my job. Isn’t that why you came to me in the first place?”
He gave me a tight-lipped smile and nodded. “Listen.” The word didn’t seem like it sounded sweet on his tongue, but he didn’t argue. “All right, Star. I’ll listen to you if you say Master Samayan has my vampires. Any ideas why?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out in the next twenty-four hours.”
***
The city of Manhattan buzzed with life. The grey skies were the perfect background to the many and colorful advertisements everywhere I looked. I had to shut down my senses because I had no doubt that the streets were crawling with supernaturals, and I needed my focus intact.
I walked down the street since Dirty Red was only a couple blocks away. According to Frosty, who took a different route to the place just in case the sun came out, it wasn’t exactly a neighborhood. Just a bunch of alleys intertwined together by magic, with lots of bars and open spaces to throw, and I quote, the meanest parties in the city. The name sounded intriguing, and when we finally made it to the dark red sign with bright red letters on it, I realized the place was pretty impressive itself.
Small buildings, only a couple stories tall, shared a sidewalk that somehow seemed to separate them from the rest of the city, though they were right there. Lights of red and yellow graced the window frames of the first floors of each of the four buildings, and the alleys—not as narrow as your usual ones—had all perfectly set asphalt, no dumpsters, and lots of colorful tables and chairs. At the end of each alley, there were bars, filled with lights and drinks and strange-looking glasses. On all four corners, mounted on the walls of the buildings, were large speakers almost the size of a person.
There were people scattered around, all of them human since the sun was playing its game and throwing rays here and there, almost sneakily. I had no doubt that vampires filled the insides of those buildings.
I was to meet Frosty in the second building. He said to just enter the blue door right by the bar. I hadn’t realized what he’d meant by bar then, but this was one of the most interesting and impressive places I’d ever seen in my life. It was also filled with magic, the air thick with it. Who knew how many spells had to be cast upon that place to deceive the human eye? Nevertheless, it was a job damn well done.
People raised their brows at me as I made my way down the hallway to the
second bar, an exact replica of the first. The other one was probably the same, too. The blue door was pretty big and blue, so I caught sight of it immediately.
Nobody stopped me when I pulled it open, which could only mean that the few people there were used to seeing weird-looking people with knives and swords on their backs, walking in and out of the place. Good for me. I didn’t have the patience to deal with anyone else.
The inside wasn’t at all what I expected. No strange bars or colorful chairs and tables; it was just a plain old restaurant filled with vampires.
Vampires that stopped speaking and turned their eyes on me.
Not that I was afraid. I had two guns filled with silver bullets and my katanas, too. In fact, as some of the sets of eyes glaring at me began to turn silver and fangs began to elongate, adrenaline caught hold of me before I could blink. As disturbing as it was, I did miss my missions. I missed catching bad guys and going in all by myself against a dozen or more people. If these vampires wanted to fight, they were going to make my day.
“You made it.”
All eyes turned to the back of the room, where Frosty sat on the wooden bar, a glass filled with blood in his hands. He grinned a pretty grin and raised his glass to me. As if their strings had been pulled, all the other vampires began to relax in their places, and they no longer looked at me like I was their favorite food. Dang it.
I made my way to Frosty slowly, hands ready to reach for my weapons, my mind already planning the best way to kill all those vampires if they decided to attack me. Nobody did, but I felt some eyes on the back of my head and it took a lot of willpower not to turn.
“The air stinks with magic round here. How do you manage?”
I laid one of my guns on the bar. All of the vampires in there could smell the silver inside. So could Frosty. He eyed my 44 with a slight flinch, but he didn’t comment. Nobody was going to take away my right to announce to the world—and my audience—that I was ready and willing and, most importantly, prepared for a fight should the occasion arise.
