Both his eyebrows rose in genuine surprise. “Capture of Alec? Dare I assume you mean a Dark One?”
“Don’t try to be coy,” I said sternly, leveling my best glare at him while keeping a firm grip on Kristoff’s arm. He was as tense as a panther about to leap. “We know you know who Alec is, and we also know you captured him a few minutes ago. I’m sure, if you put your mind to it, you can figure out how-”
He stopped me with a slightly raised hand, his lips curling in a sickly approximation of amusement. “My dear Pia, I haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re talking about.”
“You . . . er . . . don’t?” I looked at Kristoff. Is he bullshitting us?
I don’t think so. Kristoff’s gaze was unwavering and intent on Frederic. A lesser man would have backed up a step, but Frederic simply maintained an expression of mild interest.
“You knew we were coming, though,” Kristoff said, relaxing just a smidgen.
“Yes, of course. We were told you would be arriving to kill us.”
“We’re not here to kill you,” I said, attempting to figure out whether he was trying to pull something over on us.
He looked just as surprised as I felt, his demeanor cracking for one second as he glanced to the side.
Kristoff pushed past him into the room. It was a standard conference room, although the long table in the center had inlaid marquetry that I wished I had time to admire. Two men and a woman stood grouped at the far end, none of them shrieking threats, performing a chant to initiate one of their ghastly ceremonies, or doing anything, really, other than looking somewhat scared and nervous.
I looked at them for a few moments, then back at Frederic. He looked even more nervous than they did. Something did not add up.
“All right, where are all the high-powered reapers?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips.
Frederic backed into the room when Andreas walked toward him. He waved at the group of three. “This is the governing board. Rather than let you kill innocent members, we opted to clear the building and meet you here, face-to-face, in a fervent hope that we might reason with you. In fact, I think it would be best for all of us if I might have a word alone with you. . . .”
“Oh, no, I am not so naive as to fall for that old trick,” I said with a knowing look.
He glanced at the governors, and again I was struck by how nervous he was. “I feel there may be some discussions that are more suited to a private situation.”
Does he seriously think he’s getting me alone?
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was frightened of you.
Of me? That’s silly. I’m no threat to him.
Not as such, perhaps, but I wonder if your theory about him could be correct after all. If he was withholding information from the board of governors, he might fear you would tell them the truth.
About him shooting Denise? A light dawned in the murky depths of my brain. You are the most brilliant man ever. Of course! Rick and Janice said he told everyone a vampire shot Denise. He’s afraid I’m going to spill on him and tell everyone about his plan to get rid of Denise by having her first kill Anniki, then killing her before she tattled. Oh, this is sweet. And here I was thinking he was the big bad boss, and it turned out to be us all along. Ha! Justice at last!
Frederic had been making not very subtle attempts to get me out of the room while Kristoff and I were talking. I let him wind down before saying firmly, “I appreciate the offer of privacy, but right here is fine with me. And for the record, we are more than reasonable. It’s you people who seem to be at the other end.”
I was still suspicious of some sort of trick. But try as I might, I could detect no secret passage through which a Brotherhood army might flow, or axes that might come flinging from the ceiling to chop us to bits, or even the sound of venomous snakes that might be released under the table, trained to attack vampires.
There was just nothing but the three of us, the four of them, and silence.
“The Brotherhood is never unreasonable,” one of the male governors said. “We follow a strict canon of behavior.”
I made a little face at him that had him licking his lips nervously. “You kill vampires.”
“Well, yes,” he admitted, taking a step back as he glanced at the vamps present. “But we do so according to the strictest rules.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” Andreas said, scowling at them.
“You kill us, too,” the lone woman in the group piped up. The governor next to her tried to hush her up. “Well, they do,” she told him before turning back to glare at Andreas.
“Only in self-defense,” he answered.
“You tried to kill Kristoff and Alec,” I said, pointing at Frederic.
“Of course I did. It’s what we do. We’re the Brotherhood of the Blessed Light,” he said, just as if that explained things. “I really believe this discussion would be best held in my office-”
I rubbed my forehead where a headache was starting to form. “This is getting us nowhere. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Who told you we were coming?”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” a voice said from behind us. We swung around. It was Alec. He stood with a sword in each hand and a smile on his handsome face. He made a little salute with one of the swords, bowing toward us. “I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time.”
CHAPTER 16
Kristoff roared in anger, throwing himself toward Alec.
No slouch on the reaction front, Alec spun around and was out the door, Kristoff in hot pursuit.
“Stay here,” I told the others, dashing after him.
Andreas tried to push me aside, but I slapped at his hands, grabbing his wrists and yanking him to a stop. “You have to stay with Frederic and the gang,” I told him.
His scowl was familiar, if not identical to Kristoff’s. “You stay.”
“That’s the man I love out there!” I said, jerking him back.
“He’s my brother!” He grabbed me around the waist, plopping me down in a chair before running for the door.
“Love takes precedence over blood,” I said, tossing up a wall of light in front of him, keeping him from leaving the room.
His glare as I ran through the light should have dropped me dead on the spot, but I simply repeated, “Stay with Frederic!” as I ran off.
Kristoff and Alec were no longer in sight as I raced down the hallway, Andreas’s frustrated curses following me. A door opened as I passed it, Rowan’s eyes visible as he peeked out before fully opening the door.
“Pia? What’s going on?” Magda asked as they emerged from the room. Raymond was clutching his camera in one hand, the Taser in the other. Rowan glanced up and down the hall, doing a double take at Andreas trapped behind a wall of shimmering, glittering silver light.
“Alec is here. He’s betrayed us! Kristoff is after him. Reapers in the room back there with ghosts. No time to talk.” I threw myself forward, slamming right into Mattias, who had evidently come back from escorting the other Zorya out.
“Pia-pooh!” he burbled happily, rubbing his mouth where my forehead had smacked into it. “Smooch?”
“Get out of my way, you giant Viking,” I said, disentangling myself from him in order to run around the corner. I hesitated for a second, unsure which way to go. I was in a reception area, a flight of stairs on my left, while the space to my right was taken up with an empty curved desk, and the typical setup of chairs and small occasional tables bearing what looked like informational pamphlets. Across the wall on the far side of the room was a banner that proclaimed, THE BROTHERHOOD AND YOU! FIVE SIGNS THAT YOU MIGHT BE HAUNTED.
“Wait for us; we’re coming, too,” Magda said as I hurried up the stairs.
“You need me. I go with you,” Mattias told me.
“No! Stay with the reapers, all of you! They could be up to something, and Andreas is alone with them!”
Rowan, who had been about to follow, nodded and disappeared back into the hallwa
y. Magda and Raymond continued on, determined looks on their faces.
“We’re your posse,” Magda declared as we reached the top. I was a bit breathless, but didn’t pause, just charged down the corridor that resembled the one behind us. “You need us.”
“My dear, really, posse?” Raymond asked somewhat wheezily as I opened door after door, searching for the man whose life was woven into mine. “You don’t think that’s a bit dated?”
“I love you!” declared Mattias as he followed them. “I want to be your posse, too!”
“Do you have a better word for it?” Magda asked Raymond somewhat snappishly.
“Well . . . associates.”
“Dammit, Kristoff, where are you?” I muttered, flinging open the door next to me, giving the room a quick once-over, and running to the next one. “Don’t do this to me!”
“I love Kristoff, too.”
“Compatriots,” Raymond suggested.
“That’s just being pedantic,” Magda told him, following me. “‘Compatriot’ is much more dated than ‘posse.’”
“Supporters, then,” he offered.
“We’re her friends, not garter belts!”
The last door opened to reveal an empty room. I stepped inside it, looking around in bewilderment, defeat bowing my shoulders before I realized what that meant.
“Roof!” I shouted, shoving Mattias and Magda out of the way as they both tried to come into the room at the same time.
“Good God, a rooftop fight? I hope I have enough film left for this,” Raymond muttered as we ran en group up the last flight of stairs.
The sunlight was blinding when we emerged from the relative dimness of the offices, the heat already kicking into high gear. The roof held a tiny little garden on one side, with all the big cooling units and communication equipment on the other side. In the center of the small swath of green grass, two men lunged at each other, both clad in coats and hats, the blades of their swords flashing silver in the sun.
“Kristoff!” I yelled, shoving aside a lawn chair as I dashed forward.
“Stay back, Beloved,” he yelled, glancing over his shoulder at me.
Alec lunged, his blade coming away dulled and wet.
“Watch out!” I bellowed, picking up the chair with the intention of throwing it at Alec.
“Perhaps I should be fighting Pia rather than you,” Alec taunted him. I threw the chair, but he moved aside easily.
Kristoff snarled an invective that had Alec laughing.
“Then you would know what it’s like to watch your Beloved die before your eyes.”
“You what ?” I asked, setting down the second chair I had just hefted.
Alec laughed again, dancing around Kristoff, his blade moving so fast it was just a blur. I had no idea how Kristoff parried those jabs, but he did, moving as easily as if he’d been born to it.
“Let’s jump him,” Magda said, prodding Raymond forward a couple of steps. “You have the Taser. Go zap Alec.”
“Haven’t told her yet, have you?” Alec asked Kristoff.
“Told me that you made him a vampire? Oh, yes, he told me that,” I said, anger causing the light to gather in my palms.
Raymond watched the intricate dance as the two men fought, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t dare. They’re moving too fast.”
I agreed. And they were moving fast, inhumanly fast, their faces and hands turning red as they fought. I released the light, shaking my hands free of it, looking around for something else I could use to disarm Alec.
“You’d think vampires would have had the sense to fight somewhere they couldn’t get sunburned,” I said, eyeing a large potted plant.
“Ray, do something!” Magda demanded. “Posses don’t just stand around watching!”
“Er . . .” Ray pulled his camera out of his pocket and took a picture.
“Oh, for the love of all that is right and holy . . .” Magda snatched his camera away.
“He didn’t tell you how he killed my Beloved? How he watched her die slowly, her flesh melting off her body? He didn’t tell you how I almost died that night, too?” Alec called.
My eyes widened as I looked at Kristoff. You killed Alec’s Beloved?
No.
Then why-
My wife did. I told you she killed the mate of a Dark One.
You didn’t tell me she was Alec’s Beloved!
I didn’t know until you showed me that damned reaper journal.
“I thought you said vamps couldn’t live without their Beloveds,” Magda said as Raymond pestered her for his camera back.
“They can’t,” Alec yelled, leaping aside as Kristoff lunged forward, simultaneously throwing a metal bench at him. Alec jumped back, then immediately started an attack on the other side.
I realized at that moment what Kristoff was doing. He was keeping himself between Alec and me. My heart warmed with love for him. He wasn’t just keeping me alive for his own sake, but because he truly did have gentler emotions for me. They wouldn’t ever be what he had for his late girlfriend, but I had at last resigned myself to being happy with what he could give me.
“How did you survive, then?” I asked, sending Kristoff wave after wave of love.
He glanced back at me for a split second, startled. I blew him a kiss. Mattias, next to me, blew him one as well.
“We weren’t yet Joined. I had just met Eleanor when she ran into the Zorya.”
The word echoed with a horrible reverberation in my head.
Kristoff stumbled.
“A Zorya?” Magda asked, just as astounded as I was. “Uh-oh.”
“No!” I screamed, throwing myself forward as Alec, taking advantage of the misstep, kicked Kristoff’s other leg out and was instantly upon him, the sword held at Kristoff’s heart. “Nooo!”
Alec looked up from Kristoff, his green eyes like those of a cat, relish evident in them as he panted, his face and hands blistered. “Why shouldn’t I kill him, Pia?”
“Because I love him,” I said simply.
He hesitated, his eyes searching my face. Tears spilled over my eyelashes as I looked at Kristoff, his skin blistering as well, his gaze steadfast on mine.
Alec shook his head, his fingers tightening around the hilt of the sword. “Not good enough.”
“Then . . . because I can do this.” I pulled as hard as I could on the power of the moon, pulling from it the silvery cool light that filled me with a calm sense of rightness, slamming it into Alec’s chest.
He flew backward into a storage bench, knocking it over, his arms and legs tangling up in the chair cushions that spilled out from inside it.
Kristoff reached for the sword Alec had knocked out of his grip, stalking over to where the man who had once been his friend lay inert in a small stream of blood seeping from a cut on his head.
I joined Kristoff. We both stood and watched Alec for a moment.
“You didn’t kill him,” Kristoff said.
“No. There was only enough power in that ball of light to knock him backward and maybe singe off a little chest hair. Your wife was a Zorya?”
Pain washed through him. Pain and guilt and something that, for a moment, reminded me of fear. “Yes.”
“Which means, unless things have changed over the centuries, that you were a sacristan.”
Kristoff turned to me, his eyes robin’s-egg blue. “I did not know the woman was his Beloved.”
I touched his mind with mine. He was reluctant to allow the intimacy, but I was insistent, and he finally let me in. The dark, stained part of his mind that I thought was due to his plans with the vampires was now lit brightly.
You thought I would hate you if I knew you were once a reaper, too?
You did not wish to be Zorya anymore.
So?
You have to be married to a sacristan to be Zorya. I could not risk giving you up. And I knew that once you were aware of what I had been, how it was my wife who had started the reapers on their path of murder, you would not wish t
o remain with me.
I stared at him in growing disbelief. Do you seriously believe that I would dump you because of something you were a couple of hundred years ago?
Other women have when they found out.
Other women like Angelica?
He turned away from me, prodding Alec with his shoe.
“Show’s over, I guess,” Magda said softly. “Why don’t we go inside and give them a bit of privacy?”
“Probably best,” Raymond said, fussing over the camera that Magda had handed back to him. “Oh, now look what you did. You had it set completely wrong for this amount of sun. . . .”
“Come on, Mattias. Mattias . Honey, we need to have a talk about Pia. Why don’t you come with Ray and me, and I’ll tell you how things stand.”
The others left. I grabbed Kristoff’s arm and made him turn around to me. “I know you don’t want to talk about her. And I promise I will never bring up her name after this, but please, Kristoff, answer me. Did the woman you loved above all others shun you because she found out about your origins?”
His eyes narrowed. “The woman I loved above all others?”
“Angelica. Your girlfriend. The one the reapers killed,” I said, in case I’d gotten her name wrong.
“I loved her, but I didn’t love her above all other women,” he said. “And yes, we were tracing some reapers when somehow she stumbled across information about my past. She was repulsed by what I had been, and ran away from me. It was then that the reapers caught her.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, waggling a finger at him. “You were mourning her when I first met you.”
“No, I wasn’t,” he said, stroking his chin.
“But . . . you had sworn eternal vengeance or something like that. Alec told me.”
He gave a little shrug. “I had sworn to avenge her death, yes. As well as find out who had given her the information about me that sent her fleeing to that death.”
“Still haven’t figured it out?”
We both looked down to the source of the question, Kristoff immediately putting the sword tip to Alec’s neck.
Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang do-7 Page 25
