by Ava Benton
I should pull away. I should push him away. I should run in the opposite direction, away from something this powerful.
And then, just as quickly, something within me pushed that thought aside.
My throat grew dry with anticipation for his kiss. I licked my lips, but couldn’t moisten them.
What is he waiting for?
“What?” I whispered.
“What do you want?” His voice was a low, husky growl.
“I… I…” I couldn’t tell him what I wanted. I shook my head slightly.
“Can’t tell me? Can’t say it?” That low throaty voice of his again. His breath teasing. “Then show me,” he demanded in that same seductive tone that made me melt inside.
I leaned in closer, my body against his as I brushed my lips to his.
He groaned.
My arms wrapped around his neck. I tasted his mouth, caressed his lips with my tongue while he remained still, icy blue eyes locked with mine.
His tongue captured mine, tempting, teasing, demanding, claiming. He licked my bottom lip, then took it between his teeth and sucked, then bit down, sucking and biting intermittently while I ached for him, jolts of desire making my body clench and unclench, wrenching a whimper from my lips.
Elias pulsed through my blood as surely as my feelings for him pulsed through my heart.
With a final kiss, he raised his head, his eyes locked on mine.
“I needed to know.”
I exhaled slowly.
“It’ll be dawn soon,” he murmured as he looked out the window. “And we have to get out to Atlantic City.”
“I know. I can’t imagine what we’ll find there.”
The magic of the last few minutes was gone. I had never gone through an entire range of such extreme emotion in such a short time.
I could still almost feel his lips on mine—my body quivered and pulsed with desire for him—but my mood had already gone dark. “Is it wrong? What we feel?”
He turned to me with one eyebrow raised, and my heart skipped a beat.
With the early-morning light on his face, he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
“Isn’t it a little late for second thoughts?”
I shook my head. “Not what we feel, but that it’s now, while Vanessa is still out there, with Kristoff. It feels disloyal.”
He came back to me and sat down, then pulled me into his embrace.
I closed my eyes and let myself sink into it.
“You’ve been nothing but loyal your entire life,” he murmured. “I saw you exhaust yourself to the point of unconsciousness to help me question those two last night. You put yourself in jeopardy for her. You’ve done nothing but sacrifice for years.” He pulled back, brushing my hair away from my face with a rueful smile on his. “The timing is what it is. I’ll grant you that. But if it wasn’t for this madness, I wouldn’t have discovered who you are.”
“What about the rules of The Fold? What would they think about this?” I closed my eyes as he kissed my forehead, my cheeks, the tip of my nose.
“We don’t have to think about that right now,” he reminded me in a soft, seductive murmur.
“But we do.” I pulled away with a groan. “Please. You don’t know how much I’ve wanted this to happen. It’s like something out of a dream—the best dream I ever had. I don’t want to break it up. But my heart is too heavy. When this is over, when we find my sister, what happens? Realistically.”
He sighed. “Realistically. This could only go one of two ways. Either we find your sister alive and unharmed, and life goes on the way it was before, with me living as I do and you living as you do.”
“Or?” I asked with a sinking heart.
He stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers. “Or, it’s already too late by the time we find her. Then, I go back to The Fold and another High Sorceress wakes me up in a hundred years, once your sister’s blood has fully left my system.”
Tears filled my eyes.
I would be alive still then, if luck was on my side. But I would be old—too old? He would still be young, handsome, vital. And imprinted on another witch. Not me. Never me.
“It all seems so pointless,” I choked out.
He took my hands in his. “Maybe this is all there is, then. Right now. We’re not human—we don’t get the happily ever after, fairy tale ending. We take what we can, while we can, and right now I want you. I don’t want to waste a minute of this time together.”
And so I gave in to his kiss because there was no way to argue with that logic.
And I didn’t want to.
I wanted him for as long as I could have him, because I might have to live on the memories for another hundred years.
13
Elias
I shook my head in disbelief. “This is all so different. I can’t stop noticing all the differences. All the concrete, all the boxy buildings where there used to be farms.”
Mariya snorted from her seat behind the wheel of the car. “I can’t imagine. It’s one thing to live through a lot of changes, but going to sleep with the world looking one way and waking up to something so different must be tough to process.”
“Tough? It’s damn near impossible. When I first saw the jet plane that would take us from the cells back to New York, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe any of it.”
“I was wondering about that at the time. As we left The Fold. Well, first, I worried about the Ra Protection. Whether the spell worked. If you would be all right in the sunlight.”
I looked down at my hands, where the sunlight beat down on them through the car windows. “It’s still holding up,” I murmured.
“That’s a relief. I had worried about that—when the blood lust took you, I mean. Not being close to Vanessa, the spell’s power lessening. I hoped that wouldn’t be the case with every spell she cast that day.”
“It doesn’t seem to be.”
The sun didn’t affect me any more than it normally would. I felt a tingling sensation, but it was almost pleasant. Nothing like what would normally happen to a vampire in the sun.
I had watched one of my brethren suffer the agony of burning to death—screaming, shrieking, begging for help while his skin bubbled in seething blisters before turning black and flaking off, revealing the flesh beneath. Just that one incident was enough to make me a believer in the power of the Ra Protection spell used by the witches after our kind were signed into their service. It was even named after the ancient Egyptian sun god. I wondered if it had been around since those times.
The car was comfortable, though still not as flashy or luxurious as the car Vanessa used.
And Mariya drove herself. Just another difference.
I ran my hand over the leather seat. “Why do you drive yourself when none of the other members of your coven do?”
She raised a brow. “You’re familiar with the rest of the coven?”
“I’ve been to enough coven gatherings to know what I know. I’ve seen other members arriving in their cars, always driven by others in their service.”
She shrugged. “I’ve never enjoyed that. Being doted on. I would rather take care of myself.”
“Is that why you spend so much of your time in the city?”
Her fingers tapped along the outside of the steering wheel while her teeth dug into her bottom lip. “Most people live in the city and take their weekends or free time out in the country. I do the opposite. The city is where I go to clear my head and think rationally. I wish I could explain the feeling.”
“Of not fitting into the life those like you are living?”
“Something like that. Yes. Vanessa is the same—one of the few ways in which we think alike,” she chuckled. “She doesn’t believe in going with the flow for the sake of pleasing others. She wanted to live in the city full-time even after the coven named her High Sorceress, and you can just imagine how my mother reacted to that.”
I chuckled humorlessly. “Yes. I can.”
“But Vanessa got her way, like she always does.” Her hands tightened on the wheel. “I hope we’re in time to help her.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I don’t think Ra Protection would be working if she were… you know.” I didn’t want to say the word.
I had never shied away from talking about death before. I had murdered two men the night before. But even implying that her sister might die was uncomfortable. That was what opening myself up to feeling something for her did to me.
“That’s true.” She glanced at me with a quick smile before turning her attention back to the road. “Thank you for that reminder.”
We were silent for a while, but that didn’t mean my mind wasn’t racing in all directions at once. I hoped I had everything I would need to face whatever we were going up against. Kristoff had probably learned a few tricks in the last century, while I was in stasis.
“Did anything happen while I was in stasis—before Vanessa woke me—that might be attributed to Kristoff? Anything suspicious? Disappearances, strange phenomena?”
She shook her head. “Nothing that I’m aware of.”
As if on cue, her phone rang—since it was connected somehow to the car’s computer system, the sound filled the closed car.
There was a small screen between us which flashed the word “Mother.” Technology was a miraculous thing.
Mariya touched the screen to answer. “Hello?”
“Mariya.” Cressida’s voice crackled with anxiety. “You can’t let this much time pass without at least keeping me updated on what you’re doing.”
Mariya rolled her eyes, but also blushed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Everything is all right.”
Cressida let out a barking laugh. “All right? I’ll believe that when I have both of my daughters back in one piece.”
“All right as far as it can be at the moment,” Mariya amended. Frustration knit her eyebrows together. “You know what I mean. We’re on our way to where we believe Kristoff is currently in hiding.”
“What?”
I winced at Cressida’s piercing shriek.
“Mother, please. You’re on speaker phone, and I’m in the car.”
“I don’t care where you are! Is Elias with you?”
“Of course,” I said.
“How could you let her do anything this dangerous?”
“Mother, he’s not letting me do anything,” Mariya reminded her, sounding testy.
The energy in the car changed. The air almost crackled.
Vanessa reacted that way sometimes when she reached the end of her patience—though it seemed to take Mariya much longer to reach that point.
I had witnessed Vanessa filling a room with lightning when she didn’t get her way, standing in the center as bolts ran through her and danced along the walls and ceiling.
“He should know better.”
“He is sitting right here in the car with me, and I don’t appreciate you talking about him like he isn’t. I don’t appreciate you talking to me this way at all. I’m an adult, and I’m going to bring the High Sorceress home with Elias’s help. Or, he’ll do it with my help, more likely.” She smirked, looking over at me.
Cressida fell silent for a moment.
All we could hear was her breathing into the phone.
Her voice was softer when she said, “I couldn’t bear it if I lost both of you. I wish you would tell me where you’re going—we could all meet you there. The entire coven. There’s no way Kristoff could defeat all of us.”
I touched Mariya’s leg to signal quiet. “With all due respect, guarding Vanessa is my duty. I would be doing this on my own if your daughter hadn’t insisted on looking for her along with me. At the time, I had no idea how dangerous the situation was. If I had, I wouldn’t have allowed it. I would much rather do this on my own, as it should be.”
Cressida sighed. “Just because your kind has been conscripted to guard us doesn’t mean you have to take outrageous risks.”
That was as kind as she would ever be toward me, I could tell.
“Even so, asking the rest of the coven to join us would be terribly foolish. I believe we can get Vanessa out of there. Between her and Mariya, I have two powerful witches on my side.”
“Any assistance you can send from where you are would help, Mother,” Mariya reminded her. “Any spells the coven could cast to protect us.”
“I’ll do that,” she said, and she sounded much more like herself, in command of the situation. Cressida needed to feel needed.
When the call ended, Mariya asked, “Why do you do what you do? When my mother mentioned your being conscripted to this life, I realized that I had never asked.”
“Not once? Ever? Even though your mother…”
“Yes, even though my mother had a Nightwarden of her own,” she said with a sad smile. “Isn’t it funny, the things you take for granted when they’ve always been the way things are? I never thought to ask why. I even watched the ritual from outside your cell, but I never thought to ask why it had to be someone in The Fold, specifically.”
“It happened around the time I was first turned, more than...” I exhaled. “More than a few hundred years ago,” I explained.
“In Serbia?”
“What’s now known as Serbia, yes. Life was different for those of my kind back then. We were the hunters, the beasts who only roamed by night. Looked on as little more than animals. At the time, there was nothing more than faint civility between us and the covens who resided in the forests and mountains. We stayed out of each other’s way, for the most part.”
“Except for the leader of my clan—if you could call it a clan. Our sire. He created us, protected us. And he made a big mistake one night while out hunting.”
“What?” She was completely enthralled with my story.
I could hear it in how breathless she was.
“He killed the daughter of a High Sorceress.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. It was a grim time,” I said, shaking my head at the memory. “The sorceress was ready to kill all of us in retaliation. The only thing that stopped her was an idea to keep herself safe, and any High Sorceresses who came after her. The vampires our sire had created were to serve as Nightwardens for one thousand years.”
“That long?” she gasped. “What if you refused?”
“She would kill our sire, who she imprisoned. When he dies, we die. We’re all connected. It’s some sort of spell.”
“The original coven came to America and split off into two. That much I know,” she said.
“Right. But since those covens both originated from the first, we have to serve both. And any other that are spawned or split off from the original.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I ever really understood until now that you’re—“ she paused, then cleared her throat. “You’re more or less a slave.”
“That’s a very strong word,” I muttered, though I had used it myself many times.
“It’s true.”
“This is the way things have to be for a few centuries more. There’s nothing we can do about it. And I’m hopeful she keeps her word and we only have to spend a thousand years.”
An uneasy silence settled over the car as we both understood the truth to that statement.
There was nothing we could do to be together.
14
Mariya
It was always interesting to me how humans looked right through things they didn’t feel like noticing.
Like the hotel at the end of the beach, where it loomed over the rocky shore like a castle in some old horror movie.
If lightning had zigzagged out of a clear, blue sky and struck one of the many pointed roofs, I wouldn’t have been surprised. It would’ve completed the look.
“How is it still standing?”
Compared to the shining casinos with their blinking lights, the hotel was an eyesore. Not that I thought the more modern buildings were beautiful—they looked
cheap and fake and me, the way a lot of architecture did from this time—but they at least looked as though a person would live through a trip inside.
It had once been a crown jewel, that much was obvious. It was built with all the grandeur of its time, a rambling monster with a parapet at all four corners and thirty floors, by my rough estimate.
But it was falling apart.
Most of the windows were boarded, and those that weren’t let the salt air blow through. There wasn’t a pane of glass left in any of them. The outer façade had probably been a beautiful white, and I could just imagine the hotel shining like a diamond.
No, not a hotel. More like a resort. How many rich, famous, gorgeous people had been through those doors? They were probably all as rotten by then, too. The salt spray had turned the walls gray, cracked and broken. Plaster had come off in big chunks, revealing the slats underneath.
I was blocks away, still sitting in the car, but I could almost hear the walls creaking and groaning.
Elias was appraising it, too. “It’s like the old beauty where the coven meets,” he muttered. “Humans only see what they want to, and ignore the rest. I’m sure they think about this place every once in a while, and wonder why it’s still standing, but they don’t do anything about it.”
“I’m sure Kristoff had something to do with it,” I reminded him. “The way we do. Making sure the building fades into the background.”
“While he does his dirty business inside.” His voice was a nasty growl.
I pulled my eyes from the hotel where my sister was imprisoned—how would we find her in all those rooms?—to look at him.
“How do you want to do this?” I asked.
“As quickly as possible.”
I snorted despite the almost painful tension. “Be serious.”
“I am.” He shifted his strong body until he was facing me and took my hands. His were slightly cold, as always, but the blood pumping hard and fast through my veins would probably heat them. “I need you to understand what we’re going up against in there. You’ve never see Kristoff for yourself.”
