Dark Secrets Box Set

by Angela M Hudson

  “Really?” She looked away, eyes narrowing in thought. “Well, he kept that to himself then. He never so much as even hinted he might have that kind of power.”

  “Why would he keep it secret?”

  “In the vampire world?” she said, a knowing smile masking stories I’d never hear. “He’d have many reasons.”

  “Well, thanks to him wearing Mike’s face when he did it, half my mind believes it’s bound to Mike.”

  “No, you have feelings for Mike because you love him. The spirit bind breaks when the vampire who placed it dies.” Her face went white as her lips slowly parted. “Oh no… that’s only if you kill him.”

  “What?” My mind raced back to the cell—to when Jason begged me to kill him. “So I’ll never be free now?”

  “Free?” She studied me, confusion littering her frown. “Oh. Oh. Amara.” She covered her mouth. “Of course. The bind makes you believe you have feelings for Jason, too.”

  “No,” I said, disgusted only because I knew that was true. “No, I just… I keep finding myself trying to understand why he did what he did, trying to find a reason, you know—maybe something I did that set him off.”

  “Oh, Princess.” She touched my face. “You won’t find a reason. And you never did anything to deserve what happened to you.”

  “Except be born,” I said.

  “Yes, born into an age-old feud. I am sorry, but I’m also not sorry.” Her lip twitched in a sideways smile. “Your existence alone is enough to give hope to our people. After centuries of darkness and slavery, you’re our light, or future.”

  “But I’m just a girl, Morgaine.”

  “I know.” She nodded. “But I’m not asking you to swear an oath to us. I’m just asking you to realize, for now, that you are a descendant of royal blood, and you do have a duty to your people. If you don’t save us…”

  “No one will?” I rolled my eyes.

  “I know it sounds cliché, Amara, but it’s the truth. We need you.”

  “I don’t care. I’m sorry. I know that’s harsh, but I just want to be dead.”

  “No you don’t. Because I know it matters to you that Mike needs you. He cannot live without you. I’ve seen it in his soul. He loves you, and you won’t hurt him like that.”

  “No, his love isn’t real. He’s caught up in how I feel for him because of the spirit bind. He—”

  “Does Mike know yet, about the bind?”

  “No.” I looked down.

  “It’ll break his heart.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s a good guy. I really like him.” Her smile grew with each nod of her head. “I’m glad he’s Lilithian and not vampire.”

  “So you picked it when you met him—you knew?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled warmly at the memory. “But straight after I told him, all the sudden joy of the proof of your existence slipped away. Mike grabbed my arms, looked deep into my eyes and said, Show me how to save her,” she said, and even put on his deep, husky tone.

  I smiled. “He’s always been my knight, you know.”

  “I know. I felt that, too: felt the love, felt his desperation to be with you—to protect you.”

  My shoulders lifted and dropped again. “If only I hadn’t let myself love Jason in that dream, maybe everything would’ve turned out different.”

  “That was just so evil of him—of Jason. If he wanted to hurt David, that was the—”

  “Morgaine. Please?” I held my hand up. “Don’t say things like that. What happened to David was horrible, and that’s without adding the weight of his emotional torture to it.”

  Morgaine frowned, pressing her lip between her teeth. “Amara? What happened in that room—with David?”

  “He—” My throat constricted, blocking the air that brought more sobs. “I—Jason made me bite him, and I did, and I thought only of the blood—nothing of David,” I cried, my words incomprehensible. “I had to watch him burn. I had to watch him melt under those flames with no way to save him. Jason just… he just picked him up and… he was just gone. Like that.” I clicked my fingers.

  Morgaine held me close and stroked my hair.

  “I just don’t know how to go on,” I cried. “I don’t want to be alive. I don’t want to be a royal. I don’t care about your people, Morgaine. Everything I cared about died in that fire.”

  “Oh.” She sat up and looked at me. “Oh. Oh, my God. I—” She stood up.

  “What? What is it?” I looked around, feeling the crawl of fear over my spine.

  “Stay here.” She pointed at me, backing over to the door. “Mike,” she called as she opened it. “Mike!” she yelled again, desperation shaking her voice.

  “What?” He sprung up, going a little too fast, and smacked into the wall with his forearm.

  Morgaine smiled, chuckling in the back of her throat.

  “Yeah, sorry, not used to the speed thing yet. What’s up, Morg?”

  “I know what’s wrong with Amara.”

  “What?” He looked at her, then at me.

  “She doesn’t want to live now that David’s dead.” Her eyes widened.

  Mike paled. “Oh, shit. I never even thought—” He covered his mouth then landed on his knees in front of me. “Baby, I gotta tell you something. I’m such an idiot. Shit.” He looked at Morgaine, opening his hands in a gesture of confusion. “What do I say?”

  “Amara, David’s not dead.”

  “What?”

  “He’s not dead,” Morgaine said simply.

  Bumps tightened my skin, a shaking breath leaving my open lips in a whimper.

  “Oh, jeeze, girl, I’m sorry.” Mike’s wide eyes bore into mine, his hands clasping my arms tightly. “We thought you were upset about the fire.”

  “He’s alive?”

  “I didn’t realize you thought he was dead, baby. He’s immune to Lilithian venom. I thought you’d realize that—you’ve bitten him before.”

  “You…” My words came out laced with white shock. “You thought I was that upset just because he burned?”

  “Yes, because he burned alive.”

  Chills encased my soulless carcass, my eyes growing larger with every breath of fight that grew in me. Like a rocket had been tied to my feet, I launched from the bed.

  Mike grabbed my waist as I reached the door. “Ara, baby, listen to me.”

  “No! Let me go!” I yelled, pushing his big confining hands away. “Let me go to him. I have to see him, Mike. Let me go.”

  “Baby, I’ll let you go, just calm down, okay, I just need you to calm down.”

  “No, he’s alive. He’s alive.” I took a jagged breath, which slowed my heart as my eyes widened again. “He’s—he burned. He felt that! He felt that when… when…”

  “Yes.” Mike closed his eyes.

  “Oh God.” My knees buckled, and I slid down the wall. Mike held me up by the hips. “Mike. I was there. I was right in front of him, and I—” I replayed the image of his fingers on the tiles, just out of reach. “I could’ve helped him. I—”

  “No. Ara, you couldn’t, baby.” He bundled me into his arms, squeezing me against his chest. “There’s no way you could’ve helped him. Jason was too strong; he would’ve hurt you more.”

  “You—” I looked up at him. “How could you do this to me? How could you let me believe I killed my husband!”

  “We didn’t know, Amara,” Morgaine piped up. “We thought you were—”

  “You should’ve known.” I pointed at her. “You, with all your ‘getting people’ bull crap. You should have felt it in my soul. How can you have been so ignorant? Do you know what I’ve been suffering? You’re monsters,” I yelled. “All of you. I hate you.”

  Mike squeezed me tighter, whispering something in my ear as I screamed, pushing out from his chest.

  “I hate you. I hate you. Get off me. Let me go to him. Let me—”

  “What’s going on!” Emily burst through the door. “Ara. What is it? What’s wrong?”


  “Ara thought David was dead all this time, Em,” Mike said, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind as I folded over and kicked against him. “She just found out he’s alive.”

  The world seemed to move around Emily, pulling her backward as realization washed over her frozen expression. “Oh my God. I never thought of that.” She stole me from Mike’s arms. I went willingly, sobbing against her neck. “But of course. Of course you would’ve thought that. You don’t know about immunity. Aw, Ara, it’s okay.” She stroked my hair. “It’s okay, you can scream. You can hate us. You’re right to hate us—we let you suffer because we’re all too stupid to realize what we’ve done.”

  “Where is he, Em?” I howled. “Where is he? I need to see him.”

  “Okay.” She held me out by my shoulders, nodding. “You can see him. Right now. But you need to calm down first, okay? Do you think you can do that?”

  I stifled my sobs, leaving nothing but a violent quiver in my chest. “Yes.”

  “Okay,” she whispered, smiling at my poor composure. “We’ll go see him then.” Emily looked over her shoulder. “Morg. Prepare David. Let him know Ara’s coming.”

  “Emily?” Morgaine folded her arms. “You know David will—”

  “I don’t care what David wants!” Emily said. “Ara is his wife. She’s going to see him. He’d do the same.”

  “You know what? That’s actually true. So true it’s not even funny how well you know him, Emily.” Morgaine’s humored grin dropped, and her eyes narrowed slightly.

  “Emily can read David’s feelings,” I said.

  “Really?” Morgaine said slowly, rolling her shoulders back slightly with her tone.

  “What’s wrong with that?” I asked, looking between the two of them.

  Morgaine took a deep breath through her nose. “It just means they have a special connection.”

  “Morg?” Emily said. “Go get David ready.”

  “Fine. But, Amara?” She stopped.

  “What?”

  “He’s”—she looked at Mike, then back at me—“he burned. You know what that means, right?”

  I took a deep, carefully considered breath. “It was worse to believe he was dead. I… I mean, burned? Mutilated? I can handle that.” I looked at Mike, then Emily. “But not dead.”

  “Very well.” Morgaine left.

  “Ara?” Mike looked down at his hands. “I’m so damn sorry, baby. I never, never intended you to be hurting so bad. It just didn’t occur to me that you weren’t in on the plan.”

  “What was the plan, Mike? How did you come to the conclusion that sending David in there to die was a good idea? What was it supposed to achieve?”

  “Not what you think.” Mike looked at Emily.

  “Ara,” Emily started, “you remember Morgaine mentioned a child?”

  “Yeah, freaky-prophecy-child with great power.” I waved my hands around in the air.

  “Well, that child must be conceived of pure blood, which is your blood, and as the prophecy states…” She looked at Mike.

  “The blood of Knight.”

  “Night? As in… starry night?”

  “No.” Em stepped forward, standing closer to Mike. “As in David Knight.”

  “It has to be David’s?” I asked, my shoulders launching forward into my words.

  Emily nodded. “Drake ordered David dead to stop that prophecy from eventuating.”

  “But he’s not dead.”

  “Right, which gives us some time, Ara,” Mike said. “We lost most of our knights last night, and while we might’ve taken down half the Set, if Drake were to get word that David survived, he’d send an army out for you now. As one, you mean nothing, but together, you have the only weapon that can actually stop him.”

  “Whoa, whoa!” I held my hands up, taking a few steps backward. “Stop him? Stop Drake?”

  “Ara, you’re a Pure Blood. You can create armies of vampire killers. He’s not going to let you live. He will come for you too, eventually, whether you care or not,” Emily said.

  “When?”

  “Not right now. You’re weak, and without the possibility of a child you’re no more a threat than a little girl with a toy gun.”

  “But that will change, and it’ll change quickly,” Mike said. “David had to die to give us time; to give Drake the illusion of safety for a few more weeks until we could get you strong, trained, and on the throne, ready to fight.”

  “Wha—throne?” I gaped. “Did you just say throne?”

  “Yes.” Mike laughed lightly. “Baby, you’re royal blood, and by birth right you should be on the thro—”

  “Whoa.” I raised my hands again. “No more. Stop saying that. What—what throne? What is this, some kind of monarchy?”

  “That’s exactly what is it.” Morgaine walked back in. “Well, of a sort—not like a human monarchy though, and yes, you will rule the Three Worlds.”

  “The Three Worlds?”

  “The Vampires, Lilithians, and Humans.”

  “Humans? No one rules humans.” I folded my arms.

  “Um, well actually, vampires do. The humans just don’t know it. But, who do you think has been protecting their species all these centuries, stopping them from wiping each other out and leaving the vampires without food, and then, in turn, us?”

  My hand flew to my head. I wiped furiously at the overload of information. “This is insane.” I needed to pace the floors. “So, my vampire husband, whom I watched burn after his brother threw him on the fire is alive, and now you expect me to believe in tales of kings and queens?”

  “And knights.” Mike stood taller.

  “Oh, yes, knights,” I said sarcastically. “That’s right—the men who stormed that castle with swords.”

  “Venom-tipped swords,” Morgaine chimed.

  My hands fell to my sides. “This is ridiculous. Where’s David?”

  “He’s in my room,” Mike said.

  I pushed past him, shoving his chest hard.

  “Ara, wait. You can’t go in there alone,” he called, but his voice stayed where I left him.

  28

  When I reached Mike’s closed bedroom door my feet stopped moving, the walls narrowing in around me, while the echo of a tap left dripping in the bathroom dragged me to the memory of my torture.

  For so many hours I believed he was dead. I believed I killed him. But beyond that door he was alive, and yet I couldn’t open it. My hand hovered over the handle, the weight of one push being the fork in the road—the moment that could change things inside me for the rest of my life.

  What if he hated me?

  A little thought inside me whispered that none of that mattered though, because scars or none, horror or none, he was still here. Right on the other side of that door.

  With a deep breath, I pushed it open. “David?”

  No one responded.

  “David. It’s me.”

  My eyes drifted to the firm mound on Mike’s bed, the balmy heat simmering off it with the putrid, puss-scented reek of rotting skin. I covered my mouth and knelt beside the bed, slipping among the shadows, grateful not to see just yet.

  “Ara?” Emily’s frame blocked the dim light coming in from the hall.

  I looked up. “Em. Is he alive?”

  “Yes, but he’s not bothering to breathe, he’s in too much pain, but he is alive.”

  “Is he… does he look…?” I couldn’t say it for fear of making it real.

  Emily exhaled as she walked across the room and placed her hand on the bedside lamp. “I hope you’re ready for this, Ara.”

  “Wait.” I jumped up and grabbed her wrist. “How bad is he?”

  “Bad?” She almost laughed. “Put it this way, Ara: when we sent him off with the BWs, he was weak—really weak—and so battered already. We had to make it look like he’d suffered. Now, take that and mix it with what we assume was around twenty minutes in a roaring fire, and bad doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

&
nbsp; “Twenty minutes?”

  “Yes, we think.”

  “You think?”

  “Well, by the time you told us what happened, it’d already been four hours since we rescued you. When Morgaine’s knights got there though, David wasn’t on the fire anymore. Someone had pulled him out.”

  “Who?”

  “We don’t know, but they just left him there.”

  “Do you think maybe he pulled himself out?”

  Emily shook her head. “The caplet of venom he bit into was enough to put him in a state-like-death for over six hours. There’s no way he pulled himself out.”

  “Caplet?”

  “Yeah. Venom of the Created. He bit into it when you bit him so he’d become paralyzed.”

  “But… I thought he was immune?”

  Emily breathed out through smiling lips. “No one is immune to that much venom in one dose. Like drugs, you can a have a little, but too much and you’re down.”

  “So my venom in a high enough dose could still kill him?”

  “Probably, but are you really willing to test that on anyone to find out?”

  “No.” I considered the mound for a second. “Do you think Arthur pulled him out? Maybe he—”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that Morgaine examined him and said that, from the looks of his skin, he had to have burned for at least twenty minutes.”

  “Is there anything left of him?”

  “How ’bout I just turn on the light?”

  “Wait.” Mike swept into the room and wrapped his arms around my waist, linking his fingers in a tight belt of restraint. “Okay, do it.”

  “Okay,” Em said, and light spread to each corner of the room quickly, illuminating flash images as I turned my face away, closing my eyes around a hairless head, the skin cracked and charred, like lava simmering on water.

  “That’s David?” I covered my mouth, hiding my face in Mike. “That’s really him?”

  “Yes,” Emily said.

  “No,” I cried. “It doesn’t look anything like him.”

  “Ara, just look—just open your eyes,” Mike said.

  I shook my head, seeing the look in his eyes as he begged me to kill him, and it all made sense. He knew. He knew he wouldn’t die but he couldn’t say it.