Nightwalker dd-1

by Jocelynn Drake

  When we reached the double doors that led to my private suite, I stopped sharply. Something was wrong. A brief touch of Gabriel’s and Michael’s minds revealed that someone else was in the room with them. They were tense and anxious. However, a light scan of the room turned up only my two human angels.

  With a playful smile, I threw open the two doors and walked in. But all playfulness was ripped out of my body as my eyes fell on Sadira. I hissed at her, my lips drawn back to reveal a perfect set of white fangs. My hands clenched into tight fists, my nails digging into my palms until I was drawing blood.

  “Such manners,” she chided with a shake of her head. Her soft sweet voice was hypnotic, seeking to burrow down into my brain. She sat with her back ramrod straight and her chin up, as if she were a regal princess on her throne.

  I straightened my shoulders, sending a warning look to the nightwalker. I knew my first encounter with her after all this time wouldn’t be good, but I hadn’t expected to react with such uncontrollable hostility.

  “Why couldn’t I sense you?” I demanded, failing to unclench my teeth.

  “Jabari contacted me. He said to hide myself, and that he was sending someone for my protection. I had no idea it would be you.” Her voice was calm and cool. Nothing seemed to ruffle her perfectly groomed feathers.

  My skin crawled as I stared at her. Everything about Sadira seemed to be one great lie, and I hated her for it. At just under five feet, she looked like someone’s sweet little mother. Her long dark hair was streaked with gray and pulled up into a bun. Her features were soft and rounded, leaving nothing alluring or threatening in her appearance. She wore a long black skirt and a pale yellow shirt with pearl buttons. She looked prim and proper, safe and almost fragile.

  But it was all a lie. I had seen her tear out a man’s throat while she fed, the blood dripping down her chin. I had seen her plunge her hand into a woman’s chest and pull out her heart so she could drink the blood directly from it. Yet, even when she was killing these people, she never looked like a predator. Just a hideous nightmare.

  “Who is your dark shadow?” she inquired, smoothing over the silence that filled in the places where the tension had yet to reach. Her accent was haunting, an exotic flavor no longer on this earth. Ancient Persian. After more than a thousand years, Sadira had come no closer to shedding her accent. Most of us relinquished our old ties, preferring to blend in. Even Jabari’s accent faded when he was away from Egypt. But Sadira kept hers.

  “He’s not your concern.” I took a step to my left so I was standing directly in front of Danaus. “The naturi are coming. They’re planning to break the seal.”

  “How?” Surprise lifted her thin eyebrows and extended the wrinkles that stretched from the corners of her almond-shaped eyes. Her pale hands clenched in her lap, twisting her slender fingers.

  “The usual way—blood and magic. Jabari said I am to protect you and reform the triad.”

  “Has he been selected to protect you, then?” She refused to drop the issue of Danaus, intrigued by the fact that I was traveling with this stranger.

  She never questioned the assistance of my daylight warriors, Gabriel and Michael. When a nightwalker acquired a certain level of power and frequently traveled into the domain of other powerful vampires, he or she would enlist the services of such guardians. Danaus, however, was distinctly different from these protectors. It wasn’t that he stood there exuding his own dark power. It was his confidence and the fact that he seemed completely at ease in a room with two nightwalkers. He had also been out with me at night, so keeping him at my side meant that he carried a different kind of importance to me. He was an equal, not a servant.

  “I do not need nighttime protection,” I told her.

  “Oh, my Mira,” Sadira said, her voice filled with warmth and concern. “You need protection more than me or Jabari.”

  “I can take care of myself. I was never as weak as you liked to pretend.”

  “I never thought you weak, my dearest child.” Pushing smoothly to her feet, she took a couple steps toward me, but I stepped away from her, the two of us circling in the small living room. I wouldn’t, couldn’t, let her lay a hand on me.

  Sadira stopped, a look of patience filling her warm brown eyes. “I feared you would grow to be too confident in your powers. I didn’t want to see you hurt. I wanted to protect you.”

  I blinked, and images of her castle in Spain sprung to life. She was in my head again, manipulating my thoughts like the early days. Mentally, I reached for her to shove her back out, but it was like grabbing smoke. The memories blurred, and then abruptly focused. I was back in the dark dungeon with its damp, crumbling walls. I was lying on the cold slab, hovering somewhere between life and death, with only the sound of Sadira’s voice to guide me back from madness.

  Most nightwalkers are made in a night. A kiss of death, an exchange of blood, and the deed was done. But Sadira had wanted something more than when she made me. She wanted a First Blood, and thus she spent ten years—night after endless night—nursing me into her world and bringing me into the darkness. And when she was done, I was her greatest creation.

  Our years together were ugly. She wanted absolute control over me; the same control she had over the other dozen vampires that resided in her castle. She had created a few others, but I was her only First Blood. They all flocked to her, clinging to her image of the caring, protective mother, but I never believed those lies, and only stayed because I thought I had no other option.

  Now, however, I was free. Clutching that thought, I finally shoved Sadira from my mind and threw up as many metal barriers as I could. I pushed her back until she was just a vague shadow at the edge of my thoughts.

  “I did not come here to fight with you, my Mira.” Sadness tinged her voice. “When I felt your presence, I thought you had come to talk.”

  “Did you think I had come back to you?” Dragging my eyes back to my maker, I shook my head. “How could you believe such a thing?”

  Sadira smiled at me, her head tilted to the side. The look a parent gave a foolish child; one of infinite patience and love. “Why do you still harbor this hatred for me?” We were circling each other like cats, waiting for an opening. “Does it chase away the nightmares? Does it help you to forget about Crete…and Calla?”

  “I warned you to never speak her name.” My low voice crouched in the shadows, watching. I stopped circling, my whole body painfully tensed.

  “You left her and now you find it easier to blame me for your regrets. You can’t run from us both forever,” Sadira said, taking a step toward me. She lifted her hand to touch my cheek, but I raised my hand, just an inch from her face. Flames danced over my fingers and slithered down to my wrist. Her eyes widened.

  Before Sadira, I had a life. It was a short, fragile human life, but it was my life nonetheless. I’d had a family that I loved and a place in my small corner of the world. My world didn’t include nightwalkers or torture. It didn’t even include my own powers, since I’d chosen to hide that unique ability and start fresh.

  But Sadira slipped into my world one night centuries ago and stole me away, threatening to kill all those I loved if I did not remain at her side. So I stayed through the humiliation, pain, and seemingly constant fear. She kept me at her side as a human for roughly four years. During that time, I discovered that I would make a better vampire than I could ever be as a normal human. The nightwalkers surrounding her feared me, feared my powers. And for good reason: Sadira had taught me everything she knew about torture and manipulation. When the Black Plague swept through Europe, she offered to make me a nightwalker in an effort to save my life. I agreed, walking away from any hope of returning to the life I’d lived before.

  I hated Sadira for stealing me away. I hated myself for saying yes, because I could not be what I wanted—normal. Human.

  Lifting my open hands, a pair of flames danced on my palms, flickering yellow and orange. I lowered my hands again, but the flames remained
hovering in midair like little balls of light. Sadira took an uneasy step back, unable to drag her eyes from the flames. She had seen my tricks with fire before, even commanded me to perform, but I’d learned a few things since I was last with her. She had never seen me burn the air itself.

  With the barest nod of my head, the flames streaked toward her. Less than a foot from her chest, they split in two different directions and started to circle her. She pulled her arms against her chest, her head jerking from one side to the other, desperately trying to keep the fire in sight at all times. She was terrified…and with good cause.

  “I left her because I had no choice. You would have killed her,” I said, unable to even speak Calla’s name. I hadn’t thought about her in centuries, but Sadira’s cruel mention brought a fresh rush of pain, as she’d no doubt intended. “I left you because I would have killed you had I stayed. You made me, so I spared your life as an act of gratitude. I owe you nothing now.”

  Sadira lifted her eyes to my face, and I could see a mixture of anger and genuine confusion in their depths. A part of her honestly could not understand my hatred. She did everything in the name of protecting her children, but that also meant controlling them. And no matter how hard she tried, she could not completely control me. In the past, she could make me bow under the pain and anguish she caused, but it was always short-lived.

  Danaus purposefully entered my line of sight, standing behind Sadira’s left shoulder and frowning. He didn’t have to say anything. This argument was wasting time we didn’t have. I would have to add Sadira to my list of unfinished business. If naturi didn’t kill me first, I would finally deal with Sadira and my past.

  “Enough of this.” Waving my hands in the air, the flames vanished with a puff of smoke. I paced away from Sadira, over to the windows that looked down on the city. Pushing aside the gauzy white curtains, I looked down on the busy street as a steady flow of traffic rushed below us.

  When I turned back around, the tableau looked exactly as it had when I entered the room. The moment had been erased. Sadira’s face was expressionless, but that did not mean I’d been forgiven. A vampire never attacked another of her kind that was twice her age. And you never attacked your maker unless you were sure you could kill them. While Sadira worked under the pretense of love and protection, she was no different than the others. She would strike out at me at her first chance, but I wasn’t particularly worried. She could hurt me but would not try to kill me. I was a valuable pet, and she wanted me at her side, broken and obedient.

  “One sacrifice has been completed at Konark, and the naturi have attacked me twice,” I said, trying to boil down everything that had happened recently into a concise description. It wasn’t easy. Was it fair to leave out the dead in my domain or the fear that seemed to burn in me every time I stepped outside? “We think they are going after anyone who survived Machu Picchu.”

  “We?” Sadira said, cocking her head to the side as he eyes slid back to Danaus.

  “Jabari and I,” I sharply corrected her assumption. “Tabor is dead. That leaves you and Jabari as part of the triad. I don’t remember who else was at the mountain that night, but not many of us survived.”

  Sadira’s dark brown eyes narrowed on me as she frowned. Resting her right elbow on the arm of the chair, she settled her narrow chin in the palm of her hand. “What do you remember of that night?”

  “Not much after you arrived. I remember Jabari rescuing me, holding me, with you and Tabor standing nearby. And then nothing…just light and…pain.” I struggled to pull the memory loose from the jumble of thoughts crowding that night. “Why can’t I remember? What happened after you arrived?”

  “Have you asked Jabari?”

  “He said he would tell me later.” Frustration and anger crept back into my tone. I shoved my right hand through my hair, pushing it from my face.

  “Then I will leave it to him,” Sadira said quickly, with a relieved look. She was obviously glad to wash her hands of the ordeal. “I don’t wish to talk about that night.”

  “Why? What happened? It couldn’t have been that bad if we won.” Taking another step closer, I moved around the coffee table in the center of the room in front of the sofa.

  “No, Mira, please. You may doubt me, but I do love you. Even after all these years, the sound of your screams still haunts me at night. It is a sound I know I shall never forget.”

  “You never heard my screams,” I said in a low voice. “The naturi had stopped torturing me before you arrived.” Her eyes darted away from me, locking on a point somewhere over my shoulder. A heavy knot twisted in my stomach as my mind pushed against the dark shadows that crowded my memories of that night. “How could you have heard me screaming?”

  “It’s not important right now. There is nothing we can do until the triad has been reformed.” Her voice wavered before she could bring herself to meet my gaze. I stared into her brown eyes for a long time before I spoke again. She’d made her decision and I couldn’t move her.

  “Fine.” I shoved my hands into my back pockets in an effort to keep from sending another fireball at her. “Jabari said to reform the triad I needed to find someone of Tabor’s bloodline. I don’t know Tabor’s maker so I guess we need to find one of his children.”

  “And there you are in luck, though I wish one of his other children were closer,” Sadira announced, a light frown pulling at her full red lips.

  “Why?”

  “His name is Thorne. He is a little…different from what we have known. He appears to be a part of a new breed of nightwalker. He’s rather open about his condition,” she said delicately.

  “Whatever. I’ll deal with him,” I said with a dismissive wave of my hand.

  “He’s not likely to come with you.”

  “I’m sure I can handle him.” And I was sure. “Have you met him? If he’s going to be difficult, I would prefer it if he didn’t know I was looking for him.”

  Searching the area for a nightwalker I had never met before would take time and be invasive—rather like bending every vampire over and checking the initials in their underwear. If Sadira or I had met Thorne before, I could feel for him more discreetly.

  “We have not been formally introduced, but I recently tracked him down to a bar on the outskirts of the city called Six Feet Under.”

  “I’ll find him,” I bit out. Turning, I was about to stalk out of the room, happy to finally be leaving Sadira, when Danaus moved toward the door as well. “No, you’re staying,” I told him, placing a restraining hand on his chest, ignoring his dark looks. “Someone needs to stay here and protect her.”

  “What about the naturi?” he asked.

  Fear lurched in my stomach, wrapping itself around my heart. “Are they close?”

  “Not that I can tell, but you wouldn’t know it until they were standing next to you.”

  I glanced over at Michael and Gabriel seated on the sofa. If our enemies attacked as they had at Aswan, they wouldn’t have a chance. They were no match for the naturi.

  But by that logic, I also couldn’t drag Sadira behind me through the bowels of London. She would be too much of a distraction if I were forced to try to protect both her and Thorne. I was trapped. I couldn’t imagine how Jabari had expected me to manage this. He could have just commanded Thorne to appear using his telepathic abilities, and Thorne would have appeared. Easy as that. Unfortunately, I wasn’t that intimidating yet.

  I paced away from the door, desperately trying to find a new solution. I didn’t know any other nightwalkers in London I could call on and trust them to defend Sadira with their lives. And Danaus wasn’t about to stay behind when we both knew I needed him at my back to tell me if the naturi were closing in. I was about to give in and have Sadira accompany me to the pub when I felt someone else.

  My hand flew to my mouth, but a chuckle still escaped. It was crazy and desperate, but I was completely out of options. I spun around sharply, facing Danaus. He jerked back a step, surprised by my qui
ck change of direction. “Could Themis protect her?” I asked. His dark brows snapped together and he looked at me as if I had suddenly gone mad. “Do they have the firepower here in London to protect her?” I repeated a little slower.

  “Yes, but—”

  “We don’t have any other choice. I’m not thrilled about the idea, but I can’t be in two places at once.”

  A long, heavy silence stretched through the room as Danaus stared at me. When he finally spoke, it sounded as if he’d ground up the word with his back teeth before releasing it: “Agreed.”

  “Great. Now go fetch James. He just came up on the elevator,” I said with a laugh at his surprised look. “He followed us to the hotel and has been searching for us.”

  Danaus hurried out of the room, a dark look filling his eyes. I don’t know whether he was upset that James had followed us or because he hadn’t noticed earlier. I had a feeling Danaus was so focused on the nightwalkers that surrounded him and the naturi that he forgot to pay any attention to the humans lurking on the fringe.

  He reappeared a minute later, dragging a flustered-looking James in by the arm. He gave the young man a shove into the center of the room as he slammed the door closed again. It was nice to see Danaus angry with someone other than me. James ran his hands over his jacket as he eyes quickly surveyed the room. He stiffened at the sight of Michael and Gabriel, but when his eyes fell on Sadira, he stumbled backward a few steps, running into Danaus. Stepping away, he found himself that much closer to me.