Dexter met his gaze and took a sip of coffee. “This is about the loophole.”
The vampire froze. “Didn’t know we’d found one,” he replied cautiously. “Unless you’re talking about what you better not be talking about.”
Raven frowned and raised her hand. “Did I miss something?”
“No,” Nicholas said sharply.
“Look,” Dexter interjected with a weary sigh, “I don’t like it any more than you, but I’ve been doing my homework today.”
“You want a gold star?”
Raven drew in a steady breath. This could get out of hand very fast. “Nicholas, knock it off.”
“No, you don’t even know what—”
“We have a major problem,” she argued.
“Yes, but—”
“One I started. Hi, I’m the problem.”
Nicholas looked wounded at that. “You’re not the problem, kitten. You’re—”
“The reason we’re all here. The reason the world’s in jeopardy. In my book, this spells problem.” She held up a hand. “Yes, I know. It’s hard to hear the entire the-world’s-gonna-end thing when tempers are high.”
“Sweetheart—”
She shook her head and waved again. “No. I don’t…we don’t need to get into that right now.” She paused and expelled a deep breath and met Dexter’s eyes, subconsciously shifting in her seat to make room for Nicholas. He was at her side in an instant, wrapping an arm protectively around her waist. “So,” she said slowly. “What’s the news?”
Dexter swallowed hard and nodded. “I had a visitor.”
That meant nothing to her. “Um…good for you?”
“A mutual acquaintance,” he continued, nodding at Nicholas. “It was Octavia.”
The vampire’s jaw tightened. “Was it?”
Dexter closed his eyes, and his face hardened. It was the look he always exuded when he was fighting for patience. “She said the only way for the Few to live was if Raven died.”
Raven frowned, a cold wind blowing through her skin. “I see,” she said. “And in the category of things we already knew—”
“I don’t think she meant it like that,” he replied softly. “I don’t think she meant the line. I think she meant you.”
The room fell deathly silent. Dexter and Nicholas traded furtive glances.
“I…” Raven didn’t realize how hard she was trembling until her mate again brushed his lips across her temple, his fingers tightening around hers. The touch was brief, but it gave her strength. “I don’t follow.”
A long shudder ran down Dexter’s spine. “Look, I don’t like this, but I’ve been looking at it all day. I got what I could from the books based on what Octavia said before she left.”
Nicholas breathed steadily but didn’t say anything.
“I think she means…” Dexter blinked, glanced down, then back up again. “Raven, I think Octavia means in order for you to live, you have to be turned.”
Her ears filled with a loud, piercing hum, and her eyes lost focus. “T-turned?”
“No,” Nicholas growled. For a minute, she thought she’d insulted him with her reaction. “You can’t—”
Dexter frowned. “Look—”
“Turned?” Raven repeated, her voice ascending octaves. “I hope you mean into a frog or a…well, I don’t know what else, but that’s the only kind of turning I want on the table.”
Dexter cleared his throat again. “Raven—”
She turned to Nicholas sharply, waving at her Guardian. “Tell him I’m not gonna be turned,” she demanded.
“You’re not gonna be,” Nicholas whispered. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“You might not have a choice,” Dexter snapped. “You’d rather sacrifice her than give anything a try?”
Nicholas snarled, his eyes blazing yellow, a ripple of fierce possessiveness and rage spearing through his body so potently that Raven rocked with the aftermath. “What you’re talking about isn’t a try. It’s murder.” He tore himself from her side and leapt to his feet. “You’d really risk her life over something that might well kill her?”
“Her life is going to end if we don’t do something!” Dexter shot back. “Nothing can stop that, Nicholas. Believe me, I’ve looked.”
“You spent a day looking over those books—”
“I could spend the rest of this century and most of the next searching for a different way. There isn’t one. What’s more, you know it.” It was a rare day when Dexter got so worked up with any emotion that his chest actually heaved with gasps and his eyes burned with anger. “You know there’s no other way.”
“This could kill her,” Nicholas repeated. “If I do this, it could kill her.”
“If you don’t, you’ll kill her anyway.”
Raven licked her lips, the ringing in her ears still deafening. Heat crashed over her skin. “This really is the only way?” she asked. “Turning me into a vampire—”
“You wouldn’t be a vampire,” Dexter said immediately. “The Few cannot be turned into vampires.”
The fire eating her insides washed away with the most potent wave of relief she’d ever known. “You might’ve mentioned that to me to begin with,” she said, her palms flattening against her knees as her thundering heart fought for some strain of normalcy. “Jeez. You guys nearly gave me an aneurism.”
No one laughed. No one rushed to reassure her. Instead, when she glanced up, she found herself the target of two sets of very empathetic eyes. Dexter looked torn beyond repair, and Nicholas seemed to be fighting an inner war, determined to both give her space and comfort her with his presence.
“You wouldn’t be a vampire,” Dexter repeated, “but there is something that would happen. What I am suggesting has never been successful.”
She swallowed hard. “What are you suggesting we try?”
“No one can have two demons inside them,” Nicholas said shortly. “When you get turned, your soul leaves your body and a demon takes over.”
“But because of your daimon, your soul cannot be removed. At least, this is what Paimon has said,” Dexter continued. “And your daimon cannot be removed because it is a part of who you are.”
Oh right. The demon thing. She’d nearly forgotten.
The Guardian drew in a deep breath. “Your dominant trait is human, as I told you last night. Essentially, when we speak of turning One of the Few, what we mean is reversing nature’s process, and making your human side recessive and your demon dominant. If successful, there is nothing ostensibly which would change. You would, understandably, be stronger. Much…much stronger. You would also be tapped into the vampiric lifeline.”
“Meaning?”
“As a demon, and the Yin to the vampire’s Yang, you would no longer age.”
“The claim already took care of that,” she pointed out.
“Yes, well, you’d also be damn hard to kill. Pure warrior concentrate, and all that,” Nicholas agreed softly. “But it’s not gonna happen. It can’t. You won’t survive the change.”
“You’d rather she die at the hands of the Hell King, then?” Dexter asked.
“I’d rather find an answer that won’t only maybe work.”
“There isn’t time for that! There’s—”
“Why has it never worked?” Raven asked, amazed when her soft voice was able to slice so effectively through the arguing.
“As Nicholas said,” Dexter replied, “no person…no vampire, even…can host two demons at once. When a move is made to turn a person into a vampire, it involves a demon invading the host. You already have a daimon. What would ensue would essentially be a war over your body, and since you are human, there is no way you would be able to withstand it.”
Raven frowned. Her ears were beginning to ring again. “But I thought…with the strong and the immortal and—”
“You can’t possibly be thinking about doing this,” Nicholas barked.
“I’m thinking about it.”
Her heart
broke at the agonized fear that commanded his body. “Raven,” he said shakily, “this will kill you.”
“I’m gonna die anyway.”
The words sounded so foreign on her tongue.
“We’ll find another way, baby.”
“This is the way,” Dexter said softly. “Nicholas, I don’t like it any more than you do.”
The vampire bared his fangs. “I think I can safely say I like it a whole lot less,” he snarled, dropping to Raven’s side again.
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
Raven sighed. This was getting out of hand, and fast. The anguished fear burning through the claim could make mountains bow in reverence. Nicholas was out of his mind with worry, and no indefinite answer would appease him. He wanted something concrete, something tangible. He wanted something that didn’t exist.
“Nicholas,” she whispered, shivering slightly when his eyes found hers again. “Whatever happens, it’s my choice.”
He shook his head, bright gaze blazing with tears. “Raven, please…”
“It’s my choice. Whatever I decide is my choice.” She trembled. “I’m telling you because I love you. But, whatever happens, the choice is mine.”
This wasn’t the time to bring up the past, but she knew well the memories her words evoked.
She also knew, feeling his sigh, that he knew she was right.
It was her choice, just as dying for her had been his. Nothing could have changed his mind, and nothing would change hers.
His acquiescence didn’t make her heart ache any less. She’d never seen him rigid with fear. She’d never felt him shake as hard as he was shaking. And even when she tried to placate him with a soft, reassuring kiss, she tasted nothing but his tears.
“I can’t lose you,” he whispered against her lips, his voice barely audible. “Not again.”
“Then we should listen to them. Dexter wouldn’t suggest something guaranteed to kill me if he didn’t think there was a way.” She breathed softly. “Please, let’s just hear what he has to say. Okay?”
Nicholas didn’t look so convinced, but he similarly understood there was no talking her out of it.
When she felt it safe to speak again, Raven wasted little time getting back to the question at hand. Her attention shot back to Dexter. “You said I wouldn’t survive the turning because of the battle between inner daimon me and outward vampire…whatever. But if I’m all strong, then why wouldn’t I be able to kick the vampire-demon’s ass?”
A soft, sad smile drew across her Guardian’s face. “The demon would attempt to possess your body when you’re still human. The struggle that would ensue would be your inner daimon battling the other demon out, and asserting her claim on your body. This is where the turning would fail, you see. The inner daimon isn’t strong enough because it’s a recessive trait. The daimon is killed, and the demon takes over the body of the host, with every sort of person except the Few.”
“Why?”
“Once inhabited by one demon, a body cannot withstand the inhabitance of another.”
Raven frowned, squeezing Nicholas’s knee. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Meaning?”
“It’s like a soul, really,” Dexter explained. “Souls cannot exist in a physical form that is not their host body. They can for a time, granted, but not indefinitely. Eventually, the body will reject the soul and shove it out. The same thing can be said for demons.” He nodded to Nicholas. “Paimon modeled Nicolai to be the same flesh, the same body, the same soul when he adhered to your bargain. Therein, the same demon was the only acceptable candidate when he was sired by Octavia. Any other demon would have killed him. When the Few are, for lack of a better word, sired, they either die during their battle for their body or they die after the invading presence has won.”
“Why?” Raven was barely aware she spoke at all. “I mean, I get the stuff about the host body, kind of. But—”
“If your soul were transferred to another body, it would die,” Dexter explained simply. “Not immediately, perhaps, but it would die because that was not the body for which it was designed. There are numerous accounts of sorcerers, particularly during the Black Plague, attempting to save people by transferring their souls to others. It just doesn’t work, because that body wasn’t meant for them. It’s the same principle. You already have a daimon inside of you. The one you were born with, the one made for your body. Replacing it with another might work for a while, should you survive the transition…but ultimately, the body rejects the demon and they cease to be.”
Raven inhaled sharply, the clockwork of her mind working fiercely to keep up with all the information being shot her way. “So in a perfect world…”
“Your daimon would prevail over the invading presence and become the dominant trait,” Dexter concluded. “It has simply never happened.”
“And nothing would change?”
“Nothing,” the Guardian agreed. “You would become immortal, which won’t change anything as the claim has done that already. You’ll also be much, much stronger than you are now, but you would still be able to walk in sunlight. You’d still be able to ingest human food. You would still be human, Raven, because your daimon depends on your humanity for survival.”
“As opposed to the ones that go into vampires who want them all dead-like.”
“Right. Since your daimon was raised in a human body, it needs a human body to survive.”
Raven arched a brow. “Mmm hmm. How are you expert on me and the daimonness that is me?”
Dexter frowned and shuffled quietly. “I told you I did a lot of reading today,” he replied.
“But it’s never happened!” Nicholas erupted, his grip on her waist growing so tight it would likely take a crowbar to separate them. “It’s never worked! We know that some of the Few have tried before. It’s there in the books. Guardians bemoaning their idiot wards because they tried to cheat death and got it back five times over. We have no reason to think it would work—”
“Yes, we do,” Dexter said. “Raven has something no other warrior has ever had. And that’s why I think this is our best chance.”
“Oh really? Some secret weapon, is it?” Nicholas snapped. “Well, your holiness, by all means enlighten us.”
There was a long, pregnant silence. No one moved. No one blinked. No one breathed.
Then Dexter spoke again, and the air vibrated around his words.
“She has you.”
Chapter 28
She trembled so hard she was certain the bed would rattle when she sat. It did not. Her bedroom didn’t spin, the ground didn’t shake, the lights in the room didn’t blink. She didn’t feel like she was being watched, well, by unwelcome eyes, anyway. She hoped it meant Dexter was right—that Paimon’s power in this dimension was finite. After what he’d told her of their conversation, she kept expecting the Hell King to bound around the corner and seize her debt before she and Nicholas could proceed.
Perhaps Paimon planned on intervening during a crucial moment. Perhaps he would collect the daimon during the change. He’d certainly indicated he was in the know, that he eavesdropped on every conversation and therefore trying to out-maneuver him was a wasted effort.
According to Dexter, though, it was a lie. Paimon had to be summoned for a reason. Demons of his caliber couldn’t sustain life in this realm without rites and people offering blood to complete their manifestation. If Paimon and others like him truly could exist in this realm, there would never be any rest for the wicked.
“It’s very likely he has enough power to manifest whenever he chooses,” Dexter had explained. “He must. But I think it’s very limited. He came to both you and me. He wasn’t with us very long, and I believe the point of his visit was to enforce the idea that not only is he omnipotent, but to dissuade us from seeking loopholes.”
Raven perked a brow. “So he James Bonded himself on purpose?”
Dexter had frowned. “Um, yeah. That sounds about right.”
Her Guardian
’s reassurance notwithstanding, she couldn’t simply switch off the rattling of her nerves. The facts remained unchanged. These were her last minutes as a normal, earthbound human. If she lived, she would live on as something other than what she was. If Dexter was wrong and the turning didn’t take, then she would die.
Raven trembled, a chilled breath rolling off her lips.
She would die.
“Raven?”
She blinked and glanced up. Nicholas shadowed the doorway, dressed only in jeans, his eyes heavy with fear and weighted with reluctance. He didn’t want to do this, not when nothing was certain and they gambled everything else in the hope that Paimon’s true reason for keeping them parted, for keeping them ignorant of the past, was to prevent what was about to happen from happening.
Dexter had concluded as much. Paimon’s real reason for separating Nicholas and Raven was to make his bargain bulletproof. He’d attempted to eradicate Nicholas’s memories by giving him another woman. He’d reconfigured Raven’s upbringing so that she had a peaceful childhood rather than a miserable one. He’d done everything he could without bending the rule of free will, and the truly frightening thing was he might have been successful were it not for the claim.
However, he hadn’t been successful. It seemed important to remember that. Paimon had failed. Nicholas had always had her in his dreams. Though Raven hadn’t been visited by visions of Nicolai at night, there were times, she knew now, when she’d known she belonged to something greater than the High Council. They were together now. If Dexter was right and this plan worked, they would be together for a long, long time.
Paimon had failed. He’d taken their memories, but he hadn’t been able to touch them. He hadn’t been able to keep them apart, and it was the reason he had to collect her debt now. It was the reason he’d stepped from the shadows and made his presence known.
“Why wait at all?” Raven had asked. “He gave me a week, Dexter. Why give me that week?”
Dexter hadn’t had an answer. He had, however, provided vague suggestions. The New Moon was set to appear on Raven’s last day. Perhaps there was some constellation moving into alignment. Perhaps a certain number of days had to pass before her powers were up for grabs. It was anyone’s guess.
Ripples Through Time Page 29
