Nope, we’re screwed.
It was a struggle to force myself to sit back in the chair facing Adio. My eyes moved over to the warlock and I unclenched my jaw. “It’s been a while, Ryan.”
“It’s always a pleasure to see you, Mira,” he replied pleasantly.
“How long have you known Adio?”
“A few years,” he nonchalantly replied.
My mouth twisted into an ugly smirk. “So you never really needed me as a contact with the nightwalkers or the coven. You already had the ultimate contact.”
“True, but he needed someone to keep a closer eye on you. I agreed to assist.”
“How convenient,” I sneered.
“Now, Mira,” Adio chided. “Let’s keep this pleasant. No harm has come to Danaus or you while in our care. Now that you can see that Danaus is perfectly healthy and safe, will you please answer my question? Who is your father?”
I hesitated. It was an ugly answer, a fact I hated to admit to even if I had no control over such a thing. It wasn’t as if it was my fault that my father was a monster, only that others didn’t need to know about it. But then, if anyone had a chance to help me get rid of him, it was Adio, and it certainly didn’t hurt that he had Ryan in his back pocket.
“He goes my several names.”
“Pick one.”
Again the names were stuck in my throat. “Coyote,” I finally said, but their faces were blank at the Native American reference to their trickster god. “He has probably also gone by Puck, Hermes, Eshu, Anansi, Set—”
“Loki,” Adio breathed in fearful tones.
“Yes, but he’s going by Old Nick now. Or rather, just Nick.”
“That explains a few things,” Ryan said grimly. “The fire, the appearance, the tendency toward chaos over order. You are your father’s daughter—the god of chaos.”
“Yes, that does explain a few things,” Adio murmured, folding his hands in his lap as he sank deeper into his chair while staring intently at me. “Your powers have grown exponentially recently. A year ago you would never have taken on a member of the coven such as Macaire, and now you have killed both him and Jabari. There are also rumors that you’ve defeated a bori. And now you’re plotting to destroy the queen of the naturi.”
“You’re certainly well informed,” I snidely replied, crossing my arms over my chest.
“I’ve survived this long by staying well informed,” Adio snapped. “With the destruction of the two most powerful members of the coven and the ascension of your own friend to the coven, one has to wonder if your next step is my seat.”
A bark of laughter escaped me before I could catch it. “I never wanted a seat on the coven in the first place. I fear that was mostly Jabari’s maneuvering, which only succeeded in backfiring on him. You can keep the position of Our Liege. Just leave me to my domain of Savannah.”
“We want to be left in peace,” Danaus added.
“And wouldn’t that be a danger to the world?” Adio inquired. “The daughter of the god of chaos and an ageless man with bori-laced powers left to run wild.”
I smiled at Adio, my fangs poking out beneath my upper lip. I leaned forward, gripping both arms of the chair. “I’m not your biggest problem, not by a long shot.”
“What would my biggest problem be?”
“Nick.”
“What are his plans?”
“He’s never been entirely clear with me, but it sounds like he wants all of his old powers back and to return to his place as a powerful god and not just be a minor player. He plans to use to me to those ends.”
“Then we simply need to kill you to stop those plans,” Ryan offered.
“Not a chance,” Danaus growled, which only caused my smile to widen.
“Thank you. It’s nice to know there is at least one person alive who isn’t eager for my death,” I teased. I then turned a serious gaze back on Adio. “I was thinking more of a trap. Would your mother aid me?”
Adio shook his head. “She is no match for the god of chaos in this world. She is simply the goddess of the dawn, fragile and fading in strength as the day passes toward its apex. Eos would not help you.”
“Then would you help me? You said that you became a nightwalker because you wanted to be a part of the dominant species when the Great Awakening happened. If Nick succeeds, we will all be subject to his whims.”
“I will consider it.”
“What will it cost me?”
Adio smiled. “Very wise.”
“You can’t get something for nothing in this world. What would you want in return? My chair on the coven? Exile?”
“I had . . . something . . . in mind when I brought you here, but now that I know the source of your blood, I am hesitant,” Adio admitted.
“What?” Ryan suddenly cried. “You promised me!”
“Promised what?” Danaus demanded. He took a step closer to the warlock, but Ryan didn’t seem to notice, as his angry gaze was focused entirely on the top of Adio’s head.
“I’m having second thoughts,” Adio admitted.
“You promised!” Ryan shouted.
I looked from Ryan’s flushed face to Adio’s look of distress. There was only one thing a nightwalker could offer a warlock of his strength and power. My stomach churned. “You promised him that I would change him,” I softly said, drawing Adio’s gaze to my face.
“Both of our bloodlines combined in his body to bring about his rebirth,” Adio said.
“Absolutely not!” Danaus declared.
“It won’t work,” I stated firmly.
“It worked with you,” Ryan quickly argued. “You had three makers.”
“I also had the blood of a god already running through my veins,” I countered. “I was different to start with. Underneath all your powers, you are still human at heart, Ryan. Your body will glom to the first drop of nightwalker blood that enters your system and will ignore any other that enters.”
“How can you be sure?” Adio asked.
“I’m not, but do we want to risk not only changing him into a nightwalker, but using the diluted blood of both the goddess of the dawn and the god of chaos?”
“It seems there is much that we must still discuss,” Adio announced as he pushed out of his chair. “I will leave you here to come up with your proposal to get rid of your father while we discuss what I will choose to be my payment should I elect to aid your endeavors.”
“You know, you could always just do it out of the goodness of your heart,” I pressed, rising from my chair as well.
Adio turned back to look at me, pausing as he tried to leave the room. “My mother was the goddess of the dawn, not the goddess of love.”
“True,” I murmured as he left the room, followed by a somewhat irate Ryan who slammed the door shut. We could have done well if the goddess of love had decided to have a few children in the world. We might have been a little better off, but then I guess I should have been grateful that the god of war hadn’t been particularly prolific. At least, I didn’t think he had been.
Twenty-six
“You can’t be seriously considering this?” Danaus raged the second we could no longer hear Adio and Ryan’s footsteps in the hallway.
I swallowed a sigh as I crossed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around his waist, laying my head on his shoulder so my forehead was pressed into the hollow of his neck. For now, I didn’t want to think about Nick, Adio, or Ryan’s frightening demand. I just wanted to hold the hunter and know that he was safe.
“Did he harm you in any way?” I asked, avoiding his question.
Danaus heaved a deep breath before finally wrapping his arms around me and holding me tightly. “Ryan appeared a few hours before sunset and politely escorted me to a house near the outskirts of the city. I was allowed to briefly look in on you. At the time, you were alone and there wasn’t a window in the room, so I decided that he needed you alive for the time being. We simply sat in the parlor not speaking, waiting for the sun to
set.”
“Sounds like fun,” I murmured against his neck before pressing a kiss against his warm flesh.
“I wanted to rip his head off the entire time, but he didn’t say anything so I held my temper.”
“Smart man.”
“I also didn’t know what kind of danger you were in or how you had been brought here, so I didn’t want to take any chances.”
“Again, smart man.”
Danaus grabbed both of my upper arms and held me out away from him so he could look me in the eye. “Then listen to this smart man and don’t agree to this. You can’t give Ryan the kind of powers you have. He would be just as great a danger as Nick.”
“Not at first. I wouldn’t make him a First Blood, but simply chum—weak and helpless for the most part. It would be centuries before he truly came into the bulk of his powers.”
“Mira, you can’t!”
“I have to consider it. Adio is a child of a god, like me. He’s the only one that might be powerful enough to help me trap Nick. I need his help.”
“You sound like you have a plan.”
“Something that I have been slowly developing.”
“How dangerous?”
“Oh, it wouldn’t be one of my brilliant plans if it wasn’t extremely dangerous and somewhat stupid,” I teased with a wide grin.
“And I won’t like it, will I?”
“You’ll probably hate it, I’m sure, but I think it’s going to be the best shot we have.”
“When do you plan on telling me about this brilliant plan?”
“Soon. I hate to even breathe the words out loud since it’s hard to guess how close Nick is at any moment. I want it to be a surprise for him.”
“Naturally.”
“For now, our main focus has to be Ryan and his request to become a nightwalker. I can understand his need to not be at the bottom of the nightwalker food chain when he is turned, but I’m not comfortable with the idea that he would have my blood flowing through his veins.”
“Beside the fact you also swore that you would never make a nightwalker of your own.”
It was a struggle not to roll my eyes at him. Yes, I had sworn that I would never make a nightwalker, and Ryan was the least of all people that I wanted to have my blood. But I also had a feeling that this was no fragile relationship between Ryan and Adio. There was a firm understanding between the two men after years of collaboration. I had been picked because of my strength and powers, but now Adio was having some doubts about the idea of another child of chaos potentially running around. The bloodline would be even further diluted when it passed from me to Ryan, but it wouldn’t be enough. There were still risks.
What worried me the most was the same vein of darkness that ran through me also plunged through Ryan. The warlock would not be able to keep his powers in a positive place, but would have to let the darkness consume him. Adio might be able to control his fledgling for a while, but that would only be a temporary solution. In the end he would have to kill Ryan or I would have to come hunting for him, assuming I survived my attempt to take out Nick.
“The only thing we have on our side at the moment is the fact that Adio and Ryan don’t completely see eye-to-eye on this matter.” I moved away from Danaus and sat on the edge of the bed, hanging my hands between my legs.
“How do we take advantage of that?”
“We try to quickly reason with Adio while we are in the process of making Ryan into a nightwalker,” I suggested.
“And if he doesn’t listen to reason?”
“Then Adio will be forced to change Ryan over himself, and then kill me for disobeying him.”
“What I don’t understand is why Adio didn’t change Ryan over himself,” Danaus said as he sat on the bed beside me.
“I have a feeling it’s for the same reason I don’t want to change him over. Ryan is already a powerful warlock, and neither of us is sure what powers he’s going to retain when he is reborn. Neither Adio nor I want to make an even bigger monster by giving him access to the blood of a god. Unfortunately, Adio didn’t realize what he was dealing with until he had me in his grasp. Now that he’s made his mistake, he has to find a way to gracefully back out of his agreement with Ryan without upsetting whatever arrangement the two men now have in place.”
Danaus scratched the dark stubble that had grown on his chin. “Could we secretly find a surrogate to take your place? Would Ryan be aware of the difference while in the process of being remade into a nightwalker?”
“That’s my hope, but we need to get Ryan drained first,” I said, rubbing my hands together. I couldn’t help but feel a little pleasure at the thought of digging my fangs back into the warlock’s neck. Not only would the revenge be sweet after he attempted to manipulate me, but the warlock’s blood carried with it an extra little bonus—I could be awake during the daylight hours as long as I was drinking his blood. I was still vulnerable to the rays of the sun, but to be awake and alive for those long hours and not vulnerable was too precious to pass up.
“You’re getting normal blood back into your system as soon as we get home,” Danaus sternly said without needed to read my thoughts.
“A few days wouldn’t hurt.”
“Yes, they would.” I looked over at his face and saw the resolve in his beautiful blue eyes. I had a feeling I would be feeding off a normal, everyday human before I had the chance to even leave Venice. The last time I’d fed off Ryan’s blood, the results had not been pretty. In fact, they nearly cost Tristan his life and me my sanity. Yes, Danaus was right. Never again.
A knock came at the door, and Danaus jumped to his feet and placed one hand on the knife at his side as he stepped in front of me. A part of me was pleased to discover that neither of us had been divested of our weapons during the day, but then, we were faced with a powerful warlock and a powerful nightwalker. They could easily find ways around a sword and knife if they wanted to.
“Come,” I called, resting a reassuring hand on Danaus’s arm for a moment as the door swung open. As the two men reentered, I let my hand drop back down into my lap. The awe I felt less than an hour earlier when I first met Adio had melted away. I had expected a nightwalker that was older than Danaus and radiated more power than I could comprehend. Instead, I was faced with someone who was something of a charlatan. He had gotten his seat as Our Liege through his special powers and then sat back, leaving the coven to protect him out of the fear that he would kill them all in their sleep. The biggest problem when I looked at Adio was that I saw myself reflected back, except I was infinitely more devious and dangerous.
“You’ve had some time to consider my request,” Adio said as he came to stand beside the chair he had occupied earlier. Ryan stood close by his shoulder, his gaze narrowed on my face. If the warlock was trying to read my thoughts, he wasn’t having much luck. After centuries of Jabari parading through my brain, and recently Nick, I had gotten better about closing people out. Now the only one that could slip in and out at will was Danaus.
“Yes, but have you considered my dilemma?” I countered. “Nick needs to be dealt with or the future you are hoping for with the arrival of the Great Awakening—which truly is just around the corner—will not happen as you hope.”
Adio moved around to sit in the chair, but still remain turned so he could look at me. “It’s that close?”
Danaus took a step closer to Adio, causing Ryan to shift, as if putting himself more between the hunter and Adio.
“Aurora means to destroy her sisters Nyx and Cynnia as soon as possible,” I told Adio, “and she has no qualms about fighting that battle in front of humans. Nightwalkers and lycanthropes have been dragged into the battle in an attempt to control the damage and keep things secret. If we’re lucky, we may succeed, but if we don’t, the Great Awakening will be happening very soon in the worst possible fashion.”
“This is . . . unexpected,” Adio murmured. “I knew the Great Awakening was going to happen soon, but I didn’t realize that the s
ituation with the naturi had grown so dire.”
“Jabari and Macaire haven’t been keeping you informed?”
“I knew of the events at Machu Picchu, but I knew nothing of Aurora’s newest plans. I assumed she would take some time to build her army and strike back at the nightwalkers here in Venice. I didn’t know that a civil war was brewing.”
“Cynnia seeks peace with the nightwalkers and simply wants to lead her people into a quiet existence away from humanity before they all fade into extinction. I’ve sworn to help her because my other choice is Aurora and her very public war against humanity.”
“I see.”
“Do you really?” I asked, finally coming off the bed to walk around so I was standing in front of him. “I’m torn on two fronts. The naturi need to finally be dealt with, and this alliance with Cynnia could afford us at least a temporary peace to get us through a few decades should the Great Awakening occur. At the same time, I must deal with Nick and finally see that he is caged in some fashion so he can’t cause us any additional problems. I fear that the Great Awakening would afford him too wonderful an opportunity to step forward into the power vacuum created by the chaos.”
“I do not know what I can do to help you with your father, but I am sure you have a plan,” Adio said with a smirk.
“I do.”
“But for my help, you must first aid me in changing my friend here over to a nightwalker,” he continued, motioning with his hand toward the warlock.
I stood and looked over Adio at Ryan, who was standing straight and stiff. He wore his usual charcoal suit with the light gray shirt that was open at the neck. His skin still held a nice tan, while his shoulder-length hair was a flawless white. He watched me with perceptive gold eyes, taking in my every movement.
When I first met the warlock at the Themis compound, I suspected he was going to be more trouble than he was worth. However, he had helped protect us when the naturi attacked, and came to our aid again on Crete when we were fighting the naturi once again. Unfortunately, he’d tried to exploit my weakness with glittering promises of walking around during the day. I hadn’t considered the price when I agreed to the deal, only thinking I would be safe from an attack by Aurora. If we had continued, I believed he might have finally convinced me to change him without Adio’s assistance, simply because I was already too strung out on his blood to know any better.
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