by Todd Gregory
Damn, he was good.
Rachel narrowed her eyes as she looked at me. She was trying to get inside my head, I could tell, and smiled to myself. She can’t do it anymore, and it’s driving her crazy. I struggled not to laugh out loud. She looked confused, and I winked at her.
“He’s learned how to shield his mind.”
I could hear her thought as clearly as if she’d spoken the words aloud.
Oh, yes, things were going to be a lot different from here on out.
“How’s Jared?” I asked as the door shut behind Clint and Jean-Paul.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” She gestured toward the bedroom door with her head. I crossed the room, slid open the pockets doors, and shut them behind me.
Jared was sitting up in the bed, wearing a white tank top that was a size too small for him. It was obviously one of mine, and his nipples were poking through the thin fabric. He put down the book he’d been reading and folded his arms. “Cord.” He said it flatly, without emotion.
I resisted the urge to listen to his thoughts and sat down on the edge of the bed. “How are you?”
He shrugged, his muscled shoulders going up and down an inch or so. “Better.” He gave me a humorless smile. “When I woke up and found out I’m a vampire, let’s just say I wasn’t in a really good place. I’m better with it now, though.”
“Jared, I’m really sorry—”
“No need to apologize.” He waved his hand. “What’s done is done. And apparently it wasn’t really your fault.” He looked at me, his beautiful brown eyes sad. “I guess we were both kind of under some sort of spell. I don’t understand what it’s all about, but Nigel and Rachel have promised to explain it all to me.”
“I don’t think I understand it all myself,” I replied, “but I’m beginning to.” Best to leave the explanations to them. I don’t want him to know what kind of danger he’d been in. “For what it’s worth, I’m so sorry about everything. I’d never do anything to hurt you or your family.”
He just nodded and didn’t say anything.
I could hear the others murmuring in the other room, and I heard the front door open and close and knew Clint had gone.
To get Quentin, that’s where he’s going. He’s all a part of this somehow too.
But I didn’t want to listen in on their conversation just yet. I knew they’d tell me everything, and if they didn’t, I could listen into their thoughts.
I’d certainly know if they were lying.
It no longer bothered me that Jean-Paul didn’t love me. I’d listened to his thoughts in the car—it was easy, and getting easier every time I did it. I could even narrow the focus to what I wanted to know—the brain was an amazing thing. Even though we—most people, most humans, I kept forgetting I wasn’t human anymore—think we are only thinking one thing at a time, our minds are thinking many things we aren’t even aware of. We focus on what’s important at that moment and think that’s it. But there are thousands, maybe even millions, of thoughts racing through our brains at any given moment, and it’s just a matter of focusing on one strand of thought and shutting the others out. It’s something we don’t even have to concentrate on within ourselves; it’s second nature, like breathing or walking or whatever. So, I had focused my eyes on Jean-Paul’s head and listened for my name.
It didn’t hurt as much as I would have thought it would, but I was changing. It hadn’t been a mistake to leave him and the others, to come back to New Orleans. Others may think it had been, but I didn’t agree with that assessment. All of it, everything, had been set in motion by forces beyond my control long before that final explosion between Jean-Paul and me in Palm Springs. Hell, my even being with Jean-Paul in the first place hadn’t been in my control; the witches had done even that. Not even Sebastian, for that matter—the one I had cursed whenever I felt frustration and anger with what I had become—had been to blame for anything. Sebastian had been nothing more than a pawn for the twin witches, for all that he had been the witchmaster.
Nico had even been playing his own brother.
Everything had happened according to Nico’s design. He had moved us all around like pawns on his chessboard, and all because he had seen me in the woods when I was little more than a child and had wanted me. Nico had led me to Jean-Paul, and thus to Sebastian, and eventually away from Jean-Paul and back to New Orleans.
And I had destroyed him, and his brother, and his entire coven.
He had wanted to make me a god so that we could rule the world together.
It never occurred to him that I would have the power, the ability to destroy him.
In the end, he’d been as big a fool as the rest of us.
“It’s going to take some getting used to, this whatever it is.” Jared looked away from me, and I knew he was thinking about his fiancée—Tori, her name was Tori, Tori Crawford—and how she and his family would never know what happened to him. He would have simply disappeared while walking from his car to the restaurant, just another weird unexplained disappearance in the French Quarter. It happened all the time, and his family and loved ones would never know peace. Every time the phone rang, every time someone knocked on their front door, they would hope—and every time, their hearts would break a little more.
At least my family thought I was dead.
“When you were”—I paused to clear my throat, to think of a less offensive way to say it—“transitioning, several times you said to me you never believed I’d died in the fire. Is that true?”
He didn’t look at me, just sucked his lips in and nodded. “I didn’t want to believe it,” he whispered. “I couldn’t believe it.”
I nodded and walked over. I touched the side of his face, and he leaned into my hand. “I don’t understand,” he went on. “I mean, back before”—he swallowed—“when I was human, I never thought about you in that way, you know, but now . . .”
I kissed the top of his head. “Things are different when you’re a vampire,” I replied. “Don’t worry about it, okay? You’ve got a lot to learn—we both do.” I patted his shoulder and walked back into the living room.
“So, what now?” I asked, crossing my arms and leaning against the wall.
Nigel stared at me, his eyes narrowed. I met his gaze evenly, and after a few moments his eyes widened. “Oh, yes,” I heard his voice inside my head, and knew that no one else could hear it. “I suspected this was going to happen to you. Are you okay with this, Cord? I hope you are—because there’s no turning back for you now.”
“It is what it is, Nigel. Apparently it was my destiny.”
He was ancient, I knew, even more ancient than Rachel knew or suspected. He went back further than Egypt; he not only was there when the pyramids were built but also he was there when the plain at Gaza was empty of monuments. He was there when the Egyptians were little more than animals.
He went back further, and I saw the world he was from—a civilization even more advanced than the one we knew and lived in every day. For a brief moment, I saw a city of marble and sandstone, where magic and science worked together in harmony to create a world of ease and comfort no one in our time could even begin to understand or conceive of, except as—
“Heaven,” I said aloud. “That’s where the concept came from.”
Nigel stood up and walked over to me slowly. When he got close to me, he put one hand on either side of my face and stared deep into my eyes.
And I let him in, wanted him to know.
But once he was inside, all he said was, “You are the one.”
And he was gone.
The front door to the house opened and Quentin burst through, pushed by Clint. His face was twisted with anger, his body tense. I was tempted to send him soothing, calming energy but resisted. I was pretty sure I didn’t want anyone besides Nigel to know what I had become.
What I now was.
At least, I didn’t want anyone to know for now.
Quentin looked around the room, his eyes fla
shing angry fire no one but I could see. When his eyes came to rest on me, they widened and color drained from his face. He knows.
“You lied,” I said, “when you told me you turned your back on your powers.”
“Powers?” Jean-Paul looked at me and back at Quentin.
“He’s a witch, and a powerful one,” I answered, never taking my gaze from Quentin. “You didn’t turn your back on your powers. You turned your back on your twin.”
Quentin’s jaw set and he tilted his head up defiantly. “Sebastian wanted to use his powers for darkness,” he replied. “The powers are a gift from God, to be used for good, not evil. I had no desire to become a demon.”
“You knew,” I went on, turning to look at Nigel. “He knew all along what Sebastian and his coven were up to, even if he didn’t want to be a part of it.”
“What are you talking about?” Clint asked.
I laughed. “Do you want to tell them, Nigel, or should I?” Rachel started to say something, but I cut her off. “No, Rachel, Nigel hasn’t been completely honest with you, either. He hasn’t told you everything.” I couldn’t help myself from letting a taunting tone creep into my voice. Good enough for her—she was enough of a bitch to me, I reasoned. “Were you, Nigel?”
Nigel didn’t answer me, and instead asked Quentin, “Who are your people, Quentin Narcisse? I can find no record of your family, and that’s not possible. It is impossible that such a powerful bloodline of witches could exist without the Nightwatchers knowing.”
“Did you know about Nico and Lorenzo?” I asked, not bothering to drop the mocking tone. “And their entire coven? How did you not know about Sebastian? And what they were up to?”
He turned slowly to look at me but didn’t answer.
“I would suspect there’s a traitor in your group, Nigel, someone who’s been working with them all along.” I shrugged. “All evidence of the Narcisse family has been erased from the records—because they don’t want to be known, and who knows how long ago it was done? How long has the Narcisse family been pursuing their agenda with their coven, an agenda that is contrary to everything the Nightwatchers stand for?”
“You didn’t even know three days ago what a Nightwatcher was.” Rachel didn’t bother to mask the contempt in her voice. “And now you—”
“Haven’t you noticed the change in him?” Nigel asked softly. “You’ve noticed, haven’t you, Jean-Paul? Clint?” They both shook their heads. “You can’t access his thoughts, can you, Rachel?” She shook her head. “He isn’t masking them from us, you know. We don’t have the ability to read them any longer, unless he chooses to let us in.”
“But only witches—” Rachel’s voice died in her throat and her eyes widened. “Oh, dear God.”
“There were two branches of our family,” Quentin said into the shocked silence. “The white branch and the mixed branch. The white branch—my grandmere always said they were evil, dedicated to evil. Our side of the family fled this area, went up north to hide in the bayous so they wouldn’t know we were alive, so they couldn’t use us. One of my ancestors cast a protective spell—she was a very powerful witch—so that the branch from St. Tammany Parish believed we were dead, extinct.” He sat down next to me and took my hand. “I didn’t want to lie to you, but I had to. Sebastian had found the other branch of the family, made contact with them, put me and my grandmother in danger. I didn’t know what you knew and what you didn’t know.” He turned to Rachel and smiled. “I didn’t even know you were vampires. But that wouldn’t have made any difference. I had to be sure that my cousins didn’t know I existed, otherwise they would have killed me, tried to take my power. That’s what they were all about, the power.”
“They used your brother,” I said to him softly. “I don’t know if that’s any comfort, but Sebastian wasn’t dark until they turned him, you know. They were using him. They even used you, Jean-Paul.”
Jean-Paul looked startled.
“Yes,” Nigel replied. “They knew about this house. They knew about you and your fraternity. Jean-Paul, you hardly hid your existence. It was Nico, wasn’t it? He was the more powerful, the more cunning of the two.” He began explaining to them the whole plan—the plan that resulted in me being what I was now.
But he stopped short of telling them what I was, and it surprised me that none of them asked.
Nigel explained the whole sordid story of how I became a vampire.
But again he stopped short of saying what the twin witches wanted from me—and what they had made me.
When Nigel finished, silence descended upon the room.
“So,” Jean-Paul said into the silence. “Gather your things, Cord. Our flight to Ibiza is early in the morning.”
“I think,” Nigel said slowly, “that Cord will be staying here with us for now.”
Clint looked at me, his eyes confused, pleading.
I nodded. “That’s right.” I got up and walked over to where the two of them were standing. “Thank you for everything,” I said in a soft voice. “I wish I could go with you, take up my old life again, but I’m on a different path now.” As I spoke the words, I felt the power surging within me.
Jean-Paul nodded and hugged me. He walked out of the room and down the hall. Clint looked at me, his lower lip trembling. I put my arms around him and whispered, “I do love you, Clint, please know that. I’m so sorry I was so blind for so long. But now . . . now I can’t be with you.”
He nodded, and I felt the wetness on his cheeks when he whispered back, “It’s okay, Cord. We have eternity to be together.” He kissed my cheek and followed Jean-Paul down the hallway.
I turned back to face the three left in the room.
Nigel cleared his throat. “Jared has agreed to come with us, Cord, to train to be a Nightwatcher. I hope you’ll join us—and you, too, Quentin.”
I was startled when Quentin nodded and said it would be an honor. Of course, he knows all about the Nightwatchers. He knows about everything, I realized, shaking my head.
“I’ll go get my things,” Quentin said, and went out the front door.
Rachel looked at me sourly and also got up and walked out of the room. I heard her walking down the hallway, and then a door opened and closed.
“Well?” Nigel asked, leaning forward with his hands on his knees.
“Of course,” I replied. “What choice do I have? I either become a Nightwatcher, or they will try to destroy me. Isn’t that correct?”
He didn’t answer me. “There may be a war coming, Cord, one that has been long in developing. We’re going to need you—and your powers. We can train you in how to use them, control them. You’re going to have to be vigilant.”
“Because power corrupts,” I replied, closing my eyes.
It was there. I could feel it and took a deep breath.
I need to always be able to control it.
Because if I couldn’t—
I didn’t want to think about that.
“We leave at sunset tomorrow,” Nigel said, getting to his feet. “I have some research to do, if you’ll excuse me.” And he left me alone in the room.
Three years earlier, I mused, I’d been a closeted frat boy coming to Mardi Gras to get laid. For the next three years, I was a baby vampire, going from one party to another and having a good time.
And now I was something no one had ever seen before, no one had ever dealt with before.
A chill went down my spine, but I shook it off.
I could handle it—I didn’t have a choice.
I went down the hall to my room to pack.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2012 by Todd Gregory
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-7992-7
