White Lies: (The Uruwashi Series #4)

by Christina Moore

  Then the seikonō started to let loose. There were waves of ice and water, electrified gusts of fury and daggers of protruding earth all aimed for the tiny, nimble vampire.

  “Stop!” Tristan cried out, finally finding speech only to scream a swear as the center of the action exploded and everyone was thrown back by the shock wave. For a crowd of vampires, they were slow to recover and Tristan sat up, staring in awe at the destruction a single vampire caused. Every single vampire was bleeding, or more rightly had their own blood on them, their lesser wounds already healed.

  Feeling a surge of panic, Tristan looked down, patting himself. Not a scratch. That tiny, ancient being managed to hurt every single vampire here and miss him entirely—simply amazing.

  All at once, everyone seemed to recover and move again. Tristan was just getting to his feet when he felt someone moving with intentions focused on him. He spun, brandishing his trusty kitchen knife and frowned at the vampire who stood just out of reach, staring coldly at him. Dammit, he should have thought about asking Xuejiao for his back-up katana back after… when the hell did he have it last, anyway?

  It was Katrina, the strange fledging that he’d met in France. Although, “met” wouldn’t be entirely accurate since all they did was attack each other. He was sure the only reason he won that little tiff was because he’d had more hand-to-hand training than the young woman and the fact that she was severely limited by the full-body suit of armor she wore.

  But what was strange about her wasn’t her piercing miss-matched eyes, one a bright green with amber flecks, the other a cool brown, but the way her apparent appearance clashed with how she felt. Yes, there was a fundamental fledgling flavor to her; she was no doubt very young, but deeper than that, she felt old at the same time. It was impossible, really, and Tristan just didn’t understand her. Neither had Ash, and that worried him the most. Now, three months later, the wrongness was even more pronounced with Tristan’s own evolving physiology.

  “What the fuck are you doing here? You’re just a fledgling.”

  The woman huffed and flipped blonde hair out of her face. “Yeah, and you’re just human. Ass. Give me a fucking break and get moving already, don’t got all fucking night.”

  “Trina!”

  They looked up to find her Master, Balian, glowering at them from around his mask—stone mask? He was talking to her telepathically. Of course, Tristan couldn’t hear him but he felt the emotion, only just a trickle around all of the other emotions clouding his senses, to know the Master was warning his scion.

  “Yeah, I got it, I got it. Jesus, keep your panties on, man.”

  To Tristan’s surprise, the gruff vampire smiled. And then he was in a piss-your-pants full out laughter. The others all stopped to turn and look at him, this manic vampire laughing his ass off in the middle of battle. Tristan stiffened, not liking that everyone was now watching him, their sworn enemy. He just had to hope they hated Xuejiao more than the Uruwashi.

  Shit, he really needed to get away from here.

  “Come on.”

  There was a sudden tug on his arm and Tristan jerked at the hand holding him. “Jesus!” he hissed, trapped by the fledgling’s grip. There were just too many vampires around, shorting out his Uruwashi sensor, making it too hard to concentrate.

  “Sorry, lady, but I’m staying right here.”

  “She’s right!” Xuejiao called out as she slowly stood. For such a tiny person dwarfed by her larger counterparts she was an immense presence. “You should leave or else you might get hurt by accident.” Her attention shifted to the others near her. “Or on purpose.”

  Tristan jerked on his arm and Katrina let him go with a nasty sneer. He only glanced at her before he pushed past the few vampires between him and Xuejiao. Just behind her he found Ash again; she was getting to her feet, a ribbon of blood down the front of her face from her scalp.

  “This isn’t a trial,” Tristan said to her, the one person he could count on, “it’s an execution.”

  “Of course it is,” that familiar French accent said and Tristan found Audric in the crowd still hidden behind his mask. It was the hair that gave him away, that long braid slung over his shoulder to rest across his chest—only he was wearing it more like a scarf right then. “She has broken one of our fundamental rules repeatedly. Killing is one thing but to flaunt it so… mon dieu, c'est dégoûtant.”

  “Yes,” another faceless vampire, a woman with a thick Welsh accent, said. “He’s right. It is disgusting. Her very existence is an abomination, to make a child into one of us…” She hissed a word under her breath that was surely a curse.

  Tristan shivered. Abomination. No, they were looking at the wrong enemy for that.

  “Oh, come off it, Tegwen,” Xuejiao snapped.

  The woman huffed and tore off her mask. She was striking with small features giving her a sweet disposition that her attitude ruined. “What sort of anonymity is there if you go about shouting our names, you wretched beast!”

  Xuejiao was giggling, but it wasn’t a manic Yuki sort of laugh, but Xuejiao’s childish mien. What she thought she would accomplish acting like a kid in this crowd was beyond Tristan.

  “What is there of anonymity when we all feel each other? At least Ash of Earth here has the balls to face me like an adult, an equal.”

  Ash and Xuejiao exchanged a mutual nod of respect. There was a few dejected sighs and then the masks slowly started to come off. It wasn’t a mass exodus, but there were enough that gave Tristan a good idea of the crowd he kept. Almost everyone was focused on Xuejiao but there were straying glances his way by every single one of them. Yukihime flat out stared. Like she had something important to say to him and looked sick about it.

  Interesting. And, fuck, who cares! It’s Yukihime, for Christ’s sake. She’d played her cards and lost. Her time was done. He was done with her.

  “Besides… I know who your fledglings are, Tegwen, love. Don’t play the innocent card with me.”

  The woman’s face reddened and next to her Audric looked uncomfortable as he moved away.

  “Poor Julien, he thinks you hate him so he ran off to stay with the benevolent Audric.”

  Tristan’s mouth dropped open. He just got it. That burnt-faced child he met in France was Tegwen’s scion. Julien was all of ten with thick dark curls that flopped over an eye patch and some gnarly scars. That made two scions that Tristan had met now that were scarred. For a race so concerned with beauty, it seemed like a high ratio to him.

  “Yes!” Xuejiao said suddenly, turning to face him. “But Wrenny-poo was disfigured after his transformation, and on purpose.” She glanced at Desmond who looked away. “And Julien was disfigured before his death and a vampiric kiss given in a vain hope to save him.”

  Everyone was silent for a moment, looking at one another as if this were the first they were hearing of boy vampire’s origins.

  Tegwen gave a dramatic, tired sigh and lowered her forehead into a hand. “Must you air all of our follies and shames, Xuejiao? Hell’s bells, I’m not even supposed to be here.”

  The small vampire only smiled, watching Tristan with a glimmer in her eye. “Only trying to remove misunderstandings.”

  “Are you to say,” Ash said, stepping forward, “that we are misunderstanding you?”

  Tristan could tell that Ash was fighting herself not to stare at him, rush to his side. She was nearly shaking with the same need he felt. He wasn’t ashamed to admit it, he needed her. He needed her more than anything in the world right then. “And forever,” he found himself whispering.

  Xuejiao gave Tristan a look up and down, winked at him and then turned to face Ash. “Of course. I’m the most misunderstood of you all. But your assessment of my crimes is true.”

  Tristan sighed, slumping. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  She turned to him again. “Not in the least. But I prefer honesty, don’t you?”

  He sighed again. “Yeah…”

  “And my honest sent
iment is of regret. I’m sorry for what I put you through, Uruwashi, but it had to happen.”

  Tristan stiffened at hearing the name of his ancestors spoken and the waved of unease he felt from the vampire crowd as they reacted. The truth was definitely out, to everyone. There was no doubt now in the eyes of all those vampires watching Tristan, just who he was. The damned, the Uruwashi.

  The enemy.

  He took a step back even as Ash moved closer to him.

  “Ash,” he pleaded again. “This can’t happen. Not like this.”

  She stepped around Xuejiao and stopped close to him and he felt the crowd bristle at their overly familiar proximity. Xuejiao was smiling at them.

  “It must, my love,” she said to him in a low voice, full of remorse. “She is too strong for just you and I, even for,” she nodded her head towards Innokentiy. “Vampire do not get along in groups like this but only when there is a grander purpose.”

  “Brutally killing one of your own!”

  Ash took a moment to let him calm, take a breath herself. She was looking at him, straight in his eye, but she was no doubt as aware of the others all watching as he was. “Should we let her go?”

  Her question was serious but he still felt as if she was pandering to him.

  “We… no, she can’t.”

  “Then what other options do you see, my love?”

  He huffed, glancing up at the crowd fixated so intently on him. “I—I just don’t know. But this isn’t right.” Why was he protesting so hard to keep her alive? After what she’d done, she had to die. He knew it with a certainty. But he also believed that she should live, just not why.

  Ash smiled sadly and to everyone’s, especially Tristan’s, amazement, she lifted onto tiptoe and kissed him. Days ago Wren busted his lip open, Desmond made it worse, but it had a nice thick scab on it now. Still, it was a dangerous game, one that could mean the end of his humanity if the thinnest drop of Ash’s vampiric enzymes found its way into his system. Even knowing what he might be giving up, he submitted to raw need and scooped her up with an arm around her waist, that knife still in his grip, and his other hand grabbing her head.

  The entire group reacted, he could feel it light up his blood. Excitement, surprise, disgust, confusion, they all felt it on some level. And much to his delight, he felt Ash smile before she deepened their forbidden kiss, slipping her tongue into his mouth. He knew the show was for the others as much as for their own comfort. They loved each other, the Uruwashi and the vampire, and they wouldn’t hide it from anyone. Maybe it was reckless, but it was done now.

  When they parted, Tristan whispered across her lips, “My rashness is rubbing off on you.”

  She only smiled before pulling away.

  “Dear boy,” Innokentiy said, taking a step forward. He had everyone’s attention now as the question of his death, which everyone believed so deeply in, was on their minds. Yukihime, out of all of them, seemed the most troubled by the Viking’s appearance. Tristan didn’t doubt she might have known him before his faked suicide, especially since he was an ancestor to her old lover.

  “There is no prison that can hold our kind, it just doesn’t exist. And I’ve known Xuejiao for a long time, there’s nothing you, Ash, or even the mighty gods themselves can do to stop her. Not alone. This, this… mob, it’s the only way. Unfortunate but true. And just as her death is the only possible outcome and her acceptance palatable, she must also fight it. It is only natural.”

  “Well spoken,” Xuejiao said reverently with a nod.

  Innokentiy returned her nod but looked deeply saddened.

  Feeling the panic rise again, Tristan turned to Ash. Surely, of anyone, she understood him, his feelings. Even if they had been bombarded over the past few days and his subconscious anxieties were becoming clearer to him. His morals were at risk, exposed for all the world to sway. So many things were in question but the only real question he needed to resolve right then was if it was okay to kill a vampire for simply being a vampire. Because no matter what they’d done, a vampire was a person. Just like Innokentiy said, there was no prison to hold them but did that mean that death was the only answer for their misbehavior?

  “There has to be another way.”

  Ash bowed her head, whispering, “I’m sorry.”

  Tristan looked to Innokentiy again, and seeing his resolve to do what must be done, he looked to an unlikely ally. Yukihime seemed troubled but made her decision clear with her adverted gaze. Desmond too. Angry and aggravated, Tristan made a noise low in his throat.

  “Cowards,” he whispered, shaking.

  Everyone seemed to hold their breath, waiting to see what this strange creature had to say next. After a moment of gathering himself, Tristan let out a long sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly to Ash, “But I just can’t—I can’t let you do this to her.” He shifted smoothly into a fighting stance with his stolen kitchen knife brandished. His knee screamed against the position, his head throbbed. “I won’t let you slaughter her like, like an animal.”

  Ash chuckled sadly, shaking her head. She moved to stand by her lover’s side and smiled at the surprise on his face. “No. We.” She smiled up at him. “We’re a team, no matter what. Always.”

  22: Killing Strangers

  XUEJIAO looked smug as she lifted her chin, smirking triumphantly at the crowd.

  “Ash,” Tristan whispered. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Of course I do. Besides, you are right. I don’t know how, but there must be a better way. There is no humanity in a mob extermination like this and I want to believe our kind still remains human at heart. You will not stand alone because you are right. You will not stand alone because I love you.”

  The crowd was silent and tense until someone made a disgusted hiss and then all hell broke loose. Most of the group went for Xuejiao, but more than a few were headed straight for Tristan. He hesitated, for just a moment and got a shoulder to the gut for it.

  Ash didn’t have to apologize for the hit because he realized in the blur of vampire and snow that he’d almost gotten himself chomped on by one of the ancient strangers. He came to laid out flat in the snow nearly ten yards away and still gasping for a clean breath. She might have broken a few ribs and he was grateful for it.

  “Tristan!” Ash snapped and he moved without even thinking, as if he knew exactly what was coming. He rolled away in time to miss a fist encased in earth and again when a second vampire tried to scoop him up.

  They were old enough that he shouldn’t have gotten the better of them but he could tell by the look on each of their faces, he’d surprised them. They’d underestimated him.

  He was just wobbling to his feet, almost having found his breath finally, when the snow rippled and he went down again. Snow cascaded over his face, filled his mouth and sinuses. He didn’t need the burn of a dozen seikonō in his blood to know that that’s exactly what was sizzling its way down his throat. He didn’t know who was trying to suffocate him, only that he could taste their malice in the seikonō.

  Despite not being able to breathe, Tristan felt distinctly composed. Maybe it was because in the midst of vampire powers surging through him, he felt Ash nearby and trusted her to step in before it was too late. He could hear her, somewhere off to the side, fighting with all she had. Of all the flavors of seikonō swirling in him it was hers that was the strongest, like a light in the dark of all the others. She almost had a taste. God, she was so strong; she stood up to the elders of her kind on nearly equal ground.

  Another presence was suddenly on him and he instinctually fought before he recognized it. He forced himself to stop thrashing and let the man help him, praying that the trust was justly placed. Ice bit into his veins as Desmond forced his own seikonō onto Tristan, chasing out the invader. Tristan felt as if Desmond were physically inside him, filling his body and his mind.

  Desmond’s presence swelled, leaking into every fiber of Tristan’s body. His entire body prickled with sharp
energy but just as the pain of it was almost too much, it subsided. And then he could breathe and see again.

  Desmond was looking at him, but not with the stupid ass proud grin he was expecting but a deep frown and something that might have been worry in his bright green eyes. Tristan suspected he was lucky to be alive in that moment.

  He opened his mouth to frankly thank Desmond when a pair of icy hands grabbed him, jerking him back. He latched onto the wrists of the one holding him and dug his nails in. He knew that if a vampire didn’t want to let go, there was no getting away, but he could make them pay for it. They felt pain too.

  Sure enough, he felt skin break under his nails and the coldness of the vampire’s blood. He smiled to himself because he knew that coldness was to his advantage. He also knew just how strong this one was, he was the same vampire who’d just tried to asphyxiate Tristan, going for a more direct approach now. Despite the strength of the seikonō Tristan felt invading him, the vampire was young. Not quite a full Master yet, just a blundering transmute, probably one of the older one’s scions.

  “Desmond!” he croaked out and the vampire seemed to come to himself again and darted for them. Behind Desmond, Tristan could see Ash engaged in a large group. She was outnumbered by five, but somehow managed to keep them at bay, keep them from ganging up on Tristan. However she was doing it, he hoped it would last long enough for him and Desmond to take care of this one before they could join her.

  Desmond. Jesus. He was actually relying on the guy. Boggled the mind.

  The big vampire swooped in, deftly diving over Tristan and taking down the guy behind him. By the time Tristan scrambled to his feet, Desmond had the fellow House of Water attacker’s neck in his big meaty hands.

  Tristan dove for the vampire, clocking him in the jaw before sending a second fist into his middle, making him double over. He motioned with a nod for Desmond to move the vamp and when the big guy slammed the offender down into the snow, Tristan jumped on top of him, pinning his arms.