by Aja James
“Your Adversary is Simone Lafayette, the Keeper,” Jade answered her unspoken question. “She has quit the Cove as of yesterday evening. She leaves you these instructions and this address.”
Blood roaring in her ears, Inanna took the formal Challenge scroll from the Queen’s hands.
“Simone is the traitor we have been hunting,” Jade continued in a low voice, “but Devlin cannot pursue her until the Challenge is complete, as it takes precedence by our laws. I am sorry, my friend.”
“Pain is transitory despite its depths. Hate eventually eats itself into a hollow void. Sadness can only last as long as life itself. But love, love extends beyond reason and time.”
—Excerpt from the Lost Chapters of the Ecliptic Scrolls.
Chapter Eighteen
Gabriel had used the two hours around lunch time to kill two birds with one stone: one, to escape the grueling, merciless training Cloud Drako enforced upon him, and two, to quickly go by Mrs. Sergeyev’s apartment in Brighton Beach to pick up a few of his and Benji’s things, the ones with the most sentimental value, like Benji’s baby blanket Lamby, as well as give her what’s left of his savings for all the help she’d given them in their time of need.
Benji had been off his sleeping schedule lately because of all the changes in his life and because he’d missed his security blanket desperately. He was a brave little trooper and tried not to dwell on it, but Gabriel had noticed the circles under his eyes due to the lack of a good night’s sleep. Those dark bags did not belong on the fresh face of a five year-old.
He entered the studio apartment with his key and found the place already emptied, cleaned and packed up in boxes. Inanna said that the moving company would bring their things later in the day. Their most valuable possessions were stored across the hallway in Mrs. Sergeyev’s apartment for safe keeping, in case the Russian mafia had come looking for them when Gabriel escaped the fight club.
He did escape, but things did not exactly proceed as planned after that.
In the past seven days he felt like he’d lived an entire lifetime—a kaleidoscope of emotions condensed in an intensely brief period, blazing past the numbness that had characterized most of his human experience, exploding through his consciousness like meteor showers raining upon the night sky.
And now he had come full circle, back to where it had all begun.
Accepting his human past with understanding and clarity. Embracing his present and future with his Blooded Mate and son with hope and conviction.
Gabriel closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
He was at peace.
He was finally alive.
“Gabriel.”
As he turned toward the strangely familiar yet foreign voice, a sharp stab of pain bloomed in his thigh.
Before he could focus on the hooded figure clearly, his vision grew hazy and his eyelids grew heavy.
It didn’t even register when his body collapsed like a house of cards to the cold, hard ground.
*** *** *** ***
Inanna shifted gears and pulled the Aventador into oncoming traffic, navigating the cars coming at her with determined precision, taking the shortest route from the Cove to Morningside Heights, even if it meant driving on the wrong side of the street, ignoring signs and breaking every traffic law in the book.
A deadly calm pervaded her mind and body.
She was in full fight mode, senses heightened, muscles ready.
She had less than twenty-four hours to answer Simone’s Challenge, but she needed to make arrangements for Gabriel and Benji first.
Fuck the Dark Laws.
Gabriel was not going to become enslaved even if she lost. She was going to make sure he stayed free even if she had to haunt the Goddess’s halls to make it happen.
The Challenge Scroll specified the time and location of their death match.
Midnight.
A ruin in upstate New York, in the woodsy rounded mountains of the Catskills.
It would take her an hour or less if she punched the Aventador past its top speed of 215mph, despite the winding roads and city streets. Good thing she’d outfitted her ride with a turbo charger already. She had plenty of time to plan.
But when she all but blew into the Pure Ones’ apartment like a gust of northerly wind, her allies greeted her with grim expressions, Sophia holding Benji in front of her, one hand comfortingly stroking his hair, one arm looped around his chest.
The boy’s eyes were wide and frightened.
Shit.
Where was Gabriel?
“He went to his old apartment around noon and hasn’t come back,” Aella answered Inanna’s unspoken question. “We received this note in the meantime.”
Inanna took the extended scrap of paper and read: Come alone and unarmed. I have your Mate. There may not be much left of him if you displease me with your actions. Tread carefully until midnight.
Inanna fisted the missive in her hand and stood silent and immobile. She had not expected that Simone would Challenge her to a fair fight; she knew it was a trap. But none of it mattered if Gabriel and Benji were safe and well. But now…
“We can help,” Aella said, as if reading Inanna’s busily churning mind. “We’ll make sure Benji is taken to safety ASAP. The Shield would be the best place.”
Inanna nodded sharply, still calculating permutations and possibilities.
“Must you answer the Challenge yourself?” Sophia asked, anxiety and worry tinging her voice, “Can’t you appoint a Champion or substitute or something?”
“It is for my Blooded Mate,” Inanna said, “our Bond will be forfeited if I do not personally answer the Challenge. It is the primal law of Dark Ones, built into our physiology, which is why it trumps all other laws of our Kind. When we Bond, our genetic blueprint transforms to match only with each other. That’s why a Bonded vampire can only take Nourishment from her Blooded Mate and no other. A Challenge by someone with a prior flesh or blood claim is the only thing that can break the Bond.”
“But you are not entirely vampire,” Aella suggested, “perhaps this doesn’t apply in your case with Gabriel.”
Inanna shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. She has him. No one can come in my stead even were it allowed by law. I must prepare for the worst. If…”
She trailed off as she looked upon Benji’s small, ashen face. The boy might not understand everything that was happening, but he could sense the adults’ emotions.
Inanna knelt before him and drew him into her arms, hugging him tight. “Be brave, darling,” she whispered into his ear as he hugged her with all his might in return, “everything will be all right. No matter what happens, know that you are loved. Always.”
She wouldn’t make him false promises, but she would do everything in her power to return to him with Gabriel safe and whole.
“Come,” Sophia gently pulled on Benji’s hand and led the boy into one of the bedrooms down the hall, leaving Inanna, Aella and Cloud to discuss next steps more freely.
“If the worst happens, we will make sure Benji is cherished and safe,” Aella vowed. “You have my word.”
Cloud also nodded in confirmation.
“But that’s not going to happen,” Aella said firmly. “You will win the Challenge. Tell us what you know about Simone Lafayette. I have done my own research as well. We can compare notes and build a strategy.”
Cloud clasped a warm, calming hand on Inanna’s shoulder, and as she stared into the warrior’s brilliant light-blue eyes, clarity and strength flowed through her like a cooling balm.
“You are not alone, Light-Bringer,” he told her quietly, imbuing her with confidence, “we will fight this together.”
*** *** *** ***
Gabriel surreptitiously tugged at the chains around his arms, wrists, calves and ankles.
He was bound tightly to an A-shaped solid wood beam with a long bar across the top, his arms wrapped around the horizontal plank at level with his shoulders, his legs braced apart by the lower plank
s.
Save for the thick musty hood over his head, he was naked and vulnerable against the winter cold.
The good news was that he could feel the flickering warmth from a few torches near his body, close enough to hear the crackle of flames in the freezing air.
The bad news was that he didn’t know whether the torches were for the light and the small warmth they provided or because they were there to ignite a conflagration at his feet.
He felt rocks and sticks and some tufts of grass beneath his bare soles. Not enough to start a fire, but they could always pour some oil on his body…
Not a happy train of thought.
Better to focus on the positive.
Which was that he was still alive and unharmed, except for the faint throbbing in his thigh from whatever that had stabbed him into unconsciousness.
Abruptly, the hood was pulled from his head. His eyes adjusted quickly to the dull brightness of the torch lights around him and saw—
A ring of black-robed spectators all hooded so that their faces could not be seen, surrounding a small circular clearing about twenty-five feet in diameter.
There must have been a hundred or more of the shadow-like figures. Gabriel appeared to be positioned toward the middle of this clearing but slightly to the side. Stone and wood ruins stacked behind their circle like additional giant witnesses to whatever was about to go down. Solemn and judging in their eternal silence.
“Welcome to your Challenge match, Gabriel,” that eerily familiar voice suddenly purred from behind him. “Though you will merely be an observer in this fight. After all, you are the coveted prize.”
Two long-fingered hands, that might have appeared elegant in a different context now looked skeletal in their thinness, slid around his sides, past his ribs and abdomen to grasp his penis and scrotum.
Gabriel gritted his teeth to prevent a shudder of disgust. He wouldn’t give the faceless bitch the satisfaction of a sneeze much less a real reaction.
The hands kneaded and squeezed and the purring grew louder, while nausea rose like acid in Gabriel’s throat.
Keeping her clutch of his sexual organs, the female slowly came around to face him, the oversized hood concealing her from view.
Freeing one hand to smoothly glide the hood from her head, she raised red-centered eyes to his.
“Remember me?”
The vampire in the tunnels, Gabriel realized, the female who had almost killed him.
She smiled as if pleased. “I see that you do. I have missed you, delectable one.” She drew out the s in a purring hiss. “We will have so much fun, you and I, once I get rid of your nuisance of a Mate.”
Gabriel neither twitched nor flickered. He simply stared back at her with opaque, emotionless eyes, infused with a dose of boredom.
“What bravado,” she whispered delightedly, “what a performance. How I will enjoy obliterating that calm exterior piece by piece until only raw, bleeding flesh remains.”
“But first a little sip for good luck.”
She squeezed his scrotum violently as she held the back of his neck with her other hand. Gabriel managed to swallow a shout of excruciating pain as she raised on tiptoe and struck his jugular with her fangs in the same moment.
A different kind of pain descended like a hail of arrows upon him.
A pain that dragged him into a bottomless pit of despair and hate. The venom from her fangs as she drank in deep gulps at his throat spread like poison throughout his body, decimating everything in its path.
Abruptly, she released him, giving his sex a hard, sadistic tug.
“Just as I thought. A Pure One in vampire guise. I knew there was something special about you from the moment I tasted you.”
Breathing hard from the aftermath of her assault, Gabriel gave her no other reaction.
She swiped her tongue meticulously across her fangs, still dripping with his blood, savoring every last drop. She closed her eyes, her expression orgasmic.
“Warrior class. Ancient. Mmmm. There is so much I can do with you. So much to gain.”
Over his dead body, Gabriel thought, trying to twist his wrists free of the iron chains. He’d send her to Hell first.
A murmur started among the ring of spectators, all but forgotten until now. The sound buzzed loudly like a swarm of maddened hornets.
Gabriel’s heart dropped to his feet at the sight of Inanna striding into the clearing, head held high, shoulders back, hair pulled into a tight braid, dressed in snug black pants, combat boots and a short-sleeved black shirt.
Unarmed.
She did not look at him as she approached the center of the ring, her gaze focused only on the female vampire in front of him.
“Traitor.”
Inanna slammed the word down like an anvil, no other opening salvo needed.
“Half breed,” Simone returned, smiling evilly.
“Let’s get this over with,” Inanna said and assumed a fighting stance, knees bent, ready to spring on the balls of her feet.
Simone shook her head, hands ostensibly remaining at her sides, but it was hard to tell with the heavy floor-length cloak that covered her from head to ankle.
“So impatient. You never learned how to savor the violence, sex and bloodletting in all your millennia posing as a vampire, did you?”
Inanna simply stared at her, readying to pounce.
Simone picked up on the coiled energy and tsked, “Not so fast. You play by my rules now. See this beautiful piece of meat behind me?”
She made clear to whom she referred by clawing a hand down Gabriel’s torso, leaving five long, bloody tracks, “one wrong move and you won’t like what I do to him.”
Inanna pulled back slightly from her stance, shifting her feet.
A tall vampire male came to stand half behind Gabriel, half beside him, a long serrated dagger in his hand.
“He’s going to help me make sure I have your full cooperation,” Simone explained. “One can never be too trusting in these situations.”
“Are you going to talk all night?” Inanna muttered through a clenched jaw. Goddess above, she wanted to tear the limbs off this filthy bitch. Starting with the hand that left those bloody streaks on her Mate.
Simone tilted her head and seemed genuinely puzzled by Inanna’s lack of curiosity. “Aren’t you at all interested to know why I’ve Challenged you and what I plan to do with your magnificent Mate? Why I’ve left the Cove and renounced my allegiance to Jade Cicada after centuries of service?”
“It won’t matter after I murder your ass,” Inanna growled, hackles all but bristling. “And then I’m going to kill you again just for the hell of it.”
Simone started to shake.
At first Inanna thought she was overcome by some sort of seizure, a stroke of unexpected good fortune, but then she realized that the bitch was laughing.
“Oh I am going to enjoy making you suffer very much,” the ex-Keeper said around a chortle. “Your arrogance and over-confidence would be amusing if it weren’t so pitiable.”
“Back at you,” Inanna spat out.
Simone exhaled long and deep, as if she was suddenly tired of the back and forth. It was time to get down to business.
With great theatricality, she slowly unclipped her cloak at her throat, unbuttoned the top and doffed it in a black heap at her feet.
She was similarly dressed, all in black, form-fitting, mobility-enhancing clothes and boots. What was different was that she was armed to the teeth with half a dozen knives secured to a circular holster around her upper thigh, two short swords criss-crossing her back, throwing stars attached to her hip belt, and Inanna could see at least two stilettos in the hidden compartments in each boot.
Simone bared the full set of her teeth in a gruesome grin. “And they’re tipped with poison, to which I am immune,” she said, as if sharing a special treat.
Inanna had anticipated this. Aella had done a remarkably thorough research on each of the Chosen. She knew more about the Keeper
than Inanna, who had lived and worked with her for decades. It made Inanna wonder what else the Amazon knew.
Simone was not to be underestimated.
Despite her station, she was good enough as a fighter to avoid Inanna’s chained whip before. They did not know who trained her and for how long, but she obviously had some moves up her sleeves.
Earlier, Inanna and Gabriel had gone over his last fight club in detail to try to round up some clues to help end the network as well as uncover the identity of the female vampire. Their suspicion based on Gabriel’s recall was that he had been poisoned by the initial stab wound, which served to paralyze him before she’d attacked in the tunnels. Aella also hypothesized that Simone might use poison if she knew she had to compensate for other weaknesses.
“Better and better,” Inanna threw back. “I wouldn’t want to humiliate you with a beheading within the first ten seconds.”
Hate flared in Simone’s blood-red eyes, and she hissed in displeasure before unsheathing the cross swords and launching a blitz attack.
Inanna was ready and countered bare-handed with single-minded precision, using her elbows and knees to block, her long-legged kicks to attack.
It had been a long time since she’d had to engage in such a vicious close-quartered combat, her hunts and battles in modern times mostly done at a distance. But her body recalled rigorous training from the ancient past.
She could almost hear the voice of the warrior who taught her everything she knew in her ear, giving her strength and guidance.
Look for an opening as your opponent attacks.
The more aggressive the assault, the less guarded they will be.
Bring them in closer to your body by side-stepping and turning your torso ninety degrees, making yourself a smaller target while holding your ground.
Use their momentum and strength against them; conserve your energy for the knock-out blow.
Inanna finally got close enough and placed two rapid jabs in sequence to strategic spots on Simone’s upper arms so that the locked length of her three middle fingers hit critical nerves like screwdrivers that numbed her opponent’s limbs instantly.
