The Vampire Wish: The Complete Series (Dark World)

by Michelle Madow

  “But you never gave her the ring.” He glanced at the object in question, which was currently displayed on my finger. It was bright and gaudy—so unlike anything I would ever buy for myself. “You kept it for yourself. Why?”

  “When I was inside the Crystal Cavern, it caved in.” I shrugged, as if it had been no big deal.

  In reality, it had been terrifying.

  Concern flashed across his features, but he regained control of himself a moment later, the emotion replaced with guarded coldness. “It caved in randomly?” he asked. “Or did you do something to make it cave in? So Camelia would think you were dead and you could keep the ring for yourself?”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose.” I couldn’t help but feel shocked at his accusation. But then again, after all my lies, I supposed it wasn’t fair to blame him for assuming everything I’d done had been part of a giant scheme. “Although, maybe I caused it unknowingly…”

  I hadn’t thought about it much before—I’d had so much else to worry about. But now that Jacen asked, certain things started to click into place and I realized that yes, I might have done something to trigger the cave in.

  “There were bats in the cave.” I shivered at the memory of them flying down from the ceiling and coming for me. “They started attacking me. I wasn’t supposed to touch anything but the ring—Camelia had warned me as much before I’d entered the cave—but I wasn’t about to let myself be bitten to death by bats, either. So I reached for the nearest weapon—a sword—and used it to attack them back. After I struck the first one, they flew back up to where they’d come from, and the cavern caved in.”

  “You were lucky to survive.” Pain flared in his silver eyes when he looked at me—as if the thought of my death hurt him. But I had to be imagining it. Because he hated me for lying to him.

  Right?

  Of course, the flicker of emotion was gone before I could analyze it further.

  “The cave in blocked the only exit,” I explained. “The main area with the artifacts was okay. It must have been some kind of spell put on the cave by whoever created it.”

  Which would be the angels, if the story Mary had told me was true.

  “You used the ring to escape,” he assumed.

  I nodded and pulled the ring closer to my side, since he was right.

  “You should have had Geneva take you as far away from the Vale as possible and never looked back,” he said. “That was your chance to find safety and leave everything in the Vale behind. But you didn’t. Why?”

  “Because my family is gone.” I swallowed away the lump that formed in my throat every time I thought about them. “I had nothing left to go back to. Even if I did, how could I possibly return to a normal life after everything I’d been through? I couldn’t. But with Geneva’s ring, I could help so many people. I had to try.”

  “You could have died trying,” he said, a shadow flashing over his eyes. “You still might, now that people know you’re a Nephilim. You’re going to be hunted forever.”

  Darkness descended upon my mind, because he was right. Being a Nephilim gave me strength, but what good was that strength when so many supernaturals surely wanted me dead?

  I shook the thought away. Worrying about it now would only lead me to spiral deeper and deeper into the hopelessness of it all. I had to focus on my goal—getting Jacen to believe the truth.

  “I’d already been hunted—when the vampires took me to the Vale,” I said. “You don’t know what life is like as a blood slave there. I do. The fact that I’d been chosen by Camelia to get the ring was pure luck. I couldn’t let the ring go to waste. I had to do what I could do help the other blood slaves—to try to free them. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d just saved myself and left them there.”

  “So why didn’t you come straight to me?” he asked. “I’d risked my life trying to get you out of the Vale, and you knew I’d been turned against my will. I would have helped you. I thought I’d done enough to prove that.”

  “I was going to come to you,” I said. “But then Geneva looked into the Omniscient Crystal. She showed me how Camelia had used transformation potion on Tanya to make her look like me, and had her killed to fake my death. And then she showed me how you reacted to my death…”

  Understanding flashed over his eyes, and from there, I told him everything about my time as Princess Ana, up to the moment I’d come to the Haven.

  Annika

  “We’ve been on the same side the entire time,” Jacen said once I’d gotten him up to speed. “We were just being too dense to realize it.”

  “Good thing I ended up being Nephilim.” I gave him a small smile, but it hardly did anything to lighten the mood. “Otherwise, I’d be dead right now, and you never would have known the truth.”

  “I wasn’t going to let you die in that throne room,” he said. “You know that, right?”

  He watched me so closely that I felt dizzy from the intensity.

  How had I ever believed that Jacen didn’t care about me?

  “I’d hoped so,” I said, winding my fingers around each other as I spoke. “But you didn’t exactly jump up to my rescue in there, either.”

  “You proved you didn’t need rescue.” He glanced at the stake next to me. “And I knew that as long as they didn’t have the ring, they wouldn’t kill you. They wouldn’t risk killing Geneva. But if they’d gotten that ring…” He clenched his fists, and his expression hardened, as if imagining what he would have done. “I would have done anything to keep you safe.”

  “Even though I lied to you?” I asked.

  “I knew there had to be some kind of explanation,” he said. “And I was right.”

  “You were.” I smiled for real this time, feeling at ease around him for the first time since I’d come in here. “Thank you for hearing me out.”

  “I didn’t have an option,” he said. “Curiosity gets the worst of me sometimes, and when it came to you, I needed to know the truth. But there’s still one thing you haven’t told me.”

  “Oh?” I raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

  “You never told me about how you came to work with the wolves.”

  “What?” I asked. “I wasn’t working with the wolves.”

  “Someone in the palace was,” he said. “It was the only way the wolves could have gotten through the boundary to stage that attack.”

  “If someone was working with them, it wasn’t me,” I said. “The only times I’d ever seen the wolves was when we fought them in the forest and when they attacked the town. Both of those times, they were trying to kill me. I swear I wasn’t working with them. I’ll even make a blood oath if that’s what it takes for you to believe me.”

  “I believe you.” He held a hand up in a stop motion, and my heart warmed at his trust—it was something I’d wanted for longer than I’d realized. “But if you weren’t working with the wolves, then why did that one stop before attacking you?” he asked. “And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about—I know you do. The wolf was about to attack you in the courtyard, and then it stopped. Why?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” I shrugged. “When it happened, I thought it smelled that I was a human. You know wolves can do that—they smelled past my vampire disguise when we were in the forest, too. And none of the humans in the square were attacked. The wolves only went for the vampires.”

  “Except that you’re not human,” he said. “You’re Nephilim.”

  “Remember—at the time of the attack, I was human,” I said. “My Nephilim blood only activated once I killed Laila.”

  From there, I told him everything I’d learned since coming to the Haven—from the details of being Nephilim, all the way up to Rosella telling me about my destiny.

  “It all makes sense,” he said. “Except for one thing.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “When we were in the attic of the Tavern, you resisted my compulsion.”

  “You tried t
o compel me?” I sat back, surprised—and a little annoyed that he’d tried to mess with my mind like that.

  “Yes.” He nodded. “When I told you to forget we’d ever met.”

  “Wow,” I said, the annoyance only growing. “So you were going to compel me to forget your existence?”

  “For your own good,” he said. “Or at least, I thought so at the time.”

  “Still.” I huffed and crossed my arms. “I deserved a choice in the matter.”

  “And I deserved to know your true identity while you were in the palace,” he said. “So let’s call this even, all right?”

  “Fine.” I sat back in agreement. It wasn’t like I had to worry about him trying to compel me again, since compulsion didn’t work on Nephilim. And he was right—I’d lied to him enough times that I could call this even.

  “I assumed you were wearing wormwood—it was the only way you could have resisted my compulsion,” he said. “But you swore you weren’t. And at that time, your Nephilim powers weren’t activated. So why didn’t it affect you?”

  “I don’t know anything more than I told you right now,” I said. “I promise. But maybe Mary has the answer.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But first, you mentioned a paper Rosella gave you with numbers. It sounded important. Can I see it?”

  I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it to him.

  He glanced at it and smiled. “These are coordinates,” he said, looking up from the paper. “Do you have a phone on you that I can use to look up their location?”

  “No,” I said. “The guards took it from me before bringing me to the throne room. Didn’t you bring one?”

  “I did,” he said. “But I have pretty good reasons to suspect that it’s being tracked.”

  “Why would it be tracked?” I asked.

  “You see, to come here without the royal vampires of the Vale suspecting me, I had to make a deal with them…”

  From there, he told me everything that had happened to him from the time I’d flashed out of the throne room to now, sparing no details.

  “So no matter what happens, I need you to promise that you’ll never give me that ring,” he finished, his eyes serious. “Can you do that?”

  “I promise.” I rested my hand on top of the ring, cursing it for bringing so many problems into my life. “But your family’s expecting you to eventually return. When you don’t, they’ll know you’re not on their side anymore. What are we supposed to do from here?”

  “We’re going to ask Mary to borrow her phone so we can look up those coordinates,” he said. “Figuring out their exact location is imperative to your quest.”

  He stood up with the paper in hand, ready to leave the room.

  “Wait,” I said, since there was still one big thing I needed to ask him.

  “What?” He tilted his head, watching me curiously.

  “I’m supposed to ask one person to join me on my quest.” I twisted my fingers around themselves, nervous. We still had a lot to work out between us, but I took a deep breath and focused on him, figuring it was best to get out with it. “Will you be my person?”

  “Yes.” He smiled, and with that one smile I knew—Jacen and I were a team. “I will.”

  Annika

  “Tromso, Norway,” Jacen announced, looking up from Mary’s phone. “Well, a bit northwest of Tromso. That’s the closest city to the coordinates.”

  We were still in the tearoom—Mary had been happy to join us when we’d invited her back inside. She hadn’t known the answer to the compulsion question—her best guess was that my dormant Nephilim blood had protected me—but she did let us use her phone.

  “So that’s the starting place for our quest,” I said. “Norway.”

  “It appears so,” Mary said. “We can’t provide a witch to get you to your location, as doing so might break the peace with other kingdoms—or even with the Vale once they discover that Prince Jacen has turned on them. But that won’t be a problem, since you can command Geneva to transport you.”

  “Actually, I can’t,” I said, and she tilted her head, clearly curious for me to continue. “Rosella told me that only one other can accompany me on the quest. If I bring more than one person with me, I’m doomed to fail. I’m also doomed to fail if I bring the wrong person. So I’ve asked Jacen to join me, and he’s accepted.”

  “But the ring…” Mary’s eyes darted to the sapphire ring on my finger and then back to my face, alarm shining in her eyes. “It’s no secret how dangerous it could be in the wrong hands.”

  “I understand.” I twisted the ring off my finger and held it out to her. “Which is why I’ve decided to give Geneva’s sapphire ring to you.”

  Mary stared at the ring, not moving to take it. “Are you sure about this?” she asked. “Geneva’s powers could benefit you greatly on you quest, if you were careful with the wording of the commands you gave her.”

  “I’m sure,” I said, and my angel instinct glowed warmly in my chest, as if affirming my decision. “The best place for the ring is at the Haven—where its powers won’t be taken advantage of—and you’re the leader of the Haven. You’re the only person I trust with this ring. If you don’t believe me, then I hope you can at least believe my angel instinct, because it’s telling me that it has to be you.”

  “Thank you.” Mary took the ring from me, and just like that, the transfer was done. “And I hope you know that if you ever need a safe space with no questions asked, the Haven will welcome you for as long as you need it.”

  “I appreciate it.” I watched her slip the ring onto her finger, realizing that now that I was a Nephilim, I no longer needed Geneva’s magic to keep me safe. I was no longer a weak human.

  I was able to protect myself.

  I’d had a taste of strength when I’d drank Jacen’s blood, and more of it while drinking Princess Stephenie’s blood to disguise myself as a vampire princess, but now the strength was truly mine.

  Having the ability to keep myself safe was an incredibly freeing feeling. But remembering what it had felt like to drink the vampire blood made me wonder something…

  “Now that I’m a Nephilim, what would happen if I drank vampire blood?” I asked. “Would it make me into a super powerful Nephilim when it was in my system?”

  “Supernaturals can’t drink vampire blood,” Jacen replied. “But does that apply to Nephilim?” He looked at Mary to answer, since she was the only one in this room who’d been alive before the Nephilim were all killed in the Great War.

  “It does,” she confirmed. “Vampire blood makes Nephilim sick, the same way it does for all other supernaturals. The Nephilim are not as different from us as they’d like to think.” Her eyes glimmered with amusement at that last part.

  “How sick?” I asked.

  “Your body would reject the vampire blood,” she said. “You’d throw it up until it was out of your system.”

  “Yuck.” I shuddered, the awful memory of that time I’d gotten the stomach bug crossing through my mind. I still remembered the final meal I’d had before getting sick—fried shrimp—and couldn’t stomach the idea of eating it to this day.

  It was a good thing I hadn’t had pizza for that meal. I couldn’t imagine a world where the thought of pizza made me nauseated.

  “To thank you for giving me Geneva’s sapphire ring, I’ll acquire the proper forged documents for you and Prince Jacen to take on your journey,” she said. “Jacen doesn’t really need it since he can use compulsion, but it’ll come in handy for you in case the two of you get separated. I’ll also call on a chartered plane to get you to the Tromso airport.”

  “Thank you,” I told her. “We’d appreciate that a lot.”

  “It’s the least I can do,” she said. “But remember—once you leave the Haven, you’re on your own.”

  “No, she’s not.” Jacen reached for my hand and gave it a small squeeze. “Because she has me.”

  Camelia

  “We need to send vampires to scout
the wolves’ location,” Scott said from the head of the boardroom table. “It’s the only way we can be ready with a plan of attack once we have Geneva’s sapphire ring.”

  Laila had only been gone for a day, and Scott had already called a meeting for him to lead as acting king. The public still didn’t know that Laila was dead, but when we’d told the guards that the queen had gone away for a business trip and left Scott and I in charge in her absence, they’d believed us.

  Of course, the bit of compulsion the vampires had used when telling them had helped. But all that mattered was that they bought the story. Because this was the business trip the queen would never return from. It was the business trip we were going to claim had resulted an altercation with the wolves, and therefore, her death.

  It was the only way to do this. If the citizens knew that she’d been murdered inside her own palace—inside her own throne room—they would fear their safety more than ever. Fear led to chaos, and chaos led to the crumbling of kingdoms.

  A rebellion led by our own people certainly wasn’t something we needed to deal with on top of everything else going on.

  “There’s no way that can be done in a stealthy manner,” I pointed out. “The wolves will be able to smell the vampire scouts. We’ll just lose more fighters—fighters we can’t afford to lose, given the war on the horizon.”

  “I never said we’d send out vampire guards.” Scott smirked, and a shiver raced down my spine.

  “Then who do you want to send?” Stephenie chimed in. “Civilians?”

  “Bingo.” Scott pointed at her and grinned. “They’ll wear charms to hide their scent, like the wolves did when they attacked the Vale.”