by Am Hudson
As I looked back at them, they all looked away.
The phone in David’s hand then lit up and made shadows around his eyebrows and nose. He pinned in a number I didn’t recognise by the tones, and before I could ask who he was calling, Drake picked up.
“They have him.” Drake’s voice came across as if it were on loudspeaker. “That’s why you’re calling, I assume.”
“Who has who?” David stood from his lean.
“Walter has Jason. He’s being tried for treason at midnight, and if found guilty, which he will be, he’ll be drained of blood and immunity, and put to death at dawn.”
I covered my mouth.
“Then we attack tonight,” David said, and we both looked up as a patter of fat raindrops tapped the roof above us. “Give me an hour to get Sam and Vicki back to the safe-house, and get our stuff together, and we’ll be at the rendezvous point by eleven.”
“Very well,” Drake said calmly. “I shall see you then.”
David hung up the phone, and the shadows consumed his features again. I couldn’t see the worry in his eyes, I couldn’t see it in the set of his shoulders, but as he rolled his forehead against his hand and sniffed loudly, I heard it in his breath.
I rushed in and wrapped my arms around his waist. “We’ll get to him, David. I promise.”
“I know.” He nodded, composing himself. “And when we do, I will be the one to cut off that usurper’s head!”
“What’s going on?” Quaid slid the door shut behind him as he stepped out on the porch.
“Walter got Jason.”
“What?”
Emily came running out then, nearly smashing the glass door as it slammed shut. “He what?”
“We move in on Loslilian tonight.” David stood a little taller. “Prepare yourselves; we leave in two hours.”
“Oh shit,” Em said, holding her stomach.
“What?” We all looked at it.
“I just ate two servings of apple pie.”
“Then you had better commandeer the bathroom and evacuate it,” David said flatly, pushing past her. “They have my brother, and tonight they pay with their lives.”
David slammed the glass door behind him, switching back into human mode on the other side.
“You hear that, guys?” I rubbed my hands together, grinning at Quaid, then Em, practically thanking Jason for getting kidnapped. “It’s time to take the power back!”
“High five!” Quaid put his hand above me; I slapped it. “Let’s get our battle gear on.”
“I’ll be in the bathroom,” Em said, jerking her thumb behind her. “‘Evacuating’ my dessert.”
Quaid and I laughed.
***
Through the attic window I saw headlights in the distance, disappearing and then shining brightly through the thick evergreens. A few more twists and bends and David would finally be home.
With Vicki and Sam now back at the safe-house, us vampires had set to work preparing for battle. Quaid sharpened blades on the kitchen table downstairs, while Emily and I dressed upstairs. Her black t-shirt and matching cargos looked good on her, even with her very feminine blonde hair and face full of makeup. Mine, however, just looked ridiculous. My pants didn’t fit, and my t-shirt, despite being two sizes up, fitted snugly over my bump, as if I were carrying a daypack on my front.
I squatted down and tied the lace on my heavy black boot, holding on to the waist of my pants as I stood back up. “I can’t fight like this,” I said to Em. “My pants won’t stay up.”
“Well—” She grabbed the waist and started fussing with them, pulling them tighter and letting go. “It’s not my fault they don’t stock maternity size.”
My body rocked and wriggled with her stiff pulls and shoves. She yanked hard on the leather belt and made a new hole, then stepped back with a self-satisfied nod when the pants finally stayed up.
“Add a sword belt to that, and you might be able to participate without showing the entire army your pink undies.”
“Leave my undies out of it,” I said, picking up my sword belt from the ground. “They were the last pair I had left.”
Emily just laughed.
“You girls ready?” Quaid called loudly. “David’s just pulled up outside.”
“Ready,” I called back. “Is my sword ready? I feel naked without one.”
“Ready and waiting.”
“Here.” Emily handed me a stretchy elastic strap with velcro ends. “Wrap this around your leg—for your back-up blade.”
“Thanks.” I bent over and fastened it to my thigh, but as I stood up again, listening for David’s car door out in the rain, his footsteps then falling quickly over the muddy ground and up the steps, I thought I heard my name. “Did you say something?”
“Hm? No, why?”
“I could swear I heard—” Then I heard it again, and this time it came with a blue dream-like flash of the field back at Loslilian. “Em. Get out.”
“What? Why?”
“Just go.” I got down on the floor and laid on my back, my hands gathered over my belly, and closed my eyes. “I think Jason’s trying to—” My mind and eyes left the attic, left Emily’s face, and opened to the smiling face of my brother-in-law. “Jase!”
The stillness of the dark blue sky, a thousand silver stars twinkling down on us, set the mood for the world inside his head. I knew he was okay, wherever he was, without the need to ask.
“We’re coming,” I said instead. “We leave the lake house in thirty minutes, and we’ll have you rescued before dawn.”
His hands cupped my face, moving over the distance between us in seconds. “It’s a trap, Ara.”
“What is?” I pulled his hands away from my cheeks and stepped back to look up at him.
“They took me to lure you in, knowing you would come.”
My eyes moved down to the right, seeping their concern into my chest. “But we have to come. They’ll kill you—”
“I know. And I’m not saying don’t come. They don’t know you have Drake’s Warriors behind you—they won’t be expecting a fair fight. You stand a pretty good chance. But I’m asking you to stay behind—”
“No way!” I laughed snidely. “I need to get to the forest, Jase. I need a soul for my daughter and I need to ask Lilith how to kill Safia. I—”
“I don’t care, Ara. Ask her about Safia later. I’m scared for you. Walter wants you, sweet girl—no one else. He won’t stop until he’s killed the baby.”
I touched his upper arm softly, closing my eyes for a second as I committed him to memory. Even though I trusted David’s strength and his love for his brother, Walter was a highly intelligent and cunning man, and I knew this could quite possibly be the last time I ever saw Jase. “I know. And I still can’t stay here. I’m sorry.”
His shoulders dropped, the breath of his gentle sigh moving across my face. “I knew you’d say that, but I had to try.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promised. “I have Drake, and David—two of the most powerful vampires on earth. I’m safer in battle beside them than staying out here by myself—where Safia can get me.” I lifted his gaze with my own. “She can’t come to Loslilian—the purity of the Stone and the protection of the Goddess Lilith forbids her evil soul entry. I’m safe there, Jase—even in a room with Walter.”
His hand firmly cupped my neck and the side of my face, fixing there so I couldn’t pull away. “If anything happens to you, I’ll die, Ara. I—”
“I know.” I laid my hand over his, angling my face into his touch. Then, reluctantly, I moved his hand away. “Be ready for us, okay?”
“O—” he started, but a firm hand caught my arm and the voice of my husband ripped me away from the quiet, calm little world.
“—wrong. We have to wake her,” David finished.
“I’m okay.” I tried to roll up, pushed back down by my belly. David grabbed my elbow and helped me sit upright.
“What happened? You were out cold for five minutes—”
“Jason summoned me.”
“Summoned?”
“It’s a trap.” My eyes cleared and the fogginess resolved itself into the very concerned face of my David, squatting over me. “Walter took Jason to lure us in. He’s waiting for us.”
David rocked back on his heels, wiping his wrist across the dots of rain on his face. “I’m not surprised.”
“But he doesn’t know we have an army.” I grinned. “He’s underprepared.”
David grinned too. “Did you ask Jason where they’re holding him?”
“I would have, but someone ripped me out of the dream,” I said accusingly.
“I have a pretty good idea where he’d be,” Quaid said, appearing from within the shadows beside me, where he’d clearly been the whole time. “And, by the way, I’ve got dibs on slitting Fat Old Margret’s throat.”
“Only if you let me rip off her head,” Emily added.
Quaid offered his hand to shake hers. “Deal.”
“And bring it to your Queen on a pike after,” I said, standing up, with a bit of help from David.
He smiled down at my outfit then in humoured appraisal. “I take it your pants didn’t fit.”
I pulled at the bunched waistline of the black cargos we’d originally ordered for Jason. “Don’t laugh. I feel ridiculous enough as it is.”
David disappeared then, squatting down by my feet. He took the cuffs of the pants and started rolling them sharply into a neat line along the laces of my boots. “Just don’t let them distract you, okay? If they start falling off, leave them. You can’t afford to waste time thi—”
“I got it.” I patted his head in a rather condescending way. “It’s all good.”
Emily laughed.
“What’s so funny?” both David and I said.
“Mike must have rubbed off on you when he was here,” she said. “You just sounded really Australian when you said that.”
I looked down at David, and he just flashed me a big open-mouthed smile, shaking his head.
“Mike’s gonna be pissed that he missed the fight,” Quaid said, thoughtful.
“He’s where he needs to be,” I reminded him. “He should never have come in the first place.”
“I agree.” David stood, readjusting the sword on his belt. His chest looked firm and strong in that fitted shirt, and the cargo pants made him look mighty and capable, defining his waist and also giving his butt a bit more shape. I didn’t hear what he said to Quaid after that because I was too busy thinking about winning the manor back and spending our first night together in our room—most likely with his clothes still on. Or, at least, those pants. Maybe undone at the front, though—
“Ara.” He snapped his fingers in front of my eyes. “Wake up. Time to go.”
I grinned sheepishly, feeling my head go hot from my chest to my brow. “Right. Sorry,” I stammered. “I’m ready.”
***
A tar-black sky coughed out sheets of rain, forcing the windshield wipers to work harder. Quaid and Emily’s headlights shone brightly behind us, but Drake’s taillights had disappeared over ten minutes ago, and even with his vampire eyes David struggled to find the meeting point through the screen of slate grey, leaning forward and squinting at the thick wall of trees.
“That’s it,” David said, the car slowing. I saw it too then—just up ahead—a small green sign reflecting off the headlamps. The tyres crunched over the wet, muddy shoulder as we pulled up beside it.
“This is the meeting point?”
“Yep. If we go any further than this, we’ll be spotted.” He pointed to a shadow in the trees. “There’s your father’s car.”
“Right.” I leaned forward and turned my head to look out the back window at Emily and Quaid, pulling up safely behind us. “And our plan is the same as before, right?”
“Same as before,” he confirmed with a nod.
“But I don’t have Jason here to take me to the forest,” I reminded him. “And—”
“You won’t be going,” he stated. “You’ll stay here unless I send word for you to go.”
“But—”
“Ara, circumstances have changed. Jason warned us that this is a trap. There’s no point in you wandering the probably very dangerous grounds of Loslilian unless our mission fails. You can go any time once we win the manor back—”
“Yes, but if you fail, David, there will be so many guards crawling all over this place that I won’t have a hope in hell of getting to the forest without a fight. I should be in there, waiting, ready, no matter what the outcome of your mission.”
As David’s mouth poised to speak, my door opened and a hand came toward me. “I have an umbrella,” Drake said, the rain slipping off its curve and down his shiny black raincoat. “We’ll discuss that out here.”
“Discuss what?” I asked, climbing out by help of his hand. “I’m going to the forest, and neither of you can stop me.”
Drake walked me away from the car, and David’s door shut after mine, the vampire appearing under the wide umbrella beside me.
“If I have to cuff you to the steering wheel, Ara, you’ll stay here,” David demanded. “It’s the safest place for you.”
“I agree with David, Amara.” Drake looked at David and then me. “The guards will not search this far from the border if the manor were under attack. You’re safer here until we’ve secured the manor.”
“And if you’re unsuccessful, I’ll never get past the guards to the forest!”
“In the event of that unlikely outcome, I will fly out and signal my Warriors, and then come back here to escort you to the forest.”
David’s shoulders dropped with visible relief.
“What?” Emily yelled as she stormed toward us, her blonde hair flat to her head in the rain. “Hell no! He is not going anywhere with her alone!”
“Emily.” David turned slightly and touched her shoulder.
“No. Get off me.” She shoved his hand away. “He’s only helping us because he wants the child, he—”
“It’s fine,” David cut in. “I trust Drake with Ara—”
“I mean her no harm,” Drake said softly. “After all, why would a man hurt his own daughter?”
Emily gasped loudly, her small mouth hanging right open for any random passing bug to land in. “Daughter?”
“Yes,” David, Drake, and I said at the same time.
She looked at me, then at Drake, then at me again. “Oh my God!”
I laughed.
“I can’t… I mean… ew!” Her nose screwed up as she took in my father, then looked over me carefully before taking her eyes and the obvious comparison to Drake again. “Damn. You do actually look… alike.”
“I knew it.” Quaid clapped both hands loudly, pointing at David then. “Didn’t I say that—when I first saw Drake? Didn’t I say he looked more like her father than Greg did?”
David nodded thoughtfully. “You did say that, didn’t you?”
“But, if you’re her father, then…” Emily’s eyes went to my belly, clear and obvious disgust spreading across her features, and before she could ask, David said, “It’s not Anandene. The child is soulless.”
“What? How can it not be Anandene?” Quaid said.
“Because David isn’t the knight from the contract—the Pure Soul. Jason was the one I was fated to be with; the one I was meant to have a baby with.”
“Are you serious?” Em said, covering her mouth.
“Very,” Drake said. “I kept up the façade—pretending to want this child born—to keep Ara and the soulless child safe—”
“Safe from what?” Emily cut in.
“Yeah, because it seems the baby’s in more danger as the child Anandene. And if this is all true,” Quaid said, “then Walter’s got people hunting you down for no reason.”
“For no reason?” I scoffed. “Even if it was the evil witch, that still doesn’t give him the right to kill a baby.”
“I know. I didn’t mean it like that. But why have
n’t you told anyone? He might back down if you tell the truth. After all, he’s only doing this because he wants to save the world from the evil witch, you—”
“Because this secret puts both the baby and I, and Jason for that matter, in more danger.”
“How?”
“I’m getting to it, if you stop interrupting with questions,” I said with a smile. “Thing is, as Drake said, he’s been protecting me and the child all this time. From someone much worse.”
“Who?”
“Safia,” David finished.
“Safia?” Em’s eyes narrowed; she turned back to look at Quaid, who shrugged.
“An immortal witch,” David said. “A very dangerous and powerful immortal witch.”
“I thought witches couldn’t be immortal—”
“They can,” Quaid interjected. “But it blackens their souls. Turns them ugly inside.”
“Right. And this blackened soul also happens to be Anandene’s mother,” David added.
With that last word, Emily’s thought patterns clearly changed. I didn’t see what she thought, but David laughed as she looked right at him.
“I thought the same thing when I found out,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“That it makes more sense—Jason being the Pure Soul,” David said, looking away. “And that I’m…”
“The tainted one.”
“Shut up, Emily!” I stepped forward and slipped my rain-dotted hand into David’s. “He’s no more evil than you are.”
“Me? What evil did I ever do?”
“You kill people,” I stated. “How is David any different just because—”
“Girls, that’s enough.” Drake put his hands between Emily and me, and pushed us apart. I didn’t realise until right then that we were both leaning forward. “The fact here is, we have two mission objectives: secure the manor and rescue Jason. That is priority one, because Jason may be the only hope of saving the baby—”
“Hang on.” Em put her hands up to stop us, then slowly lowered them. “How is Jason the only way to save the baby?”
“May be,” I corrected. “And only if I can’t get answers from Lilith, or if I never make it to the forest.”
I watched it all click together; she knew that my soul was once my mother’s and her mother’s before her; she knew that it once belonged to Lilith; she knew that this child would need a soul too. “What are you going to do to Jason?”
