While drinking from my victims, I’d picked out a quick map of the city, discovering that I was only a couple blocks from the plaza that Danaus mentioned before I left the hotel. With that in mind, I now wandered in the opposite direction, toward a second, smaller square. I headed away from the crowds and from where I sensed most of my own people were congregated. If I was going to finally draw out Rowe, I needed to be as alone as possible.
And I knew the moment that it worked. I had entered the distant square from the south, my hands shoved in the pockets of my leather pants, trying to keep my fingers warm and nimble against the bitter wind. I skirted the cobblestone sidewalk that led toward the center of the park with its stone monument to some forgotten hero or a forgotten people. The dead grass and sticks crunched lightly under the rubber soles of my boots, but I stuck close to the shadows created by the trees, offering up an obscured view of me as I passed through the darkness.
I sensed no one in the area—nightwalker or human. And naturally, I couldn’t sense any naturi in the region. I was half tempted to reach out to Danaus across the vast distance and see if he could scan the area for me, but quickly pushed aside the urge. No need to make the hunter worry more than he already was.
A feeling twisted in the pit of my stomach suddenly as I stood halfway between the entrance of the square and the monument in the center. Freezing where I stood, I slowly turned my head left and then right while my hand slid down to grasp the handle of the knife at my side. There was a whisper of cloth rubbing, and I was in motion in the blink of an eye. Rolling to my left, I jerked my knife free with my right hand and was grabbing for a second knife with my left by the time I was back on my feet, facing whatever creature had managed to sneak up behind me.
Rowe, the one-eyed naturi, smiled at me, pulling his dark black wings close to his body while wielding a long knife in his right hand. The silver blade reflected a sliver of lamplight as he twisted it in his hand, waiting for me to make the next move.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” I said, inwardly wishing I had brought something a bit longer than the trio of short daggers. His long knife was going to make it difficult for me to get in close to do any kind of substantial damage without completely impaling myself.
“I figured as much,” he snorted, lowering the blade slightly. “Wandering alone at night in a city dominated by the naturi. You have to suspect that you’re completely surrounded right now. You have no way of walking out of here alive.”
To his obvious surprise, I placed the dagger in my left hand back in its sheath on my left thigh and turned my back on the naturi, a smile toying with my lips. I walked toward the monument in the center of the square. It was little more than a plaque on a marble slab. I didn’t attempt to read it, because all of my senses were focused on the approach of the curious naturi.
“You fell while we were at Knossos and didn’t get back up,” I commented as if making idle chitchat. I could barely make out his footsteps on the stone walkway as he approached me, but my smile never wavered. “They said that you had to be carried away. What happened?”
“I fell and hit my head on the edge of some broken stone,” he said in a strange voice. He stopped when he was a few feet away, standing almost directly across from me at the monument. His brow was furrowed in confusion and his full lips were twisted in a frown that seemed to deepen the scars that stretched across what I could remember being a handsome face.
To add to his confusion, I very carefully placed the knife in my right hand back into its sheath on my waist and snapped the guard over it so I wouldn’t be able to quickly draw it. While it would be a lie to say I was completely unarmed, I could honestly say that I was not holding a single weapon at that moment. In response, Rowe tightened his grip on his knife and took an unsteady step backward.
“You’re surrounded, you know that,” he said in a loud, hard voice. As he spoke, his wings disintegrated into fine black sand that spread across the paving stones.
I cocked my head to the side, seeming to listen to the wind. But deep down I knew that he was bluffing. Every time Rowe had faced me, he’d been alone. Regardless of whether we were trying to kill each other or just wanting to talk, it always came down to just him and me. I was beginning to think that he had it in his head to succeed where Nerian had failed; he wanted to break me personally.
“Maybe from a distance,” I conceded with a shrug of my slender shoulders as I shoved my hands into my pockets. “But in this square, right now, there’s just you and me.”
“What game are you playing, Mira?” he snapped, shaking his blade at me. “Do you seriously think I won’t kill you right now?”
“Killing me would solve so many of your problems, wouldn’t it?” I taunted, starting to walk around the monument to my left. Rowe matched my movements, maintaining the same distance between us. “I wouldn’t be around to stop you from opening the door between worlds. I wouldn’t be around to form yet another seal, keeping Aurora safely locked away. I wouldn’t be around to ruin any more of your brilliant schemes. Why, I bet you’d be able to locate your missing princess if I weren’t around!”
A snarl erupted from Rowe and he quickly tried to close the distance between us that he had been so eager to maintain. I chuckled as I stepped back and created a circle of fire around me about five feet tall and only a couple feet wide in diameter. I wanted to make sure there was only enough room for one within that circle.
At once, the energy that had been filling the air pushed harder against my skin, trying to gain entrance into my body. Lucky for me, the power in the air wasn’t as strong as it had been in Heraklion. Yet, I was in a dangerous situation, beyond just my baiting Rowe. If the energy from the earth entered my body as when we were in Crete, I had no way of stopping it, no way of turning off the flow. It was likely to kill me just as easily as Rowe could with his blade.
“Take a step back, Rowe,” I warned in an even voice. “I came here to talk. Let’s continue our little chat in a civilized manner, if you please.”
“Where the hell is she?” he growled. The point of his blade wavered as it penetrated the flames to come within inches of my heart. I stood still, smiling at him, daring him to plunge the blade into my chest. But I was making a dangerous wager. I was willing to bet that Cynnia was more important to him alive than I was to him dead—at least for the moment.
“Back off,” I repeated.
Rowe snarled one last time as his blade sliced through the flames and returned to his side, yet not before leaving a small cut on the side of my throat, a reminder that his patience was extremely limited. The one-eyed naturi paced away from me, his knife tightly clenched in his fist, ranting in a language I didn’t understand.
In the flickering firelight his tanned skin took on an almost swarthy complexion, while his scars stood out as white lines crisscrossing one side of his face before disappearing beneath a leather eye patch. His dark black hair swung down past his shoulders, nearly obscuring his face when he turned away from me for a second then paced back again.
“Did I do that to you?” I softly asked, bringing his pacing to an abrupt and uneven halt. He stared at me with a confused look until I touched my cheek, mirroring his, which had been brutally scarred.
“What? Why do you care?”
“I don’t, but there’s so much I obviously don’t remember about you, and when we last met, you seemed all too eager to jog my memory. Tell me, did I do that to you?”
“No, you didn’t,” he snapped, then turned his body so I could clearly see only the unflawed side of his face. “Are you surprised to find that there are more dangerous and evil things in this world than you?”
“No, relieved actually,” I said with a half smile.
“Where is she?” Rowe demanded, returning to our previous conversation. He seemed a little calmer than a few seconds earlier.
“Somewhere safe.”
“The only place that she will ever be deemed safe is with her own people,” he said, and was about
to continue when I started laughing at him. My head fell back and for a moment the flames actually flickered as my laughter broke my concentration.
“I truly doubt that little Nia is safe with your people,” I mocked, purposefully using her nickname to drive the proverbial knife even deeper into his stomach. “I honestly wonder if she would be safe in your hands, or the hands of her loving sister Nyx. That’s who I saw you with back at the Palace of Knossos just moments before the seal was broken. Thin creature, dark hair, silver eyes—Cynnia’s sister Nyx, right?”
Rowe said nothing, but he began circling me again. His full lips were pressed into a hard, unyielding line of hatred as he watched me, looking for a way to get at me through the flames without risking complete immolation himself. I knew he was fast, but he had to count on me being equally fast. And then, if he killed me before he discovered Cynnia’s location, what would happen to the young naturi in the meantime?
“You see my quandary, don’t you?” I said, smiling broadly at him, loving every minute that I could let him twist in the wind. Only months ago he had tormented me in much the same fashion, and now the shoe was on the other foot. And I loved it. “She fell into my hands quite neatly. I was supposed to kill her when I found her, and yet I didn’t out of sheer curiosity. And now I wonder—just who is trying to kill this young naturi?”
“Like you care for her well-being! Give her to me!” Rowe raged. He took a reckless step closer to the flames and then back again, pacing like a caged tiger ready to leap at any second.
“Or what?” I chuckled a bit hysterically. “You’ll kill me? Torture me like Nerian did years ago on that forsaken mountain? Why should I not do the same to Cynnia?”
“Because she’s a child, damn it! She’s just a child,” Rowe shouted, slicing through the flames with his knife though he came nowhere close to hitting me.
“So was I,” I bit out, suddenly fighting back a well of tears I had not expected to spring forth. With my teeth clenched, I drew in a steady breath and strengthened the flames around me so they snapped and crackled angrily between us. “But then again, I don’t think she’s the child you claim she is. I think the main concern is that she is of royal birth, the same bloodline as your beloved wife-queen. And we’ve already seen how I treat the royal family.”
Nerian had died at my hands months ago, though his death would have come centuries sooner if I had not been so concerned with the rising sun. The only brother to the queen, he died in a dingy, crumbling basement with his throat in my hand. He had been raving madness right up until the end. I hoped I never saw the same madness light Cynnia’s eyes.
Gritting his teeth so the muscle in his jaw jumped and throbbed, Rowe stabbed his long knife back into its sheath at his side. He threw open his arms, showing that there were no weapons in his hands, but I only laughed and shook my head at him.
“You are as unarmed as I am at this moment,” I taunted.
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to walk away from Machu Picchu.” Rowe shook his head, but I ignored him and continued. “Walk away from Machu Picchu and your plans to open the door. My people and I will reseal the doorway and there will be no more talk of freeing Aurora. Enough of your people have snuck through the weakening walls. We will stop hunting you and you will stop hunting us. Both races will endure in silence.”
“And what about Cynnia? Would you then hand her over to me?”
“I would set her free.” I carefully attempted to evade his question, but it didn’t work.
“Would you give her to me?” he angrily repeated, dropping his hands down to his sides.
“If that is where she wanted to go, I would let her go to you.”
“Why wouldn’t she want to go to me? What have you been telling her? What lies have you been spreading?”
I shrugged lightly and placed my hands into my back pockets. “None that I know of.”
“What have you told her?” Rowe demanded, once again taking a step closer to the flames. I increased the power going into the flames and a pain shot through my temple. I was wearing down, and the power from the earth was working harder now to find a way into my body. I had to end this conversation soon or there were going to be bigger things to worry about than one pissed off naturi, however powerful.
“I told her that you are a loyal soldier to your wife-queen. That you follow her direction. She told me much the same of her sister Nyx, calling her the defender of your people. Was any of that wrong?”
“No,” Rowe murmured, taking a couple steps away from me.
“Good. Now I think we have come to an understanding, or at the very least, you and Nyx have a lot to discuss during the next couple of nights,” I said, lowering the flames slightly. “I will take Nia to Machu Picchu the night of the equinox. If you’re not there and there is no sacrifice, then I will set her free. She will be free to find her own way in this world, with or without you, that is her choice. If you continue with the sacrifice, then she will die with the rest of the naturi on the mountain ruins.”
“You can’t do this!”
“You’ve left me no choice.”
Rowe shoved his left hand through his hair, pushing it out of the way of his eyes as he angrily marched away from me and back again. “I can’t turn my back on centuries of work for the life of one person.”
“No, I can’t imagine this is what Aurora would want either, but then again, after talking to Cynnia, I’m beginning to think this may have been a part of her master plan after all. I’d just be wary of how Nyx fits into all of this.”
With a wave of my hand, I extinguished the flames that separated us, plunging the tiny plaza back into total darkness. Rowe growled softly at me, and the hiss of the blade as it left its scabbard warned me of his attack. I ducked low and drew my own blade. The naturi scored a hit on my upper right arm while I made a shallow cut across his chest before we both separated again.
He crouched several yards away from me as wings exploded from his back—the trademark of a member of the wind clan. With a span at least nine feet long, they were perfectly black with an almost leathery texture. They were kept low to his body as he prepared to take flight on the wind still whipping through the city.
“Don’t bother to have me followed,” I called to him, still tightly gripping my knife. “I’m going to see my own kind. I’ll not see Nia again until the night of the equinox. And if I suddenly disappear, Danaus will kill her.”
His only answer was a low grunt, and then he threw open his wings, allowing them to catch the wind and pull him up into the black night above me. I had been partially lying. I was just hoping that he at least believed the lie, as it would buy me a little more time.
Putting the knife back in its sheath, I leaned back against the monument and inspected the cut along my arm that was still bleeding. Normally it would have healed already, but all naturi weapons contained a poison that slowed the healing process and burned like the fires of Hell.
“Don’t hurt her,” commanded a soft voice from the darkness. My head snapped up, and I was surprised that I hadn’t actually been alone with Rowe. Flinging my arm out, I sent five fireballs speeding out into the surrounding darkness, not caring who saw me—naturi or human. I needed to see who my new companion was.
The naturi stepped between two fireballs as they went speeding past her. She was still dressed in the same soft gray clothing that I had seen her in at the Palace of Knossos. Her black hair danced in the wind and her pale skin seemed to glow in the lamplight. Cynnia’s sister Nyx.
“Abide by my wishes,” I told her, “and I promise that Cynnia will be safely released.”
To my surprise, the woman nodded and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” She then threw out her own black wings, but these were different than Rowe’s. Nyx’s wings were not made of the same leathery material, but covered in glossy black feathers. Once again the wind rushed through the park, and then she was gone into the night sky.
Nineteen
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nbsp; My upper arm had stopped bleeding by the time I reached the Plaza de Armas. A good portion of my sleeve was soaked in blood, making the minor cut look much worse than it actually was. If I was lucky, Danaus would overlook the little scratch. He hadn’t been in favor of me traveling through the city alone, and the blood covering my arm didn’t exactly argue my case.
I was struggling to ignore the bite of winter wind. With the city at more than two miles in the sky, the night air had dropped down into the low thirties. I reminded myself that though it was September, in Peru the land was slowly plodding through its winter months. Cold generally didn’t bother me, except when I was low on blood. The wound Rowe inflicted had left me needing to feed yet again. However, most of the tourists were now tucked away for the night in their respective hotels, forcing me to wait around in a dark corner for some drunken sot to stumble from one of the local bars so I could drain a pint off of him to keep me warm.
The Plaza de Armas was a large square flanked by a cathedral and two other churches to the northeast, and another, more ornate, church that rose up from the southeast. With a frown, I was forced to cut between the quartet to reach the Hostal Loreto. As I walked, I mentally reached out and tapped the minds of the nightwalkers around me, sending them images of my route and calling them to my side. When I reached the Loreto, I could feel close to forty vampires approaching. It was going to get crowded.
Of course, that concern was temporarily derailed when I passed through the lobby and halted at the entrance to the bar. It was as if I had left Peru and stepped back into the United States. It looked like so many of the places I had visited in the U.S., with its enormous bar, crowded tables, and scattering of televisions flashing whatever sporting event their satellite could pick up. I could only guess that the owner was a motorcycle fanatic because the walls were covered in photographs, posters, and other biker paraphernalia. This theme was evenly balanced against the soccer posters that also covered the walls. Maybe not the exact kind of decoration you would find in an American bar, but close enough to make a traveling Yankee feel at home.
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