“David and Zane.”
I shrugged, shaking my head. Right now, I didn’t really care about their history.
“So, Zane is about four centuries older than David, right?” he reported, whether I wanted to hear it or not. “But when David became a vampire, he moved up the ranks pretty fast. It was Zane’s position on the council that he took.”
I stopped scooping up broken weapons for a second and looked at Quaid. “And that’s it? That’s the only beef he has… had with David?”
Quaid lifted one shoulder. “Far as I know.”
“Doesn’t seem like enough of a reason to want to kill him—and rape his wife.”
“Then you clearly don’t know vampires very well.” He laughed lightly. “They were opponents in the ring, too.”
“The ring?”
“Boxing,” he said, as if I should already know this. “It’s a huge sport for vampires. David never told you?”
I shook my head. “There’s a lot about his life that he never told me.”
“Well, it’s a pretty long life, when you think about it. It’d take an awful long time to hear all his stories.”
“I guess.” I tossed the weapons into a pile and dusted my hands off on my jeans before I remembered they were covered in blood, then just groaned.
“Go to bed, Ara,” Quaid said, looking up from my now-soiled jeans. “It’s been a long night.”
After a sigh and another round of consideration, I shook my head. “Nah. I’ll stay.”
“Suit yourself.” He put the truck in gear and went to drive off again. But I stopped him.
“Any word from Blade yet? On Em?”
The red brake lights glowed suddenly in the darkness. “She’s fine. Got up about an hour ago. They’ve been down in the cells for the last half hour interrogating our prisoner.”
“Has he cracked?”
“We’ve got a few things out of him.”
“Like why Ryder betrayed us?”
“You didn’t hear yet?”
I motioned around the open field—to the scattered clean-up crew, all busy with their own tasks. “I haven’t spoken to anyone since I came down here.”
“Well, turns out he wasn’t betraying us. He was betraying you.”
“Me? Why?”
“You know that whole freaky-blood-curse thing?” He waved his hands around, outlining my body. “The one you inherited with your blood that makes anything with a heartbeat love you?”
“Yes,” I said impatiently because the tone he used just really rubbed me the wrong way.
“None of us woulda known, but he was apparently caught up in it.”
I screwed my nose up. “What?”
“Serious,” he said, his brows moving up on his head.
“No way.”
“Yes way.”
“I…” I couldn’t find anything to say to that except, “No. Surely not.”
“You heard it here first,” he sang, like a TV presenter.
“Well… damn.”
“Yes. ‘Damn’ is right.” Quaid looked at the back of his truck as a few of the clean-up crew dropped some body parts in. When they left, he returned his attention to me. “He kept a journal, did you know?”
“Of course I didn’t know. I hardly spent any time with the guy.”
“Well, he did. We read it.”
“Isn’t that a little invasive?”
“Invasive?” His voice peaked like a pubescent teen’s. “He was a traitor, Ara.”
I scratched my head. “True. I guess.”
“We only skimmed through it, anyway. It was good for a laugh.”
All I could do was frown at him. I’d hate to think people would read my journal if I was no longer around. And then laugh at it. “What was funny about it?”
“Turns out he’s had this thing for you since you first got here. But, unlike Blade, he kept it to himself—out of respect or professionalism, who knows?” He shrugged. “But, I dunno, guess maybe he got jealous or something of all the guys you hang out with, and it festered into this insane belief that he had a right to punish you.”
“Punish me?” I balked. “What the hell was he planning to do to me?”
“From what our prisoner told us, Ryder sold info to the Warriors—you know, guard change-over times and stuff. He didn’t know there was gonna be an attack. Not now, anyway. But when they asked him why he was betraying his queen, he told them you used men and he was tired of suffering at your hand—”
“What!”
Quaid shrugged again. “This is just what I’m told. So, anyway, he said that if they ever attacked, he’d use it as an opportunity to get you where he wants you. And that’s all the guy would say.”
My skin crawled. “Creepy.”
“Yep. Oh, and speaking of creepy.” He leaned out the window a little more and lowered his voice. “That girl you sent me to turn—the one in the forest?”
“What about her?”
“I found out who her boyfriend is.”
“And?”
“He’s not one of our vampires. The only reason he hooked up with that girl, and took her virginity, was so he could get in here tonight. When we were attacked, he wasn’t with your dad—being kept safe. He was attacking our people.”
“Jerk!”
“You got that right.” He leaned back into the car. “Anyways. I better go collect the rest of these body parts. I’ll come back around in a few minutes to get your pile, okay?”
“I’ll be here,” I said wistfully. “This mess is going to take all day.”
He shrugged absently as he took off again. “You coulda driven the truck.”
I groaned, watching him peel away.
From the other side of the field, I caught my dad’s scent and took a second, with my eyes closed, to breathe it in. I’d asked around after the battle on the beach, and everyone told me Dad was fine; it seemed they’d all seen him at some point, but no one knew where he was. Now that I’d picked up his scent, the only person I needed to locate was Mike, and then everything could go back to normal.
“Ara!” Mike’s voice ricocheted off the emptiness.
Speak of the Devil. “Over here!” I called back.
He broke through the smoky fog a second later and wrapped me up tightly in his arms. I cringed at the mess of him: his Core jacket gone, leaving nothing but a blood-stained white shirt to cover barely-healed wounds. His chest was so cold through the fabric I thought maybe he’d died for a while. “Are you okay?” he asked. “They told me you were on the beach, I—”
“I’m fine.” I pushed out from his arms. “Are you okay? You look…” My eyes darted over his cringe-worthy body while I searched for the right words.
“I know. But most of it’s vampire blood.” He opened his shirt. “Look.”
“Holy crap!” I reached out to touch the giant slice taken out of his chest—nipple and all. “Mike! That looks awful.”
“Yeah, but that’s the worst of it.” He folded his shirt over the wound, cringing a little. “I’ll be healed in roughly another twenty minutes. But the guy that did it—” He bounced his brows suggestively.
“Well, I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.” I patted his arm and walked away.
“Ara?” he called after me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lied.
“Liar.”
I stopped cleaning and faced him again. “I’m just waiting for David to wake up, that’s all. I hate it when he’s hurt.”
“He’s up.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, stepping back. “He’s out helping Falcon burn Zane’s remains.”
“How long’s he been up?”
Mike shrugged. “’Bout ten minutes or so.”
“How’s his throat?” I motioned to my own. “Is it—?”
“It’s still cut deeply, but it’s healed inside. We’ve put a few stitches in it for now.”
“So…” My shoulders dropped. “Is he… looking for me?”
“Not as far
as I know.”
“Oh.” I frowned then as the sinking feeling washed away and a breath of dread froze my lungs. “Did you hear that?”
Mike shook his head, his lips arched downward. “Nope.”
My ears pricked, listening through the wind, the roar of Quaid’s truck, the crashing waves down on the shore, and found the tiny sound somewhere among the trees in the forest.
“That’s a cry.” My heart stopped. I grabbed Mike’s wrist, waiting to hear it again. “Mike. That’s a child’s cry!”
Mike’s eyes set around the fear that swam suddenly through us both. We circled on the spot, trying to pinpoint the sound.
“Near the Training Hall,” I said, and took off running across the endless field, leaping over body parts and shattered bits of wood, dizzy and breathless from gravity pushing back on me. I passed the hall and went straight to the forest behind it, and as I broke through the lines of trees I saw a small, toddling boy on the dirt path up ahead.
I paused a moment and sniffed the air to make sure he was human, catching a coppery mix of blood and salty tears. His little heart hammered in his chest as he wandered alone into the darkness, screaming out for David.
My arms wrapped him up and cradled him to my chest before my feet even stopped running. He pushed out from me, his mouth agape, tiny tears streaming his face. When he realized who had him, his chubby arms circled my neck and he climbed me, kicking his feet like he was trying to run deeper into my arms.
“It’s okay, Tommy. It’s okay,” I soothed, angling my hips so he couldn’t kick my belly.
Mike landed on his knees beside me in a scuffle, losing his balance for a second, and we both stared into each other as the howling filled the deathly silence.
“Blood.” Mike’s voice cracked with fear. He touched Tom’s head, cupping his big hand over it. “Why is he covered in blood?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered into Tom’s baby-soft hair. “God, please let them be okay.”
“Is he hurt?” Mike asked, checking every inch of the toddler. “Is it his blood?”
“I don’t know.” I looked around me, checked the treetops, the pathway, the shadows, but there were no other children with Tom. “Call David.”
Mike pulled out his phone.
“No. Wait.” I put my hand over Mike’s. “I can feel him.” I tilted my face to the sky and sent out a quiver of light, calling David’s name in my thoughts. I felt it connect with him, felt him stop what he was doing and tune in. “David!” I screamed aloud, sending out another pulse.
Only a second passed before he appeared at the end of the path, surrounded by the shadows of a coming dawn. “Ara?” he called, clearly unsure what he’d just felt.
“Over here,” I sobbed weakly, holding little Tommy so tight I wasn’t sure he could breathe.
David walked slowly over, cautious, and stopped dead when he saw the child in my arms.
“The children,” was all I could say. “The children.”
If hearts could be seen to leave a person’s body and land on the floor, that’s what it would look like—the way he froze, the way his eyes reshaped—the way he paled.
I buried my face in Tommy’s neck and cried for a moment, breathing him in as though he was the last one left, praying to God that he wasn’t. When I looked up, David was gone.
“Ara?” Emily appeared from thin air and landed behind Mike, one hand cupping his shoulder, looking from him to the child. “What’s happened?”
I couldn’t talk. My throat was so tight with fear I just couldn’t get anything out. And Mike was unresponsive, too—didn’t even know she was there. He just knelt there on the ground, whispering something to his hands.
“Mike?” Emily said, putting her ear to his lips. She looked up at me then. “Give me Tommy.”
I peeled the frightened child from my neck and placed him in Em’s arms. “Take care of him—keep him away from the Institution. Get him to the manor and call his new dads.”
“Okay.” She hugged Tommy tight, and I left her and Mike alone in the forest, speeding across the island before slowing down as I saw the Institute over the rise. I walked numbly from there, each step a new prayer for every one of the twelve little lives in that place.
But as I reached the base of the hill, David’s bloodcurdling cry echoed out over eternity, and I knew. I knew what I’d see when I walked in that door.
Falcon darted out from the nursery covered in blood, and just dropped to his hands and knees on the grass, gagging on his own vomit as I walked past. “Stop,” he tried to say, but I ignored him, falling onto the doorframe when the flicker of a broken light overhead lit up each of the twelve blood-stained beds around the room. There was no sound.
There was no crying, no whimpering—no heartbeats.
They were dead. All of them.
The light flickered one more time above me then, and finally died, leaving everything in total darkness.
I stood for a time that had no measure, my eyes closed, with the images of those innocent little bodies burned into the backs of them and, center to it all, David kneeling on the ground a few feet in front of me.
“Ara.” A hand caught my arm, snapping me unwillingly back to reality. I turned my head as Mike’s eyes absorbed the horror, two words coming from his lips to stop my heart again. “The boys.”
A metal vise tightened my lungs and we both looked to the secure wing—the door ajar, ripped off its hinges, held on only by the state-of-the-art lock.
“Oh God!” I wrapped my arms around my stomach, folding over a little. I couldn’t take it. I just couldn’t take it if those boys were dead.
Mike ran past on legs of jelly, tripping and falling to his knees as he entered that room. And my own legs failed me too. I sunk down and listened as he cried out, breathless and…
I looked up.
Breathless and thanking the gods.
My arms filled with an icy cold rush of hope. I got to my feet and darted into the secure wing, falling back against the wall when I saw Mike wrapped completely around two terrified but very much alive boys.
“Ara!” Max called, reaching for me.
I slowly shuffled over to them and threaded my arms into the mix, kissing their heads over and over and over. “I was so scared,” I cried. “I was so scared.”
Mike leaned back, keeping one hand on each boy, looking at them like he’d never seen anything more precious in his life. “I thought you were… I…”
“You have to go, Mike,” I said, touching his shoulder. “You have to leave—tonight. Get them out of here. Get them away from this world!”
He stood up and drew them both into him.
“Don’t just stand there!” I screamed, shoving him with both hands. “Go. Take a full year’s pay from the treasury and just go!”
He dug the heel of his palm into his eye to wipe the tears away and then shook his head, snapping out of his trance. And he said nothing as he walked off, leading the boys away with him. I knew he’d be gone by the time the sun completely rose. I knew there was a chance I might never see him again—not when he had to protect the boys. But I was okay with that. As long as they were safe.
“Goodbye, Mike,” I whispered, blinded by the tears of relief and fear.
“Ara?” Falcon said delicately.
I didn’t want to turn around. I didn’t want to see the agony in his eyes and know that what I just saw out there was real.
“Ara?” he said again.
“What do we do, Falcon?” I took a long, jagged breath. “How do we… I thought they were protected.”
“They were,” he said, stepping in to the room. “And we sent more guards down here after the initial attack last night. They were fine then. But.”
“But?” I asked, spinning around, my eyes wet and cold. “Is this what Drake wanted—why he sent men in to attack?”
Falcon’s mouth sat open, his lips dry and cracked. “I think, maybe… it’s possible.”
I cupped my mouth. �
�Why?”
“Perhaps that is something you should ask your husband,” said a cold, stern and very familiar voice.
Falcon and I held our breath as the eerie, devilish form of my uncle glided into the room, like Death in a black cloak.
“You did this?” I screamed.
“I did.” He nodded once.
“Why? What reason could anyone have for killing innocent children?!” I stormed into him like a mad woman and shoved him into the wall, hitting his chest with the full force of my Cerulean Light. But all he did was look down at his chest and laugh.
“Is that all you’ve got?”
I looked at my hands, horrified. “Why didn’t it—”
“Because I am too powerful,” he said, his jet-black eyes small with amusement. “A Cerulean attack will do nothing to me.”
“Then let’s see what a blade can do,” Falcon barked, stepping up with his hand to his sword.
Drake put both hands up calmly. “Before we point the finger of blame, I suggest you ask your king why this happened.”
Falcon stopped walking, and we both looked to the pale, haunted face of the king as he walked up slowly behind Drake and leaned on the doorframe. He couldn’t look at us, couldn’t even stand straight.
Drake presented the weaker state of the king and then grinned back at me.
“David?” I said. “What’s he talking about?”
David’s venomous gaze sliced layers off Drake. “I don’t know.”
“Of course you do,” Drake said, taking the floor like an actor on a stage. When he stopped walking, his jaw set tight and the hatred of a thousand years of war crossed the space between he and David. “Tell her what you did to my niece.”
I frowned at him, then my husband. “Is he talking about Morgana?”
“Ara,” Falcon said calmly, touching my shoulder.
I faced him, seeing that same look in his eyes that he’d had earlier tonight. “What is it?”
“When David woke up last night after Morgana lifted the spell, he—”
“He hunted her down,” Drake snapped. “He tore the terrified girl from her cell and he killed her.”
I looked at David, who shrunk slightly, his eyes cast to the ground. “But she can’t die,” I said. “She’s a Pureblood, like me.”
“She can die!” Drake yelled, spitting and shaking. “She can die if her body is dismembered—her remains burned in separate pyres and her ashes strewn upon the wind!”
Echoes & Silence Part 1 Page 59
