by Ciara Graves
That answer didn’t seem to be good enough, but this wasn’t the time or place for a lecture. I removed my arm from under his and staggered forward on my own.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Leaving your ass behind like I should’ve done earlier, if all you’re going to do is give me shit.”
“You can’t listen to him,” he urged. Rocks clacked together behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to see him struggling to catch up. “He will manipulate you in the end.”
“No, he won’t.” I meant for the words to sound stronger, full of conviction. Instead, they came out flat.
Macron’s eyes narrowed. Finding strength in his wearied body, he hauled himself forward with that staff and grabbed hold of my arm. “Look at me.”
I averted my gaze, not sure what he was looking for. He squeezed harder, and I gasped, my gaze flickering to his. The second it did, I couldn’t look away. His eyes glowed white, matching his loose, long white hair, billowing suddenly around his face as he drew on his power.
“Macron, stop,” I warned. “You’re going to make yourself weaker. I’m fine.”
I sensed him trying to weasel his way into my head, to breakthrough my memories and find the ones with Rudarius. He was getting close, so damned close. I had to stop him. I snarled and shoved hard at his chest, throwing him away from me. He tripped over the stones and went down hard. The glow faded from his eyes, and I hissed quietly. I’d been too late. He saw something and whatever it was made him afraid. Very afraid.
“You are comfortable around him.” Not a question, pure statement of fact.
I ground my teeth, wanting to deny it, but what was the point. I hated myself for how I felt these last couple of times around Rudarius. I remembered what he did to me. Remembered every freaking detail and swore up and down I hated him for it. I’d beat him to a bloody pulp the time before last, right? My anger and drive to kill him were still there; they had to be.
But somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I saw myself standing beside Rudarius. Saw myself turning toward the darkness, embracing it, and becoming a villain, just like he was.
I shut my eyes and stumbled away. As I fell to my knees, I curled in on myself. That image, I needed to burn it out of my mind for good. But I couldn’t, because I’d seen myself turn evil. Seen it through the vision Briar showed me. What if it couldn’t be changed? What if I only made it worse? Rudarius was trying to get to me, I knew that, but why did I suddenly want to talk to him again? Draven understood me, knew who I was. It was him I should long for at that moment, but my mind turned to that bastard. I hated myself all over again, my mind confused and messy. Nothing made sense. Not anymore.
A hand rested on my shoulder, and as I wiped away the angry tears that had fallen down my cheeks, I glanced up to find Macron looking down at me. There was no anger there, no fear. Only an understanding that I’d had no idea he could have for me.
“Come on,” he said and helped me up again. “We have to keep moving.”
I followed his demand without question, supporting each other again as we walked.
“We will find a way to get through this,” he murmured, but to me or himself, I wasn’t sure. “You will defeat him. There is no other choice.”
But there was, and as much as I never thought I’d think it, I was. I cursed Rudarius for getting inside my head. I pushed aside all notions of him and focused on Draven and only on Draven. On his voice and his laughter, his arms around me. Him holding me close, keeping me safe. The further we inched along the cobbled road, fog swirling endlessly around us, the more my heart lightened. I belonged with Draven and he with me. Nothing was going to come between us.
I wouldn’t let it.
Seneca… we are not finished yet, my pet.
I hissed at the sound of that gods-awful voice.
Rudarius would die. Now I knew I had to be the one to do it. His cackling laughter mocked me, but one day soon enough, I’d be the one laughing.
Chapter 9
Draven
We were a day out from the Blood Dragons territory. They resided deep within the Rockies, far away from any human town and even further from any point of access to the veil. We’d traveled as far as we could, but as dawn threatened to rise over the peaks, we had no choice, but to seek shelter. Nathaniel took us on a route many vampires used and were thankfully void of humans. Several blacked-out cabins lined the long trail, all of them empty when we arrived a few moments before the first rays of pink light appeared on the horizon.
The others let me have one to myself, and I told them all to get some much-needed rest. As soon as the sun was low enough, we’d set out again. As pleasant as the greeting from my own kin had been, I sensed that the moment I showed my face to another coven, I’d be hard-pressed to prove I was no longer Rudarius’s dog.
I turned over on the creaking cot and looked up at the ceiling. I should sleep, but I couldn’t. Seneca was on my mind. I hadn’t sensed anything from her since she’d been attacked. I shut my eyes, but all I saw was her lying wounded, dead.
With a growl, I sat up and held my face in my hands. A sign, all I needed was one sign that she was alright, and I could keep going. Even as I thought it, my eyelids grew heavy, and I fell back on the bed.
I’d assumed I’d end up staring at the ceiling all day, but my body relaxed, and I drifted off.
A warm breeze blew across my face, and I froze. That sensation, that heat on my skin, it’d been over two hundred years since I felt it. My eyes shot open, and I patted my hands down my body to put out the flames. Only there were no flames. I wasn’t on fire, but that was definitely the sun high in the sky, and I was in it. I raised my hand to block the brightness and realized where I was. Seneca’s garden. How had I gotten here? If I wasn’t burning, then this couldn’t be real. A dream maybe?
“Draven?”
My eyes barely registered her when Seneca threw herself in my arms. She was solid alright, and I hugged her back as hard as I could, kissing her. Dream or no dream, some part of this had to be real. I held her as close and as hard as I could, then stepped back, checking her over for wounds.
“I’m alright,” she replied, but her eyes darkened as she said it. Her red hair blew lightly in the warm summer breeze of this dream world, and she caught my hands as they continued their search for injuries. “Draven, I’m alive. I’m fine.”
“Your pain, I felt it,” I told her.
“It hasn’t been easy, but we’re making it.”
“Why not? What’s happened?”
She shut me up with another kiss that had my hands fisting in her black t-shirt. It went on and on as she pulled me backward into the shade of the large oak tree in her backyard. She shoved me against it with a hungry snarl, and I let my worries for her safety be shoved aside, content to hold her in my arms again.
The leaves rustled above us, and when I nuzzled her neck, she laughed, a sound I’d missed these last few weeks. True laughter.
“Gods, I missed you,” I whispered.
“Same. Macron’s not been that great of company.”
“How many lectures have you gotten?”
She rolled her eyes as I chuckled. “Don’t get me started.”
The carefree Seneca slipped away, the longer I looked at her. I tucked her hair behind her ears then she turned around. “Braid it for me, would you?”
It had become a routine for us most nights. She’d sit against me and I’d braid her hair. It calmed her, and me too, honestly. Such a simple thing, but it gave us both a moment of peace and quiet. I did as she asked, running my fingers through the tangles slowly, then working at the braid. Usually, I didn’t talk, but the questions I had about how things were really going in the other realm burned at me.
“You were attacked by something, I felt it.”
“You said that before. How did you know?”
A hiss escaped my lips. “Not sure, but I did. I thought you were dying.” My hands stilled in her hair, and she reached around, searchi
ng for me. I caught her fingers and kissed her palm. “I saw glimpses of you covered in blood.”
“The realm we’re in has some shitty ass monsters,” she replied. “I killed them though, don’t worry.”
“But you were hurt.”
“Yeah, and?”
Why was she making it sound so casual? Something else was off, and it didn’t take me long to realize what. “Rudarius. You’ve talked to him.”
She didn’t say yes, but she didn’t deny it either.
Hissing with frustration, I stormed away from her. “Why? What are you trying to do, huh? You can’t let him get inside your mind. You just can’t.”
“Why? Worried he’ll turn me after all? You don’t think I can handle him?”
“You can’t. I’ve been around his mind games longer than you have.”
“Maybe,” she replied, her casual tone making me want to shake some sense into her, “but he wasn’t the one who turned you. It’s different.”
“Different how?”
She bit her bottom lip so hard it bled. Wait, bled? She lifted a finger and wiped at it, as confused as I was. “Huh, that’s weird.”
“This isn’t a dream.”
“Has to be. We’re not back at my cottage. You’d be dead by now.”
I returned to her side, wiping the rest of the blood away. The consistency was right, as was the smell. Another drop bloomed, and I gently ran my thumb against the small puncture. “I don’t care what this is. What matters is we can talk. So you can tell me what you think you’re doing with Rudarius.”
“It’s nothing, alright? You’re as bad as Macron. I can’t always keep him out.”
“Are you even trying?” Her hands fisted at her sides and her green gaze flickered away from me. “Seneca, for gods’ sakes, you said you wouldn’t speak to him again.”
“I lied.”
Her tone changed again, and this time, I was the one with my hands in fists as I backed away from her. “What are you trying to say? Just tell me.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
The words were little more than a breath. “About what? Us?”
“No, about me. About this turning out with the two of us surviving.”
“Whatever he’s told you—or shown you—it doesn’t matter. All that does is you believing in us, got it?” I gripped her hands in mine, but it wasn’t enough. I wrapped her in my arms, and she buried her face in my neck. “We’ll find a way to make it through this. We will.”
“And if I turn out to be a monster?” She pressed herself harder against my chest. “If Rudarius is right and I’m too far gone already?”
“You’re not. You are good, Seneca, you just have to fight it—” The pain was excruciating, and I was left with my mouth gaping open, too confused by what she did to react right away. When I caught up to the moment, I wrenched Seneca free of my neck and threw her across the yard. Blood oozed from the gaping puncture wounds at my neck. “What the hell are you doing?”
But it wasn’t my Seneca looking back at me, eyes black and my blood dripping from her fangs. It was a beast, a monster. She snarled and made ready to charge me.
“No,” I whispered, then shouted it. “This isn’t you. Seneca, look at me, damn it. Come back to me.”
If she could hear me, she didn’t show it. I was still yelling when she lunged through the air, hands extended and those fangs more than ready to plunge into my neck again and rip my throat out—
I shouted as a hand fell on my chest, giving me a shake. My fist went flying and connected with someone’s face. He cursed and fell backward as the rest of the cabin came back into view. Shane held his face, blood dripping from his nose.
“What were you dreaming about?” he muttered, pulling his hand away from his face, then cursed. “Damn, I think you broke my nose.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled and shook my head hard. “Nightmare, just a bloody nightmare.”
“About?”
“Seneca,” I said, but stopped myself from going further. “Doesn’t matter, wasn’t real.”
He frowned and pointed at my neck. “You sure about that? You’re bleeding.”
I rubbed my neck where Seneca had bitten me and cringed when it hurt. My hand came away bloody. “Bite marks?”
Shane leaned over and prodded around the two small holes. “Looks like. Shit, man.”
Not a dream after all then. A nightmare with some weight to it. “Doesn’t matter, I’m fine. Are Nathaniel and the others ready to move out?”
“You said you dreamt about Seneca.”
“Yeah, and?”
“Did she bite you in this dream?”
“Doesn’t matter. We need to keep moving.” I blurred out of the cabin, not giving Shane a chance to keep questioning me, and met up with the small number of followers I had. “We good to get going?”
Nathaniel bowed. “We’ll catch some food on the way. The Blood Dragons territory starts about a hundred miles or so southward. But we’re going to have to climb. It’s not easy to reach them,” he warned.
A hard climb was what I needed at that moment to get my mind off the hellish nightmare I just had.
Shane joined us. Nathaniel gave him a questioning look after noticing his nose. He made up some excuse or other and then we were off, blurring around the pine trees and through the snow that became deeper the further up in elevation we went. The stars shone brightly overhead, what I could catch through the thick overhang of branches above our heads. We moved like a silent unit for hours, taking down several large elk along the way to sate our thirst. Never as good as a human, but it’d have to do.
When Nathaniel threw out his hand to halt us, dawn was only an hour away at best. My skin itched with the familiar warning to take cover. The timberline was only a few thousand feet away. He hadn’t joked about how high we would have to climb to reach the other coven’s territory.
“You think they know we’re coming?” I asked Nathaniel quietly.
“We know.”
I held my hands up to show I was unarmed as vampires blurred in a tight circle around our small group. They were dressed in all black, each armed with a sword at his back, and eyes narrowed suspiciously. The one who spoke approached me first.
“You stink of the enemy.” He spat at the ground near my feet.
“Sorry about that. Haven’t had a chance to shower yet,” I replied.
He punched me, and my head flew back, but I wasn’t about to go down that easily. “I know your face. You are with Rudarius. What are you doing here, huh? Scoping out the place for an attack? You should have brought more men. Our coven will not fall as easily as yours did.”
My lip twitched. “Is that right?”
“Yes, it is. I ask again. What are you doing here, traitor?”
Nathaniel started to move in closer. “He can’t speak to you like that.”
I held up my hand, stopping him. “It’s fine. It’s deserved.”
The vampire in front of me blinked, not saying a word.
“I am no longer with Rudarius, not like I wanted to be, to begin with. I’ve left him behind and have come here with several of the Bleeding Crown coven seeking an audience with your leader.” Shit, I couldn’t remember who it was anymore. Gareth? No, he died ages ago. Who had taken over after him?
The vampire glanced at the others but said nothing. Were they going to keep us out here until we roasted alive? If we weren’t outnumbered, and I wasn’t here seeking their aid, I would’ve hit him back. Starting a fight was not the best way to ask for help.
Eventually, the vampire pressed a finger to his ear. He must’ve been getting orders from someone inside, but they were far too quiet for me to hear. His eye twitched in annoyance, then he nodded. I was about to ask what that was supposed to mean when he decked me again. A black, cloth bag was thrown over my head. I made no attempt to fight back and ordered those with me to do the same. My hands were bound in heavy, silver chains that burned enough to be annoying, but little else. If they stayed o
n too long, they’d eventually eat through my skin. I was shoved along the rocky ground by rough hands. The uneven ground changed to something flatter and solid. Our steps echoed in some sort of tunnel. The clanking of metal and the heavy hum of a generator grew closer. Elevator? I was shoved again and ran into a hard, metal wall.
“Apologies,” the vampire holding me said, amusement in his tone.
I kept quiet as we descended deeper into the mountain. The elevator jerked to a sudden stop, and I was dragged off it, down a sloping hall. The fortress hidden deep within the Rockies was crowded, judging from the number of voices coming I could hear—though muffled—through the cloth bag. Lights were all I could make out through the thick fabric. We rounded a corner and went down another sloping walkway.
“Hold them in the cages. This one, take him front and center. She wants to see him for herself.”
She? My only dealings with the Blood Dragons had been when my father was alive, and I’d been his second. Then Gareth had been in charge. He had no bride that I knew of and no female commanders. Who had taken over when he died? I might’ve been able to convince Gareth that I was no longer with Rudarius.
But this woman was an unknown. Great, with my luck I’d be fighting my way out of this mountain or be dead in the next five minutes.
My hands were unchained only to be placed in much heavier manacles. Finally, the bag was removed from my head. I blinked at the bright lights. A hard tug on the chains told me I was attached to the floor and wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Above me, the ceiling reached high above, easily into the peak of the mountain we were in. Balconies and walkways had been carved into the stone and surrounded us. Strings of lights, as well as braziers, lit the circular space. Black stones made up the floor. Columns supporting the first level balcony surrounded the space, while several tapestries in rich reds and blacks hung along the walls. And everywhere I looked, there were vampires. The cages mentioned were to my right. Nathaniel and Shane glared at someone in front of me, but at least they were unharmed.
Eventually, I swung my gaze around and spotted a woman sitting in a massive, high-backed wooden throne. The same chair Gareth used to occupy. The vampire I met outside stood just to her right, and several more stood to the left and behind. I was flanked by four more.
