by Zoe Forward
“I know. He told me.” She clenched the hand not holding the phone into a fist so tight she felt her nails dig into her palm.
“Do you know why he went alone? Why he wouldn’t allow even Bryan to go with him?”
“I swear I’ll get him free.” She noted the passing trees had grown lighter with accumulations of snow as they drove east. Flurries of snow came and went. The roads remained passable but hadn’t been cleared in hours.
“At what price will you gain his freedom?” Lexan released an audible sigh and curse. “You will not force me to be the one who sends you to your death, Kiera, not after Vee saved you three nights ago. She will never forgive me for letting her aunt die. You can’t do that to me.”
She bowed her head. “I love my niece with my whole heart. I thank every lucky star in the sky that she found you. You’re a worthy match for her big heart. You’ll keep her safe and value the gift of love for as long as you both have. Viktor has Carol. I’m going to get her free. I regret nothing I accomplished for your people nor doling out this form of justice in a war I’m afraid may be more Viktor’s doing than any of us realize.” She fingered the flash drive Anita passed her, suspecting it had enough evidence to damn Viktor. “Call Viktor. Tell him the leader of the League agrees to the exchange so long as he brings both Carol and Michael. We will have two different drop points. One for the leader of the League and one for Michael and Carol. Only when they’re free and recovered by your people will they get me.”
“No,” Andrew said next to her. “I won’t allow it. I’ll go as the leader. He’d believe that. In fact, he already suspects me.”
“He suspects me, too. He’ll have no trouble believing it.” She put her hand on his arm, silencing him. Into the phone, she said, “Make the deal. You have to trust me. Mine won’t be a simple execution.”
She ended the call.
To Andrew, she said, “If you went, it would guarantee your death. That’s not in the cards. You have your own life ahead of you. Much more ahead than me.”
“We’re not done talking about this. I won’t let you.”
“Never underestimate me, my dear. It demeans both of us.” She caught Andrew’s shifty look. “If you do something stupid, I’ll be furious with you. You don’t want to make me mad because it means I’ll probably have to save your life.”
…
Kiera flipped open cell phone from Isaac, which she’d put into her clutch. Probably stupid to have dragged it to the gala, but that dratted intuition, which was annoyingly accurate most of the time, nagged her to keep it close. Her mind churned with tactical scenarios to wiggle out of this tight spot. She’d never involved Isaac in any of her ventures. He made clear they weren’t his business. Only when her death was on the line would he appear.
But you never asked him to help. Maybe now was the time.
Would he show up? If he did, would he take her side?
The druid wasn’t a being who could be coerced or controlled. He seemed to like her, so she had that in her favor.
She closed the phone.
A dirt-salt film coated the car’s windshield from driving on recently plowed snowy roads. The windshield wiper fluid had run out long ago. Now parked inside a metal hangar on the private airstrip Andrew owned, she watched Andrew’s people buzz around his plane as they prepared for an unplanned departure.
This down time created an opportunity. Her mind churned over Isaac. And Michael’s infuriating heroics, leading to the impending exchange. Before she risked her life again, she needed to pause. Now was her only moment to deal with the revelations she’d found in the druid text. Even though she hadn’t read it cover to cover, the little bits she’d deciphered raised too many questions. Questions only one person could answer for her.
Aside from the text, she had a bigger question for the druid: why did Isaac show up every time she almost died? Why was her life so important to him?
They’d passed beyond gratitude over her “saving” him long ago. In fact, she always wondered if he actually had needed a rescue to begin with. He was so powerful that a magic dabbler like Armand shouldn’t have been able to catch or keep him. She suspected Isaac wanted to be where he’d been. He’d wanted her in his life.
Bottom line: she suspected Isaac was related to her, as in some sort of genetic connection. The question was how. Before she died, she needed to find out.
She exited the car and stalked out of the hangar toward the tree line in the dark distance. A snuggle into the oversize winter coat Andrew lent her helped ward off the chill in the air but didn’t heat her body. She used magic to shroud herself so no one noticed her departure, one of her “parlor tricks,” as Isaac would label it. Once out of earshot and sight of everyone, she opened the flip phone and dialed while continuing to walk into the depths of the forest.
Snow dusted the ground, which had been protected from heavier snowfall by the dense evergreens. Each breath came out in cold swirls of frost.
“Not a good time,” Isaac answered in a harsh whisper.
“We need to talk. In person.” Her heart pounded inside her chest. She’d never pushed Isaac. Never insisted.
“You owe me, which means you have no right to make demands.” Shuffling then a grunt came through from the other line. Sounded like an unintentional painful noise caused by an outside source rather than a grunt of reply to her.
“What’s going on?” She pressed the phone to her head as if that would help her hear better.
His tone came out dismissive. “Later will have to work, unless you’re in trouble again.”
“You’ll only show up if I’m about to die? I read An T-urram Draoidheil.”
“What? There are no copies in existence,” he snapped. She could’ve sworn he whispered I made sure of it, but that may have been her imagination.
“You preach to me life is a circle whose only currency is trust, but your every interaction with me has been based on lies.”
The phone call ended.
She stared down at the phone. Had the call been dropped, or did he hang up? She hoped her analysis of him and his motives proved correct. She’d picked up bits about his past over the last century from their intermittent encounters. Based on what he told her when he was incarcerated by Armand, Isaac flitted into peoples’ lives, making changes—saving a life, restoring a memory, righting a wrong—while keeping to the shadows, intent on remaining unnoticed by all. Except her. He flashed in and out of her life, each time leaving a marked impact. He wanted her to remember him. The question they were going to discuss was why.
Crack.
Static electricity kicked up in the air around her, crackling and hissing. Hairs on her body rose as did her sense of triumph. A white light whirled from a small hole to a size large enough for Isaac to step through. Dressed not in scrubs but in dark, loose clothes, he tucked a serrated blade into its belt holster. Two long blades crisscrossed behind his back ninja style. She picked up a whiff of human blood as the air settled around him.
Her gamble worked.
His lips compressed into a thin line as his glare zeroed in on her, vertical lines appearing between his brows.
Good. She, too, was mad enough to give him a high five in the face with a tree branch. Him appearing here confirmed he’d lied to her about her magic.
“You once implied the magic I have came from what you did to put me back together.” She cocked her head and glared at him in stony silence. Contradict me.
No reply other than a further narrowing of his eyes.
“That’s not possible, is it? The book said the ability to channel magic can only be inherited. People can dabble in it and maybe bend some to their will but not use it like a sixth sense, like me. You lied to me.”
He crossed his arms. The raised tattoos on his neck glowed in the darkness, a residue of recently use of magic. “I omitted. Never lied.”
&
nbsp; Ah-ha! “The slickest way to lie is to tell enough truth but not all of the truth.”
His jaw clenched. “You weren’t ready for the full truth.”
“Stop treating me like I’m a six-year-old! I’m two hundred twenty-eight.”
“To me, you’re a child. I’m exponentially older.”
Her voice kicked up a volume level. “What am I?”
“You’re Kiera.” His dark gaze bored into her with a light at its center where the scant moonlight reflected. The eerie glow seemed almost supernatural, although that wasn’t possible, even for a druid.
“I’m not pure vampire.” She waved a dismissive hand. “We can discuss my parents in a sec. Instead, explain how a druid who’s older than dirt and can travel by magic energy tunnel got captured by the asshole I was forced to mate? Armand wasn’t an idiot, but he wasn’t a match for you.”
For the first time in all the years she’d known Isaac, he got shifty, blasting her with a wave of insecurity. He toed at snow near one of his boots. If she touched him, she could get a better read on his emotions. But no way she was getting close enough right now to touch him.
He didn’t reply.
She asked, “That awful night, my mother wasn’t there for a social call like she claimed, was she? That made no sense. She rarely visited me. I think she got wind Armand had you imprisoned and was there for you.” She let silence rest between them, awkward and uncomfortable. When he didn’t speak, she said, “You know what’s always bugged me? You were far more upset than my own mother over what happened to me. Don’t get me wrong. She freaked out. But I want the truth. Are you my father?”
“Kiera…”
“The truth.” She crossed her arms. A blast of energy detonated around her, sending powdery snow in all directions and causing him to stumble backward a few steps.
“A warning flash. Interesting. You have become strong, amor tenebris, even if you have no idea what you’re doing.” He frowned. The temperature around them dropped. “Never think you’re powerful enough to challenge me.”
“Yet you’re the one of the two of us who’s anxious.” She took a step toward him. “Would you hurt me? Kill me?”
Isaac stepped backward, well out of her reach. “I won’t fight you.”
“Tell me the truth.”
Isaac’s head dropped onto his chest, and his shoulders drooped. “Ehlena was angry at Armand about what he did to both of us.”
“Stop evading.”
He compressed his lips. “Me there? I’ll admit I allowed myself to be captured. You’re right.”
“You chose to be imprisoned and tortured for months? Why?” Surprised to be right, she stepped backward and threw out a hand to lean against a tree.
He wobbled his head back and forth in a so-so gesture. “Tortured? Not so much. Armand understood nothing about the how-tos of torturing one of my kind.”
She clenched her fists. “Balls, Isaac. Be straight with me.”
His face pinched with an odd and new emotion she’d never seen from him. “I needed time to determine if you inherited any magic. An opportunity presented itself. I took it.”
“Are you my father?”
His frown remained the same. No emotion bled through. “Calm down. Impatience is your greatest weakness.”
“Stop patronizing me. This is my life. I’m not going to calm down!” He heart pummeled her rib cage.
Without breaking eye contact, he said, “You’re half druid.”
The world seemed to spin around her, although the sensation was in her head. Deep down, she hoped Isaac would deny he’d lied to her about the magic. She’d wanted the ancient druid text to be wrong about the origins of magic.
For centuries, she’d identified as a pure vampire. Now, who was she? What was she?
“Were my two sisters also part druid?” she asked.
“Both were pure vampire. When Ehlena was arranged to be mated, she was already carrying you.”
Ehlena had an affair before the mating ceremony? Unheard of in Ehlena’s generation.
“Who am I to you?” she asked. “A niece…your daughter?”
He remained still as stone despite the inner turmoil. “If I’d known about you, I’d never have allowed vampires to raise you. You should’ve been with someone who understood the magic. It is both a curse and a responsibility.”
“You are my…” Breath froze in her lungs. “My father?”
“Yes.” Isaac’s expression remained the same, although he projected emotional turbulence she could pick up even without touching him. On a whispered exhale, he said, “Before you were born, I didn’t mean to leave Ehlena for long, but I had good reason.” Responsibility. The world hung in the air between them and in her head as if he’d said it out loud. “She panicked and agreed to the mating. Then she wouldn’t speak to me about any of it, thinking if I stayed out of your life, you’d never develop magic. It scared her to know she put you at risk in that den of elite bloodsuckers. I also think the magic inside you terrified her. She doesn’t handle fear of the unknown well.”
She snorted. “You can say that again.”
“Surprised the hell out of me when she showed up that night. I don’t know how she found out I was there.”
Isaac was her father.
Fact.
That was going to take some time to sink in.
He moved so fast she jolted. He brushed hair off her forehead and held her chin in his grip. “You are more powerful than you can imagine. So much potential flows through you. Raw potential. If you read the text, then you know this magic comes with obligation and restraint. You need training. Druids are the guardians of time. We try to fix injustice and stand for what’s right. It’s the mantra in your soul. It’s why you do these crazy things to save the werewolves.”
“So this magic gives you the right to play God?”
“I’m too tired to have a philosophical discussion tonight. Sometimes God needs help with so many working against him.”
“Didn’t you want to be my father for real…be there for me?”
“I tried to do what I could. We see how well that turned out.”
“A parent doesn’t slither around in the periphery, showing up only when I’m about to die. And then explaining nothing.”
He looked a tinge remorseful. Not much.
She asked, “How did you find out about me way back when, if Ehlena didn’t tell you?”
“Energy as rich as ours can be felt in our blood. Less than a handful of us are still alive. The energy calls to us. When you were young and I detected your power, I confronted Ehlena. She tried to deny it, but blood doesn’t lie.”
“Do you have other children?” Might help to talk to someone else who’d been through this.
He shook his head. “Children require a powerful bond. A once-in-a-lifetime for most.”
He was her mother’s once-in-a-lifetime, or maybe it was the other way around.
Someone yelled her name in the distance.
Time to ask him for help. Michael might already be dead. Debilitating pressure squeezed her lungs.
“What is it?” Isaac reached for her.
She backed out of reach as she tried to push aside her pride. Begging for assistance didn’t come easy. With a throat clear, she said, “I have a problem. I’m not sure who else to ask for help.”
“What kind of problem?” Although his tone came out monotone, she picked up unease from him.
“Viktor DiFalco kidnapped my sister. And Michael, in an insane move he probably sees as heroic, provided a distraction to allow me to escape Viktor’s house, but now he’s been captured. In exchange for their release, Viktor wants me—well, the leader of the Nightshade League—to surrender. I’m sure he plans to drag me in front of the Foundry and get me executed.”
“Why don’t you use your connec
tions to get them out of wherever they’re being held? You’ve got vampires on your side, right?”
“We can’t locate Carol despite scouring for days. Michael is at Viktor’s house in Milan. That place is impossible.”
“You want me to go get Michael out.” Stated as fact and not a question.
“Would you?” Hope soared.
“No.”
“Why the hell not? You do your energy travel thing and poof, he’s out.”
“He got himself into that situation. It was his choice. There are rules to the magic. If someone makes a decision, we can’t force things to be as we want.”
She stalked toward him. “I find that hard to believe.”
He crossed his arms. They faced off for endless moments.
“So why when I do something by choice that almost kills me, do you show up and force me to live?”
“You never wanted to die. Michael chose to create a distraction and accepted he might die in the process.”
Suspicious, she flattened her lips. “Were you spying on me at Viktor’s place today?”
He looked away from her.
“You were? Stop lurking in the goddamned shadows. If you were there, why didn’t you save him?”
“Rules. He made a choice. It’s what he wanted.”
“It was a ridiculous decision.”
“Won’t argue that. I can’t waltz into wherever he is and remove him.”
“Can you free Carol, then?”
He scrunched up his lips. “Same sort of ethical issue.”
“I don’t think she wanted to be captured.”
He held up a hand and closed his eyes. Then shook his head. “I can’t do it. She wanted to be captured.”
“What you just did was freaky. How would you know what Carol wanted?”
“I can read the past. I’m not sure why she chose to be captured, but she did. She’s not trying to escape.”
“That’s not something she would do. She’s a survivor.”
He held out his hands. “Just stating facts. If you get her free, then you’ll have to discuss her decisions with her.”
