Court of Frost and Embers (The Pair Bond Chronicles Book 1)

by Leeann M. Shane

  I swallowed hard. And then I gave him the truth. “No.” I couldn’t imagine having to lose him. Could barely stand it in a nightmare. “How could they be, Max? They lost their star. And what sucks is that you’re so close. Maybe you can talk to your brother, at least?”

  “Did you just call me Max?”

  I nodded. “Guess I did. You like it?”

  He smirked. “Yes.”

  I smiled at the road. “You ever think about just telling them? Maybe they won’t care that you’re a vampire.” I didn’t.

  “What are you thinking? That because you accept it, they will too?”

  “Are you reading my mind?” Again?

  “No,” he chuckled. “I can read your face, though. You have to remember something. We’re pair bonded. I’m addicted to your humanity the same way you’re enthralled with my immortality. Most humans won’t be so accepting. It’s too dangerous for them to be around me. One whiff of Misty and I would have drained her.”

  He didn’t sound too worried about that. “Maxell,” I admonished. “That’s my friend.”

  “Oh,” he said, perfectly innocent. “Friends are off-limits, I take it?”

  I glowered at him fleetingly. “Yes, don’t eat my friends.”

  He held both hands up. “Okay, got it. Glad we cleared that up.”

  I was sure he was kidding. Kind of. I sighed, gripping the steering wheel so tightly my fingers ached. “How far do I have to go?”

  “Pull over whenever you wish.”

  I yanked the steering wheel to the right and scrambled over the center console as he zipped around front and reclaimed his seat, easily navigating the roads. Too late, I realized why he was so willing to take over the driving. There was a black car behind us. The moment Maxell pulled back on the road, it did as well.

  “Been following us since you got on North Crystal Road.”

  “That was ten minutes ago. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want you to panic.”

  I rotated in my seat, trying and failing to see beyond our tinted windows, much less able to see beyond theirs. “Can you see who it is?”

  The car’s engine hummed loudly as he increased its speed. “Yes. Put your seatbelt on.”

  Worry invaded my body. “Who is it?”

  He took the upcoming corner dangerously fast. The tail end of the car slid on the ice. I screeched, holding on to his arm and the dashboard with my other hand. He was able to right it at the last minute, and unfortunately so was the car following us.

  “Don’t panic?”

  A panicked bubble of breath escaped my lips. “Scouts honor.”

  “You were a girl scout?” he asked, surprised.

  “Maxell!” I snapped.

  He whipped the wheel around the icy, dangerous forest roads. “I don’t know who is following us personally. Can’t say I’ve ever met a Warrior.”

  The name wasn’t familiar enough to put reason to the fear, but I’d heard him mention the name Warrior in reference to— “The Immortal Society.”

  Dread, cold, hot, and horrid filled me. The loss I felt in my dream reared up again and I bit my tongue to keep myself from spewing chunks all over the car. “No.” My breaths came uneven and too deep at the same time.

  “Emmie, breathe. It’s okay. I’ll make sure it’s okay.”

  “I can’t calm down,” I wheezed. “They’re going to hurt you.”

  “No they’re not. That’s a Warrior from The Immortal Society. Vampires bred to protect the Pures. If he wanted, he could slaughter the entire city in seconds, and it would be of no consequence. If he wanted to hurt me, he would have. He just wants us to know he’s there.”

  I sat back in my seat, closing my eyes. I tried and breathed through the panic, to think. I had to focus. I had to in order to keep Maxell safe. “Pull over.”

  “Next plan.”

  “Pull over. If you can’t outrun him and he knows that then he probably just wants to talk.”

  “About what? The Mariners upcoming season?”

  My nightmare played in my mind as I tried to hope beyond hope that that’s all it was. A bad dream. “Stop the car.”

  He sped it up instead, face dark and determined as he yanked the steering wheel. “There’s a side road up ahead after the next turn. There’s no way that goon knows where it is. If I can get us there before he does then I can get him off our trail.”

  I held my breath as the car went so fast the trees were blurs past my window. Maxell took the turn, giving us a second of clearance before he whipped the car so hard to the right that I hit the side panel. The glass window clocked me in the head, but I managed to right myself just in time to see the taillights of the car following us keep going straight.

  Maxell gunned the engine through the narrow, snowy road. He took the turns so easily, I knew he’d had to have driven them a hundred times. “My grandfather owns a cabin nearby,” he revealed. “Mom gave him hell for giving me driving lessons up here.” He dipped hard to the left, spitting us out onto a road so thick with snow, the car slowed dramatically. He stopped abruptly and shoved his door open. “Stay here. I’m going to erase our tire prints. Don’t move, Emmie. Promise me.”

  “I promise,” I insisted, afraid to move a muscle.

  The moment he was gone, quietness descended on me. Thick and cold, it filled my ears. Before the sound blew my eardrums apart, Maxell sped past the front of the car. When he returned, there was a path in front of us, but nothing behind us. If the Warrior did somehow find that turn, he’d never know which direction we went.

  Maxell drove through the roads until we were on the other edge of North Crystal Road. If we went left, we’d leave Port Inlet behind. If we went right, we’d go back.

  Maxell idled there for a long time until he finally turned to look at me. “The fever elixir. You need it. We can’t leave without it. But if we go home, there’s no doubt they’ll be there waiting for us.”

  I was struck by how tortured his eyes were.

  He turned right, heading back down North Crystal Road for home. He skated around the turns, taking them even faster than last time. “Masters,” he whispered under his breath, like a plea for answers. He squared his shoulders. “You’re going to the Snow Day Sleep-In. Stay there. Your scent’s already all over the school. They’ll never look there twice. Plus, it’s surrounded by humans. Let’s hope they’re not willing to make a show.”

  My heart fell away into my stomach. “You’re ditching me?”

  “No. I’m leaving you somewhere safe so I can keep you that way. I’ll lure them away, get the elixir, and then come back and get you.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then we hunt down Masters and Reowna,” he said with an edge to his promise.

  I didn’t dare look away from his face. “No.”

  “No?” he shot me a second-long glare. “What do you mean no?”

  “I mean there’s no way you’re leaving me and running headfirst into the hands of the people who want to burn you alive.” I gritted my teeth together, too mad he’d think that I’d go for that and too scared to think of it happening. “Whatever we do, we do together. Promise me, Maxell. Promise me!” I shouted, when he didn’t immediately answer.

  He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, his teeth grinding together. “I promise.”

  “Do you mean it?”

  “Yes,” he grumbled. “Even though you have to know that if it’s you or me, I’m always picking you.”

  That time, I let my true feelings loose. “I understand that better than you think.”

  His eyes found mine, focusing so intently on me I felt his fear, want, and torture as if they were my own. “That right?”

  “That’s right.”

  He returned his eyes to the road. “What do you propose we do, Emm—”

  He never got to finish.

  I never got to answer.

  Maxell shouted, and half-a-second before the front end of his car crashed into the gi
ant man standing in the middle of the road, I remembered something else from my nightmare.

  There was a robed couple standing behind me. I turned around, my pair bond nothing but ash now, and faced them both.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Metal crunched under someone’s feet.

  They weren’t my feet. I couldn’t feel them.

  The smell of gas and hot metal burned my nose. My chest ached so fiercely, tears burned in the backs of my eyes. I struggled to open them, spotting trees as I bobbed in the air.

  “She’s hurt.”

  “Turn her,” someone ordered, their voice scratchy and deep—it boomed in the air even though their tone wasn’t that loud.

  “No,” someone else hissed, closer to me, their voice the only familiar one.

  “She can’t come back with us. Not as a mortal. The only humans allowed in The Immortal Society are solely for satiation or those with a death wish. You may not know this, but vampires can’t feed from human pair bonds. Her blood’s already been claimed by you. A descendant of the Pures. All you had to do was turn her. I don’t see the problem.” The voice sounded genuinely confused.

  A sob echoed in my ear. Lips, cold and smooth, pressed to my temple. “Drink from me,” Maxell whispered a second before something ice-cold and tasteless trickled into my mouth.

  I’d tasted it before. Vampire blood. I sucked the viscous liquid into my mouth, swallowing his blood down. Even before it hit my stomach, the pain in my head and chest radiated like fire. I writhed in his arms, and then the fire abated and I sagged in relief as quickly as the fire began. I opened my eyes.

  Maxell set me on my feet, cradling my face in his hands. He searched my eyes. There was such sorrow, fear, and regret in them. “How do you feel? Does anything hurt? Can you walk?”

  My eyes skirted to the side since I couldn’t move my face. There was a guy there. A huge guy with hair the color of freshly turned butter and eyes that were flat and black. He had muscles on top of his muscles. And he was pale in the truest sense of the word. There was no color to his complexion and deep purple moons dug into the skin under his eyes.

  Beyond him, Maxell’s car lay in shambles. The windshield was blown out and I faintly remembered flying through the glass before pain knocked me unconscious. I let my eyes drift back to my pair bond’s. “I feel physically fine.”

  The distinction made him pause before he pressed a kiss to the space between my forehead. “And emotionally?”

  I looked away.

  He stroked his thumb along my cheek. “Okay.” He turned back to the ginormous vampire. “I’m not turning her. If you want me to come to The Immortal Society as badly as you seem to, the only way I’ll come is if she can come with me. Human. And she must leave human. She must stay human. That’s the deal.”

  The Warrior gave him a bored look. “You know I can’t make such deals. I’m a Warrior. I do what I’m told. I was told to bring you back intact. That’s what I will do. If you want your pair bond to come along, she must do so as a vampire.”

  Maxell’s breath hitched. I studied his chest in amazement to find that he was breathing. Every muscle and tendon on him was taut. He kept one of his hands on mine, the other was a fist. “If what you said is true, then I have dominion over you. Even a little. And I demand that you bring her human. And that she stays human, or so help me, you won’t live forever like you’ve been planning.”

  I was confused and scared. And Maxell was afraid and angry and that only made me even more confused and scared.

  The Warrior and Maxell locked eyes. Neither one appeared to want to back down. Defiance and power radiated off them. It made my instincts kick in, but Maxell defied those instincts. I didn’t feel them because of him anyway. I felt them because of the Warrior. “What’s going on?” I whispered, too afraid to speak loudly.

  The Warrior drug his lazy, dark gaze over to meet mine. “Your pair bond is of Pure descent. Which is probably why I smell heaven and hell in you. You’re closer to both sides of the Pures than any human has ever been before. This one has to be brought back to The Immortal Society. The Pures will determine then if he can exist or not.”

  My nightmare replayed itself in my mind. “I don’t understand.”

  The Warrior sighed so dramatically, it irked me. He breathed around me just fine. “The vampire who turned him was of Pure descent. What’s so hard to understand? Pures can only make other Pures with approval. That was not given. Now they must determine if he deserves to exist.”

  Then that meant… “Masters is of Pure descent?” I looked at Maxell for confirmation.

  He gazed back at me in understanding. “Apparently.”

  “Did you know that?”

  “Of course not. But it makes sense. Why I had the strength not to feed from you. Why he knew how to make the elixir. Why he left before another one of them showed up. He broke the rules when he turned me. And now we both suffer.”

  “He will be brought to justice. Just as soon as he’s located. You wouldn’t happen to know where he might be, would you?” The Warrior asked, tone so drab I almost felt bad for him.

  Almost.

  “Wait,” I interrupted. If my nightmares were visions of the future, then that meant that the Pures weren’t going to choose to keep him. I turned to the Warrior. “What’s your name?”

  “My name is of no use to you, mortal.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “My name is Emmie. Now you know mine, you have to tell me yours.”

  He sighed again. Right in my face. His breath smelled sickly sweet, like poisoned cherries and coal. In dismay, I realized it was because he drank human blood. Straight from the source. “My name is Phare. And no, I’m not really fair.”

  “I’d say it’s nice to meet you, Phare, but it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get along. We both know what’s going to happen to him if you bring him back. And I can’t let that happen. I can’t lose him. Don’t you have a pair bond? Don’t you understand what it’s like?”

  Phare studied me intently. “Warriors do not bond.”

  I blinked at him. “You don’t get to fall in love?”

  He was still as he studied me. “No,” he said simply. “We’re bred without emotions.”

  I didn’t believe that. Maybe that was their goal, but I could see emotions in his eyes. Bitterness even. “So then what do you do? What’s your purpose?”

  He gazed at Maxell. “Does she do this a lot?”

  “What?”

  “Talk?”

  Maxell’s hand squeezed mine. “On occasion.”

  Phare took a step back. “Here’s the deal, you two. I have no purpose other than to serve my kind. I do what I’m told. I was told to bring you back. I’m doing that. I can kill her and bring you back that way, or you can turn her, and we can all return in one piece. They’ll determine her life along with yours.”

  Maxell unthawed. I knew why. In my nightmare, I survived. He didn’t. He was okay with that. Okay for my life over his. But I wasn’t.

  “No,” I told him, tears sticking in my throat. “You promised. If we go back, they’re going to kill you. What about me? I get you for such a short time only to lose you? I don’t even get a chance at the forever you’ve been promising me? That isn’t fair.” I turned vehemently to Phare. “Listen here, you big bully. We’re not going back with you. That’s final.” I shoved at his chest with one hand. Maxell wouldn’t let go of the other.

  Phare didn’t budge a single inch. “How do you know they’re going to kill him? They could decide that he is valuable. You as well.”

  “She had a dream,” Maxell responded so matter-of-factly it made my heart bleed.

  Phare’s right brow shut up. “Interesting. Displaying powers before she’s even turned. She’ll be a useful vampire. That’s probably her ticket out. You must not have any powers,” he deduced, gazing fleetingly at Maxell before bringing his gaze back to mine. “And yet you love him still?”

  I jutted my chin out. “Are you usefu
l?”

  Phare narrowed his eyes at me. “You tell me.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me if I’m useful. If you do, I’ll bring you back human. Because we are going back. I’m ten times stronger than your pair bond. Even newly turned and stronger than most, he isn’t stronger than me. I don’t want to kill you. I suspect I’ll get more out of him keeping you alive, and the Pures would love to know that you display talent, but I will if you get in my way. Tell me if I’m useful. Tell me my purpose.”

  “I don’t think it works that way. I didn’t ask to dream what I dreamed.”

  “Maybe you did. Foreseers are rare. But they’re usually protective, strong, and cannot defend themselves without knowing what they’re up against. No one made me a Foreseer. But they made you one, and your powers are so strong they’re showing themselves while you’re still human. If you’re even human at all.”

  “What else would I be?”

  “What else indeed,” he murmured, taking a sniff of the air around me. He rolled his tongue over my scent, and his eyes narrowed. “Hmm.” He held his hand out to me, looking at me strangely. “Tell me what you see.”

  What did you see? I thought but didn’t dare ask. I looked at Maxell.

  He nodded me along. “Go ahead. I’m here.”

  I stepped forward and let Maxell’s hand go to hold the Warriors with both of mine. “Close your eyes,” I told him. I wasn’t sure if that helped, but it seemed like a good place to start. I had no real intentions of doing anything. I wasn’t a Foreseer, or whatever that meant. I’d only ever had a nightmare. But Reowna had been able to see it through my mind. I took a deep, shaky breath and closed my eyes once his slid shut, recalling what Reowna had said to me, so I could repeat it. “Let me into your mind. The part where dreams and hopes and fears come from.”