12
WHEN I CAME
DOWNSTAIRS AFTER SPENDING THE afternoon sequestered in the bedroom,
the ropes that tied Noah to the staircase were loose on the floor
and he was gone.
I froze.
“He’s coming with
us,” Matthias said. I turned slowly to see him standing between me
and the front door. “It’ll be a good test for him. You know how
much I like my tests.”
Yes, I did. All too
well.
I finally spotted
Noah, crouched in the corner, rocking back and forth like a mental
patient.
“I don’t know,” Noah
mumbled. “Jill’s blood . . . it—it’s too hard for me to resist. I’m
not strong enough.”
“You can resist it.
It’s mind over matter.”
“Right. If I don’t
mind, it doesn’t matter.” Noah groaned. “But that’s the problem. I
mind. I mind a lot.”
“What the hell are
you doing, Matthias?” My voice came out pitchy.
“What you saw last
night is typical behavior for a brand-new fledgling. But it’s been
nearly twenty-four hours now and his control is improving. His body
is adjusting to being a vampire. There have been no accidents so
far, which is a good sign.”
“Other than trying to
attack me last night.”
“All fledglings
within the first day are mindlessly hungry and violent like that.
But he was stopped before anything could happen. Although it will
take him months to settle in completely, he should be able to
function nearly as well as he ever did. Better, even.”
That didn’t really
set my mind at ease. “And if he doesn’t function as
well?”
Matthias glanced at
Noah. “If he bites you, he’ll die. And the problem he presents will
be solved. I’m hoping his desire to live will trump his need to
taste your blood.”
“Oh, my God,” Noah
groaned. “This sucks so bad.”
My hands curled into
fists at my sides. “More games.”
Matthias blinked.
“No. I’m being practical.”
“You want to take a
fledgling vampire to see your daughter. And that’s being
practical?”
“If he makes one move
to harm Sara, I’ll rip his heart out from his chest. Do you hear
me, Noah?”
Noah cleared his
throat nervously. “Loud and clear.”
I didn’t feel good
about this, but I didn’t have a lot of choice here. I wanted to see
Sara, too. I’d been worried about her ever since Declan took her
away and refused to tell me where she was. I didn’t miss the
diapers, constant feeding, and the throwing up, but I did care
about the baby’s well-being. Knowing she was with someone like
Emily, even though I’d never met her before, helped ease my mind a
lot.
We left the house
without another word spoken between the three of us. After what
happened earlier between me and Matthias, I felt awkward and
embarrassed. What had seemed like the means to help me forget about
Declan, now seemed indulgent and irresponsible. To say the least. I
didn’t hate the former vampire king—I wasn’t sure now if I ever
had—but sleeping with him was not a wise choice, despite my
attraction to him. When I was with someone, I wanted it to be
because I loved him. My libido had gotten me in trouble a few times
in my life, but I was older and wiser now. I learned from my
mistakes. Matthias would have been a mistake.
He could have had sex
with me anyway, but he didn’t. He’d stopped just in time. I guess I
should thank him for that.
Maybe
someday.
We headed for Toluca
Woods, a middle-class neighborhood in Burbank. It was warm out
tonight, but not hot, and there was a nice breeze in the air.
Emily’s house was at the end of a cul-de-sac, a redbricked, back
split bungalow with a cypress tree out front and a rock garden
instead of a grass lawn. Matthias pulled the car alongside the curb
and parked there.
Noah sat quietly in
the backseat and I was keenly aware of his presence the entire
half-hour drive over. He pressed up against the driver’s side door,
his arms crossed so tightly over his chest it looked
painful.
Entering this
neighborhood made a sudden and surprisingly large amount of emotion
well inside of me. It reminded me of where my sister and my nieces
lived, which wasn’t very far away from here. My throat closed,
making it difficult to swallow.
I had to call her.
I’d waffled about this so many times that I’d lost count, but I
always came back to what felt right to me. A quick phone call
wouldn’t put her in jeopardy. It might stress her out, but it would
take a weight off her mind that I was still alive. I had to do
that. A couple minutes and that was it. Maybe just the sound of her
voice would be enough to give me some well-needed
strength.
Yes, it felt right to
me. The knot of tension I had in my gut loosened a little just
thinking about it. I was going to call Cathy. Right
now.
“Go on in,” I told
Matthias and Noah. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Matthias eyed me.
“All right.”
He didn’t grill me
about why, which was nice. They got out of the car, Noah a bit
reluctantly, and I sat there for a long moment as I tried to gain
enough confidence to do what I should have done a week
ago.
I had Noah’s cell
phone in hand. I slowly keyed in the phone number and held it to my
ear.
This might be the
last time I ever spoke to Cathy. I’d wanted to see her again, to
know at that moment everything was back to normal. But I might not
have that chance. If my blood killed me—or, rather, when my blood killed me—at least I’d die knowing
I’d said good-bye. Just because I felt good today compared to how
I’d felt before didn’t really mean anything in the long run. I knew
I was living on borrowed time.
For a moment I
thought it would go through to voice mail like last time, but it
didn’t.
“Hello?” It was my
sister’s voice.
I found I couldn’t
speak. The words caught in my throat and I swallowed
hard.
“Who’s there?” Cathy
asked after a moment of silence.
“It’s . . .” I licked
my lips. “It’s me, Cathy.”
“Jill? Oh, my God! Is
it really you?”
Tears stung my eyes
and I felt a wash of relief at hearing her voice. “Yeah, it’s
me.”
“Are you all right?”
She sounded surprisingly calm. Eerily so, actually.
I frowned. “I’m fine.
Are . . . are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“And the girls? Meg
and Julie? How are they?” Cathy’s kids. My nieces—ages eight and
six. I wasn’t sure why cold dread began to slide through
me.
There was a pause.
“Don’t you know already?”
My grip tightened on
the small phone. “Know what?”
“He was very nice,
Jill. Such beautiful eyes. I think I could have stared into them
forever.”
Even though the car
window was open, I felt the hot air closing in around me. “Who are
you talking about?”
“He was here a little
while ago with some of his friends. He said everything would be all
right, and I believe him. He told me that you were alive, but you
hadn’t been feeling very well, and that you were looking forward to
seeing Meg and Julie again. I’ve been so worried about you for the
last two weeks, but I’m so relieved everything’s going to turn out
okay after all.”
I could barely
breathe. Fear ate at the edges of my mind. “Who was he, Cathy?
Please, please try to concentrate. Tell me.”
She was quiet for a
moment. “He didn’t introduce himself formally, but one of his
friends called him Chris—Chris
something.”
“Kristoff?” The name
caught in my throat.
“Yes, that was
it.”
Kristoff had gone to
my sister’s home and taken my nieces. I didn’t know how he’d even
known they existed. I’d never met him.
“They’re going to be
fine.” I forced the words out.
“Of course they will
be.”
Cathy had been
mentally influenced. There was no way she would normally be acting
like this, so calm and undisturbed by the fact her children had
been taken away from her. One look in Kristoff’s eyes and he’d made
her believe that everything was okay. It was the only reason she
wouldn’t have phoned the police already and had an Amber alert
spreading across the state.
I felt physically
ill. “I need to go. It’s going to be okay, Cathy. I swear it will.
I—I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
I ended the call. My
hands were shaking so hard I had a difficult time finding the
disconnect button.
Kristoff kidnapped my
sister’s children and said that he knew about me. I didn’t know how
that was possible.
There was a rumor
about me that a lot of vampires seemed to know about—the woman with
the poisoned blood. My reputation preceded me. But I didn’t think
they knew my name. Most of them wouldn’t know my face. Kristoff had
only been awakened yesterday. This didn’t make any damn
sense.
Matthias.
I covered my mouth
with my hand. Matthias was psychically connected to his
brother—they had a bond, that was what Matthias had called it. I
remembered Matthias reacting with intense pain when Kristoff was
awakened. He said he could see into his mind, know everything he
was thinking, feel everything that he was feeling. And that
Kristoff could do the same with him.
He said it had shut
off soon after and he hadn’t made any other mention of it. Matthias
didn’t know where Kristoff was. He was waiting for his brother to
make the first move once he’d regained his strength. To find
Matthias so he could extract his revenge on him for locking
Kristoff away for three decades.
In that moment both
of their minds were open to each other, Kristoff must have seen
everything about me. Who I was. What threat I posed to him. My
name. And he’d used that to hunt down my only living relatives. And
he’d taken my nieces to use them against me. Matthias knew about my
sister from the newspaper article. He’d found out about my nieces
easily. They were my family, the people I cared about. The thought
made me feel even sicker and fear raced through me.
If he’d gone after my
nieces, there was no way Sara would be safe.
My eyes widened. If
Kristoff had found out about my family through peering into
Matthias’s head, then he’d know all about her, too. And considering
how much he would hate his brother right now, that was dangerous
information.
A baby. A girl. A
dhampyr. The daughter of the brother who’d stolen his
throne.
I scrambled for the
car door and got out so fast I nearly went over on my ankle. I ran
to the house to find the front door ajar. The house was dark and
quiet.
“Matthias?” I
whispered, afraid to shout. “Noah? Where are you?”
I reached the end of
the front hallway. As I edged around the corner into the kitchen I
stifled a gasp of horror.
A gray-haired woman
in her midsixties lay on the ceramic tiled floor in a large puddle
of blood coming from her slit throat. Her lifeless eyes were open
and glassy as she stared at the ceiling.
“Emily.” Fear and
pain sliced through me at the sight of the dead woman.
Declan wanted to keep
this location a secret from Matthias, thinking that he would be the
one we’d have to worry about. I knew Matthias wouldn’t hurt Sara
and it was my opinion that helped Declan decide to tell Matthias
where she was staying.
He couldn’t have
known this was how it would turn out. That the woman who’d helped
to raise him would lie dead in her kitchen now for what she’d
agreed to do out of the goodness of her heart.
Grief for a woman I’d
never met slid though me, but there was no time to
stop.
I made it to the
stairs and went up, clutching tightly at the banister. The house
was so quiet. The nursery was at the end of the hallway on the
second floor.
A little relief
spread through me when I saw Matthias standing there, holding the
side of the crib, his shoulders tense. It was so dark in the
nursery, the only light was coming through the window from the
moon. I walked quickly to his side and looked with dread down at
the blankets and stuffed toys.
Sara wasn’t
there.
A sob caught in my
throat. “He was here, wasn’t he? He killed Emily
downstairs.”
“This is all my
brother’s fault.”
I tried to think,
tried to figure out what to do next. “My sister—I spoke to her on
the phone just now. She says he was there, too. He took my nieces
and mentally influenced her not to panic—to think everything’s okay
when it’s anything but. And now he’s taken Sara.” My hands were
shaking. “It’s because he could see into your mind. That’s where he
got the information. Everything that you know—everything—he could see it and he wants to use it
against us.”
He pulled me against
him tightly. I didn’t resist. I felt numb. His daughter whom he’d
sworn to protect had been taken before he’d even had a chance to
see her face. I couldn’t help but felt his pain. I felt it,
too.
“We have to find him,
Matthias. There’s no time to waste.”
He pulled back a
little from me, stroking the black hair off my face and tucking it
behind my ears. “There’s only one problem with that plan,
Jillian.”
I looked up at him.
“What is it?”
He cupped my face in
his hands. “I’m not Matthias.”