A Shade of Vampire 13: A Turn of Tides (7 page)

A
s I stood
at the gates of the Ageless’ celestial palace, a sea of familiar faces smiling to welcome me home, it should have felt like a dream.

But it didn’t.

It all still felt like a nightmare.

Even as the new Ageless herself, Thalia Adrius, descended the steps toward me in all her ethereal beauty, I couldn’t manage the faintest of smiles. Grief was clamped around my heart like a barbed wire. I could barely breathe.

She slipped her hand into my sweaty right palm, leading me up the stairs toward my quarters. In my left palm, I still clutched the only possession I’d left the island with—my mother’s jewelry box.

I couldn’t pay attention to the elegance of the palace as Thalia, Brisalia and their third sister, Hermia, led me through chamber after chamber. I just wanted to be alone. Thankfully, the sisters were understanding.

On first arriving in The Sanctuary, I’d asked the first witch I came across to take me to Brisalia. I’d explained to her briefly why I was here, and she hadn’t pressed me for many details. I couldn’t have been more grateful for that. I wasn’t ready to talk.

Brisalia brought me immediately to the city palace, where I was to be housed. As we reached the top of the building, we stopped outside an ornate rosewood door. Pushing it open, the sisters led me into a sprawling apartment. From its pearl-studded window panes to gold-leafed bed frame, there wasn’t a single corner of the place that didn’t ooze extravagance.

But, as with the rest of the palace, I didn’t care.

“We’ll leave you now,” Brisalia said, as I entered the bedroom. “If you need anything, there is a maid staying in the servant quarters.” She pointed toward the hallway to my left.

I nodded, watching as they backed away and closed the door behind them.

I walked over to the dressing table and, opening my palm, looked down at the jewelry box. Tears threatened to spill from my eyes again as I stared at it. Lifting it to my lips and placing a kiss on the gem-encrusted lid, I placed it down on the table directly in front of the mirror.

Then I looked up at my own reflection. I looked a state. My eyelids were puffy, my face deathly pale.

I shut my eyes, wincing as the memory of Sofia and Kiev kissing at the Port blasted through my head.

My head dropped down against the table, and now that I was alone, I could no longer hold back the tears. They streamed afresh from my eyes as the question I’d asked myself a thousand times in the past twelve hours replayed in my mind.

Why would Kiev do this to me?

M
ona’s departure
had blazed a hole in my chest. A hole I knew wouldn’t be filled until I once again held her in my arms.

After we extinguished my burning home, I entered it once again and walked from scorched room to scorched room, hoping she’d be there. Our bedroom had borne the brunt of the flames. It was practically unrecognizable. The bed had disintegrated, as had most of the furniture. I was about to walk into the bathroom when a soft voice spoke behind me.

“Kiev.”

I turned around to see Sofia standing in the doorway. She was looking at me with concern.

“Patricia and the others have finished examining the bodies that were left outside Brett’s cave.”

I took a step toward her. “And?”

“The murderer squished their bodies up badly. But not quite badly enough. One of the witches, Leyni, noticed one thing in common with each of the corpses—their intestines had been completely removed. Piecing this together with the strange visions some of us have been having, the witches have concluded that, somehow, a ghoul was placed on this island by those two white witches… it might even still be here, for all we know.”

“A ghoul,” I muttered, running a hand through my hair. I didn’t know much about such creatures, and I didn’t recall ever encountering one in my hundreds of years in existence, but I had heard rumors about them. “How could Mona not have suspected that she was being influenced by a ghoul?”

“Apparently, once a ghoul has you under an illusion, it’s very hard to detect anything other than what it wants you to see.”

“So those bitches…They placed a ghoul on this island to trick Mona into returning to The Sanctuary.”

Sofia nodded. “I can’t think of anywhere else Mona would be now. Vampires and werewolves have been searching everywhere for her. She’s nowhere to be found on this island.”

I swore, slamming my fist against the doorframe. Then, without waiting another moment, I rushed out of the room, down the stairs and out of the house. Sofia racing alongside me, I ran full speed ahead.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“What do you think?” I breathed. “I need to bring Mona back.”

Sofia followed me to Corrine’s temple where all the witches were conducting their examinations. I ran from chamber to chamber looking for them until I found them in one of the innermost rooms, all gathered around two tables pushed together. My siblings, Erik and Helina, along with Matteo, Saira, Abby and Derek stood there too, deep in conversation.

They all looked up as soon as I entered.

“I need a witch to come with me to The Sanctuary to help me find Mona,” I said. “Who volunteers?”

There was a silence as the witches exchanged glances. Then Patricia, the tall wiry witch at the end of the table, raised her hand. “Out of all of us, I’m the most skilled. I’ll come. But I’ll need to consult Mona’s map to know which gate into the supernatural realm would be best to use.”

“We have copies of it in our home,” Sofia said quickly. “I’ll fetch one.” She hurried out of the room.

“I’ll come too.” Erik stepped forward.

I looked at him reluctantly. “What use will you be? You’re a vampire.”

“So are you,” he shot back.

“The fewer of us there are, the better,” I said. “I need to draw as little attention as possible.”

As if she hadn’t heard the words I’d just spoken, my sister stepped forward too. “If Erik is going, I’m going too.”

Before I could even respond, to my surprise, Matteo reached for her hand and pulled her back. “No, Helina,” he said. “Kiev’s right. The fewer people who go, the better.”

I would have pondered longer about the look of affection Matteo had on his face as he stared down at my sister, but I was too preoccupied with the matter at hand.

My eyes fell once again on Erik. My brother could be as stubborn as an ox once he got an idea into his head, and something told me that it would be easier to just let him come with me.

Breathing out in frustration, I said, “Fine. Erik and Patricia come with me. Nobody else.”

Gripping both Erik and Patricia by the arms, I pulled them out of the room before another word could be said.

As we ran down the corridor toward the exit, Derek called after me.

“Be careful, Novalic.”

I shot a look back over my shoulder to see his silhouette at the other end of the shadowy corridor. Grimacing, I gave him a curt nod before continuing toward the exit.

I didn’t know how we were going to actually pull this off—and I was sure neither Patricia nor my brother had any clue either. But it didn’t matter. The image of Mona burning through my brain clouded any uncertainty I might have otherwise held about what we were about to attempt.

As we left though the front door and entered the moonlit courtyard, I stopped.

“Wait here for Sofia to return and give you the map,” I said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

I lurched back through the woods until I reached the beach. I didn’t stop running until I reached Mona’s and my wrecked home again. Whizzing through the front door and up the stairs, I passed through the bedroom and entered the ensuite bathroom.

I reached for the scorched drawer beneath the sink and pulled it open. The contents near the front were mostly ruined, but as I reached further inside, my fingers brushed against a leather pouch. I pulled it out and examined it, relieved to see that it was still intact. My eyes remained fixed on the small bulge beneath the fabric for a few seconds longer before I slipped it into the back pocket of my pants.

Then I hurried out of the house, back toward the courtyard. I’d expected to return to only Patricia and Erik, but there was also a third person: Abby. I was relieved Patricia was holding the map already.

“Right. Patricia, Erik, let’s go.”

“I’m coming too,” Abby said.

I scowled at her. “Did you not hear what I said back there?”

Grabbing Patricia and Erik, I yanked them away from Abby and started moving away from the courtyard. But Abby caught up and stood in front of me, blocking my way.

“I’m coming with you,” she repeated, hands on her waist. “I’m fed up of sitting still on this island. I want to help.”

“We don’t need anyone else tagging along. It will only be a hindrance—”

“Come on, Kiev,” Erik said, gripping my shoulder. “Let Abby come if she wants to. One extra person won’t do any harm. It will only make four of us.”

I wasn’t sure my temper could stand being held up for another moment, so, rather than risk maiming someone, I agreed.

“Patricia,” I said. “Take us to The Sanctuary.”

W
e’d been so tied
up in the crisis of Mona leaving us completely defenseless against the black witches, it wasn’t until Kiev had left the island that Derek and I realized that Ben wasn’t in his room. Panic gripped both of us. We thought that perhaps he’d escaped to the human area and was wreaking havoc there. But a thorough search for him there soon assured us that he had not. My father helped us scour the whole island for him for the rest of the day, but he was nowhere to be found. Nobody seemed to have seen him.

It wasn’t until we returned to the apartment late that evening and Derek noticed the note left on the desk in his study that we realized what had happened.

I took the note from Derek, desperate to read it for myself—as if Derek had somehow misinterpreted it. But the message was clear. Our son had left The Shade.

Derek gripped the edges of his desk so hard the wood groaned beneath his hands. I stared at him, my mouth agape. I wondered if Ben had somehow gotten wind of the suspicion some humans held that he’d been responsible for the murders.

“He must have taken one of the subs,” I whispered, the full horror of the situation sinking in. “How will he even survive?”

“I don’t know what he was thinking,” Derek said.

I read the note once again, focusing on the last few words of his letter:

“Don’t come looking for me.”

Of course, my first reaction was to want to leave the island and scour the seven seas for him, if that was what it took to find him.

“We need to look for him,” I gasped.

I turned my gaze on my husband again. A stoic expression had set in on his face and he was looking at me steadily. He shook his head slowly.

“When Ben left,” he said, his voice deep, “he was self-aware enough to leave us this letter. He was aware enough to know what he was doing. He made a decision.”

Derek’s words were the last thing I wanted to hear, and yet I couldn’t help but find truth in them. When I remained standing there, my mouth open, Derek stood up and clutched my hands. “Our son is no longer a child, Sofia.”

“I know, but… he could die out there,” I choked.

Derek furrowed his brows, taking a deep breath. I could see that it was just as difficult for him to speak the words as it was for me to hear them. “Do you remember what you said to me, just before I turned him?”

My mind was too alight with worry. I couldn’t think of anything right now other than Ben adrift in the middle of the ocean, starving to death. I shook my head, avoiding Derek’s gaze. He reached for my face and forced me to look at him.

“You said that there’s one thing even vampirism can never take away from a person… Choice.” When I still didn’t respond, he drew me closer to him, cradling the back of my head as he whispered into my ear. “As Prince of The Shade, Benjamin chose to take this risk to protect his people. That’s a choice that we shouldn’t take away from him.”

My hands tightened around Derek’s waist as his words burned me. How could I argue with him when ever since Derek’s and my first meeting, I’d been the one preaching the very thing he was repeating to me now?

Lowering his mouth to mine, he kissed me slowly and tenderly. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever loved my husband more when he brushed my cheeks with his thumbs and whispered:

“We need to have more faith in both of our twins. Remember, they’re Novaks… They’ll survive.”

T
he burden
of my failure to recapture the Novak girl weighed heavily on my shoulders.

Had my sisters not been alert to the rings glowing on their fingers that day I’d lain injured and trapped beneath the deck of that ship, with all those circus animals running about, I might have perished there.

Despite the agony bursting from my palms and wreaking havoc on my nervous system, I’d managed to climb atop one of the containers to stay clear of the stampede. There, I’d rubbed the copper ring around my index finger until it glowed orange. After that, all I could do was wait. My sisters, Julisse and Arielle, had appeared beside me a few hours later and brought me back to the island Caleb Achilles used to manage—now managed temporarily by my aunt, Isolde.

After my sisters had returned me to safety, they’d left immediately to complete the task I’d failed at. Then, when they’d also returned unsuccessful, it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming.

The days that followed were agony—not so much from the physical pain of recovery, but from the shame and the absence of my powers. It felt like I’d been stripped of my identity, rendered some pathetic shadow of my former self. Worst of all, it had been a puny human girl I’d allowed to do this to me. The situation couldn’t have been more humiliating.

I remained at the top of the castle—Annora’s old quarters—and kept myself locked there as Isolde and my sisters assisted me in my recovery. We witches didn’t have many vulnerabilities, but our palms were one of them. They were both our greatest strength and our greatest weakness.

Somehow, Caleb and the girl had figured that out. My blood boiled as I suspected that it might have been the wolf who’d told them.

What I’ll do to that dog if I ever meet him again…

I’d promised Lilith that I would bring the girl back to her within a few days. A few days had long passed. Now, as I lay in the bed still recovering, I felt too ashamed to go before Lilith and admit to our failure. But I couldn’t delay it any longer, or she would start stressing. And stress made her weaker. She was clinging to life by a thread as it was, and she needed to be stronger than ever before for what lay ahead of us.

No, I had to visit her now, even if my recovery wasn’t complete.

Throwing aside my sheets, I got out of bed and pulled on my cloak, careful to not knock my fragile palms against anything in the process.

Leaving my quarters, I sought out my aunt. She was down in the kitchens, stirring a pot of blood. As soon as she saw me, she reached for a goblet and offered me some. I shook my head, brushing her away.

“I need to leave now,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed on my palms. I thought she might protest and try to convince me to wait at least a couple of days longer, but she seemed to realize why I ought not delay the visit further.

“I’ll escort you there,” she said.

“Yes, but I will deliver the news. There’s no need for you to enter the cave. This task was my responsibility.”

“Of course.” Covering the pot with a lid, she laid down the spoon and removed her apron. Picking up her cloak from the coat hanger in the corner and wrapping it around herself, she walked back over to me. Placing a hand on my shoulder, she asked, “Are you ready?”

“Let’s go.”

She vanished us first to the dungeon of the castle where the gate led to our island in the supernatural realm, and then once we’d travelled through the gate, she vanished us once again to the small island Lilith resided on.

Isolde waited outside the cave as I made my way toward the Ancient’s inner sanctum.

To my surprise, Lilith’s head was above the surface of her liquid resting place as I entered. That worried me. I wondered how long she had been positioned in that way. The liquid was what helped to preserve her.

Keeping my hands hidden deep within the pockets of my cloak, I walked over to the edge of the pond and knelt down. Her shining black eyes shot open and fixed on me.

“Why are you so late?” she hissed in ancient tongue.

“I apologize,” I replied in her language. Deep lines crisscrossed every part of her shrunken face. Her skin looked much drier than usual. “How long have you been waiting like this?” I dared ask.

Her lips pursed, eyes narrowing, to form a scowl. “Too long.”

“Please, duck down for a moment,” I urged. “You need moisture.”

She hacked and spat. “The girl is what I need. Where is she?”

I bowed my head. “I lost her.”

A deathly silence filled the chamber. I hardly dared even look at her. I expected her to start throwing a fit of rage, but what she did terrified me far more than if she’d become violent and cursed me.

She winced and closed her eyes. She appeared too weak to even chastise me. “You know what this means,” she wheezed.

I nodded, my gaze still downcast.

“Without the girl’s blood,” she continued, “I stand less of a chance of surviving the final ritual. And if I fade away before it is complete, everything we have been working toward will be in vain.”

I clenched my jaw. “I know.”

“Yet you still managed to let her slip between your fingers.” She clucked her tongue softly. “Sometimes I wonder if you want what you say you want.”

I glared at her, wanting to throw back a retort, and yet in that moment of shame, I could think of none.

“So, for now,” Lilith continued after a pause, “we will forget about finding the girl. We’ve wasted enough time on her already.”

“I agree,” I managed. “But all is not lost. I suggest that we continue with our original plan—take control of The Shade and its inhabitants. There are many different types of blood there—human, vampire, wolf, ogre, and don’t forget Anna, the immune. Her blood alone should provide you with much sustenance, even if it won’t match what the Novak girl’s could have brought you. Claim The Shade, and we claim a sea of blood in one fell swoop.”

She raised a hand in the air and clicked her bony fingers.

“So do it immediately. We can’t afford to wait longer.”

I grimaced before finally pulling out my hands from my pockets and revealing to her my injured palms.

Fury sparked in her eyes as she looked from one palm to the other. Hissing a curse, she sent me flying back until my back thudded against the stone wall with force that shook the whole room.

Taking that as my cue to leave, I picked myself up from the floor and walked to the door. Before exiting, I called back. “Isolde is working hard to heal my palms. My powers will return in a matter of days. And then I will see to it that your order is done, your grace. That I swear.”

As I left the chamber, I should have been wincing from the pain. But I wasn’t. I was smiling. She’d just shown me that she still had some sting in her. Enough, I hoped, for our final blood ritual to be successful.

Because if it was, we would no longer need to depend on her as we did now.

She would no longer be the only one of her kind.

We’d have many more—enough to make up for our lack of numbers. Enough to reclaim The Sanctuary and our dominion over all lesser creatures. Enough to return to the way of our Ancients and reinstate our kind’s true glory.

Yes, we’d have enough power to do all this. We’d have entire graveyards of it.