A Shade of Vampire 14: A Dawn of Strength (5 page)

“It’s okay, I guess. We’ve gotten used to it better now,” Ariana replied.

“Thanks to me,” Claudia blurted out with a smirk.

My gaze fell on the short blonde vampire.

“It’s true.” Anna chuckled. “Ariana and Jason went to stay with Claudia and Yuri immediately after turning.”

“I did such a good job with them,” Claudia continued, “Yuri’s really having to scrape the barrel now for reasons why we can’t have a baby.”

I giggled. This was news to me that Claudia even wanted a baby. They’d both have to turn back into humans like my aunt and uncle.

We spent another fifteen minutes or so walking along the beach, greeting all those who were resting in the shade before we reached the end of the beach and turned to walk back into the forest. But just before we left the borders of the sand, there was a thudding of footsteps behind us.

I turned to see a group of a dozen human girls—most of them classmates of mine—racing toward us. They were all in swimwear and dripping wet, having just climbed out of the sea.

“So the rumors are true,” Silvia announced, narrowing her eyes on me. “Rose finally got herself a guy.”

All eyes fixed on Caleb as they looked him over from head to foot.

“Oh, my.” Jessica winked at me. “Good choice, Rose. He’s a real hottie.”

I giggled at the bemused look on Caleb’s face as he was being examined by my teenage girl friends like an exhibit.

“His name is Caleb,” I said.

“Well, if you ever grow tired of Caleb, please send him my way,” Lucy gushed.

I reached my arms around Caleb’s neck and kissed his rough cheek. “You’ll be waiting an eternity, Lucy,” I whispered, though I spoke the words more to Caleb than Lucy. He chuckled softly.

I managed to disperse the crowd after Caleb endured a further ten minutes of their banter. We moved back into the darkness, walking along in mostly silence as we enjoyed the peace and quiet of the forest. I could see Caleb’s head was still spinning. The Shade was so different from where he was used to living for the past God knew how many decades of his life. He was still taking it all in.

We reached the clearing in front of the Port. I led him toward it and stopped just before the jetty.

“You remember what happened here?” I asked quietly.

His jaw tensed. “How could I forget?”

I walked along the wooden floorboards and stopped right at the end of the jetty. My stomach clenched just at the remembrance of that night he’d left me, the night I was so sure I would never see him again. “The last words you spoke to me here, that night… You said you didn’t belong in my world.”

He cleared his throat as he stood next to me. Reaching for my hands, he held them gently and gazed into my eyes. “I’m still not sure that I belong in your world, princess.”

“Then whose world do you belong in?”

He furrowed his brows, then averted his gaze to the ocean. Letting go of my hands, he lowered himself to the floor and sat down, his feet grazing the waves. I sat next to him, studying the conflicted expression on his face.

“I suppose,” he said finally, “since the night I turned into a vampire all those decades ago, I haven’t been used to the feeling of belonging. Every place I stayed was just somewhere I could survive.”

I swallowed hard. The distant look in his eyes was tearing me up.

“I hope we can change that, Caleb,” I managed. “I really do.”

He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me onto his lap. Facing forward, my back against his chest, I felt him let out a quiet sigh against my neck. We fell into silence as we both gazed out at the dark waves.

After half an hour had passed, I was about to suggest we get up when Caleb pointed toward the ocean. Easing me off him, he stood up and stared into the distance.

“What?” I asked.

“A submarine is coming our way.”

Excitement and apprehension coursed through me at once.

Ben! Could he have decided to return?

Standing as close to the edge of the jetty as I could without falling off, I strained to see what Caleb was looking at. Only once the vessel came within twenty feet of us did I finally spot its shadow beneath the water.

I held my breath as the black submarine surfaced and, a few minutes later, the hatch opened. A dark-haired head emerged, and I was about to scream out my brother’s name, but as the head raised fully, I gasped.

“Uncle?”

I
remained hiding
among the rocks at the base of the castle long after my wolf form had disappeared. Without my thick coat, I was shivering in the snow, but I just couldn’t bring myself to return to the boat. Not after hearing Rhys mention leaving for The Shade.

After his conversation with the female died down, I kept my attention sharp, hoping that he might start up another conversation and I’d be able to glean more information. But hours passed and, although there were other conversations, none of them were of interest.

I huddled into a crack between two boulders in an attempt to at least escape the biting wind. It worked, but the icy damp continued to seep into my bones. It was torture, waiting for endless hours in the snow. Once I’d lost all feeling in my limbs, I suspected that if I wanted to survive, I’d have to return to the boat to warm up, at least for the time being. But then night fell outside the island’s boundary and I turned into a wolf again, immune from the cold.

Yet another night was spent straining to hear anything that could give me a clue as to Rhys’ plans. But again, I failed. When I did hear Rhys speak, it was usually related to his injury. It wasn’t until I’d turned back into my human form again and, in the early-morning hours, was close to being forced to return to the boat that I finally heard what I’d been waiting for.

“Arielle,” he murmured. “Gather together the vampires. I’m ready.”

“Should I give them any explanation, or would you like to do that yourself?” a female voice asked.

There was a pause before Rhys answered, “You can just tell them that the time has come for us to take over The Shade. I’ll give them more information if and when required.”

There was the sound of a door clicking open and another female voice spoke—Julisse’s. “The rest of our witches have just arrived through the gate. They’re waiting in the apartment below.”

“Good,” Rhys said. “Isolde, take one last look at my palms before we leave, will you?”

“Yes,” another voice replied. “The balm is all off. Your powers should now be as they were before.”

“So, if all goes according to plan, we should be ready to start the final ritual in three days. Once I’ve dealt with Mona and we’ve secured the island, Julisse and Arielle will head up choosing those with the choicest blood. We’ll perform the blood rites for three nights in a row.”

“The third night, I’ll bring Lilith to the island,” Isolde said.

“And by the fourth day,” Rhys continued, his voice almost trembling with anticipation, “Lilith will be gone.”

“Should we not have someone stationed in The Sanctuary to make sure Lilith didn’t sacrifice her life for nothing?” Julisse asked.

Isolde scoffed. “Trust me, Julisse, even in the human realm, we’ll all know if it has been successful.”

“Our dear friends in The Sanctuary won’t know what hit them,” Rhys said quietly. “The wave of rage will sweep through their every home and street, until every witch not aligned with the Ancient’s cause is either punished or resurrected to the true path of our kind.” Rhys paused, letting out a dry chuckle. “It’s easy to argue about what the Ancients might or might not have wanted. It’s easy to squabble over the texts the Ancients left for us. Quite another thing entirely to be standing in front of one and still trying to deny their instructions.”

“It will be a bloodbath,” Julisse said, apprehension in her voice.

“And long awaited,” Isolde said. “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. If the rite fails, we will be back to square one—and this time without Lilith. We’ve got only one shot at this. Failing is not an option.”

As the conversation trailed off, my stomach was in knots. Although much of what they were saying was a mystery to me, I understood enough for their words to terrify me.

S
itting
with Derek in the mountain cabin Kiev and Mona were staying in temporarily, I found my jaw was on the floor as they recounted all that had happened since leaving the island. But almost more than the witches’ deceit, I was shocked at what Kiev had been willing to sacrifice to reclaim Mona. I knew Kiev loved her, but I hadn’t understood the extent of that love until today.

As our conversation came to a close, we watched as Mona applied a strong-smelling ointment around his closed wound.

“Will you be able to replace Kiev’s arm?” I asked.

“Even my magic has limitations,” Mona replied, grimacing. “Kiev’s arm is still trapped somewhere at the base of the Adriuses’ palace in The Sanctuary—that’s if Hagatha hasn’t devoured it already. The most we can do is fix Kiev up with a prosthetic arm.”

Once Mona was finished with him, Kiev stood up from his armchair and walked over to the window, stretching out his remaining arm and rolling his neck. I was surprised by how nonchalant his attitude was to the whole affair of his missing arm. He seemed almost disinterested.

Mona shot a worried glance his way. “How are you feeling, Kiev?” she asked.

He turned around and walked over to her. Lifting her chin upward, he planted a kiss on her lips.

“I’m fine,” he said.

I almost jumped as a banging sounded at the door. Since I was closest to it, I stood up to answer it. My voice caught in my throat at the sight on the doorstep.

Standing next to my daughter and Caleb were Vivienne and Xavier. I stared at them, blinking. They looked so different with their sun-kissed skin and glowing complexions.

“What are you doing here?” I gasped.

Derek shot to his feet and pulled the door open wider behind me. His breath hitched as he stared at his sister and brother-in-law.

“Vivienne!”

She rushed forward and flung herself into her brother’s arms. They entered the cabin with us along with Rose and Caleb.

“I had a vision, Derek,” Vivienne said, her forehead creased with worry.

“But why are you here? I told you to stay away. Why couldn’t you call me? You left with one of the charmed phones.”

Vivienne’s cheeks flushed as she exchanged glances with her husband. I wondered why they looked so embarrassed all of a sudden, though I wasn’t left wondering long as Xavier replied, “That’s what we were going to do, but… uh… something happened to the phone.”

“Huh?” Derek turned on Xavier. “What?”

“We thought we’d lost it at first,” he said, “but after searching the apartment, we realized we’d… uh, been a little too hasty the night before out on the veranda. Long story short, we found the phone at the bottom of our pool.”

Derek breathed out sharply in frustration, running a hand through his hair. “You should have taken a backup with you.”

“Well, we didn’t. And we’re here now,” Vivienne said, sitting down on the couch and pulling her brother down with her. “I need to talk to you.”

Everyone took seats around Vivienne and listened with bated breath as she began to tell us about her vision. She looked traumatized as she recounted it, as though she was reliving it all over again.

“What do you think it means?” Derek asked.

“I think it means we need to be prepared for an assault by the black witches,” she said, her breathing uneven. “We’ve suspected all along that this was what they were planning, but with their failure to keep hold of Rose… I think they’re just going to cut to the chase now.”

My eyes travelled to Mona. The blood had drained from her face as she stared at Vivienne.

“Prepare,” the witch murmured. “If they’re going to attack, I’m not sure there’s much we can do to prepare. The protection that’s around the island right now is the strongest that I’m capable of. If they…” Her voice trailed off as she swallowed hard. “Put it this way: if they bring all of their most powerful witches, there’s only so much pressure I’ll be able to stand before I break.”

Derek stood up and began pacing up and down the room. “So we need to assume that they’ll break through within a few minutes, perhaps a few hours, of them launching an attack. Is that accurate?”

“It’s impossible to say,” Mona said.

“We need to call a meeting in the Great Dome with all the council members,” Derek said.

“I’ll go gather them,” Kiev said. “I could do with the exercise.”

Mona didn’t look happy about Kiev leaving, but he left the cabin before she could protest.

“Our first priority is to protect our most vulnerable,” Derek continued. “Our humans. We’ll inform all of them of this threat we suspect is looming, and all those who wish to leave us will be shipped away. Those who wish to stand by us and weather the storm should be evacuated into the innermost chambers of the Black Heights. Then we’ll have to figure out how the rest of us can best prepare for their arrival.”

“Their weakness is in their palms.” All eyes shot toward Caleb as he spoke. “Damage them, and they’re stripped of their powers—at least, temporarily.”

“But after we injured Rhys,” Rose said, “I doubt they will fall for the same trick easily.”

“Oh, not easily,” Mona said.

“At least we have Corrine and Ibrahim returned to us,” I said. “After you, Mona, they’re our two most powerful witches.”

“Their powers won’t be a lot of use against the likes of Rhys’ kind,” Mona replied. “Though of course, we need all the help we can get…”

“Caleb and I can start alerting and rounding up the humans,” Rose said, shooting to her feet and catching Caleb by the hand. “As soon as we’re done, we’ll meet you in the Great Dome.”

She didn’t wait for our answer. The two of them slipped out of the cabin, closing the door behind them. I considered going with them to help out, but I trusted my daughter could manage it with Caleb. Besides, Derek needed me by his side now.

“Let’s head to the Dome,” he said. Everyone stood up and motioned to follow him out the door. But he stopped just as his hand closed around the handle. He turned round to look at Vivienne and Xavier. “I suppose the two of you weren’t away long enough to… accomplish what you set out for.”

To my surprise, Vivienne’s and Xavier’s ashen faces lit up.

Vivienne bit her lip, blushing. “You suppose wrong, Derek,” she said.

Derek’s eyes widened. “A-Are you sure?” He moved closer to her, placing his hands on her shoulders.

She nodded. “We’re both quite sure. You’re going to be an uncle.”

Derek pulled Vivienne into an embrace, joy filling his eyes.

“Oh, Viv!” I gasped.

I hugged her once Derek had let go of her. Beaming, Derek slapped Xavier on the back. “Thank you, my friend,” he said. “You’ve just improved my day considerably.”

Xavier grinned. “Really, Derek. The pleasure was all mine.”