Birth of Jaiden (30 page)

A soft whimpering reminded
her that Isabella was still there. She looked over and saw that
Isabella had scooted as far away from her as she possibly could
without the cuffs slicing her hands to ribbons.

“
Please,” Isabella begged,
“please don’t hurt me.”

For some reason, her
begging angered Levine.

“
Don’t
hurt
you. Don’t hurt you,” Levine repeated.
“I
am
going to hurt you.
I am going to make you wish that you were never born. And even
though I want to do it now, I need to wait.”

Levine rose and towered
above her. “But now,” she tilted her head toward Stewart’s corpse,
“you know what to expect.”

She watched how Isabella
started to cry again and sighed.

“
Pathetic,” she said
mostly to herself and turned to leave the room. “Don’t move his
body,” she told the guards. “Leave him there to remind her to be
good.”

They nodded at her and
said, “Yes, Miss Levine” in unison.

Back at the throne room,
Levine discovered that her husband was not there.

“
Where is he?” she asked
one of the guards.

“
I believe he went to
check on the baby, Miss Levine.” The guard stood at attention while
he spoke to her.

Levine didn’t bother to
thank him; she spun around and went in search of
Malcolm.

Indeed, she found him in
the room they had prepared for the baby long ago. The room actually
disgusted her. The entire thing was pink; pink rugs, pink blankets,
pink canopy over the crib.

Levine could hear Jaiden
screaming before she even got close to the doorway. She stood in
the doorway and watched for a moment before she entered. Malcolm
leaned over the crib and appeared to be trying to calm the
baby.

“
Hush, hush,” he told her
softly.

Surprised at his patience,
Levine wondered why he was even trying to visit with the baby at
all.

“
What are you doing?” she
asked as she strode into the room.

He looked up. “I’m trying
to make friends with her.”

“
She’s not a dog,
Malcolm.”

“
Well, I want her to love me so
that when the time comes, she is prepared to do whatever we ask. I
need her to
want
to do it,” he responded.

“
She will do it regardless
of how we treat her,” Levine told him.

Malcolm stood up straight and
took both of Levine’s hands loosely in his. “My love, imagine the
possibilities. If she grows up loving us as her parents, she
will
want
to rule.”

Levine yanked her hands
away. “We still need the book for her to do that,
anyway.”

“
We will have it, in
time.”

Levine spun toward Jaiden.
“Shut up!” she shouted, but instead of quieting her, it only made
her scream louder. “Damn, what’s wrong with her?”

Malcolm moved closer to
Levine and put his arms around her. “We’ll figure it out. We have a
lot to learn.”

“
I don’t want to learn anything
about raising a child. I want that
book
.”

“
The book is the easy
part, my love. We already have the other things we
need.”

Levine rolled her
eyes.

“
They will be coming for
their friends and for her very soon.” She waved her hand at
Jaiden.

“
Yes, they will be
coming…if they can find us.”

Levine feared that Stewart
was right; Malcolm did seem to underestimate the council every
time.

“
You know they will find
us eventually. You and Alexander have been battling it out for
years. I would think you would know by now that nothing stops them
when they want something.”

Malcolm finally appeared to get
frustrated with her negativity. “So, what if they
do
find us? They come,
we fight, we kill them, and then we don’t have to deal with them
anymore.”

Fool
, Levine thought. “It’s not going to
be that simple and you know it. Corrine is with them and they
have
slayers
too.”

Malcolm threw his arms in the
air. “We, my love, have an army with a lust for
blood
.”

At his words, Levine found
herself anxious for more blood. She went to Malcolm and reached up
both hands to caress his pale cheeks. “When can I have the
girl?”

“
We need to save her,
Levine. Why don’t you take the other one?”

Levine smiled seductively.
“I already did.”

Malcolm shook his head. “I
should have known.”

“
Well, he was taunting
me.”

“
He does have quite the
mouth on him, doesn’t he?”

“
Let’s leave the child
alone and let’s go see if the girl knows anything about the book.
Even if she doesn’t, I want to see her scream out in
pain.”

“
Darling, what is it with
your infatuation with torture?”

“
We’ve been together for how
long, and you still don’t know the answer to that? Don’t make me
want to see
you
scream out in pain too.”

She watched humorously as
Malcolm used his right hand to sweep the side of his cape around.
“Whatever you wish, my love.”

“
Come on.” Levine held her
hand out to him, and together, they went down to the lower
chambers.

32

Alex paced across the kitchen.
He literally steamed with anger.
How could this happen?

“
Damn it!” he cursed and
gave Corrine’s melted toaster a swift kick which sent it flying
across the linoleum.

“
Alex, calm down,” Corrine
said from the kitchen door. She had appeared just in time to bend
over and pick up the toaster. “We will find them,” she said
softly.

He threw his hands in the air.
“How?
How
will we find them? We can’t just waltz in there and say
‘Hey, I’m here for my friends.’ That would be suicide.”

“
I think you need to have
more confidence in your fellow council members.” She nodded toward
the living room. “Come with me.”

He followed her and was
surprised to see Michael and three of the slayers sitting among the
group. Tension showed on everyone’s faces. Alex knew they were
stressing out about what they were going to do but all were staring
at Michael questioningly.

“
What’s going on?” he
asked and sat down next to Chris.

Michael spoke. “I think we
might have a plan for when we actually find and are able to get
into the mountain.

“
Oh.”

Michael saw sheer
disbelief on Alex’s face. “What?”

Alex shrugged. “Well, tell
us.”

Michael lifted his right
hand toward his friends. “First things first, this here is Jeff; he
is our designated computer geek.”

He pointed to the next
one, who was a woman with short blond hair and a sleek body which
fit excellently into her jeans. “And this lovely lady is Tessa;
she’s our weapons expert.”

Victoria cleared her throat and
said, “Since when does sharpening a few stakes and arrows make
someone a
weapons expert
?”

The room filled with sighs and
moans from the group.
Alex
couldn’t help thinking,
Victoria, just shut it for
once.

Tessa refused to be
offended. She brushed her bangs away from her green eyes and said,
“Ma’am, we are living in the times of technology; we have weapons
that will outdo most of your magic.”

Before Victoria could
respond, Michael continued, “And this is Cameron; basically, he
just likes to kick some vampire ass.”

Alex watched Michael’s
face fall as he remembered Alex and Chris were vampires.

“
Sorry, guys.” He looked
over at them and apologized. “Anyway, Cameron is the one who came
up with this idea. So, I’ll let him tell it.”

Alex ran his gaze over
Cameron. He was big, not fat big but burly big, with an innocent
looking baby face.

Boy, the girls must love
him
.

Cameron began, “Here’s the
deal. First, we have to find out where they are. We can do that
with the co-ordinates from the map and the snazzy GPS system we
have in the truck. Then, someone will have to go in and scope out
the inside of the mountain, which means we need someone who can get
in there and move around without being seen.”

Alex watched Cameron look
around the group and let his eyes settle on Victoria. He had
obviously been told about her.

“
Oh, no.” She shook her
head. “No way!”

“
Come on,” Damion told
her. “You’ll be fine.”

“
Do you realize what I
have to do to appear completely invisible?” Victoria continued to
shake her head.

“
No one is going to see
you. You will have your clothes on before you reappear.”

“
No! I’m not doing
it.”

Alex smiled and laughed to
himself at the image of Victoria running around naked in Malcolm’s
caves.

Chris, on the other hand,
could not contain himself; he laughed out loud.

“
Christopher!” Victoria
chastised him. “Get those thoughts out of your head right this
second.”

“
Sorry.” Chris sucked in
his breath and did his best to stay quiet.

Michael continued to persuade
her. “Victoria, this could be our only opportunity to save Jaiden,
Isabella and Stewart. You were given the power of invisibility for
a reason and I think
this
may be the reason. You are the only one who can do
it.”

“
That’s not true, Danielle
can do it.”

Danielle shook her head,
“no, Victoria, I can’t. I am an angel and I am earthbound,
therefore I can only use my powers to help you in time of dire
need.”

Victoria rolled her eyes.
“Oh please, like this isn’t a time of dire need.”

“
Dire need means it must
be a matter of life or death, Victoria.”

“
Why can’t we just storm
the place?” she asked.

It was Damion’s turn to
shake his head. “Because that would mean certain death. We have to
know exactly what we are getting into here. We have to have a
plan.”

“
So, what
exactly
would I have to do?” She
appeared to be on her way to consenting.

Michael answered, “We need
you to remember exactly what the place looks like. You have to look
at the walls of the caves and tell us if there are holes or
crevices in them. Explore the place and remember it. Then, your
friends can tap into your memory and recall exactly what it looks
like so we can go on with the next part of the plan.”

“
Which is?” Alex
asked.

Michael glanced at Cameron
and nodded for him to continue.

“
The next stage will be
these babies.”

He reached down into a bag
Alex hadn’t noticed before and pulled out what looked like a weird
flashlight.

“
These are hand-held
ultraviolet lights.” He glanced at Alex and Chris. “For certain
reasons, I won’t demonstrate. One of these couldn’t kill a vampire
but two probably would.” He paused to let the information sink in.
“We need to spread these throughout the entire lair and hope no one
finds any of them. They will all be on timers and most will have
bombs inside them as well. Between the time we set these out and
the time they are supposed to go off, you need to have found your
friends and the baby.”

Deanna finally cut in.
“What about the people in there, the ones they are using for
blood?”

Danielle shook her head. “We
can’t let them into the world. Others would put them into a mental
hospital, that is, if they don’t kill
themselves
.”

Alex was appalled. “You
mean we have to murder those people?”

Danielle
nodded.

“
How can you be so all right
with that? You’re an
angel
!”

“
My being an angel has nothing
to do with the balance of humans on earth. Do you honestly think it
would be ok for all those people to run around telling everyone how
they were kidnapped by
vampires
who fed off their blood?”

“
But do we really have to
kill
them?”

Damion took over for
Danielle. “There is no other choice. If we kept them contained and
locked up, we would be no better than Malcolm is, and it wouldn’t
do them any good, either.”

Deanna looked upset and
struggled into an upright position. “There has to be another
way.”