Blood Awakening (37 page)

Marquis snarled and the infant giggled.

Ciopori jumped back, startled. “Can they do that
already?”

Marquis nodded. “Vampire babies are born at a
higher level of maturity, and they progress much faster than human infants. He
thinks that what you said was nonsense.”

Ciopori laughed with abandon. “No, warrior, I
think he thinks what
you
said was nonsense!”

The child laughed again, and Marquis frowned. “Give
me that kid; you’re already spoiling him.”

Ciopori rolled her eyes and tightened her hold on
the infant, still laughing. “A name, husband? Middle ages? Warrior…conqueror…victorious?”

“Nikolai.”

“
Nikolai
.” Ciopori let the word roll off
her tongue. “I like it.”

Marquis nodded, pleased. “Would you like to choose
his middle name?”

Ciopori shut her eyes. “There is nothing to think
about:
Jadon
.”

Marquis stared at her then. Jadon. The ancient
patriarch of the house of Jadon. The original male of their kind. No one had
ever used his name before out of reverence, but if anyone had a right to invoke
it, it was Ciopori. Jadon Demir was more than just a powerful legend to Ciopori,
one who had brought mercy to his house and his descendants at the time of the Blood
Curse. He was not just the father of a species, an ancient prince, or the
original ruler of a new civilization and way of life: Jadon Demir was her
beloved brother and Nikolai’s uncle. The reality was almost too much to
comprehend. “Nikolai Jadon Silivasi. It is done, then.”

Ciopori pressed her forehead to the child’s and
whispered something private, which Marquis was careful to mute out of respect. Sighing,
he placed one hand on his mate’s back and gently ran the other along his son’s
soft cheeks. “I don’t want to leave you, but I have to go now. I cannot leave
Nachari with—”

“Of course not,” Ciopori whispered. “Will you be
okay? If you’d like, I can call Jocelyn or Vanya to take Nikolai for a moment,
and we can go together.”

Marquis kissed her on the forehead, his head
resting against hers. “I love you for asking, but no. It would be a sacrilege: an
original female bowing down to the male’s curse. No, this is my punishment—my
atonement—it is my life that will be forever spared as a result.” He sighed. “I
will return to you shortly.”

The baby’s eyes shot from his mother to his father,
and his face warmed with the most gentle, radiant smile Marquis had ever seen.

Marquis would get through this.

Oh yes, after fifteen hundred years of endless existence,
he would definitely get through this. The required sacrifice was all that stood
between himself and eternity with this beautiful woman and their newborn son.

To return to them, he could get through anything.

Marquis entered the Chamber of Sacrifice and Atonement with singular focus,
carrying the struggling infant in his arms. The child was no longer cooing and
crying but hissing and spitting and trying to score his father’s hands with the
tips of his tiny fangs. Compassion was a ploy the newborns often tried with their
once-human mothers, but as soon as it failed, the darkness inevitably came out.
Marquis tried not to think about the fact that he had been conceived along with
a similar entity—that he had existed side by side with a Dark One in his
mother’s womb.

The temperature in the chamber was eerily cold,
and the energy of rage, mourning, and sorrow grew with every step Marquis took beyond
the neat rows of pews toward the granite altar. He stepped up on the platform
and placed the squirming baby in the smooth, hollow basin at the top, careful
to keep his feet from touching the dark, swirling mist at the base. And then he
stepped back and knelt on the floor, prostrate, as required. But when he opened
his mouth to speak, nothing came out.

The required words—and their subsequent meaning—ran
through his head in an endless loop, but he couldn’t seem to speak them...not in
Romanian or English:
Pentru tine, care au fost drepţi şi
fără vină; pentru tine, care au fost sacrificate fara mila: am
venit pentru a rambursa datoria mea. Pentru păcatele de stramosii mei, am
oferi primul nascut fiul meu şi vă implor de iertare. Ai mila de pe
sufletul meu şi să accepte acest copil viaţa în schimbul meu….

To you who were righteous and without blame; to
you who were slaughtered without mercy: I come to repay my debt. For the sins
of my ancestors, I offer my first-born son and beg of you forgiveness. Have
mercy on my soul and accept this child's life in exchange for my own.

Marquis’s head tilted to the side as if someone
else was working it with puppet strings, his eyes fixated on the other side of
the room—on a heavy wooden door with crossbones and an ancient warning inscribed
in the Old Language on the front:
Iată de portal pentru a coridorului
de morţi. 

Behold the portal to the Corridor of the Dead.

He knew there was a double entry-way just beyond
that door, containing two steps that led up to a hatch: the chamber of
sacrifice for the males who failed to do what he was doing now. The last place
his baby brother, Shelby, had stood alive.

Marquis’s heart clenched and his arms trembled. Shelby
had kneeled before this same altar, bowed before the swirling black mist, and
repeated such similar words:
To you who were righteous and without blame; to
you who were slaughtered without mercy: I come to repay my debt. For the sins
of my ancestors, and because I have failed to sacrifice my first-born son, I
offer my own life in atonement. Have mercy on my soul and accept this sacrifice.

To you who were righteous and without blame?

To you who were righteous and without blame!

Marquis trembled with rage even as the baby began
to scream, and the swirling mist became agitated. No one had been more
righteous than Shelby. No one had led a life with less blame, and still, they
had murdered him cruelly and without mercy for a crime his ancestors had
committed. And they had forced him to kneel and beg for his own soul before
they did it.

To call such an entity
righteous and without
blame,
he couldn’t get the heretical words out of his mouth.

Marquis stared back and forth between the chamber
he was in and the one just beyond that door and considered his options: If he
failed to sacrifice the child, he would have to enter that evil place and offer
his own life, instead. In other words, he would still have to
utter the
nonsense
. The only way to defy the Blood of the Slain was to refuse either,
in which case, he would be slaughtered anyway, and his eternal soul would go to
the Valley of Death and Shadows as opposed to the Valley of Spirit and Light. Eternity
was a very long time to endure just to make a point.

Marquis lowered his head, opened his mouth, and
tried once again to offer the supplication. Once again, nothing came out. By
now, the swirling mist had transformed into a black, angry cloud. Taking the
shape of mangled claws, it rose from the ground, perched over the altar, and
reached out to claim the infant, who was now screaming at such a high pitch
that it hurt Marquis’s ears. Red stains, like blood, dripped down from the
sharp talons, and the room began to shake as Marquis concentrated…and forced
the words.

“To you who were righteous and without blame, to
you who…”  His voice trailed off, and the apparition exploded in anger. The
dark cloud formed a dangerous funnel, swirled around the altar, and sucked the
baby up into its spiraling fury: It was waiting, demanding the supplication.

Dear gods.

Marquis looked on with horror: Now he was the one
without mercy. Evil or not, the child was suffering between life and death,
battered about, awaiting the pronouncement of his body as a sacrifice.

And then a strong hand settled on Marquis’s
shoulder, and he spun around to find Nathaniel standing behind him, a look of startling
intensity in the warrior’s eyes. “Brother, let me help you. Release your voice
to my control, and let me help you.”

An arc of lightning shot out from the cloud. It struck
the tip of the altar, bringing a horde of snakes to life. They began to slither
along the ground toward Marquis, hissing and rising up to look him in the eyes
with demonic stares. When a fissure split through the ceiling, Marquis knew he
was running out of time.

Nathaniel tried to reach into Marquis’s mind
then—to take control without his permission—but it was sealed like an iron
vault. What under heaven was wrong with him? He had a mate now. A son!
Nikolai
.
He couldn’t die like this. Not here. Not today.

Kagen and Nachari materialized in unison; one
stood before him, the other behind him.

“Brother,” Kagen implored, his eyes wild with
trepidation, “give Nathaniel your voice!”

Marquis stared up at his brown-eyed brother,
noting the hard set of his jaw, and slowly shook his head. Kagen didn’t
understand. It wasn’t that he was unwilling to do it; he simply could not. In
that fateful moment, there was only Shelby—his beloved younger brother—and the
injustice of his murder. Marquis’s indignation—
his guilt
—was a living
thing, and his voice would not betray him. Gods in heaven, he was going to die.

“Look after my son,” he muttered as the reality
began to sink in.
He could not speak those words
.

Nachari knelt before him. He began to chant a
hypnotic spell, while weaving a golden aura around his throat. He intended to
force Marquis’s words with magic.

“No!” Marquis yelled. “
No
.”

Momentarily stunned, Nachari lost his place. He rushed
to start over, but it was too late. The mangled claw came out of the cloud and
grasped Marquis by the throat. Determined to pierce the golden aura, the razor-sharp
talons slashed deeply, three times, tearing through Marquis’s jugular like a
knife through butter. The snakes began to strike, and a high-pitched shriek shook
the chamber walls.

Napolean was there in an instant. He pumped his
hand full of healing venom and quickly thrust the soothing balm against the ancient
warrior’s throat. As the king was the only male, outside of a child’s father,
who could make the Blood Sacrifice, he hastily began the Supplication: “
Pentru
tine, care au fost drepţi şi fără—
”

“Cease!” A thunderous voice rang out in the
chamber, halting the king in his tracks. “His heart will not yield. Your
supplication will not be accepted!” A bolt of fire flew out from the cloud and
struck Marquis in the heart. It melted instantly into liquid acid, launching a
slow burn inside of his body. Despite his resolve, he cried out in pain; his
energy waned from the steady loss of blood.

“We are only getting started!” the Blood roared. “We
will bleed you out until you are helpless; we will sustain your torture for
weeks! You will beg for death before we are through!” The rage shook the
building, and Marquis felt his bones begin to break, one after another.

My love! What is happening!
Ciopori’s voice
cut him deeper than the slayer’s, yet he still could not find the words.
Please,
warrior, do not leave me alone to raise our son. Say what must be said and come
home. Please, Marquis!

Using the last amount of energy he possessed, Marquis
shoved Ciopori out of his mind. She could not witness his pain.

He could see his brothers’ lips moving, and he
could feel the urgency in their commands, but their words no longer registered.
The Blood would not allow Nathaniel to take Marquis’s voice or Nachari to use his
magic, and Kagen looked…more helpless than he had ever been.

Nachari grasped Marquis’s face in his hands, his
indescribable eyes filled with tears and pleading.

Pleading
.

Marquis held his brother’s gaze with a warrior’s
stare as he felt his liver and his kidneys begin to twist inside. Bile rose in
his throat, and he pushed Nachari aside just before he vomited all over the
floor. The look of terror and grief on the wizard’s face was the most horrific
sight Marquis had ever seen, but before he could crawl away, a slimy hand
grabbed him by the arms and began to drag him along the floor.

He closed his eyes, bracing himself for the torture
to come. Where were they taking him? Ah yes, of course, to the sacrificial
chamber—where they could do their worst. The pain in his body was already
unbearable:  Days? Weeks? How could he endure such a thing? Nikolai’s face flashed
before his eyes, and his heart filled with regret. Yet as sure as he was a
warrior, he knew that such words of contrition would never leave his lips: He
was an Ancient Master, trained in the art of war, the leader and protector of
his family. Honor was everything. Duty was supreme. Shelby was his brother, and
to speak such words would be to dishonor Shelby’s life—to once again fail to
live up to his duty.