Darkness Avenged (Guardians of Eternity) (30 page)

“The Oracles created the first witches, you stupid bitch,” the creature growled.

Against her will she found her attention captured by his claim. Was it true? Had witches truly been created by the Oracles or was this man just a raving lunatic?

Allowing a part of her mind to concentrate on unraveling the complex weaves, she sent the vampire a puzzled glance. “Created to kill vampires?”

The glowing eyes were turned in her direction, but Sally didn’t have a clue if he could actually see with them. Not that it mattered. If he was like any other vampire, then his senses would be acute enough to pinpoint a roach a mile away even if he was blind.

“To contain me and mute our powers.” He spoke the words with the certainty of a true believer.

Right or wrong, he was convinced that witches had been created by the Oracles as some sort of weapon against vampires.

Sally frowned. “Why would they create an entire species to contain you?”

“They were jealous of my powers,” he said without hesitation. “They wanted me dead, but they dared not kill a god. The best they could do was lock me away with their pathetic magic.”

She grimaced; Sally was beginning to suspect that she’d grossly overestimated her skills as she realized that the web of magic was more than one spell. It was as if sorcery had taken the incantation of the thirteen witches and used each one to layer the spells one on top of the other. So it wasn’t thirteen times stronger, but thirteen to the thirteenth power.

On top of that, now that she’d actually opened her barriers she could
feel
her connection to the damned thing.

Maybe the creature was right.

Maybe she had been called by the book to travel to this location at this exact time.

Weirder things had happened.

“Not so pathetic,” she muttered.

Easily sensing her dismay, Santiago took a step toward her. “Sally,” he prompted.

“I’m not certain, but I think the sorcery is more than just a protective spell.”

The handsome vampire frowned. Obviously he was like every other leech who preferred to pretend magic didn’t exist rather than try to understand a power he couldn’t battle against.

“You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“The sorcery is coming
from
the book,” she said, her tone hesitant.

“Which means?”

She hesitated, unconsciously nibbling at her bottom lip. It was a definite case of the blind leading the blind since her knowledge of sorcery could fit in a thimble.

Still, she had to do
something
. She could sense Roke’s straining impatience. They had about two minutes flat before he smashed his way through the brick walls.

“I might be able to use the book . . .”

“Nooooo.”

The hair-raising shriek came completely out of the blue. Stumbling backward, Sally turned to watch a strange, black mist float out of the mutilated vampire’s body.

At her side Santiago cursed, pressing the Roman dagger against his chest until she could smell his flesh beginning to burn and a flow of blood stained his T-shirt.

“Stay back,” he rasped.

The mist seemed to hesitate, as if it understood Santiago’s threat. Then, with a movement too swift for her eyes to follow, it darted across the room.

With quicker reflexes, Santiago was lunging forward. But as fast as he was, he was a half step too slow as the mist disappeared into the female vampire who had regained consciousness while they were focused on the mysterious book.

Time seemed to stand still as the beautiful woman watched Santiago rushing toward her with such an intense sense of loss it was painful to witness. Then, as Santiago reached her, those dark eyes were filled with an unearthly glow and her slender hands wrapped around the gold medallion at her neck.

Santiago cried out, but he couldn’t halt the inevitable.

He reached for her, but she was already gone.

 

 

Santiago roared, his fury exploding the overhead lights and coating the walls in a layer of frost.

Nefri.

That bastard had taken his female.

He was going to rip him apart and feed him to the jackals. No wait. That was too quick.

He was going to . . .

“Santiago,” a harsh voice broke through his searing rage. “My son.”

With a growl he whirled toward Gaius, who remained pinned to the wall. His former sire looked like death. Literally.

His gray skin sagged to reveal the sharp angles of his brittle bones. His dark eyes were sunken, although they’d lost the weird-ass glow, and only a few tenacious clumps of hair remained on his head.

“Don’t call me that,” Santiago hissed, flowing across the floor, intent on finishing off the vampire he’d once considered his father.

Gaius’s gaze was pleading as Santiago halted directly in front of him. “Please, I need to tell you . . .”

“What?”

“I’m sorry.”

Santiago made a sound of disgust. Did this vampire truly have the arrogance to believe that after all he’d done—the abandonment, the betrayals, the treachery—that he could ever gain Santiago’s forgiveness?

But even as he lifted his hand to strike the killing blow, Santiago found himself hesitating.

Nefri had disappeared using her medallion. Which meant he couldn’t track her. It could take hours, if not days to discover where she’d gone.

The creature had been inside Gaius for weeks. If anyone would know where it was headed, it would be this pathetic wreck.

A gut-wrenching pain nearly doubled him over and with a savage anger he slammed his fist into the wall next to Gaius’s gaunt face.

“Where did he take her?”

Gaius flinched, but he refused to be distracted. “Please, Santiago, I thought Dara had been returned to me. It seemed so real.”

Santiago pulled back his lips, exposing his fangs in a visible warning. “Tell me where he took her.”

“But she was an illusion,” Gaius continued, as if Santiago might actually care that he’d been fooled into believing Dara had been returned. Gaius was eager to blame everyone but himself for his weakness. “Nothing more than a figment of my imagination.”

“I don’t give a shit.” Santiago wrapped his hands around Gaius’s too-thin neck. Every second separated from Nefri was like pouring salt on a gaping wound. “Tell me where they went or I’ll kill you.”

“You should kill me.” Gaius gave a shake of his head. “I no longer matter.”

“Goddammit.” With an effort, Santiago managed to keep himself from crushing the bastard’s throat. So long as Gaius was wallowing in his bout of self-pity he would be useless. “What do you want from me?”

Gaius licked his rotting lips. “I need . . .”

“What?”

“I need your forgiveness.”

“Fine,” Santiago bit out, willing to say anything to get Gaius to help him track Nefri. “You’re forgiven.”

The dark eyes softened with a soul-deep gratitude. “Thank you, my son.”

Santiago tightened his fingers on his sire’s throat. “Now take me to Nefri.”

“Yes.” With a visible effort, Gaius lifted his hand to cover the medallion around his neck. “Hold on tight.”

Santiago scowled. “Why?”

“The medallion,” Gaius rasped. “It will take us to Nefri.”

“Wait,” he commanded, glancing toward the wide-eyed witch. “Tell Styx what happened here. . . .”

His words were lost as blackness surrounded him and they were being catapulted through a rift in space.

Mierda
.

It was a gross understatement to say that Roke’s patience was strained. It was, in fact, hanging on by a very slender thread.

Which was why it was no surprise that it snapped the second he heard Santiago’s roar.

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Sally’s soft whispers in his mind (her ability to reach him telepathically was astonishing since it was a rare talent that usually only manifested itself between pairs that had been intimately bonded for centuries).

He fully believed that the spirit was capable of taking command of a vampire. And he equally understood the logic of keeping the creature contained by shutting him off from available hosts.

But logic was no contest against the instincts of a newly mated vampire, and the need to get to Sally was a force that wasn’t going to be denied.

No matter what the consequences.

He stepped forward, ignoring Styx’s grim presence. Jagr had taken the Ravens to circle the warehouse, making sure nothing could escape, and Levet had thankfully remained at the lair with his odd demon friend. But it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d all stood between him and his goal.

He was getting to Sally.

Now!

He swung his arm, hitting the brick wall with enough force to make the entire building shudder.

“Dammit, Roke,” Styx growled. “You said that Sally warned us not to enter.”

“To hell with that,” he muttered. “I’m done waiting.”

“But . . .” Styx reached to grasp his wrist before he could widen the crack he’d just created in the wall. “You’re going to bring the entire building down on our head.”

Roke yanked his arm free, his fangs throbbing and his temper threatening to explode. “I don’t care what I have to do. I’m getting into that room.” His eyes narrowed. “Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Styx muttered. “Stand back.”

Lifting his leg, Styx used his Sasquatch-size boot to kick the center of the door. Steel screeched in protest, but with two more kicks the stubborn door at last twisted off the frame, and before Styx could open his mouth to protest, Roke was leaping through the wreckage.

He had a brief glimpse of Santiago holding on to a vampire, or at least he thought it was a vampire—the pathetic male looked more like a rotting zombie. Then, just as he began to move across the floor, the two vampires simply disappeared.

Ignoring the bizarre vanishing act, Roke’s attention honed in on the tiny female who stood near the safe hidden behind the crumbling wall.

The tightness in his chest eased at being able to see her and catch the sweet scent of peaches. But the driving fury at the knowledge she’d been stolen from him, snatched from beneath his very nose, had him storming forward, not halting until he’d wrapped his arms around her slender body.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine,” she said, but her voice quavered and her body shivered with the terror she’d been forced to endure.

“I swear, I’ll kill that bastard,” he snarled.

Her hand lifted to his chest. “Roke.”

He gave a low growl as he sensed she was about to pull away, burying his face in the curve of her neck.

“Don’t move.”

“What are you doing?”

Like he knew? He was running on a primitive impulse and gut need.

“Just . . .” His hands ran a compulsive path down the curve of her back. “Give me a minute.”

Styx cautiously moved to stand at their side, leaving enough space not to set off Roke’s possessive fury. No doubt he sensed that Roke was on a hair trigger. Or maybe it was his bared fangs that gave it away.

“Tell me what happened,” he said to Sally.

She gave another shiver and Roke tightened his arms around her, his head lifting to watch his Anasso with a feral warning.

“That creature—”

“Gaius?” Styx asked.

Sally nodded. “Yes, although it wasn’t really him. He was being controlled by something inside him.”

Styx glanced toward the safe just visible through the jagged hole in the wall. “He brought you here to get the book?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It can harm him.”

Roke glanced down at her in surprise. “A book?”

She grimaced. “That or the magic in the book.”

Styx matched her grimace, shifting uneasily. Roke sympathized with his king. Any vampire would rather fight an entire tribe of trolls bare-handed than deal with magic.

“Why you?” Styx abruptly asked.

Sally blinked. “Me?”

“Why did he go to the trouble of kidnapping you if all he needed was a witch?” The towering warrior clarified. “He had to know it would alert us to his presence here.”

She hesitated, sending a covert glance toward Roke before she returned her attention to the Anasso.

“Because the spell is bound to my soul,” she at last revealed.

“Shit,” Roke snarled, a sharp fear spearing through him. He might be clueless when it came to magic, but he knew that having Sally’s soul bound to a spell was a very bad thing.

Dammit, why had he ever brought her to this warehouse? He should’ve had the sense to return her to Styx’s lair the second he realized he was susceptible to her magic.

Now . . . He swallowed a curse.

No. As eager as he might be to blame himself, he knew fate well enough to realize that if it intended Sally to be reunited with the book, there was nothing he could do to stop the inevitable.

But that didn’t make him any happier.

His dark thoughts were interrupted as Styx stepped toward the hole in the wall, his brows drawn together. “Sorcery?”

“Yes. I’m the last surviving heir.” She bit her bottom lip, the scent of her lingering terror making Roke twitch with the need to rip the spirit into painful pieces. Several painful pieces. “If he can kill me, then he can destroy the book.”

“No one’s killing you,” Roke snapped.

She flashed him a weak smile. “That was my hope.”

Their gazes locked. His filled with a bleak promise of protection; hers filled with a rueful regret.

“Why can this book hurt the spirit?” Styx intruded into their silent exchange.

Sally shrugged. “I won’t know until I manage to unravel the threads of sorcery protecting it.”

Roke went rigid. “No.”

“Roke.” She firmly pulled out of his arms, her chin set to a militant angle. “We have to find out what’s in that book.”

His hands clenched as he brutally squashed the need to jerk her back into the safety of his arms. Instead he turned his head to glare at his king. “And if this is a trick?”

Styx arched a dark brow. “What kind of trick?”

“Maybe the damned spirit pretended the book could harm him just so we would do everything in our powers to destroy the magic that guards it.”

“No.” Sally gave a shake of her head, her nose wrinkling. “There was no doubt it was being affected by its proximity to the book. It was rotting from the inside out.”

Roke folded his arms over his chest, his stance warning he was a male about to dig in his heels. “All the more reason to leave it alone until we know more about it.”

“Under any other circumstances I would agree with you,
amigo,
” Styx said, a hint of compassion on his face. “But in this case, neither of us is in a position to make a reasoned decision.” He nodded toward Sally. “Only our expert can decide what’s best.”

She widened her eyes in faux shock. “You mean I’m allowed to have my very own opinion? Amazing.”

“Sally . . .” Roke began.

“I have to do this,” the stubborn witch interrupted him before he could even state his case.

He scowled. “Why?”

She lifted her hands in seething frustration. “Because there’s a creature out there who claims to be the god of vampires and is convinced that his survival depends on my death. I’d rather get him instead of waiting around for him to get me.”

“A good offense is truly the best defense, Roke,” Styx said in tones that were clearly intended to be soothing.

Roke, however, was in no mood to be soothed. He was mad as hell at a fate that would force him into an unwanted mating (with a witch, for god’s sake) and then once his most possessive instincts were fully committed, threaten to take her away.

“And if it was Darcy?” he accused him.

Styx rolled his eyes. “By now you should know that my mate charges into danger with nerve-shattering regularity.”

Roke couldn’t argue. The tiny pure-blooded Were was as irrationally stubborn and uncontrollable as Sally.

As if to rub salt in a very tender wound, Sally narrowed her eyes, the scent of peaches filling the air. “This is my decision, no one else’s.”

“Dammit.” He squashed a wry laugh as he met her warning glare. He’d been so smugly certain he would be able to choose a submissive, easily trainable mate who would always understand that the duties of his clan came first. What he had instead . . . His heart gave a dangerous twist, something far more potent than a forced mating tingling through his blood. “What are you going to do?” he roughly demanded.

She turned to pace toward the gap in the wall, her hand stroking at the edges of the hole, as if testing the invisible spell.

“Sorcery is similar to magic,” she said slowly, averting her face as if she could hide her uncertainty behind the satin curtain of autumn hair. “But the spells aren’t connected to a specific incantation or brew or sacrifice.”

“It’s connected to you,” he said in flat tones.

“Yes.”

He took a step forward, his hands still clenched. “Which means?”

“That I should be able to peel back the layers of magic like an onion.”

“
Should
be able to?”

She turned to meet his smoldering glare. “What do you want me to say? I’ve never tried to break through sorcery before.” She gave a restless lift of her shoulder. “To be honest, I didn’t even believe it truly existed.” Sally then proceeded to tell Roke and Styx the rest of what had occurred in the warehouse before they had broken in as Santiago had asked her to.

“God almighty,” he growled, his jaw clenched so tight his teeth threatened to shatter. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

Without warning her expression hardened, her hands landing on her hips. “No. That’s one thing I won’t be,” she informed him. “I need everyone to leave before I start—”

He was standing in front of her, wrapping his fingers around her upper arms in an unbreakable grip before she could even blink.

“Forget it.”

“Don’t be so stubborn, Roke,” she muttered, pretending she wasn’t unnerved by his inhuman speed. “If the book could hurt the spirit, then there’s a good chance it can hurt all vampires.”

“Santiago looked unharmed before he disappeared,” he reminded her. Not that he would have left even if Santiago had matched his decomposing companion.

At least not without this female.

Her lips thinned in annoyance. “I can’t concentrate with you breathing down my neck.”

“I don’t breathe.”

“But—”

“No.”

“You might as well give it up,” Styx drawled as he moved to stand beside them. “I recognize that expression. You’d have better luck arguing with that brick wall.”

Her lips parted to continue the quarrel, then catching the determination etched onto Roke’s face, she heaved a resigned sigh. “Fine,” she grudgingly conceded. “But don’t bitch at me when things go to hell.”

His hand lifted to tuck her hair behind her ear, his touch gentle. “Then we’ll go there together.”

 

Nefri had never been truly defenseless.

She’d been used, abused, vulnerable, and on occasion, so out of control she’d become no less lethal than a nuclear bomb.

But she’d always had her powers. Which meant she’d never truly known the terror of being at the absolute mercy of another creature.

Now she blinked as she glanced around the empty marble building with fluted columns, and a domed roof that was painted to resemble the blue skies no vampire had ever seen. Below her feet was a delicate mosaic and in the center of the building was a fountain that was surrounded by marble nymphs dancing in the spray of water.

It was a place of meditation, which meant that no one would enter once they sensed her presence. Thank the gods. But she couldn’t hope that the spirit who had taken command of her body would be content to remain secluded.

Already she could feel her emotions being agitated by the creature, although she sensed he was still weakened. She had to get away from her people.

Or, if worst came to worst, she would have to end her life.

A small price to pay for the salvation of her clan.

Right. All very noble and completely worthless, she dryly concluded, as long as the spirit was in control of her body.

For the moment her only hope was that she could find a way to regain command. Or that Santiago would be able . . .