Prophecy: Caelestis & Aurorea (30 page)

Her stomach tightened and fire filled her veins.

She raised her hand up and traced her thumb along his lower lip, teasing him with it, before running it down his neck and eventually to his chest. She stroked her fingers down it, feeling his tensed muscles beneath his shirt, and kept her eyes fixed on his. He was in vampire guise just like she was. She could see his sharp canines when his lips parted and the sight of them made her tremble inside.

Bringing her hand back up, she hooked it around the back of his neck and slowly lured his mouth down to hers. He was close enough for her to feel his cool breath in her mouth when voices echoed along the hall.

His fingers tightened against her ribs.

She turned her head to one side, listening to the distant conversation.

This had to work.

She started a little when Valentine raised her goggles up and took the hint. Placing them over her eyes, she remained in her demonic form and looked out into the hall, keeping far enough back that the men wouldn’t notice her.

There were two of them. One was short and thin, while the other was broad but not much taller than his colleague. She couldn’t see their faces. Their scent and voices told her they were men.

The short one removed a flashlight from his belt and clicked it on.

She instinctively flinched away and went to slip out of her vampire guise but then realised that with the goggles on she didn’t have to. The tinted glass in them was protecting her eyes, meaning she could remain in her demonic visage and keep her senses as sharp as possible. Is this why Valentine had made her wear them, so she could keep herself in hunt mode and could use her heightened senses during the break in?

She looked over her shoulder at him to see he was also wearing his goggles. Something about them only added to how good he looked. She didn’t think it was possible that a pair of goggles could do that to someone, but they made him look mysterious and even deadlier than usual. There was another bonus to wearing the goggles. It meant that if they were caught on camera, their faces would be partially obscured. They were going to have to leave the country at some point and it would be easier to do that if they didn’t have the police after them.

“What the bloody hell is going on up there?” A crackly voice sounded out.

Her attention returned to the guards. The broad one took a walkie-talkie out of his belt and pressed the button while bringing it up to his mouth.

“Not a lot,” he said and peered up at the window his colleague was shining the light at. “Probably just a cat jumping across the glass or something. It looks secure.”

He released the button and leaned across to his friend. “Sodding waste of time this is. No bugger could get through them windows without leaving a trace. You couldn’t lock’em again.”

His friend nodded. “Why doesn’t the fat bastard come down here and check them himself? Sending us all the ways down here.”

She ducked back behind the wall when the man turned, bringing his flashlight around at the same time. She leaned her back into Valentine and felt his fingers holding her arms.

She almost breathed a sigh of relief when the alarm went quiet. Her ears rang with it for a few seconds, marring her hearing and making it hard for her to listen for any sign of the men moving.

“Might as well do the rounds while were here,” the broad one said and she waited until their footsteps drifted into the distance before peering out into the corridor.

They were nowhere to be seen. She looked back at Valentine who was pulling his goggles off. He pushed them up so they were sitting across his forehead. It reminded her of their night at the masquerade in St. Petersburg. He’d pushed his mask up in a similar fashion.

She kept her goggles in place.

“Which way?” she said, looking along the length of the dark corridor in both directions. It was lined with paintings and vases balanced precariously on pedestals. A velvet rope arced along it, dictating the barrier that no one should cross.

“We need a map,” he said and slipped his goggles back on. He led her in the opposite direction to the one the men had gone in. “Where did Hyperion say it was located in the building?”

“He didn’t. He just told me it was labelled as a cuneiform text of unknown origin and had no date.” She frowned and realised that she should have asked Hyperion for more information about it, or at least a general idea of which section of the museum it was in.

“It’s old. Being cuneiform, they have probably placed it in with other scriptures and texts of Sumerian origin. That area will most likely be near anything to do with Ancient Egypt.” He stopped in front of a map and ran his fingers across the diagram. Her eyes followed them, trying to spot what he was looking for. “Here.”

She frowned at the place where his finger had stopped. It was the Egyptian exhibit. Next to it was a series of rooms along a corridor that were labelled Ancient Civilisations.

“Not very specific,” she said and looked around them to see where they were so she could figure out which direction they had to head in.

“This way,” he said while taking hold of her hand.

Prophecy followed Valentine along the corridor, not questioning whether he knew where he was going, and kept her senses sharp so she could easily detect any of the guards before they ran into them. The whole place was silent except for the sound of their boots on the hard floor. Maybe it would have been a good idea to do this barefoot.

Her eyes roamed the walls, looking at all the Greek artefacts and the little statues. She never could understand the ancients’ fascination with making models of naked people. She glanced at Valentine and bit her lip when she remembered waking up on top of him today. He did have a beautiful body. She hadn’t even really noticed the scars that had been left behind after she’d healed him. All she’d seen were the defined curves, the muscles that shifted beneath his pale skin, telling her how powerful he was. If she had an artistic bone in her body, she’d probably want to make a statue of him too.

He looked over his shoulder at her, as though he’d felt her watching him, and she gave him an awkward smile before looking back at the artefacts. When they turned down another corridor, she tensed. In the distance, she could sense movement and on the edge of her hearing were voices.

She tugged Valentine down another corridor and into a room.

The footsteps grew closer and the voices got clearer. She listened to the man and the woman talking as they passed them by, not noticing her and Valentine where they were hidden in the shadows.

“That’s four,” she said.

Valentine nodded. “There will be at least five or six security patrols. That means we have a dozen guards to deal with when the alarms go off.”

“What do you mean when?” She gave him a confused look.

“A scroll as old as the prophecy is fragile and bound to be in a glass case. When we break into the case, an alarm will sound. Whether it’s audible or not, the guards in the control room will know something is wrong and they will know where. We will have to fight if we are to get out of here.”

She frowned and stared at his chest for a moment. She had known that there was a chance that they would have to kill the guards, but she hadn’t realised that it was inevitable. She hoped that Venturi was ready when they made it out of the building. The police would be hot on their heels if they didn’t make a swift escape.

“Are you all right?” Valentine whispered.

She nodded and managed a smile. “I just … I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop myself from wanting to feed. I’m so hungry.”

He rubbed her arm gently.

“We have to make this look as though humans attacked them.” He put his hand into his pocket and pulled the hunting lock knife out. “Kill them with it. It will give you ample cover so you can feed if you need to. Just resist biting them.”

She took the knife from him and opened it. She pulled her left glove off, ran her finger along the blade to test its sharpness, and then closed the knife again. A spot of blood seeped from the small wound on her finger. Satisfied that the blade was sharp, she slipped the knife into her pocket and was about to put her glove back on when Valentine caught her wrist. She didn’t stop him when he raised her hand and licked the cut on her finger, his lips wrapping around it and sucking it a little while he sealed the wound.

She wished he wouldn’t do things like that. It made her want to forget the scroll and go somewhere a little more private with him, or maybe not even private. It was dark enough here and the thrill of being caught made her want him even more.

Pulling her finger from his mouth, she chastised him with a frown and saw the corners of his lips curve into his slight smile. He knew what he was doing. She grabbed hold of his shirt collar and dragged his mouth down to hers, moulding her lips against his in a brief but passionate kiss.

Releasing him, she smoothed her appearance, placing her glove back on, and smiled inside when he licked his lips and she realised he was the hungry one now.

She walked out of the room and back to the corridor they had been walking along before she’d heard the guards.

Valentine banged the back of his head against the wall behind him and told himself to get a grip. Now wasn’t the time to be thinking the things that were running around his mind, even if they were the same thoughts she was having judging by the way she’d kissed him. He had to remain focused so they would make it safely out of here.

He followed her out into the corridor and walked beside her, occasionally sneaking a glance in her direction.

Something about Prophecy had always destroyed his ability to concentrate. From the moment he’d met her in the graveyard, he’d been unable to get her out of his thoughts. These past weeks she’d been constantly in them, always distracting him and making it impossible for him to resist her.

It definitely hadn’t just been the vision he’d received from her blood that had made him want to rescue her.

It had also been the underlying attraction that had been gravitating between them since they’d laid eyes on each other. He knew that she had been the same. Her attraction to him had swayed her decision to go with him to England. They’d both denied it at first. In England, he’d hated her. In Paris, he’d denied his feelings. In Venice, he had realised hers. In St. Petersburg, he’d surrendered the fight.

He loved her.

And no matter what the laws said, there was nothing wrong with that.

“I think we’re here,” she said and he looked around them at the room.

He hoped that she’d been concentrating while they were walking because he couldn’t remember any of the journey. His attention had been completely arrested by her. He wondered if she ever had that problem. Did she ever find his presence distracting?

He looked across at her to find her facing him. He wished he could see her eyes so he could know what feelings he was stirring in her. Her kiss had told him of her desire and it matched his own. He could think of much better things to be doing than sneaking around a museum finding a scroll. Maybe they should have put it off until tomorrow night so they could spend more time together. He felt as though he hadn’t seen her in years and apart from last night, he’d barely spent any time truly alone with her.

Prophecy watched Valentine walking along the rows of cabinets that lined the walls. She went in the other direction, searching for the scroll and hoping that she’d recognise it. Would it be in a case like the other half? She shook her head, telling herself not to look for such particulars. She just had to look at each manuscript she came across and see if she recognised it, regardless of the state it was in.

There were various stone tablets in the first case she passed, and in the second were fragments of paper, all pinned next to each other to make up one document. It wasn’t that. The fragmented manuscript was labelled as being Mesopotamian. She scanned the pieces of parchment in the next case and saw a few that were written in cuneiform but none that seemed familiar and none that were labelled like Hyperion had said.

Looking across at Valentine, she saw that he was still walking along the row of cases, his attention wholly with them.

She ran her eyes over the cases again, looking at each parchment in turn and each tag, and then moving on to the next case. She kept her ears pricked and her senses sharpened so much that she would be able to hear a pin drop thirty metres away.

She turned the corner and started along the row of cases on that wall. When she found herself standing next to Valentine, she smiled at him.

“Not this room,” she whispered and he led the way to the next.

Her eyes ran over his back and down the length of his legs. She was glad that he seemed to have taken onboard what she’d said outside. The only way that Venturi would give up on annoying Valentine and winning her was if Valentine rose above it all. She realised that it was probably difficult for him to do so. She had wanted to fight Lucya when they’d met. She’d felt threatened for Valentine’s affections and she knew he felt the same way about hers. Venturi was a threat in his eyes, just as Lucya had been in hers.

And Elena before her.

In fact, any girl that even so much as glanced in his direction.

She broke away from him and started looking in the cases for the second half of the prophecy.

Of course, next time they ran into a girl he used to know she was going to have to control her mouth or he’d be lecturing her about the fact that she’d complained about him being jealous.

She went back a few steps when she felt as though she’d missed something and stared at the fragment of manuscript in front of her. It was about the same size as the half a scroll that they had, barely six inches across and a little more than that in length.

Her eyes darted to the label. It was exactly as Hyperion had told her. Had he been here before? Why hadn’t he reclaimed the prophecy? Maybe he’d felt it was safe here amongst the humans. Mathias had told her that they had been unsuccessful at translating it. Even if they did, each line was only half of the sentence and would make as much sense as each line of the first part they had.