Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (15 page)

Falcon’s eyes narrowed as he clearly failed to see what David saw, but after scanning past me two or three times, he finally saw it too. The small slits of confusion rounded like headlights, his hand slowly wiping down the side of his face. “That’s Ara.”

David looked at the crux then at me again. “Is she…”

“I don’t know.” Falcon grabbed the silver talisman from the king and walked toward me. He watched it get brighter and brighter the closer he got, then stopped right in front of me and put his hand in my chest.

I giggled. The energy in his body sparked and flickered inside me, like a ticklish feeling.

He laughed too, as if possessed, stopping with a breath of shock as he forced his hand away from my light. He looked at it, studied it, then turned to David. “We need Jason.”

“Why?”

“He can talk to her in this form. He’s the only one that ever could.”

“Well, go call him,” David said simply. “Tell him to come back to Loslilian immediately.”

“I can’t.” He scratched the back of his neck. “He was banished—indefinitely—for his role in Ara’s betrayal.”

“They
banished
my brother?” David asked in a cold voice, eyes darkening.

“You weren’t here to defend him. And no one else
would
.”

His fists balled up, his lips went tight, but he didn’t say anything. Which was probably for the best.

Falcon laid my crux down on the table and stood back with his arms folded. Neither of them knew what to do because neither of them knew exactly what they were dealing with. I wanted to find a way to tell them I was okay, but I just didn’t know how. And I could feel myself fading—getting weaker, colder.

“Ara,” Falcon said. “If you can hear me at all, I want you to get to Jason—get a message to him. I’ll leave right now—take your crux to him. Just do what you can to get there too, even just for a second to let us know you’re alive.”

“Okay,” I whispered, but I knew he wouldn’t hear it. I felt like a heart in its breaking moment then—felt like a tear leaving a child’s eye. The sadness flooding my soul weighed me down and made something at my centre twist and swirl. When I looked at David as he looked at me, I knew he felt it too; it was in his eyes, like a roiling thundercloud—the unending fall through uncertainty.

“If you’re dead, Ara, I don’t think I can—” he said, then closed his eyes. “Just… Please don’t be dead.”

Beside me, the crux went suddenly dark, and before I could look back at David, my eyes fell heavily on his cold and empty room in the castle.

***

In my hands and arms I felt capable, but my mind just wouldn’t do what I imagined it could. I stood with my feet apart, hands loose by my sides, and focused on the air around the pen, willing it to snap. If I could just get this right then end Drake I could go home. Maybe not back to life as Queen, but at least back to David—to run away with him and finally just live our lives.

I once had this big dream of living in a house much like my dad’s, sending my own children to the school I went to back home in Oz, maybe even having some grandbabies one day. Yet with the eternal youth of immortality, the whole sitting-on-a-rocker-knitting desire had died; but I at least wanted to spend lazy days lying in the shade of David’s lake, watching my daughter learn to swim or hunt, free from monarchial responsibilities.

I snapped suddenly back to the present when the pen hit the ground.

“Hey! You moved!” I yelled at it excitedly.

When I picked it up and laid it back on the coffee table, there was a word scratched there on the probably very ancient surface: Home.

I picked up the pen, looked at the word, then at the pen. So this pen had a mind of its own.

“Why will you write what I’m thinking but won’t do what I say?” I pressed my thumb onto the tip and snapped the pen in half.

“Hello?” called a voice from under the floor.

With a sigh, I put the two halves of the pen down and pushed the rug back. “Trey, you okay?”

“Who’s there?” he asked nervously. “Please. Just make it quick. Please—”

“Trey, relax,” I said, opening the trapdoor and stepping down into the darkness. Even in the dark I could see my personal blood bank looked tired, his eyes sunken as if he’d been crying all night. “Do you need something?”

“Are you here to kill me?” He lowered his head and cried to himself for a moment. “Oh God! Why did I do it? Why? I’m so sorry, Jess. I’m so sorry.”

“Jess?” I walked a little closer, not really in the mood to explain who I was again. “Your wife?”

“My son,” he cried, then rattled his chains, trying to break loose. “Please, miss. I’ll give you anything. Anything. Just don’t kill me.”

My teeth had just about ground off as many layers as they could for one day. Telling and retelling Trey who I was and what was happening was starting to make me lose compassion for him. Which, for his sake, was not a good thing.

In a moment of probably very bad judgement, I marched over and placed one foot on the wall by Trey’s shoulder, grabbed his chains with both hands and pulled hard. But they didn’t come loose from the wall. Not even a little bit. And then I realised that, of course, if
he
couldn’t break free from them, how on earth would I do it?

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m trying to set you free.” I tugged again, determined, against all odds.

“So you can kill me?”

“I’m. Not. Going. To. Kill you!” I yelled, the last word ending in a yelp as I fell back on my butt, a pair of heavy chains coming away from the wall and nearly pulling Trey on top of me.

He looked at the snapped steel and I looked at him, and we both dropped our mouths in surprise.

“How did you break them?”

“I…” I looked at the holes in the wall. “I don’t know.”

He cautiously drew his arms back to his body and flexed his fingers, rubbing the raw skin under the metal left in place. “Can you break this part off for me?”

My hands were shaking a little, my head tight with a stabbing pain. I wet my lips and shuffled back in the cold dirt, shaking my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Can you try?” He offered his wrists.

“It hurts.”

“What does?”

I curled into a ball to hide my head, and Trey appeared above me, gently rubbing my back.

“What can I do? Can I—”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just go. Leave here and go to the Lilithians—tell them to offer you protection in exchange for information about the Queen.”

“The Queen?”

“Yes.”

“Are you—?”

“Yes.” I flipped my head up and looked at him, then realised he wouldn’t remember ever having spoken to me if he left here. “But… you’ll need a note.”

“Then we’ll need a pen,” Trey said, offering his hand. He helped me to my feet and slung my arm over his shoulder, hauling my weak self up the narrow stairs to David’s room.

When he sat me down on the bench at the foot of the bed, I took a moment to close my eyes and centre myself, feeling the room spin and shrink around me.

“What’s happening to you?” he asked. “You look so pale all of a sudden.”

“Just hand me that pen—” I pointed blindly to the coffee table, “—and there’s a sheet of paper under that book.”

A piece of paper landed on my knee a second later, and Trey tucked the pen half into my curled fist. “Do you need me to write something down for you?”

“No.”

I opened my eyes again, breathing through the pain. Layer by layer, as I scribbled a note down, asking Jason to tell David I was okay and to look after Trey and his family—hide them—the pain receded.

“Here.” I shoved the note into Trey’s chest.

He took it and stared at it, confused.

“Put it in your pocket.”

“Why?” he asked.

I grabbed his arm then, tightening my hold when he flinched, and wrote Jason’s address down on his skin and, in big letters:

RUN, TRAY. DON’T STOP. THERE’S A NOTE IN YOUR POCKET FOR THE MAN AT THIS ADDRESS. HE WILL HELP YOU. Love, Ara.

Trey frowned at the words. “You’re helping me?”

“Yes, but you won’t remember me once you leave this room.”

“Why?”

“There a spell in place.”

He seemed to understand that. “Thank you.” He clasped his hands in prayer and bowed his head. “You say I won’t remember that you helped, but I will forever be in your debt.”

“All very well if you can escape here.” I gave him a shove. “Now go.”

He ran to the window and pushed it open, turning to look back. “Hey.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what this is costing you—to help me this way. But whatever it is, you’re saving five lives today—not just one.”

I smiled, and Trey disappeared, leaving me alone with the dread of telling Drake what I’d done, and also the thrill that all this training was having
some
effect.

***

Hindsight: it’s realising you probably should have eaten from the vampire
before
setting it free.

My stomach growled as I crept down the tight corridor, hunting. If no one would remember me once I left their sight, no one would know I cut them and drained them. And Drake wouldn’t have to know I set Trey free.

I kept my shoulder to the wall for the most part so I could navigate through the almost pitch black, but the walls felt the same down here on the first floor as they had in the cells and torture chamber I once encountered. As much as I wanted to tell myself the southern wing was all a show, my mind still lived in the past—trapped behind its experiences—and every step I took just felt like a betrayal to my freedom.

When I reached the end of the corridor I stopped and sniffed the air. Most vampires were attending the castle tour tonight; it was set to be a big one as it was, apparently, every Friday night. Drake would be in Court right now, ruling on all the vampire issues, but when he finished he would come to find me and offer another invitation to his theatre show and tour. I would decline. As usual.

For every vampire that starred in the show or operated other areas of the tour, special effects and that sort of thing, there would be at least two vampires that didn’t attend. And the unlucky vampire in room twenty tonight would wish he had gone.

I rapped on his door and announced myself as housekeeping. The door popped open slightly and a confused head poked out.

“We don’t get housekeeping down here, bitch. Go away!”

I grinned as my hand stopped the door. Feeding from a jerk of a vampire made this so much easier.

He didn’t scream as I shoved him hard in the chest and slammed his door shut behind me. He didn’t know he had a reason to. He simply looked confused, his eyes flicking from my hands to his chest. And when he opened his mouth to speak I lunged for him, pinning him down on the floor under me.

He bent his knees and tried to flick me off, but I was too hungry, and with that hunger came an inhuman strength that was no match for his.

My hands hooked his wrists and knuckled them to the floor, and as I leaned down and pressed my lips to the fat pulsing under his skin, I quickly moved one hand to make a cut with my nail. No need to kill him. Just drain him.

He went hard between my legs and gave up the fight, his arms and hands relaxing under me. I’d never actually hunted before, but I’d heard Lilithians could hypnotise vampires the way vampires do humans—make them trust us; make them want us. So he was either under my spell, or very turned on by the idea of a dominant woman.

I let his wrists go and drew my hair back from where it caught in my lip, sinking into the magic and lust of the kill. His blood entered my mouth so fast my spine rolled as I gulped it down, and it tasted like bitter dark chocolate, so rich that the female essence in me wanted him. All of him, even though I couldn’t say what he looked like or even what colour his hair was. He was blood, and sex, and that was all.

When his hands wrapped my hips and a pair of thumbs moved down the back of my jeans, I pulled back with a giant gasp and slapped him clean across the face. Which only made the demon huntress in me so much more enthused.

“What the hell?” He rolled up slightly, holding his cheek.

“I came for blood,” I said, swinging my leg over him and standing up. “Not sex.”

He grabbed the pocket of my jeans and swept me back down onto him. “Well, maybe I want a little payment for my blood.”

I cocked my head sideways and smiled. “Of course. How rude of me.”

He took that to mean I agreed; guess he didn’t hear the sarcasm in my voice.

While his thoughts moved on to my breasts, his hands following, I drove mine seductively into his hair and gave his skull a very slight, very gentle zap.

My body jerked up and down like a kid on a washing machine, as the man quivered and convulsed under me, his fingers seizing up around my breasts until I shoved them off. The poor baby in my belly gave a little jump and rolled over, and I did the same, lunging off my victim just as a line of urine darkened his jeans.