Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (47 page)

“
Me
? What evil did I ever do?”

“You kill people,” I stated. “How is David any different just because—”

“Girls, that’s enough.” Drake put his hands between Emily and me, and pushed us apart. I didn’t realise until right then that we were both leaning forward. “The fact here is, we have two mission objectives: secure the manor and rescue Jason. That is priority one, because Jason may be the only hope of saving the baby—”

“Hang on.” Em put her hands up to stop us, then slowly lowered them. “How is
Jason
the only way to save the baby?”

“
May
be,” I corrected. “And only if I can’t get answers from Lilith, or if I never make it to the forest.”

I watched it all click together; she knew that my soul was once my mother’s and her mother’s before her; she knew that it once belonged to Lilith; she knew that this child would need a soul too. “What are you going to do to Jason?”

“Nothing. Jason will
give
his soul to our daughter when she’s born.”

“What?” Quaid grabbed Emily’s arms as she lunged at me. “You can’t kill him! You have no right!”

“He volunteered,” David said flatly, in the same uncaring way that made me first think it didn’t matter to him if Jase died.

“Why
him
?” Her voice creaked; Quaid let her arms go.

“Because the soul a body carries must be bound to it by blood. Jason is not only the other half of David’s soul, he is an exact copy of him biologically,” Drake started. “It is either Jason or—”

“Or David,” she snapped. “Or Ara. It’s
their
baby.
Their
mess. Why do they have to take Jason?”

David and I looked at each other. She was right, and we both knew it.

Drake sighed and handed David the umbrella. Rain splattered his coat and made a soft pattering sound as he took a purposeful step out, firmly clutching both Emily’s arms so her face was in a direct line with his. “I will be damned if I will see my daughter die—or lose her Love Eternal. I will take Jason’s soul from his body with my bare hands if I have to, but I will not see Amara suffer another day of sadness. And I expect you, and Quaid, to fight as hard for that end as I. Do I make myself clear?”

Emily just nodded, finally releasing a breath when Drake released her arms.

Quaid wrapped himself around her and swept her back a little.

“Now, back to the agenda.” Drake reached back and took the umbrella from David again.

“Right.” David stood a little taller as he switched on his King Mode. “When Lord Eden arrives, we’ll pass through the forest and over the bridge under the cloaking spell—”

“One at a time,” Drake cut in.

“Huh?” David looked at him.

“I was not prepared for this. My magic is a skill, not a birthright. To lead a group this size a distance that great and have the strength to fight at the end, I would need to have spent a few days preparing myself—meditating and drawing strength from the Earth. I can take you in one at a time, and we would need to move at human pace—”

“We don’t have time for that,” Emily screeched. “Jason could be dead before you get two of us to the tunnel!”

“I can do no better than that.” Drake raised both hands in defence, then dropped them. “But if you have a better idea, I welcome it.”

David groaned quietly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fine. Take me in first. I’ll go look for Jason until you bring Quaid up. Actually, no. Emily will be after me. Quaid can stay out here with Ara—”

“Why don’t I just take her directly to the forest while you secure the manor?” Quaid suggested. “I don’t trust her to stay here, and if we fail to take back the manor, she’ll need protection running through the grounds—”

“As I said,” Drake interrupted, “I will do it.”

“Yeah, but your skills are better use in the manor—killing Walter,” Quaid reasoned. “I can look after Ara. I’m sworn by my oath to die for her, I—”

“And I am sworn by the love of a father!” Drake said. “There is no greater force.”

“But—”

“It is out of the question,” Drake added. “They are hunting her—with the sole purpose of killing that innocent child. She needs the protection of an Ancient—”

“Well what about Lord Eden?” Quaid said. “He’s older than you—”

“I would not trust my father alone with her for a second,” Drake said drily. “And besides, he’s not coming.”

“He’s not?” we all said.

“He’s not here,” he stated factually, presenting the empty road. “Which means he is not coming.”

“How can you be so sure? He might—”

“Because, Emily,” Drake interrupted, his expression and the tone of his voice liquid with annoyance, “I know my father.”

That was all he needed to say. The road either way went on for miles, and if anyone were nearby, we’d see the headlights. He wasn’t coming. We were on our own.

“Why?” Emily said, looking down the road. “If he really cares—”

“That’s just it, Miss Pierce.” Drake’s voice had softened. “He does not care. He never has. This version you know of him, this…
Greg
, he is a persona. And that is all—an act—one designed by Vampirie. But the true man—the man that abandoned me as a boy, the man that sent my daughter away to live with a human woman in another country, the man that came to kill Amara’s unborn child—he is the true face of Gregory Thompson.”

“
Kill
the baby?” Emily looked at my belly. “He was going to kill the baby?”

“That’s why he came to Loslilian in the first place,” I said. “It wasn’t to support me through a hard time. Think about it, Em. If that’s why he was here, if he came because he cared, then he’d have come right after I was taken to the castle and tortured—”

“But he did. He was Petey. He—”

“He was spying,” Drake said. “He needed to keep close in case Amara fell pregnant.”

Emily covered her mouth and took a small step back into Quaid’s arms. She turned around then and we all looked away while she had a little cry.

“Emily,” David said. “We have no time for tears—”

“Leave her.” I put my hand on his arm, stopping him from going over there. “We need to get moving. It’s almost midnight.”

Drake lifted his arm and set his fingers against the watch on his wrist. “Set your watches to exactly eleven forty-three.”

We all looked to our watches—our very cool matching standard issue military watches—and set the time.

“It will take precisely thirty minutes to reach the tunnel outside the village, and fifteen more through the escape passage, bringing you out in the Queen’s Chambers. Once we reach the tunnel at the village, I will loop back for Emily, and David can run ahead at vampire speed—”

“So we can’t run fast under the cloaking spell?” Em asked, looking up from Quaid’s chest. “Just to be clear.”

“As I said, I’m not a miracle worker. The concentration it would take to—”

“I get it,” Emily said coldly. “I don’t need another explanation.”

“What about the spell you used to come get me?” I moved between Drake’s death stare and his intended victim. “When you made us
appear
at the castle?”

“Our plan here is to sneak in and slay our marks—undetected. You saw what that spell did to the windows.”

“Oh.” I nodded. That spell wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.

“And, if we were to appear outside for the sake of stealth, there’d be no way of knowing who might be around when we do. Not to mention, again, using magic that way weakens me. If I were to transport two of you, the third would be impossible. And I would be of no use to anyone after that.”

“Okay.” David clapped his hands together once. “Then let’s get a move on.”

“Right.” Drake went to walk away, but stopped when David didn’t follow.

“Ara.” David cupped the side of my neck, bringing his forehead down to mine. “May God be with you.”

I reached up and laid my hand softly to his wet, stubbly cheek. “And you.”

“Be safe.” He pulled away as if gravity was holding us together, and dropped to his knees in the inch-deep puddle under my heavy black boots. “And you—” He kissed my belly, wrapping both hands firmly around it, “—take care of your mommy, okay?”

As if the baby knew what he was saying, she gave a little kick then, and David laughed.

“I think that was a yes,” I said.

David stood, giving Bump one last kiss. “I love you both.” He pressed his lips to my cheek, holding my face with both hands. “I’ll see you on the other side of this nightmare.”

I patted his arm as he pulled away, and they walked into the blackness under the sheets of heavy rain, leaving me alone out here with one guard and a large umbrella.

***

Drake came back for Emily after only twenty-eight minutes had passed, and Quaid and I decided to keep warm with a bit of friendly sparring.

My sword was light and easy to hold, but it wasn’t Nhym. The rain made the handle slippery, and the mud made it hard to get my footing. That didn’t stop me from getting the blade to Quaid’s throat five times out of ten, though.

“We’ve taught you well, I see, my fair and lovely opponent.” He laughed, sheathing his sword then laying his right hand to the gun on his hip. In the darkness, the black cargo pants and a black shirt blended with his lovely dark skin, almost hiding him from sight unless he smiled. Which, for Quaid, was all the time. “Well, that helped pass about ten minutes,” he added lightly. “Twenty to go.”

“Yep,” I said, putting my sword in my belt. “And I’m just glad it’s stopped raining. Finally.”

He looked up at the sky through the thick branches of the evergreens. “It would’ve made for an easier trip across the open fields if it were still raining—less likelihood of being seen.”

“Hm, yes, but the grass will be long this time of year, and after that much rain, it’ll be nearly impossible to take a step without every immortal ear within a mile hearing it anyway.” I squelched the mud under my heavy boot to make my point. “My journey to the forest will not go undetected no matter what the weather now.”

“’Specially since you can’t run at vamp speed either,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Haven’t you ever done it in shitty weather?”

“A few times—nothing this bad, though. Why?”

“When it’s been this wet, even immortals have traction issues. Watch.” He put both hands out as if to say stand back, and then he vanished, appearing a second later on the other side of the road; I heard a strange kind of wet whirring sound, like sticking your head out a bus window on a rainy day, and when he stopped, it wasn’t a neat, elegant halt; it ended in a wild skid into the trunk of a tree. Pine needles crashed down around Quaid.

“It’s like car tyres at high speed in wet weather,” he said, pushing up off the tree and dusting off his hair and shoulders. “Being immortal doesn’t give us Spidey grip. If you run too fast, you’ll slip, and you’ll slide further than a flipped car on an interstate.”

“Well, I’m glad it wasn’t just me.”

“What wasn’t?”

“I slid once—when running in the rain. Actually, a few times. But I just figured it was because I was a newb.” I thought back to that afternoon—the last afternoon—at the manor, where David and I ran in the rain. “David must have better traction than I do.”

Quaid laughed, lifting his shirt to wring out some of the rainwater. “I hear it gets easier the older you are. But even then, I’ve seen a few of the House members fall on their arse once or twice.”

That made me think about all those vampires in Drake’s army, laying in wait for a battle—imagining them running up over the hills at the call of battle, and then skidding into their opponents.

“What?” Quaid said, coming to stand beside me again. “What are you grinning at?”

“Just picturing a funny battle scene in my head.”

He laughed. “Well, there won’t be anything funny about this one. And don’t forget, Drake has his men dressed in the same colours as the knights, so be careful who you kill.”

“Yeah, why is that?” I turned away from my imaginary battle to look at him.

“He didn’t tell you?”

I shook my head. “And there wasn’t really time to ask either.”

“Or you just felt silly for not already knowing the answer,” he suggested, moving on without needing a response. “It’s to confuse the knights. What’s left of Drake’s men after we last attacked his castle have fought side by side for centuries. They know each other by smell, by face. They could fight blind and wouldn’t hit a comrade. But our soldiers are new to this—new to each other. They won’t know who to fight, and it should result in fewer casualties if they’re all being careful not to kill.”

I nodded. “Right. Because the Warriors’ objective is distraction and defence—”

“Not offence,” he finished.

“And to see me safely to the forest—should things go bad.”

“Yes. And that.”