The Last Keeper (41 page)

And I remembered
everything.

“Damn, that
hurt,
” I muttered, getting my bearings.

There was no way to tell how much time had passed in the catacombs. It could have been hours, days, or mere seconds. Almost every figure in the room was still, shocked, and staring. Lizzy appeared unharmed, but it had been her I’d heard crying. The tears stained her face.

Ray’s hand was extended towards me. I needed the help; I still felt off after . . . what exactly had happened?

Slowly the pieces started clicking into place. William’s letter. Ray drinking from me. My gift. It had all been about my gift, the inability to have my life taken from me. Or that was what I’d gathered from the words William had written. Life, what a gift. A true immortal being only able to be killed by their own decision.
 

“You scared me,” he whispered, cradling me in his arms.

“Don’t worry, Ray. I think I know what happened,” I told him, turning in his arms, smiling at him.
 

The rest of the vampires in the cavern were silent, shocked at what had occurred, waiting for some kind of order. No one wanted to be the first to make a move.
 

For all intents and purposes, I’d been dead. I understood what William meant about the pain that was still to come. My heart trying to restart itself was something I would never forget. Elena’s face was the one that made me laugh. She was torn between utter disbelief and absolute rage.

“You really thought we were that stupid, didn’t you?” I asked, taking in the room. “You really thought, with the gifts we had, we didn’t see this coming.”

I was taunting Elena, all of them, flaunting their blatant failure. Being the only female in a male-dominated world was hard enough. When they all wanted you out, it was even harder. Things may have seemed settled within The Seats, but it was far from it. They all wanted to be the self-proclaimed king, and they would all do anything to get there.
 

They’d thought that they’d won. They truly believed they had me beaten. The all-knowing Seats never failed.
In anything.
“We knew who betrayed us, and we took steps to make sure we would
always
survive. The time will never come when you are free to take over the world,” I told them with utter confidence.

“I want to leave you with a message and a warning, all of you! I will stand between you and the rest of the world for as long as I live. I will never let you take over. As much as I want to destroy you now for what you’ve done to my family, I won’t. You do a good job of sticking to
our
rules, and I would like to keep it that way. But if you
ever
cross my family or me again, I won’t hesitate. I will destroy your world and everything in it.”

They never moved, never flinched or blinked, not even when I stood in front of Kiros. He was their king, and he was the one who needed to know more than anyone. There was fear in his eyes as I spoke, fear that I would do exactly as I said. That I would take
everything
he valued, and
everything
he loved, just as he’d done to me.
 

I would’ve gone into their minds and taken their knowledge of my kind, but that was almost impossible. It was best to let The Seats remember, to know what I could do, and to be afraid of it.
 

I promised Jayne I would make them pay, and this was my way of doing so: by instilling a fear in them so deep it would never leave. I didn’t have to enter their minds to do that.
 

“Release them,” I called to the vampires holding Lizzy and Martin.
 

They hesitated for a moment, not moving, not daring to obey my command.
 

“Sometime today would be nice.”
 

The vampires simply stood there looking back and forth between Kiros and me, unsure of what to do.

“Let’s make this easy, shall we?” I offered, turning my attention back to Kiros. “Tell your little minions to let my family go and we will leave. You already screwed up the whole trying to kill me thing, and I, for one, would like to go home now.”

Before I had a chance to react, Kiros lurched forward, clutching my throat and lifting me. “This is not over, Azrael. Your warning is meaningless. You never had it in you to destroy us, and you never will.”

He was only partly right.
 

I didn’t have it in me to kill them all; I only ever killed when I was attacked first. I did, however, have it in me to show him how much I meant it, the only way I knew how.
 

“Take a look into my mind, Kiros, and see just how far I am willing to go.” There was no way he could resist a glimpse into any of our minds. Not when we’d been silent to them for so long.
 

It took little effort to flip that internal switch, to let go of whatever it was that stopped us from having our minds read. It was something I’d never done before.

As I felt the invasion, I remembered every ounce of pain I’d suffered at the hands of the vampires.
 

The exchange was silent, but it was profound. I’d seen so much in my time, more than anyone could see in a hundred lifetimes. The guilt I felt when I first had to defend myself and had killed the vampire I was up against. The grief I’d experienced with the passing of each of my mortal family members. The tears I’d shed at their gravesides. The pain of betrayal, of losing the last of my brothers, of watching my sister die so cruelly. And above all, the pain of losing the one person in the world I loved more than anything. That pain had lasted too long, every day, every breath, and every heartbeat for decades.
 

“You will
never
understand what that feels like,” I snarled.
 

Kiros dropped me to the floor, staggering under the weight of my memories. “I have lived through far too much to give up now. I will do whatever it takes to keep my promise to you. Never think I won’t follow through, and always remember
we were the ones who made you what you are.
”

“Let them go,” he whispered.

There was a new look in his eyes, not one of fear, though fear was still there, but what appeared to be regret. That would be a first, but I’d have to check with Leola and see what she was picking up. For now, I wanted to get Lizzy and Martin home safely and go back to normal. Well, as normal as was possible for me.

Lizzy and Martin were released, and she practically flew into my arms. She held me so tightly I thought for a moment she was trying to crush me. She wasn’t, she was simply relieved. I had Ray on one side of me and Lizzy on the other. There was one more thing I wanted to say before we left.

“Oh, and when I say my family, I mean all of them,” I told Kiros, “and that includes Ray, Poppy, Issac, Al, and Leola. You cross any of them, and I will keep my promise.”

“They come under our rule!” Elena protested, finally coming out of her daze.

“Not anymore.”

“You cannot do that!”

“I can do anything I damn well please, Elena. Get over it.”
 

It was hard to believe they were actually going to let us walk out of there without a fight, but as we turned for the door it appeared as though they were. Each step we took was a step closer to freedom. As soon as they let us walk out of the chamber, it was over. They could try to hunt us through the passages all they liked; we knew how to get out.
 

“You’re just going to
let
it leave?”
 

It?
Elena had called me an
it?

Elena hadn’t always had the cruellest of minds. She’d forgotten how her life started out with the vampires—helpless at their hands. The years of working to be the best and trying to earn their respect had twisted her view of the world.
 

“Let her go,” Kiros whispered, obviously not yet recovered from the influx of memories I’d revealed to him.

“Not this time.”

Ray was already trying to move me aside, trying to stop me from getting hurt. I was moving in the opposite direction, getting Lizzy out of the way.
 

Neither of us was quick enough.

Ray’s arms, tight around my waist, pulled just as I slipped my own around Lizzy’s. I thought I knew what was coming. I expected to feel fangs piercing my skin, but it never came.
 

   
Everything went wrong, and the scream of pain that filled the air wasn’t my own. It was Lizzy.

She’d been in my place when Elena’s teeth clamped down on their target. What she was attempting to achieve was beyond me; they’d already seen what happened when drinking my blood. Fortunately, Lizzy’s blood was as sweet as mine, and the flavour distracted Elena long enough for me to react.
 

The Seats had never tasted our blood before; they never got close enough. If they’d known how good our blood was, then we’d have been hunted for a whole other reason.

Elena was consumed enough with the flavour for me to pull Lizzy from her grasp. Handing her straight off to Ray, I growled, “Take her and leave.”

“Not without you.”

“I’ll meet you at the plane. Go!”

Turning away from my mismatched family, I stalked towards Elena.
 

“You have kept pushing me, testing the limits of what I am willing to do,” I hissed, daring any of them to attack. “I’ve had enough. You never believed we were capable of the things we claimed to be. That is going to change. Which memories of yours should I take, Elena?”

I stood in front of her now, glaring. Her eyes held no panic; she truly didn’t think I was capable of it. She
refused
to believe there was someone with the ability to control their thoughts, actions, memories, and desires. She thought everything The Seats had was of their own doing.
 

How wrong she was.
 

The reason they had such little opposition wasn’t because they were feared, it was because we instilled the fear of The Seats into every vampire we met.
 

If half the world’s vampires forgot that fear, then The Seats would be faced with destruction. There were covens with the number and the power to destroy them.
 

We were the ones stopping them.

“I would rather tear your head off,” she replied, fangs out, teeth bared.
 

“
Try it!
”
 

I was ready for anything. The other Seat members wouldn’t interfere unless they were given a direct request to help. The fight, what there would be of it, was between Elena and me.
 

Our encounters had never come to much more than one pinning the other against a wall. Blood was rarely drawn, and never mine.
 

She didn’t know I was armed. It was one of those subtle changes that had been made after losing Ray.
 

Elena and I were evenly matched, but I was working with an advantage. For once it was my short stature. Elena towered over me, meaning I could get in a blow before she had a chance to strike.

One thing I’d learned was to never make the first move. When she lunged, looking as though she was going straight for my throat, I let her come, waiting for the slightest move that would give away her real intention.
 

She wasn’t that stupid. A head-on attack was pointless and so easily blocked.
 

She forgot I was faster than she’d ever been.

At the last second she changed her stance, just a fraction. She shifted to the left, going for my arm, which was slightly outstretched, balancing myself for any kind of impact.
 

Coming from the side was a mistake.
 

I threw myself in the opposite direction, twisting my body as I did. I brought my foot up, jamming it into the side of her neck. The ground was the perfect propellant, giving me enough of a boost to throw Elena off balance and send her tumbling. She’d made what was going to be a short-lived fight much easier with her ineptitude.

I pinned her to the ground by the throat, cutting off her air. Not that she needed it.
 

“Should I take the memories of your brother?” I asked and saw a flicker of disbelief in her eyes. “Or perhaps you’d like to see what
really
happened to your mother?”

Her brother was the reason she was so bitter. She’d never been a particularly kind human, but she’d loved her only surviving family member. Her upbringing had been harsh, more so when the vampires found they could use him against her.
 

She often thought her memories of her brother were a dream and struggled to hold onto them. She wished she could’ve saved him.
 

“Should I take those dreams, Elena?”

“You can’t do that! You can’t know that!” Fear was clear in her expression.

“I know
everything
about all of you, and you have pushed me too far. You murdered my sister, slaughtered my entire race, kidnapped my family, and threaten my life.
No more.
”

Reaching out with my mind, I entered hers. The hate that was her most prominent feature was gone, replaced by a fear that almost made me change my mind.