The Power of One (The Forever series Book Two) (6 page)

I sigh. “I’m fine,” I say again for the millionth time.
“Honestly. I’m more concerned with why it is getting bigger. What did you find
out?” I ask as I turn around, flashing a large amount of cleavage to the room.

CK’s eyes drop to said cleavage briefly but then snap back
to my inquisitive eyes, as he conservatively does up the buttons on my shirt.

“Not much actually. Corinne didn’t give us much to go on.
We’re still trying to track her down.”

“Then why are all these people here?” I wave at them
absently.

“Because this is an unusual situation and you need to be
protected.”

I snort with amusement, “By them?” I glare rudely at Gregor and
Eloise, who both return my look.

“By all of us,” CK says sternly. “They know how important
you are now. They won't hurt you,” he says quietly.

“It’s not me I’m worried about!” I snap.

He looks at me intently. “He’ll be fine. He is important
too, this wouldn’t have happened without him. I won’t let anything happen to
him. I promise you,” he says so only I can hear.

I smile gratefully.

“Tell us what happened before the mark first started to
grow?” Gregor asks, surprising me with a good question.

CK takes my arm and ushers me to the sofa. “Sit, my dear.
Nico, a drink, please,” he orders and a drink appears in front of me.

I hear a collective gasp from everyone in the room as I
reach for the glass on the table. Stopping just short of it, my hand wavers
slightly.

“Where did that come from?” I ask pointing at it.

Silence. I glance at each of them in turn – blank stares.

“Where did that come from?” I ask again loudly.

“It just appeared out of nowhere,” Gregor finally answers.

I gape at him, assuming he is joking but his face is deathly
serious. As is everyone else in the room.

“Erm, Liv, sweetie,” Devon starts, “ I think you did that.”

I stare at him like he’s just lost his marbles, “Excuse me?”

He glances quickly at Cole, “I felt a tug on my energy
before it appeared. I think somehow you conjured it.”

Cole nods, “I felt something too, but didn’t know what it
was.”

Eloise laughs then. “Oh she does magick now then?” she asks
nastily. “This is ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not,” CK says, continuing, “The Power of One
indicates magick. We just don’t know what or how.” He looks intrigued and
proud, like I did something really special.

“Ignore the glass,” Gregor snaps. “Get back to what happened
before the marking grew.”

I look at Cole, “Well, Cole and I were talking.”

“About what?” he inquires.

“It was private!” I snap.

“Liv,” CK says gently, “The content of your conversation
might help us figure out more pieces to this puzzle.”

“It’s private!” I say again through gritted teeth.

“If you must know, I swore my love and loyalty to my sire,”
Cole says quietly. I look at him sharply and he shrugs, “If it helps you Liv,
that’s all that matters.”

“Hm, interesting. A strengthening of your bond, perhaps,”
Gregor muses out loud. To Cole he says, “And your marking? Anything?”

Cole shakes his head, “No.”

“And the second time? What were you doing then?”

I think back. “Cole and Devon were joking with each other,
we were laughing together.”

“Another tightening of your bonds. Not just yours, but
theirs. It is most unusual for siblings to bond,” he says almost to himself as
Eloise and CK nod in agreement to my surprise, not having had much contact with
any of mine, apart from… well we won’t talk about that right now. Rest assured
though, there was no bond.

“Then you appear to do magick. It seems to me the stronger
your bonds grow, the stronger you get,” Gregor deduces. “Try to make something
else appear.”

Gobsmacked at not only his deductions but also his apparent
acceptance of this, of me, I glance at CK who is staring at me thoughtfully.

“He’s right. Your Power, whatever it is, is growing as those
bound to you grow stronger. Stand up and try to bring something to you,” he
orders.

I stand and with everyone watching me expectantly, I falter.
“Oh for fuck's sake, I am not some performing monkey. I can’t just do magick on
demand. Even if it was me that did it,” I add, practically yelling in
frustration.

“See, she’s not that special after all,” Eloise goads and I
glare at her. Bitch.

Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. I’ll show her. Err,
but what exactly?

Sighing, I sag my shoulders and open my eyes. This is
pointless. “I need a drink,” I declare and before I can step towards the bar a
glass of wine appears in my hand in a swirl of black, glowing fog.

Everyone stares dumbfounded, especially me, at the glass in
my hand.

“What the fuck?” I ask of no one in particular.

“Err…” is the general response.

“How did you do that?” Gregor asks, intrigued.

“I really don’t know. I wanted a drink and well, here it
is,” I reply stupidly. I walk over to the bar and place it down carefully as if
it might blow up. I notice a wine glass missing from the shelf, and that
interests me. Walking around, I peer at the spot. CK comes up behind me, “What
is it?”

“This shelf was full before. I am sure of it.” Trying for
something I grab the wine bottle out of the fridge and place it on the bar.
Even Eloise is watching me with interest now. Making a note of the level of
wine in the bottle, I hold out my hand and think about a glass of wine in my
hand, another swirl of black, glowing fog, and
voilà
: it appears in my
hand. Handing the glass to CK, I check the level of the bottle: it’s a glass
less than before and turning to the shelf, one more glass is missing.

“Huh, displacement,” I say as if it’s obvious.

“What?” comes from several voices in the room.

Blinking, I explain, “Displacement. Seems to work on the
same principle as Teleporting. The older Vampires can move themselves through
the three dimensions of space. I can move ‘things’. I’m not conjuring, I’m
moving.” Holding out my empty hand, the next second Devon’s Blackberry is in my
palm.

“Holy Shit!” he exclaims, patting his empty pocket, looking
totally impressed. Cole is looking totally at a loss, Gregor is staring at me
in wonder (which is really creepy and weird), Eloise is trying her damndest not
to look fascinated, and CK is looking at me with such love and pride I almost
blush.

“The Power of One,” he says.

“But how?” Eloise asks. “Just all of a sudden she has this
Power? How? Where did it come from?” She is very suspicious.

Good questions, all. I shrug, “That’s the million dollar
question.”

“We need Corinne,” CK states. “Somehow, we have to find her.
Liv, you need to come to Milan immediately. You need to be sworn in, made an
official member of The Council and once it’s official, we can try to figure out
your powers and the reason behind them. They’ve been given to you for a reason.
We need to know what that reason is.”

I nod dumbly at his request.

A loud knock at the door startles everyone, seeing as
everyone is already here. Eloise smiles seductively and gets up to answer it.

Oh no… that can only mean one thing and I scowl as Constantine
and Devon bristle, Vampire senses going on alert.

She opens the door. “James,” she gushes and pulls him into a
deep kiss. He kisses her back with abandon while we all look on, unable to look
away. Pulling back, his bright blue eyes land on me, still scowling at him.
James Lake is to Eloise what I am to Constantine. Slightly younger than me,
Eloise turned him around nine hundred years or so ago. With his light blonde,
spiky hair and intense blue eyes, not to mention cheekbones you could cut yourself
on, he’s a looker all right. Average height and all lean and rippling muscles,
he turns heads. Even mine. Much to Eloise’s fury, we were lovers back in the
1800s and again in New York in the ’90s. 1990s, that is. It ended badly, twice,
so I was not happy to see him in my hotel suite.

“Liv,” he says my name in his adopted South London accent.

“James,” I say with distaste.

Entwined around Eloise, which actually makes me slightly
ill, he strolls into the room, “Nice digs.”

I throw him a withering look and say to Eloise, “What is
he
doing here?”

She looks at me innocently, “I invited him. Seems only fair,
to even the playing field,” referring to CK, Cole, and Devon being firmly on
“Team Me.”

“Great,” I mutter.

“Constantine and Devon. Never far from her side. So nice to
see you again,” James says, sarcasm dripping from every word.

“And how nice to see you again, James,” Devon responds
equally sarcastically, while CK just glowers at him.

“Hm, and you must be Cole?” James asks, his sharp eyes
zeroing in on my new charge.

I am instantly at his side, not trusting James as far as I
can throw him. Well, I suppose technically, as I am older, I could throw him
quite far I’d imagine, but you get my drift.

Cole just stares at him impassively picking up on the
oh-so-obvious dislike between us all.

“You must be something else in the sack to keep this one
interested long enough to say yes and turn you,” James says insultingly. “I
always wondered who it would be that would make an honest woman out of her
again, seeing as these two never managed it. Way I hear it, you have some big
shoes to fill, not to mention other things,” he continues nastily much to
Eloise’s delight and my fury. Before I can respond, never mind Devon or Cole,
CK is at his throat, pulling him from Eloise as he would a rag doll and shoves
him up against the wall with a growl. “If you want to keep your head, I suggest
you do not speak to my family that way again.”

My mouth drops open. Way to go CK! “My family,” eh? That is
high praise coming from him. I glance at Cole whose eyebrows have gone skyward.
That now familiar burning in my shoulder flares up again and I hiss. Cole and
Devon glance at each other and Devon takes a quick peek at my shoulder. “Yep,”
he confirms.

Seems Gregor is right. The strengthening of my bonds with
these three men and their bonds to each other is key to this… whatever it is.
CK’s declaration of his ”family,” the three of us descended from his bloodline
solidifies our commitment to each other.

With a final shove he releases James and returns to my side.
“Keep your boy in check, Eloise,” he orders and she stares defiantly at him for
several moments before she submits. Near as I can tell, as the creation of the
Initial Vampires is shrouded in secrecy, Ahmed was the first, Constantine the second,
then Gregor, and Eloise last--only by a matter of months, but it still makes a
difference to them in who is superior.

Pulling him over to the sofa quickly, she tells him to sit
and shut up. He pays her no mind though and continues to look at us with that
arrogant, overly confident glare. “So is anyone going to fill me in on why Liv
got the fourth seat? Seems a bit biased to me,” he states.

Eloise makes a noise of agreement but Gregor speaks up on my
behalf, “She is the One. It matters not, why.” James raises an eyebrow, as
surprised as I was with Gregor’s apparent acceptance of me. I say “apparent,”
as I don’t take anything he says or does at face value. I haven’t had any
dealings with him since I first met him, but the memories of him are etched
into my brain with clarity. I first met him when we returned to Italy after the
Norman Invasion of England. CK dropped me off and carried on for business in
Rome, leaving me alone in the castle. Gregor visited a few days after CK left
and he was quite taken with me and wanted to take me as a lover. I was repulsed
by him. He was so cold, his eyes and manner dead. He had no heat, no fire, no
passion – not like Constantine had and besides, I still wanted no one but my
sire. As a young Vampire, I was expected to fall in line, be grateful for the
attention from an Initial Vampire and when I wouldn’t submit, he took me by
force. I took it without fighting back as I knew I would have lost, as he was
much older and stronger. He lost interest in me soon after when Constantine
returned and as I never gave him what he wanted, neither my willingness nor my
fear, I was dismissed. To this day Constantine doesn’t know. He would blame
himself for leaving me there alone and not protecting me and that was something
I wanted to protect him from. Sighing at the complexities of sire/charge
relationships, I ponder why Gregor never told him what he did. At the time, I
wasn’t about to say anything out of fear of accusing an Initial Vampire, a
member of The Council, and the trepidation that it would somehow backfire on
me. I kept a straight face, having been practised in that, and kept my distance
until after he left. It takes a strong, established bond to sense fear over
distance and ours wasn’t strong enough yet for him to be able to, that usually
only develops after a century or so and in exceptional circumstances. We have
it now, as I do with Devon but back then I kept my mouth shut and my head down.
It was many centuries later that I saw Gregor again and he acted like it never
happened so I did as well. I was no longer afraid of him and as a result
Constantine has never found out. Having tuned out for the past several minutes,
lost in my ruminations, I can hear them arguing about me and I just want out.
Too many old and powerful Vampires in one small room together sets everyone on
edge and it was getting way too crowded in here. God only knows how Nico can
stand it; it is a mystery to me. Wishing I were anywhere but here, I think of
my home in L.A. that I will share with Cole when we get back. A strange feeling
washes over me and suddenly I am standing in my own bedroom.

What the fuck?

Spinning around my mouth wide open, I try to understand what
just happened. Teleportation! Holy shit. All the other Vampires who have gained
this ability were well over two thousand years old when they developed this
ability. I start to panic when I try to get back to the hotel in Monte Carlo
but fail. I sink to my knees, placing my hands in front of me on the plush red
carpet, draw in a deep breath, and try again. Nothing.