A Shade Of Vampire 4: A Shadow Of Light (16 page)

Things were getting back to normal—or at least it seemed that way. After we heard what they had to say and what their demands were, we told the humans that we would look into their requests and that we would see that their living conditions were improved. With that settled, the humans were back at their posts. We were still hunting down Felix and the few men who still remained with him. Those who surrendered were given amnesty in exchange for their loyalty.

The only remaining threat was the attack of the covens
—which we hadn’t heard anything from Natalie about.

“What if they actually agree to you sending
Gregor?” Ashley asked. “I don’t really understand why you would send him in your stead.”

We were at my penthouse
’s dining room with Eli, who just stepped out to get us some blood when Ashley broached the subject of the meeting with the coven leaders.

“Trust me. They won’t. They’re bent on declaring war on
The Shade. Of that, I am sure. I won’t even be surprised if my father’s working with them.”

“It seems like a dangerous assumption to risk the entire island on.”

“I just know. I know Natalie. I could tell by the way she was acting. They’re going to declare war on us whether I go or not, and if there’s war, I think we all stand a better chance if I’m here at The Shade and not out of it.”

“Then what about looking for Sofia?”

I inwardly groaned. We’d been discussing everything we knew about the hunters and where we were brought and we narrowed down our search for their headquarters to a certain spot on the map.

Ashley had already made it clear that witches still worked for the hunters. Thus, there was a great possibility that headquarters could be hidden by a spell the same way
The Shade was.

“I want more than anything to have Sofia back here, but maybe we’re wasting our time with all this… Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be.”

Ashley gave me a strong smack on the shoulder. “I can’t believe you! We’re at this again? Really? I know Sofia. The fact that you left her there is probably driving her insane! How could you do that to her?! I don’t care what you think things are supposed to be, I know for sure that Sofia belongs here with you and not out there as some sort of spoiled, rich princess to her father, the lord of the hunters.”

At that point, Eli stepped into the dining room, glasses of blood in hand. He began placing the glasses on the table in front of us. “What’s going on?” he asked
.

“Do you think Derek should
leave here and be looking for Sofia as soon as possible?” Ashley asked.

Eli first took a sip from his glass of blood before responding to the blonde. “I suppose, but I’m not sure about ‘as soon as possible.
’” He directed his attention toward me. “I understand how important Sofia is, but I can’t help but feel as if we’re wasting time looking for her when there’s an imminent attack on The Shade. Should we not be focusing on our energies on fortifying our defenses and gearing up for war?”

I cast a triumphant
look at Ashley, who ignored me and sent death glares at Eli. Truth be told, my heart sank at what Eli had just said. Though my brain was telling me the same things Eli was saying, deep inside, I was desperate to find Sofia—whether it was because of my love for her or my craving for her blood, I was no longer sure. When it came to Sofia, black and white always had a way of fading into gray.

A knock on the front door interrupted our conversation. I stood up to answer it despite Eli’s offer to get the door.
I walked up to the front door and swung it open to find Xavier and Natalie standing at my doorstep.

“Look who’s back,” Xavier announced wryly, a weary look on his face. “Apparently, she can’t get enough of the chaos.”

“Or maybe she just misses you…” I shrugged.

Natalie stepped forward, rolling her eyes at both of us, before giving Xavier a glare that clearly
showed there was little chance of her ever missing him. She then set her eyes on me. “You’re going to need a seat for what I’m about to tell you.”

I swallowed hard and waved toward my living room.
Natalie seemed to be bracing herself for what she had to say. “I have two messages. One is from the vampire covens. The other is from Sofia Claremont. Which one do you want to hear first?”

I froze. I knew what to expect from the vampire covens. I had no idea what Sofia’s message
would be. The unknown seemed to be a lot more fearsome than the immense threat that came with the known. “I’d like to hear what the other vampire covens have to say.”

Natalie cleared her throat. “Their message is simple. Three words. Prepare for war.”

“They sent you all the way here just to say that?” Xavier grimaced. “Not like we didn’t already know that.”

I straightened up in my seat and nodded. “Very well then. All I can say in response to that is another three words. Let them come.” I paused, surprised that war
—something I feared would happen—wasn’t alarming me as much as it should have. I guess knowing that Sofia had me in mind was more rattling a thought. “The second message?”

“Understand that there was no way for me to meet with her,” Natalie explained. “It was too dangerous to see her personally, with her being in the hunters’ hands, so we had to communicate by phone.”

I understood the implication of that. If Natalie was somehow bugged by the other covens, then they had most likely heard what Sofia had said.

“Sofia says that she might have found a way for you and her to be together. She wants to meet with you at a hotel in Cancun.” Natalie handed me a small note. “Those are the details of the time and place.”

I took the note and drew a breath at what was written:
They know the time and place. It’s too dangerous. Sofia is talking about the hunters having found a cure to vampirism.

It felt like a rock was somehow able to lodge itself in my throat as I read the last phrase over and over and over again.
A cure to vampirism.
Not once since I had turned into a vampire did it ever even cross my mind that there could be a cure.
How is that possible?

I raised my eyes to meet Natalie’s. She tightened her lips almost as if to warn me to tread very
, very carefully. The possibilities that came with a cure began to whirl around my mind.
A cure. A cure!
If I turned back into a human, I would be mortal. Sofia and I could get married, have children, grow old together… The deepest desires of my heart made possible.

Hope unlike
anything I’d felt before surged within me.
Could she have really done it? Could she really have found a way for us to be together?

“Well?” Natalie broke the tense silence, her eyes set on the piece of paper she
had handed over to me. She noticed how much I was shaking as I held it in my hand. “What do you want me to tell her?”

“Tell her to come to
The Shade. I can’t risk leaving The Shade. Not with an impending war. If I’m going to meet with her, then it would have to be here.”

“You do realize that she doesn’t plan to meet with you alone, right?” Natalie clarified. “The hunters will be with her
—most likely her own father.”

“Derek…” Xavier was shaking his head, clearly about to object. “I know how much Sofia matters to you, but for crying out loud…she’s with the hunters.
Is now really the best time to accommodate
hunters
here at the island? We can barely keep things together!”

A thousand possibilities crossed my mind all at once. Threatening. Overwhelming. Disturbing. I shook the thoughts out. There was no point in succumbing to the fears. “I need Sofia to find true sanctuary. The prophecy makes that clear. If the only way she can get back here is with the hunters, then so be it. Let them come. Let them
all
come.”

If war ha
s to happen, I can’t stop it. I just know that I need Sofia by my side. If this is the only way, then so be it.

I was their gift to him.

Yuri was celebrating his twenty-first birthday and his newfound friends wanted to give him a woman as a gift. The Duke decided that I would be the perfect gift for the young man who was already being acclaimed as an artist of great genius. Of course, my master also knew that Yuri meant so much more to me than that.

When I was presented to
Yuri, I could tell that he was uncomfortable with the idea. I’d seen the same look in his eyes with countless other men before him. The uncertainty…that gut feeling that what they were doing was wrong. Still, most of the time, the gut feeling never actually stopped them.

Both of us were practically jostled and shoved into a room, with hoots and cheers for Yuri to enjoy himself. I could tell that he would be pressure
d to tell them what had gone on inside the bedroom. I stood there, trying to control the way my body was trembling. I often shook before the Duke, but in front of Yuri, it was for very different reasons. With Yuri, I never felt more vulnerable than I did at that moment.

“Could you please take off the mask?” he asked.

“I can’t. I’m not allowed to.” I hoped that he wouldn’t recognize my voice. I hoped that I would never have to remove that mask and reveal myself to him, but I also understood why the Duke instructed me not to remove it until Yuri was finished with me. The Duke relished the idea of Yuri finding out that he’d been pursuing a whore like me. I swallowed back the tears at the thought of Yuri seeing me in a completely different way after that night.

He approached me and raised his hand. I flinched from his touch, afraid that he would take the mask off. Instead, he just brushed a thumb over my exposed collarbone, the flimsy dress I was wearing leaving little to his imagination.

“Should we begin?” I asked, motioning to get on the bed. I was slightly curious about what he was going to do. I was half-expecting him to stop me, to tell me that this didn’t feel right and that he really shouldn’t do this considering how he was pursuing another woman. I wanted to believe that he was a decent man, but I should’ve known that he was what he was: a man.

As I
lay down on the bed, my heart broke when he climbed on top of me and began gently undoing the laces on the bodice of my gown. As he did what he came there to do, I tried to shut my mind off what was happening. I tried to think of him as someone other than the young man who enamored me over the past weeks, but I couldn’t. Yuri was just like every other man: out to use women like me.

When he was done, his weight fell atop me and without asking me, he removed the mask. I didn’t have the will to resist. At that point, I didn’t care anymore if he saw me for what I was, because I saw him for what he was too.

When our eyes met, I could barely recognize him through the blur of my own tears. Despite the haziness, however, I could still make out the shock in his eyes upon realizing who it was that he just laid with.

“It’s you…” he managed to
say as he got off me and pulled his clothes back on in a hurry.

I tried to show him that I was strong, that my heart wasn’t breaking in two at what had just occurred between us, but my resolve was crumbling. I sat up and took my place on the edge of the bed, trying not to cry as I pulled my dress
back on. I wanted to get out of that room as quickly as possible, but found that I was shaking so badly, I could barely get the dress on.

His face softened as he watched me struggle. I couldn’t decipher the expression on his face.

Is he disgusted by me? Does he think less of me now than he did before?

“Stop,”
he ordered me after I failed once again to get my arms through the sleeves of the dress.

By pure instinct, I heeded to his command. That was the training
the Duke had put me through. Every order was followed immediately and without question. I dropped my arms to my sides, allowing the top of the dress to fall over the bunched skirt of the outfit.

Yuri approached me and held my arms, coaxing me to stand up. Afraid that the skirt would fall to the ground and once again expose me completely to him, I hung on to the dress, holding it just below my waist as I let him study me.

I didn’t dare look at his face as he perused me, but I sensed it when he swallowed hard. “Why do you have so many bruises?”

Why does it matter?
As usual, I didn’t respond. In my book, he didn’t deserve a response. Not after he had just used me.

“Who did this to you? Is this why I can’t walk with you anymore? Is this why you wouldn’t accept even the smallest of gifts from me?”

I hated his questions. I didn’t want to have to answer them. After all, what was the point? I was fully exposed to him now. The charade we had was over. “Is there anything else you would have me do for you?”

“Yes. Answer my questions and tell me your name.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.”

Yuri
frowned at me and the silence was so long and deafening, I finally managed to look up at him. I was surprised by what I saw there, because what I saw was something I never saw from the Duke or from any man who’s had me before. Guilt. I saw Yuri’s guilt.

“I’m so sorry,” he told me.

I couldn’t fight back the urge to scoff at him. “You’re sorry? Would you have been sorry if you had never seen who was behind the mask?”

He gulped. “I was sorry even while I was…while we were… This is wrong. I never should’ve
gone along with this.”

“Then why did you
?”
Why does anyone? Do they have any idea how much ruin they bring to us?

He didn’t respond. Instead, he lifted the bodice of my gown over my body and began lacing it up. “This time, I really do understand,” he said
. “Nothing has changed. In my eyes, you’re still the beautiful woman in the woods, the same one I wouldn’t mind taking a walk with every day for the rest of my life, the same one who enamored me from the first moment I laid my eyes on her.”

He kissed my lips
—the most tender and precious kiss I’d ever experienced.

“I’m sorry I did this to you. I’m sorry you have to go through this, but know that I will spend my whole life making it up to you. I swear it.”

He was true to his word. I don’t think Yuri ever forgave himself for sleeping with me that night. In fact, even when I made advances on him over the past centuries, he never did quite respond.

He was the one who turned me into a vampire. He did it so I could protect myself from
the Duke. Yuri was the one who always looked after me and protected me for hundreds of years.

I hated it when he was with any other woman
aside from me and I knew that he hated it whenever I was with any other man aside from him, but that was the way it’d always been with Yuri. We couldn’t stand being apart, but somehow, we both knew that we couldn’t be together either. I asked him once why that was and his blunt answer was enough to give clarity to our situation: “I want to be with you, Claudia. I think you know that, but I don’t think you’ll ever enjoy us being together until you get that sixteen-year-old victim out of you.”

That was the day I realized
that Yuri saw right through me. I knew that he didn’t care about my past, that he would accept me if only I could accept myself. He also knew that I would always find it difficult to ever forgive him for sleeping with me that night. Until I was ready, until I could let go of my past, we both knew that we could never really be together.

Leaving
The Shade, that’s exactly what happened to me: I realized that the past really didn’t matter, that I’d been wasting my immortality being so caught up in avenging my past against someone I had already ended. I was punishing both Yuri and myself for a past neither of us could ever change.

What I would do to take it all back and do things differently…

My thoughts were interrupted when the door creaked open and Sofia emerged. I hadn’t heard from Sofia since she had told me that she was going to escape.

“
Sofia!” I jumped out of the bed to greet her. “Were you able to do it? Were you able to find a way to escape to The Shade? And now you’ve come back for me?”

She shook her head and gave me a soft smile. “I got caught.
You really can’t trust some people.”

My heart sank. I breathed out a sigh and shr
ugged. “I guess this is it then? I deserve this fate. My fault for being so stupid all these years.”

I couldn’t have predicted what Sofia was going to say next in a million years, but when she said it, it was music to my ears.

“No, Claudia. We’re going back to The Shade.”