Blood Born (25 page)

“I can kill her, too, before she can complete a spell. If she rebels, then she’s of no use to me, anyway.”

He said casually, “So take your chances with an incomplete spell, which may begin with your eyeballs melting out of your head, but then you kill her before the spell is completed and you’re left with melted eyeballs.” Sorin barely held back a grin as he put forth this fairly preposterous supposition. A spell had to be completed before any part of it could work, as far as he knew. But Regina’s weakness was her vanity, and he’d use whatever argument he could to protect his little witch. That she reminded him of his daughter didn’t do anything to negate his sense of protectiveness toward her. He
wanted
it to, he didn’t want to feel responsible for any human, but the connection was there whether he wanted it to be or not. All he had to do was catch her scent, and it was almost as if he could pick up his child again and swing her around, hear her joyous giggles.

He pulled himself away from that long-ago memory, and watched Regina mull over the possible horrors of an incomplete witchcraft spell. He knew he’d won when she shrugged. “Then
you
must make her study harder. Jonas said more and more conduits are getting close to contact. We don’t have a lot of time left, a few weeks at the most.”

He didn’t ask her how he was supposed to hunt down and kill conduits and at the same time force Nevada to study more, how he couldn’t be in two places at the same time, but kept his mouth shut. Nevada was doing all she could, and pushing her harder wouldn’t accomplish anything except add to the pressure on her, which would be counterproductive.

“I’d love to bring Luca to our side,” she said, tapping a finger against her cheek. “He’s so incredibly powerful, no one knows for certain exactly what he can do; did I tell you he used Voice on the Council members? We were all so shocked, we didn’t know what to do. Think about it: a vampire wizard, a blood born. If he switched to our side, success would be inevitable, because very few would take a stand against him.” A malicious gleam lit her eyes. “He’d make an acceptable king.”

If she’d wanted to annoy him, she’d succeeded. Not that he’d thought about being king in the new regime—too many restrictions, plus he seriously didn’t want to fuck her—but judging by the sparkle in Regina’s eyes she knew her jab had landed. To too many of their kind, Luca was the be-all and end-all of the kindred. The hell of it was, even Sorin liked the bastard. Sort of. And he’d be a lot more confident of their success if Luca was on their side.

“Don’t pout,” she said without remorse. “You’re a perfectly acceptable second in command.”

“As long as Luca Ambrus doesn’t see the error of his ways,” Sorin said sarcastically. “I don’t think that’ll
happen; if he had ever wanted to mate with you, it would have already happened.”

Red flashed in her eyes again, and he grinned. Jab at him, and he jabbed back. She was the type who kept jabbing until she got a reaction, so Sorin always gave her one, and if his reaction wasn’t exactly what she wanted, then she’d better learn to stop jabbing. He’d give her respect, he’d give her loyalty, but he wouldn’t be her punching bag.

She fiddled with the amulet she wore. For her excursion away from Council headquarters she had dressed in modern clothing, leaving the identifying robe behind and opting for a hideously expensive and perfectly fitted black suit and very high heels. But the amulet … she never removed it. Every Council member had one as a mark of their position, and her ego wouldn’t let her part with anything that signified her power, her position, her place in their world. She sighed. “You don’t have anything to worry about. Luca doesn’t change his mind. If he’s protecting the humans, he won’t be joining us. That’s a shame; it’s such a waste of strength and possibility.”

“Do you want me to kill him?”

“Of course I want you to kill him.” She lifted her hand in a dismissive wave. “But not just yet. Give him a few days to settle in with our little D.C. conduit. Maybe he’ll get to know her and decide she’s not worth the effort, because Luca’s very pragmatic. He might decide to sit out the action this time, or at the least he’ll relax somewhat. Even Luca isn’t infallible. Assign two or three of our more expendable soldiers to keep an eye on them. If Luca sees reason and gives up on her, then all the better.”

“Expendable?” That was the word which caught his attention. He was a soldier; none of his people were expendable, not in the sense of logistics and strategy.

“If Luca catches them, they
will
die,” Regina said without even pretending concern. “You might as well not send your best.”

Sorin’s hands clenched and unclenched. “And what am I supposed to do while Luca Ambrus picks off my weakest soldiers one by one?” It went against every instinct he had as a soldier to simply sacrifice his men for no good reason.

She was obviously unconcerned with the loss of a soldier or two. “Another target has been located, one who is apparently further along than Luca’s pet.” She seemed somehow displeased with the news. “I swear, if Jonas doesn’t pick up the pace, the Warriors will start coming in long before we’ve eliminated all the conduits.”

Poor Jonas, Sorin thought. He’d been cajoled, bribed, and then tortured, in order to get what Regina wanted from him. Nothing made the answers come any faster, and it would never occur to her that she was actually slowing down the process.

“I can’t tell you how annoying it is to have the one conduit that’s right under my nose protected by the only creature in the world who might actually keep her safe.”

In his opinion, there was very little chance they’d be able to eliminate all of the conduits in time, but a handful of Warriors, while formidable, wouldn’t be enough to organize the humans and realistically have a chance of winning. Even then, if Nevada didn’t succeed in breaking the sanctuary spell, the vampires were doomed to fail. The war would be costly to the humans, but as long as they could withdraw to a safe place the vampires couldn’t penetrate, couldn’t harm in any way, they
would
win.

She shrugged then, putting the subject aside for another. “Have you ever been to Atlanta?”

“Many times.” Just not in the past sixty years, or so.

“That’s where the next target is located. You leave tonight, so get some rest today.”

Good enough. At least when he was out hunting he wasn’t called to her audiences. That’s what his meetings with her felt like lately. Instead of being her second in command, nearly an equal, he could tell she was beginning to look at him as merely a subject. She habitually treated everyone as inferior, but lately it had begun to grate.

After she left, he did as ordered and assigned two soldiers to watch Chloe Fallon’s house when night fell. Regina might not approve, but he also warned them to steer clear of Luca, to keep a safe distance, and to inform him immediately if the two separated for any reason.

With that chore done, Sorin climbed the stairs to Nevada’s room. She’d been keeping vampire hours for most of her time here, working at night, sleeping during the day, so he knew she would be hard at work.

    Nevada couldn’t remember when she’d last slept well; not since coming to this place, at any rate. She woke often during the night … well, during the
day
, which had become her night … thinking of her family, of the life she’d lost, of the monsters who held her here. Sometimes she wondered why no one had found her; she wondered if anyone was even looking. Probably not. The vampires had left little to chance. What did her friends think had happened to her? Did they believe she was dead? Touring Europe? Since her family was also being held, did the cover story involve them, too? Probably.

It was likely everyone from the real world thought them all dead. A house fire or a horrific car accident would explain their exit from the world better than any other story. She hoped not, because that meant some
other people had died in their places, to provide bodies for the authorities to find. If that was the case, would any of them ever be released?

Since discovering that she had a talent for remote viewing, Nevada had tried to reach out for her family, to see them, to know they were alive and well. Alive, at least. She’d cast her net far and wide, thinking of her parents, her brother and sister, trying to find them in a big, chaotic world, but she couldn’t find any trace of them. She knew they were alive, or had been recently, because Sorin occasionally let her speak to them, very briefly, on his cell phone. But if she could just
see
them, visit them even if only in spirit, she’d feel better, feel as if something good could actually come from what she was doing.

Though she couldn’t see beyond these walls, and she didn’t have a clock to mark the hours, she was pretty sure it wasn’t full dark yet. At night the vampires became more active, they moved about, made more noise, filled the house with the energy Nevada had learned to feel. So, not yet dark; in these early-evening hours she was rarely disturbed by the vampires. It was easier to concentrate on her task when she didn’t expect to be interrupted for an hour or so.

Instead of searching willy-nilly for her family, it had occurred to her that she might have more success if she started at the center, and slowly widened her net of awareness. Taking a deep breath, she settled herself with her fingertips spread on the proper page in the book of spells, and drew all her energy in. Slowly, slowly, she began pushing it out, taking her time, examining every surge whether it felt familiar or not—

And there they were. Her family. Shock almost broke her concentration, but desperately she gathered all her strength and energy and held on to the vision. They
weren’t beyond her, they were
below
her, in the basement of this very building. Their windowless room was much too small for four people, and the walls were bare and gray. There was little furniture—two cots, some blankets, and a dim light—and no amenities that she could see.

But they were together, and alive, and oh, so close.

She sent her spirit soaring, out of her body and away from the physical world. In a flash Nevada stood in the corner of the gray room, washed in the love and fear her family emitted. She could see and hear them, and in that moment that was all she needed, she didn’t care that they couldn’t see her, that they had no idea she was with them. Anxiously she examined their throats, looking for signs of biting. Sorin had promised her none of the vampires would feed from her family, but why should she believe anything she was told by the monsters? Even though part of her whispered that he was different, he was still a vampire. It was a relief to see for herself that none of her family members bore any marks, no scars or bloodstains.

The tears that ran down Nevada’s cheeks were real. They dripped down the cheeks of the body while the spirit, in another place, felt the pain. She walked toward her parents, who sat side by side on one of the narrow cots. They were both thinner, older, and so very tired. She felt their fatigue, of both body and spirit. They were almost broken beyond repair. Her mother’s hair was now more gray than red, her face deeply lined. Her father had lost what little dark hair he’d had left on his head. Nevada reached out to touch them but her hand fell through their bodies. She didn’t truly exist here; she couldn’t touch them.

Justin, sitting on the other cot, had grown so much taller and thinner since she’d last seen him. He was now seventeen years old, tall and lanky. His auburn
hair had grown long and tangled, and the expression on his face was so angry. He had much to be angry about, to be trapped here, to have his life taken away. She couldn’t offer him any comfort, couldn’t reassure him.

Emily sat on the floor in the corner of the small room, her head down, her knees drawn in. Her hair was a fine light red like Nevada’s, her skin was pale … more pale now, since she hadn’t seen the sun in such a long time. Emily was fourteen … no, it was summer now, which meant Emily had just had her fifteenth birthday. They had always been so close, and even though she knew it was useless Nevada reached out to touch Emily’s hair, a gesture she’d been making since her little sister was born. She couldn’t comfort Emily, but perhaps she could comfort herself.

But as Nevada’s hand passed through her little sister, Emily’s head popped up. Her eyes widened and she looked wildly around. “Nevada?” she whispered.

Nevada was shocked out of the small gray room, away from her family and into her own body with a gasp and a lurch. She grabbed the table before her to keep from falling to the floor. Dear God, how was it possible? The others hadn’t realized that she was there, but Emily had known. How?

She swallowed, trying to control her rapid heartbeat. The vampires would hear it, would know she was upset or excited, and they would come to investigate. She needed some time to gather her composure, to think about what could have happened.

And then she knew. Emily had inherited some of the same powers the vampires had discovered in Nevada. The vampires would use Emily if they knew. No matter what, she couldn’t let them find out there was more than one witch in the family, and they certainly couldn’t find out that Nevada had discovered a way to reach beyond
these walls. Somehow she had to warn Emily to hide what she could do, what
they
could do.

The door swung open and Sorin walked in, as if he’d been drawn by her agitation. What she wouldn’t give for a lock on that door! The vampires were constantly in and out; they never knocked, never announced their unwelcome presence. Yes, Sorin was more welcome than the others, but she would rather have privacy.

He was what he was. As much as she’d come to care for Sorin, she knew that if he found out she’d discovered the ability to spy on them he’d kill her, and her family, in an instant. He was too dedicated to his purpose to allow her to spoil his plans.

“I’m leaving for a little while,” he said. “Until I get back, Loman will be in charge.”

There were some days when Nevada thought she might love Sorin, in some weird way. Other days she hated him intensely. But she never doubted that he was the lesser of many evils. She knew full well that inside he was as much a monster as any of the others, but he seemed to be more in control, less openly vicious. She saw the man he’d once been buried deep inside, where in the others she saw only hate and monstrosity. Just because he was handsome and occasionally kind to her, just because she occasionally saw his face when she closed her eyes to go to sleep, that didn’t mean she’d forgotten what he was.