Blood Born (54 page)

Warriors continued to arrive. They’d missed the initial battle, but there would be others. And it looked as if the war they’d come here to fight wouldn’t be so simple as vampires against warriors. There were four vampires who’d killed their own kind tonight, who’d protected the humans, as Indikaiya had come here to do. She was not foolish enough to dispatch an ally in a war where she needed every ally she could get.

Chloe said a word to Luca and stepped away from him, heading toward Indikaiya with a smile. The rising sun had dimmed her new vampire’s energy, even though she hadn’t seen even a hint of light. Luca watched her closely, especially as she walked past Jimmy. But she passed the human without anything more than a quick glance; she was very much in control of herself, which was rare for a new vampire.

“You nearly drove me crazy,” Chloe said gently as she came near.

“My apologies,” Indikaiya said, the words accompanied by a curt bow that would’ve been more appropriate in another time. “Of all my descendants, you were the strongest, psychically. Your mother could not hear me at all, and the others … they were simply not capable.”

“It’s okay. You were doing what needed to be done. I know that now. But man, when all I could see was a braid and I was hearing your voice out of nowhere … definitely nutsville.”

“It was necessary.”

Chloe lowered her voice. “I just want to make sure
that you’re going to keep your word. About Luca. You said you wouldn’t kill him.”

“He still has his head, and his heart.”

“I’d like to keep it that way.”

Luca Ambrus needed protection less than any being on this earth, as far as Indikaiya could tell, and yet here was Chloe, shielding the blood-born vampire as best she could. “You love him.”

“I do.”

Indikaiya was attuned to the power in the room, to every vampire, the two humans, to the warriors—some she knew well, some who were new allies—and suddenly she was aware of a new and different energy, something rare and powerful: another descendant.

A half breed in the belly of a new vampire; a vampire who was also a conduit, both impregnated and turned by a blood born. Such a thing had never happened before.

Chloe had no idea that she was carrying a child conceived before she’d been turned. Indikaiya didn’t think Luca knew, either … though with his gift he would likely figure it out very soon. She was only able to sense the child because she was so attuned to those in her bloodline.

Like it or not, the war Indikaiya had come to this world to join would not be a simple one. Vampires like Luca and Sorin would be fighting beside the warriors, not against them. Chloe and her child needed to be protected, just as the humans would be. There would be those, human and vampire, who would do their best to make sure the half breed didn’t come into this world. Indikaiya herself would argue that such a being should not come to be, and yet this was Chloe’s child, Indikaiya’s own blood.

This would be a war fought in shades of gray, and she much preferred black and white. Good and evil.

As if to prove her point Sorin caught her eye, smiled and, heaven above, winked at her.

The sooner they killed the vampire queen and ended this foolish revolution, the better off the human race, and Indikaiya herself, would be.