Blood Hunt (60 page)

Two found herself speechless, flabbergasted by this news. They had known about this since before she had ever met with the council, before she had agreed to go to Europe, and they had told her nothing.

Theroen, who had remained silent the entire time, seemed to sense Two’s growing fury. He put his hand on her shoulder, but she knocked it away.

“How could you keep it from me?!” she cried. “Naomi … how
could
you?!”

“You would’ve run!” Naomi shouted back, still crying, her face contorted with grief and pain. “You would have run to Ohio, and we would have had to follow. We didn’t even know where she’d gone at that point!”

“And you know now?” Two asked.

“A person fitting her description has been leading the groups that are abducting Burilgi,” Jakob told her. “That’s the entire reason that Aros was mobilizing his army. We believe the Children of the Sun are responsible, and we believe that he was going to strike at them directly.”

Two ran a shaky hand through her hair, trying to retain some level of composure. “You fucking bastards. She’s my friend. She’s … do you have any idea what she went through with me?
For
me?!”

“We agreed as a council that it should be kept from you,” Jakob said. “It was not solely Naomi’s decision, nor mine. It was put to a vote, and it passed. Unanimously. We had no idea where she had gone. Two, if you want my apologies, you have them. If I knew then what I know now, we might have done things differently. We were trying to protect you.”

Two covered her face with her hands, forced herself to breathe. Forced herself to think.
Be calm,
she told herself.
Be calm and do the right thing. For once in your stupid life, try not to make things worse than they already are.

“What can I do to help her?” she asked at last.

“You can start by treating us as your friends,” Jakob said. “The council wants nothing more than to find Tori and stop her from continuing down this path. It’s going to be difficult. We’ve been studying the Children of the Sun for decades, and we don’t even know where their center of power is. They’re extremely secretive, and they’ve taken Tori to somewhere unknown.”

“So it would be pointless to go to Ohio,” Two said.

“Pointless
and
stupid,” Naomi muttered. William glanced over at her again, shaking his head.

“This is a poor time to discuss this,” he said.

“It’s a poor time for anything,” Jakob agreed. “If we weren’t all drenched in blood, I’d have already insisted that we break up this delightful gathering and go home. We need sleep, so that tomorrow we can do Stephen the courtesy of organizing the funeral he deserves. My men will be here with new clothing very soon.”

“Fine,” Two said. “Yes. Stephen’s funeral comes first. Then we’re going to figure out how to find Tori.”

“You’ll have the help of the council,” Jakob said. “In truth, you both should have seats. Theroen and his apprentice …”

“I offered,” William told him.

Theroen shook his head. “No. Not yet. Forgive me, but I’ve been held back from vampire politics for more than four hundred years. I’ve only been back from the grave for two
days
. I’m not ready to jump headfirst into this council.”

“I’m not much better than Stephen is … was … at sitting around and debating,” Two said.

“That’s not all we do,” Naomi said. The last of her tears were gone, and she seemed almost relieved, or at least less beaten-down than she had been. Two supposed a weight had been lifted from her, with the truth finally revealed.

“The invitation will remain open,” William said. “You are a new strain of vampire, the two of you, and the council welcomes the participation of all strains.”

“Have you returned to lead the council, then, William?” Jakob asked.

“Only until Malik returns,” William said.

“What if that never happens?” Two asked.

William sighed. “If that is the case, then I will do as we all have done: that which I must. In the end, is there ever any other way?”

No one answered him, and for a time, silence descended on the group. Two picked up Theroen’s hand in her own and stroked his fingers gently. She was sorry for knocking his hand away earlier and tried to make this obvious in her thoughts. If Theroen could read it he gave no indication, but she hoped that he understood.

At last, there was the sound of the cathedral’s front door opening, and Jakob stood.

“My men are here with clothing,” he said. “Let us all change and get on our way. I would like for this night to be over.”

* * *

“She didn’t mean the things that she said.”

Theroen was standing at the entrance to the hotel room’s bathroom, naked except for a towel tied around his waist, leaning against the door frame. Two, more thoroughly soaked in blood than he had been, had taken the first shower. Theroen was now done with his, and Two had been amused to hear him humming to himself as he brushed his teeth. She recognized the tune not as something from his long past, but rather a pop song that had been popular just two years ago.

“Who?” she asked now, glancing up at him from the bed where she had been reading. “Naomi?”

“Yes.”

“Of course she did.”

Theroen was silent, looking at her, waiting for her to elaborate. At last Two sighed, setting her magazine down on the bed.

“You know what Naomi learned from what happened to Lisette? She learned not to make waves. She learned to play politics, follow the rules, and not piss anyone off. It kept her alive even when she was just a fledgling with a dead master, stuck in the middle of Europe with no friends and no idea what to do next. She went to the European council, and they put her in touch with other vampires who could help her. That was how she learned to be a diplomat, and how she learned that if she didn’t have something nice to say, she probably shouldn’t say anything at all.”

“I’m not sure how that coincides with her screaming at you,” Theroen said.

“That’s the point, though. Listen, Naomi couldn’t admit to me that she blamed you for Lisette. Even when we were lying in bed together she said she didn’t blame you, but that wasn’t the truth. It took Stephen … it took him getting killed for her walls to finally come down enough for her to tell us the truth about how she felt.”

“I wish I could help ease her pain,” Theroen said. “But I don’t see how I can. She is right to blame me for Lisette’s death.”

Two shook her head. “Oh, baby, she doesn’t blame you for
that
. I know you blame yourself, but it wasn’t your fault. It was Lisette’s fault, and Abraham’s fault, and Naomi understands that. What hurt her … what’s
still
hurting her is that Lisette chose you. She made Naomi her fledgling, but she
loved
you.”

“I never knew,” Theroen said. His eyes were distant, and Two guessed he was going back through his memories of times long ago, searching for clues that he might have picked up as to Naomi’s true feelings.

“She kept it inside,” Two said. “She didn’t want you to know. She was happy for the two of you! She … it’s complicated. Love is fucking complicated.”

Theroen nodded.

“As for the rest of it, I mean … is it any surprise she was upset that as soon as I heard we might be able to bring you back, it pretty much nuked our relationship? Blaming you for Stephen was unfair, but it’s probably the only thing she said that she didn’t mean.”

“What about the things she said when you went to talk to her?” Theroen asked. Two had told him about that on their way from the Cathedral to the hotel. She had seen no sense in hiding it from him.

“What, that I’m a horrible, ungrateful, manipulative bitch who never loved her like she loved me, no matter what she did to make me happy? That’s all true.”

Theroen left the doorway now and sat down beside her on the bed. He took her hand, pressed his lips to it, and smiled.

“I don’t think it’s true,” he said. “Or at least, I don’t think your actions were anywhere near that intentional and malicious.”

“Sometimes people can be pretty malicious without meaning to,” Two said. “I … I need to be a better person, Theroen. I need to be less selfish and impulsive. I need to make up for all the shit I’ve caused for so many people. I owe it to people like Melissa and Stephen. Naomi. Rhes and Sarah and Molly. I owe it to
you
. All of those people believed in me.”

“We still do,” Theroen said. He leaned over and kissed her. Two kissed back, broke away, closed her eyes and put her face against his neck. His skin was warm, his heart beating. He was here, real, and that fact seemed to fill her with a strength she hadn’t felt in so long.

“Will you help me?” she asked him. “We’re together in this now, right? You and me? Will you help me to be someone better than I am now?”

Theroen put one hand in her hair, traced the other up and down along her back, said, “I will help you to be whoever you wish to be.”

“You’re not going to leave me again?”

“I am not going anywhere.”

Two wrapped her arms around him, clutching him to her, holding him tight. Theroen returned her embrace.

“My love,” she whispered.

* * *

Members of the American council of vampires held services for Stephen on Christmas Eve. William led the event, as Malik had tendered his formal resignation from the council the previous evening. The funeral was attended by many Ay’Araf vampires, and not a few from the other races. For all his abrasive qualities, Stephen had been well-respected among the vampires of North America.

Naomi had declined the opportunity to present a eulogy, not wanting to break down in front of her fellow vampires. She was sitting in the first row, next to a man Two did not know but who looked equally devastated. Two thought the man might be Stephen’s sire.

It was Jakob who delivered the principal speech of the evening, and he took the podium with an expression of deep sadness, looking out over his fellow vampires for a moment before addressing them.

“Stephen was my friend and I will miss him,” he began. “I will miss his experience and his insight, his humor and his sarcasm. I will miss sparring with him, with words and with weapons. Most of all, I will miss his honesty – the knowledge that whatever his opinion of the subject at hand, I was sure to get it without filters … of any sort.”

The crowd chuckled at this. Even Naomi managed a laugh through her tears.

“It pains me so very much to have to stand here today,” Jakob continued. “It pains me to acknowledge that I will never see him again, never laugh with him, never argue with him. It pains me, yet it is the least I can do for him. The very least.

“Stephen Connelly was a good man, a good fighter, and a good friend. He gave all that he could in the service of his fellow vampires. In the end, he gave the most precious thing he had to offer: his life. Today we honor him. We will not forget him, nor the sacrifice he has made so that others of us might live. Goodbye, Stephen. Goodbye, my friend.”

Jakob’s voice cracked on the last sentence, and he bowed his head briefly as he attempted to regain control. Eventually he made his way back to sit down next to Sasha, who looked tired and pale. Her left arm was still heavily bandaged and partially bound to her body to immobilize it. She leaned her head on Jakob’s shoulder and he took her good right hand in his.

Two had started crying only a few moments after walking through the cathedral doors and had been unable to stop since. She was weeping now, holding a tissue to her eyes with one hand, the other clutching Theroen’s. These were not the hard, harsh sobs of anguish that she had gotten out of the way earlier, first standing under the shower at their hotel and then kneeling, leaning against the tiled wall, her legs no longer able to support the weight of her grief. Instead, it seemed simply that her eyes would not stop leaking tears, no matter who was speaking, or what the subject was.

Two listened as William told of Stephen’s many contributions to vampire society and the work he had done on behalf of the council on both sides of the ocean. She listened as some of his Ay’Araf friends told stories about him. She listened as the man who had been sitting next to Naomi, now proven to be Stephen’s sire, told of the young and brash human he had once known.
At last, the service came to an end. Stephen’s casket was brought away by a group of Ay’Araf men and women, Jakob among them, and the funeral attendees stood, breaking off into small groups to talk among themselves. Two was surprised to see that Naomi, now somewhat more composed, was making her way over.

“Hi,” she said as she reached Two.

“Are you OK?” Two asked.

Naomi smiled a little, sniffled, dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “I’ve been better.”

“Yeah. No kidding. Look, Naomi—”

Naomi held up her hand. “No, wait. Let me go first. I … I’ve spent some time talking with Mother Ashayt, these past few days. She is helping me to deal with what happened. Not just Stephen, but all of it.”

Naomi glanced down at the floor. Two and Theroen waited, silent, letting her gather her thoughts.

“It was wrong of me to say the things I said … to both of you,” Naomi said at last. “That’s not … it’s not the politician talking. I’m not trying to win points or … or smooth feathers. Do you understand? It’s just me. Just the stupid, needy, pick-pocket servant girl who’s been hiding behind the façade for all these years. What I said was wrong.”

“Under the circumstances, we can hardly blame you,” Theroen said.

“Stephen and I …” Naomi shook her head, sighed, and looked like she was about to begin crying again but forced it away. “In nineteen-seventy, in August, he and I went to Ireland together. I’d known him for two years and we’d become quite close. We toured the countryside by night and ended up staying just outside of Galway, on the western coast, near the place where he was born. One night, just after the sun had set, we went down and walked on the same beach he had walked as a child, and I kissed him. I told him I loved him, and I kissed him.

“He stopped me, of course. We went through all the usual things that people say when they don’t want to start a relationship. He told me I was wonderful, that it was because of his issues and not me that we couldn’t be together. He told me he wished it could be different, but that he would never be right for me. He said I deserved someone who would want to see plays and read poetry with me. He said I should find someone who could love me in all of the ways that I could love them. I didn’t know what he meant, not then, but I do now.