Dark Awakening (25 page)

And she was still clutching Ludo’s shirt. The vampire was barely on his feet, and she could feel his trembling. Even as she realized he was there, he began to fall. Without even thinking, Lily moved to take his weight and was mortified when he flinched at her touch.

“Don’t!” he wailed. “Get away!”

Lily watched helplessly as Jaden stepped forward to take him.

“I’ve got it,” he said, and Lily hated the wary way he looked at her now. What the hell had happened to her? She wrapped her arms around herself protectively and shivered, but not from the cold. She didn’t even want to look at Ty, didn’t want to see the horror she was sure was there.

“You going to be all right?” she heard Jaden asking Ludo. The Dracul vampire’s voice was weak at first but quickly gained strength. That, at least, was encouraging.

“I’ll be fine,” Ludo snarled, shaking away from Jaden to stand on his own. He looked at Lily balefully, his eyes spitting dark fire. “You’re right. The Dracul can come after you himself. I want no part of this.” Then he looked at Ty, just behind her shoulder. “Take her to the Ptolemy. I hope she kills every last damned one of them.”

Then he was simply gone. A small winged shape flickered into the air and vanished. Lily watched it go with a heavy heart. Even among freaks of nature, she was considered a freak. And here, she didn’t seem as able to control it. She was slipping, and she didn’t know why.

All she knew was that wherever she had gone, Ty’s voice had brought her back.

Jaden’s voice claimed her attention then. “Holy God, woman. What got into you?”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. What could she say? Slowly, reluctantly, she turned to look at Ty. His expression revealed nothing, but she
knew
that he would take the first opportunity now to deliver her to Arsinöe and run. Just as anyone who had ever seen one of her “episodes” had run.

She didn’t really blame them. But that didn’t ever make it any easier.

“Lily,” he breathed. “What happened?”

The world began to swim as the reality of what had happened landed on her with immense force. The power was a high, but the comedown was an awful bitch. She swayed but didn’t reach for Ty. She knew better. He wouldn’t be wanting to touch her now.

“The red-haired woman from my dreams,” Lily said, having to force herself not to slur her words. “The priestess, or whatever she was.”

Ty frowned. “Priestess?”

Lily shook her head, and wished she hadn’t. The motion was nauseating. God, it had never been this bad before. But she’d never thrown so much force before. “Vampire priestess. I don’t know. I could hear her in my head. And then it wasn’t me anymore.”

She was stunned when she felt his hands on her, though she thought it was only to prop her up. She was sliding fast. Too much output, not enough energy to keep going afterward.

Crap.

“Who’s this woman, Lily? What are you talking about? What have you seen?” He sounded almost frantic, but there was little she could tell him and even less she could explain. Besides, she was sliding toward the darkness
now, warm and welcoming. There was no time for small talk.

“She rules the House of the Mother,” Lily said, and saw Ty’s face change. “But she died, a long time ago. Her people were slaughtered. And she says I’m the only one left. I carry her blood. Somehow…”

He looked stunned. But Lily had no time for it.

“That’s not possible,” Ty said.

“Yes, it is,” Lily replied, feeling her legs buckling, relieved that she was going to get to escape if only for a little while. “But you’re going to have to catch me while you figure it out, okay?”

The last thing she felt was his arms around her as consciousness slipped away.

S
HE HAD NO IDEA
how long she’d slept, only that she awoke to a comfortable bed and delicious warmth.

Lily opened her eyes slowly, finding herself in an unfamiliar room. It was small, tidy, and lit with only a single flickering candle that had burned almost all the way down. Her shoes had been taken off, but everything else remained. However, she had been tucked neatly beneath a soft and faded quilt. And the warmth, she saw, came from the enormous black cat lying up against her.

Ty
. She knew it was him immediately. He was sleeping, drawing in deep, even breaths. Despite the fact that Lily thought it was likely daylight outside, she moved carefully, not wanting to disturb him.

So this was the form that made him a vampire outcast, Lily thought, fascinated that the animal beside her could be the man she’d been with all week. He hadn’t changed form around her, though she wasn’t sure what he did on the occasions he vanished to get the sustenance he
needed. She’d only seen him like this once, and then it had been fleeting.

One thing was for sure: just as no one would ever mistake him for a domesticated male, he was never going to pass for a house cat.

He was long and sleek, stretching half the length of her body. His fur gleamed black in the flickering light, and his frame was muscular, more like a wildcat built for hunting. Which he was, Lily knew. She lifted her hand, momentarily uncertain.

Oh, what the hell, he’s passed out. He’s not going to know if I pet him.

Tentatively, Lily ran her hand down his side, fingers brushing over silken fur. She stroked lightly at first, then more assuredly, soothed by the feel of him as she began to turn over all that had happened and ponder what was to come. She let her hand travel over his flank, his face, pausing to rub velvety ears.

She smiled a little when a low vibration began to thrum beneath her touch. She didn’t know what he was like with other people, but he seemed to be a purrer with her.

Her smile faded when she thought back to what had happened in the street. She’d lost control. Why she’d ever thought she could grab her particular tiger by the tail and make it obey was beyond her now, though how could she have expected what felt like possession? She shouldn’t have cared, but the sheer terror on Ludo’s face was going to haunt her.

It was the look her adopted mother had had on her face when… when…

Lily pushed it from her mind. There was no point in revisiting something so far in the past. What was done
was done. She needed to figure out what to do going forward. It was a complete mess. Anura had run to the leader of the Dracul. She still had Damien out there somewhere, hunting her. And Ty still seemed determined to take her to Arsinöe, who was probably going to be disappointed at best in her ability to produce the sort of vision she needed.

She stroked, unseeing, lost in thought.

And suddenly realized that she was no longer stroking fur but taut, silken flesh.

Lily sucked in a breath, jerking her hand away instinctively. It was now Ty lying alongside her in the form she was used to, wearing nothing but jeans and a sleepy, heavy-lidded look that made her want to press him back down on the bed and crawl on top of him. Immediately her troubled thoughts stilled, replaced by her need for his body and by a longing, one she couldn’t quite articulate, for more than just the physical.

“You should warn me before you do that,” she said, hearing the shaken sound in her voice and knowing that it had nothing to do with what had happened earlier. It had everything to do with him.

He rested on his side, up on one elbow, watching her with his steady silver gaze. The hazy expression had vanished almost as soon as she’d noticed it and was now as sharp as ever. He didn’t smile, only seemed to be searching her face for something.

“You’re all right,” he said. There was something strange in his voice, something she hadn’t heard before.

Lily slowly nodded. “Yeah. I guess ghostly possession is one of those things that doesn’t have any lingering effects.”

The crack appeared to fall on deaf ears.

“I wasn’t sure when you’d wake up.
If
you’d wake up,” he said. “Jaden and I carried you here. Fortunately it wasn’t far.”

Lily found it hard to tear her eyes away from Ty’s, but curiosity made her take another look at her surroundings. The room was small and simple, with an iron bed, a nightstand. The wooden floor was bare. There were two doors, both shut, and one of them was dead bolted.

“And where is ‘here’ exactly?”

“It’s a safe house. Every large city has them, and there are others scattered about. Good places to hide if you’re a lowblood in trouble. This is actually where we were headed when we ran into Ludo and… everything. It’s run by an old friend of mine. Another Cait Sith.” Ty looked away. “I’d thought he might know where Anura went, but we already have the answer to that question.”

Lily nodded, troubled as she remembered. “Why would she have run to the Dracul? I still don’t understand why she would have told this Vlad about me. She seemed so…” She trailed off, but a number of words came to mind.
Warm
and
wise
were two of them. Descriptions completely at odds with what she had done.

Ty looked less surprised than she felt. “She’s protecting her interests, no doubt. Vlad Dracul is a powerful vampire, if not the most beloved, and though the Empusae have a presence here, it’s really his dynasty that tolerates them being here and not the other way around. She smells war, Lily, and she’s probably not wrong. Anura is just shoring up her protection. I don’t like it, but it wasn’t personal. Even if she is on the wrong side.”

“And you’re on the right side?”

He sighed. “It’ll be the winning side. Makes it right
enough, in my opinion. I don’t get to sit this one out, so I’d rather stand with the Ptolemy.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that we’re in some serious trouble.” He looked at her closely, hesitated, and then brushed a lock of hair out of her face with a tenderness that surprised her.

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

“As all right as I’m going to be. I’m not exactly sure what happened.”

Ty’s brows drew together. “You were talking about the House of the Mother right before you passed out. Do you know what that is?” he asked.

Lily shook her head, pushing away memories of fire and smoke and screams. They had come upon her so quickly in the street, overwhelming her. “Not a clue. But I think the woman I see in my dreams, the one in my, well, I guess they’re visions, of a sort… I think she’s the head of it. She’s got red hair, same color as mine. And she’s always wearing this one-shouldered green dress that looks Greek or Roman or something. I always see her in a temple, and there’s a huge fight. Seems like an ambush, actually, with the other side in red.” Lily closed her eyes and saw it so clearly. “It’s a bloodbath, at least at first. The ones attacking are so fast.”

“Like lightning,” Ty murmured, but she barely heard him.

“But then things start to turn around. I’ve never seen people fight like that, throwing things with just a touch. Flashes of light. It’s pandemonium,” she said, swept up once again in the thought of it, the intensity of the scene that she’d stood in so many times. “I always think she might manage a victory, pull it off. But every time, she dies.”

“Dies?” His voice was soothing but far off. Lily could smell the smoke again, and the distant echoes of the cries of the doomed began to echo in her ears. She didn’t want it, but she felt herself slipping, falling down into the dark place again where she knew someone else was lurking—someone who had already risen up to use her body, her voice. Someone incredibly strong. Her mark tingled ominously.

“There’s a woman, beautiful and dark, with a knife,” Lily said, struggling back up from the encroaching darkness. She opened her eyes, banishing the vision that wanted to claim her again. “She comes up behind the woman in green, out of nowhere. Calls her terrible things. And after… you know… she wants to know where the baby is. That’s always the last thing I hear, this dark-haired woman demanding to know about the baby.”

Ty was watching her closely, his expression unreadable. She didn’t want to be telling him this, was afraid he’d think she was as crazy as her family once had. But she knew she had no choice. This time, it was important.

“Lily,” he said, “are these people you keep seeing vampires?”

She nodded. “Yes. I could see their teeth. And the abilities they had are definitely not normal.”

“Then I don’t see how there can be a child. Vampires can’t have children. And all things considered, that’s probably best.”

Lily shrugged and looked away, frustrated. “I know. Maybe she’d kidnapped it.” Except that wasn’t right, she knew. She’d seen the tenderness on the red-haired woman’s face, seen the way she’d held the baby. It was hers. Somehow, it was hers.

“In any case,” Lily finished, “the baby was important. But she handed her off to another woman before they could take her away.”

“Her. It was a female child?”

Lily frowned. “I… Yeah, it was.” She knew it was true. It felt true. Even though she realized at that moment that she’d never heard anyone in her dream refer to the baby as being a boy or a girl. Still. She knew.

She looked at Ty, an oasis of silent strength standing just outside of her own whirlwind, and tried to use his outward calm to center herself. “I don’t understand it, Ty. What happened out there… it’s like I wasn’t myself. There have been a couple of incidents over the years. But this time was worse. Or maybe not worse,” she qualified, remembering the thrill of the power that had rocketed through her like a drug, the seductive edge of what she had wielded. “More dangerous,” she decided. She could have killed Ludo. She’d felt his life in her hands, the pulse and beat of it. Why she’d stopped, she didn’t know. She could only be grateful that she had, because she’d also known as soon as she’d touched him that he was no match for her.