Heiress of Lies (24 page)

     She knew she was leaving out huge chunks of the story, but she couldn’t see how it would make the situation better for him to know that she had been turned into a wraith, and that her journey home required a stop at the coven of the vampire master.

     Alair drew back and his eyes widened in alarm. “You should never have been allowed anywhere near the Amaron Forest. It is a dark place for anyone of my bloodline.” He looked around him with a slightly panicked expression. “Is this the place where you have conjured me? If so, you have put us both in danger, your life, and my peaceful afterlife.”

     Angeline frowned. She had never considered that in his current form that Alair could be in danger as well. She glanced back over her shoulder. Caspian was writing in his book. Searon had wandered back to his chair and was picking at his nails with his knife. Only Connor seemed to be paying attention, and his worried expression mirrored her own.

     “The boundary will hold for a time longer, m’lord. You have no reason to fear. But I do,” Angeline said with a confidence that she didn’t feel. “How I arrived here is of little consequence. I am here and I am in trouble. If my father dies before I return home, Altera could fall into anarchy. I am the heir to the throne.”

     Alair’s eyes narrowed. “My throne falls to a woman? How could a descendant of mine have been so careless to not secure the throne with a son?”

     Angeline felt a familiar anger, not one that was part of her demon. She was tired of being told that she should have been a boy. She wasn’t, and that ship was long sailed.

     “My father chose not to remarry when my mother passed,” Angeline said. “And I have been preparing to take over the throne since I was born. My father has trained me well, and
my
country will be in good hands.”

     Alair snorted, but said nothing else.

     “You bound these spirits here. You have to tell me how to unbind them,” she said.

     “You know nothing,” Alair hissed. “Whatever your
friends
told you isn’t the truth. Or what you’re telling me isn’t the truth.”

     “What do you mean?” Angeline said, crossing her arms. Alair wasn’t making any sense.

     “Those spirits are gatekeepers, yes. They are guardians of Altera and they serve a very special purpose. And I will not unbind them, no matter what,” Alair said firmly.

     “Gatekeepers of what?” Angeline said.

     “They protect the boundary of Altera from the most vicious predator of all, more dangerous to my kingdom than even the vampire, which at least can be reasoned with,” he said, looking her squarely in the eye.

     And Angeline realized that he knew. He had known from the moment she told him what she needed.

     “They protect the boundary from wraiths,” she said faintly.

     “Indeed they do,” Alair said. “They had to. Even after my wife and eldest son became ones.”

     Angeline felt dizzy and she wanted to sit down. But she couldn’t let her emotions overrule what she needed to do. And she needed to escape this forest intact.

     “So, that part of the histories remains lost,” Alair said, nodding in satisfaction. “Good. Marietta and Josiah did not deserve to be remembered the way that they ended.”

     “No, it is said that they died in the plague,” Angeline said numbly. If this man was willing to wipe all existence of wraiths from the face of history, how could she get him to help her?

     “Close enough,” Alair said. “The beast found them when they had taken ill with the disease that was sweeping the land. We called it the plague, but it was something far worse. My enemy had found a way to strike at me in the most insidious way. He was taking my people and raising a horde of wraiths to ravage and destroy the countryside. The vampires had less to fear. Their histories spoke of the wraith and they knew how to fend them off. But humans had never been exposed to this abomination and so we were ill prepared. I was forced to grovel before the Clan to save my people, but not before the disease visited my own house.”

     “What happened?” Angeline said.

     “I made a deal with the devil. They gave me the means to rip the souls from the bodies of the wraiths and they all set upon each other in each in a frenzy. While they were distracted, I banished them across the Solera Valley on the far side of the kingdom to the Amaron Forest and forbade anyone to go there. I admit that I had hoped that the souls would have turned their attention on the vampires, but unfortunately my enemies had already figured out a way around that problem too.”

     “If it saved your people, then it sounds like a good deal,” Angeline said.

     “Oh no,” Alair disagreed. “They gave me that power, but in return I could no longer fight the vampire. I had to declare a blood truce with the Grand Counsel of vampires and cease all future efforts to eradicate that race from all existence. You see, even then the Clan was playing both sides.”

     “A blood truce?” Angeline asked in horror. It was another barbaric practice that she had read about in those books that were hidden in her father’s secret library. “Who?”

     Alair sighed heavily. “I was becoming an old man. The years of war had worn on me, even though I had thought that the tides had finally turned completely in my favor. But then the wraiths came, and I lost my wife and my eldest son. To ensure my bloodline, I could not afford to sacrifice my remaining son.”

     “Who?” Angeline asked, more forcefully this time.

     “My daughter Sophia,” he said simply. His eyes never left hers. “I had no choice.”

     Angeline felt sick. She wanted this interview, or whatever it was, to end. But she couldn’t until she had pulled every bit of useful information out of this hateful man.

     “How do I leave the forest?” she asked.

     “You don’t,” Alair said. “I regret that this leaves my kingdom without an heir, but it is much more important that the demon inside of you never has a chance to see the light of day on my throne. I’d rather die a thousand deaths all over again than to help you.”

     And that was when Angeline saw his hand slip inside his cloak and he pulled out a glowing red knife. She heard Connor yell and saw a blinding flash of light. She felt his pain as he bounced off the barrier. Her barrier of blood.

     Angeline let herself fall backward just as the knife sliced through the air above her. It was like she was moving in slow motion. As soon as the knife completed its arc, she rolled to her left and flipped over. She hit the ground and rolled again just as the knife dug into the dirt where her torso had just been. She heard the voice whisper in her head, and for once she listened. As Alair’s shadow fell over her and she saw his arms raised over his head, she kicked out her foot and connected with the bowl of blood that had been sitting in the middle of the circle. As soon as it went over she heard Alair’s scream of frustration, and as the knife came down she flung her arms over her face.

     Then there was another blinding flash and Alair seemed to explode into a thousand tiny bits of dust that swirled all around the circle. He was gone. And seconds later Connor hovered over her.

     “Princess, are you all right?” he asked.

     The dust particles caught in the firelight and lit up, reminding her of the ceiling of the cave where she had first woken up after she had been bitten by the spider. Now, just as then, she was mesmerized by them. But in this instance, they were the final remnants of her great-great-great-grandfather, who had tried to kill her. She felt Connor’s hands tuck under her arms and he drew her to her feet. She leaned against him, wanting for just one moment to feel like someone else would take care of her.

     “That was…unexpected,” she said.

     She heard clapping and looked up to see Searon looking at her in delight. “How wonderful!” he said. He jumped into the circle and grabbed Angeline out of Connor’s grasp and swung her around.

     Angeline wanted him to set her down. She could feel his cold fingers biting into her waist and although he was smiling she sensed a cruelty lay just underneath the smiling surface. He finally set her down and threw his arm around her shoulders.

     “Caspian!” Searon barked. “Go dig in those ragamuffin trunks of yours and find a ball gown worthy of a queen. We can’t have my cousin meeting my father in these common rags!”

     “Cousin?” Angeline said. Her head was spinning, not only from everything that Alair had told her, but from the crazy turns that Searon had just spun her around in.

     “Yes, of course. I’m surprised I didn’t see it before,” Searon said. “Caspian! Forget it. You have no idea what you’re doing. I’ll do it myself.” Searon leapt from the clearing into the left eye up the cliff.

     “What is he going on about?” Angeline muttered.

     Shock laced Connor's words.“Sophia was Searon’s mother.”

     Angeline felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. How much of her life was false? How much didn’t she know about who she was and where she came from? How could her family have kept these terrible secrets all these years?

     Connor was hovering, and she wanted him to wrap her in his arms and take her away from this place. Away from this truth that had spun everything she thought she knew and had taken for granted. Good and evil, black and white, everything now seemed to be a muddy shade of gray.

     Caspian suddenly appeared in front her, searching her face with a new inquisitive eye. “Huh. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. No wonder the Master was so secretive of his wife’s bloodline; she wasn’t a true pure-blood vampire, although one can’t sniff at her background. It has been one of the most well-kept secrets in the coven. Even I couldn’t ferret it out, and I can usually find out anything.” He turned away and buried his head in his book.

     Angeline heard a ruckus coming from up the cliff, and then shredded fabric started to pepper the air. Silks, chiffons, and cottons in varying textures and colors. None of them appeared to be meeting with Searon’s approval.

     Despite the intense desire to be comforted, she knew that a problem still existed that hadn’t been resolved. She turned to Connor. “We didn’t find out how to unbind the souls here.”

     “No,” Connor said. “We will have to take our chances up above.” He pointed to the top of the rock wall.

     “If that was another option, why did we have to go through all of this?” Angeline asked. She hated the slight shriek of her voice that signaled she was stressed. She also started to feel a familiar twinge in her stomach.

     “There are creatures beyond the Altera limits that give even vampires pause,” Connor said. “It didn’t seem prudent to subject you to that. Even though you are likely stronger and faster than any one of us, you are still bound by your human flesh and easily hurt.”

     “I don’t understand the benefit of this form, or how I could have inherited what is supposed to be the best of both species, and still be so frail,” Angeline said.

     “Every species has weaknesses,” Caspian said, finally raising his nose from his book. “The only way to kill a vampire is to stab it through the heart. The benefit of your frail skin is that you can still go out in the daylight. Be grateful for it. Every weakness has its opposing positive benefit.”

     Angeline chewed on her lip. “We need to get out of here. Is there any other way? Anything that you haven’t already thought of?”

     Connor shuffled and cleared his throat. “There is one other way. But you won’t want to do it.”

     “What is it?” Angeline demanded.

     Connor muttered under his breath. Caspian nodded, but Angeline didn’t hear what he said.

     “What?” she asked again.