Obsidian (Mystic Stones Series #1) (23 page)

“Did you love her?” I asked without thinking.

“I loved her as I would a family member. I saw her more as a mother or an aunt than anything else. The whole village did. The tragedy is she did nothing wrong. She was the kindest and most generous person in the whole village,” Jesse said. I caught his eyes with mine. They were years away. He was remembering every detail as if it happened yesterday.

“Why didn’t she use her voice to control the men that took her?” I asked.

Jesse blinked for the first time in a short while. He hung his head. “They were prepared, and they gagged her,” he finally replied.

I took in a deep breath. “I’m sorry you had to lose someone so close to you,” I said as I put my arm around him and rested my head on his shoulder.

“I only hope I never have to endure that again,” he said. He put his hand on my cheek and wiped away the tear forming under my eye.

“You and she would have gotten along well. She would have gladly mentored you in the ways of the siren,” he said. A slight smile crossed his face.

“What was her name?” I asked.

“Tullia,” he replied.

I sat with Jesse until the sun sank deep in the sky. He stared out the window as the sun disappeared over the horizon and he turned to stone with sorrowful eyes and his mouth set in a hard line. I kissed his marble forehead and after a few more moments of silence, I went to my bed and watched TV until I fell asleep.

That night I dreamed of my mother. I dreamed we were singing to sailors, to lure them away from rocky shores to the safety of Hilo Bay. One of the sailors seemed to resemble Jesse and he waved to me from the ship as it sailed to safety.

Bang!

My eyes flew open as adrenaline surged into my chest and I sat up in bed. The door to our hotel room was wide open and Tom walked through the doorway with two other men. It took me a moment to realize I wasn’t dreaming before I reached for my dagger and gun. Two inches away from grabbing protection, one of the drudges grabbed me by the wrists. I struggled and pushed him back. My voice would only let out grunts and useless words like “stop” and “let me go.”

The drudge took out some handcuffs and the other one helped flip me over to my stomach so they could cuff my hands behind my back. I started to yell, but they gagged me.

“Take off her ring,” Tom instructed.

I closed my fist, but my ring finger was no match for the strong hands of two drudges. The ring slipped off and the drudges let go of me. I rolled back over onto my back so I could see Tom and the drudges. I glared at them and wished the hate in my eyes could stop them dead in their tracks. Tom stared back at me with a grin one-thousand times more evil than any other I’d seen him wear before.

“Sorry, Ava. I wanted to do this the easy way, but you’ve forced me to take this route.” I glanced over at Jesse. He was still in statue form and watching helplessly while I was being kidnapped.

“Interesting, isn’t he? Such a weakness is most definitely a curse,” he said as he turned his attention to Jesse. “What a gentleman to give you your own bed. Let’s move on, boys.”

One of the drudges grabbed me and lifted me off the bed. I got a glimpse of the clock before they rushed me out the door and into a waiting limo. It was only 4:30 a.m. Jesse wouldn’t return to his normal state for at least two hours. The adrenaline still coursed through my body, but had diluted itself so that my mind became calm enough for me to form clear thoughts. I would not allow myself to cry or show weakness of any kind.

In the limo, I tried to sit far away from Tom, but the drudges kept me sandwiched between them. After about ten minutes of driving, Tom made his move. He slid toward me and relieved the drudge on my right.

“I’m going to take this gag off. Don’t scream. It’s not going to do you any good. Oh, and don’t sing either, it won’t work on me and the boys here have pearls in their ears. You figured out that you’re a siren, or Jesse figured out you’re a siren. Either way, I watched your little show at the beach yesterday.”

I nodded with a glare directed at him. Once it was off, we drove in silence for a minute or two.

“Where are you taking me?” I demanded.

Tom didn’t answer.

“I know your plan,” I said to taunt him. The story that Jesse had told me the night before was fresh in my mind. They were taking me away from the ocean.

He was still silent.

“Even now you still won’t get what you want. You can’t change me unless I agree or I’m worthless to you,” I said, keeping an eye on his expression.

An emotion flickered. Then he turned to me and said, “The rules say nothing about you agreeing under duress. It’s never been attempted, but I guess we are willing to take the chance since all other plans failed. Tell me. How did you figure it out? You must have gotten sick on your way to Las Vegas.”

I ignored him.

“I’ll bet Jesse Sutton figured it out. He’s been on this earth for much too long. Almost as long as I have, but not quite. Long enough to build quite the reputation, though. He hates most supernatural creatures, but I guess he has a weak spot for sirens,” Tom retorted. He had his evil grin across his face.

They were going to make me sick, so sick that I might die. My heart raced at the thought, but I knew I could get through this. Emotions spiraled inside my head and anger took over. I wanted to hurt Tom.

“You were so stupid to believe me,” I spat at him.

“You thought you were playing me, but I was the one playing you. Nothing we had was real. It was all a result of double manipulation. I won that round, and I’ll win this one too,” I said.

Tom looked at me with his poker face. “We’ll see. You’re stubborn, but so am I. I hope you like the desert. It isn’t so bad once you get past the dry air. Although, it may be a bit more difficult for you, siren,” he said, spitting the word ‘siren’ at me.

“Unfortunately, I don’t plan on staying long,” I said firmly. Although I could feel myself starting to get sick, I was determined to show that I was still strong. He wouldn’t break me. The urge to vomit started to overwhelm me, but I tried to keep my mind on other things.

Tom chuckled a little, and we drove in silence for a while longer. The sun started to come up when we pulled into an abandoned gas station. By the time we pulled over, sickness tried to push me over the edge and I drifted in and out of consciousness. Delirium started to set in and my vision doubled.

The drudges brought me inside the gas station and into the backroom. They sat me down on the floor and handcuffed me to a cold metal pipe. Tom emerged after a few minutes. Two versions of him walked into the room and stared down at me. I was having a hard time steadying my gaze, but my eyes finally found his blurry face.

“Are you ready to give in?” he asked.

“Sorry to disappoint,” I paused to gain my composure, “but it won’t happen.”

I tried to control the words as they fell off my lips. I felt like I’d been drugged. The spinning room made my head feel light and heavy at the same time.

“A few more hours of this and you’ll beg me to change you. Did you know, vampire sirens don’t get sick from leaving the coast? You’d instantly feel better and you could travel anywhere you wanted,” he said as if it would sway me. He reached for a strand of my hair and tucked it behind my ear. I flinched away from him and scowled, although I wasn’t sure if I scowled at him or his slightly ghost-like twin.

“You would be an exquisitely evocative being,” he continued. He kneeled beside me and came too close for comfort. “You could control anyone you want. Of course, I would have certain authority over you, but don’t worry, I would only call on you for important tasks.”

“I’ll die before I let you control me,” I said. I paused for his response, but he said nothing. Adrenaline built up inside me again and allowed me to see through the fog just enough to say, “Tell me something: what do you really know about my parents’ deaths? You know who did it, don’t you?”

“I’m not going to get into all the details, Ava. They are gone, why dwell on the past?” his voice started to sound like an echo to me, but I wanted answers, and I was unwavering in my interrogations.

“Was it you who killed them?”

He didn’t answer.

“You’ve been planning this for longer than I thought,” I said.

“Does it really matter who did it? Soon enough you’ll be one of us. You’ll be part of the group that was responsible. After you’ve changed, what happened in the past won’t matter. Your hunger for blood and power will take over. You’ll see that when you’re one of us, you’ll do anything to get what you want.”

“I’ll consider your lack of denial as a confession. I will kill you someday, Tom Walker. I know in my gut, that it was you and I will drive an obsidian dagger into your heart like you drove that olivine stone into my mother’s. Your soul will be trapped in a ring upon my finger. For an eternity.”

Tom laughed. “I think it is your soul that will belong to me. You grow weaker and weaker with every breath of this dry air. You will give in, it may take hours, or days if you can last that long, but it will happen.” He turned and went through the door.

I struggled to hang onto my consciousness. The last thing I wanted to do was pass out, but I’d used up too much energy talking to Tom.

My stone prison dissolved and a shout escaped my lungs. I jumped out of the bed and grabbed the landline phone connected to the wall. I struggled to keep myself from ripping it out of the socket. My fingers quickly tapped Hiu’s number.

No signal.

He didn’t have the virus blocker plugged in yet. I paced the room from one end to the other. Emotions fluttered through me without warning or control.

I had to find her. I couldn’t let what happened to Tullia happen again. I tried to get the emotions out so I could think logically about where they would take Ava. I knew Tom was at his last resort. He must be attempting to get her to change under duress which would entail either taking a friend or family member close to her hostage, or making her so sick she would beg them to change her to stay alive.

Since it was likely everyone was safe on Hiu’s boat, I assumed Tom chose the second option. The only way to do that quickly was to take her somewhere with dry air, and the Mojave Desert was only miles away. I tried to think it through. Psytech didn’t keep a lot of property in the desert since vampires didn’t particularly like dry air either. It made their thirst grow considerably.

The most direct way to the desert from the hotel was Interstate 15. I’d start there and search every abandoned place along the Interstate until I found her. I had to contact Hiu to tell him what happened.

I decided to try again in an hour. I used that time to gather up any weapons I could. Ava’s dagger and handgun were still in the room. I took all of our belongings and checked out.

I hopped in my Hummer and sped back to the beach where I arranged to meet Hiu. He wasn’t there yet, but I thought I could see the boat on the horizon. I tried to call him again. This time he answered.

“Howzit?” Hiu said on the other end of the line.

“Something’s happened. Tom and two drudges took Ava while I was still in statue form. At least I think it was Tom. He fits the description, and he seemed to know about me.”

“What?” Hiu asked. The hard “t” conveyed his anger.

“We have to find her. I think they took her to the desert. Remember yesterday when I told you about her being a siren?”

“Yeah, so they trying to make her sick so she agrees to change?”

“Exactly. So get here fast. I’m gonna need you, Perry and Edison to help me search. It’s only logical that they took Interstate 15.”

“I be there wikiwiki. I meet you at the beach.”

“I’m already here. I can see your boat. I’m going to try to find another transportation vehicle. Bring some weapons but make sure the others can defend themselves too,” I replied.

“When we find that bloodsucker, I gonna kill him,” Hiu said with determination soaking his voice.

I hung up and went to find a car or motorcycle to buy off of a local or hot wire if necessary.

Soon I found the perfect motorcycle a few blocks from the beach. I looked around for the owner and found no one. It had GPS so I reasoned that it had been abandoned. I hooked up a virus blocker, then hotwired the machine and disabled the GPS. I knew that Tom or another vampire could be monitoring the devices. After the job was done, I sped off to the beach. Hiu was coming ashore on a life raft with Perry and Edison. I filled a large water bottle with ocean water as they anchored the boat in the bay.