Prophecy: Caelestis & Aurorea (29 page)

She watched Valentine putting his gloves on and stretching his fingers. He wasn’t wearing his red jacket tonight. He’d left it back at the house. After their shower, he’d changed into a pair of black trousers and one of the black shirts he kept at Mathias’ place. She noticed that he’d polished his boots and she smiled at the sight of them. They were a reminder of just what kind of man he was. So proud and loyal, and a real perfectionist.

Her attention drifted to the car they had arrived in. Valentine had neatly parked it on the road outside the museum. He’d scared the hell out of her with his driving and she’d spent half of the journey clinging to her seat. Inside she knew he had driven that way to scare Venturi. They seemed to have started some kind of twisted competition to prove who was the better vampire.

She wanted nothing to do with it. If they wanted to kill each other, she was just going to stand back and let them. She had more sense than to interfere in their little game. The snide remarks that had flown around the car had shown her a new side of Valentine. She had expected it from Venturi, but she’d been surprised when Valentine had given as good as he’d got. Some of their comments had been bordering on childish and she’d spent a lot of time rolling her eyes at them, but at the same time she’d found it funny and a little thrilling.

After all, she’d never had two men act this way about her. Whether they knew it or not, it was one hundred and ten percent jealousy that was making them act like younglings.

“Are you certain that you can handle what she has asked you to do? You could go home if it is a problem for you. She will not think any less of you.” Valentine pulled his other glove on and then swept his hair out of his face.

She sighed and pulled an unimpressed face. Here we go again. She was beginning to regret suggesting that Venturi come with them. She was beginning to wish she’d come alone.

“I think it is you that should go home. I could slip into this place without the need for a man on the outside watching for trouble. I could get that scroll in the blink of an eye. You, youngling, will fail dismally.” Venturi leaned against the car, his arms folding across his chest.

Were they always going to be like this?

She picked up the goggles and looked at them. According to Valentine they would cut down the glare of the security guards torches and would stop the light from temporarily blinding them. Even with the protective layer over their eyes, the torches could still damage their vision for a few seconds. A few seconds was all it took to get killed.

Slipping her pair on over her head, she let them dangle around her neck and set about tying her hair up. She pulled it back so it would stay out of her face and tied it into a ponytail high up on the back of her head.

When she’d finished, Venturi and Valentine were still exchanging snide comments and dark looks.

She cleared her throat loud enough for them to hear her and smiled at them when they looked at her.

“If you’re both done?” She intimated the museum.

Valentine smirked at Venturi. She decided that she had to find Venturi a love interest because she was starting to dislike this jealousy stuff and the way Valentine was acting.

Grabbing his arm, she dragged him away from Venturi and stopped when she reached the front of the museum. She gave him a hard look and then sighed. Stepping up to him, she ran her hands up his chest and looked into his eyes.

“Can you please go back to being the man you were a few days ago?” she said.

He frowned at her. “Whatever do you mean?”

She stepped away from him and threw her arms up in the air. “This is driving me insane. I don’t like Venturi … there … I said it. I don’t like the way he looks at me and flirts with me and I don’t like how he makes you act!”

“Prophecy … I—”

“No … let me finish.” She cut him off and fixed him with a black look. “I expected it from him, but not you. You know how I feel about you and that I would never look at him that way. You’re the only one in my heart. The way my magic reacts to you is testament to that.”

“I know,” he said with a weight of guilt in his eyes. “I am sorry. I do not know what has got into me. I just cannot help reacting to him. I—”

“It’s all fear, isn’t it? You’re scared that he’ll take me away?”

He nodded and hung his head forwards. She walked back to him and ducked her head so she could see up into his eyes.

“Please don’t think that he could ever take me away from you. It’s impossible. I could never feel for him like I feel for you.” She smiled when his eyes met hers. “You don’t have to act like this to keep me. Acting like this is only driving me away. Let him be. The less you react to him, the less he’ll act like this.”

He hesitated for a moment and then wrapped his arms about her, holding her tight. He seemed so different recently. The strong man he had always been, stern and confident, had been replaced by someone so full of fear and trepidation. Is this what love did to people? Hyperion had told her that love made her strong, but it made his sister weak. Did love make Valentine weak? Or was this all because of the things that had happened and Venturi’s presence?

Pulling back, she frowned at him.

Valentine frowned back at her, wondering what she was thinking and feeling as though he was being scrutinised. He avoided her gaze and looked across at Venturi where he was leaning against the car, watching them. Prophecy was right. He wasn’t worth it. The way he had been acting since first hearing mention of the Tenebrae was nothing like the man he was. His love for Prophecy was strong, as was hers for him. Venturi could never come between them. If he kept acting like this, he would open himself to mistakes and would slip up. Now wasn’t the time for jealousy and childish fights with a man who was half his equal.

This was a time of war, a time for leading and fighting, two things that he was exceptionally skilled at.

This was his moment, their moment. Just as the Lady Caelestis and the Lord Aurorea had brought peace to their houses by standing by each other’s side and fighting together, they would bring peace to the world.

His eyes narrowed and he looked up at the building, assessing it and searching for a way in. He walked along the length of the façade. He had been here before. He had a faint memory of it and he couldn’t remember breaking in.

Clearing his head, he focused on the task at hand, his eyes darting about and scanning all the windows and doors.

They would be alarmed.

He raised his eyes up to the top of the building. It was possible that the roof would be the only way in.

“Valentine?” Prophecy’s voice sounded out to him.

He looked at her.

The seriousness of his expression seemed to make her smile. He didn’t lose his frown when she stepped towards him and tiptoed to press a kiss against his cheek.

She grinned. “Welcome back.”

He gave her a slight smile and returned his concentration to the building. Taking hold of Prophecy’s hand, he led her around the back, looking for a way up to the roof. There were trees surrounding the museum. It was possible that they were going to be their only way up. He stopped when he saw a lower section of the building and a tree not too far from it. There were branches that reached to within only a few metres of the roof. A human couldn’t jump the gap from such a fragile branch, but a vampire could.

“We have to go up,” he said, looking across at Prophecy.

She nodded and then crouched down, tucking the hem of her trousers into her boots and tying them tight. When she was ready, he looked up at the tree, plotting the best route up it.

Before he could move, she had passed him and was halfway up the tall tree trunk. He could only watch her as she sprang from branch to branch, eventually landing on the one that stretched out towards the lower roof. He sniffed, took a deep breath and then followed her. When he was standing near the trunk on the same branch as her, he nodded towards the roof. She was lightest and therefore it made sense for her to go first. If the branch was going to break on the second person, he preferred that person to be him. He could find another way in if necessary.

She rolled her shoulders and then edged along the branch. He held his breath and watched her creeping closer to the point where the branch was too thin for her to walk on. There was still a good five feet to that point when she stopped. She looked back at him, smiled and then sprinted. He frowned when she leapt through the air, landing with all the grace of her species on the roof. He waited for the branch to stop swaying and listened to it, hoping to hear if it had been weakened by Prophecy.

She beckoned him with a wave of her hand.

He extended his senses and focused them on the branch while he ran towards the end of it. Leaping at the same point as she had, he landed on his feet close to the edge of the wall. He quickly grabbed hold of the hand she offered him, stopping himself from falling backwards over the edge.

“Not as spry as I thought I was,” he said.

She smiled. “I thought you were pretty spry. Quite limber in fact.”

He raised a brow at the seductive tone her voice had taken on and the way her smile became alluring. Stepping up to her, he tugged her hand towards him, pulling her up against him. He kissed her, letting her see that her reference hadn’t been lost on him and showing her that there was more to what they’d shared the other night. There was much more, and a lot she had to learn. This was one thing that he didn’t mind teaching her.

Keeping hold of her hand, he walked across the roof, searching for a way into the building. There was a small door and a raised glass roof. The door was bound to be alarmed. The windows he wasn’t so sure about.

He released her and pointed to the windows. “Check that side and see if there is any sign of a device on the inside.”

“What about the door?” she said.

He shook his head. “It is definitely alarmed.”

She looked at the door and then went to the windows. When he was halfway through checking his side, she stopped what she was doing.

“What’s it like inside?”

“How do you know I’ve been inside?” he said and his fingers paused at their work. He looked up at her. She was still smiling.

“You must have. Everywhere we go, you seem to have been there before. Were you a vampire when you came here?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know if I was. It is hard to say. I recall coming here many many years ago, only I cannot remember the details of my visit.”

“So what’s it like inside?”

He smiled. “Let’s find out.”

Pulling a knife out of his pocket, he slid it along the edges of the glass panel. It must have been years since these windows were opened. They’d been painted shut and by the looks of things, they’d had several coats. When he finished separating the window from the metal frame, he looked at Prophecy.

“I might need your assistance,” he said, his gaze moving to her amulet.

She raised her hand, looking at it. “What do you need to me to do?”

He looked through the window at the latch. “How are your telekinesis skills?”

“Let’s find out,” she said, echoing his earlier words.

He stepped back to give her room when she closed her eyes. Her fingers wrapped around her wrist, holding it steady as the purple streams of magic began to appear. He watched with fascination as they reached out, extending in a waving, dancing line towards the window. They slipped inside through the crack he’d created and the window creaked as the latch was drawn back.

He pulled the window up and held it barely a few millimetres away from the frame. There would be some kind of security device fitted to it and he was certain that once it was more than a few centimetres away from the frame, it would be triggered.

Holding the window, he waited for Prophecy to open her eyes and look at him.

“We will have to be quick about this. You drop down first. Once you are in, I shall follow you. Have your magic ready to close the latch on the window. An alarm will sound, but if we can get the latch back in place there is a chance that the security guards will believe it is a false one.”

She nodded and he took a deep breath. It had been a long time since he’d broken into somewhere like this. Instinct told him that they would run into trouble at some point. There was no way they could make it in and out without alerting someone to their presence. All he wanted was to get as far in as possible before it happened. Death was on the cards this night.

He looked up at the sky, his eyes running along the silvery threads of clouds that hurried across it. There was no moon.

The perfect night for hunting.

Raising the window up, he watched her drop inside.

Prophecy landed silently on the floor and looked back up at the window in time to see Valentine coming in. The alarms whined in her ears, deafening her, and she frowned, struggling to concentrate through all the noise. She directed the threads of magic back to the window latch and focused on it.

“Hurry,” Valentine whispered.

She lost concentration when she heard footsteps through the noise of the alarm and sensed the approach of humans. The magic stuttered and withdrew a little before she managed to regain her focus. She stared hard at the window latch, willing the magic to go there and stifling the nerves inside of her. She knew that they had to succeed in making the guards believe that it had been a false alarm. If they didn’t, then they would never get a chance to find the scroll. The guards would call the police. They didn’t even have the option of killing them. If they did that, then the guards wouldn’t be able to stop the alarm and she was sure that it was rigged to contact the police if it went off for any extended period of time.

This had to work.

The moment the latch clicked into place, Valentine grabbed her around the waist and hauled her into a dark room. She stilled her breathing and listened hard for a sign of the guards over the sound of the alarm. Her focus kept slipping. Valentine had her pressed up against the wall, his body hard against hers and his fingers tightly grasping her ribs. She could feel his thumbs beneath her breasts. She bit her lip and slipped into vampire guise, using her heightened senses to see him in the darkness. He was looking at her.