Prophecy: Dark Moon Rising (21 page)

She gave him a look that begged him to come to her. He silently refused and remained leaning against the door. Whatever it was she had to say, it was bad enough that she wanted to break it to him when he was close to her. Either that, or she was worried there would be people on the other side of the door listening. There wasn’t. He could sense everything around him. The hallway on the other side was empty. The rooms either side were unoccupied. There was only her signature on his senses.

She felt scared.

“He almost killed me.” She stared at a spot on the carpet, as though she didn’t dare see the black expression those words made settle on his face.

His hands balled into fists and he tensed, stopping himself from questioning her and giving her time to gather herself. The idea that the vampire hunter had nearly taken her away from him made him want to go back down the hall and tear the hunter’s head off, but he kept still, studying her face. There was something more to the hunter’s presence in the mansion, something Prophecy wasn’t telling him. He had to know something, or have given her reason to trust him, or she would have killed him herself. He’d seen her fight. She could easily kill this man.

“Venturi … what I’m about to say goes no further than this room, understood?”

She spoke the words so quickly that he was still trying to catch up when she stood and walked across the room to him. She pressed her hands against his chest to steady herself and leaned in close to him. Her breath was cool against his neck, making the skin it washed over dance with tingling waves. He closed his eyes when her cheek hovered close to his and resisted the temptation to lean into her, causing them to touch.

“He’s my father,” she said the words so quietly, as quietly as she’d thanked him earlier in her room, and then stepped away from him.

Her eyes were wide and full of worry. He could sense how on edge she was. She looked petrified. What was making her so scared? Was it Valentine, the knowledge that the vampire hunter was her father, or did she expect him to react badly to what she’d told him? Did she fear what he was going to say?

What could he say?

If the vampire hunter was her father, it was reason enough for her to trust him, especially if she thought that he could help her save Valentine.

“Prophecy—” He stopped himself and ran a hand around the back of his neck. She was looking at him with eyes full of hope now. He had to say something to reassure her that she had made the right decision in bringing the hunter here, even when he thought she hadn’t. She needed someone on her side, and it was down to him to be that man. “He is really your father?”

She nodded and then paced across the room, her fingers flexing while she did so. “I know it all sounds so strange. My whole life is strange. He didn’t even know that my mother was pregnant when she was turned, or that she died to give me her power when I was born.”

He had to admit that her life was strange when she boiled it down into a handful of sentences like that. When he added the prophecy she was at the centre of, it became even more bizarre.

Walking across to the bed, he sat down on the end of it. His eyes followed her progress as she paced back and forth, her gaze sometimes fixed on the floor and sometimes on him.

“So your mother was a witch and your father is a vampire hunter.” He scratched his neck. It was no wonder she was so confused. “You did the right thing in bringing him here if you thought there was a chance that he could help, but keeping him here now will only lead to trouble.”

She stopped and looked at him, her face a mask of blankness. Clearly, she hadn’t considered that keeping the vampire hunter in the mansion would be a problem. With so many different bloodlines under one roof, things were tense enough already. They didn’t need a vampire hunter added to the mix. He would be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

“I can’t make him leave. He showed me how to open the book. He knows things about my mother.” She started towards him and then stopped again. Her hand came up to her mouth, her knuckles pressing against her lip and her brows meeting in a heavy, thoughtful frown. He could see that she had realised he was right. Keeping the vampire hunter here was a recipe for disaster. “I only need him here a little longer. He might be able to help yet. He knows things about magic and my mother’s book.”

Venturi held her gaze. He wasn’t going to push her into a decision. If she chose to keep the hunter around for another day or two, he would see to it that she was safe and the houses remained in order. He wouldn’t let them hurt her. He wouldn’t protect her father though. No mortal, not even the parent of the woman he loved, deserved his protection.

“You are bleeding,” she said and pointed to his neck.

He frowned and then brought his fingers away from his throat. She was right. There was blood coating the pads of his fingers. It had seeped under his nails, rimming them with red.

“I sparred with Piotr, my head guard. He can be … overenthusiastic … when it comes to fighting. He swiped at me and caught me with his claws.” He rubbed his bloodied fingers with the pad of his thumb. “I repaid him of course.”

He looked up and found she was standing right next to him. He hadn’t heard her move. He’d been so lost in remembering the fight. She ran her fingers over the long gashes on his throat and he stared up at her face, watching her dark eyes. He swallowed down the fire the delicate sweep of her fingers ignited in him.

“I can heal those,” she said distantly, her attention wholly with his neck.

He caught her hand and stopped her. “They will heal.”

She looked a little offended so he smiled. He could still remember how painful it had been when she’d healed the knife wound he’d picked up in Oxford. It was something he could live without when it wasn’t a serious injury. A scratch across the throat was hardly going to slow him down, not like a deep cut in his side had.

His eyes crept across to her wrist where he was still holding it. It was level with his mouth and temptingly close. He grazed his thumb across the veins he could see and she pulled her hand free of his grasp.

She rubbed it while staring at him.

“They’re bleeding all down your shirt.” Her tone was matter of fact. There was an air of childish annoyance about it, as though any moment now she was going to pout because he hadn’t let her use her magic.

He tilted his head to one side and raised his chin, exposing his neck to her. Her gaze moved to it and he smiled inside when her eyes flickered green, betraying the fact that she’d smelt his blood and wanted it.

“So heal them,” he whispered, enticing her into it.

She went to raise her hand but he caught hold of it again, stopping her. Her expression changed to one of uncertainty but she continued to move towards him, edging ever closer to his neck. Her knees knocked against his and he parted his legs, allowing her room to get nearer to him. She stepped in between them, her body tantalisingly close to his, so close that he could feel her in every inch of him. Anticipation engulfed him as his body silently screamed out for her touch. He told himself that any moment now she was either going to punch him for trying to muddle her feelings, or she was going to walk out of the room.

She did neither.

His jaw tensed when her tongue ran over the scratches on his throat. Desire washed over him and his grip on her wrist tightened. Her other hand came to rest against his shoulder, her fingertips digging in. She slowly licked each scratch, sealing them. He hissed through his teeth and then breathed hard against her neck, staring at it as she lapped up the blood that had crept down to his collarbone. Her soft touch teased and tortured his senses, giving him so much but so little at the same time, and her quiet moans were the only sound in an otherwise silent world. Desperation grew inside him, hunger for her to keep following the trail of blood down to his chest and need for her never to stop. He swallowed again when she stepped backwards. Her hand left his shoulder. She looked at him for a few seconds, her eyes gradually turning from green back to dark brown while at the same time expressing her growing awareness of what she’d done, and then she swallowed hard.

“Prophecy—” he started.

“I have to go and check on Valentine,” she said, cutting him off and heading directly for the door.

He watched her go, flinched when she slammed the door behind her, and then collapsed back onto the bed.

He sucked in a breath and sighed it out. Some things deserved a sigh.

He stroked his neck, closing his eyes and replaying the feeling of her moist tongue against his flesh.

A smile crept onto his lips.

That was definitely one of them.

Prophecy turned another page, read the words written on it, and then moved onto the next. Nothing she’d read so far looked as though it was the kind of spell that would help Valentine. She cocked her head to one side and looked at the spine of the book. She was a third of the way through it now and the night had become day, and was again turning to night. She tapped her fingers impatiently on her desk and looked at Valentine.

He was getting worse. Her magic was only holding him for three hours at most now, and it was taking more of her power to make him sleep in the first place. She was losing him.

Rubbing her face and her sore eyes, she tried to push the tiredness out of her body. She closed the book and leaned back in her chair, her gaze lingering on Valentine. He was lying on his back on the bed, his hands folded across his stomach. She’d put his black jacket back on him. She didn’t know why. It made him look like a prince charming, sent to sleep for a thousand years and waiting for his princess to wake him with a kiss. Only it was a kiss that had sent him to sleep. Something as simple as one wasn’t going to cure him.

Standing, she walked across the room, opening the curtains and the window so the night air came in and soothed her. She sat next to Valentine, her eyes roaming his face. He looked so peaceful and calm. His expression was soft with sleep. It made him even more handsome. Lying down beside him, she curled one arm under her head and rolled onto her side so she was facing him. She brought her knees up and blinked slowly.

It was so easy for her to forget how much danger he was in when he looked as though he was just sleeping deeply. It made her feel as though she had all the time in the world to find a way to stop the spell Elena had cast on him. She reminded herself that she didn’t.

Once the spell was complete, he’d leave her, just like Caden had said.

A tiny voice at the back of her mind suggested that she should kill Valentine. If the only alternative was to have him fighting against her, she was better off killing him.

She frowned and stared at the corner of Valentine’s mouth as it twitched.

She couldn’t do that. Even the thought of killing him made her die a little inside. It made all of her marks hurt, setting them off in a dull ache that throbbed into the very depths of her bones.

She’d never kill him.

She’d let him kill her first.

After all, she’d promised him that she’d never let it get that far. Her vision about him dying wouldn’t come true, and neither would the vision she’d had of him running her through with a sword. She wasn’t going to let anything happen to him. Even if Elena’s spell did take him away from her, she knew in her heart that he would continue to fight it.

And she’d continue to find a way to counter it.

There was no way on Earth that Elena was taking him away from her for good.

She placed her hand over his where they were resting on his stomach and curled her fingers around so she was holding them.

Sighing out her breath, she let sleep take her.

She opened her eyes and frowned when she saw the darkness surrounding her. She was standing in the middle of nothing under what seemed to be a distant spotlight. Wherever she walked, the dim light followed her, making everything around her black.

She turned on the spot and slid into her vampire guise, hoping it would help her see into the darkness. Nothing stood out in it. It was as though she was surrounded by infinite inky blackness. She could walk for miles and not find a thing, not even the wall.

A chill breeze crept around her ankles, and she shook her leg when it felt as though it was swirling about it, crawling up the length of her body. She rubbed her arms when the cold air reached them, sucking what tiny trace of heat there was from her body.

Shivering on the spot, she looked at her amulet and saw the stone was darkest blood red.

“Valentine,” she breathed his name and wondered just where she was.

The temperature was still falling and it was beginning to make her sleepy. It was as cold as the home of the Three now.

She squinted when a little green light danced in the distance. It was tiny, flitting about like a glow worm. As it got closer, it started to take on a shape. She rushed towards it when she recognised her.

“Shh, child,” the soft feminine voice said and it brought tears to her eyes to hear it.

Her mother stopped a few feet from her and gave her a look that made her heart ache.

“I know the pain you feel as though it was my own. To lose the man you love … it is something I never wanted you to experience,” her mother said.

Prophecy dropped her gaze to her feet and sighed. “I won’t lose him. Tell me there’s a counter spell.”

Her mother moved closer. Prophecy shuddered when her mother’s fingers touched under her chin, raising her head so she was looking at her again.

“Do not be scared, my child. There is always a counter spell. You will find it, in time.”

“In time?” Prophecy said and her heart sank. “So I won’t find it before Elena’s command of him is complete.”

“I did not say that.” Her mother smiled.

“No, you didn’t, but that’s what’s going to happen. He’s slipping away and I can’t work fast enough to find the right spell. My Latin isn’t that good and I have to use dictionaries to translate the other languages. It’s taking me too long to read through the book.”

“You have opened it then. I knew that you would.” Her mother drifted away, spinning in slow motion as though she was dancing.