Shadow Kin (29 page)
Authors: M.J. Scott
The truth would kill anything he might feel. I couldn’t afford that. His wanting was buying me time. And, if I was honest, I wanted too. Not just wanting what his kiss had awakened but wanting his world. I wanted to spend some more time with someone who saw me so differently to everyone else in the world. To be a person rather than a weapon.
Which was foolish when he too wanted to use me. But just for a little while, I wanted to pretend that whatever he felt for me had a chance. But I didn’t have to say that aloud yet. I doubted I could. “Do we have a deal?”
Behind me there was a sudden hum from the wards. “Someone’s coming,” I said. I turned and scooped up my daggers, ready to shadow if I needed to. I touched Atherton’s sleeve. “Quickly, tell me, do we have an agreement?”
“An agreement about what?”
I turned slowly. Simon stood silhouetted in the door, holding a lamp in one hand. The light touched me—not sunlight; that would burn Atherton—so I could disappear if I wished. But it was too late. Simon had seen me. Even if I shadowed, there was no way to hide now.
I looked at Atherton, holding my breath. His move. He could tell Simon the truth about me and change everything.
“An agreement about what, Lily?” Simon said again, moving into the room. I didn’t like the edge in his voice.
Atherton smiled slightly when Simon spoke my name. “Miss Lily wanted me to stay silent about the fact that she had been here.”
“In return for what?”
“I do believe it was something along the lines of her not returning one night and slitting my throat.” Atherton’s voice was calm but I heard the thread of underlying amusement. He might not be intending to expose me, but he was going to have his fun at my expense. I wondered if Simon knew Atherton well enough to decipher it too.
“You threatened him?” Simon said.
“I wasn’t going to actually kill him,” I said, trying to conjure a defensive tone. Better Simon think me sadistic than know the truth.
“Is that supposed to be any better?” Simon’s eyes were hard to see in the dimly lit room, but if I’d had to guess, they were likely as icy as Guy’s right now.
“He took me by surprise. I hardly expected to find you had a tame vampire down here.”
“What did you expect to find?” He put the lamp down on a table. His hand came to rest on the pistol at his hip. Apparently Simon wasn’t taking chances with me right now.
I tried to look innocent. Hard to do when you’ve recently been discovered somewhere you’re really not supposed to be. “I don’t know.”
He looked past me to Atherton, who had the air of someone watching a sparring match and enjoying it immensely. “Did she see inside?”
“No.” Atherton and I spoke together.
“At least,” Atherton added, after a pause in which we both stayed silent, “she has said nothing about what is beyond the door. I don’t know if she has been in there, of course. Wraiths being what they are, I cannot tell where she had been before she came upon me.”
Simon frowned. “True. Lily?”
“I didn’t go inside. I came from the tunnel.” I wanted him to believe me. If he turned against me, then who knew what would happen? Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so quick to come here. Too late to change that decision now.
“Why are you here at all?”
“How did you know I was here?” I countered.
“Atherton triggered an alarm.”
A ward. Of course. “Yet you came alone?” I wondered if that choice was because he knew he could handle whatever he was likely to find here or because not many people knew the tunnel’s secret.
“I looked in your room. You weren’t there. I figured you’d either left or you’d caught wind of something in the tunnels.” He shook his head a little. “Should’ve taken you the other way,” he said more to himself than anything. “What was it? Can you sense the wards?”
“I smelled the iron. I got curious.”
His eyes narrowed. “Of course. How foolish of me. Unsatisfied curiosity is not to be tolerated.”
He was angry. Understandably. But he had to start to understand that I did things my way. “I need to know what I’m dealing with. You want me to pick your side, to trust you. To help you. But you’re keeping secrets.”
“And you’re not?”
“Not the kind you hide underground behind iron and magic,” I retorted. “You would do the same thing in my place. If I’m to choose your side, I need to know what I’m choosing.”
Though if I could have disguised my secrets so easily, locked them away from him under iron and magic, I would have. “You’ve brought me into your world. You want me to stay here. I’m not going to wander around blinded by ignorance. Whatever is behind that door is important. Important enough to spend a lot of time and effort and money concealing it. Important enough to break the rules perhaps?”
“Yet you want me to trust you with the knowledge before you agree to help me.”
“Help you do what?” Atherton interrupted. “What’s going on?”
“Lucius has crossed a line.” Simon said. “And Lily can provide proof of that. If she chooses.”
“You want her to turn against Lucius?” Atherton’s head twisted toward me. I could almost hear the thoughts spinning through his mind. Reworking the equations and potential of our earlier conversation. “You didn’t mention this earlier,” he said accusingly.
“I haven’t agreed to do it yet,” I said.
“So, why should I show you?” Simon said.
I crossed my arms. “At this point you can either show me or I can walk through the wall. You can’t call sunlight here, not without hurting Atherton.”
“Atherton’s fast on his feet. I could light you and not him.” Simon moved forward, putting himself between me and Atherton.
I folded my arms and lifted my chin. “I’m sure you can. Which would stop me for now, but do you have enough sunlamps to keep me trapped forever? What happened to trust?”
“I want to trust you,” he said.
“Then show me what’s behind the doors.”
“No.”
I blinked. “No?”
“No,” he repeated. “Trust goes both ways, Lily. It has to be earned. In this, my duty is to my oaths. So, no.”
“What if I look anyway?”
His face was calm. “If you do that, then there is no trust between us. And I would be forced to conclude that I have been wrong about you and the others were right.”
Bryony, I assumed he meant. And whoever else had been telling him not to trust me. I bit my lip. I wanted to know what was in that room. Instincts screamed that it was important. But if Simon didn’t trust me . . . if he gave up on me, then no one else in the human world would stand up for me. I might as well go back to Lucius.
Then again, if what lay beyond that door might change my choice, I owed it myself to find out. I needed to use my head, not my heart.
There was something between Simon and me, yes, but the decisions I had to make were life and death. I couldn’t afford to let emotion sway me.
It seemed it was time for another of Guy’s choices. “I won’t look,” I said. “But I want you to show me. Show me what you’re protecting.”
“So you can run back to Lucius and tell him?”
I met his gaze clearly. “You say you know me,” I said. “That you want me to be more. You want me to help you. So do this. Change my mind. Trust me.” I held my breath, nerves pricking, muscles tensed, waiting for his response.
His body blocked the light from the lamp, outlining him in gold. It made it hard to read his expression as he stayed silent. Finally, just when I thought my stomach might actually have tied itself in a knot, he blew out a breath. “You’re right. Trust goes both ways. So I’m going to trust you. Don’t make me regret this.”
Atherton rose to his feet, looking, as far as his face was able, as startled as I felt. “Are you certain about this?” Atherton asked.
Simon walked over to the inner door. “No. But I’m doing it anyway.” He looked back at me. “If I show you this, and you betray us, then there’s nothing I’ll be able to do to stop them hunting you down.”
I nodded. “I can live with that.” If I betrayed his trust, it would be because I was running or desperate or crazy enough to choose Lucius. I would expect them to come after me in those circumstances. I wouldn’t blame them.
Simon watched. “All right, then. Atherton, close the outer door.”
The vampire moved easily across the room. Here, in his own little world, he would know every inch of the rooms, every bump in the floor and every piece of furniture. I wondered how he would feel if he suddenly had to move outside the limits of these spaces again.
The door closed with a soft clanging thud that seemed to vibrate through my bones. Simon took a slow breath, then laid his hand on the inner door. The warded lock started to glow with a cool silvery sheen. The light flared, bright enough to make me throw up a hand to shield my eyes. Then it died to a soft sparkle, as though the metal were new formed from the night sky, spangled with tiny glimmering stars.
Atherton had come up beside me and he turned his head toward the door as if he could sense the magic at work.
My stomach grew tight. What were they hiding behind so many wards, so much iron? What was worth so much?
Would I be able to keep the secret?
Keep Simon’s trust?
Keep Atherton’s? He was a secret too. At the moment, he was the more important secret, particularly if he could provide me with knowledge about the need.
When the last sparking lights faded from the metal, Simon pulled his hand from the door, shook it quickly as if it pained him, then turned the handle.
The door swung inward, near silent like the other. All I could see beyond was light. Atherton moved after Simon and I followed them slowly across the threshold.
At first I didn’t understand what I was seeing. It looked like any other hospital ward, neat rows of beds, full of people sleeping. More beds than seemed normal perhaps but nothing more unusual than that.
Above each bed, a lamp burned. The air was faintly hazy with lamp oil and smoke. The smoke mingled with the soap and chemical smell of the rest of the hospital. The lamps shone pools of light down onto each bed, highlighting the sleeping faces.
This was the big secret?
I didn’t understand. Atherton and Simon began to move from bed to bed, touching wrists, bending to listen to breathing. The separate rhythms of forty or so hearts beating, like a band of distant, clumsy drummers who couldn’t quite keep time, filled my ears. Likewise, the sounds of slow human breathing.
I stood and watched, trying to decipher the puzzle.
Other smells came to me as I watched. Human smells of sweat and bodies. And the faintest hint of blood. So faint I wasn’t sure it was there at all. None of the patients had bandages or bruises to indicate injuries, so where did the blood smell come from?
I watched a little longer, studying the forms lying still beneath pale gray blankets. Too still, I realized. Only their chests rose and fell. And despite the stillness, they weren’t all asleep. Some had their eyes open, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Staring straight up at the lamps above their beds without blinking or squinting.
I knew that particular stillness, in humans.
“Blood-locked,” I breathed. “They’re all blood-locked. But . . . alive? You’re keeping them alive.” I turned to Simon, disbelieving. “You idiot! This is why Lucius wanted to kill you.”
“Lucius doesn’t know,” Simon said sharply.
“Then he bloody well suspects,” I replied, shaking my head in disgust. “Why else would he risk killing you?” My mind whirled with it. Blood-locked. He was trying to cure them. Lords of hell. It would change everything. If a cure existed, then the humans wouldn’t be willing to cede the locked to the Blood. They would want to cure them, reclaim them. Which would remove one of the vampires’ primary food sources. The Blood wouldn’t give that up without a fight. This could turn the treaties—and the City—upside down. No wonder Lucius wanted Simon dead.
And who knew how the other races might react? It could be seen as working against the treaties, and the Fae seldom took that well.
I walked to the nearest bed, stared down at its occupant. A woman with short dark hair that needed brushing and skin I thought would be olive rather than sallow had she seen daylight recently. Her eyes were, mercifully, closed. She looked young.
“How?” I asked, that being the simplest of the myriad questions bouncing around my brain. “How are you keeping them alive? And how long have you been doing this?”
“We’ve been trying to find a cure for the locking for a long time,” Simon said slowly. “But as for this particular line of research, only since Atherton arrived.”
“I’m keeping them alive,” Atherton said. He straightened from where he had been bent over one of the beds.
I suddenly put two and two together. “You’re feeding them your blood?”
“Yes,” Atherton said. “But not very much. Just a few drops now and then. Once they’ve reached this stage, that seems to be enough to stop them getting any worse. That and the care Simon gives them.”
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