Stefan (Lost Nights Series Book 1) (21 page)

“Me neither,” I said, frowning.

“Also, as you head back to Venice, stay away from Vienna and Budapest.”

“Why?”

“Mira has laid claim to Budapest and you do not want any of her little followers spotting you. Sneaking into Venice would become impossible.”

“And Vienna?”

“Valerio has laid claim to Vienna in a way.”

“Another nightwalker?”

Ignacio nodded. “A troublesome nightwalker who has very old ties to Mira. He would think nothing of handing you over to her.”

“Thanks.”

Slipping back inside the building and down the stairs to the ground floor, I quickly cut across toward to the derelict old house where Daphne and the others had been hiding for the past several years. I popped into the room I shared with Daphne and gathered up the few meager belongings I had acquired since coming to Poland. It still irked me that all my belongings in Europe were now in Mira’s possession. If she really was my enemy, there wasn’t a chance in hell that I was getting my stuff back. I would have killed to have some of my own clothes. As it was, I’d borrowed a few things from Daphne and stolen the rest using some mind control. Not my proudest moment, but since I had no money, no credit cards, and no ID, I didn’t really have much choice.

Daphne caught me as I was attempting to leave and convinced me to stay for the rest of the night. There was only another four hours until sunrise so I wouldn’t get too far before I had to find some cover for the daylight hours. And finding shelter in a city you didn’t know was a risky venture.

As the sun inched toward the horizon, I lay near Daphne in the pitch black room, engulfed by the silence of the house. A thin blanket was wrapped around me as if it could hold back the panic that gripped me in those last minutes before the sun rose. Each morning was the same as that first morning alone in the old crypt. The pain and feeling of losing my soul ran through me until I nearly screamed.

“Does it ever get easier?” I whisper, my voice rippling through the silence like a pebble dropping into a glassy pond.

“Sunrise?” she whispered back.

“Yeah.”

“No, but you keep telling yourself that it will.”

I smiled at her response, clinging to her words as the light tugging sensation started in my chest. Beneath the rising panic that gripped my still heart, I could hear Stefan’s voice whispering through my mind. This morning, his soft voice was like a prayer. He wanted me to be safe and beyond the reach of pain and fear. Clenching my teeth, I forced a strained smile on my lips and pushed back to him that I was safe. He couldn’t hear me, but I didn’t care. In a few days, he’d know everything and we’d figure out what to do next.

Chapter 16

My hands were shaking. If I were still alive, my heart would have been pounding so hard that I would have been able to taste my heart in the back of my throat. But I wasn’t alive any longer. All I could taste my tonight’s dinner as it fought its way back up my throat. It was nice to know that I could probably still vomit from nerves. You’d think that death would get rid of such things, but I guess not.

Time was ticking down. Just two minutes until eleven. I’d spent the past three nights in Venice, sneaking around and generally making myself as invisible as possible. Not a single human laid an eye on me. And as for the nightwalkers, I kept as far from them as possible, which wasn’t the easiest of things to accomplish. While Jedrzejow had only six nightwalkers in the entire city, Venice was overflowing with them. There were so many that if I didn’t rein in my own meager powers, I was instantly hit with a blinding headache. My forays into Venice were limited to only a couple hours here and there before I retreated back to Verona to hide. I couldn’t risk Stefan getting word that I was in town until I was ready. I was handling this on my own terms for as long as I could.

For the most part, the few nightwalkers I encountered where eager to keep away from me. From what little I could pick up from them, most instantly jumped to the conclusion that I was a dangerous older nightwalker because they couldn’t read my mind. That worked for me.

A minute before eleven, I forced myself to put down the cell phone I’d recently purchased and take a step back. Two hours earlier, I’d left a matching phone under Stefan’s chair in the Coven meeting hall. That little excursion had been the dangerous part of my mission so far, but I’d been lucky. The hall had been empty. Apparently everyone had been out hunting in anticipation of the meeting at ten o’clock. With any luck, no one had spotted the phone yet and no one would notice it until the alarm I set went off at exactly eleven.

I jumped when the cell phone started ringing. The LED display showed the number of drop phone I had left with Stefan. At least someone had noticed the phone and the message I’d left on the main screen.

Swallowing back dinner, I picked up the phone and answered the call but didn’t say a word as I held it to my ear.

“Is she alive?” Stefan’s snarled voice vibrated menace and barely controlled rage.

I smiled. “Walk out the front doors of the Main Hall. If you’re alone I will call you back.” Pushing the end call button, I turned toward the laptop computer set up beside me while turning off the first phone. The screen held a video feed from a small camera I had hidden in a tree outside the Main Hall, giving me an excellent view of everyone who went in and out of the building from the front and side entrances.

I had to wait only a few seconds before the doors burst open, startling both the human guards standing there. Stefan zoomed down the stairs before barking something at the humans. The two men scrambled inside the building, closing the doors behind him. I didn’t have sound with my video feed, but I could clearly see Stefan attempting to use the phone, likely calling the first number he had used but it didn’t work.

Tears blurred my vision for a second and I fought the initial urge to just tell him exactly where I was. But I swallowed those words. I needed to protect myself. Stefan had attempted to do just that and it had ended disastrously.

When I was in control again, I dialed the only number programmed into my second phone. Stefan answered before the phone finished ringing the first time.

“Where is Erin?” Stefan snarled, looking as if he were about to explode.

“I’m somewhere safe, Stefan.”

I could see the tension instantly drain from his hunched shoulders and he actually swayed for a second as if suddenly unsteady. “Erin?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“Do you remember where we first met? I’ll call you again when you’re there.” And I hung up again. Dropping the phone immediately on the small table beside the laptop, I wrapped my arms around my middle to keep from picking up the phone again while I watched him on the screen. He seemed to hesitate for a second, looking confused, before he zipped off out of the view of the camera. With a shaking hand, I moved the cursor and switched the camera view to a landing in Dosoduro. It was just a couple blocks from the apartment I had rented and was where the water taxi had dropped me off that rainy night I had first taken his hand.

I waited, willing him to remember that first moment. I wanted him to remember, needed it to be as important to him as it was to me. A part of me was afraid the phone would ring before he appeared on the camera. To me, that would mean that he didn’t remember. That he was lost. But then, maybe he was already lost to me and I just didn’t realize it.

A broken sob jumped from my throat when Stefan appeared on the sidewalk, searching for me on the empty street. He looked more than a little worried and angry when he couldn’t see me. Using the second phone, I dialed his number again.

“Where are you?” he demanded before I could speak.

“Somewhere safe.”

“But not here with me?”

“Not exactly. I can see you though.”

Stefan slowly turned around, his eyes narrowed as he inspected each window of the buildings around him. I relaxed, knowing that he wouldn’t find me. I was nowhere near that landing. “Why are you playing these games?” he growled, growing more irritated by the second.

“This isn’t a game. It’s about being safe. It’s —”

“Has someone hurt you?”

I tapped down a sigh and frowned at his image on the laptop. How did I even answer that question? Right now, I didn’t. “It’s about making sure that you’re not being followed.”

Stefan stiffened, becoming completely immobile for several seconds. I had a feeling that he was using his powers to search the immediate area for nightwalkers.

“There is no one else here.”

“I hope you’re right,” I murmured, talking mostly to myself. “Did you discover who framed me?”

“No. A day after you disappeared, there were rumors that surfaced of your death. I... I...”

“You didn’t believe them,” I whispered. I watched as Stefan shook his head. He turned, facing the camera I had set up so that I could see the pain and fear clearly etched on his face. “I could hear you calling for me. I heard it almost every night. You didn’t give up.”

“Tell me where you are? Let me come to you. I need to hold you. It is the only way I will know that you are safe and unharmed.”

I clenched my teeth, fighting to stay silent. A part of me longed to tell him, but the other part wished to shout that I wasn’t safe and I certainly wasn’t unharmed. But in the end, I didn’t say either of those things.

“Did you discover who is trying to harm you?” I demanded, struggling to keep all emotion from my voice.

“No.”

My shoulders slumped. I figured as much, but I was still disappointed. “I’ll call you tomorrow night. Same time. Be alone when I call.”

“Erin, don’t!”

“I need time to think.” I hung up the phone and quickly turned it off so that I couldn’t give in to the temptation to tell him exactly where I was. Stepping back, I watched him search the immediate area for the next fifteen minutes, searching for any sign of me, but he never found the camera. As I had guessed, it was the weakness of the older nightwalkers — technology. My parents had been the same way. The older they got, the more they struggled with smart phones, tablets, DVD players, and their laptop. They couldn’t keep up with the technology and in truth, they didn’t want to. Stefan had never struck me as a creature who much cared for the latest gadgets. He wasn’t the type to notice a tiny wireless camera about the size of my fist placed on top of a broken lamp. It was weakness I had to exploit as long as possible.

In the end, he slumped on a bench not more than ten feet from out meeting spot and stared out at the lagoon. I sat on the floor, staring up at the laptop, watching him. There was something so lost in his posture. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or worried or afraid. Maybe it was all of the above. For now, he thought I was still human and he cared for that human, I had no doubt of that. But I hoped that a part of him at least now started to mentally wander down those dark roads of what if. I didn’t want my new state of being to be a complete shock to him. I wanted him to consider it as well as consider what he valued most about me. Was it me or merely my mortality?

With no easy answers forthcoming, I turned off the computer and settled down into the darkness. I was safe in my little hiding place in Verona, more than an hour’s drive from Venice, though I hadn’t a clue as to how fast Stefan could make the trip. It didn’t matter. With any luck, he thought I was in Venice.

I was permitted only a few minutes of downtime before my third and final phone started vibrating in my back pocket. This one Daphne had forced on me days ago when I left Poland. When I glanced at the screen, her smiling face was shining back at me.

“How goes it, my friend?” I said with forced cheerfulness.

“A lot more boring now that you’ve gone,” Daphne complained. “You sure you don’t want to come back?”

My smile turned more genuine and I relaxed, leaning against the wall. “It’s tempting but you know I’ve got to get this settled.”

She gave a scornful snort. “You know you don’t have to do this. You need to let this silly sense of human justice die. Nightwalkers don’t suffer from it. Just come back.”

“I don’t think Ignacio wants me back.”

“Fuck Ignacio.”

“Daffy,” I grumbled in warning.

My friend sighed. When she spoke again, she’d lost some of her bluster. “He wouldn’t care. “

I perked up at her words. This was strange and unexpected. “Something’s changed?”

There was soft noise that I could identify and then Ignacio spoke, surprising me. “Yes.”

Fear clenched in my chest. “What’s wrong? Is Danaus there causing problems?” I’d left Poland as quickly as possible so as to protect the few people who had risked helping me. I didn’t want them getting hurt because they knew me.

“Yes and no,” he hedged.

“Ignacio, no games.”

“The Hunter arrived in town in the early evening as best as we can determine. I actually saw him downtown. He’s more frightening in person.” I grunted in agreement. There was something that radiated danger from that man. “I think he may have even spotted me, but he stopped suddenly and answered his phone. A second later, Mira appeared before him and then they were both gone.”

The fear in my chest returned. “How long ago did this happen?”

“About fifteen minutes.”

Rising up on my knees, I tapped the laptop to bring it out of snooze to check the time. It was quarter after eleven. Mira suspected that I had contacted Stefan and brought Danaus back to Venice so he could continue his search closer to home. The big question was whether he suspected that I was a nightwalker? I didn’t know which answer would speed the Hunter’s search, but I hoped that I still have one night left to talk to Stefan alone.

“Thanks for the information.”

“Come back to Jedrzejow, Erin.”

“You know I can’t. As soon as they’re sure I’m not in Venice, Danaus will start his search again. I can’t live my very long life on the run.”

“You won’t have a long life if you stay,” he said grimly.

“Thanks,” I murmured and hung up the phone. He was right, but I had to take a chance.