The Den of Shadows Quartet (9 page)

I am lying, of course. I know he is stronger than I, but I am not about to admit that to him.

“That remains to be seen, does it not?” he answers, turning away from me as if he doesn’t care where I am.

Another deadly game. We circle each other.
I am not afraid to have you behind me — I do not fear you that much
, we say to each other. Yet we watch our backs, because we are both vipers, willing to kill and simply waiting for a chance.

“Shall we find out?” I suggest coolly. I am not bothering to hide my aura, and I can feel it stretch out, strike Aubrey’s aura, and crackle around it. I search his
aura, looking for weaknesses, as I know he searches mine.

“Why are you so eager to lose, Risika?”

He
is
afraid of me, I realize. He is playing for time — trying to make me lose my nerve. Why? Because he is afraid he might lose? It does not seem possible that Aubrey thinks I could win.

I walk around the table toward him until I am close enough that he turns, not trusting me.

“Why are you stalling, Aubrey?” My power snaps out and hits his like a whip. He staggers a bit — I am strong, and I am reckless, and I really do
not
like him.

His own power lashes out, and I feel a burning in my veins. My vision mists over for a moment, a moment in which Aubrey draws his knife.

“You always need your blade, don’t you, Aubrey? Because without it you’d lose, wouldn’t you?” I circle behind him, and he turns to keep me in sight. Like the game of insults, this is one I can win: Follow me, watch me, but do not let me get behind you, because you know I hate you and will kill you if given a chance. It is only in the actual fight that I fear I might lose.

“Come now, Aubrey — just like old times. You threw your blade down then and dared me to pick it up; are you too afraid to do so now?”

I lash my power around his wrist. His muscles spasm, but he holds on to the knife.

‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ I have nothing to fear, Aubrey — what about you?”

His power flares out with his anger, and I hear wood
crack. One of the tables splits down the middle, and a human jumps out of the way barely in time.

“Impressive,” I say scornfully and lash out with my own power. The mirrored walls fracture into spiderweb patterns with no single inch left whole. Hairline cracks run through every surface, but not one piece falls out. Aubrey backs up a step, away from me.

“Coward,” I say. “Do you back away from me?” I take a step forward, ever aware of the knife in his hand, and he steps back again, almost running into one of the humans, who jumps away quickly.

Aubrey glances behind him and notices the crowd for the first time. It is mostly human, but there are some of our kind. I see Jager lounging against the wall and Fala, Jager’s fledgling, sitting cross-legged on a table.

Are you all talk, Aubrey? Are you too afraid to fight?” I circle to the left as he moves to get behind me, so that I end up behind him. Once again he has to turn to keep me in his sight.

“Why would I be afraid?” he asks, his tone mocking. “It would not hurt me to destroy you, Risika.”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t, Aubrey, but we will never have a chance to test the theory,” I answer.

“Test it again, you mean,” he says. “We have tested it once before.”

I ignore his words and reach out, my aura striking his in its center and latching on. The average human sees nothing, and the vampires see only a shimmering space between us, but Aubrey feels it, and I feel it.

He stumbles again, bringing his shields up and throwing my power back at me. I hold on with my
mind, though I fall into a table, and feel his power crackling around my own.

Humans have one thing to use in a fight: their bodies. Among my kind, opponents fight with their bodies, but also with their minds. I can feel Aubrey’s power beating against my shields, trying to get into my mind, trying to latch on to my own power. I push him away from my mind, trying to get into his, all the while circling, moving closer, dodging the knife, circling away.

My eyes mist over for a moment, and my veins burn as Aubrey lashes out again. I stumble, and he strikes out with his blade. I narrowly dodge, falling back, barely catching myself before I fall to the floor. Aubrey is there in a moment, but I am not.

His power, which has attached itself to my aura, keeps me from using my mind to move. But I push him back long enough to change to hawk form and fly away. Fighting his mind and holding hawk form is nearly impossible, and I return to human form. Aubrey’s mind is stronger than my own, but for the first time I realize that the difference is small. Were he as strong as I thought, he could have stopped me from changing at all.

I came here expecting to lose but refusing to run. For the first time I realize I might be able to win.

Aubrey’s power wavers for a moment as my fear drops, and I strike out again with all my strength. Aubrey falls back a few feet, and I advance and strike again. He disappears for a moment, and suddenly the knife is at my throat.

I know that if I use the small strength I have left to move, I will not be able to hold up the walls keeping him out of my mind.

I
FREEZE
, feeling the faintest burning where the blade presses against the skin of my throat. With that blade, it will be fatal if my throat is slit.

“I told you long ago that you cannot win against me, Risika.” Aubrey thinks he has won, and he is not paying as much attention to his shields. I do not feel him pushing as strongly against my mind. Why fight when you think you have won? “I do not kill my own unless forced to, Risika, and you are not enough of a threat to force me. So go.”

He moves the knife away for a moment, and I hit his wrist, breaking it. The knife falls to the ground, and I shove him into the fractured mirrors that make up the walls.

I laugh.

I pick up the knife before he can recover, striking him with my mind, keeping his shields down. I lock on to his mind with my own, forcing him down.

“Aubrey, I’ve learned. In fact, you taught me this
little trick. You think that once you turn your back I will stay away, afraid. Well, know this, Aubrey,” I say, feeding his words back to him. “That isn’t how the world works.”

Now he begins to fight again. He was taken by surprise for a moment, but he grows desperate. He lashes out along the line of power I am using to strike him, and as I stumble for a moment, losing my hold, his walls return.

We both now know that this fight is serious. But he is weak, and I can feel that he is afraid. He has forgotten his knife, which I now hold; his every instinct is focused on survival.

I throw his strike back at him, forcing him away from my mind. He stumbles slightly but then throws all his power at me. I fall into the table Fala sits upon and instantly feel her power strike out against me. For just a moment I lose focus, dropping the knife, and Aubrey pins me to the ground.

He has retrieved his knife.

This scene is familiar. I remember three hundred years ago, lying upon the forest ground, Aubrey pinning me, knife in hand. The memory brings a thread of terror, and I react instinctively I do what I was not able to do then.

I throw Aubrey off me — not far, just a foot or so. But in the moment when he is off balance I shift into another form I know inside and out, one with the strength to fight.

The Bengal tiger is the largest feline on earth. Aubrey does not know the mind of a tiger, the pure animal instinct, and cannot find a hold. I slash at him,
scoring his chest. The wounds heal in moments, but I have pushed him down again.

Aubrey tries to roll away, but I pin him to the ground. I am physically stronger than Aubrey and though he is stronger when using his mind to fight, my mind is powerful enough to hold him off when I am in this form.

I look into his eyes, in which I can see a flicker of fear beneath a sheet of resignation. He almost looks as if he was expecting this moment.

I prepare for a killing strike. But he does not want to die.

“You’ve proved yourself, Risika,” he tells me. “Years ago I gave you a choice between giving up and fighting to the death. Do I get no such chance?”

I hesitate.
Aubrey, I know how this game works
, I answer with my mind, as I cannot speak the human tongue when I am in this form.
If I let you go now, what is to stop you from stabbing me in the back as soon as I turn away?

This doesn’t need to be to the death, Risika
, Aubrey insists. I can sense his desperation.

You gave me a choice because I was weak, Aubrey. I am stronger than you — we have proved that here — but I swore long ago that I would avenge all you have taken from me. And you took so much; the price is so high
.

He moves his head back, exposing his throat, and I pause, waiting for him to explain.
I paid a high price long ago for this life. I do not want it to end yet
, he tells me with his mind.
I offer you my blood in return for the blood I have spilled
.

He is serious. The fool really would do anything to survive. My taking his blood would make me far
stronger and open his mind to me completely. There would be no way for him to shield his mind from me, and no way for him to harm me with his mind, which would make it nearly impossible for him to hurt me. Physically he would have the same strength, but he could make no move that I could not read from his mind ahead of time.

I pause for only a moment, then return to human form and lean forward. My teeth pierce skin, and the blood flows. Vampire blood is far stronger than human blood.

His blood tastes like white wine, only thicker and far more potent, and I feel giddy when I pull away again, wiping blood from my lips. The wound on his throat heals instantly, but I know the wound to his pride will last as long as I do.

I pick Aubrey’s knife up off the ground and contemplate it for a moment. He is defenseless, and if I struck him in the heart he could not raise a hand to protect himself. I trace the scar from my throat to my shoulder, remembering, and then, like lightning, I draw the knife along Aubrey’s collarbone in an identical wound.

“Remember this day, Aubrey. The wound you dealt long ago has returned to you. I’ll be satisfied with your blood, though it doesn’t begin to replace the lives of Alexander and Tora. Now get out.”

I let go of his mind, yet I can still feel it completely. It is an eerie sensation. I stand easily, his blood racing through my veins, replacing the power I lost in the fight and far more.

Aubrey pulls himself up into a sitting position, using a nearby table. His skin is flour white, and his eyes are
almost empty as he raises his hand to the wound on his shoulder. No one has ever wounded him and lived to tell of it.

He slowly stands to leave, and the humans move away as he walks through them. Those that remain know what we are, and they know what such blood loss has done to his hunger and how hard it is for him to maintain his control as he leaves the room.

I turn my back on him, unafraid, and return my gaze to Fala, who is still sitting serenely on the table. She does not seem to remember almost causing my death.

I lash out with my power, and she jumps up gracelessly as the wooden table catches fire. Fala disappears, not wanting to fight.

I
WALK TOWARD
J
AGER
, and humans bump into each other to get out of my way. I laugh as they hurry from the room.

“Come to see the show?” I ask him.

“I told you you were stronger than Aubrey,” he says. “The coward. I didn’t expect him to offer so much just to live. You are probably one of the strongest of us now — maybe as strong as I. It would be interesting to find out.”

“Another time, Jager,” I answer. The adrenaline and energy from the fight are still in me, and part of me wants to fight something stronger. But the rational part of my mind tells me I am far too giddy to fight anyone seriously.

“Of course, Risika,” he agrees. Jager fights simply for the challenge, not for a prize, and he does not fight anyone who he does not think has a fair chance unless it is necessary. At the moment I am drunk on Aubrey’s
blood, and I would lose. “Your eyes are still golden from shifting to a tiger,” he tells me.

“I like them this way.” I laugh, looking into the shattered mirror. My once misty reflection is now completely gone, but I can see myself in my mind’s eye. My hair is still tiger striped, and my eyes are as golden as my silk tank top — the color they were when I was alive, before vampirism darkened them to black. I run my tongue along my teeth, licking off the last traces of Aubrey’s blood.

Jager disappears, and I realize that almost everyone has left. Tossing a black strand of hair off my face, I feel for the first time a familiar aura in the back of the room. I remember it from a letter I received recently, a letter with a tearstain on the page.

“So my stalker would visit me in person,” I say to his back. In this light the blond hair looks almost exactly as my own once did. I reach out with my mind, and even though I cannot read him I realize what he is. I remember the Triste witch who had been in the Café Sangra, who had given a note for Rachel to his vampiric victim.

I did not think much about it at the moment, but now I wish I had. I swear, suddenly realizing the truth I should have realized long ago.

“I was hoping I could convince you not to follow those creatures … but I guess it’s too late, isn’t it?”

I remember wondering why I never heard him fall.

“Rachel —” he starts to say.

“Alexander, don’t talk to me.” He has waited three hundred years to tell me he is alive? I damned myself years ago. I had — or thought I had — nothing left to
lose, then. All the years I was alone. All the pain he could have spared me …

What pain has he known? I never went back to my father, because I did not want him to see what I had become. Had I known my twin was alive, and immortal like me, would I have chosen to spend the years with him? Would he choose to spend them with me, knowing I’m a monster?