Allegiance (17 page)

My eyes shifted to Viggo as a knot formed in my belly. There was something there … the pieces were sliding into place. Viggo had something to do with the original’s death—that much I knew. That meant he had something to do with Lilly’s mother’s death. He probably killed her. That would explain Lilly’s hatred for him.

The mother-killer stared back at me with a smug smile, likely aware of the puzzle pieces I was putting together in my head.
I hate you! I want you to die! I hope Lilly kills you after all of this!
If it weren’t for everyone else here, I’d throw the towels on the ground and run toward him. Let my blood kill him! I had to force my hatred down as I dismissed the thought, turning back to Sofie. “So what now? Clearly she’s not happy.” I held my arm up as evidence.

“Now … you go get that stitched up before your blood turns us all mad!” Sofie yelled.
She never yells at me
. Cowering slightly, I glanced at Caden. He nodded to the door, his jaw clenching as his eyes grazed my arm.

Terrified I’d see those spider veins again, I willingly followed Ivan out.

6. Threats—Sofie

No sooner had Evangeline left with Ivan than Caden appeared by my side, his hands digging into my biceps.

“Fix her!” He hissed through bared teeth.

I flung his hands off my arms. “I’m trying! Don’t you think I’m trying?” I was in no mood for another verbal assault. Evangeline’s had shredded me to rags.

“You’re not trying hard enough!” His roar reverberated off the vaulted ceiling. I noted Mage’s weight shift in my peripheral. I stayed her with a wave of my finger. There was no need for her intervention. Caden’s rage had already collapsed, his shoulders hunched inward, grief laying siege to his fiery spirit. “I almost killed her, Sofie …” Beautiful greenish-blue eyes begged me, shattering my heart.

I tentatively reached up to lay one hand on his broad shoulder, the other cupping his jaw. “I’ll fix this. I have to fix this.” I realized I was trying to convince myself more than anyone else.

“Forget the human!” Viggo cried out, his arms spread wide. “What are you going to do about Lilly? What’s your brilliant new plan?”

“She’ll come to her senses. Give her a day or two,” Mortimer answered for me, offering the briefest smile and head nod. Who would ever have thought that I would come to appreciate his company?

Viggo wouldn’t let up, though. “She’s a child nurturing a century-long grudge. She has no sense.”

“A grudge?” Mage’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “You murdered her mother.”

“She wasn’t her real mother,” he retorted, but the fire in his voice was gone. He wasn’t an idiot. Whether he felt the tiniest bit of remorse, he knew this was all on him. I had only learned the reason of Lilly’s hatred for Viggo upon leaving the Tribe’s island, after I gave him the ultimatum of pledging allegiance to me or dying. Even then, I thought I’d have to tear off his toenails to get the truth out of him.

That’s when he finally admitted to killing Lilly’s mother, who was also the original vampire. Apparently she betrayed him, though my instincts told me there was another, more plausible side to that story. As if that weren’t enough to earn Lilly’s wrath, he stole the body, burned it, and hid the ashes away where Lilly could never find them. For what? Only the Fates knew …

“We will give Lilly a day or two to come to her senses, and then I will hunt her down if I must,” Mage answered calmly.

I sighed, as glad as ever to have Mage in my corner. “And while that’s happening, I’ll be busy trying to fix Evangeline and Julian. And Bishop.”
Or I’ll die, trying …

7. Torture All Around—
Evangeline

I trailed Ivan as he led me down the hall to a main floor bathroom. Without warning or asking permission, he slid his hands under my armpits and hoisted me onto the counter as if I were a child. I sat quietly, putting pressure on my wound as instructed, and watched him rifle through the cabinets below until he pulled out a sizeable rectangular white box with a red cross on the front. A first-aid kit—a strange thing to find in a palace of vampires, though perhaps not so strange with the ever-prepared Sofie.

Ivan unraveled the bindings around my arm in silence. Part of me wanted to keep the wound hidden, afraid of what I might see. The bleeding had stopped, thankfully. He tossed the soaked towels into the sink with one hand and reached for a giant syringe with the other. He gestured to my arm. Grimacing, I nodded my assent but had to turn away and grit my teeth against the sting as he pricked my arm in several places. Within minutes, my arm was completely numb.

Ivan continued rummaging through the box, pulling out various things—thread, gauze, ointments. He went to work, cleaning my wound and the skin around it with an antiseptic and cotton pads. With the blood cleaned up, it didn’t look as horrific. Still, the gash had to be a good four inches long, stretching from just below my elbow joint to halfway down my forearm.

I watched with fascination as my werewolf-nursemaid threaded a needle through my skin with the grace and delicacy of a plastic surgeon. In the eighteen years before I met Sofie, I hadn’t had one stitch. Since meeting her, my hand had been cut open, my neck punctured—twice—and now my forearm mangled.

“I’m going to look like Frankenstein’s monster by the time this is done,” I muttered to myself as I studied the long, thin pinkish scar across my palm.

Ivan looked up, his golden irises revealing nothing about whether he understood me, whether he even knew who Frankenstein was. “Scars build character. They make you human.”

He speaks English!
I smiled, both at his gentleness and at his attempt to console me. “Well, that’s good. I thought they just made me ugly.”

One corner of his mouth twitched into a crooked smile as he went back to work on my arm. Within minutes, twenty precise, neat stitches closed up the gash Lilly had so stealthily granted me.

“Thanks … Ivan,”

He grunted, thrusting a small white pill and a glass into my hands. “For the pain.”

I accepted it with a nod, tossing it back and chasing it with the water. “So all this blood doesn’t bother you?”

He shook his head. “I can’t smell it.”

“At all? I thought werewolves would have a keen sense of smell.”

“We do. We can’t smell your blood. We can’t smell you. It’s like you aren’t here anymore.”

My heart skipped a beat as I processed his words. “What do you mean, anymore?”

Ivan shrugged noncommittally as he packed up the medical supplies. “In Siberia, you were normal. Now you’re not.”

This must be another symptom
. “You mean, like, the Tribe? Do they also not exist?”

Another shrug. “I have not met this Tribe so I cannot tell you.” His hands moved rapidly and I realized he was rushing to get away from this conversation. I wanted to know more.

“What else…?,” I asked, but my voice drifted as Ivan shoved his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a plain white envelope, thick and stiff with its contents. He thrust it forward.

With a curious frown, I gingerly took it. Inside was a stack of four-by-six photographs—the ones of my time on Ratheus. The ones that brought me a balance of both sanity and insanity while in the mountains. The last I remembered, they were in my nightstand …

“Thank you,” I whispered, swallowing the lump in my throat, as I flipped through them, wistful longing pulling at my heart. I landed on a picture of Fiona and Bishop, sitting on a bench, Fiona’s beautiful violet eyes playfully taunting the camera. Full of life and love, and friendship. I traced her face with my finger, memorized Bishop’s smile beside her. I’ll never see either of those smiles again.

“Ivan?” I asked as he hastily bagged the bloody rags and gauze in a garbage bag. “What happened to all the others? In the mountains? When Ursula attacked and Leo sent us away, there was still staff there. Magda … Maria …”

“They are in Russia. Safe.”

A disturbing thought entered my head. “You know they’re all … who they’re supposed to be?”

His brow furrowed as if not understanding.

“I mean ... you heard about Ursula, right? You know about that witch who possessed Valentina? Did she die? Permanently?”

Ivan’s grim face cracked a smile as he chuckled. “Yes. She is not coming back. We’ve made sure of it.”

I hesitated, wondering what
made sure of it
meant but decided I didn’t need to know. “And Leo?” I asked, my eyes suddenly stinging with tears. “Were you able to bury him?”

He shook his head.

Sadness cloaked me. “But… you didn’t just leave him there, did you?”

Again, a shake of his head. “Follow me.”

I trailed him down the hall, an inkling of worry growing to full-on dread by the time Ivan stopped in front of a solid wood door. Was I going to find Leo’s corpse on the other side?

Pushing open the door to allow me to pass, I stepped into a lady’s parlor, decorated with tasteful floral wallpaper, crown molding, and matching pastel chairs. A cream-colored wall-to-wall bookcase filled one wall. I half expected to see a circle of prim ladies with big hats and china teacups, crocheting handkerchiefs.

Ivan raised a rough hand to a simple silver-plated urn sitting on a shelf. “Sofie will bury him with his family.”

His family. Maeve. A slow smile touched my lips as tears rained down my cheeks, a strange feeling of closure cleansing the pain of my sudden and tragic parting with Leo. Thankfully, Ivan took that as his sign to exit. He quietly slinked out, leaving me to cry alone.

It didn’t last long, though. “I’m going to take him to Ireland, when this is all over,” Sofie said, suddenly behind me, her arm draped over my shoulder. “That’s what he wanted.” With her free hand, she lifted my injured arm to inspect the stitching. “Those wolves of mine are obedient, aren’t they?”

“They can’t sense me. It’s like I don’t exist. Ivan told me.”

“Did he now …” By her clenched teeth and her calm, even tone, I could tell Sofie wasn’t surprised by this news but wasn’t impressed that I knew.

“You knew?” I cried out, my words thick with accusation.

She heaved a sigh of exasperation but then nodded. “I didn’t want you to worry more about this Tribe magic than you already are, so I asked them not to say anything. I guess maybe they’re not so obedient after all. Does your arm hurt?”

She was trying to distract me. I shrugged. The freezing was still working, but I sensed the first signs of discomfort waiting in the shadows. There was no point telling Sofie that unless I wanted to heighten her anxiety, which I didn’t. Besides, whatever that little white painkiller was, it had to kick in soon. I scanned the empty room. “Where are the others?”

“Amelie is taking a walk with Julian. Max is out hunting with his brothers.” Sofie bit her bottom lip in worried thought. “And Caden is with Bishop.”

Bishop. “When are you going to release him from the Merth?”

Sofie hesitated. “I don’t know yet, Evangeline. I can’t say what Lilly and the others are going to do, when they’re going to come back. I need to be ready.”

“So … what? We’re going to leave him bound like that forever? Sofie! We can’t do that! You have to do something! You’ve got to find a way to … bring this guy back,” I pushed, waving the picture of a smiling Bishop in front of her face. “Come on! You’re Sofie! You’ve got the Fates’ ears. You can solve anything!”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” Sofie said with a wry smile. But then she sighed and with it, raw pain shone through. “I’m working on it, darling.” She placed her hand over mine. “I did have an idea but … we’ll see if I can pull it off. I’ve got that to worry about, you to worry about …” For the first time, I noticed the dark circles under her eyes. She looked exhausted.

“You don’t have to worry about me, Sofie. I’m safe here.”
Except that the love of my life came close to losing control again; I’m linked with your sister who’s out of her tomb and being tortured; I have a toxic magic flowing through me that is turning me into a nocturnal yellow-eyed demon; Julian is a secret Sentinel, and for some reason, a child vampire enjoys maiming me ... safe as a baby in a cradle.

Sofie let out a loud guffaw. “Safe? Are you nuts? In a blink of an eye, before any of us could stop her, Lilly cut you open! With Caden holding you, and all of us around, she got to you. And worse! I can’t heal you, Evangeline. I can’t do anything! I’m useless where you are concerned, and it’s driving me crazy!” Her fingers rifled through her mane of red hair, leaving it in disarray. “Safe, mon dieu!” she muttered to herself, rolling her eyes.

I studied my newest stitch work, Ivan’s words jumping out at me. “At least I’ll have character,” I repeated, earning the flattest look I’ve ever seen on Sofie’s face. I gave her a sheepish grin. “So, what are you going to do about Lilly?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. Now, we wait. Let them stew on what we’ve shown them. Lilly’s a lot of things, but stupid is not one of them. If nothing else, she’ll be curious enough to come back. She’ll come to her senses and it sounds like, when she does, she’ll have plenty to tell us.”

“She’s not going to pledge her allegiance to you, Sofie. You realize that, don’t you?”

“It’s the only way I can trust her. Lilly’s dangerous, Evangeline. Extremely dangerous. More so than Viggo in some ways. She’s trapped in a child’s body and mind—she’s reckless and stubborn; she lacks long-term vision. But she has the power and speed of an ancient vampire. From what I understand, she’s about twelve or thirteen hundred years old. Her size is her advantage. She’s so small, she’s hard to catch. And she’s sharp as a tack in ways that surprise even me. She sees things as a child that many of us don’t detect as adults.”