Dark Awakening (29 page)

“What is this? Do you mean the temple fire Lily keeps seeing?” Ty demanded. “You could have stopped all this madness?”

“We are watchers. It is not our place,” Sammael said.

“Typical,” Ty snorted, angry. “None of the highbloods seem to think it’s their place to do anything unless it’s their own ass on the line. And even then, they leave a lot of it to their servants.”

Sammael’s gaze was piercing. “Some. Most, perhaps. But not all. There is still honor among our kind, though sometimes found in strange places. Lilith was different. This heir to her dynasty is different as well.”

Though he would have thought it impossible, the throbbing in Ty’s head actually increased. He rubbed at his temple with his fingertips. “Look, Sammael, I appreciate the pep talk. But you’re not giving me much to go on here. Why exactly are we having this conversation? Are you planning to fight me for her?”

That provoked a small smile from the hulking Grigori, an expression Ty hadn’t imagined the man was capable of.

“Alas, no. You might be a worthy adversary, Tynan of the Cait, but you would not live. And I am curious to see what you do with what you have been given.”

“I’ll do what I’ve been trained to do. I hunt and I deliver.” He sighed and gave his temple a final, irritable rub. His words sounded callous and cold, even to his own ears. “Look, I appreciate your… well, it’s not exactly help, is it? But I don’t have a choice. The Ptolemy are dying. And I’m tied to them, like it or not. Lily is the key to fixing it.”

“Hmm,” Sammael said, his face falling back into its hard lines. “One would hope you gain some intelligence before it’s too late. But do as you will, cat. The boundaries
between our kind were not always so harshly drawn. They may blur again while I draw breath. I will wait with my brothers and sisters, and watch.”

“Yes. You did mention that’s what you do.” Ty shifted on the balls of his feet, impatient to be gone and possessed of a restlessness he sometimes thought would be with him for all his life no matter how hard he fought it.

When the Grigori didn’t move, Ty held on to what little patience he had left and dredged up some manners. “Well. Good night, then, Sammael. Lovely meeting you. Hope you sort out whatever trouble brought you here and all that.”

That enigmatic smile again. “Rogan does love a good tale. But you need not worry. I am in no trouble. I have done what I came here to do.”

Suspicion bloomed deep in Ty’s chest—along with a sudden fear that he would never be more than a pawn in some game controlled by those much more powerful than he would ever be.

“You mean to say you came here, lied to Rogan, just to give me that little speech?” He looked more closely at the white-haired giant, the eerie, carved perfection of him. “What are you really, Sammael? Which of the rumors about your kind are true?”

“None of them, of course,” Sammael replied. “Though I have heard a few that may have had a kernel of truth in them. It matters not. We will be watching, cat. Prove yourself worthy of her, and our world will change again.”

“I really wish you’d explain that.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do. Good night, Tynan MacGillivray. May the darkness protect you.” With that, Sammael inclined his head, turned, and walked away.

Ty briefly considered going after him and beating the truth out of him, but he doubted it would have done any good. Besides, the way Sammael had casually said that Ty wouldn’t survive a fight with him rang true. He was a hell of a fighter, but the Grigori were just… eerie. Worse than he’d remembered.

Hell
. He had enough to worry about without being accosted by ancient, creepy vampires spouting prophetic nonsense. He knew Lily’s mark was going to mean trouble with the Ptolemy. If only because Arsinöe had never liked having rivals for attention, beautiful ones especially. Still, he refused to believe she wouldn’t listen to him, to consider his plea.

Because after being basically mugged by Rogan, Ty had decided that just this once, he was due a fair price for his services to the Ptolemy crown. He wanted only one thing: to be able to keep his word, just this once. He wanted Lily to be able to go home. There were certain herbs that would make her forget, once she had helped them. Make her forget she had ever met a vampire… make her forget him. And that, he knew, was especially important. She could never be allowed to remember him, since what he had seen written all over her face tonight when she’d spoken to him had set off every self-preserving alarm he had.

Lily was falling for him, impossible as it still seemed to him. And despite what Sammael had said about trying to deserve it, Ty knew deep in his bones that such a thing wasn’t possible. He was a lowblood, a liar and a killer, and such things were all he would ever be good for. He could not remake vampire society, or the strictures it placed on him and others of his ilk. But he could do his best to get
her out of it and to wipe all traces of it from her memory. She could go on as she had in her tidy life—surviving.

And he could get back to the slow death that was living forever.

With miserable thoughts of living an eternity without Lily, Ty trudged upstairs.

Left alone in the little room, Lily paced like a caged tiger. Resentment bubbled just beneath the surface, right along with a fair amount of worry for Ty. How, in a matter of days, had she gone from a cozy, uneventful life as a professor to being holed up in a vampire safe house, on the run from an entire dynasty of creatures who wanted to lock her away and never let her go?

That she was being deliberately kept out of the loop right now, when this was her future, was more than a little infuriating. Granted, Ty knew the rules, the protocol, and these strange, shady people. But it would have been nice not to be stuck in this bare little room for over an hour with no company but her own thoughts, which were driving her slowly insane. Even Jaden had flaked out on her, stalking off to his room with barely a word. He’d looked like he had a lot on his mind, which Lily was sure he did.

They all did.

She paused in the middle of yet another circuit around the room and shoved her hands into her hair, cradling her head. It was then, without the sound of her own footsteps filling her ears, that she heard the soft noises just on the other side of the door. Jaden’s room.

Maybe he’d throw her out. Maybe the door would be locked from his side and it was a moot point anyway. Still,
the possibility of distraction from herself was impossible to resist.

Lily padded to the door dividing the two rooms and gently, quietly turned the knob.

She had to open it only a little to see that this room was a carbon copy of her own: small, functional, lit by a candle, no windows. In the middle of this room stood a man clad in nothing but faded jeans, his back to Lily as he rummaged in a small bag on the bed. His feet and his torso were bare. Just from his build and the swing of ebony hair, she knew it was Jaden.

But nothing she knew of him, nothing he had said or done, had prepared her for the shock of the sight of his bare skin.

His back was covered in scars, some white, some still an irritated pink, in a crisscrossing pattern that could be nothing but the marks of a whip. There was little of his fair skin that had been left unmarked, and Lily couldn’t imagine the pain he must have endured. No wonder he had been quiet and strange with Ty; no wonder he had run from the Ptolemy.

At the thought of the dynasty’s name, Lily’s blood ran cold. Only a monster would inflict this on another creature. And Ty was bringing her right to the monsters responsible for this. For the first time, she began to question the validity of Ty’s promise, not on his part but on the part of the one who had allowed him to make it. If these Ptolemy would do this to their own, would they really stand by their word to her and just let her walk away from them?

“It’s rude to stare, you know.” Jaden’s voice, quiet but intense, made her jump.

“I, um, sorry, I was just…”

He turned to look at her, and she saw no surprise. Only resignation and the haunted look he seemed to wear all the time. Now at least she knew why, but knowing didn’t make it any better.

“No,” he said, visibly softening. “I was hoping to see you before… Well, you might as well come on in,” he said, beckoning before turning back to the bag he’d been looking in. “It’ll be daylight soon, and I need to be out of here before then.”

Lily looked at him incredulously. “You’re
leaving
? Now?”

“Best time to make an escape. Right before the sun peeks its head up. Just have to make sure you know where you can crash next, and that it isn’t far, but I have my connections. You can come with me, if you like.”

She could tell from his faint smile, almost mocking her, that he knew very well she wouldn’t run away with him. But she was also fairly sure the invitation was sincere.

“Why are you running?” she asked. “I thought you were going to help us.”

“What’s to help?” he asked. “Anura has chosen to stand with the Dracul. Hell if I know why, but it’s her prerogative. Which means going back to the apartment would be foolish.
Someone
will be waiting there for us, and no one we’ll want to meet. Tynan won’t give up hope that the Ptolemy will appreciate him for what he does for them and maybe throw the rest of us cats a bone in the process. A nice thought, but a pipe dream. And you…” He cocked his head, studying her as he trailed off.

It was unnerving, how direct his gaze was, not unlike Ty’s. He was quite handsome, Lily realized. But his smiles were even rarer than Ty’s. They had a hard existence, these
Cait Sith. She wanted so badly to help, but there was nothing she could do.

The priestess’s voice whispered through her mind.
“Break his chains…”

But how? Pulling an entire bloodline out of slavery wasn’t exactly a one-person job. And certainly not a one-
human
job.

“I can’t quite get a handle on you, Lily Quinn. You’re full of contradictions.” He pulled on a dark-colored shirt he lifted from the bed. “One moment I think you’re just a naive girl who got hit with an ability you couldn’t handle. The next, I see someone who could be a formidable force, if she tried.”

Lily felt all the sting of his matter-of-fact assessment. “Neither one of those is very flattering.”

Jaden shrugged. “I’m not trying to insult you. There’s a lot more to you than meets the eye—of that much I’m certain. But you wouldn’t be sleeping with Ty if you weren’t at least a little naive. As to getting a handle on your power, that’s not really your fault. I’ve never seen anything like it. I have no idea what it would feel like to try and control it.”

“It’s like trying to wrap my hands around a bolt of lightning,” Lily admitted.

“Hmm.” He finished whatever he was doing, then moved toward her. “Let me see that mark of yours. Ty didn’t seem to want me gazing upon your virgin skin. Can’t think why.”

It took her a moment to realize that he was actually teasing her. When she finally did, Lily obligingly pulled down the collar of her shirt while she watched Jaden approach.

“When did you grow a sense of humor?” she asked, arching her neck a little so he could get a better look.
His fingers brushed lightly over the mark. His cool touch made her shiver.

“I have one. There’s not a lot to be amused about right now, is all.” He paused, then murmured, “Strange and beautiful. Like the one who wears it.”

The remark surprised her. When Lily looked in his eyes again, she was surprised to see the amount of power glittering in their depths. Jaden might be quiet, but he was like every vampire she’d met so far: more than he seemed. Jaden looked at her so intently she felt as though he were searching her very soul for something. Finally, he sighed and stepped away.

“I can see why he wants you. He’d have to be a fool not to, and if you stay on this course, he won’t be the last. But you’re making a mistake in staying, Lily. There’s a lot you don’t understand about us. And about him.”

“I can’t tell you how tired I’m getting of hearing that.”

Jaden chuckled, another rarity, though there was little true humor in the sound. “At least Ty tried to tell you, then, though not hard enough, obviously.” His expression grew more serious. “I’m guessing tonight was the first you’d heard of his family. He doesn’t talk about that, not that I blame him. Life was hard for him from the beginning, and it got harder for a while after he was changed. Has he told you how he came to the Ptolemy?”

Lily shifted uneasily. “No. Only that the queen of the Ptolemy saved him and that he owes her.”

Jaden snorted. “Yeah. Well, she wouldn’t have had to save him if he hadn’t fought back during a Ptolemy raid of the local Cait Sith lair.” He stopped, shook his head. “But it’s not my story to tell. That one’s his.”

Her interest was piqued, but she refused to rise to the
bait. She hadn’t exactly been going on about her own past issues, either, and Ty hadn’t asked until she’d nearly plastered a city block with vampire guts. Which was fine, she told herself. Just fine. She didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to talk about it. Which left them… where?

“The past doesn’t matter,” Lily said, her chin going up. “And I don’t have any expectations, Jaden. He hasn’t lied to me and pretended we have a future. And I’m not pretending we have one. If being with him anyway makes me naive, well, then I guess I am.”

She hadn’t realized how it would hurt to say it, that there was no future, only the now. Nor had she realized how easily Jaden would pick up on that pain. She saw his pity and recoiled from it. She’d had enough pity in her life. It had never been warranted, and it wasn’t now. Still, she couldn’t help adding, “Ty’s different. He’s a good man, even though he thinks he isn’t.”