Dawnbreaker (6 page)

I lingered behind on the island after Gabriel had left, thinking about my last days with Michael. Yet, when I started to cross the bridge to the back of the graveyard, I sensed the lycanthrope’s unexpected presence. I halted, my stomach twisting into a knot. He was not supposed to be there. He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near me unless he called ahead of time. With the naturi overrunning the area, the lycanthropes had agreed to leave the city and keep a wide distance from the nightwalkers after the sun set each night. It was the only way we could think of protecting both sides. It wasn’t a perfect plan. So far, six nightwalkers and four werewolves had been killed from fighting, including one of Barrett’s brothers. The Savannah Pack Alpha was still mourning his loss.

Licking my lips, I turned and headed west, moving away from the werewolf, but Nicolai also changed directions, heading toward me. Yeah, he was looking for me. It was a silly hope, but I had to try.

I didn’t sense anyone in the graveyard with us. There was a chance that Nicolai had simply come looking for me over some matter. We’d hardly spoken since I returned from Crete. He had settled in, finding a job at the local college and a new apartment with relative ease. From what Barrett had told me, Nicolai was still struggling to find his place within the local pack, but then this was supposed to be a temporary arrangement. But with Jabari lurking around and the naturi breathing down my neck, I wasn’t sure when I would be able to allow the lycan to safely return to his own life outside of Savannah.

Digging in my heels, I changed direction again and started walking toward him. At worst, the naturi had gotten control over the lycanthrope and sent him to kill me. If it was at all possible, I would try to knock Nicolai out and kill the naturi. But my hopes weren’t high considering that I would be painfully outnumbered in this situation. I should have brought Danaus along.

I stepped onto one of the winding gravel roads when Nicolai finally came into view. He hadn’t changed since I last saw him, my Adonis with an ugly past. His golden blond hair brushed at the collar of his shirt, and his skin seemed a perfect bronze, as if he had been worshiped by the sun. I kept him in Savannah to protect him from the naturi and Jabari, but we both knew that I was only extending his life span by a matter of days.

“Long time no see,” he called to me when I stopped in the middle of the road. His pace had slowed to almost a shuffle but he was still drawing closer, his hands shoved into the pockets of his khaki pants.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t see much of a future for us,” I said, shrugging one shoulder as my eyes continued to sweep over the immediate area, searching for anyone else that might be drawing close for the ambush.

“It’s hard to compete with the hunter. He’s so determined to have your heart,” Nicolai replied, stopping when he was still several yards away from me.

A snort escaped me and I weakly smiled at my companion. “On a pike,” I replied, finishing the thought. Danaus’s only interest in me was how to finally kill me. “What are you doing here?” I demanded, ending the lighthearted banter we had forced into the tense air.

“He wants only to talk,” Nicolai murmured.

“Rowe?”

“No.”

“Shit,” I hissed, the muscles in my shoulders instantly tensing.

“Me,” Jabari said directly behind me.

Spinning around and into a crouch, my skirt flaring out around me, I snarled at Jabari, exposing my fangs to the Coven Elder. I positioned myself between the lycanthrope and the Ancient, ready for the attack. “You can’t have him,” I growled.

In Venice, Jabari had sent Nicolai to kill me. I knocked the werewolf unconscious and later claimed him as my own in an effort to protect Nicolai from Jabari and the rest of the nightwalker Coven. However, both Nicolai and I knew that I wasn’t strong enough to protect him from Jabari should the Ancient ever return to claim him. My only goal had been to extend his life for a little while.

“I can take him back at any time I should choose,” Jabari said with a smile. His pale Egyptian robes wavered in the breeze sweeping through the city that night.

“Nicolai, get out of here!” I commanded as I lifted my right hand and conjured up a fireball. The sight of the dancing flames brought a growl from the back of Jabari’s throat, forcing the Elder to realize that I was ready to take the defense of the werewolf seriously. The nightwalker seemed too tall, too strong, with his dark brown skin and fierce black eyes. I was in over my head, but I had promised to protect Nicolai with my life, and I was prepared to keep that promise.

“No! It doesn’t have to be this way,” Nicolai countered. I could hear his footsteps growing closer. I needed him out of there, but he wouldn’t leave.

I threw the fireball at the Ancient nightwalker so it landed just before his feet, forcing him to take a couple steps backward. As he moved, I launched myself at him. But he was ready for me. There was no surprising him. Jabari was constantly in my head, he knew my thoughts if he wanted. He grabbed my wrists just before my fingers could reach his neck and tossed me aside like a bag of garbage. My feet slid across the walk, sending up a spray of gravel. The second I stopped sliding, I was moving toward him again. I spun in a roundhouse kick, hoping to get him off balance again, but he caught my ankle and pushed me backward. Landing on my butt, I snarled up at him, preparing to push to my feet. But I couldn’t.

Jabari raised a single hand toward me, and I could no longer move. The nightwalker had the power to physically control me like a puppet on a string. He had just been toying with me before, allowing me to get my hopes up that I actually had a chance in defeating him. Now he was ready to crush me.

“You can’t have him,” I growled, still fighting his control over me. Jabari was too strong, though. I could feel his power sliding through my entire frame, soaking into muscle and tissue until he was a part of me.

“I could make you kill him for me if I wanted it,” he taunted, taking a couple steps closer to where I sat. “I could force you to rip his heart out and set him on fire.” As he spoke, a surge of power rushed through me, sending a wave of pain through my frame. At the same time, a voice in my head commanded that I create fire. I tried to fight it, but there was no fighting it. A ring of fire sprang up around Nicolai.

“Stop it!” I screamed, fighting his will. The flames shrank, but I couldn’t completely extinguish them no matter how hard I tried. The ring of fire closed in around Nicolai until it was only a couple feet away from him on all sides, and still he said nothing. He knew that we were both trapped by Jabari’s will. “Stop it, Jabari! Your fight is with me. Not him. Leave Nicolai out of this.”

A secretive little smile appeared on the Ancient’s full lips for a moment as he stared down at me. And then the fire disappeared, as well as his presence within my body. “I didn’t come here to take Nicolai from you,” he admitted with an indifferent shrug. “I can take him at any time, but for now my concern is with the naturi.”

“What! You came here with Nicolai to talk to me about the naturi, not to steal him back?” I demanded, shock keeping me from pushing back to my feet.

An evil smile twisted Jabari’s full lips and danced in his dark eyes. “Yes. You’re the one that started this fight. Not me.”

“You’re a real asshole, you know that,” I snapped, pushing back to my feet and dusting off my black skirt. “I’ve been under attack here since leaving Crete and then I have you pop into town with Nicolai in tow. I don’t need this kind of torment, Jabari. My hands are already full.”

“You should have returned to Venice as I commanded. You would have been protected from the naturi and had none of these worries,” he calmly stated.

“But my people in Savannah would not have been. They are my responsibility.”

“You’re on the Coven now. Your responsibility extends beyond a single city to all of our people.”

I shoved both of my hands through my hair and paced a couple steps away from Jabari in frustration before I screamed. There was no winning with him, in a fight or in a discussion. It was never enough. I didn’t want to be on the Coven, but I’d had to take the open seat in order to break the bargain that Macaire made with the naturi. Macaire struck a deal that would have the nightwalkers kill the naturi queen, Aurora, so long as the naturi killed Our Liege, stopping him from releasing the Great Awakening early.

“Besides the need to drive me insane, what do you want?” I finally demanded when I had my temper under control.

“The next sacrifice is going to be in a few days. You need to be there to stop it.”

“The fall equinox, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the location?”

“Machu Picchu.”

I nodded. I wasn’t surprised. That was just how my luck ran. Machu Picchu was also one of only two holy sites south of the equator. In Peru at this time of year, winter would be drawing to an end, making the holiday the spring equinox there instead of the fall. The spring equinox was a time of rebirth and new beginnings. Peru was also the sight of the last great failure of Aurora’s people to come through the door. There was no better time or place for her to make her grand reappearance.

“Is there a plan?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. The last plan the Coven had come up with to defeat the naturi was to use me as bait in an attempt to draw at the leader of the naturi.

“I would like you to be there early. Hunt Rowe. Stop him.”

“Will you be joining us on the hunt?” I inquired, knowing the answer before he gave it.

“Eventually.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. Yeah, Danaus and I were to be the foot soldiers in this attack. We would sweep in and take on the naturi. And then when Rowe was preparing to complete the sacrifice, Jabari would appear and help to take down the consort king of the naturi, stopping the arrival of Aurora. At least, that’s how I’m sure he envisioned it. But then I doubted any of this had happened the way Jabari had envisioned it so far.

“Mira!” Nicolai cried, causing my head to snap up. The first thing I noticed was that Jabari was gone, but then, he had the ability to pop in and out of a place at will.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded, briskly walking toward him.

“The naturi,” he called back, causing my feet to come to a sliding halt. I seemed doomed to have someone forever shouting those two words at me.

I forced myself to take a step closer to him as I looked around the night-drenched cemetery. “Are they here?”

“No,” he said, pressing the palm of his right hand against his temple. “They’re calling us.”

Biting off a curse, I rushed to his side. I cupped his cheeks with both of my hands as he slowly fell to his knees. He was gritting his teeth as beads of sweat dotted his forehead. His pounding heart and ragged breathing filled the night air.

“Are they close?” I demanded, tilting the werewolf’s head so he was forced to look up at me.

“N-No…in the city.”

“Can they read your thoughts? Are they searching for me?” I barely resisted the urge to give him a little shake when his attention seemed to drift away from me.

“No, just calling. Want us to come to the city…Forsyth Park.”

“Listen to me, Nico,” I murmured, kneeling on the ground before him. “You don’t have to obey them. They don’t own you. They aren’t your masters. You
don’t
have to go to them.”

He sucked in a deep, cleansing breath through his nose and pushed the air out again through his clenched teeth. He was trembling beneath my hands as sweat started to cover his body. He was fighting it as best he could, but if there were any naturi close by, Nicolai didn’t have a chance at avoiding them. I had watched the Savannah Alpha give in to the call, and I knew few lycanthropes that were stronger or more stubborn than Barrett.

“They’re miles away. You’re stronger than they are,” I continued, desperate to free him from their siren song. Kneeling beside him on the ground, I was so close now and he was holding on by a thread. If that thread snapped, he would have his fangs into my throat before I had a chance to move.

Nicolai blinked and looked up at me with copper-colored eyes. I was losing him to the animal inside. I swallowed back the fear that was rising in the form of a lump in the back of my throat.

“Stay with me, Nico. Think of Venice,” I said, trying to conjure up a purely human memory for him to cling to as he fought the naturi’s hold on him.

“Venice…?” he bit out between clenched teeth. He closed his eyes and shivered. “Nightwalkers everywhere. Air was thick with blood.” His upper lip curled and I caught a flash of his right canine as it started to lengthen.

“No, not that part of Venice,” I said, running my thumbs over his cheekbones. “I meant where it was just you and me together, alone in the hotel. No naturi. No nightwalkers.”

Nicolai’s eyes opened and I watched the copper recede to brown. He was coming back to me, fighting their hold as he recalled the memory of us having sex following a narrow escape from both the Coven and the naturi. Neither of us had spoken about that night since it happened. In fact, after returning to Savannah myself, I had gone out of my way to avoid Nicolai, and not entirely because of the naturi. I hadn’t been quite sure what to say after our extremely brief encounter, particularly since the night before that, Nicolai had tried to kill me.

“You were beautiful that night,” he said in a low, rough voice. He lifted his left hand and laid it over my wrist, his thumb caressing the inside of my arm.

“I like to think I still am,” I replied with a smirk. I needed his mood to lighten, needed to be sure he was completely with me before I released my hold on his face.

“You were a long, pale line of white light,” he continued, ignoring my comment. His eyes traveled over my face slowly, as if he was suddenly becoming reacquainted with me, before finally meeting my gaze again. “You’ve avoided me.”

“It was for the best. The…the naturi,” I said, trying to swallow the last word. I had just won him away from that dark race, I didn’t want to lose him all over again. “They’re making it difficult for everyone.”

“You don’t even call. You send Gabriel with all your messages,” he countered. The hand encircling my wrist tightened, as if he was preparing to hold me in place in the event that I tried to quickly move away from him. “You started acting cold and distant while we were still in Venice. It’s because of what my sister did.”