Dayhunter (21 page)

“You will or I will kill Tristan now,” she calmly said, switching tactics when images of Calla couldn’t make me cave.

“Ridiculous. You won’t.”

Sadira laughed lightly, reminding me faintly of a bird’s song. “Of course I will. You are far more valuable to me than he could ever be.”

“Mira?” The voice was soft and fragile, reaching me from beyond the nightmare I was trapped in. It was Tristan. I had forgotten about him. We were really in the Great Hall, and for now Tristan was alive and still mine.

It suddenly dawned on me to fully open my mind instead of closing everything down in an effort to block out Sadira. Tristan’s pain and fear instantly flooded in. It was more than Sadira could effectively block out. The image of my home in Greece disintegrated. Calla faded away to only a ghostly memory.

I knelt on the ground beside Tristan, who was still chained to the floor. Reaching across, I took his hand and gently squeezed it as I slowly reduced our mental connection. His pain was draining me and I needed to be sharp against Sadira.

The rage from my earlier fight pumped in my veins again, and a new anger filled my trembling frame. I had packed my past away and left it to collect dust in the corner of my mind, but Sadira trotted it out as a way of controlling me. She had defiled the memory of my daughter; she sullied those precious few moments in my life when I’d felt human and whole and happy. I didn’t need the monster dwelling inside of me to fire my need for violence. Sadira had already done that.

“I’m free now,” I said, pushing back to my feet. “And Tristan belongs to me.”

You can’t have him,
she snarled in my mind. I felt her pulling another veil over my mind, so I opened my thoughts to Tristan again. Trapping my mind between two realities, it stole away my sense of balance. I had no idea where Sadira was. Desperate, I threw up a ring of fire around Tristan and me.

Sadira’s screams rang through the hall. She had been approaching and got trapped in the fire. With her out of my mind, I extinguished the flames, but she was already blackened to a crisp.

With a little effort, I broke the lock on the manacle around Tristan’s neck and dropped it with a loud clang. Tristan leaned heavily on me as we moved away, his fingers digging into my forearm as he struggled to stay on his feet.

The smell of burning flesh filled the room, overpowering the scent of the Lagoon and lush gardens that wafted in through the open front doors. Tristan struggled against my hold on him, trying to look back at the creature that had spawned us both, but I wouldn’t let him stop moving forward.

Sadira didn’t die that night, but every nightwalker in Venice could feel her pain. At dawn she would fall into her deep sleep wrapped in that pain, and tomorrow when she awoke would still be drowning in it. Even if she gorged herself on blood, it would still take several nights to recover from those burns. I only needed to keep her alive until we defeated Rowe. No one had ever said anything about the condition she had to be in.

Tristan and I paused at the front doors long enough for him to feed off the two doormen. I knew they would come in handy sooner or later. Borrowing a pair of pants off one of the unconscious men, we slowly walked back to the boat. My back ached and my head throbbed from where I’d been hit with the chair. From the way my vision still blurred from time to time, it seemed that the nightwalker with the chair had cracked my skull. I needed to feed and sleep for a couple days, but I doubted I would get such a luxury.

Tristan moved more easily as his body healed with the fresh infusion of blood, but our progress was slow. We were several yards from the docks when I saw Nicolai walking toward us up the path. I pulled Tristan to a stop, my whole body tensed. If the werewolf attacked now, I knew I would kill him. My body hummed with pent-up energy from the fight. I might not intend to, but I would still kill him.

“Walk away, Nicolai,” I called to him. Now was not the time to resume our fight. Jabari had ordered him to kill me, and I could only assume that Nicolai would pursue that task until he finally completed it or was dead. The golden shifter had stopped in the middle of the path more than twenty feet away, watching me. “Turn around, get back in a boat, and drive off.”

“Why didn’t you kill me?” The question was soft and reached me on the back of the breeze crossing the island.

“My fight isn’t with you,” I said. Beside me, Tristan tightened his grip on my arm. He wasn’t so much looking for support as he was questioning me, seeking assurance. I placed my right hand over his and gently squeezed it. He had been through enough for one night.

Nicolai caught the movement and frowned at our hands. “He’s the reason I was sent to kill you,” he said, the words barely pushing past his clenched teeth. “A distraction?”

“Possibly.”

Nicolai jerked his eyes away from us as a string of Russian curses rumbled from his chest like a freight train across the desert. His fists were clenched at his sides, trembling. He had been used so another could be tortured, and now he knew it.

“Please, Nico,” I started again, hoping a nickname would get him to acquiesce to my request. “Walk away. I need to get him somewhere he can rest and recover.”

Frowning, Nicolai walked toward us. I stepped forward, putting myself between the werewolf and Tristan. His expression instantly softened when saw my aggressive stance and he halted a few feet away from us.

“I only want to help you to the boat,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender.

Nodding, I turned and put Tristan’s hand back on my left arm. Nicolai took Tristan’s other hand and placed it on his right arm. The werewolf got a glimpse of Tristan’s back and swore softly, his jaw clenched in boiling anger.

“This has nothing to do with you,” I murmured a while later, breaking the tense silence.

“But I didn’t help matters. I held you up when you could have rescued him sooner,” he grumbled.

I said nothing because it was true. He didn’t know how he was being used. He didn’t know he was aiding in the torture of another. I wondered if he would have followed orders if he’d known what the plan was. By the pained anger that filled his copper-brown eyes, I doubted it.

We didn’t speak again until we reached the little speedboat. Nicolai helped me lower Tristan in. The nightwalker sighed deeply as he lay across the bench on his stomach.

“I could have killed you,” Nicolai abruptly said, pulling my gaze back up to his handsome face. He stood on the dock with his hands shoved into the pockets of his dirty slacks. His left cheek was smudged with dirt, and a shadow of blond stubble outlined his hard jaw. A smear of blood stained his temple where I had hit him with the rock, but there was no lump or other discoloration. His stare was intense, holding me silent for a moment, unable to read the emotions that lay just below the surface.

“You have the ability,” I conceded, a smile lurking on my lips. “But you couldn’t have killed me tonight. You don’t have a good enough reason, and you need a reason to kill.” It was a guess, but I doubted that I was far from the mark.

Nicolai snorted and opened his mouth to argue, but I held up my hand and continued before he could speak. “Don’t go back to the hall until after daybreak. I didn’t leave its occupants in a good mood.”

“Thanks for the warning,” he said with a half smile.

With a nod, I turned on the engine and pulled away from the stone dock, eager to get Tristan back to the relative safety of our suite. By the time we reentered the Lagoon, the worst of his wounds had healed and he was beginning to relax.

My muscles were battered and the wind was chilling the blood that covered my body. We crossed those dark waters in silence, lost in our own thoughts. Even now I could still hear Sadira’s screams, feel Gwen’s warm heart squishing between my fingers. The soft touch of each soul as it left the bodies of the nightwalkers I had killed this evening pranced through my mind, and I smiled. I felt more alive with every existence I’d extinguished, and I loved it.

Maybe I’d been wrong about what I told Danaus. Maybe I
was
evil. I could argue that I had killed those nightwalkers of the Coven court to stop them from hurting another vampire. I could argue that I’d done it to protect Tristan. But that would have been a lie. I did it to prove my own power and exert my control over them. I killed them simply because I could.

FOURTEEN

T
he night closed in around me, warm and wet like a lover’s lips on the hollow of my throat. But I wanted to shove the feeling away. I didn’t want to be touched. I didn’t want to hear another heartbeat or feel heat radiating from another human body. I didn’t want to look up and meet Tristan’s haunted gaze, asking questions I couldn’t bring myself to answer.

For the first time in what seemed an eternity, I was alone. Gabriel, my guardian angel, was hundreds of miles away, and Danaus remained safely ensconced in a church—protected from me and my kind. Tristan had been left curled up on the bed. After a quick shower to remove the fresh coating of blood, I slipped down to the landing.

As I flew across the Lagoon, a roar rose up from the engine of the tiny speedboat and I could feel it rumbling through my bones. Waves slapped against the sides of the boat and the wind pulled at my hair, tangling it. The darkness crowded close as I headed away from the lights and sputtering heart of Venice.

I needed to be away from the pulse of humanity so I could think. Yet, something in me was afraid to plumb the dark depths of my feelings too deeply. I didn’t regret the destruction I had brought at the hall. I didn’t regret the lives that I took or the joy I felt in doing so. And it wasn’t the act that was gnawing away at me—it was my complete lack of remorse. I don’t know whether it was some wrinkled remnant of my humanity or if I truly believed it, but something was screaming inside of me that I should be horrified by the bloodbath I had created. But I wasn’t.

Beyond the screaming, another, more insidious voice mocked me. Nearly two centuries ago Valerio had warned me there was no escaping what we were—heartless, cruel, and violent. I had left Europe professing that I could be different, I could avoid what he believed was fated. Less than twenty-four hours back in Venice and I was covered in the blood of my compatriots, basking in their terror, and laughing like a madwoman struck by the moon.

As I neared the dark island, I cut the engine and let the small boat glide into the dock. I had gone to the one island where I knew I would be completely alone. No human lived here, and no vampire would dare find rest here due to the constant traffic of people during the daylight hours. I had come to San Michele—the cemetery island.

The entire island was ringed with an enormous redbrick wall, and a pair of graceful white stairs and gates led into the sanctuary. The shadows were deeper on the island, thrown down by the countless cypress trees that reached up past the walls. Most of the island was thickly lined with graves, marked with headstones of varying size and decoration, from the traditional white cross to the more elaborate family crypts. The lanes were laid out in a neat grid, but due to the need for space, they were narrow, forcing visitors to walk single file in most places.

With my head down, I wove my way to the east. It had been a while since I last visited, but I remembered a small section that was left as a park. The scent of jasmine and roses drifted to my nose. The air, thick and humid, left me feeling I was pushing through wet cotton. As I turned the last corner, I allowed myself to release a soft sigh as my gaze fell on a small patch of earth that had yet to be turned into a resting place for the dead. The park had shrunk in size, but it was enough for me to sit in silence, surrounded by cypress and what appeared to be a pair of hybrid poplar trees.

Yet, something was wrong. I felt as if I wasn’t alone, though I knew I was. No human lived here and nightwalkers had no reason to visit this place. Despite my logic, I still scanned the entire island with my powers, but I sensed no one. Shoving my fingers through my hair, I shook my head and forced myself to walk into the clearing. I was frazzled from the long night and the seemingly endless battles with the naturi.

I sat on the ground and threaded my fingers through the cool grass, wishing the silence of the island would seep into my soul and wipe away the pain caused by Calla’s sweet memory. Behind the great stone walls, I could no longer hear the waves of the Lagoon and the clang of the buoy bells were faint. There was just me and the wind and the dead.

“I have grown very weary of you, little princess,” someone above me announced.

Rolling over to balance on my hands and toes, I looked up into the poplar tree that had been at my back. But I didn’t need to see him. Frustrated tears welled up in my eyes at the sound of Rowe’s taunting voice. I was too tired both in body and spirit to fight the naturi now.

“Leave here,” I snarled, the muscles in my calves starting to tremble from the awkward position I remained in. “I didn’t come here looking for you.”

He snorted and stood easily on the branch he had been sitting on. His large black wings brushed and scraped against leaves and branches as he resettled them. “You leave. I was here first.”

Was it that simple? I wasn’t surprised to find him in Venice after seeing the female naturi in the Great Hall. Hell, I was sure there were several other naturi wandering around the city or even swimming in the Lagoon. But he didn’t honestly seem to be there for me, since his best weapon was the element of surprise.

Letting my knees fall so I was kneeling in the grass, I quickly glanced over my shoulder in the direction Rowe was facing. By my best guess, he was looking out toward San Clemente and the Great Hall.

I had to get off the island and find some way to alert Jabari or Macaire. Stopping the naturi meant stopping Rowe, but I couldn’t accomplish that alone. I had no idea what the wind clan was capable of, but I was willing to bet there was more to it than just a nice pair of wings. Unfortunately, I had succeeded in pissing off everyone in the Coven, as well as angering and/or scaring the shit out of all the flunkies. I couldn’t reach Jabari, Elizabeth would rather see me dead at the hands of Rowe after what I did to Gwen, and Macaire…well, the only way I could reach Macaire was through the flunkies, and that wasn’t going to happen. My only potential contact inside the Great Hall was Sadira. I could have screamed. No matter what I did, I kept wading deeper and deeper into the mire until there was simply no escape.