Heiress of Lies (16 page)

     Angeline tried to remember as much as she could of the glimpse of her father, but she couldn’t remember anything in the image that would tell her when it was. She shook her head. “If it’s there, I can’t see it.”

     She could tell that Caspian was annoyed. He put down the stick and pulled a small book out of his pocket. He grumbled as he wrote something down, scratched it out, and then wrote again.

     “What am I doing wrong?” she said.

     “Nothing,” Caspian said, shutting the book and stuffing it back in his pocket. “I’m trying to shove what is likely a decade’s worth of training into a few days, if we even have that long. If you didn’t have the bloodline you do, I wouldn’t even consider it possible.”

     “That’s the third time you’ve mentioned my bloodline. What difference does that make?” Angeline asked.

     “Bloodlines make all the difference,” Caspian said. “Weak, impure, watered-downed bloodlines make for weak immortal beings. We learned that a long time ago. The Master is quite selective about who is allowed into the coven. The blood has a long memory, and untainted bloodlines still carry the memories of our ancestors forward. Humans have forgotten such things, which over the years have made them weak. Few actively preserve the bloodline, but Alair Robart would have done everything in his power to ensure that his bloodline stayed strong forever.”

     Angeline thought of all the whispered conversations that she had walked into after her father had decided not to take another wife after Angeline’s mother had died. She had always thought it was because he didn’t think he could love another woman as much as he loved her mother. She had never considered that he might not have considered anyone…
suitable
.

     Caspian chuckled. “That man wanted a son. We both know it. But all of the noble families have forgotten the old ways and so their bloodlines with each progressive generation have become less desirable. He made a risky choice when he decided to make do with a daughter.”

     “But he wants me to marry Malin,” Angeline said. “If all the noble families are so impure, why would he allow it?”

     Caspian shook his head. “The Baford clan is almost as old as the Robarts and they have served the Robarts for years. A Baford would have been the most desirable choice, but that’s another family line that has grown smaller over the years. There would be no one else Eric would trust for you, especially if he was keeping secrets that he never intended you to know.”

     The information was coming too fast for Angeline to take in. She felt anxious, and underneath that anxiousness she felt hunger. She watched as Caspian picked up the stick again.

     “I suppose you are starting to feel a bit peckish. Good thing that your knight in shining armor isn’t disappointing.”

     Angeline saw a blur of black fall behind Caspian and hit the ground with a heavy thud, kicking up a flurry of dirt. She jumped to her feet just as Connor landed beside her.

     “Princess, I see you are still in one piece. Caspian as well. I am relieved.” He grinned.

     Angeline was alternatively annoyed and delighted to see him. He had come back. She knew that he wouldn’t leave her here with this crazy vampire. Then suddenly she caught a whiff of something tantalizing, rich, and spicy. It was coming from the shapes that Connor had thrown down the wall that were hidden behind Caspian.

     She moved to step around Caspian to get a closer look and Caspian moved with her; blocking her. She went to step in the other direction and he blocked her again.

     “It’s time for your second lesson, Princess, and I need you to focus,” Caspian said.

     “Hungry,” she said. It wasn’t her thought but she could tell that her body was definitely hungry.

     “I know you are,” Caspian said soothingly. “But Connor told me about the last time you ate. Do you remember?”

     She flinched. She did remember. But the pig’s flesh had tasted so good. She felt a bit dizzy remembering how good it had tasted. She could see now that the shapes were animals. Very big cats. And their chests were moving up and down. They were still alive. Her mouth started to water.

     “Angeline!” Caspian said sharply.

     Her eyes shifted back to him. She could feel that dark presence trying to peel away from her consciousness. It knew that Angeline didn’t have the stomach for this kind of thing.
I will do it so you don’t have too
, it whispered to her.
Let us feed
.

     Angeline moaned. Then she felt Connor behind her. He rested his hands on her arms. There was no pressure, yet. But she knew if she moved without Caspian’s permission, he would try to hold her back. The dark presence found this amusing, and Angeline could hear its giggles again.

     “Hungry,” she said again. Her voice sounded strange. She was wrestling with the parasite, but it was difficult because they wanted the same thing. To feed. “Please,” she said.

     “I will let you eat in just a moment, Angeline,” Caspian said as he drew the stick up into his hands again. “But first you must listen. How you eat your food will dictate who is in control. You do need sustenance to keep your strength, but you do not need to let it be in control to feed. You do not need to drink blood to survive no matter what it tells you. Civilized humans do not shred their food to pieces or revel in a bath of blood. This is a test, Angeline, a test of your ability to control your mind.”

    
Hungry hungry hungry hungry
, the voice whispered to her.

     Angeline tried to block it. She remembered what Caspian had said about her bloodline. She was a Robart. Robarts did not give in or lose control.

     “What am I supposed to do?” she said through clenched teeth.

     “I will cook dinner for you. And you will wait, over there.” He pointed with the stick to the corner of the clearing. “And if you give in and let that monster inside you loose, I will beat you with this stick and tie you back to that tree until you are in control again. And we will start again.”

     She saw a flash in her mind. In the image, she slid out of Connor’s grasp, shoved Caspian aside, and jumped on top of the closest mountain cat. Then she knelt down and ripped its throat out with a shriek that could be heard for miles. With that victory achieved, she grabbed the corpse and jumped to the top of the cliff wall and ran away with her spoils. She’d run so far that they’d never be able to catch her.

     Although there was a part of her that wanted to do whatever that voice told her to do, she knew that woman could never be queen. That woman would never be able to go home. She turned into Connor’s chest.

     “Help me,” she said softly, but she knew that he had heard her.

     “What do you need me to do, Princess?”

     “Sit with me. Help me remember who I am,” she said.

     He placed his arm around her and walked with her to the spot that Caspian had indicated. She sat down facing the trees. She couldn’t watch what Caspian was doing. It was bad enough that she could smell it. The smell was intoxicating.

     Connor sat down beside her but didn’t say anything. She shivered and he put his arm around her again. She leaned into him and they sat to wait.

     Connor felt the waves of heat coming off of Angeline’s skin, but she was shivering violently nonetheless. Her anxiety level was high, and he could tell that she was barely holding on against whatever her internal demon was pressuring her with. He was amazed at how much control she had at such an early stage. The stories said that most often, newly born wraiths had no sense of their previous lives or memories for days or even weeks. They had no motivations at all other than to feed.

     “Talk to me,” Angeline said through chattering teeth.

     “What do you want me to talk about?” he asked.

     “Tell me about what you have done with your afterlife,” she said. “Is it as wonderful as you thought it would be?”

     The comment rankled Connor, but he knew that part of what he was hearing in her voice was the other one, the one that would taunt him so that he would get angry at her, and give it a reason to take over.

     “My sire is the Chief Deputy to the Master,” he said. “He made me when he was creating a private guard for the Master’s safety.”

     “You’re the Master’s bodyguard?” she said, looking at him in surprise.

     “Not anymore. Not for a long time actually. I wasn’t very good at it,” he said. He had been terrible at it. His anger at Monroe meant that he had gone out of his way in his early days to do the opposite of whatever Monroe told him to do. He was constantly getting thrown in the seclusion chamber and was regularly denied blood until he was so weak from hunger that he couldn’t stand. But he didn’t bend. He didn’t want to be what he was, and he certainly had no desire to guard the one that ruled his afterlife.

     Luckily, or unluckily, however you looked at it, the Master had found his insolence more of an amusement than anything.

     “The Master finally told Monroe that clearly my interests lay elsewhere, and he released me from his service,” Connor said. “Monroe said that I had to make myself useful to the coven somehow. So I tended to the library and read everything I could get my hands on about how the vampires came to be.”

     “If you hated what you had become so much, why would you go through the trouble to learn something like that?” Angeline asked.

     “Know thy enemy,” Connor said with a wry grin. “And I wanted to know if there was any chance that I could be cured.”

     He felt Angeline move against him and he looked down. She was staring up at him with gaunt eyes. She was there and she was in control, but something else lurked behind her gaze.

     “A cure?” she said.

     “Sure,” he said lightly. He didn’t want to say too much, but his story seemed to be helping her stay focused. “Just because this is the way I am, I refused to believe that this is how I had to be forever.”

     “Did you find one?” she asked. He could hear the unspoken question in her voice.

     “No,” he lied. “There is no cure for what ails me.”

     She fell back against him. “That’s too bad.”

     He liked how her body curved against his. It made him feel almost human again. “Yes, well, what I did discover is that despite what my human father always told me, I am inclined toward scholarly pursuits. Once the Master noticed, he gave me special projects to research and both he and Monroe pretty much left me to my own devices.”

     “Hmm,” she mumbled.

     Connor looked down again and saw that her head was nodding. She was falling asleep. He knew that her mind was working overtime trying to absorb everything and learn as fast as she could against the backdrop of a sneaky, devious demon. He wasn’t surprised that she was exhausted.

     “
She’s strong
,” Caspian said inside his mind. “
But I don’t know if it’ll be enough. That one inside her is strong too. I could feel its hatred of me and of us.
”

     “
It has to be enough. I’ll help her,
” Connor replied.

     “
You can’t help her. No one can,
” Caspian said.

     Connor hoped that he was wrong.

     Angeline shifted against him again and her eyes fluttered open. In that moment Connor saw it there. The demon. Her lips curled into a sneer. “Silly vampires,” she said.

     “Caspian!” Connor yelled as he tried to grab her.

     She shot through his arms and was across the clearing in two bounds. The screech she made raised the hair on the back of his arms. Her mouth sunk into the mountain lion’s neck just as Caspian plunged a sharp bone into her arm. She howled and then her face went slack and she rolled off of the cat and onto the ground.