Moon Child (16 page)
THE back and forth whispers of an ashy feminine voice and a tired male voice coaxed Tristan from his fretful sleep. He hadn’t meant to sleep before the vampires went down for the day but as the excitement wore down and the adrenaline was all spent, sleep demanded tribute paid. Their whispers were somehow soothing, even with the anger lacing Ash’s words.
“You are lying,” she hissed, baring her teeth in a threat she didn’t mean.
“Maybe,” Mamoru answered not sounding frightened at all, “but it’s not your place to interfere.”
“I am no—” Ash snapped, but Mamoru spoke over her.
“Nor mine. Don’t you think if he were meant to know who his father was, he would have found out by now? You’ve said yourself that you’ve been searching for months and haven’t come up with anything.”
Now that was like a bucket of cold water to Tristan’s head and he struggled to remain still to hear more. He hated eavesdropping like this but he needed to hear their thoughts unhindered. Neither Mamoru or Ash would admit it, maybe they didn’t even notice, but they treated him as a child at times, hiding things from him to spare his delicate human sensibilities. He was stronger than either saw. And apparently Ash had been keeping more secrets from him. God, he still had to find the right time to broach the whole Yuki-gave-her-memories-back subject. It was obvious that Ash remembered Mamoru and what he was. She wasn’t even pretending not to. Just thinking about it now made him angrier than he wanted to be.
“Are you a pythia or an Uruwashi—do you think to see the future now, to understand fate?” Ash snapped and then sighed, softening her tone. “I apologize. I just, I am very frustrated over the whole thing. I have been searching so hard for Tristan’s father and have found nothing at all, not even the tiniest of clues.” She shook her head. “I feel as there may be a force out there greater than all of us keeping me from finding these answers. Perhaps the answer is in the few memories Yukihime still holds back from me. I cannot believe someone would meddle this profoundly…”
Tristan’s whole body suddenly ached. That clenched it. She remembered.
“Yes, speaking of the Snow Princess…” Mamoru paused for a long time, trying to pick is words carefully. “There’re a few things you need to know.”
Ash raised an eyebrow at him. “I imagine there is. But you know I cannot take another drop of your blood right now.” Ash’s voice was a low whisper but there was a heat in it that made Tristan want to see her face. Was she really saying what he thought he was hearing, that she was so weak right then that she would just drain the man dry? Rip his pants off, ride him to climax and drink down the last drop of Uruwashi blood?
“He loves you,” Mamoru said. “Very much.”
“I know,” Ash said in a tiny voice full of pain. “And that love… it hurts both of us.”
Tristan was too shocked to even breathe. Just what was she saying?
“Anyway,” Mamoru said and cleared his throat after an uncomfortable long silence. “I still don’t think that crazy old antediluvian was the one that helped spell you inept. It just, he doesn’t seem old enough, wise enough for that. I talked to him—” He stopped to scrub roughly at his hair, the heavy salt water had left him itchy. “I don’t know, two days ago now? He seemed to know exactly what was going on but I don’t think he’d actually helped that monster humanize you. I think he’s working for someone. Maybe whoever Chrysanthe’s working for.”
Ash raised a dirty eyebrow at him. “You are far more naïve than I had thought you to be.”
He gave a scoff in answer. “
Ash
,” he admonished.
“Think of it,” Ash pleaded in exasperation. “If he did know what was to happen, he might have wanted to ensure that outcome. Putting my life in danger would surely push Tristan the right direction. By the Goddess, it would certainly push me in that direction. Back in France, when I thought we would die, I offered to bite him. And I meant it, Mamoru. All to save his life, whatever it might be. By the Goddess, I was committed to it before Yukihime—” Ash stopped as the memory of that night filled her with anguish. She was rash for letting that woman sway her so easily.
Tristan could barely contain himself with what he’d just heard. She was going to bite him.
“Knowing all of that, if Agamemnon—”
“Agamemnon?” Tristan blurted before he could stop himself. He sat up and turned to look at the pair huddled close, nearly forehead to forehead. He couldn’t stand playing possum anymore and needed to engage. “That stinky old pythia, you think he’s got something to do with all this?”
Mamoru gave him a look that said he knew Tristan had been listening and was helping him out by letting him hear Ash speak so freely. As it was, Tristan felt bad for it, having to eavesdrop just to learn anything from Ash.
Ash’s lips pressed into a tight line. She hated not being able to feel the subtle rhythms of the others, hear their thoughts. The rise and fall of Tristan’s breath as he slept, the steady beat of the muscle in his chest keeping him alive, the quiet of his thoughts as he slept were all shut out from her. It was eerily… depressing.
Her lips suddenly parted in realization. The other two men noticed and were on sudden alert, unsure of the expression.
“Ash?” Tristan went to her and knelt beside her. “What’s wrong?”
“I,” She stopped to blink at him in utter shock. “I miss being a vampire…”
He blinked back at her a moment and then burst into laughter, hugging her. “You’re still a vampire.” Otherwise she’d be dead, right? “You’re just…” He sat back, looking at her and trying to find the word.
“Tamed.”
He nodded. “A strange sort of vanilla. Think it will wear off soon?”
She glanced at Mamoru quickly, a look of warning in her eyes, before looking back to Tristan again and shaking her head. “I cannot guess. Ingested pythia spells vary in how long they last.” Some, even permanently.
Tristan nodded again, remembering the gradual building pain the break on his arm felt as it blossomed to life again when the spell ran its course. Chrysanthe, that witch, she never fixed it to start with, just slapped him with a super strong spell to hide the fact that she wasn’t good enough to heal him properly or make a permanent spell.
“At any rate, my hand should be back to normal by dusk.” Resting in her lap, she wiggled the fingers of the right hand. They were slowly working again. “And when this spell runs out, I should be able to refill my seikonō from Mamoru’s blood to get us out of here.”
“You think Agamemnon is interfering?” Despite the man’s vehement claims that he would never do such a thing.
Ash sighed. Tristan was annoyingly focused sometimes. “Perhaps. He is the only pythia within very near proximity that would have the power to make a spell that strong.” Perhaps even focus elven magic to a pythia. “The one helping Genoveva has to be an antediluvian, a very, very seasoned one at that. Though, if anyone but either of you had told me it was possible to humanize a vampire, or bind an elf with no earth power to a pythia, I would have said they were utterly mad.”
Again, there was that stab of jealously. Ash trusted Mamoru a great deal for being only passing acquaintances. Maybe their interlude was longer than Mamoru let on.
As if she could actually read his mind, she sighed, giving him a look that said he was being silly. “I do trust Mamoru. Remember what I told you before about blood? No greater truth than what it holds. Mamoru is most assuredly friend.”
Tristan nodded, licking his lips as he considered just blurting it all out. She was still lying to Tristan. Mouth firmly closed, Tristan looked away to hide his anger. That’s when he noticed it was quieter than it should have been. He realized why when he saw the pale figure slumped, propped up in a little corner on the rocks. Desmond was asleep for the day already, having used more seikonō than he was willing to admit. It was dangerous to use up all their greater power as sudden deficits were too large of a toll to pay. If a vampire ran out of seikonō they could easily put themselves into an involuntary comma until the next sunset, which, if they’d been anywhere where natural light could touch, was life ending.
“There’s no chance that someone else made it?”
Ash tilted her head, considering Tristan. “You are not convinced that he is the one either then?”
Tristan sighed, slumping. “No, not really. I mean, I didn’t really like the dude, but he was… I don’t know. He seemed like he really meant it when he said he didn’t want to interfere with fate.”
“He has had his share of misfortunes, from what I understand, with dabbling with the flow of fate but I believe him to be like most men of his kind.”
Tristan looked at her and raised an eyebrow in question.
“Prideful fools.”
He smiled. “I guess there’s not many antediluvians around anyway, huh?” he asked, remembering what Mamoru had told him.
“No. Not many at all.” Only five world-wide that anyone could say with a one-percent certainty. Though, Ash couldn’t recall any of their names right then outside of Agamemnon of Crete and Pauwu, a lovely Algonquin that, from what Ash had last heard, had found herself a nice little corner of Australia to sulk in after having a lovers quarrel with one of the other antediluvian shortly before his sudden and violent death. But for the life of her, Ash couldn’t remember that other pythia’s name. She was sure she knew all five names but there was a haze around the memory that felt cold and tasted of Yukihime. Why would Yukihime want to take such a memory, just what was she up to?
“After we get out of here, we’ll go right to that old bastard and make him tell us what he’s done.”
Ash’s blue eyes rolled slowly up to meet Tristan’s and he shivered at the hot anger in their depths.
“So,” he drawled and Ash let out a little puff of air. She hadn’t needed her vampire gifts to know what was about to come out of Tristan’s mouth from the look in his eyes. “You really think that gross old fart knows who my father is?” Inside he was worried as hell but the possibility of finding out who is father was lifted his spirits. He was starting to make the mysterious sperm donor up in his mind as a great man. He had to be, right? Because if he wasn’t, all that was left was a selfish asshole who ran out on his mom, the same woman who was now dead because there was no one there to help fight off the vampire out for her blood.
“Perhaps,” she said sounding guarded, eyes searching for something to fix on that wasn’t Tristan’s excited expression or Mamoru’s equally worried one.
“Because I wondered that too. Chrysanthe seemed to hint at knowing too.” Hell, he was starting to wonder if everyone but him and Ash knew because he was nearing certainty that Yuki knew too, the scheming old bat.
“I will know for sure when I kill him,” Ash said.
“You’re set on that, huh?”
“If he was indeed the one who spelled me human, then yes. He will die.”
Tristan wasn’t so sure she really meant what she said. She was just angry, rash in the moment. He gave Mamoru an apologetic look. “Do you mind?”
“Uh, sure. Excuse me.” The Japanese man had more color to his face but he was still unsteady on his feet. The group really was a mess. In fact, Tristan was the only one well enough to do anything right now. And he was the weakest one.
Tristan waited as Mamoru shuffled to the far side of the dead tiger jikininki and wondered what the man was doing as he pulled out that ornate silver knife.
“Hey,” he said softly as he returned his attention to Ash and lifted the hair out of her eyes to push behind an ear. “Will you talk to me?”
Her eyes widened almost unperceivably so. “About…?”
He huffed and let his hand drop to his side. “You were just at the whims of a woman who…” He choked, remembering the pain and fear, the hopelessness of being trapped by that vampire. They were Ash’s feelings but he felt them with a keen awareness that felt like his own experiences. For those feelings alone he wanted to kill Genoveva.
“He really did show you.”
It was probably meant to be a question, but in Ash’s mind it was anything but. Tristan nodded, eyes flicking to the passed-out vampire. “Yeah.”
She dropped her head to hide the well of tears. “I am sorry you had to experience that. I know how terrible it must have been.”
He pressed a finger lightly under her chin and lifted her face to look at him. “It was and still is. Don’t ever think your pain isn’t mine. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what Desmond showed me.”
“Some things,” Ash whispered. “Are not meant to be remembered.” She only had believed that anyway.
Tristan dropped his hand away, straightening his back. He didn’t want to do this now, but he had the opening. And it was a conversation that had to be had. “Ash. I know you’re hiding things from me still. Big things… things that happened in France…”
If she were feeling more herself she might have been able to hide her reaction. As it was, she wasn’t herself and she flinched. Her mouth opened, sound came out, though not words, and shut again. She was at a loss for words, for once.
“How could you lie to me still? After all we’ve been through.”
